More of my FASCINATING LIFE
Correspondent:: nenslo
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 21:49:42 -0800
--------
As I'm SURE you recall I mentioned that the bearing chase of the front
wheel of my immortal clunker bicycle had gotten a groove worn in it
which caused it to emit an annoying CLICK every single time the wheel
turned and possibly potentially might cause it to someday SEIZE UP
flinging me over the handlebars. I went down to the bike co-op and to
the bike repair collective looking for a used wheel and they didn't have
any my size and all the new wheels were 45 dollars and I don't like to
put anything new on my bike except tires tubes and brake pads. Which I
actually did this week since the rear tire was so thin I kept getting
flats and you could see the fabric at one spot. And at the Bi-mart they
have these Bell brake pads four in a pack for three dollars instead of
some other kinds which are two for nine dollars because I guess they are
streamlined which makes them worth that much more than mere inexpensive
rectangular brake pads. So I went into the parts room at the Citybikes
bike repair collective, where they replaced my cracked rear axle the
week before, and looked in the drawer marked front wheel hubs and darned
if the fist thing I picked up wasn't a real attractive and clean hub
that looked pretty much exactly like the one I had been dicking around
with for a week or so and I took a chance on it figuring I could always
return it and if I was somehow incapable of disassembling my front wheel
and rebuilding it around the new hub the worst thing that would happen
would be I would have a nonfunctional wheel which I pretty much had
already. So I paid five bucks for the thing and took it home.
As I was waiting to catch a bus home from downtown this damn kid looking
in the window of a shoe store, dressed WAY more expensively than me
(meaning he obviously bought his clothes retail instead of thrift) asks
me if I can help him out with a quarter and I say no and he says
PLEEEEZ???? Pritty pleeeze??? and I say What does NO mean? No means
NO!!! and he finally seems to get the idea that perhaps I wasn't going
to "help him out" with a quarter which I didn't have anyway, having
literally NOT ONE CENT on me. I used a ticket to get my bus ride and my
one credit card that Mrs. Nenslo talked me into getting to buy the wheel
hub. So when I get on the bus I see that the damn kid that was mooching
a damn quarter offa me in his fifty dollar hip hop superbaggies is in
the shoe store talking to a salesman over a pair of 125 dollar sneakers
which I guess he had $124.75 and was trying to cut a deal on them or
something the stinking rat. I may be a sorry broke chump but I don't go
all whiney begging people. You jerks OWE me a decent computer. Get on
the stick willya.
So I get home and take my wheels off my bike and take them down into the
basement and begin to disassemble the front wheel. It was clearly a lot
newer than the back wheel and came all apart pretty nicely and got all
cleaned up very easily so now I have a rim, a pile of spokes, a crappy
hub and a good hub. I used the rear wheel as a model to see which
spokes go where, and which direction they go and where they join the rim
and it took me less than an hour to get it all back together. Then I
got my copy of Richard's Bike Book by Richard Ballantine which I bought
because it has really nice exploded view drawings of all the parts of a
bike and all the various types of derailleurs and brakes and brake and
shift levers they had at the time, and turned to the half page where he
tells how to true up a wheel and basically recommends against it but if
you must do it he tells you roughly how. I got this long nail that is
used to secure gutters to the edge of the roof of a house and drilled a
hole in a big upright beam I have down there in the back room of the
basement which if you saw the bryce pictures I did of my basement when I
was planning the big bookshelf project you know what I mean but you
probably didn't. A hole in the beam to fit the nail into and I stuck it
through the axle of hub, it being a quick release kind which is hollow
when you take the quick release out and just the right size for one of
those long nails and hung the wheel on the beam and fiddled with the
thing for about 45 minutes and got it trued up to within a 32nd of an
inch mostly which is about as good as it was before. It probably plays
a little more of a tune on the spokes than a wheel really ought to but
it's good enough for me. Now it rides really nicely. Considering that
I have put over a thousand miles on it since I bought it at that yard
sale 12 years ago, most of that in the past three years and with almost
no maintenance until now, it's doing pretty well. Seriously. Over 300
miles a year the last 3 years. When I took it in for some minor work a
few years ago the guy said I shouldn't count on getting too many miles
out of it. Those bike guys think if you aren't on a thousand dollar
bike you can't get anywhere. SO this year I put almost fifty dollars
into my bike, the most I have ever spent on it in one year, about two
and a half tanks of gas for our station wagon.
