The document begging for permission to slightly ease the lockdown in Monterey County is 142 pages long. Much of this consists of copies of the orders and public notices that will be distributed to provide guidance and penalties for the classes of activity that will be permitted to partially resume, plus supporting letters from every bean-counter in the county. (I feel a song coming on: “Everyone considered him the counter of the county”)

Missing from the documentation is how long before it takes effect after it is approved in Sacramento. We can only hope that they didn’t accidentally forget to get a signed affirmation from some random person no one’s ever heard of but who feels important for the first time in his rubber-stamping life.

Meanwhile:

“In Northern CA, above normal significant large fire potential is expected in most areas below 6000 feet in June.”

At the moment, only Camp Roberts is burning, but expect that to change soon. If it’s a bad fire year, we may soon be recycling leftover Corona masks for ash-covering.

Update: A nibble!

Phone interview next week, for a build & release position. (what kids today call “DevOps”)

I went looking for updates on the story of Detroit-area grocery-store security guard Calvin Munerlyn, murdered in cold blood for “disrespecting” a woman by instructing her to wear a mask, as required by the state. To no great surprise, the mass media is… “not aggressively pursuing this local news story of no particular national significance”.

I managed to find local news coverage sharing the good news that Ramonyea Travon and Larry have finally been arrested; surprisingly, the family that kills together split up, with Larry hiding out in Texas (two unnamed accomplices drove him to Houston and checked him into a motel under his own name).

The killer’s sister Brya Shatonia was also arrested, for tampering with evidence and interfering with a murder investigation. Momma Sharmel is being held without bond on the charge of first degree murder.

In addition to murder, the fact that Larry is also charged with “felon in possession of a firearm” completes the explanation of why this story was dropped like a hot potato.

Today, California entered early stage 2 of the Grand Non-ReOpening And Gluten-Free Bake Sale. This means that they gradually, grudgingly, allow a small percentage of businesses to reopen for curbside delivery of orders placed online or over the phone. No in-person sales or merchandise on sidewalks, or else. It’s stages all the way down, though, so there’s no telling when we’ll even reach middle stage 2, much less late-early-middle stage 3 when it might become possible to get a haircut or go to a church.

Unrelated, there’s a big sale on telephoto lenses in Tokyo…

Also unrelated, Good Eats: Reloaded season 2 episode 4 wasn’t bad,

…but it didn’t do anything for me, perhaps because I never tried the cake recipe from the original episode, and wouldn’t really want to make the revised one, either; I just don’t bake cake.

Now, I did make a batch of Bigger Bolder Baking’s Crazy Dough and use it to make fresh soft pretzels. WARNING: disable Javascript on this site or be inundated with a constant stream of page-reflowing Google ads.

It’s an interesting dough, tangy without the overpowering sourness of California sourdough. The flavor comes from yogurt, and since she said her favorite kind to use is Greek, I used the good stuff: Fage’s with 5% milkfat. I think that would be too rich for some of the other suggested uses for the dough, like pizza or naan, but it worked great for pretzels.

The one snag with this dough is something that my Baker’s Percentage script called out: she lists 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour as being equivalent to 500 grams. Her other weight conversions are reasonable, since different sources give slightly different results, and she likely rounded a bit to make the numbers clean. But you’d really have to pack your flour in to get to that weight, which most conversion tables would call 4 or 4 1/8 cups.

And that’s a lot of flour for the amount of liquid, and since Greek yogurt has less water than the standard stuff, substituting it in makes things even worse. I used the quick-dough cycle on my bread machine to do the kneading, and I’ve never heard it make squeaking noises like that before; I had to add more milk twice to get a nice smooth dough out of it.

The milk and yogurt also gave the yeast quite a feast. The recipe says to let it proof for about two hours until it doubles in size; it tripled in one hour. I gently punched it down and stuck it in the fridge, and the next morning it had tripled again. After that, it was well-behaved, and I separated it into 105-gram balls and put them back in the fridge until needed. Two pretzels a day for four days was a nice treat, especially since they only needed 10 minutes in my convection toaster oven.

I’ll make it again sometime when I have guests, or after I’m no longer stuck at home waiting for the mindless horde to end the lockdown. And by that I mean the state and county governments, not the zombies.

Shutdown contest: which movie best describes your government?

