Quote of the Day

H1 and I had quite the long day at the office yesterday and ended up taking a car home.

Maybe it was the late night craziness but for some reason we got to talking about window sill pies.

In my mind, I imagine pies sitting on window sills to cool down to be one type and one type only: Smurfberry pie.

It was then H1 revealed what I can only imagine to be a deep, dark secret that she had been harbouring for years.

"I always envision that smurfberries probably taste like swedish fish," she said, with all honesty.

In my mind, I think raspberries, boysenberries, blueberries or even ribena berries but...swedish fish?

Oh, H1.

You are out of your smurfin' mind.

Or perhaps I just lack creativity.

Smurf.

True. So, So True.

Thoughts for the Day

It's been a while since I've listed any Thoughts for the Day.  It's also been a while since I changed the Obsessions for the Week but that'll have to wait just a bit longer.

Thoughts...on Music:

As I was listening to The Beatles this week, it occurred to me that if bands these days wrote half as good as The Beatles, we'd not have to listen to a lot of the nonsense out there these days.

It might also mean that everyone would have to delve into a lot more drugs, but it's all for the music! Think about the music...

Thoughts...on Berries (Conversation of the Day):


Or 2: I think when blue berries were named, not much thought or creativity went into it.  It's the stepchild of berries.


What's worse, said person who named the blue berry did not even take the time to bite into one to see that it's not even blue on the inside.


H1: They're blue because they are the stepchild of berries.  Not even berries' biological child.  All very sad.

The Time Has Come

Some may say I am an ass.

A lot of people do that, actually.  And they're rude.

Some may say I can cook white rice like nobody's buisness.

Those people would be right.  In fact, everyone should know this about me.

Some may say I talk too damned much.

Yeah, well.  I believe that to be true because look! I've typed so many words here and have not yet said what I wanted to.

Some may say I am a dreamer.

Bwahahaha, okay.  I won't go there.  That was just a little kid.

Some may say I am a lot of things, but the one I no longer am...

...is displaced.

That's right because it was at this time 16 years ago, we moved to the U.S.A.

It was then at that young age that I was plucked from Trinidad and brought to NY to live my life.  I was confused and felt like I belonged no where for some time but now, I am no longer that displaced child.

I am a New Yorker.

Some may argue.

And to those I say, "Screw you guys."

Should You Make Your Own Ramen?

I am of course, not speaking about the pack ramen which you can pull off a shelf in your local supermarket.  Of course you should do that.

What I mean to ask is, should you painstakingly go to a Japanese supermarket and buy noodles - soba, udon or otherwise, buy some soup base and proceed to experiment?

Hey, why not?! We can all boil water, here, right? RIGHT? How bad could it be?

I also ask of you, how hard could it be to throw some veggies and meat in a pot to your own liking for your own specialty ramen? Huh? Sounds like fun to me!

So, The HOchieS last Saturday, did exactly that.

Not being skilled to hand pull our own noodles, we bought some dry pre-packaged soba noodles.

Not really sure what sort of soup base to make, we bought a somen soup base.

Okay...I promise this story gets better and will redeem our venture of not just buying a 75 cent package of Ichiban.

Next, we bought things to add to the pot.  Here's what we got:

Marrow bones, with which to flavour our soup base.

Bok choy for veggies and a lovely green colour along with...

...Mushrooms! Yummy, yummy mushrooms.

Watercress for a good time.

Corn, for a not-so-good time garnish.  Not on my ramen, H1.  Not on mine.

Scallions for a garnish that also does not belong on my ramen.  And thanks.

Some brilliant seaweed. 

Shrimp for yum.

And beef for x2 times the awesome yum.

With our marrow bones boiling away in a water and somen soup base mix, we assembled each bowl of ramen with love.  We boiled the noodles, added veggies to the pot, cooked the meat and shrimp and presto!

Ramen for me.

Ramen for you.

I'll have some ramen if...

...you'll have some too.

Oooo, and let us not forget our Japanese pepper that cost an arm and a leg that you got in ripped off in Osaka for.

Now.

Should you make your own ramen?

Yes.

But please, follow the noodle preparation instructions on the packet.  If it says boil in water for ten minutes, those people probably know what they're talking about.

We boiled ours in our stock and even though the stock was lightly salted, the soba noodles were clearly hella salty causing our food to be almost inedible unless eaten with everything.

It was near perfection, that ramen...

::sigh::

A HOchieS semi-fail? Check.

Defeated? Never!

We'll do this again.

Oh yes we will.

