Sunday, October 2, 2011

I'm Probably Doing This Wrong But I'm Willing To Risk It.

I don't think I've ever actually recycled a post before.  I know that I made a conscious decision I wouldn't do that when I first started blogging because:

A.) It seemed lazy to me.
B.) It was a clear signal that the blogger (me) had nothing to talk about
and
C.) Reasons A and B seemed particularly pathetic when I had been blogging for less than a year.

As time went on, I started to take a perverse pride in never having recycled a post. 

Today, I announce that my pride, perverse or otherwise, is willing to take a hit.  Ah well.

Here's the thing, though.  Most people, when they get around to recycling posts, seem to choose one of two options. Either they pull up what they think is a post from their "Greatest Hits", or the go to the archives and choose a post the re-iterates a stand they've taken about something that may be current again. (More accurately, I think they pull up a post from the past intended to say, "Remember when I said this and nobody else was talking about it at all?  Well I was right then and I'm right now, so nyah, nyah, nyah; bask in my personal brilliance!)

Anyway, I'm pulling up a post from the past because I've got nothing to babble about today.  And I figured I'd pull up a previous post where I babbled about having nothing to babble about.  Or nothing worth babbling about. At least, not babbling well.

Remember how Seinfeld was a show about nothing?  Well, sometimes, Polybloggimous is a blog about having nothing to blog about.  Or sometimes it's a blog about blogging not well about blogging and having nothing to blog about.

Or something.

With that in mind...Sherman, set  the WABAC machine to 2010!

Postus Interruptus
 August 24, 2010

I've tried to make it clear that Polybloggimous is all about you!  I don't mean it's about you -- clearly, most of the stuff here is about me -- but I really try to make sure I'm taking you into account before ever hitting that PUBLISH POST button.  I really don't want to put stuff here that's just going to leave you scratching your heads or wondering WTF, or especially thinking, "Holy Crap. why is Nathan bugging us with crap like this?"

Yesterday, I wrote a post that was intended to riff on PBS's Sunday cooking shows and then introduce you to an idea I had for my very own cooking show --  Medieval British Cuisine.  On the face of it, this should have been at least mildly promising.  Primal Grill really is episode after episode of Forty Guys Make a Hamburger.  New Scandinavian Cooking really is a weekly exercise in cooking outdoors for no discernible reason whatsoever. Not only do they cook everything outdoors -- last week, they buried a roast in a hole in the ground to cook it -- they also have their chefs stand knee-deep in a fjord if they're making seafood.  'Cause you couldn't possibly understand how seafood might have made it all the way to the shore.  And I actually like Colameco's Food Show, but I'm willing to admit that the show consists entirely of the host watching chefs make things, and then he tastes the stuff and then he grunts a lot.  It's Tool Time, just about making food instead of building manly stuff.

So, anyway, I figured I could come up with some ideas for a show about Medieval British Cuisine -- surely an oxymoron if there ever was one.  I kind of envisioned episodes about peasants poaching deer from the Lord's estates.  There'd be stuff about how to prepare a hearty acorn stew with rocks!  Maybe some tips on dealing with spoiled food -- eat it, of course, do you want to starve?

And my "best" idea had something to do with making your livestock last.  If you wanted meat, you could just amputate one of your goat's legs.  That would give you enough meat for a couple of meals, and your goat would just limp a little until you got hungry again.  Not to mention, if you propped up the goat's rear end, you could still milk it.

As you may be realizing by now, the entire idea of the post was a recipe for disaster (no pun intended - really).  I have deleted the whole thing with impunity.

And, no matter how painful you may have found this post to read, it doesn't hold a candle to the sheer craptaculous-ness that the actual post would have inflicted upon you. You may thank me at your leisure.

P.S.  I may have deleted the post, but I'm still willing to use my blog-fail as blog-fodder.  This may be crappy content, but it is content.

P.P.S.  Here's a picture that would have made it into the post somewhere.  Consider it the visual equivalent of pounding a square peg into a round hole.

8 comments:

John the Scientist said...

You shoulda recycled the stinky tofu post, instead. :D

Gristle McThornbody said...

Disturbing. The only thing I'm horrified at isn't the lack of new material. My first concern was that the nurse lady chewing on a cow's nether regions is probably going to get some kind of wormy parasite from eating uncooked cow nether regions.

Nathan said...

The stinky tofu post was not about a lack of something to write about.

And I thought a nurse chewing on a raw cow's nether regions was a perfect illustration of Medieval British Cuisine. (I couldn't find picture of anybody chewing on a live cow.)

John the Scientist said...

A nurse chewing on a cow's nether regions is a fine example of Modern British cuisine. Judging by the rubbery hamburger most London pubs offer, offal is the order of the day in ground meat. Blech.

Warner said...

Offal is excellent, and some of the best cow dishes are fully or mostly raw.

Phiala said...

I know a fair bit about medieval British cuisine, and have cooked and eaten many dishes.

None of them involved raw cow ass.

Some are very like and some are very unlike modern dishes, and many are incredibly tasty.

Nathan said...

Phiala (and Michelle channeling Janiece),

I had in mind the Medieval British Cuisine that involved butchering a cow and storing the un-eaten portions in a cool-ish hole in the ground until they got around to eating it. I don't care how great a recipe you might have had...things were gonna get a bit ripe for the later meals.

Phiala said...

So you're operating from a different misconception of medieval cuisine than I'd thought, but that doesn't make you right.

Meat: eaten fresh, or salted, smoked, dried. Sausages, bacon, ham are all medieval, along with jerky and such. Food poisoning was mostly avoided.

That common knowledge you see about heavily spiced dishes to conceal the taste of rotten meat? Wrong.