Dracula's Daughter

Dracula's daughter
Dracula's daughter
Dracula's daughter's got it bad

Think you got it bad?
Try having Dracula for a dad

Colin Meloy

Hot Cup O' Zhou

I could live on Thai "zhou". No problem. Mind you, it's not the sort of dish that springs to mind when imagining Thai food, but it's my favorite. Think of a chicken-and-rice flavored porridge and you'll have a good idea of what I'm talking about. It's not unlike a Chinese dish of roughly the same name. Unfortunately, zhou is not so easy to come by. Imagine going to a restaurant in the States and ordering cream of wheat or PB&J.

So far I've only been able to get my fix through friends, usually in a "home cooking" setting. My attempts to get the recipe have been frustrated time and again, usually with a curt, "You want, I make for you." That's fine, but I'm just wondering how many bowls of this stuff might constitute common law marriage.

Addendum (3/22): Oh, it's called jog (long o), not zhou. And the preparation is more involved than I imagined: traditional receipes call for the rice to be boiled overnight.

A Tale of Two Olympics (Or: NBC, You Suck!)

I was in the States for the first week of the Winter Olympics, but have been watching the final days here in Phuket, Thailand. The contrast in television coverage is remarkable. I watched in agape horror as NBC hit a truly historic low with a lengthy time-out to introduce Jerome Bettis as their newest NFL commentator. "Commentator" is likely too strong a word, as Bettis' on-air style borders incoherence. Shame on you, Bob Costas, and on everyone who pulls your strings.

Thailand is watching the Olympics on SuperSport, which has featured close to 24-hour coverage of the games -- live when possible, lightly edited otherwise, with no teases, no baiting and switching, just action. Commercial breaks are minimal, so the sad irony is that NBC and its sponsors are effectively subsidizing what the rest of the world is watchng, while Americans are force-fed soapy/syrupy fluff pieces with scraps of event footage thrown in. Of course, Gree might be paying as much as Coke or Visa but somehow I doubt it.

Prometheus Unbound

Yesterday, for the second time in a month, I burned all the twigs, limbs, and assorted blowdown I could collect from my parents' yard. The photos might not capture the scale of it, but at its largest the "pyre" was about seven feet in diameter and and close to six feet tall. In all I burned at least three years' worth of deadwood -- both literal and figurative. If you're underwhelmed by that, well, you're not alone. Some of my friends see the fun in indulging pyromanical fantasies, but others apparently see only a brush pile. If you fall into the latter category I feel sorry for you. I guess if you have to ask you wouldn't understand, but few things are more fun than a bonfire.

Self-Promotion

Happy Birthday

For several months now I've been tinkering with a small business idea. I didn't tell many people about it because I wasn't sure it would really go anywhere, but now it's time to spread the word. Today I went "live" with my pet project, The Golfer's Elbow.

I cannot predict what the future has in store for my little invention but I can guarantee that my resume will spin it as a breakthrough rivaling the wheel, the telephone, and penicillin.