There are certain things a man should just know how to do, change the oil, change a tire, how to tie a tie, etc. Basic tasks that show being a man is more than simply a genetic quirk of fate. One of those things, especially for those of us in Texas, is smoking a brisket. You need a smoker, I use an old sportsman’s smoker my grandfather had, it’s about 30 years old, and I do sort of covet one of these… If you don’t want to pay that much you can get a decent one for about $100, or if you’re really on a budget even less. Don’t have any reservations about the last one, it’s still much more capable than the one I’m using, the most important part of this is knowing what you’re doing not the smoker.

I generally smoke something around a 6lb brisket, it fits on my smoker, in the container I use for the marinade, and feeds us quite nicely for a few days, all things you should consider before you start.

The Marinade

You need enough Coca Cola Classic to cover the brisket when it’s in whatever container you’ve chosen for the purpose. Generally for me that’s around 32 oz, I add in a bunch of onion salt, garlic salt, (as for how much, if you wonder if you’ve added enough, you haven’t) and somewhere around a cup of BBQ sauce. I use Stubb’s, but whatever you like should be fine. Mix all of that together then pour it over the brisket and put that in the fridge for somewhere between 12 to 24 hours.

The Smoking

Place your smoker where having hot coals falling through the bottom won’t create a problem you don’t want to deal with. If someone asks why you haven’t put your smoker on your deck like everyone else, say something sage such as “you do realize that would be putting a fire on a structural part of my house and intending for it to simmer there for the better part of 12 hours, right?” You want the cooking part of the smoker to be 200 to 225F. Mine is almost never that hot, and I’m always having to fiddle with it a bit to keep it close, so if you get a nice smoker that’s one less hassle. I also have to replace the coals once for a typical cooking session, so having something to start them in helps. I use a very effective metal trash can lid. For unknown reasons, I pour the marinade in the water tray, then fill it the rest of the way with water. Then I take kosher salt and McCormick Seasoned Pepper Blend (I’m sure black pepper works just as good, this is just one of those things I do) and coat the entire brisket with it. This is another of those areas where if you wonder if you’ve used enough, you haven’t. Put the brisket on the smoker fat side up and cook it for 1.5 to 2 hours a pound. If your smoker is holding the 200F thing consistently, then you’re probably going to be at the 1.5 hour mark. The fat side up part really has no relevance to the cooking of the brisket, but much like the designated hitter rule, you are expected to have an opinion on whether to cook them fat side up or down. So while you may be able to cook a perfectly tasty brisket fat side down, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re doing it wrong, just like the designated hitter rule. Wrong.

It’s Done

Get yourself a meat thermometer, maybe if you’re really good at this you can do without it, but if you’re just one of us regular guys, you need one. You’d like the temperature to be 180 or so (I find that 165 or up seems to be OK, so long as it’s been on the smoker for the 2 hour per pound bit) and up to 200 is fine if you aren’t yet ready to eat. When it starts getting close, I wrap the brisket in foil and leave it on the smoker, I’m not sure it makes any difference at all, but the guy that taught me how to do this did that, so I do it too.

When you’re done, take it off the smoker, let it set for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, slice it across the grain and enjoy.

Currently there is no fiscally responsible party in U.S. politics. There’s plenty of interest in playing the game, check out this neat little press release from Nancy Pelosi just a couple of years ago hammering President Bush for his unbalanced budget.

The glimmer of hope in all of this is for this tea party movement to grow enough to create a third party (not something I expect) or to be a significant enough voice that the current players have to pay attention.

A small thought for the ADD generation…

Even if you’re getting a tax break now, or benefiting from a stimulus package, take another look at this chart.


Sound familiar?

Absolute proof the experts don’t know what they are talking about.

I had the distinct pleasure of riding around in a 1980 Citation that belonged to a friend. I’m not particularly a car guy, but I do oh so remember that one. The memory mostly involves the need to not have anything that could possibly spill in a position to spill when the driver was using the clutch (think drinks poured down the front of your shirt). Many shouts of “you’re doing that on purpose!” were uttered before we finally came to the realization that, um, no. It was the car. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it even more had I known at the time it was an award winning car…

Admittedly I’ve got nothing, but you can cruise over to So Last Year and get a chuckle.  or two.

