The other day I was running an errand and decided to take care of one more nagging task while I was hopping around the city. See, while I am totally into making my own salad dressing (it is that easy) I’ve become (re)addicted recently to the salad dressings from the Japan-based Italian restaurant chain Alberto Pietro’s. Their dressings wouldn’t be that hard to make on my own, but with garlic and ginger as key ingredients, sometimes the staleness of a bottled dressing isn’t enough to convince me to do all that fine chopping. (Yeah, I do have one of those mini-chop processors, but cleaning them after only a little bit of use is another point where my laziness takes over.)

My current bottle of dressing comes from a friend who lives in Hawaii, but I had seen the brand’s distinctive bottles at a Japantown grocery store. Since I’ve been having trouble finding a couple manga volumes, it seemed like a good time to add a quick jaunt to J-Town to my errands so that I could buy my bottled salad dressing (oh, the shame!) and browse through the selection at the Kinokuniya Book Store.

Y’know that old saying about grocery shopping while hungry? It’s so much worse when you’re surrounded by packaging you find fascinating and flavors that aren’t easily found elsewhere. Worse, two of the three items on my shopping list weren’t in-stock at the store. When I don’t find what I’m looking for quickly, I start looking over the store’s shelves more carefully which gets me to notice products I wouldn’t have paid attention to otherwise.

So. There was no Alberto Pietro’s Ginger Dressing, but I did get a bottle of the Miso Dressing.

There was also no Macha Green Tea Pocky, which I was an item I’ve been craving lately. However, there was two, unusual new flavors of Pocky. The first was a black sesame Pocky (which tasted exactly as expected) and a kinako-flavored Pocky. The Kinako  Pocky was a surprise as kinako is an unusual ingredient (a flour made from roasted soybeans) that has a distinct flavor that is difficult to describe. In my childhood, I used to eat fried mochi dipped in a mix of kinako and sugar. This Pocky tastes the same, except without the soft and powdery texture of kinako.

As for my manga quest, my trips to various bookstores and comic shops have all failed to get myself a copy of Kikaider or Enduring Love. What is it about these titles that no stores are bothering to get even a single shelf copy?

SFist is noting a report saying that a San Francisco comics shop, Al’s Comics is in trouble and may be closing.

Al’s may not be amongst the Bay Area’s more famous comic shops, but it is one of the finer comic shops in a city full of great comic shops. The retail space was never laid out as prettily as other stores, but in my experience Al’s has long been a great place to buy comics. The stock is well-maintained and shows an understanding about the breadth of quality that you can find in the medium. It was a store that I would turn to if there were a DC superhero comic and a new issue of Electric Girl that I was having trouble finding elsewhere. It would be a shame for the Direct Market to lose a shop as good as this one.

Honestly, I haven’t been to Al’s Comics in a while. When I lived in the city, I lived in areas that discouraged regular visits. (That probably says something about the Bay Area’s comic shops, there’s so much quality available to comic customers in the region that we can disregard one that is inconveniently located, since there are other great retailers one can visit.) However, now that I commute into San Francisco, the only shop I visit (that isn’t within a short walk from the office) is Comix Experience. Perhaps its time I changed that and paid the shop a visit.

Normally, I procrastinate for way too long when pointing out contests, but Love Manga’s Advent Calendar contest begins Wednesday. For the month of December,  Immelda and David will be counting down the days until Christmas by giving away a spotlighted manga volume.

I’m just looking forward to seeing which titles are behind those twenty-four boxes.

Yep. I’m feeling lazy (actually, I’m working on a few different in-progress posts) so here’s a cute anecdote found at the YABS political thread:

A friend of mine used to work at the Tower of Terror, another Disney ride that takes your picture, and she told me all about the rules for photos. Obviously, they get a lot of teenagers flipping the bird at the camera, but whenever possible they just digitally erase the finger, so you’re just showing the camera the back of your hand and everyone else can still get their photo. If you flash the camera, obviously your photo’s yanked before it’s ever displayed on the ride monitors or printed.