Another thing I RE-learned is when you loosen up the headstock or
whatever that's called, to take the front fork off, DON'T do it with the
bike standing on the kickstand, and DO do it with a cloth on the ground
under it because if you have it on a kickstand as soon as you loosen it
up it will lean over, relieved of the weight of the front wheel, and you
will go DAMMIT when you hear the tick tick tick of the bearings dropping
out of the dry bearing race which hasn't been lubricated in years. and
if you have a cloth on the ground you will not spend ten minutes on the
floor with a flashlight and wondering if there are really supposed to be
only twelve bearings.
Also made another fabulous apple pie and some really good chili. I used
up the last of my chili powder and started to write it on the chalkboard
which is our grocery list, when I thought wait a minute. I know that
chili powder is just ground dried chilis, cumin and salt. I HAVE dried
chilis, cumin, and salt, and I just bought an electric grinder at an
estate sale to use as a spice grinder for a dollar. So I toasted a
couple of chilis over the burner to get them soft and puffy for a minute
to cut them open and get the seeds out, then when they had cooled and
dried I ground them up and made my own chili powder like a genius.
Instead of buying it like a dope.
Today I took the bus downtown to buy a pad of watercolor paper and maybe
take some pictures. I have been wanting to do some pictures that take
even less time and work than the acrylics I have been doing and Mrs.
Nenslo got a nice photo magazine of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and
tsunamis which has some good pictures of crunched up overturned cars and
I have already done a good picture of a couple of cars flung up on a
guard rail next to a gas station. I do the picture all in ink wash and
then tint it very lightly with watercolors. Takes about an hour. It
was really nice and rainy downtown and very dark which I like,
especially in December because of the holiday decorations in the stores.
I have a roll of 800 film in a little Canonet camera which is not as
nice as my old Zeiss Ikon but which works a little better for me since
it has viewfinder focus and the Zeiss just has a distance setting and a
variable iris and unfortunately I am really lousy at judging distances
and about half of the photos I take with it are blurry. Considering
that only about three out of any roll I take are what I would call
pretty good pictures I really need to have as many advantages as
possible. The probably pretty expensive super electronic Olympus which
was given to me is pretty good except for the damn eight dollars worth
of batteries it burns up just using it and then when they die on you
when you have two more shots on the roll it's either spend eight more
bucks or forget about that roll for a year or so. I wanted to take some
photos of the entries in a gingerbread house competition but they all
pretty much stunk.
I also went to the library and found an old historical novel about John
Law and the Mississippi Bubble by Emerson Hough, a 19th century french
detective novel Other People's Money by Emile Gaborieau, a collection of
stories by Tennessee Williams, and Tales of Hoffman which somehow I have
never read. I find I get the best results in browsing at the library if
I simply ignore the vast majority of books which do not look like they
were put in a library binding in about 1951. One I almost got was
called something like Mister Sponge's Sporting Tour, an ancient British
specimen of "humour." I just didn't think I would really read it but it
looked like it had been put into a library binding in about 1915. I
recently read a few Japanese mysteries, the best being by Matsumoto
Seicho entitled in the english version Inspector Imanichi Investigates,
originally Vessel of Sand. They don't seem to have anything at the
library by Akutagawa. I have also enjoyed reading some of the manga
Petshop of Horrors, since it is made up of a series of short stories
instead of an interminable soap opera. On the other hand I have also
enjoyed the interminable soap opera of a Korean manga called ONE, which
has to do with the Korean pop star manufacturing industry. Notable quote
- "If you are handsome, you are a singer. If you can dance, you are a
singer." I also sort of enjoyed a book called Snake Pit, by a guy who
draws a three panel autobiographical comic strip EVERY DAY. Just
telling what happened that day. The book contains three years of this
guy's slacker rock and roll zinester life mostly in Austin TX. It sort
of transcends any opinion you can have about it since it's basically
just the guy's real life. Imagine how interesting your life would be in
that format.
Pretty much like this post.
