gross

You see that? That’s Joose. You might spot it hiding on shelves in the beer aisle at your grocery store, or maybe in a cooler at a local gas station. Whatever you do… DON’T FUCKING DRINK IT. EVER!

That is all.

Why so early? The idea with smoking is that you go “low and slow” – you cook at low temperatures for an extended period of time, giving the meat plenty of opportunity to absorb the smoke from whatever wood you are using. Figureing about 1.5 hours of cooking time per pound of meat, it would take about 9 hours before the meat was done, and then at least a 45 minute wait after coming off the smoker before I could start pulling the pork. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at about 5am, with my goal being that I could eat by 5pm.

Before that though, I had to prepare the meat for smoking. The first thing I did was trim some of the extra fat from the outside of the meat – my reasoning here is that when you pull the pork, the fat is going to get tossed, so any exterior fat that hasn’t melted away is just going to end up on the trash pile. Another reason is that the rub will form a nice bark around the meat, which is usually pretty tasty. If this bark forms on fat, you miss out on that delicious bark! So, knife in hand, I trimmed about half a pound of fat from each of the two butts, leaving me with a 6lb and 4lb piece of meat.

After that, it was time to apply a generous rub to the meat. I used a recipe I got online, which was made up largely of paprika and brown sugar. After coating the butts with the rub, they were wrapped in saran wrap and tossed in the refrigerator overnight. This let the rub mix with the juices of the meat, and by the time I pulled it out, the meat was coated with a nice glaze.

From there, it was on to the smoker. I got the smoker going via the minion method, tossed the meat on, and checked back every half hour to make sure the temperatures were holding steady. I was shooting for a temperature inside the smoker of 225-250 degrees, which I was able to maintain nearly the entire time. This was done via several vents on the smoker – close them to cut of the air supply and bring the temp down, or open them to let in air and get the coals burning hotter. Because I didn’t know what I was doing, I was adjusting my vents every 30 minutes – not a big deal, but it would have been nice to have been able to let it go a few hours on its own and take a nap.

About three hours in, I put the smaller cut on, and after about eight hours, the 6lb butt was at 205 degrees, which meant it was time to get pulled off . It was nearly 2 hours later when the smaller cut was ready. I let them sit for a while while the juices worked their magic and the temperatures dropped a little bit, and then went to town pulling the meat. I ended up doing it by hand, because the meat was so tender. The bones pulled right out, without a single piece of meat attached! I heard nothing but good things about the final product, which was a relief after catching the grill on fire the last time I offered to cook for people. I’m looking forward to doing it again, the hard part will be figuring out what to do next….beef brisket, ribs, turkey….all great options.

Here’s what some braniac at Arby’s’ Executive Chefatorium thought one day, presumably after putting down the bong but before getting off the futon: “I want a roast beef sammich, but I’ll be damned if I don’t ALSO want bacon. If only there was some way to have-” and then he blacked out from the concussive force of such a profound idea.

They took a burger and replaced the beef patty with roast beef.  That sounds like a nice idea, eh?  Some ‘maters, some lettuce, maybe some mayo on their already exquisite roast beefer.  But they didn’t stop there, friend, oh no.  They added that peppered bacon.  They added your choice of Bleu or Cheddar cheese.  Bleu fucking cheese on top of roast beef underneath bacon!

Could it get any better?  How about “Double the beef for a buck”?  What the fuck are you gonna do when somebody asks you if you want to double the roast beef for a mere dollar?  Say ‘No’?!?!

Let’s recap.

• Bacon Cheddar Roastburger
• All-American Roastburger
• Bacon & Bleu Roastburger

OK. I can handle that.  Just don’t throw any more surprises my way and I won’t freak- hey WTF does it say on top of this Roastburger box?  It’s got punchholes for the 3 above burgers, plus a hole for double beef.  But it’s also got:

• a mysterious “Special” box that might include anything from blood pudding to Jamocha shake
• a BBQ Bacon box, which makes my mouth water
• a BBC Bacon Cheddar box, which makes my mouth runneth over
• a Jalapeno BBQ Bacon box, which made me drool myself into dehydration

They are coming out with MORE tasty burgers.  MORE! TASTY! ROASTBURGERS!

Yes, friends, Burger King is now in the cologne business. That on its own isn’t too terrible. It could just be a ridiculous little marketing stunt. Hell, I might have even been tempted to buy a bottle just for the sake of novelty. But they had to take it a step too far with this:

The King's New Clothes

That isn’t an image that I want in my head! It is especially bad considering that they are releasing these ads along side their Whopper Virgin campaign. What does this say to me? It says “The King is going to rape the planet!”

For disturbing advertising, I hereby extend Burger King’s Hall of Shame membership!

A Burger King was just recently built right down the street from me. It was the only major fast food franchise that wasn’t already within a convenient distance from my apartment. It is now the closest fast food restaurant to me, which is excellent because it also happens to be my favorite.

