Happy Holidays

I was planning on writing something snide and cynical about the holidays and the economy and the polar bears and so on. But I got distracted by a dog. Pure zen in a beam of sunlight.

Look out, Daedalus Books

Although Daedalus remains my favorite source for remainders and other less-than-mainstream books, I've run across another source of good stuff, Revisionist Press, specializing in books that question conventional wisdom, mainstream science, and common sense. Here are a few items from their Holiday Catalog:

• The Really Interesting Stuff I Found, Douglas N. Thusiast. Chronicles two years' work on the author's family farm, excavating a site which he now believes represents centuries of pre-Colombian habitation by the lost tribes of Israel in central Indiana. Details his struggles with the archaeological establishment and his valiant efforts to bring his theories to the public, despite widespread scepticism and his complete lack of academic credentials. Not the first but certainly the most recent exposition of the "I really want to believe this, so it must be true" approach to epistemology. "Presents a distinctly new theory of the settlement of the Americas, based on seemingly irrefutable evidence consisting of some scratches on some rocks." The Complete Wacko Magazine. "Hard to argue with, since he refuses to speak to strangers." Journal of American Hallucination.
  
• Hydrate Your Way to Health, The International Bottled Water Association. A team of hired physiologists sets forth the case that the more water you drink, the healthier you'll be, also more attractive to the opposite sex, and cooler. "It's blindingly simple," explains the chapter on coolness. "Drink half a bottle of water and pour the rest over your head: presto, you're cool. Or cooler, anyway."
  
• Sons of Heaven and Corn: The Chinese Discovery of Des Moines, Louis Natick. Based on careful study of aerial photography, satellite imagery, and epigraphy (scratches on rocks), Natick (who holds a Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Phoenix) argues that an offshoot of the fifteenth century expeditions of Zheng He found the northwest passage, sailed down through Hudson Bay, built birch bark junks in what is now Lake Huron, visited the site of present-day Cleveland, and then marched overland to eventually found Des Moines, bringing with them the life-giving grain we know as "corn," plus the recipes for ethanol and bourbon. "Very convincing, if you're prepared to abandon two hundred years of western-centric thinking and hard data." Proceedings of the American Council of Deluded Halfwits.
  
• A Really Nice Guy, Once You Get to Know Him, Ed. Newton Leroy Gingrich. Anthology of contrarian biographies, exposing decades of liberal mud slinging at such misunderstood historical figures as J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Stalin, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Slobodan Miloševic, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, William Marcy Tweed, John Mitchell, and Attila the Hun. "Makes you think twice ..." The Wall Street Journal.
  
• Mounds of Rubbish, Rev. Utter Lee Barking. Lays out the Reverend Barking's theory that North America was populated in ages past by a race of white ("well, white-ish") mound-builders who were eventually overwhelmed by dusky-skinned barbarians from somewhere else (the book is a bit vague on just where the invaders came from -- in one chapter, it's the Middle East, in another place, it's Newark.) He bases his conclusions on the debris and discardia found in his excavations of a mound on his property in West Virginia, including inscriptions on golden tablets, copies of the Wall Street Journal, and some scratches on rocks. Traditional archaeologists, confronted with Barking's evidence, tend to resort to cheap shots such as pointing out that the mound in question is approximately 4 feet high and does not appear to have existed prior to 1987. Barking refutes this criticism in a chapter entitled, "Unbelievers Shall Burn in Hell!"
  

Get your copies now, while supplies last and lawsuits are still pending.

Shop Local

So things are a bit tough, economically. Here are some places to spend what money you have on hand, in the hope that they'll survive. (Apologies for the formatting - this site really doesn't speak HTML -- it just pretends to.)

Wine, Deli, Chocolates	Morgan and York	1928 Packard, Ann Arbor 48104	734 769 9770	http://morganandyork.com/
As we say in Ann Arbor, "you know, the old Big Ten Party Store." Repeatedly voted Best Wine Shop. Especially in the realm of small French labels and Kermit Lynch - imported values, this is the place.
Wine	Everyday Wines	407 N. Fifth Ave - 1st Floor Ann Arbor, MI 48104	734.827.WINE	http://www.everyday-wines.blogspot.com/
Just as the name implies, Mary Campbell's shop is dedicated to affordable wines.
Produce, high-end groceries, wine	Produce Station	1629 S. State St. Ann Arbor MI 48104	734.663.7848	http://www.producestation.com/visit.php
With the exception of the Farmer's Market in season, there is no better place for produce in Ann Arbor, period. Small, inconvenient to get to and get around in, it's worth the effort. Unofficial Rules: do not use a full size grocery cart (even though they have them), do not bring children.
Deli, luxury foods, coffee beans, bread	Zingerman's	422 Detroit Street, Ann Arbor MI 48104	888.636.8162	http://www.zingermans.com/default.aspx
Although Zingerman's is the Superpower of local vendors, with aspirations to a global reach via their mail order side, they're still local, and they still roast a fine coffee bean.
Produce, meats, plants	Ann Arbor Farmers Market	315 Detroit St, Ann Arbor 48103	734 994-3276	http://kerrytown.org/detail.asp?id=336
In season, the best produce available. In the winter, a desolate tundra of crafts and wreaths. I mark the return of reasonable weather in the area by the reappearance of edible things at the market. Unofficial rules: no strollers!
Produce, groceries, wine	Fresh Seasons Market	2281 W Liberty St, Ann Arbor MI 48103	(734) 662-6000	(nothing useful yet as a website)
Again, "the old Coleman's Market." Not on my beat, but Northwest Side residents swear by it.
Meats, produce, groceries	Sparrow Market	415 N. Fifth Ave - 1st Floor Ann Arbor MI 48104	734.761.8175	http://www.kerrytown.com/sparrowmeats/index.html
There is no better, more consistent source of meat in Ann Arbor, with the possible exception of the actual raisers who come to the Farmer's Market. The rest of Sparrow's empire in Kerrytown is pretty darn good, too.
Meat	Hannewald Lamb	Stockbridge MI 49285 (in the Farmer's Market, too)	517-851-4718	http://arbormarket.googlepages.com/hannewaldlamb
A local raiser, with a Farmer's Market presence. The absolute best lamb I've ever cooked, and nice dog treats, too.
Smoked fish etc.	Durham's Tracklements	212 East Kingsley Street Ann Arbor MI 48104	734-930-6642	http://www.tracklements.com/contact.php
Nationally-known source for great smoked fish and other smoked animals. In fact, a tiny hole in the wall on the north side of Kerrytown. Wonderful stuff.
Groceries	Busch's	various	various	http://buschs.com/
Although Busch's exhibits most of the faults of supermarkets, it is, at least, a local enterprise. If you absolutely, positively have to shop at a supermarket, these are slightly better than the other places. Not recommended for anything that perishes or comes in grades of quality, such as fish, meat, deli, or produce.

