Hot Air

This had better go up again.

It's the weekend, so a little chocolate mousse is allowed, and here's a recipe by Mark Bittman, from his book, How to Cook Everything, as featured on Joy of Baking.

And here's a nice scrap-and-debris magnet for your skid steer, in case you have some demolition work lined up. This one is from Skidworks, makers of specialty skid steer attachments. This one is rated at more than 500 pounds, and has a wireless remote control that clips onto the joystick.

No worries.

Assertiveness Training for Creatures From the Tepid Lagoon

Start with something small, like sacking  a village, tearing the inhabitants to pieces, and stealing all of their Tupperware. Then work up to something larger, like asking for a date.

And don't be disappointed if you get a sack of pitted dates instead of true romance. Many a tear has to fall, etc.

In case you're interested, the song, It's All in the Game, is the only #1 hit ever written by a US Vice President. It was composed in 1911 by then-banker Charles Gates Dawes, who became VP under Calvin Coolidge in 1925. You can read more about it on this site.


The lyrics were used by Bernard Wolfe in a novel entitled The Late Risers, which I read a long time ago and remember as being a highly unusual tale of various colorful characters--actors, promoters and grifters  in a 1950's era Broadway setting. You can read an excerpt here, and there are various editions floating around.


Bernard Wolfe was at one time a secretary and bodyguard to Leon Trotsky, although he was not on duty when his boss was murdered.


Here, from Martha Stewart, are pictures and a recipe for bittersweet chocolate mousse.  I cannot believe that I just linked to a Martha Stewart item! My parents must have done something wrong when I was still at an impressionable age. Actually, the chocolate made me do it.


Here is a picture of the Big Bertha Howitzer. You won't find any Howitzers on Martha Stewart's site. She's probably never fired a Howitzer in her life. 


Neither have I, actually, but I can think of a number of occasions when I could have used one. The day I got that detention, for instance. All I did was roll a penny down the  length of the classroom floor while the teacher was droning on about the chief export products of some country I'd never heard of! Talk about injustice! Bring on the Howitzers! 

Monday Morning is Waiting Like a Crocodile Under the Bed

It's late. I was helping my son move all of his stuff from one apartment to another.
If you help someone, anyone at all, you get to eat one of these. It's your duty--it rebalances the world so everything is in harmony.

If you don't like harmony, you can add a little random percussion with one of these Sherman tanks. It won't balance anything, but it will certainly convince your friends to share their chocolate mousses with you.

I don't know if Jean-Paul Sartre ate any chocolate mousses during his long career. It would depend on whether or not Flaubert ate any. On the other hand, if his friend, Camus, had eaten any chocolate mousse, Sartre would have been compelled to denigrate it as bourgeois, humanist, and possibly cursed by the demon Descartes. So he would have walked away from it and gone off to join the Maoists.

That would have left Simone de Beauvoir all alone with a provocative chocolate mousse.

To eat or not to eat.... I don't think she would have worried too much about whether or not the chocolate was for itself or in itself. She was free to choose, after all.

Tomorrow is another day. And I have a dental appointment. Monday morning. I was free to choose.

No worries.