At least my cat doesn't eat nerf darts. Although he does hunt worms.
Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:38:25 -0500
--------
In article <41B938F3.E8257E49@yahoox.com>, nenslo
wrote:
> As I'm SURE you recall I mentioned that the bearing chase of the front
> wheel of my immortal clunker bicycle had gotten a groove worn in it
.....
>
> Pretty much like this post.
>
> At least my cat doesn't eat nerf darts. Although he does hunt worms.
I just knocked you right out of the water, tedious-detail-wise. Eat
your heart out.
--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com PRABOB
Correspondent:: nenslo
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:17:04 -0800
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"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
>
> In article <41B938F3.E8257E49@yahoox.com>, nenslo
> wrote:
>
> > As I'm SURE you recall I mentioned that the bearing chase of the front
> > wheel of my immortal clunker bicycle had gotten a groove worn in it
> .....
> >
> > Pretty much like this post.
> >
> > At least my cat doesn't eat nerf darts. Although he does hunt worms.
>
> I just knocked you right out of the water, tedious-detail-wise. Eat
> your heart out.
>
Like I would ever dream of trying to out-slop you in that hog pen.
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:56:29 GMT
--------
In article <41B938F3.E8257E49@yahoox.com>, nenslo
wrote:
> As I'm SURE you recall I mentioned that the bearing chase of the front
> wheel of my immortal clunker bicycle had gotten a groove worn in it
> which caused it to emit an annoying CLICK every single time the wheel
> turned and possibly potentially might cause it to someday SEIZE UP
> flinging me over the handlebars.
After reading all of that, I wish it had. Aw, I'm just kidding. Oh no
I'm not. Oh yes he is.
--
HellPope Huey
"Polite Society" is a mangy Russian bear
on a unicycle with a bent wheel
"Every country has at least one museum that says
'Here's why we chased you out'."
- Jon Stewart
"Once the swelling goes down,
the fangs should fall out."
- "Malcolm In The Middle"
Correspondent:: asscoassc@aol.comSHUTUP (AssCo Assc)
Date: 10 Dec 2004 17:26:24 GMT
--------
It's a good thing I read that.
When you got to the part about the bike
I was reminded of the work going on in
the bathroom. I had to take the toilet out
to put a bathtub in and while toiletless I
found myself in an emergency shituation.
I ran up to the attic and squatted over one
of those orange "homer buckets" thay sell
at Home Depot. The plan was to dump it as
soon as the toilet went back in but I've
completely forgotten about it until I just
read the phrase "a crappy hub and a good
hub" so I have to go deal with that now and
I'm afraid.
Perhaps I should begin noting important
bowel movements here so I don't forget
about 'em.
---
Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.
ooOOoo
It petrifies the tongue. . .
Shoots arrows through the lung. . .
Guttural rending pain . . .
. . . and next it Sclerotifies the brain
-- Copyright 2004 Ilya Shambat
Correspondent:: "Kevin Cunningham"
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:13:29 GMT
--------
"AssCo Assc" wrote in message
news:20041210122624.11861.00001646@mb-m16.aol.com...
> It's a good thing I read that.
>
> When you got to the part about the bike
> I was reminded of the work going on in
> the bathroom. I had to take the toilet out
> to put a bathtub in and while toiletless I
> found myself in an emergency shituation.
> I ran up to the attic and squatted over one
> of those orange "homer buckets" thay sell
> at Home Depot. The plan was to dump it as
> soon as the toilet went back in but I've
> completely forgotten about it until I just
> read the phrase "a crappy hub and a good
> hub" so I have to go deal with that now and
> I'm afraid.
>
> Perhaps I should begin noting important
> bowel movements here so I don't forget
> about 'em.
>
You and everybody else.
Rev. Dr. Junior Mints
Anti-Pope of Atlanta
Correspondent:: nenslo
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:19:11 -0800
--------
AssCo Assc wrote:
>
> I ran up to the attic and squatted over one
> of those orange "homer buckets" thay sell
> at Home Depot.
Any man who can crap in a bucket in the attic doesn't need or deserve a toilet.
