Author: Philip Weiss

Kanal

Kanal DVD
Kanal DVD

Sunday I watched a second movie in the Andrej Wajda Criterion Collection, Kanal. Really good film. I liked it even more than Ashes and Diamonds. It’s even more depressing, but I didn’t like it for that.

Set during the Warsaw Uprising, Kanal tells the story of a 40+ man unit of the Polish resistance. At first they take over an apartment building where they intend to rest for a bit before fighting the German army. Several of the men have lovers, including one who is somewhat part of the unit. The Germans attack, and the unit loses half it’s men. Afterward, they are ordered to travel to downtown Warsaw via the sewers to reinforce the rest of the Polish resistance there. The largest part of the movie is them crawling through filth in the sewers, trying to find the proper way out. Wouldn’t want to come up amid a German army encampment.

My favorite thing about the movie? Teresa Iżewska’s character Stokrotka. She’s a blond who’s schtupping Tadeusz Janczar’s Lieutenant Jacek. She doesn’t exactly travel with the men, but travels through the sewers out of downtown Warsaw to meet up with them. During the first battle scene though, Jacek gets himself shot while disabling German mini-tank. Stokrotka accompanies him as the unit heads back through the sewers to Warsaw. Being injured, Jacek can’t keep up, but Stokrotka knows the way, so it isn’t quite the problem you’d expect. The irony about the whole thing is that while the men almost uniformly treat the women as lesser-than, Stokrotka is by far the strongest of the entire group. They get freaked out by the sewers and filth, but she’s the one bravely soldiering on, telling them it ain’t so bad, that they’ll make it through. She more or less carries Jacek through when he starts becoming delusional from his wounds. The tragedy is that she’s in love with the oblivious Jacek, who thinks she’s so tough that she’d never fall in love with anyone. He’s too bull-headed to see what’s in front of him.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to the film than that, but that’s the reason to watch it. Oh, for sure it’s a good depressing Polish war movie. If you are into that. But Teresa Iżewska is a terrific actor playing an awesome role. That’s the best.

Italian Sausage Pie

Tried this recipe out the other night. It comes from Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles.

Recipe is what I made, and does not exactly match what’s in the cookbook.

  • 1½ pounds bulk sweet Italian sausage
  • 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
  • ½ chopped sweet onion
  • 6 teaspoons minced garlic from jar
  • 16 ounce package hot roll mix
  • 5 eggs
  • 3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
  • ½ of a 15 ounce carton ricotta cheese
  • ½ of a 10 ounce package of frozen chopped spinach
  • 2 4 ounce cans sliced mushrooms
  • 1 more egg
  • shredded Parmesan cheese
  1. Thaw spinach and drain
  2. Preheat oven to 350°
  3. Cook sausage, pepper, onion, and garlic in large skillet over medium heat until sausage is browned
  4. Prepare hot roll mix according to package directions through the kneading step (my hot roll package mix required another egg, as well as margarine)
  5. In a large bowl, beat five eggs
  6. Stir in 1 cup of the mozzarella
  7. Stir in ricotta
  8. Stir in spinach (I forgot this step, and had to sorta mix it in later)
  9. Stir in sausage/pepper/onion/garlic mixture
  10. Stir in drained mushrooms
  11. Grease a 9 inch springform pan
  12. Roll ¾ of the dough into a 15 inch circle on a heavily floured surface
  13. Lay it into the springform pan, pressing the dough into the sides
  14. Sprinkle bottom of pie with ½ cup of the mozzarella
  15. Add sausage/cheese/egg/etc. mixture into pie
  16. Add remaining mozzarella to the top of the pie
  17. Roll the rest of the dough into a top pie crust
  18. Place top crust on top, then fold edges over and pinch to seal
  19. Beat last egg slightly
  20. Combine 1 tablespoon of water with egg
  21. Brush egg on top of pie and let dry for 5+ minutes
  22. Score the top of the pie in a diamond shape, but don’t cut all the way through the crust
  23. Sprinkle with Parmesan
  24. Bake uncovered for 40 to 45 minutes, remembering first to take your oven off pre-heat
  25. Cool on a wire rack for 20+ minutes
  26. Remove springform pan side, cut into wedges, and eat

Overall the pie worked out pretty good, though it was a bit soupier than I expected. I forgot to take the oven off pre-heat status (I have an older range), so that may have affected this. It probably could have used a spice or two added, though I’m not really sure what spices go well with sausage.