The interesting one is that if you’re kissing your sweetie, the photo gets yanked just as fast as if you’d pulled out Mr. Happy or Ms. Lefty and Ms. Rightie. The reason for this is that people complain if there’s a gay or lesbian couple kissing in their souvenir photo, so they have to yank homo kisses. This being Disney, however, they’re not going to pick on homosexuals, so this policy gets applied to all kisses, gay, straight, or (tip o’ the hat to senator Santorum) man on dog.

Followed by confirmation:

This is indeed true. My wife and I had this happen to us. It wasn’t us, but another, hetero couple. Not that we wanted the picture anyway, we already had one from Splash Mountain. Hint: They don’t pay nearly as much attention to the location of the rear rider’s hands so long as there’s nothing showing.

The silly part here is that there’s an easy, obvious solution. If you don’t want a gay couple kissing in your photo, don’t buy it.

The result is exactly the same as it is with no option to buy one: You leave the ride with no souvenier photo. The difference is that those who don’t mind seeing someone kissing in their photo, regardless of orientation, are deprived of the opportunity to get their photo.

Now obviously I’m playing devils advocate here, as there’s no way I want to see some guy kissing a woman in the same photo as me. That’s just icky. But why should I deprive some stranger of their souvenier because of my small-minded morality?

And a response to the closing question:

The issue is that not displaying or offering it reduces the odds of someone making a big scene in The Happiest Place On Earth. Believe me, controlling the emotional state of people in their parks is the most important part of their job, and it’s creepy how specific their rules for that are.

Isn’t it funny to know the kind of careers that open up to you if you speak German?

Now I have to talk to the spouse with the perfect German accent (northern, he’s told) about why he’s not exploring these amazing possibilities… then again, I can’t imaging wanting to live with one of the last three.

Heh, cool. Ed Cunard brilliantly takes down some empty, hyperbolic hype. While I see how any publicity can lead to sales (making it good publicity), it is hilarious to see someone try to claim what was a dogpile of snark as "buzz."

More brilliance. Reviews of All-Star Superman by A Blogger Who Doesn’t Know The Book Is Written By Grant Morrison, A Blogger Who Does Know The Book Is Written By Grant Morrison and some guy named Steve Pheley.

Oh, you know you’re in dangerous territory when a someone who usually writes about sex pens an ode to stuffing.  Now I want to go back and make more with different ingredients.

Mark Evanier always writes great eulogies and his remembrance of Pat Morita is no different. Sigh, I remember watching some awful shows because of Morita’s presence but that’s all about that quest for representation.

The post-turkey day cooking reminds me of how I wanted to like to SFist’s praise of stock.

A freezerful of stock is a cook’s secret weapon. Create buttery,
flavorful boiled rice by using stock in place of water. Make extraordinary soups with homemade stock. Finish a dish with a rich, stock-based pan sauce. Braise food in stock to add extra dimensions of flavor. Impress your friends with tales of stockmaking (though this doesn’t work for us nearly as often as you’d think).,,

It’s an easy skill. You can find complex instructions, but we prefer the simpler forms. Yes, it takes time, but you don’t have to do much work, so set it up before you hunker down for a night of TV, and by the time the news comes on you’ll have a richly colored, aromatic addition to your pantry.

Since many homes now have some leftover turkey bones, now is a good time to try out a basic stock recipe. There’s a surprising difference in the flavors of chicken and turkey stock, so turkey stock can make a leftover turkey soup taste much more rich and complex.

I got very much hooked to turkey stock when I tried making stuffing one year with fresh turkey stock (made from turkey wings) instead of canned chicken broth. I didn’t expect there to be much of a difference and figured it would turn out to be one of those elaborate methods that don’t produce enough of a difference to justify the labor. I figured that I’d go through that process once, see that it didn’t make a difference and get the curiosity out of my system. However, it turns out the difference is big enough that now I can’t imagine making Thanksgiving stuffing with anything else.

Once you get the hang of letting a pot simmer gently for several hours (something that gets easier over time, until you wonder what the big deal was), making stock gets quite easy. I try to follow Jaime Oliver’s advice and whenever I roast a chicken, I turn the bones into stock. When I’m done, I freeze the stock in 8-ounce Ziploc containers which makes it easy to grab stock a cup at a time when I’m cooking. (Those containers are also perfect for when I make ice cream. If I divide one container into two bowls, I get an appropriately-sized serving for the spouse and myself.)

