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Archive for September, 2009

Stuff I Want To Say

by Nathan on Sep.06, 2009, under About Me, Daily Life, Good Eats, Miscellaneous, Music, Politics, Women's Studies

I got things I want to say. Here they are:

  • Look! It’s a picture of a cat being all cute! This will probably be your favorite part of this post.
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  • My trip to London and Paris seems to be having a lingering effect on my music taste. I’ve been listening to BBC Radio 1 on my iPhone using the WunderRadio app. I’m probably too old to be listening to Radio 1, but whatever, it’s a good station to get you going in the morning. Radio 1 has managed to firmly wedge a few new songs into my head. The first is Left My Heart In Tokyo by Mini Viva, which you can hear in the video below.

  • The next song stuck in my head is The Day I Died by Just Jack. The video below is an acoustic version. I love acoustic.

  • BBC Radio 1 has also reintroduced me to Lily Allen. I love Lily Allen. I might have to add her to my harem of girlfriends (along with Mandy Moore, Reese Witherspoon, Meghan McCain, Natalie Portman, Julia Stiles, and Danica McKellar). I’m not completely sure what it is that I like about Lily Allen’s music. She is a beautiful vocalist and an amazing song writer. Her music has a “real” and authentic quality to it. Plus, she knows how to use the word “Fuck”, and God bless her for it. My favorite Lily Allen song of the moment is The Fear. This song speaks to me in ways I don’t understand. I love the version in the video below. It’s acoustic *and* it has a piano, two things I love.

  • In my ongoing pursuit of beer cheese (documented here and here) I attempted to make welsh rarebit using Alton Brown’s recipe. I was going to blog about it, but it only turned out okay. I think this technique has promise though, because this is the first time I have have made beer cheese using real cheese without it turning out lumpy. The key seems to be low heat and adding the shredded cheese slowly. While it turned out okay, I was hoping for a stronger beer cheesy flavor. If you want to try welsh rarebit, Dressel’s Pub in the Central West End (St. Louis) has great welsh rarebit that they serve with their homemade bavarian chips (potato chips). Here is a picture of my welsh rarebit on toast.

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  • I still have a lot that I want to say about health care, but I’ll spare you, just kidding. I’m shocked at how some people seem resistant to even the most basic and obviously needed reforms. At a minimum, we must prevent insurance companies from discriminating based on health and in turn require everyone who can afford it to purchase health insurance. This is exactly how most employer provided group insurance plans work, and most people on these plans are very satisfied with their health care. Group insurance works, we just need to make sure everyone can get in the group. This will be good for small businesses and the self employed, why republicans aren’t more supportive of this I will never understand. On the other end of the spectrum, my support for a public plan is waining. A lot of this is because I was watching an episode of NOW on PBS about health care called Gambling With Health Care. In it, the Bush administration official in charge of medicare made the point that subsidies for lower income individuals to purchase private insurance could be just as effective as a public plan. I’m a big fan of the simplest solution that works, so if we can have meaningful health care reform without a public plan, that would be simpler, and I’d be all for it. I’ll probably change my mind on this in a day or two. On another note, why aren’t more moderate republicans making rational suggestions like the former Bush official in the NOW episode? Why do republicans let their craziest voices speak the loudest? Oh, and what about this whole freaking out about Obama talking to kids on the importance of education thing? WTF? When republicans pull these stunts, they allow themselves to be labeled as wingnuts, which causes a lot of people to instantly write off anything they say, even if it might actually make some sense. Ugh! This is why I wish I could register as a non-republican. Here is the NOW episode on health care. You aren’t allowed to comment on the health care portion of this post unless you watch the whole video.

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