The End of 2008 Year Review III - Broadway, Concerts and The Best of the Blog 2008

There were not many concerts or broadway shows we attended in 2008. I can't really do a list of what was the best and worst because all the bands we saw were good and the one broadway show we went to was hilarious.

The R.E.M. concert was plagued with B rated celebrities that made for an annoying concert experience and The Last Shadow Puppets had a terribly long wait at the beginning surrounded by hipsters who are always an annoyance.

I guess that makes The 39 Steps the best thing we saw last year since there was no drama involved and damn it, thank goodness I made sure to check the time before going because H1 would have had my hide.

2008 like all years, we shared many memories together. I decided to not only do a recap of the awesome times but also pick our best blogs posted by month. Being that May was the worst month ever, I don't think I'll even be looking at it.

Sometimes I may not be able to give a clear winner because taku, did we write a lot last year!

January

There was a survival guide. It's kind of funny because we just bought a survival guide to everything for a friend. I guess this time in January is prime Survival Guide season. Maybe we should market this one that we wrote for Beetchie as she embarked on her adventure in Grenada.

A trip to a cook your own dinner experience with a quiz book made for some good laughs but damn it, of course it'd figure that I'd be Robin.

February

Hands down, this is the winner. Every year we forget MC's birthday and last year was no different. His response to this blog was "how come I didn't get a nice Birthday greeting like everyone else?!" The truth was that we totally forgot again and posted it with some clever editing a few days later.
It even posts the title as "oh for eff's sake", which if anyone paid attention was the rastafarian cheese paste blog's title becuase that's what we originally had there on MC's drop day date.
Sealing the deal was the damned random song I was listening to as I posted that too.

We're sure to forget again this year but if he doesn't read this, he'll still never know. Heh heh heh.

Notable mention: Frass's favourite.

March

We had the most activity this month and out of the 34, I found 3 that we posted that I really enjoyed. I didn't put in the teary-eyed bachak or turtle so as to not traumatize Bughie J. again.

Here we've got Hong Kong, possible bird flu and a whole of nerdish behaviour on my part. I've not regretted it though!

Plagued by Jamaicans and chameleons?

And umm, this thing.

April

Yeah, MC. Here's another blow to you but what we blog is just true.

June

The month CLee showed up! We had lots of fun, from Mario Kart Racing to being confused by Duck Asses.

August

The ass of all months. No one likes August. There are no holidays, the tail end of summer just makes you remember how hot it's been and work is always an effin' pain.

Nothing good ever really happens in August either. Even a trip that was supposed to be fun times with Beetchie turned... slimey.

Then turned dangerous.

Bunji and I even got into a fight of magical creature proportions and saddened by things we hoped weren't a hoax but yeah, kind of were.

Robert Downey Jr. is awesome again but was always more awesome than MC.

And the devil made me do a lot of things, including write a whole lot in the month of nothing to do.

September

MC's starring but that's what happens when you're ridiculous, I guess.

September's usually pretty busy. I love Fall, so I'm all happy when the end of the month comes around. I was even happier this September because OMG, Frass FED US! Heh. Thanks, again Frass.

X wasn't happy but I sure was as hell laughed my ass off when this happened. Who knew Canadians could do something applaud worthy?

H1 and I spent quality time together.

October

Oh ho.

This was the consolidated blog month. I stopped blogging because H1 and I were fast approaching our 666th blog post and it was so close to Halloween, I staggered blogging by consolidating our very busy month just so I could legitimately post our annual Halloween ratings on that numbered post.

So, the whole month had fun times as October usually does but Emo Lumberjacks and H1's knowledge of Flounders are things that never cease to amaze.

November

November's all about food. The squirrels stock up for winter, as do the HOchieS. Well, it certainly seemed that way and this blog made most really hungry and really cranky with us.

It was also a first time for everything month. We voted in our first presidential election and hoped that we wouldn't have to go so far as wishing for a moosey fate.

You know, there's always a conspiracy of some sort and if Obama didn't win, we'd find a way to link it to Bughie J.'s other conspiracy...

December

The end of the year came quickly.

We made Christmas which was fun and too many good times to re-hash here (and it's late, so I'm getting really tired now).

Chinatown continues to amuse us and we hope for much of the same this year as last.

And as per usual, there was some damned debacle with these drunken louts.

We hope that this year, we'll have fewer bad times (even though it's already not started so fantastic but...we're hanging on) and more good memories to share together.

Currently listening to: "What If You Were Right First Time?" by Arctic Monkeys.

Some The Times...

...If you're ugly on the inside, it shows up on the outside.

Not the case with Naomi Campbell. We're not really sure what happened there.