And here are some places NOT to spend your money, for a variety of reasons.

Whole Foods: all marketing, all the time, with marginally better quality perishables than low-end supermarkets and a predatory approach to local competition. You spend more for what you buy and get far less value. Not a place to buy wine, either; if you can spell "Bordeaux," let alone pronounce it, you will know more than the wine staff.

Trader Joe's: just say no. There is nothing here that you want, and most of it is of very dubious provenance. Again, the staff know nothing that you don't already know.

Kroger's, Meier's, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco, etc. There is absolutely no viable cost/quality equation you can come up with that justifies shopping with these people. None. Don't try.

Just in time for holiday giving

A must-read for good little boys and girls. Thanks to Greasy Jimmy for the link.

Video from someone who actually knows ...

... what he's doing, in distinct constrast to me. The son of a good friend is in Germany, making video like this. Have a look.

Not again! More dinner shots

I'm sorry -- I'm just a hopeless chicken addict. Here's a half Amish "small roaster" from Sparrow Meats, frogged, rubbed with oil, salt and pepper, and thyme; served with sweet potato and parsnip puree' and a sauteed and broiled vegetable gratin. Simple stuff.

Frankly, doing chicken like this in the oven is second best -- the grill is the proper way to do it, but it's just too cold, snowy, and dark to do that, this time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving

After nearly a week of carrying on in one way or another with family and friends, I have a boat load of digital media, but I haven't gotten around to doing any editing. So until I do, let's just list the things we're thankful for:

• The company I work for, for very good reasons, isn't able to outsource things to the Pac Rim or South Asia, meaning that I'm not likely to have to go there. (Unlike a previous gig, when I did.)
  
• Linda's job, when she was applying for it, was described as "0% travel," so nobody's likely to send her to Mumbai, either.
  
• Coney Dog doesn't have a passport, so ...
  
• You get the picture.
  

Next time I'm rambling on at dinner about how I wouldn't invest a dime of development work in a country that has both a sectarian and a Marxist revolution going on, maybe someone will listen. Probably not.

The miracle of the dogs

Miracles happen all the time, if we just look for them. For example, this weekend I entered a local store by the back way, as per usual, and passed a perfectly nice Australian shepherd dog, tethered up and waiting for his owner. I was in the store for 15 minutes or so, and when I came back out, the dog had miraculously been transformed into a black Lab.

Don't laugh. Whole religions have been based on less ...

Arrrgh!

Occasionally, something that works well

Amid the clangor (one of my favorite words) and discord, tumult and shouting (big shout out to Ruddy Kipling and his blog at
www.ominousforeshadowing.com), and general can-o-whup-ass-opening (note that the more commonly heard term, "open up a can of whoop-ass," is absolutely incorrect and semantically ridiculous, as William Safire recently noted in his NYT column, "Who the f**k cares what William Safire thinks, anyway?"), it's nice to reflect on the one or two things that actually seem to be working.

No, that wouldn't be the various bail-out packages; nor any of the proposed paths to peace in the middle east, mid-west, or Midlothian, for that matter; nor the efforts by the government of North Korea to stay in the top six of America's worries (not kidding -- that is apparently a recognized goal of NK, never to be the number one on our hit parade, but to be four or five down on the list of things we have to concern ourselves with. I've worked for companies with that kind of strategy.) No, I'm thinking at the moment, anyway, of my recently-acquired Garmin GPS, with which I'm well pleased. I used to have a Garmin Quest, which was adequate, but had a user interface designed by a commitee of macaques, drunk on palm toddy. When it just quit working, I replaced it with a Garmin Nuvi 250. This little thing fixes all the complaints I had about the Quest, runs faster, and doesn't require downloading maps for different parts of the country.

Why do I need a GPS, you ask? Well, I find myself driving around the countryside in strange cities more than I used to, by myself, and it's useful not to have to fumble with maps while trying to not hit more than my limit of pedestrians and/or moose.