For California, I’m thinking we’re approaching the third act of a Zorro movie, but I can’t decide if it’s The Mask Of Zorro or Zorro: The Gay Blade. On the one hand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, which would be nice. On the other hand, Ron Leibman’s insane over-the-top dictator Esteban, which is more realistic.

Michigan has already passed peak Esteban, but we’re getting there. I’ve been hearing a lot of coordinated car-horn honking outside lately, but I have no idea where it could be; my best guess is that it’s on Main Street, over a mile away. There have been formal protests on South Main, but that’s a good five miles away.

Update

Definitely Zorro: The Gay Blade:

"You don't really believe the people are happy!"

"All I know is the soldiers are quite happy shooting the peoples who say the peoples are not happy."

(Esteban pointing to peasant on rack)
"That man was three pesos short in paying his taxes. I can assure you that he will never be short again."

"Arrest that woman! Now!"

"No, wait! Isn't this the village square, where according to law, everyone is allowed to speak his or her mind?"

"You're right, Señorita."
"The woman is allowed to speak! Arrest anyone who listens."

"It looks like it'll buy the peoples a lot of houses, maybe even some schools and roads."

"Roads? What do the people need roads for? They never go anywhere."

"This sword, with which to fight injustice. This mask, with which to deceive tyranny. And this hat, which needs... reblocking."

Nanci Griffith’s Trouble In The Fields sounds charmingly naive now, when tons of food are being destroyed by farmers because governments have shut down most of their customers, many of which will never reopen. Just sayin’.

The version I like best is Maura O’Connell’s studio recording for A Woman’s Heart 2, but this performance with her and Nanci Griffith is good, too:

(embedding disabled; thanks, youtubes!)

Looks like King Arthur Flour has both SAF Red and Gold yeast in stock now, as well as Red Star Active Dry (2-pound bag). No flour yet (unless you need gluten-free, paleo, or almond), although they recently mentioned shipping out several million bags to retailers, and shifting some distribution from rail to truck to get it out faster. The SAF availability is interesting, since it’s made in Mexico.

Oh, and it’s reported that Trump will be temporarily banning all immigration by executive order. Throw in one about mandating in-person paper ballots, and the Left will be leaking fluids at both ends. Do H-1Bs, and Silicon Valley will suddenly discover that the skills you were looking for were with you all along.

If your fancy rice cooker includes a pressure option, turn it off before making barley rice. It will still work, but even when filled to only half capacity, cleaning up the heavily-starched water that escapes through the valve is like being a janitor on a porn shoot.

I’m keeping at best an idle eye on the stock market, because I have enough cash to stay afloat until at least October without selling any stock, as I hunt for a new job. It’s comforting to realize that even with all its ups and downs, the market is in better shape than at any point during the Obama administration.

On that note, it’s not something I need, but you can now borrow up to 100% from your 401K without penalty, with interest-only payments for 2020, or, if you got bit by Corona-chan or laid off, take a no-penalty hardship withdrawal.

Sharwood’s Red Curry sauce neither smells nor tastes like any Thai curry I’ve ever had, anywhere. Not bad, but not what I expected or wanted.

The rubber they use for Swiffer pads degrades pretty severely. I went into the garage, picked mine up, and half the pad stayed stuck to the wall. Walmart had them in stock, although it was amusing to see some of the brand-X replacements they’re stocking right now for other cleaning products.

Related, it always freaks me out a little when I clean house. I am by nature a clutter slob, and gradually accumulate piles of books, music, hobbies-in-progress, electronics, and clean laundry. I walk around them without noticing, then clean and wonder where all the space came from.

I remembered very little about a certain children’s book, to the point that my search string was “tony tina soup”.This proved to be sufficient.

If you didn’t stock your home gym a month ago, too bad. Also, don’t expect the supply chain to refill quickly, because guess where most equipment is produced and shipped from, particularly plates, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc? Mine’s in good shape (coughcough) because I’ve had an elliptical cross-trainer for many years that still works, and I splurged on Rogue kettlebells several years ago. My only complaint about Rogue’s product is that the handles aren’t quite wide enough to comfortably do two-handed moves, so I plan to buy Aders in some of the larger sizes (40 & 44-kilo) later this year.

Currently I’m mixing the Skogg system workouts with elliptical/anime runs and loaded carries (overhead, rack, and farmer’s walk); since I only have one each of the 28, 32, and 36-kilo bells, I’m using a 4-kilo strap-on ankle weight to create balanced pairs, and extending my distance to 60 yards (three loops around the first floor of the house).

