YOU HAVE BEEN DEMOTED TO 7BITS. THAT IS ALL.

Ah. I no longer own a grill. However, at one point I had a deck on the second level of a triple-decker house in a shitty part of Boston, on which I had arranged my hammock and grill such that I could grill while in the hammock. Now, the thing of it was, I would get some drinks in me while grilling and then fall asleep and more than once, woke up with burns on my elbow.

I also used to drink at a place on the beach in Viet Nam that had a grill right next to the bar and of a weekend, would rock up with my crew and make ribs. We used hardwood charcoal because that's what was available. Fantastic stuff, if insanely long lasting. The best compliment I ever got was when people walking by on the beach wandered over and tried to buy the lunch out from under my friends and I.

My man, you are in NC. The Carolinas have their own distinct barbecue tradition that I would absolutely love to explore. Though grilling is distinct from barbecue, I would imagine that in NC there are far greater grillmeisters than I. Does yours by any chance have a rotisserie? I have to say, some of the best chicken I've ever made was with a rotisserie and it was dead easy too. A pork shoulder is also nice that way.

If I recall, your wife is vegetarian, no? If so, a gas grill is capable of making some pretty good baba ganoush but then, I love eggplant and I know that not everyone does. I've never had the opportunity to check out smoking as a method of food preparation, but with a really nice gas grill, I bet you can make some decent bacon or salumi if you are willing to be nontraditional about it.

Ah, before I forget. A fish in foil is pretty perfect for a gas grill. Some of the best fish of my life has been prepared this way.

You will need:

1 whole fish (a big one, or a few smaller ones)

A big onion

Some good tomatoes

Some green onions

Some herbs (dill is nice, as is basil, long cilantro if you can find it, even woody herbs like rosemary and sage)

Some lemons or limes

A whole lot of garlic

Good olive oil

Coarse salt

Some black pepper

Chili peppers (optional)

Lay your foil down on the board and put down a layer of sliced tomatoes and onions. Sprinkle with salt. Add a layer of lemon slices too. Throw some crushed garlic on top and some sprigs of herbs. Coat lightly with the oil. Rub the fish with the oil, rub it with salt and pepper and then put a layer of lemon slices and herbs (including the whole green onions, washed with the roots sliced) on top, followed by a layer of lightly salted and oiled onions and tomatoes, with the crushed garlic. I like to put my chili peppers next to my fish, so the spice enters it. If the fish is really big, do all of that but first cut slits in it about two inches apart, perpendicular to the back, down to the belly and stuff herbs and garlic into them. Oh, also stuff the cavity of the fish and make sure to season it with salt.

Wrap very tightly in the foil and then grill it . . . uh, until it's done. It's a pretty forgiving preparation and the lemon helps to ensure that it will be cooked. If it is kind of bland (in that the salt hasn't really penetrated the fish) make a 1:3 mixture in a ramekin of coarsely ground salt and black pepper and dissolve it in a squeeze of lime and maybe some of that olive oil. Add some chili if desired and dip bites of fish into it as you go. The drippings of the fish will go very well over rice/pilaf or even just with a very crusty bread.

Maybe it's just that I've been around for a little bit, but I've seen what seems like an increase in it and I'm not in favor of it. It's one thing for users to ironically badge things in the spirit of fun (at least I think that's how I got some badges), but using it to spotlight something the badger deems worthy of derision or ridicule seems on the cruel side to me.

. . . but let's not have this turn into an "issue" . . . please.

I wonder if part of this whole internet hostility thing is because there's no native "Hi, I'm _________" part of interactions where we can make snap judgments on people's appearances, voices, etc. in addition to what they say.

Or let's take an example from the Western model of food production. Westerners (yeah, I mostly mean white people . . . so?) generally do not give a fuck about animals without faces. On styrofoam and shrink-wrapped? "Mmm, chicken!" With feathers, clucking and shitting? "Oh my god, I feel so close to my roots. Animals are adorable!" No face? Whatever. Face? "Let's be friends!"

When really everything is food AND friends (potentially).

Suggestion: pet stain remover

I like my men like I like my bird cages: full of dead birds and bird poop.

I will do better.

Yes, it's the quality of fucking around that counts! It was a mixed bag before, so I'd like to set myself up for quality tomfoolery from now on.

You should build her a house-- then you could be BLOB_VILLA.

All jokes aside, that's pretty cool. Good for you!

Somehow, I think a lot of people operate along those lines, even if they aren't aware of it.

I don't know that I can recommend anything that shaped culture, policy or society that you haven't read, but a while back I did mention Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm still reading it, but the ideas are pretty striking, (for me anyway).

