All Entries in the "Hard News" Category
School Lunch Menu
Montrose School District, January, 2018
Public service announcement
Monday:
Salad of Mallard, Foie Gras, Orange and Aniseed
Jerusalem Artichoke Soup
Lobster Cocktail with Pesto
Veal with Blackberry Sauce
Onion Risotto
Lavender Crème Brownie or French Beignets
Taylor Fladgate (15 year)
Tuesday
Tapas Plate
Roasted Kumamoto Oysters
Dinkling Green Red Leg Partridge
Peruvian Potatoes Puree
Late Season Fennel with Smoked Apple
Pressed Goat Cheesecake
Conco y Toro Sauvignon Late Harvest (Chile)
Wednesday
Beetroot salad
Young leeks
Loin of Monkfish Wrapped in Butter Puff Pastry
Braised parsnips
Forest Mushrooms with Walnut Parsley Fried Rice
Bahian Coffee and Petit Fours
Martel Cordon Bleu
Thursday
Escargot Pot de Crème
Carpaccio of Cauliflower
Langouistin Ravioli
Skate Cheeks Tempura
Maple-glazed Thumbelina Carrots with Macona Almonds
Clotted Cream Éclairs
Flaming Brandy Punch
Friday
Ahi Tuna Nicoise Salad
Pomme Frites with Truffle
Beef Tournedos with Port Wine and Stilton
Rack of Lamb with Sauce Paloise
Tomato Fondue
Chocolate Sorbet
Remy Martin XO
Cigar selection: Arturo Fuente or Macanudo
An Evening at the Harcourt
When we hit Dublin, it was still raining from the year before. The pastel gray Liffey blended with the faded gray alleyways peppered with foggy people in wrinkled long coats and proficiently ducked heads. Umbrellas were on every street corner. No frowns on crowded O’Connell Street. Hard to tell what evil lurks behind the walls of nearby Dublin Castle, for centuries a symbol of British control.
“The weather here has only been like this since about 300 AD said Richard Kelly, the same man who at the Harcourt bar assured us that the Dublin City Ramblers would perform at nine, ten o’clock at the very latest.
“It’s a week night and the people of Dublin have to work in the morning,” he smiled, embracing a Paddys. “Besides, by Irish law the pubs must shut their doors and half past ten.”
We had only arrived that afternoon, after a groggy trip from Denver. The only thing less appetizing than airline food is airline sleep.
“What do you mean you don’t have Cork Gin? What kind of airline is this anyway?”
The taxi ride to Tavistock in Ranelagh was an eye opener as our driver, Brian, covered 2500 years in about 15 kilometers.
“That’s the General Post Office and the Ha’Penny Bridge. There is Steven’s Green and Trinity College, and over there is the eternal flame to the famine victims.”
Everywhere people hurried about, a Saxon city, a Viking city, a Norman city, the Pale…now back in the hands of the ancestors of Repeal, forced emigration, landlordism. The survivors of a terrible potato famine, slow murder by unofficial Parliamentary decree. A place on the landscape.
But we were here to drink pints of Guinness, not dwell on the pains of my ancestors. (“No, I’m not here to find my roots…I’m here to find a good seafood restaurant.”) We stepped into a three-story pub off Parnell Road. We had been coached by the wise…the Dooleys, the Walshes, the Sullivans, the Healy’s.
“When you’re in Ireland and you’re thirsty, step up to the barman and simply ask for a pint,” they had told us. “You don’t need to say a pint of what. They will know what you’re after, and they will appreciate your knowledge of local custom.
We stood at the bar and were greeted by a redheaded colleen who could have been the Young Ireland poster girl.
“What’ll ya have?” she asked.
“Two pints,” I answered as Tuatha De’ Danainn might have done.
“Of what? was her curt response. It turned out she was an American student, unfamiliar with drinking manners and, as it turned out, much of the noted social curriculum at all.
“Did ye rent the hair too?” Slight disappointment overcome with the arrival of the dark stout. Where is The Gingerman, Sebastian Dangerfield, when we need him?
“Maybe a nap would put us in league with Dublin’s lovely night life,” someone suggested.
By now it was approaching seven and already dark on the shores of the Irish Sea. Strolling with the flow along Grafton we came upon the Harcourt and a sign in the window: “Tonight: The Dublin City Ramblers. What good fortune. These people put on one hell of a show. I saw them in Boston some years back. What a fitting arrival to Dublin’s fair city.
