Blackmoor Vituperative

Do not seek marriage

Seek humour
Seek dignity
Seek adventure
Seek reliability

Do not seek marriage

Seek vulnerability
Seek strength
Seek kindness
Seek lust

Do not seek marriage

Seek independence
Seek intelligence
Seek passion
Seek friendship

Do not seek marriage

Wait for it to find you
With the realization
That all it will give you
Is a label
For what you already have

I had a dentist appointment this morning. I had planned to pick up some milk from the store afterward. Unfortunately, my car’s battery was dead. After some protests, Susan consented to allow me to drive her car.

When I arrived at the dentist’s office, I realized that I didn’t have a face mask: it was in my car. So no shopping afterward.

I called the dentist office to let them know I was outside, so they could bring out the pandemic-release forms and take my temperature. My temperature was 96.3 F, and they left the forms with me.

The first page described all of the reasons that I could catch COVID-19 at the dentist’s office despite their precautions, and ended with a statement I was supposed to sign confirming that my visit met the requirements of urgency and medical necessity described above.

I apologized and returned the form to the next nurse who came outside, and said it wasn’t urgent: just a checkup.

“Oh, it’s okay. We are seeing patients for checkups now.”

I apologized again, and fled, my stomach in knots.

I make my own taco seasoning mix. The stuff that comes in packets always has sugar and silicon dioxide (and sometimes sawdust — cellulose). I am going to start mixing up my own creole seasoning, too (once my current can of premixed creole seasoning runs out).

Creole Seasoning

Update (2020-03-27): I reduced the salt by 1/3 and tripled the cayenne. I was happy with the result.

This is the recipe I plan to use for creole seasoning.

• 4 teaspoons garlic powder
• 4 teaspoons onion powder
• 2 tablespoons sweet paprika powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (or less if you don’t want it as hot)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I use kosher salt for this)
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Grind it up in a coffee grinder, put it in a jar, and you’re done.

Taco Seasoning

This is the recipe I use for taco seasoning.

• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (I use kosher salt for this)
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Same deal: grind it up, put it in a jar.

Aside from the sugar and sawdust you find in store-bought taco seasoning packets, it also does not include the corn meal that is always in those packets. If you want to add corn meal (to thicken the sauce for burritos, for example), get a small bag of masa harina (like, a 1 pound bag — it looks like a small bag of sugar or flour — it’s actually corn flour). A little masa harina goes a long way, so keep it in the fridge in a 1 gallon ziploc bag (put the whole masa harina bag in the ziploc bag, don’t dump it out) and it will last for ages.

Don’t just use regular corn meal, by the way. That’s fine for making corn bread, but not Mexican food. You want “masa harina”. It’s different.

Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.

“The Lancet”, Volume 395, ISSUE 10223, P524-533, February 15, 2020

Two days until Christmas! Here is a classic Christmas song written (as so many were) by Jewish composers, Joan Javits and Philip Springer: “Santa Baby” (1953). It was written specifically for Eartha Kitt, for whom it was an instant hit. Kitt, at 26, was a star on Broadway and considered (by Springer, at least) the “sexiest woman in the world”.

Even Lovecraftian cultists love Christmas!

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten.

— “The Festival” (Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1925)

This is beautiful. Christmas is so much more than any one religion or culture. Christmas is about love and hope and generosity. It’s about acceptance and kindness to strangers. Christmas truly is a human holiday, for everyone, of all faiths (or no faith), and all cultures.

On this day in 1997, the world learned about Festivus, the Seinfeld Christmas alternative. Let the airing of grievances begin!

Any plan to include Google as a core part of a business process should also include a contingency plan for when (not if) Google shuts down that service.

Feel free to quote me.

It irks me that people so consistently misunderstand the world “soul“. A whole psuedo-religion has grown up around this misunderstanding.