Weblog
25 days ago: Bacon!
The following is an article from HERE!
The podictionary word for today is bacon: I had a moment of slight panic the other day. I was listening to an NPR podcast and this guy was talking about bacon and how it came from porkbellies. Now that in itself wouldn’t put most people into panic mode but you see I had just the day before sent the last and final corrections for my book back to the publisher. No more changes to be made.
And there in my book I mention in passing that the word bacon comes from the same Germanic source as the word back. So shouldn’t bacon itself come from the back of the pig? I rushed to the bookshelf and pulled out my Larousse Gastronomique. To my horror there is said “lean cured sides of pork” and went on to say
“The word derives from the Old French bakko, meaning “ham.” In French this became bacon meaning a piece of salt pork or even a whole pig. It was then adopted by the English and returned to France with its present meaning.”
The beads of sweat began to form on my forehead. I know I make mistakes, but I hate knowing. I clicked wikipedia.
“Pork bellies are the underside of the hog, from which bacon is made … in the United States in other parts of the world, bacon is more often made from back and side meats”
I cracked open Mark Morton’s Cupboard Love and read The term back bacon is redundant in that bacon derives from the old German bach, meaning “back.”
So that’s where I learned it. Could Mark be wrong? No, Mark is right. In fact everyone is right. What is normally called bacon in North America is from pork bellies. While in other places it is often loin. The word did come into English from French, but it got into French from German. I was surprised to see that the phrase saving one’s bacon goes as far back as 1654. To save your bacon means to save yourself from getting into trouble and I can see most of the path in the development of the word bacon in English to guess at how we got this idiom.
As Larousse said, bacon came from French and when it appears in English back in 1330 it meant salted meat from the back and sides of the pig. But over time people started using bacon to mean not only those cuts of meat but the entire carcass, as well as unsalted, fresh meat. To a very limited extent the word seems to have been applied to other flesh. There is a citation for whale blubber called bacon, I suppose due to the fat association.
The point is bacon had come to apply to an entire body, not just certain cuts. In parallel a new sense of bacon appeared—and it appears in Shakespeare in Henry IV—with a meaning of a country bumpkin. The idea here is that much of the population of rural England was sustained by eating pigs and just as French have been called frogs because they sometimes ate frogs’ legs, the hayseeds from the country were called bacon. So here we have the word bacon applying on the one hand to the full bodies of animals and on the other hand referring to actual people. It’s only a short hop to think that to save my bacon would mean to “save myself.”
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129 days ago: It's a girl!
I just got a text from Jason, He and Yaz are having a baby girl. The little girl in this video always reminder me of Yaz so I predict this is how baby “Jazz Hands” will turn out.
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182 days ago: Raid Tip: Rain of Fire (AOE Damage)
A little known fact is that if you are taking damage from an AOE*, like Rain of Fire, if you physically move out of the area being affected by the spell you stop taking damage almost immediately. As illustrated above our little raider turns his frown upside-down just by moving out of the rain of fire.
*AOE or Area of Effect: Many spells instead of targeting an individual target an area and do damage to everyone in that area regardless of how many people are in that area. So if 5 people are in the AOE 5 people will all take damage.
Alternate/Blizzard instructions
fire = bad
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203 days ago: Eat more kitten!
My friend Judson lead me to this article via the Drudge Report.
A top Italian food writer has been suspended indefinitely from the country’s version of the television programme Ready Steady Cook for recommending stewed cat to viewers as a “succulent dish”.
RAI, the public broadcasting network, said that it had dropped Beppe Bigazzi, 77, for offering the recipe on La Prova del Cuoco, which is broadcast at midday on the main channel. Its switchboard was inundated with complaints from viewers and animal rights groups. Bigazzi said that casserole of cat was a famous dish in his home region of Valdarno, Tuscany.
“I’ve eaten it myself and it’s a lot better than many other animals,” he told viewers. “Better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon.” He said that for optimum flavour the meat should be “soaked in spring water for three days” before being stewed… more
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218 days ago: Mitch Hedberg (1968 – 2005)
I bought a doughnut, and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don’t need a receipt for the doughnut, man, I’ll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut… end of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can’t imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: “Don’t even act like I didn’t get that doughnut! I got the doc-u-men-tation right here… oh, wait it’s at home… in the file… under ‘D’... for doughnut.”
I hope the next time I move I get a real easy phone number, something that’s real easy to remember. Something like two two two two two two two two. I would say “Sweet.” And then people would say, “Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?” I’d say, “Just press two for a while. And when I answer, you will know you have pressed two enough.”