Taphouse Grill

A friend of mine, formerly of Seattle, was back in town last night to visit. To celebrate, a number of us had dinner at Taphouse Grill in downtown Seattle. Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t particularly thrilling.

The first issue is one most people have dealt with: the bill. After collecting money, we were short $100 on the bill. I think the primary cause of that was all the beer our table drank. Taphouse Grill’s gimmick is having 160 beers on tap. But the beer isn’t cheap, and people (at least in our group) don’t keep track of how many they drink. I’m a non-drinker, so I have a pretty easy time of keeping track of my alcoholic intake. We made everyone pitch in again and got it all covered.

The second part of the suboptimal experience was the atmosphere. The bar has a nice mixture of locals and downtown hotel tourists, which makes for good conversation. At least if you are sitting at the bar and want to make conversation. However, the cavernous ceilings at Taphouse Grill cause a lot of echoing. I had a pretty hard time hearing.

And lastly my food was very undistinguished. I had Garlic Chicken Penne. Outside of the garlic, it would be a normal run-of-the-mill chicken penne dish. Nothing special, nothing bad. But I could barely taste the garlic in the mixture. In fact, when I picked out a roasted garlic clove or two and bit into them, I could still barely taste the garlic. Somehow the palce is picking the most unflavorful garlic ever, or they are somehow leaching out all the garlic flavor before using it in the food.

Now I don’t want to say this was a bad experience because it wasn’t. These things are all typical for having dinner in a restaurant. I’m of the opinion that a restaurant should be giving me something I can’t get at home for the money I pay, no matter what items on the menu I choose. Even if I’m not drinking, the remaining menu should still be better than a boxed Lean Cuisine dish. And it wasn’t.

Log Cloud 1.0 beta

In a somewhat previous life, I used to write software. At this point it’s been years since I’ve written a line of production code. But I still poke around every once in a while. I’ve even coded up some plugins that I use on Rat’s Reading. Most are very specific to that site, such as adding in my Amazon associates tag automatically. Not really releasable stuff.

Both on that site and this one, I use Simple Tags to manage my tags. Pretty good plugin. However, one of my irritations both with that plugin’s tag cloud and the standard WordPress tag cloud are that they use linear scaling for font sizes. In other words, if a site has one tag that has a disproportionate number of uses, the font sizing is worthless. See this post for a good explanation.

Anyway, I took the ideas from that blog post and hacked the Simple Tags tag cloud implementation on Rat’s Reading to use logarithmic scaling. But every version upgrade of Simple Tags overwrites that, which is a pain. So I looked for a standalone tag cloud with this kind of scaling so I wouldn’t lose my changes every time I upgraded.

I couldn’t find a standalone tag cloud plugin that implements logarithmic scaling. So I just wrote one. And here’s version 1.0 (beta). It’s very very simple. Almost zero features. Only way to get a tag cloud is via shortcode, and it only implements options in the standard WordPress tag cloud functions. I’m throwing it out in case other folks want to play with similar stuff. I will add a few features over the next few weeks and versions, as it’s currently not good enough to replace my modified Simple Tags tag cloud.

Log Cloud 1.0 (beta)

Seeing Blood Clots Using Ultrasound

Today’s adventure in chauffeuring my grandfather around took us to Seattle Cardiology (at Swedish Cherry Hill campus) for a follow-up visit after his recent hospitalizations. Gramps wanted me to accompany him into the rooms for the actual checkup. Usually Gram goes, but today was her pinochle game. Gramps wanted me to go in so he could have a second set of ears on what the doc said. The better to remember everything.