Related, while I like the Skogg workouts, I found their 60-day challenge quite disappointing. I expected online critiques and feedback from Michael, and instead got Sue’s fad diet and a list of dubious supplements. This was several years ago, but the occasional email offer I get doesn’t suggest that it’s changed much. I hear they’ve got a book out on it, but I’ve never looked to see what’s in it.

Speaking of anime, I finished season 1 of Bokuben over the weekend, and started on season 2 last night. Fumino is best girl, but I find Mafuyu quite appealing as the grown-up choice. Also, she’s an ace with a rifle, at least when it comes to winning carnival prizes.

The entire world has been getting a fast, sharp lesson in the value, limits, and abuses of computer modeling. It’s like watching the global-warming debate play out at 1000x speed.

Amazon’s current variable-speed shipping is based on how products are classified. Surprisingly, given my long history of poking fun at their classification and recommendation systems, it seems to be mostly working:

• Ankle compression sleeves? 3 days.
• OXO dish scrubber? 4 days.
• Cat treat that’s actually a relabeled cooking ingredient? 5 days.
• Bamboo bookcase? 7 days.
• Out-of-print book from the Heibonsha Survey Of Japanese Art (fulfilled by Amazon)? 7 days.
• Bread knife? 12 days.
• Bluray box sets of ZombieLand Saga and Restaurant To Another World? 22 days.
• Cookbook? 23 days.
• Kitchen measuring spoons? 23 days.

Related, UPS just told me I’ve got a package from Amazon coming today, which doesn’t match any of my orders. Must be a gift from someone. (the monthly order of canned fruit and coffee is late because they simply don’t have most of it; I’ll get half of the fruit in a few days)

By the way, the cookbook is the original Joy of Cooking, without the curse of having been “updated for modern tastes”, which is a bit like calling Twiggy an updated version of Cynthia Myers, when they’ve really just cut out useful fats. Far too many cookbooks sacrifice flavor and nutrition on the altar of ever-changing federal guidelines and fad diets. That said, I thought Twiggy looked pretty hot in The Blues Brothers, but she was older and looked like she was eating regularly.

While I have my issues with Trump’s reopening plan, its metrics are measurable, predictable, and based on the best medical information available at any given time. The well-defined two-week intervals offer increased confidence for people making economic decisions (such as “should I switch my commercial production facility over to retail packaging”, “can I reopen in time to make payroll”, or “am I better off breaking the lease now and declaring bankruptcy”). The plan also forces governors to make tough choices:

1. do what Trump says.
2. say he’s too timid, and take all the risk of an increased body count.
3. say he’s too aggressive and lard up your plan with less-well-thought-out conditions, taking all the resposibility for lost jobs and failed businesses.
4. cheat like crazy and hope CNN’s got your back.

The problem with 2-4 is that Trump has a daily forum to smack them around, and despite their best efforts, the mass media hasn’t been able to silence it.

Q: What actor was in both Excalibur and Krull?

Tell me more about your efforts to prevent price-gouging…

This is for one (1) 1-pound bag of yeast. For comparison, the best price right now is $53.99 for six bags with free shipping, a difference of 22x. The ordinary, non-panic price at King Arthur Flour would be $5.95.

The good news is that between these assholes and eBay, when legitimate suppliers restock, we’re going to have the freshest mail-order pantry goods ever. All the expiring stock will be rotting in their garages.

Unrelated, apparently Good Eats: Reloaded season two starts Monday.

Update

(now that I’ve placed my order…) King Arthur Flour has SAF Gold back in stock for $6.95/pound. Gold is a specialty yeast for high-sugar breads (because sugar sucks up the water that yeast needs), but it works fine for regular breads as well. My existing supply of Red is good for another ~25 loaves, but given the current shipping delays, if things don’t open up again by the end of April, I might need it, if only to share with deserving friends and neighbors.

The sidewalks are pretty empty in my town, with maybe one dog-walker or jogger every six blocks. They’re all wearing masks. Why?

I can understand the homeless guy begging on the street corner, since if he doesn’t have a mask and gloves, no one’s going to want to roll down their window and give him anything, but if there’s no one within a hundred yards during your outdoor rambles, you ain’t spreadin’ or bein’ spread.

(parks and beaches are, of course, closed, because people might choose to get within six feet of each other, even if they came in the same car…)