Overt racism is like a formal declaration of war whereas passive or ingrained racism is like fighting the War on Terror. Overt racism has a face and can be attributed to that one person's or small group's upbringing and life experience. It's something you can lash out at and break the teeth of, or report to the police or the community at large. Passive racism has no face. You can try to fight it, but if no one else sees it then suddenly you're crazy, or overly sensitive, or making mountains out of molehills.

For me, one clear example is the difference in the way people of color are treated if they speak with an accent vs. how white people are treated if they speak with an accent. On some level, it's a psychological trigger that lets the listener know that the speaker is not from wherever "here" is. The almost automatic assumption for most people would be that the white with an accent must be intelligent, because they speak more than one language. The automatic assumption for the person of color is that they don't speak English correctly.

Well, what do you mean by "benefit"? There is no technological advantage, other than not needing a supply of electricity and the inability for whatever is written to be intercepted electronically (unless someone installs a keylogger on it, which has happened in the past, though of course not to me).

Personally, I like the immediacy of it. I type and there it is on the page. I don't need to print anything because the act of typing actualizes a product. I also like the feel of it. Pounding away on the keyboard makes a real product, so the work is more tangible. Then of course, there is also the fact that it is imperfect, which means that I have to think about what I'd like to write instead of barfing whatever trickles down my brain stem and into my fingers, or else waste ink and paper.

For someone who writes, different writing implements, like different pens and different typewriters, or even different computer keyboards (for example, an ergonomic keyboard rather than a laptop keyboard) is akin to a painter with different brushes, paint knives, palettes, canvases, paper, boards, etc. In my experience, the way that something is produced can have an effect on exactly what is produced. To use another analogy, musicians might think similarly in terms of music theory, but the instrument they play will influence the music they create. For example, on a saxophone it's really easy to create complex runs of notes and to play notes very quickly due to the setup of the valves and keys, unlike say, a slide trombone.

On a computer, I can take whole passages of text and easily chop them up and edit them on the fly until I hit on something. On a typewriter, I have to think about what I want ahead of time and generally proceed with more consideration as I work toward shaping things toward their final form. On a manual, this is slowed down even further and there is a lot of room for error, which can sometimes lead to interesting new ideas.

Everybody is a bit dumber late at night. That's why staying up is so fun.

It's the bookmark on my phone! I don't know how to exit my phone browser, so if I was looking at it before and then I hit the "internet" app, it will go to the page I was last looking at. How embarrassing . . .

I feel like this is a nice math problem and all, but it overlooks the question of whether or not a given whiskey should be chilled at all (if optimum flavor is a goal).

Dude, I think I broke this game or something. It won't let me do anything except masturbate. Games should not parallel real life too closely.

I like funny poems and I like writing funny poems. I remember during undergrad, we were discussing humor in poems and how in American poetry the professor (who writes funny poems) opined that it seemed like there was less tolerance of humor by critics than their British counterparts critiquing British poetry.

I don't know if it's true, but from what I've seen, it does seem like most people expect that poetry should be at least serious, if not Serious. If the poetry is to be funny, then it should be for children, something like the work of Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss or Edward Gorey.

Why can't a poem like Jennifer L. Knox's excellent Hot Ass Poem from A Gringo Like Me be taken seriously as art? Is the ridiculous not worthy of exploration?

Anyway, most of my favorite poets and poems make me laugh, or laugh and feel like crying into a beer. Poems are like drugs: trying out new ones would be no fun if they all buzz the same. Hell, there are a whole lot of different species of bees.

Otherwise though I think there is something to genital massage that is more than just sexualized "jerking off," and that the ensuing interpersonal bond is absolutely desirable.

That's totally fine. If you're cool with it, own it!

Edit: Sorry flagamuffin, this was what I meant to quote:

I also really, really doubt that my first job out of college will a) last more than three years, or b) be interesting. I'm fine with that. It's the where and how much that matters to me.

Oops. On another note, I happen to be drinking Porkslap, which is, I guess an appropriate beer to be drinking for this particular error.

It's interesting (and sometimes heartbreaking) to see how social media and death come together. A guy I went to highschool with died last year and his facebook page evolved into a kind of shrine where his friends and his family would post things about how they missed him and said (kind) things they might not have to his face.

There were also people who didn't know him well who expressed their sorrow, but it seemed to me that while some of it was genuine, it was also a way for them to show that they were sensitive to and aware of the tenuous grasp we have on life. As far as I know, the page is still active. I wonder if it will stay that way, or if eventually it will be shut down. It's very strange to wander through the records of other people's mourning and I don't know if it's entirely healthy; it seems almost like all that previously etheric grief coalesced into something more solid than it would have if it had been allowed to dissipate as it would outside of social media.