On the Money; Foie Gras

 

On The Money;

Economics For the 99%

Foie Gras

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Despite their fat books, and complex economic models, economists fail to comprehend the nature of economic activity. They don’t realize that the economy is an organic part of a greater organism known as society, and an even greater organism known as the environment. In other words, the economy is not a thing in itself. Instead, it is a part of our lives, and our lives are part of life on Earth. Ideally, the economy should be a much smaller part of our lives, and much less of a burden to life on Earth.

 

 

To illustrate this relationship, you could think of the economy as the liver of a goose. The liver of a healthy goose is about the size of a human thumb, and at that size it serves the goose very well. In a healthy goose, this small organ helps the goose digest and process all of the seeds, plant material, bugs and small fish that a healthy goose eats, and turns that food into strong goose muscles, shiny warm goose feathers, healthy goose eggs, and gives the goose all of the energy that it needs to fly thousands of miles each year as part of its annual migration. That’s what a goose’s liver is supposed to do.

 

 

However, some people who raise captive geese, don’t care about the health of their geese. They don’t want their geese to fly, or lay eggs, and they don’t care if the goose is strong or if it has shiny warm feathers. Instead, they want their geese to grow the biggest liver possible, in order that they might dine upon a French delicacy known as Foie Gras.

 

 

They’ve learned that if they nail the goose’s feet to the floor, so that it can’t get any exercise, and they put a tube down the goose’s throat, so that they can force feed it huge quantities of leftover pasta, bacon grease, and lots of other fatty, high carbohydrate food, they can make the goose’s liver grow until it is larger than a human fist. So, this is what they do to their geese.

 

 

As you can imagine, this doesn’t make the goose very happy at all. The goose shows many signs of distress, but the people who raise geese this way, simply ignore those signs. The goose then becomes very ill, but the people who raise geese this way ignore that too. Instead of the liver serving the needs of a healthy goose, the people who raise geese for foie gras, sacrifice the goose in order to produce the largest liver possible.

 

 

Before long, the goose is near death, and the goose’s liver, by this time about eight times as large as a healthy liver, has become so distended and diseased that it barely functions at all. At this point, the people who raise geese for foie gras, kill the goose, and remove the huge diseased organ, for which they have sacrificed what was once a beautiful, healthy bird. This is the ugly truth behind that popular French delicacy.

 

 

Unfortunately, this is also the ugly truth behind economics. For far too long, a small number of people who enjoy “the finer things in life”, have eagerly sacrificed the health of society and the environment in order to force economic expansion. For them, the quality of our lives, our health, our strength, and our culture only exist to deliver to them, the largest possible economy, so that they might enjoy the largest quantity of the richest possible delicacy.

 

 

Do not be fooled by fat books, sharp suits or white lab coats. Economists, businessmen and scientists generally do not have your best interest at heart. Instead, they seek to preserve, and improve their positions of authority and privilege, while they serve the interests of the 1%. Unless we overthrow the tyranny of objective science, escape the clutches of the 1%, and remember how to live our own lives, despite our fallibility, our goose is cooked. There’s an economic analogy that’s On The Money.

 

 

The Most Important Holiday Blog Post in the World

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the abundance that I have enjoyed this past year, but I am aware that many in this world go without. Thanksgiving also harkens in the Christmas shopping season, and many of you will spend a lot of money on stupid gifts no one really wants or needs. This Thanksgiving, I’m asking my readers to cut me a slice of that pie by supporting this important cause.

The Most Important Holiday Blog Post in the World

 

With the holidays rapidly approaching, a lot of us will be looking for gifts for people we don’t really like that much. If you’ve managed to avoid them all year, a gift is the perfect way to say, “Even though I hate your guts, I really can’t afford to have you talking shit about me.” This Holiday season, I offer you the perfect gift for people who you’d like to think well of you, but whom you don’t really know or like well enough to actually get them anything.

For these special people, a gift card from Helper International tells the recipient that you care more about some random, anonymous kids than you do about them. Helper makes sure that your money only helps cute, happy looking, photogenic kids, and we use the money you donate to give them cute, photogenic animals.

Your chosen recipient will receive a card with a beautiful color photograph so packed with cuteness and “Awwww”, that they will hate themselves, for being pissed that you didn’t really get them anything. Really, isn’t that what giving is all about, the feelings it inspires?

Sure, its awfully expensive for a greeting card, but you and your recipient will both know, that the kid in the picture really got to keep that cute little animal, gave it a name, took care of it, and bonded with it emotionally, before his parents slaughtered it and served it for dinner. That’s the kind of emotional enigma that makes the holidays so special.

