Although I'm sure many of you have it in your minds that simply because I did not attend an Ivy League university or descend from old money that I am not capable of appreciating the finer things le monde gastronomique has to offer. True, I do have rather simple tastes, but occasionally I allow my creativity to run free and explore the ideas of 'what can be' when it comes to comestibles.
Just this morning, my thoughts dwelt upon those foods I consider to be essential elements of American cuisine, and a tantalizing potential brought itself to my forebrain--a savory synergistic fusion of all that is good, decent, and utterly delicious about my native foodstuffs.
That invention? Why, a delightful tid-bit, an hors d'oeuvre (a word which I hasten to tell you has nothing to do with either horses or ovaries, but is French and therefore untranslatable) of utter simplicity yet enormous, near cosmological complexity.
My friends, I give you Pork Rinds with Spray Cheese.
Soft, yet crunchy.
Creamy, yet bristling with brio.
The goodness of real pork by-product, with the kick of modern industrial propellant-assisted pasteurized processed cheese food product.
The perfect no-carb, high-protein addition to your favorite yacht club gathering, polo tourney, or monster truck derby.
The endless variety of sizes, shapes, and textures of the pork rinds alternately cuddle and conceal, fling and flirt with the decorative yellow sunburst streamers of the cheesemaker's art.
The photo arrangement above uses Mac's Vinegar and Salt flavored pork rinds, with filling of Aldi's Leland-brand Sharp Cheddar squirt cheese (no refrigeration needed), arranged upon one of our Wedgwood Queen's Shape dinner plates. It was photographed using my Samsung SCH-u550 cell phone, because my Hasselblad is in the shop. (Note: I don't actually have a Hasselblad.)
You are welcome.
We were at lunch Sunday after church and somehow (and I’m not sure how, exactly) the subject of popular singers came up, in particular, one Miss B. Knowles.
As the kids chattered, Catherine (who turns 13 today, by the way) suddenly got a perplexed look on her face. “Wait—her last name is Knowles?”
Without missing a beat, Rebecca looked at her and replied, “Well, yeah—what did you think it was, ‘Yoncé’!?”
For some reason, that really struck me as funny, and nearly caused me to snort sesame chicken out of my nose.
In the past few months, I have been quite diligent in keeping the Chinese spammerbots off of here. It's been hard--sometimes they hit late at night when I'm sleeping, so I might wake up to 100 or so spam comments, and each one has to be deleted individually. If I was lucky, I could get them right when they started and ban their IP before they got too many posted.
Well, I was off Monday (swapped off days with the other guy in the office), and I had already been off on Friday, so when I got to work Tuesday, I was beyond swamped with work. So, no real time to check and make sure I didn't have lots of spambabies. But, it wouldn't have made a difference, because the new broom at work sent down word that all Internet usage was going to be closely monitored, and anyone using the futuristic 486 computers we're saddled with for anything other than work-work would be in BIG TROUBLE. So when I got home Tuesday night and checked up on things, I had been hit with A THOUSAND spam comments.
I didn't get to do too much--banned a few IPs, deleted probably 250 or so. Still, not even a real dent in things. Last night, we had church, so no time to check, then all day today, then tonight--finally got a chance to check it again. Over TWO THOUSAND spam comments.
It's beyond me--unless Movable Type has some hidden way to delete massive quantities of spam, I've basically lost the battle to keep this crap off of here. It takes at least a couple of minutes to go through the steps to delete a comment, so that's 4000 minutes worth of mindless clicking to get rid of what I've got built up.
So, if you see spam on here, do the obvious thing and don't click on it. And say a little curse on my behalf for the inscrutable little bastages who keep messing up my once pristine little corner of the Web.
UPDATE: 2/12/10 1:18 p.m.
Well, so I gots myself off work early today because of the snow we're having (we've got about an inch or so here at Casa de Possum), so after I got here and got the kids situated outside giving themselves hypothermia and frostbite, I decided to see what the damage was. In addition to seeing I had some comments on this post from some of the ol' regulars, I also noticed that somehow, some way, SOME one has gone through and deleted all of those thousands of spam comments! I don't know if this was done back at Mu.nu Central Control, or somehow the mysterious Pixy Misa heard I was having problems, but I'm back down to where it was, and I'm a happier camper.
Obviously, not happy enough to start blogging again, but happier nonetheless.