Keyrock

Are Lee Child's works as jingoist as Clancy's?

I'm making my world household famous chili to take on the road with me. It's one of the best take along meals since it keeps for a long time and it's just as delicious nuked as it is when initially cooked. That pretty much applies to any soup/stew, I guess. I should expand my soup/stew repertoire. I make delicious chili and beef stew but I rarely try anything else. I made a halfway decent chicken & dumplings once, but it could stand to improve.

One of the (many) wonderful things about living and operating in the southeast is that we, for the most part, stopped giving a $#!+ about masks a loooooooooong time ago. I noticed Tennessee, in particular, stopped having mask mandates as early as mid-2020, or if they had mandates then the majority of people didn't follow them. Pretty much all the states I operate in (the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida) followed suit shortly. I've never seen or even heard of any mask protests. I'm sure some have happened at some point somewhere in the southeast, but it's not something that happens with any significant frequency. For my own part, if a business requires a mask I put one on, no big deal, otherwise I don't. I never wear one outside. About 50% of the businesses I pick up at or deliver to require a mask in the shipping office. None of the truck stops require masks, a good number of them don't even have the employees wearing them. We southerners are over this $#!+, if COVID is going to burn through our states then it's going to burn through our states, mask or no masks.

I've never actually had chicken & waffles. I feel that I need to rectify that soon because I'm failing at being a proper southerner.

Flapjacks with maple syrup. I tried out this high protein pancake mix: It's not bad. Had someone just handed me a plate of these flapjacks I would never have suspected that they're not just plain ol' regular flapjacks. Side note: I rarely do sweet breakfast, I'm usually a greasy breakfast guy. I do corn beef hash & eggs, bacon & eggs, sausage & eggs... Basically, some manner of greasy meat product & eggs. My dad is a sweet breakfast guy and my mom often doesn't have breakfast at all. My sister has changed her diet so many times that I have no clue what she does for breakfast these days

My old faithful go to Dewar's 12 Year Old. It's tasty, it's smooth, and it warms up my brain cells.

I obviously have a biased opinion of Jerry Jones since he owns my favorite team. I view him like that weird uncle who's kinda suspect but then he'll take you to the strip club, pay for a lap dance for you, and help you score some drugs, so I can't really hate him.

I'm going through the clock tower area of Circle of the Moon. It's not actually called clock tower in this game but they have this area in pretty much every Castlevania game and it's traditionally called clock tower. Anyway, this is almost always one of the coolest looking and most infuriating to play areas, and CotM is no exception. Medusa Heads are easy enough to deal with on solid ground, but when you're doing a bunch of platforming, well, they can die in a fire. Any enemies that fly in a sine wave pattern in any game: Medusa heads, birds, bats, wisps. They can all die in a fire.

Is Dan Snyder the most loathsome NFL owner?

Washington Commanders is a perfectly cromulent name. The team still sucks, though.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. It's been so many years since I played this game that I forgot where everything is. I do remember that the cross is the best sub-weapon, but frankly the cross is the best sub-weapon in most Castlevania games.

I don't really care who wins but I guess I'll root for the Bengals because I like Joe Burrow.

I got my Bengals/Rams Big Game.

Out of a 2.25 lbs package of ground beef I usually make 6 burgers, so 12 patties. That works out to 5.3 patties per pound. It's not an exact science, I just form roughly inch and a half diameter balls for each patty. I generally cook on one notch below max heat. You will likely get a bit of burn you need to scrape with your spatula, that's just extra flavor. Do all your prep ahead of time because once the meat hits the pan it's very quick, little to no time to do anything else.

It's actually the exact opposite. You want to use ground beef, not preformed patties, those are way too compacted. Gently roll the beef into vague ball shapes, use as little pressure as possible. Parchment paper acts as both a sealant to keep juices from escaping and a buffer to keep the beef from sticking to your spatula. Because there is a flat piece of metal on one side and a piece of parchment paper on the other very little juice can escape when being squashed and because it's high heat and thin patty it cooks very quickly, thus not giving juices much time to cook out of the meat. These are some of the juiciest burgers I have ever eaten. Pro-tip: I make a sauce that's mostly mayonnaise, a bit of mustard, some horseradish, some worcestershire, and a dash of hot sauce for the condiment.