Here at Helper International, our mission is simple, we use your donations to give highly prolific, and nutritious, live snails, to exceptionally cute children. Then we photograph the happy kids with their snails, print the photos on gift cards and send the cards to your specified recipient. That’s all there is to it.

Does it help? Sure it does. It helps us unload a bunch of snails, and puts money in our pockets. I can’t think of a more important cause than that, can you? You, and your chosen recipient get to share that “awwww” moment during the holidays, and some kid gets a snail. It’s a win win win deal for everybody.

So, please, give them the most important gift you can give. Give the gift of Escargot this holiday season. Help Helper International make the snail shepherding dreams of adorable children everywhere a reality. Only you can make make this miracle happen. No child should ever be denied the this exquisite delicacy and every child should have the opportunity to get to know the delightful little creatures that produce it in abundance.

Send your generous donations to Helper International, P.O. Box 2301, Redway, CA 95560 and make checks payable to John Hardin.  You’ll be glad you did, and so will I.  Thank you, for you support!

Word Power, Heliculture

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary, One Word at a Time

Heliculture

heliculture (hell ih cult yer) n the art, science, practice and folklore of raising snails

Simon and Garfunkle as Adolescents (Helix Aspersa)

About a year and a half ago, we adopted a snail we found on a plant at Sylvandale’s Garden Supply here in Redway. They were going to kill it, so we decided to give it another lease on life, and took it home as a pet. For a while, we kept it in a big jar with cheesecloth over the lid, and fed it lettuce leaves.

Garfunkle, aka Snail Friend, shortly after he joined our family

Amy misted it with a squirt bottle every day, which usually motivated it to come out of its shell and climb around for a while. After a while, it seemed lonely. I don’t exactly know why it seemed that way to us, but we went back to Sylvandale’s to see if we could find another one. We did, and they hit it off immediately. We often found them resting right next to each other, shell to shell.

Simon whispering to Garfunkle

When we just had one snail, we called it “Snail Friend”, but when we added the new one, we named them Simon and Garfunkle. We chose those names because of how quiet our new pets are, which reminded us of Simon and Garfunkle’s hit song “The Sounds of Silence”. At first Garfunkle, aka “Snail Friend”, the one we had the longest, was much larger than Simon, but they both grew rapidly.

Simon and Garfunkle (Simon is the little one on top in this photo)

Eventually we found a nice little aquarium with a fitted lid and transferred the snails into it. They really seemed to like the new digs, which had a nice layer of soil on the bottom, a couple rocks, and a piece of bark to create a diagonal ramp from the bottom corner to the top corner of their enclosure. They continued to grow, and Simon eventually grew to be the larger of the two.

Simon and Garfunkle in their Mason Jar Home

One evening, about two months ago, we noticed them necking rather enthusiastically. We knew they liked each other, but this got to be embarrassing to watch, so we put their aquarium away and gave them some privacy. About a week or so ago, we discovered dozens of tiny gray ovoid shaped masses about an eighth of an inch long, all over the inside of the aquarium. Baby snails! We have dozens of baby snails. Now what?

Baby Snails!

We checked out a book from the library about raising snails for food, titled, cryptically enough, Raising Snails for Food by Jacques Baratou, subtitled, “How to Make Friends With Garden Pests and Develop Them Into The Darlings of the Gourmet’s Table. We’ve done pretty well at the “making friends with garden pests” part, but I’m not sure we’re ready to “develop the darlings”, so to speak. However, I did discover this great word, heliculture.

Tiny snails in Amy’s palm

So, as we weigh our options at this critical juncture, and decide whether or not to join the distinguished ranks of the world’s heliculturalists, let me share a few photos of the proud new parents, and their babies, as well as a few facts I’ve learned about snail ranching:

Garfunkle with offspring

Snails have the most complicated sexual apparatus in the animal kingdom, and they are all hermaphroditic

Simon with baby

Snail ranchers ride specially bred horses that don’t run very fast, but are very careful about where they put their hooves down.

Baby Snails!

In France, snails have the right-of-way. Occasionally, french snail herders will have to cross a major road with their herd. This can tie up traffic for hours.

Proud Parents Simon and Garfunkle

Snail rodeos, where snail ranchers show off their snail-handling skills, and compete for prizes, have become high-stakes sporting events that draw competitors from all over the world. However, few spectators have the patience to sit through a snail rodeo, and as a result, the sport remains extremely obscure, outside of helicultural circles.