I was having a relaxing day at home and enjoying the remnants of the weekend with a beer and some Fallout 3. I decided to grab some lunch at BK. Ok, so I was drinking beer before lunch. DON’T JUDGE ME! I got to the drive-thru and prepared to order my standard #2 combo with onion rings and a Coke. I didn’t get to, though.

“Welcome to Burger King. We are temporarily out of burgers, would you like to try some chicken or fish today?”

Of course I didn’t want chicken or fish! I wanted a flame broiled heart attack! I sat there, stunned, for probably a full minute. I said nothing. “Sir?”

I had to make a decision. The #8 looked like it was chicken, so I asked for that. “I’m sorry, sir, that sandwich is grilled. We can’t grill it right now.”

I felt my face crinkling up in a look of bewilderment that the kid at the window must have seen, because he immediately said, “I’m really sorry. Is there something else that I can get you?”

I had seen the commercials where Burger King tells people that they no longer serve the Whopper. Shit like that makes people upset. I never thought it would happen to me. I was being let down by The King, and I wasn’t even on TV. This was real. I looked sadly at the speaker and said, “Never mind. I guess I won’t get anything.”

I was trapped in the line with cars on both sides, so I had to wait for the line. Before I pulled away from the speaker, though, the kid came back and said that they would grill up my chicken sandwich for me. I smiled and thanked him, I paid for my food, I took it home and sat back down in my gaming chair. I was pleased that they had at least helped me out that little bit. Then I opened the bag.

The fries were stale. So so stale. I have worked in fast food before. I know what it looks like when you refry old fries. Also, they had dropped the fries into the bag upside-down, so they were just all over the fucking place. Thanks, Burger King. Jerks.

• Dog-cloning should wait until the housing market improves.
• Tiny Gods talk genetics?
• Batman’s deep, sexy voice.
• Bonus Dark Knight spoiler @ 11:28-11:32
• Maggie Gyllenhaal, hot or not?
• Citag is the new bitch.
• We’re fresh out of fajitas in this piece.
• Indie games (Braid, Crayon Physics, Choke on my Groundhog, etc.)
• Dr. Horrible is back.
• Why didn’t anyone tell me Birds of Prey existed?

Listen to it or something. I’m out.

Oh, wait. I’m not out yet. Download the stuff: tiny-godcast-ep05.mp3

Ok. Now I’m out. For realsies.

I’d write more but I’m too fucking tired.

One love, Нико Белић!

So what do you think?  Nevermind that corn ethanol is indirectly cutting our precious Tequila supply, it’s clear that we don’t have a solution now.   Do any of these look good long term?  Sure, if we get the algae burning automobiles with “gas” tanks that actually incubate the algae internally we’ll truly be living in The Future!

But that’s all beside the point.  Look, we’re going about it slightly wrong, and I’ll tell you the right way(s).

1. Gas is actually a biofuel anyway, the problem is that it’s such a wicked old biofuel that it’s nonrenewable.  Let’s try to make crude oil into a renewable resource.  If we simulate dinosaur decomposition then we keep the (awesome) cars we have.  That’d be ideal (and would bankrupt the OPEC too!) but it probably won’t happen since they shut down Jurassic Park.

2.  Try the biofuel options like ethanol and biodiesel.  I am definitely jumping the gun here, but let’s just call it a miserable failure, get our tequila production back on track, and move on to something more interesting.

3.  Biofuels for mechanized people movers?  Illogical.  Look at the biofuels that we have technology to use: corn, sugar, soy.  What’s the problem with those?  We use them for food.  We, organic critters, use those items as “fuel” for our own movement and operation.  See where I’m going with this?  Grow us some fucking cars!  Get some mad scientists on the job and let’s shift the paradigm from “fueling up” to “feeding” our rides.  Catbus anyone?
PS I am aware that “My Important Thoughts” is redundant.

First, the details.  For $8.99 American (roughly 6 Pesos w/ the current exchange rate) you get 13 songs encoded as 256KBps MP3s w/o DRM.  Pretty good!  But how does it stack up against the crepes I made for dinner?

The crepes featured real butter, while the MP3s were fat free.  I had a raspberry spread between crepe folds, but no whipped creme.  You might think the lack of whipped creme was a deal-breaker because the Amazon downloader automatically imported the songs into iTunes, but you underestimate the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top.  Crepes win.

That’s fine and dandy, but how does digital music purchasing compare to a massive nosebleed?  The Amazon downloaded hid any download speed info, but the entire album was finished in under 2 minutes.  My nosebleed was epic and extremely inconvenient.  The inconvenience made me mad, and the madder I got the faster the blood squirted out of my nose.  It was difficult to throttle blood download speed, while I would never throttle MP3 downloads.  Also, the Gnarls Barkley album didn’t leave my bathroom a bloody mess.  Amazon wins.

Now it is clear:

Crepes > Amazon music downloads > bloody noses

My advice to you is that you go fetch some Egg Beaters and Nutella from the store and make yourself some lovely crepes.  While you are digesting, go download The Odd Couple, which is clinically proven to sound delicious.