Seems the planet isn’t exactly getting warmer.

Maybe it’s relevant maybe it isn’t. Mostly I think it’s not simply because it’s too short of a time frame to really be worth discussing.

From Realclimate , check out the graph, use it to impress your friends.

The first point to make (and indeed the first point we always make) is that the climate system has enormous amounts of variability on day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year and decade-to-decade periods.

I admit to being pretty much a skeptic to all of this. I’m that way with just about anything that involves some version of the sky falling…mostly because the sky rarely falls. I also think there is a bit of a modeling problem in that mother nature hasn’t provided a complete list of the relevant variables. I searched for a reference and couldn’t find it before I lost interest, but it involved a recent warming trend due to solar irradiation and a current cooling trend with a decrease in that radiation. Once that returns to “normal”, we’ll see temperatures starting to increase again with a rise in greenhouse gas. I mention that because I’ve seen it used to explain rising temperatures, but rarely used to explain falling ones, and I think many global warming skeptics are guilty of dancing around the topic. And it is after all, a completely separate issue from CO2 warming.

No matter what you think about all of this, RealClimate has this part right:

…the question should be, are there analyses that will be made over the next few years that will improve the evaluation of climate models? There the answer is likely to be yes. There will be better estimates of long term trends in precipitation, cloudiness, winds, storm intensity, ice thickness, glacial retreat, ocean warming etc. We have expectations of what those trends should be, but in many cases the ‘noise’ is still too large for those metrics to be a useful constraint. As time goes on, the noise in ever-longer trends diminishes, and what gets revealed then will determine how well we understand what’s happening.

but duct tape is silver…

or if you prefer duck tape, although that conjures up an entirely new train of thought…

This computer=good reviews, and Best Buy’s version has some pretty good ones as well.

So I thought to myself, I shall buy one. After finishing that thought, and a healthy pause to make sure that it was finished, I get in my very own car, and drive to the nearest Best Buy only to be told that yes, it is a very good computer but they don’t have any. After checking the fancy Best Buy inventory computer, I learn there isn’t one at any store in the Dallas Fort Worth area. But at least it’s a good computer, it’s not like I wasted a trip or anything only to return home without a crappy computer. No I came home without a very good computer.

Feeling quite proud of my ability to select a high quality computer, I ponder my options.

A nicer computer would be better, I’m fuzzy on a lot of things but in general I understand that better is better so I decide to just buy the fancier version from the website. Expected shipping date in a week. I order it, only to find out in the rarely used Gateway Calendar one week is actually 21 days. It is however negotiable so we negotiate. I spend some more money but Gateway promises their new calendar has special 10 day weeks just for me.

I become enamored with the really helpful order status page they have. So useful. I use it.

It never changes, remaining committed to the original 21 day week. When I call the helpful help line, they tell me not to worry, they have a different calendar they are using for my order and they will stick to the agreed 10 day week (just for me, don’t tell anyone or everyone will want 10 day weeks). So not only am I brilliant, I qualify for special treatment.

Yesterday, the day before the delivery date, I call and inquire as to what is really going on since I no longer am confident in my ability to interpret the Gateway Calendar as displayed on the order status page. The helpful person answering the help line phone informs me that yes, everything is as scheduled and my computer should ship to arrive here today.

Sweet.

We apologize for being unable to ship your items as planned. We expect to ship your items by 04/03/2008

Gateway via Email

Best Buy still doesn’t have any computers either. I’m not exactly sure what it is that Gateway is trying to do here since it obviously doesn’t involve actually providing any computers for purchase. Perhaps this is merely a plan to revise the calendar to some sort of 30 day cycle, thereby reducing the number of weekends.

Order cancelled, I want my weekends back.  Guess I’ll get in my very own car and take a trip to Fry’s.

Me?  I think I’m going with Leaping Volkswagen…

I gave up on trying to fix the previously mentioned problems, so I saved the one and only post I felt worthwhile, scrapped the data base, created a new one, installed a new copy of wordpress in a new directory, and have begun to post in run on sentences, I think it’s a worthy effort…