Thanksgiving is an odd time of the year for me because I tend to really go crazy over the time.

I had a friend who had this decorating book that he loved. It had a personality quiz at the beginning and he would try to get anyone he knew to answer the quiz and kept a scrapbook full of his friends’ quizzes.

The book declared that my personality type saw good cooking as a way of expressing love and viewed the kitchen as a lively corner of the house that pumps the lifeblood of a warm gathering.

I guess that summarizes my feelings for Thanksgiving.

I suppose there’s also a bit rebellion too, as my mom always approached the holiday meal rather practically and tried not to make more than one dinner and no more than two days worth of leftovers. Me, I usually get a big turkey because I want to perform a blur of cooking that means no more cooking for a week or so. Plus Thanksgiving in Hawaii doesn’t usually mean a typical menu… that gives the traditional holiday dishes a little bit of their own mythology. I remember the puzzled looks I got the first time I went to a college friend’s home for Thanksgiving dinner. I raved over the cranberry-orange relish because I had never tasted a cranberry sauce that good. Cranberry-orange relish isn’t that unusual a Thanksgiving dish, but that was the first Thanksgiving dinner where the cranberry sauce didn’t come from a can. It was, honestly, as exotic to me as lychees are to most Americans.

I tend to geek out on the mythology of the Thanksgiving table and enjoy trying to find variations on it, much like how some people enjoy creating their own interpretations of characters in fanfiction. I’m a little behind my usual schedule for the holiday (as, typically, I’d have finished sketching out the time charts for cooking by now) but the holiday is always an exciting challenge and there really isn’t anything like sharing food you’ve put special care in preparing with people you care about.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian certainly came up with an attention-getting cover for this holiday weekend.

Is it just me or is there something extra-steamy about that kiss?

Blogging will be light (but will hopefully occur) over the holiday weekend… it all depends on how many times I can pull myself away from The Sims 2 or City of Villains. I hope everyone has a happy hanksgiving.

There’s been a lot of great comics industry talk lately and I’ve got a long rant coming in that direction… one so long I’m likely to procrastinate about it forever. However, I did want to note this anecdote from Heidi MacDonald:

Back when I was an active participant in making comics, I would often stump my colleagues with the following question. “What is the best selling comic DC publishes?”

JLA, peoples would guess, or Batman, or whatever was at the top of Diamond’s chart that month.

And I would say no. “It’s MAD magazine.”

The response was always the same.

“That doesn’t count.”

Me, I say “That’s so cool!” I mean, I’ve long figured that MAD magazine had descended into irrelevancy, even though there’s been some great moments in recent issues, smart stuff that’s had me considering an actual subscription. Now, I wonder if I should worry more about Wonder Woman (the least well-managed amongst DC’s major properties, IMO) sliding into obscurity instead.

It sounds more than a little hopeful to me that a mainstay that isn’t wrapped in the trappings of the comics industry is performing strongly.

Tuesday tidbits, since I was busy and procrastinating on Sunday…

David Welsh creates a hilarious parody of annoying YAOI cliches.   

Okay, that is damn cool.

When Brokeback Mountain marketers designed the movie’s poster, they didn’t look to westerns for inspiration but posters from romantic films.

The Guardian’s guide to picking out a video game gift had some very solid advice.

The last point resonates with me, as I’ve discovered some great independent game developers — I was very happy, after being disappointed in the demos for MicroSoft’s Zoo Tycoon games, to learn that my favorite business sim game developer, Enlight, had a similarly themed game. (And, for a zoo game it had all the animals I wanted — penguins, koalas and bears.)

So. Google thinks it knows bad people? That’s certainly good for a laugh, though things get more interesting if you check out the full results. What does Google have against so many bloggers?

Yep, I’m more pop than politics. When I read a headline saying "Politics as usual: Orphans! Woodward! Tax Law!" my first thought was of Alfre, not Bob, Woodward.