Fragile Bird

This thread reminded me of a story a friend told me. Decades ago, when she was a young teen, her uncle, who worked for a dairy, brought over a case of whipping cream, the type you buy in cans. I think many of us have memories of taking a can of whipping cream and sticking the nozzle in our mouths, sucking up that sweet, lovely cream. Because we were, you know, stupid. Well, this was a whole case, and her parents put the stuff in the fridge in the basement. There were five kids, the family needed a second fridge. Anyway, she and one of her older sisters went down to the basement and sat there sucking up whipping cream. Can after can. I can’t remember if they went through all of them (12? Maybe) but they went through a good number of them. Shd cannot face whipping cream to this day, almost 50 years later.

I’ve been deep into mindless candy, the Hamish Macbeth books, as I mentioned in the previous thread. I said the audiobook narrator was great but getting too old to be mid-30s Macbeth, and looking up his name found out he died last year or the year before, and the new narrator of the most recent book is a bit too twee. I also mentioned that M. C. Beaton had started working with a co-writer, and I see he also picked up the writing on the Agatha Raisin books as well. Beaton apparently gave him a long list of ideas for books. I’ve been a bit disappointed in the book he wrote himself, there were a couple of continuity issues (the police station gains a second floor, and other minor points). The latest book has already been announced and I’ll try it when it comes out, I guess. That led me to deciding to revisit P. D. James, and I’ve listened to five of her Adam Dalgliesh books. It’s amazing what you see in retrospect. Since I earlier read all of Josephine Tey’s Alan Grant books, I can now see James must have been heavily influenced by Tey. Among other things, both detectives are heavily addicted to the job and reluctant to get involved in a serious relationship. Maybe if Tey had lived longer she would have eventually married off Grant, as James eventually marries off Dalgliesh. Both have mysteries that get wrapped up by unexpected confessions. Both detectives get seriously ill and go off somewhere to recover, getting involved in murders. Something I didn’t remember about Dalgliesh is that he really finds handicapped people repulsive, very apparent in Book 3, Unnatural Causes. I wonder if she faced criticism for that, as Book 5, The Black Tower, is actually set mainly in a home for the disabled. Dalgliesh still has issues but they’re really toned down. Still, well worth listening to. And then something totally different, I finally finished The Three-Body Problem. It took me a couple of times to get through it, but I’ve now finished it and really enjoyed it in the end. There are trying stretches which get quite technical. Has anyone read books 2 and 3? I looked at the Wikipedia article on Three-Body and saw a synopsis, and I’d like to know if they make you feel as depressed as they sound. I’ve put a hold on The Dark Forest. I also looked at some of his other books and they do look grim ie Supernova Era.

It’s the name given to a cooking technique, that frankly speaking, I more or less used over the decades. Perhaps not as extremely, though. You know when you make a hamburger patty, and you toss it on the frying pan or the bbq? If you just let it cook, flipping it once or twice, you get a nice, sort of rounded patty. I always liked to take my spatula and press down on my burger, flattening it and browning both sides evenly. With smash burgers they use a heavy spatula or even the bottom of a frying pan, to smush the burger flat on the grill and get the whole surface browned and a bit crispy. Smash it into the grill.

It amazes me to see how The Simpsons can be quoted on virtually every topic imaginable! And it doubly amazes me to see how Simpsons fans can first, remember there was something suitable, and second, find the damn thing! Bravo!

On a lighter note, a cartoon popped up on my Facebook page, showing a boy waiting for an elevator together with his dad. The cartoon is labelled “2075”. The boy is asking his father (quoting from memory here) “how come so many buildings don’t have a 45th floor?” eta: not to derail the protest discussion

Silly me, I thought it was because you were drunk!

I guess that comes under the heading “well, that explains a lot”.

Hey. It was in the part of his brain that he didn’t use.

The US had huge surpluses of dairy products. There was so much butter they stored tons of the stuff in caves.

We were just chatting about foods we have negative memories about. For me it’s canned tomato soup, not because it was a go-to because we were short of money, but because it meant my mom was too busy to make soup herself. She made wonderful soup, but had cans on the shelf to use if she was too busy to cook. What food did you used to eat that you no longer have any interest in?

Canned tomato soup.

Beans on toast is literally a can of Heinz beans warmed up and poured onto a piece of toast, right? I think I once saw a suggestion that you fry up a sliced onion, red or yellow, add the beans to warm them up and pour that on the toast. I do like a mess of mushrooms fried up and put on toast. (What do you call a bunch of mushrooms? Mess seems ok)

Not off the top of my head but yes, I’ve seen the ridiculous list. eta: when Boris was PM and he had another kid, you guys talked about his background and his names.

Oh come on, you just made that up.

Congratulations! That did not come up when I googled the same phrase. There were two Samogitian uprisings, Wikipedia tells me, the first one failed and the second one provoked the Teutonic Knights to declare war on Poland. If your peasant revolt brings war to a third country maybe you think that was a success story, maybe not so much for Poland. And after Polish-Lithuanian forces defeated the Knights, damned if the Samogitans continued conflicts, so to hell with them. As for the remensas (auto correct keeps changing this word) their rebellions brought some relief but the they were still serfs in the end. The UK peasant revolts were actually more successful in bringing reform, even though they were failures. ETA @Spockydog One of the more famous Japanese peasant revolts ended up with 37,000 peasants being beheaded. Man, those Japanese didn’t screw around. And none of them changed the system, though taxes may have been reduced.