“Entombed”

For various seasonal reasons, I was thinking about the holidays and about the nature of the past and the present when suddenly “Entombed” popped into my head.  “Entombed” was a video game from 1982 which was made for the Atari 2600.  My family found our copy in a discount bin at Hills (a long defunct chain store from Middle America), and bought it for the picture…which made the game seem like a cartoon-y Indiana Jones sort of affair.  Hilariously, the single online photo I could find of the package shows a similarly marked-down copy–so probably everyone bought this thing from a discount bin for the low price and the wacky package art. There was also a vague narrative blurb which made it seem like the player would be exploring catacombs and dodging phantasms. Fun!

Yet when you started playing “Entombed” you were immediately dumped into a rudimentary hell world the color of artificial cheese…and the only escape was death (which came with merciless speed).  The player was a little purple stick man who had to keep moving downwards through twisting matching pathways in luridly colored walls which were marching upwards (if that description makes no sense here is a link to the stunning gameplay on Youtube).  Occasionally little blue apparitions appeared which would kill you by touching you, however the cause of death was almost invariably getting caught in a tunnel and crushed by the top of the screen (which caused a grim noise and then oblivion).

The real problem was the walls moved upwards with relentless speed and they moved faster and faster as you moved down.  A game of “Entombed” was about 45 seconds of descending an ugly  zigzag and then being crushed with a resounding digital crunch.  The game swiftly found its way to the bottom of the game cartridges and there was no question about how it ended up in the bargain bin at Hills. Something about 2016 and my progress through the world (or maybe our collective progress) called this long-lost memory to mind and now it is stuck in my head.

Well, time to head to bed so I can get up for a fresh day at the office tomorrow!

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A Strange Delightful Feast (with recipe)

My food pyramid is more like food columns lately

I have been living on rice and pulses for weeks (pulses=lentils, split peas, red beans, pink beans, black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas…you get the idea). These foods deserve their own posts, not just for keeping me alive in this narrow stretch, but because they are also some of the first crops of humankind (and our history with them goes back way longer than that). However, as much as I love my chili and curries, tonight I couldn’t bear to look at the crock of chana masala. Plus I somehow managed to complete my training as a new employee of [Redacted], the regimented and tight-fisted financial firm where I am improbably quartermaster, and I felt like celebrating the fact that I made it through a (mostly) full week of grueling work alive.

Uh…is this a post about the glamor of working on Wall Street?

So I gathered up my nickels and bought one of the cheapest meats available at the supermarket to make a strange poultry feast. Now this is one of my favorite meals, but it is kind of a monster’s dinner–and it is definitely made of meat! My readers who are vegetarians…or even just squeamish may want to skip this cooking post [ED: Why is a recipe post even here?] and come back tomorrow for Fourth of July stuff.

Chicken Livers (photo by the hungry native)

OK, we are making delicious chicken livers with onions in creamy marjoram vermouth sauce! I usually eat it on a bed of yellow rice, but it is really a French meal and it also works well on buttery mashed potatoes, if you want to make those. The key to the meal is fresh undamaged livers without gall bladders…but your only clue in the supermarket is color so this is sort of a Russian roulette meal. Just buy the freshest looking chicken livers and you’ll probably be fine.

Drain the chicken livers (which, rather unpleasantly, come floating in a little plastic cup of chicken blood) and dredge them in a deep plate of plain flour with a pinch of salt mixed in. I threw away one of the livers that looked like it came from a chicken with a serious drinking problem, but all of the livers smelled good (if they smell rancid or bilious, you uh probably need a new batch). Keep the bloody flour—you’ll need it! Grease a large solid frying pan with a bit of olive oil and start frying the livers on medium heat. A lid really helps if you have one!

Thanks Mom and Dad, for the really nice pan.

I then chop up a medium onion and get a handful of wonderful marjoram from the garden. Flip the livers and throw a large pat of butter in the pan. When the butter melts and starts sizzling, put the onions in and flip them around so they don’t burn.

Marjoram

Add the chopped marjoram and some dry thyme and turn the flame down and put the lid on. Now mix the bloody flour with water till it becomes a viscous paste. The livers should be browned and firm and the onions transparent. Pour the flour water into the pan. Cook covered for a few minutes over low heat and then add a liberal splash of dry vermouth. If the gravy looks too thick, just ad some water and turn up the heat. Slosh everything around delicately with a spatula and add some sea salt to taste. Let the meal simmer on low heat till it looks right and then let it rest while you rice finishes (this all goes really fast).

I’ll put up this mystery image so you can imagine the meal

The meal looks like brown glop with horrible livers and dispiriting brown bits floating in it. It smells like butter, onions, trace elements, and cooked viscera. Sadly I forgot to take a picture before I fell on it and devoured it like a savage—so you can’t see how ugly it looks. Yet, when it comes out right, it is one of my best meals (and I’m a very good chef). I always imagine it being cooked by some sad scary old French man who lives alone in a forest, but when you get to know him you realize that he is a visionary genius and his horrifying meal is a gourmet treat.