We walked into the bar and were greeted by soccer on the big screen, (they call the game soccer here so as not to be confused with Irish football, hurling, rugby, or even horse racing, which, along with swilling the Product, makes up the recreational side of this culture.) The pub was full of men in suits who forgot to come home from work that evening. My beautiful companion began receiving offers of marriage right there at the bar.
“I don’t usually do this but in your case I will have to make an exception…”
Then the first of many pints arrived at my thirsty elbow. I acknowledged the gift, raising my glass in the direction of my benefactors.
“My name is Richard,” said the big man to my right, “and this is my mate, Tommy.”
We exchanged the basics, marinated in room temperature Guinness. The duo, with their British accents assured us that the band would begin any moment now. It was 8:30 and the pubs had to close and all.
As it turns out Richard and Tommy were in the British Army together during the 1970 Troubles in Ulster. Both were the off-spring of Irish parents who fled the starvation economics of their own country for better conditions abroad, in this case Liverpool. When the two were old enough the army looked to be the best prospect and they joined. Both volunteered for duty in Derry, a decision that continued to haunt them. Now both lived in Dublin.
“It all makes little sense,” I offered, “to hear you scream Some Say the Devil is Dead with a cockney accent.
As a gentlemen in Rosscarbery would later explain it: “Layers, laddie, layers.”
Finally, the band arrived on the stage and played until about 2 am punctuating their rowdy performance with the Irish National Anthem. A Nation Once Again. The two of us got lost by the Grand Canal, going home. It was still raining.
“The Canadians are attacking! Run for your life!”
– Mr. Hat in the film South Park
LOS NIVELES DE MAR CRECIENTES AMENAZAN LAS CUENTAS DE LA ORILLA
Los principales meteorólogos y expertos en clima prohibidos de las reuniones patrocinadas por la Casa Blanca sobre el cambio climático dicen que elevar los niveles oceánicos creará estragos en las localidades costeras ya en el próximo verano Un objetivo particularmente vulnerable de este fenómeno planetario son los innumerables pozos de dinero creados por ejecutivos corporativos que evaden los impuestos y los ricos ociosos.
“Construir su casa en la arena y toda esa podredumbre ha llegado a su hogar en una percha empapada”, dijo un científico que ha pasado los últimos 30 años estudiando leones marinos en los alrededores costeros.
“Hemos visto la acumulación de agua, patrones de tormentas viciosas e incluso el comportamiento agresivo de leones marinos generalmente dóciles contra los nadadores en el Pacífico”, dijo. “Podemos esperar más ataques de animales que pueden terminar siendo los cuidadores del planeta después de que los humanos nos extingamos. Puede apostar a que no habrá mucha perforación o fracking cerca de estos escondites para desestabilizar el medio ambiente local”.
La gran pregunta sigue siendo: ¿Es Terra Firma lo suficientemente resistente como para soportar el peso de esta cornucopia pecuniaria y una variedad de cargas emocionales generadas y exacerbadas por la presencia de delincuentes en estas hermosas playas? Parece Atlantis para los ricos, donde la evasión fiscal reemplaza a Neptuno como el Rey de los Océanos.
Ambas partes de la controversia coinciden en que la inundación de estos reductos fiscales es un resultado involuntario de la continua negación del cambio climático provocado por el hombre. Ayer, la Guardia Costera intercepta 4 yates enormes que transportan metales preciosos, gemas y lingotes de oro, así como materiales de construcción a un destino no revelado.
Las fuentes no confiables aquí creen que los barcos estaban destinados a cuentas lejanas de la costa, propiedad de los ricos e inmorales. Los políticos republicanos y otros continúan en riesgo en el continente debido a filtraciones en el techo de la Cámara de los Reprensibles. Un plan salado y empapado, descubierto en el bolso del vicepresidente Mike Pence por lo que los patriotas republicanos llamaron “agentes comunistas gay de Irán”, exige la construcción de 75 mansiones en las nuevas comunidades marítimas.
“Si los israelíes pueden hacerlo, aunque en semidesierto, nosotros también podemos hacerlo en alta mar”, alardeó. En otras noticias, los republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes aprobaron lo que los débiles demócratas llaman una resolución Pinnochio “sesgada y ponderada”, a pesar de que nadie se había molestado en leer la fábula.