Simon with two babies

Again With The Circuit-Bending

Again With The Circuit-Bending

Next Monday, May 21the Southern Humboldt Amateur Radio Club will host a circuit-bending workshop with the band CMKT4. I’m really looking forward to this event. I hope I meet all of the local musical odd-balls out there who find the proliferation of pointless electronica (used here to denote a genre of gadget, not music) fascinating, disturbing, or compelling enough integrate these devices into their art.

 

After this event, I will get back to producing the kind of vapid pointless pap that you’ve come to expect from me here. Maybe I’ll even get back to Zombie Rodoni’s write-in campaign for the Second District Supes race. I don’t know, I’ll find something to bitch about. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you pitiful drones desperately seeking sanctuary from your dreary lives in my words. I’m here for you.

 

I know you are out there. I know you count on me. This blog has averaged over one-thousand hits a day for the last two-and-a-half months. Almost a hundred people an hour, and over thirty thousand people a month come here, for what, I don’t know, but I appreciate every one of you, even if you just look at the pictures. I won’t let you down.

 

But right now, I just want to keep writing long enough to use up this disposable pen. I need the spring from it for this electro-acoustic cigar-box drum-machine I’m building. I know these cheap disposable promotional pens really don’t have much ink in them, so if I just keep writing, I know I can use it up. Then I can take the pen apart to get the little spring I need, with a clear conscience.

 

I feel inspired, for the first time in years, to make music. This time with an odd collection of hand-made, circuit-bent, highly idiosyncratic instruments. I don’t have any idea how to get people to listen to my music, and I know that even if I could get people to listen to my music, most people won’t like it. I won’t let that stop me from making it though.

 

Like all the world needs is more fucking music,… played on jerry-rigged children’s toys, no less. Some of you might wonder what I find so appealing about these annoying, noisy, electronic toys. Not only do they sound profoundly unmusical, they’re ugly, they’re plastic, and they’re full of unrecoverable toxins and heavy metals. They offend everything natural and wholesome in this world. Even children don’t really like them much, and parents hate them, which is why you find so many of them in our thrift stores.

 

By all accounts, these things should never exist. No one should ever buy for a child, a toy that makes electronic noise whenever the child pushes a button. Kids should have to work harder than that to make noise. Banging pots and pans, screaming at the top of their lungs or jumping up and down all take some energy, and will eventually tire the child out. Noisy electronic toys make it too easy for kids to be loud and annoying, the way cell-phones make it too easy for adults to be loud and annoying.

 

Though I consider myself a musician, I don’t care much for music, at least not the music of our culture. I don’t like classical music much, because I can smell the tuxedos. I don’t like country and western or bluegrass, because I can taste the alcohol, incest and bigotry. I don’t like rock, because its too loud and stupid, and I don’t like techno, because it has no soul. I don’t care for gospel, because it reminds me too much of church, and I don’t like reggae because it reminds me of the blood-sucking dope-yuppies who ruined this place. No, I prefer something else. Something I find in little black blobs on circuit boards embedded in brightly colored plastic toys from China, or in the spring in this pen.

 

To me, these little machines sound more brutal than death-metal, more comical than Spike Jones’ Jazz and more transcendent than trip-hop. They are more sophisticated than the Space Shuttle, and yet they produce the most crass and banal sounds ever heard on planet Earth. In many ways, these circuit-bent toys reflect what we have become as a society: a cheap imitation of an infantile fantasy, hopelessly short-circuited, and malfunctioning spectacularly. At least that’s how they sound to me.

Or maybe I just love the sound of electricity and the smell of solder. Either way, I killed off that pen about two paragraphs ago. Now I can get to work on my drum machine. Adios!

P.S. I just recorded an interview with Terri Clemmentson of KMUD news in which I demonstrated a circuit-bent teddy-bear’s innards, and a baby rattle miked with a CMKT4 contact microphone. Here’s a short etude for these two instruments.

You Call That Cooking? Twinkie Flambe

I’ve noticed that a lot of popular blogs revolve around cooking. Personally, I’m not that into cooking, but I’m into having a popular blog. So, today, I launch the first, in a new, occasional feature, that I’m calling:

You Call That Cooking?

…or, How to make, not quite a meal, from stuff that is not quite food.

Twinkie Flambe

Since I don’t cook that often, most of the recipes I have seen, were printed on the labels of other prepared foods: Rice Krispy Treats, Ritz Cracker Mock Apple Pie, 7Up cake and Chex Party Mix to name a few.