They say he lives on entrails…and read all of Proust…

This post concerning chicken strayed pretty far from the beaten path, but now you have a gourmet dinner you can make for next to no money! Let me know if anybody makes it! I’m new to food blogging but it seems to be all the rage out there and I thought that this meal fills a peculiar sophisticated/impoverished/delicious niche!

Skylon

Artist’s rendering of SKYLON in orbit (by Reaction Engines Ltd)

Back in 2011, as the space shuttle program wound down, Ferrebeekeeper published what seemed like an elegy to spaceplanes—mixed-use vehicles capable of operating both as spacecraft and aircraft (most notably the space shuttles).   The dwindling national interest in science and exploration once seemed to indicate that the shuttle program would be the last spaceplane program for a long time.  However, as the United States abandons its interest in cutting-edge Aerospace projects, other nations and private interests are picking up the slack.

Skylon is a British spaceplane concept from a private company, Reaction Engines Limited. During the eighties, Rolls Royce and British Aerospace, poured money and knowledge into the creation of a vehicle named HOTOL (an awkward acronym which stands for HOrizontal TakeOff and Landing).  Although huge amounts of human energy went into HOTOL, it was canceled because of lack of funding.  Reaction Engines Limited is trying to build on the extensive HOTOL designs.

A Concept Model of HOTOL

Skylon certainly has a futuristic look.  It has a long slender needle-like fuselage with stubby delta wings sticking out midway.  Each of these wings is mounted at the end with a SABRE (Synthetic Air Breathing Engine).  These next-generation engines are the real key to achieving single-stage-to-orbit spaceflight (a milestone which has long proven elusive for space engineers).  Ideally the plane could take off from a runway and speed up to Mach 5.4 as it left the atmosphere and entered orbit.  After deploying its payload it could then glide back down to Earth like a normal plane.

Skylon Diagram

Skylon would be constructed of a carbon fiber frame with heat resistant ceramic tiling and it would employ liquid hydrogen as a fuel to loft its 82 meter long (269 ft) body into near-space (before switching to internal liquid oxygen as it left the atmosphere).  Like HOTOL before it, Skylon was stuck in funding purgatory for a long time, but recently a huge chunk of funding became available to test the viability of the various systems.  These tests were successfully completed in November of 2012 and Reaction is now moving forward with the building of Skylon.

Skylon is designed to be vastly cheaper than the shuttle or any current rocket programs (and it would cut down on space debris).  Engineers estimate that one of the crafts could be ready to launch again in only two days after a successful landing (as opposed to the shuttle which required months of refitting).  Let’s hope the technology works out.  Although unmanned interplanetary craft are accomplishing great things, it has been too long since there was a flashy achievement

Super Adobe Architecture

In the 1980s NASA challenged architects to invent a way of constructing buildings on the moon or Mars where traditional building materials would not be available.  An Iranian American architect named Nader Khalili came up with a simple & ingenious concept which involved minimum material and time.  Khalili’s idea was to fill long plastic tubes with moon dust or space rock and then build dome-shaped buildings from these sandbags (judiciously braced with metal wires).  Although NASA has not yet used the idea to build any space bases, the architectural and building style which Khalili invented has taken off here on Earth, where it can be used to quickly make highly stable, inexpensive structures.

The style of crafting domes out of plastic bags filled with local earthen material is known as super adobe.  Khalili initially thought that his buildings would be used as temporary structures for refugees or disaster victims who had lost their homes, however, when plaster or cement is added to the buildings they can become surprisingly permanent and elegant. Super adobe architecture results in beehive shaped structures filled with arches, domes, and vaults.  Windows and doors can be created by putting inserts into the bags and then building sandbag arches around them, or arch-shaped holes can be sawed into the finished plastered domes. Superadobe domes can be beautifully finished with tiles, glass shards, or other decoration or they can be smoothly plastered.  Khalil created a finish which he called “reptile” where the domes were covered with softball sized balls of concrete and earth.  Reptile finish prevented cracking by creating paths for the structural stress caused as the building settling and by heating/cooling expansion and contraction.

"Reptile" Finish

Superadobe architecture is best suited for the dry hot southwest, but can be used elsewhere (especially if the builder adds a layer of insulation) and can employ a variety of available fill materials.  If the builder uses earth and gravel to create small domes the buildings are surprisingly resistant to earthquakes, floods, and gunfire.  Additionally earthbag buildings are cheap and easily constructed by unskilled builders.  The fact that wood is not required has made the style a focus of environmentalists and green builders.  I am a huge fan of domes, but they are rarely seen outside of huge expensive buildings like churches, legislative houses, and mansions for rich eccentrics.  This paucity of domes could be corrected with more superadobe architecture. Imagine if you could live in an elegant little superadobe dome house with circular woven carpets and little round hearths!  The organic shape of the small houses makes them blend in perfectly with succulent gardens informal flowers and unkempt fruit trees.  Some builders even go a step farther and cover the entire building with grass and plants. I would like to see more such structures built here on Earth and hopefully someday farther afield.