El nuevo proyecto de ley lubrica los derechos disminuidos, el robo de los beneficios de la red de seguridad, la adopción de falsedades y el acaparamiento del dinero de otras personas. Para una historia sin relación, pero fabulosa, por favor dirígete a los Broncos para posponer la exclusión de los puntos destacados de la NFL semanal: se interrumpió constantemente debido a una mala jugada. en Soft News
LOS TATUAJES PUEDEN AÑADIR AÑOS A LA VIDA
(Needle Rock, CA) Adornando el cuerpo con tatuajes puede tener algunos efectos positivos de acuerdo con un nuevo estudio recién publicado por la Escuela de Psicometría de Cal Polygamy. Según hallazgos claros, las personas con tatuajes viven más tiempo, en promedio, que las personas sin diseños. De los sujetos probados en marzo de 1925 y nuevamente en mayo de 1926, entrevistados en 1990 y 2006, casi el 80% de los que tenían tatuajes todavía están pateando. La mayoría parece ser marineros, a menudo de buques mercantes y arrastreros de pesca.
“Había muchos más de estos viejos tipos de sal vivos en 1990 que en 2006”, dijo el Dr. Efram Pennywhistle, (del equipo Gladstone Pennywhistles, téngalo en cuenta) del departamento. “Tendremos que escribir eso en función de la inflación. La encuesta tiene un componente de inexactitud incorporado del 14%, que es un poco alto para este tipo de estudios”.
Los investigadores aún no saben qué harán con los hallazgos hasta que todos los datos puedan analizarse más detenidamente y compensarse con otros estudios similares. En la actualidad, ni la FDA ni la AMA han respaldado la exhibición de tatuajes, o incluso piercing en el cuerpo, a pesar de los vínculos con las inyecciones de refuerzo y los usos de las sanguijuelas en el tratamiento.
La reacción dentro de la comunidad de tatuajes y pintura corporal fue resguardada por grupos de defensa que insistían en que los tatuajes “nunca se refieren a la mortalidad, y ciertamente no a la moralidad”. Los salones locales informan un ligero repunte en el tráfico sin nada dramático.
“Siempre vemos muchas caras nuevas en las vacaciones”, dijo Syd Fahrdt, propietario de Seaweed Tattoo en Delta. “No sé qué vamos a hacer con todas estas vidas desdentadas tatuadas en sus años noventa y más. Estamos teniendo suficientes problemas para pagar Sociable Security como es”.
No se ha establecido ninguna conexión entre estos descubrimientos y el bien documentado intento de los cirujanos argentinos de transplantar un ego humano en una losa de carne.
– Boca Pequeña Bess
Martian Web Site Discovered
(Colona) Two internet surfers appear to have stumbled across the most magnificent discovery since Lief Erickson sailed into Newfoundland in 1340. Unlike the Viking they did it from a home computer.
Perhaps the most thrilling kicker is that they have had mounds of correspondence from their extraterrestrial counterparts, two young hackers from the Noonday Gulf on the Red Planet of Mars. Although at first the language barrier was formidable, after a little code work and sound wave application both sides began to communicate quite readily.
“What a shock to find a Martian website,” said one of the lads, whose names were not released until further investigation could be completed. “This certainly throws a bit of light on the question of other beings living in our solar system. What’s really funny is that our new friends still use dial-up to access their email.”
The Martians say their entire culture lives miles above and below the planet which has been determined to be quite inhospitable due to extreme temperatures and the presence of red dust all over everything.
When contacted leading sources at NASA and the FAA agreed that the assumption is ridiculous and that any number of scenarios could explain the exchange.
“It’s about as silly as the Man in the Moon theory,” said one NASA official.
Meanwhile sources within the Trump Administration denied validity regarding the findings due to accepted Creationist theories and “because, to quote a high ranking aide, “We believe the world to be flat.”
Rogue scientists attempting to make contact with other beings in the Universe say the vocal patterns and data shared indicate that the sources are indeed extraterrestrial.
“We have yet to hear anything like this,” stressed one free-lance space ship chaser from New Mexico. “even in the movies. If true, the ramifications of this encounter will immediately change the world as we know it.”
The two boys have been taken into protective custody by government officials who hope to determine if the communication is real or if its a hoax. Intergalactic enthusiasts interested in checking out the site can go to www.mars.org or wait to be contacted telepathically. Be advised that doing so may violate recent federal bans on communication with persons from outer space.
-Muriel Boteliff