Smashed burgers. Nothing fancy: 80/20 ground beef gently rolled into roughly inch and a half diameter balls. I don't have a flat griddle, but that would be ideal, so I use my largest frying pan (12"). High heat, put the balls of beef on the pan (2 per burger), put a piece of parchment paper on top of each and squash them flat and very thin. Season on one side (I use salt, pepper, and paprika), flip after 30 seconds, put cheese on both patties, put one patty on top of the other after 20 seconds, then put the stack on a (preferably brioche) bun after another 10 seconds. Add whatever veggies (I use lettuce, tomato, and onion) and condiments and eat. It's greasy and messy but super delicious, like a burger from a good greasy spoon.

Wish Upon (2017) - While I don't generally like horror movies, with some notable exceptions, "horror" movies that fail in hilariously spectacular fashion are my jam. It's a monkey's paw tale. There's a mystical Chinese music box that will grant you 7 wishes, but they come at a price. It's really stupid and there are some entertainingly ridiculous deaths. The ending of the movie is *chef kiss*. Unlike my 2021 MotY Malignant, I'm convinced that the comedy in this movie is unintentional, which makes it all the more glorious, and it's a more entertaining movie throughout. That said, Wish Upon only reaches the wonderful, glorious level of over the top stupidity that is Malignant's masterpiece of schlock third act for 2 amazing moments near and at the end. It's absolutely worth watching for those 2 moments alone, though, and it's not boring (for all the wrong reasons) before that.

No comment on Boba Fatt, I stopped caring about anything Star Wars well over a decade ago, but these points you bring up mirror my own criticisms of the vast majority of movies, shows, and vidya games, for that matter, about age of sail pirates. They almost always present this weird romanticized version of pirates. Oh they're crass and rough on the outside, but they have a heart of gold. No! Pirates are terrible people. They're criminals. They loot and pillage, they murder and rape. These people are not heroes, they're not even antiheroes, they're scum.

I finished The Good Life. In typical Swery fashion it's a game filled with half-baked clunky gameplay mechanics and bizarre characters, and with a convoluted borderline nonsensical story. As jank as the controls were, I never did tire of riding sheep, though. It's not a game I could in good faith recommend to anyone that's not already a fan of Swery games (the same could be said of any Swery game) and any fan of Swery games doesn't need me to recommend this, they're going to play it regardless. I guess that makes this paragraph a complete waste of time. Anyway, I enjoyed it, but I'm a weirdo that likes weird games. Swery makes weird games.

Guinan was QAnon. /ducks thrown tomato //runs away ///hides

Do we have any Niners fans on this forum? I want to ask them if they watch games with their hands over their faces through their fingers. Handsome Jimmy threw about 5 interceptions in each of the 2 playoff wins and the defenders dropped 4 in each game. He throws some really clutch pinpoint strikes, but he also throws 7 or 8 really terrible and ill-advised passes a game.

Patrick Mahomes vs Josh Allen last night might have been the greatest QB duel ever. That was some epic level one-upmanship.

That Rams vs Bucs game was wild. The Rams absolutely DOMINATED the game for 3 quarters, engaged in one of the most epic bed ****tings of all time by blowing a 24 point lead, then won the game on a crazy drive in the last 40 seconds.

Better Born into Football than I wasn't born into football either, to me football was (still is) what folks here call soccer until I moved to The States. I have, however, been watching NFL since the late 80s. I've been trying to quit the NFL for years but they nefariously drag me back in every year, though I don't follow it nearly as closely as I once did. I need to figure out how to watch Rugby. Everytime I've seen either Rugby or Australian Rules Football I loved it, but it's just not as widely broadcast here in Murica. Still, the internet is a thing, I bet I can make it happen.

This is me after every season over the past 25 years.