Music Friday: "Thoughts and Prayers"

The GOP representatives and senators are fucking cowards.

They need to stick their useless thoughts and prayers up their asses. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I grew radishes this year in my garden, and they're going great. I use them as an alternative to potatoes when I make pot roast in the slow cooker, and you cannot tell much of a difference when the radishes have been in the slow cooker for about eight hours. 

It's clear that industrial ag sprays something on the radishes after they've been picked because I picked a few a couple of days ago, and when I tried to use them for a salad, they were all soft and not good eats. 

After I cut up a ton of radishes for the pot roast dish, I got to thinking. All these leaves that I'm composting - are they good to eat? 

Apparently they are. 

You can use them similar to any other kind of greens. So I'm going to add a few to when I wilt some spinach, which I'm doing quite regularly since my spinach is kicking it right now. 

The culinary scions of the InterWebs tells us that they have a peppery flavor. I chewed on one raw leaf, and it reminded me of the taste of mustard greens. 

And apparently you can substitute radish greens for basil and make a pesto. 

I've been making my own salad dressings for the last year or so, and the quality of homemade ones is such much better than that store-bought stuff. 

My go-to recipes are thousand island and blue cheese dressing, and occasionally I make a balsamic vinaigrette. 

Music Friday: "I Wanna Keep Your Dog" & "Pressed 2 Death"

I missed last Music Friday because of my daughter's high school graduation and all the hullabaloo associated with such an event. 

So here's a duo of songs to make up for it from the illuminati hotties.  

Random Notes from a Crank

Here are some factoids from the most recent editions of "Harper's Index":

• Percentage of Afghans who are expected to be living in poverty in August: 97
• Percentage of Americans who approve of labor unions: 68
• Percentage change since 2019 in U.S. labor union membership: -4
• Portion of Americans who think Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is no longer relevant: 1/4
• Percentage by which Republicans are more likely than Democrats to think so: 94
• Percentage of U.S. educators who plan to retire earlier than they had expected: 55
• Percentage of U.S. workers who received raises in the past year that kept pace with inflation: 17
• Percentage by which men with a dog in their dating-app profiles are more likely to want a long-term relationship: 90
• Increase, in years, of the average age of marriage for U.S. adults since 1970: 7

The Guardian has an interesting article that relates recent research by archeologists that goes against the traditional narratives about prehistoric men and women. The depictions follow gender-based cliches. Check out "Prehistoric Women Were Hunters and Artists as Well as Mothers, Book Reveals." 

Some of these organizers for travel baseball tournaments are sketchy as hell. My son's team had a tournament in Peoria this weekend. We were originally set to have our first pool-play game at 5pm on a Friday, which is a shitty draw. 

With all the rain, our pool-play games got switched to Sat morning, so my son and I drove in a steady drizzle and checked into the hotel and ordered pizza. Then a couple of hours later, our coach was notified that the tournament is cancelled because of rain. 

So by not telling us ahead of time that it's likely to be cancelled, they made many people pay for hotel rooms and also made money hand over fist for the sponsoring team. With a $75 admin fee multiplied by 19 teams, the sponsoring team made $1,425 with no games being played.

Thievery. 

A waste of my time. A waste of gas. A waste of my preparation. A waste of my money. 

A lot of frustration and anger. 

Music Friday: "It Aint' Easy"

Delta Spirit is a band that has grown on me over the years. 

The band has a new album titled What's Done Is Done that is coming out May 20. 

When I heard about the new album last month, I realized I never got the previous album, What Is There. 

Here's a tune from that album.