I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.
This shirt is “dry-clean only”...which means it’s dirty.
Imagine being killed by a bow and arrow. That would suck, an arrow killed you? They would never solve the crime. “Look at that dead guy. Let’s go that way.”
By the way, you don’t have to be sweaty and holding a basketball to enjoy a Gatorade. You could just be…a thirsty dude! Gatorade forgets about this demographic!
Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus?
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258 days ago: Christmas Prayer
A Christmas Prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson
Loving Father, Help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and worship of the wise men.
Close the door of hate and open the door of love all over the world. Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting. Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children, and Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone.
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278 days ago: Games
Sorry for the lag of updates but if you miss me that much you should just call! I had a nice turkey day, we played games after dinner. We played a little mad gab then opened a brand new Scategories game. My Dad used the wrong list for one round but still did pretty well with the answers. In my free time I’ve been playing a bunch of the little browser games on facebook. Look me up to see what I’m playing.
I’ll try to post more before the holidays. The boots in my last post are on sale! (hint hint hint)
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317 days ago: Boots
These boots are super cool I want a pair so badly but they are way expensive. what I need is for a bunch of people to each send me a $10 gift card then i can use them to get the boots. Oh well its always nice to dream.
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350 days ago: Pitt Burger the Paladin
I have been working on a history for my Warcraft character Pitt. It has a long way to go but I wanted to post some of what I already have. Details about the first and second wars still need to be fleshed out and I have not started the third war or any of the recent history. This is probably less than half the story. Your feedback is welcome.
Pitt Burger is a mountain dwarf born in Ironforge about 40 years before the first war. He is the head of Dom Ursus, one of the oldest houses of Ironforge. Dom Ursus loosely means “House of the Bear”, sometimes also called the Father Bear Clan. Dom Ursus is a clan of merchants not warriors. Most of the family fortune has been made in the gathering and sale of raw materials especially ore, stone, and leather but they have also produced some of the finest crafts men of dwarf legend.
Like most dwarves Pitt is driven to create but in the field, especially at war, this can be very hard to do. He loves to cook and cooking provides a short term outlet for his creative inspirations as well as the practical applications. But he’s also frustrated by how quickly meals are finished and their impact rarely last past the next one. Although he has taken up many hobbies and earned a large personal fortune none of it compares to making a mark on metal for all eternity. The day Pitt is no longer able to strike his hammer to the anvil will most likely be the day he passes from this world.
Pitt really enjoys smithing and will work tirelessly for hours on end. He never intended to fight for a living, he has never seen the “sport” in combat, and had always intended to be a craftsman and take over as head of his clan from his father. Pitt was still an apprentice blacksmith when the first war broke out. Dwarves believe that you learn a craft from the most basic elements up. For blacksmith this means you first learn to mine and smelt the ore before you can learn to shape the metal. Although Most of his time was had spent mining in the Dun Morogh and Loch Modan areas he had already become quite skilled at shaping metal and had a natural talent for armor construction.
His young wife was killed in the first weeks of the first war. When word reached Pitt he enlisted immediately. Because war broke out they never actually had a wedding ceremony. She worked in a traveling carnival, this is how they met. Her carnival came to Loch Modan every spring. The first year he noticed her they never even spoke but each day Pitt would go to watch her work. The second year Pitt mustered his (drunken) courage and introduced himself. On the third year he asked for her hand in marriage and presented her with a plain mithril band he had crafted. They would have been married on their fourth meeting if not for the Horde. Because he will never love another as he did her he considers them to be “married” from the moment they met.
In the second war he was separated from the rest of the dwarves and Ironforge. Pitt was stationed at the Stonewrought Dam when the second war began. He did battle with the first waves of Horde in the Valley of the Kings. Outnumbered, the dwarves sealed the South Gate Pass and ordered the remained troops to the North gate Pass. Pitt deliberately stayed in the battle rather than seek the safety of Ironforge. Pitt knew the mountain would soon be sealed and the Dwarves would be cut off from the rest of the Alliance. Ignoring his orders Pitt made his way back to the Dam with a few others. Eventually the Dam fell as well and in the final moments of the battle Pitt was knocked back over the edge of the Dam and fell into the wetlands. His paladin abilities saved him from the fall. He made his way to the then deserted Grim Batol. Once recovered and reenergized he continued to move north and eventually arrived at Aerie Peak