I always liked these recipes because they gave the impression that you could do something creative with these hyper-processed food products, instead of just staring blankly at a glowing screen while eating them right out of the box or bag. Not that I ever actually prepared any of these recipes, just the idea that somewhere, someone was doing something less pathetic with these products than I was, seemed somehow edifying.

Did you know that you can baste a pork roast with Coca-Cola?

 

Coca Cola Pork Roast

I wonder why you don’t see recipes like that on Coca-Cola anymore. Probably because no one makes pork roast anymore. Who’s got two hours to squirt Coke on a pork roast? I guess Coke figured that you consume more Coke when you go out to eat, than you ever will cooking at home. Now they offer coupons to Taco Bell on their packages instead.

Also, the few people who still cook, have become more snobby. They want organic, vegan, bio-dynamic, gluten-free ingredients, without additives, preservatives, artificial flavorings or colorings. They want to eat food, and ever since Michael Pollen’s book, the Omnivore’s Dilemma, they harbor a very prejudicial view of what that entails. Those people can go eat chard in hell!

With Hostess facing bankruptcy, threatening the very existence of Twinkies, Ho-hos, and Ding-dongs, the time has come to really explore the culinary potential of these oft ridiculed, and under-appreciated food-like products. Today, I offer a truly elegant, exciting and delicious way to prepare Twinkies, that you will be proud to serve at your next dinner party.

Twinkies Jubilee Flambe

This recipe combines three of my very favorite culinary elements: 1)Twinkies, 2)Booze, and 3)Arson, in a recipe that not only tastes delicious, but gets you fucked-up, and explodes in a ball of flame on your dining room table.

 

You’ll need:

Twinkies, 1 or 2 per serving

Brandied fruit, 4 oz per serving. Cherries, berries, peaches or pears will work. If you don’t have fruit preserved in brandy, use canned fruit, and add a shot of flavored brandy (peach brandy for peaches, cherry brandy for cherries etc.) per serving. I usually brandy a few quarts of blackberries every year, to enjoy the following winter, and this is a great way to enjoy them.

 Sugar, 4-6 heaping teaspoons per serving.

 Juice of ¼ orange per serving.

Flaming Brandy ½ oz per serving. Flaming brandy is really high octane booze, approx 150 proof, you can substitute 151 proof rum or grain alcohol if you can’t find Flaming Brandy at your liquor store.

 

Preparation:

Don’t try to prepare this dessert ahead of time. Think of the preparation of this dessert as after dinner entertainment for your guests, ideally, performed at the table.

Step1. Remove Twinkies from their plastic wrapper (you might want to do that part in the kitchen).

Step2. Place Twinkies on dessert plates. Don’t ever try to serve this dessert on paper plates! Always use glass, ceramic or China plates.

Step3. In a saute pan, over medium heat, combine fruit, fruit brandy, sugar and orange juice.

Step4. Gently stir the mixture until the sugar dissolves completely, and the mixture begins to bubble.

Step5. When the mixture gets good and hot, and has begun to thicken, add Flaming Brandy carefully!

Step6. Set the whole mess on fire! You can do this with a match, or a simple “flick of the bic”, or you can pour a little of your Flaming Brandy into a spoon, hold the spoon up to one of your dinner candles, when the booze in the spoon catches fire, pour it into the saute pan, igniting the contents.

Or, if you want to get fancy, just slide the saute pan off of the flame, and as you pour the Flaming Brandy into the pan, dribble a little over the edge of the pan, into the flame. The flame will climb the stream of booze into the pan, igniting the mixture. Remember, you are doing this on purpose. Don’t flinch! You want to burn off most of the alcohol in the mixture, not your home, tablecloth or guests. A spastic reaction at this point can turn your best dinner party into the night you lost everything. So, be careful! You don’t want to live the rest of your life as a hideously deformed freak, like Richard Pryor.

Step7. Scoop the still flaming mixture over Twinkies, and serve. If you get this dish good and hot before you light it, the alcohol will burn quickly and spectacularly. You will barely have time to set the finished dessert in front of your guests before it the flame goes out. If you spill any of this fruit flavored napalm, smother it quickly and calmly with a napkin. If things get out of hand, don’t hesitate to dial 911.

 

As long as you don’t burn the house down, you probably won’t screw up this recipe. If you add more sugar, it will be sweeter. If you add more flavored brandy it will be boozier. If you add more Flaming Brandy, it will singe your eyebrows off when it flames. However it turns out, it will impress your guests, because everyone likes to see stuff catch fire, and everyone loves Twinkies. Bon Apetit