3:04 am Eastern Time

I am tired. I'm burned out on this UPS job. I applied for a real job again yesterday, and I am hopeful. That's probably foolish, but you only live once.

More important, however, is onion foccacia. I made a batch of pizza dough from The Best Recipe, an invaluable cookbook from the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine. While it was rising, I sweated an onion in one of my black, shiny iron skillets. I formed the dough into a 1" thick pizza crust sort of oblong. I smeared the onions all over it. I applied salt, pepper and parmiggiano. I slid it onto my thoroughly preheated (425°) pizza stone and baked it for 25 minutes. I flashed it with the broiler at the end to give the onions a bit more color (an easy way to ruin stuff, so never walk away). This foccacia was then topped with pulled pork (see below), and Cottonwood Endo IPA washed it down. Lovely.

Now, I must go to work.

It's hot
My time is wasted on silly things like work
There's livin' that needs to be done

Cooking
Brewing beer
Baking bread
Having sex
Going places
Writing about it

Drudgery ain't my bag, yo. Maybe it's the ADD in me that keeps me from enjoying 47 hours or so of menial work every week.

However, food is always a welcome entertainment:

A few days ago, my wife and I sat down to a dinner of pan seared pork chops with blueberry/herb vinegar sauce with baked sweet potatoes. Afterwards, we had some pound cake (made by my sister) with fresh strawberries (from the Farmers' Market, see below) and Chambord-spiked whipped cream (made with the Mixer o' Death, see below).

Yesterday, I went to a little barbecue place on Chapel Hill road, Davis Family Barbecue. I got a couple of pounds of pulled pork. Heaven. Smoky, vinegary. I ate it on pita bread when I got home. Before stopping at the barbecue place, I had a couple of Yuenglings at Rocco's bar and grill, just across the road. An unassuming little place in a snippet of stripmall. An improvement to a shitty day at work.

Thanks must be directed to Charlotte, mighty among bloggers. She improved this site, making it more fun and jolly.

This is the farmers' market in Raleigh, NC. A palace of earthly delights. 

This website is hilarious or darkly disturbing. A scathing indictment of American Society!LILEKS (James) Gallery of Regrettable Food 3.0 : Potpourri

Ah, yes. One of my favorite paintings. I recall a sunny day of hateful LA traffic to get to it. Worth it.Irises (Getty Museum)

Mixer o' Death 

Some angry ranting:

Politicians are assholes. Primarily white, rich men, they seem to be the distillation of the desires and fears of a select portion of society. Why wouldn't I be cynical about our political system? It's all advertising, not leadership. They follow; they do not lead. They hop from tree branch to tree branch, posturing and evading.

High-minded, wooden speeches which purport some sort of moral superiority fly from the White House like papal bulls. No wonder so many people hate us Americans so much. Such arrogance, such stupidity. Such condescension. Who made us the Policeman of the World? Sure, it would be nice to intervene and prevent ugly human rights situations, but it doesn't seem to work as simply as a cop arresting someone. The cop has even less credibility when we find pictures of him torturing someone.

How many American kids could have had full-ride scholarships in exchange for the billions of dollars that have gone to Iraq? How many people are dead? How many people have gotten rich off of this war? We could do good, constructive things with the blood and money that has been wasted. We could do things that posterity looks upon with satisfaction and wonder instead of shame. We could be on our way to a manned Mars mission. We could make nonpolluting transportation. We could cure diseases.

Nope, let's try war and nation building. Just because they've always been misbegotten nightmares before doesn't mean they will be this time, right?

Fucking morons.