Correspondent:: asscoassc@aol.comSHUTUP (AssCo Assc)
Date: 11 Dec 2004 01:35:06 GMT
--------
<< Any man who can crap in a bucket in the attic doesn't need or deserve a
toilet. >>
Thanks.
Where would you shit without a toilet?
Actually it wasn't so bad. I covered the bucket
with an old picture of the BVM that I've been
saving because it's a stone etching. It must have
had magical BVM preserving attributes as seen
in the cheese sandwich. Either that or the dry
attic air dehydrated the turd. I went up the
stairs expecting to hear a THX DTS 5.1 swarming
flies sound.
---
Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.
ooOOoo
It petrifies the tongue. . .
Shoots arrows through the lung. . .
Guttural rending pain . . .
. . . and next it Sclerotifies the brain
-- Copyright 2004 Ilya Shambat
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:08:07 GMT
--------
About the chile part, I seem to have wandered off in two directions with
the chile.
One is the New Mexico variety, and the other is in the Cincinnati direction.
A while back, I was impressed with the flavor of Red Mole, and found that
besides the ancho chiles and cumin, it had some peanuts and chocolate!
So, that's likely why I have tried a little peanut butter and chocolate and
more cumin and ancho--
"Second in line after Texas chili for "fiercest fan following" is Cincinnati
chili.
This concoction has a tomato and ground beef base, and it's seasoned with
cloves,
cinnamon, cardamom, chocolate and coffee."
"The word mole comes from the Aztec word "molli", which means concoction,
stew, or sauce. In Mexico, mole recipes are passed down from generation to
generation, vary from town to town and from family to family. Mole is a
complex rich thick sauce, which is traditionally used to accompany chicken
or turkey. It is made from a variety of chiles, onions, garlic, cumin,
coriander, cinnamon, cloves, sesame seeds, several types of nuts and a small
amount of chocolate.
Its best-known ingredient is the chocolate, which contributes richness to
the sauce without adding much sweetness."
Correspondent:: asscoassc@aol.comSHUTUP (AssCo Assc)
Date: 10 Dec 2004 21:05:39 GMT
--------
Yeah, the Aztecs were all about the chocolate.
At least the royalty were -- the regular citizenry
of Quezacotyl worshippers were forbidden to
have it.
Dutch processed cocoa is the way to go in a mole' --
that's been my experience. The other stuff
has sugar in it and doesn't even dissolve properly.
The "Dutch Process" makes it dissolve easily in
various liquids. "Droste" is the euro brand.
It's repackaged as "Hershey's European Style
Dutch Processed Cocoa" in a silver and brown label
in the US.
"Droste" is preferable because
there's a nun on the label.
Radio Netherlands has good choco content:
http://tinyurl.com/6hcqh
---
Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.
ooOOoo
It petrifies the tongue. . .
Shoots arrows through the lung. . .
Guttural rending pain . . .
. . . and next it Sclerotifies the brain
-- Copyright 2004 Ilya Shambat
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:34:56 GMT
--------
AssCo Assc wrote:
> Yeah, the Aztecs were all about the chocolate.
> At least the royalty were -- the regular citizenry
> of Quezacotyl worshippers were forbidden to
> have it.
>
> Dutch processed cocoa is the way to go in a mole' --
> that's been my experience. The other stuff
> has sugar in it and doesn't even dissolve properly.
> The "Dutch Process" makes it dissolve easily in
> various liquids. "Droste" is the euro brand.
> It's repackaged as "Hershey's European Style
> Dutch Processed Cocoa" in a silver and brown label
> in the US.
>
> "Droste" is preferable because
> there's a nun on the label.
>
> Radio Netherlands has good choco content:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6hcqh
>
I have found that for getting tamarind paste in a block,
you still got to steep it in hot water, so you might as well
start with tamarind bean pods.
Maybe it would be fun to make chocolate from scratch.
There are several kinds of cocoa beans listed--
although one account of roasting cocoa beans did not
seem to get the result
Some about Madagascar, Ghanan Forastero, and Venezuelan Criollo
Pick a target temperature for your beans.
210-230 F for barely roasted
250-260 for medium roast
280-290 for full roast
310 for very roasted
http://www.chocolatealchemy.com/
Humorous and informative--
http://www.sweetmarias.com/cocoa.html