The first hour we sat in a darkened room as a technician applied a hand-held ultrasound device to Gramps’ legs, looking for blood clots. We knew there was one, because that’s what his emergency room visits told us. But where exactly and perhaps even how many we didn’t know.

What I didn’t know was that they could use this device to look for clots. It appears to be much the same device used to take images of fetuses in the womb. Stick some goop on the end, push against the skin, see a cross-section of the insides. In this case, the leg.

I could see on the screen black spots, which the technician told me were veins and arteries. A clot sort of looks like a filled in spot. In addition, the technician would press on Gramps’ leg near the ultra-sound wand. You could see the spots squish. He said a blood clot wouldn’t compress like that.

Anyhoo, the technician found the clot. It doesn’t change anything Gramps has to do, but I suppose now they can better monitor it over the six to twelve months a blood clot is supposed to take to dissolve naturally. I put that in quotes because it doesn’t dissolve, but despite being told the process, I can’t repeat it particularly accurately.

Another technician also downloaded a bunch of information from Gramps’ pacemaker. Hang an electronic ring of some sort of my grandfather’s chest, and it reads information transmitted from the pacemaker. They didn’t tell use anything about what they read this time.

Actual visit with the doctor resulted in keep following the discharge instructions and we’ll see you in 4 to 6 weeks.

Ultrasound Device
Ultrasound Device

Image by Greg Younger used under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license. This is not a picture of anyone checking my grandfather; the device is similar but not quite the same.

Blagojevich Impeachment Trial Rules

Without taking any opinion on whether or not Rod Blagojevich should be impeached or not, I do have an opinion on the impeachment trial. I’ve seen lots of criticism of Blagojevich for not attending his trial or mounting a defense. Having read the Illinois Senate Impeachment Trial Rules I am in agreement with Blagojevich on this one.

The fix is in. He’s not allowed to mount an effective defense and is not being afforded due process. That may be perfectly fine in an impeachment trial, but it doesn’t mean that Blagojevich should participate in what is a show trial. Why waste the time?

Here’s what I found in my reading:

  • The defense is not allowed to challenge any of the prosecution’s evidence that is included in the House impeachment record. In other words, most of the evidence. — No objection, however,
    may be made against all or any part of the House impeachment record filed by the House Prosecutor with the Secretary.
  • Blagojevich is not allowed to present any evidence without the permission of the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting him. The charges from the U.S. Attorney form the core of the impeachment charges. In other words, he could only stand in front of the Illinois Senate and say I didn’t do it. He can’t present any evidence to the contrary unless it’s already public or the U.S. Attorney approves.

Those aren’t rules that are conducive to participation. Given that set of rules, I wouldn’t participate either. The Illinois Senate should pass out the impeachment record, let everyone voting read it for a day or two, and just hold a vote. The trial is all show.

Truly Great Insults

With all the vitriol being spewed my way in the comments on my cforms II post, I’d have thought that someone would have come up with a truly great insult. The best insult of the bunch only compared me unfavorably to Gordon Brown. It’s much better as a crack against Mr. Brown than against me. The bulk of the insults are people calling me a moron or, heaven forbid, a rat. Sometimes in capital letters.

Now, I’m not a strong insulter by any stretch of the imagination, but I could have come up with something better than that. All it takes is a quick Google search for truly great insults.

To help inspire folks, if they are bothering to read anything else on my blog but that entry, I’m instituting a contest. I have no idea what Google PageRank that post will end up with, but it’s bound to be halfway decent (3, 4, dare I say 5? the mind boggles) considering all the links to it. Come up with a better insult! The best insult on either entry will win a link back to your blog! Juice yourself up a bit. I’ll close the contest when I get bored, or the ultimate insult comes along. Contest is over.

So, here’s a few links I found with good insults.

That last one reminds me of Josh’s insults. Hell, Josh could insult me better in his sleep than my apparent enemies can.

Anyway, have at it folks. Best insult gets you a link!