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The Daily Dose/January 31, 2010
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...
WRITE THIS DOWN: Here's our prediction for the Super Bowl: New Orleans 45, Indianapolis 42. Our predictions should be respected because, of course, the Writer's Shack is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for having correctly picked the score of the last 32 Super Bowls, from Oakland's 77-19 victory over the Detroit Lions in Super Bowl XXXIII to the Atlanta Hawks 17-10 win over the Hamilton Tiger Cats in the Super Bowl XXIX. You can take this to the bank.
TEN…NINE…EIGHT: On this date in 1961 the United States sends Ham the Chimp into outer space aboard Mercury-Redstone 2. The flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds and with the exception of a bruise on his nose Ham survived unscathed. Like he was trained to do on Earth, Ham pressed levers after seeing a blue light and did so only a fraction of second slower than he did on Earth, establishing that work could be performed in space. Ham died in 1983 and is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico.
Seven…Six…Five:The Soviet Union launches Luna 9 on this date in 1966. On February 2 it would become the first spacecraft to land on the Moon and it would send back the first up close pictures of the lunar surface.
Dry, Technical Matter: Thought the Luna program could not match the scope and success of the Apollo program, by most measures it was a success. Luna 1, however, launched in 1959, did not get the program off to a roaring start. Someone in ground control, later executed, mucked up a rocket burn but the memories of Lenin and Stalin were still honored, and the glory of the Soviet Union displayed for the entire world to see, because Luna 1 would come back strong to become the first spacecraft to fall into orbit around the Sun.
Later that year, Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach the Moon when it crashed into it and Luna 3 transmitted the first ever photographs of the Moon's far side.
The final Luna mission, Luna 24, was launched in 1976 and was the third Luna probe to land on the Moon, collect samples, and return to Earth.
Four…Three…Two…One...Blastoff: Apollo 14 is launched on this date in 1971. It would end up being the third manned lunar landing and among its accomplishments was bringing home several hundred seeds it had taken into lunar orbit. This was because Command Module pilot Stuart Roosa used to fight forest fires and some tree huggers thought it would be fun to plant seeds that had orbited the Moon. Maybe it was, but the Moon trees showed no discernable difference from their terrestrial counterparts.
FunFact: The Apollo 14 crew was also the last Apollo crew to be quarantined after returning home.
Would You Like Vodka With That? On this date in 1990 the first McDonalds in the Soviet Union opens in Moscow, a few blocks from the Kremlin. The opening culminated over 14 years of negotiations between McDonalds and Soviet officials and over 27,000 Soviets applied for the 600-plus jobs. The concept of fast food is new to the Soviets, with some citizens disassembling their Big Mak's and eating them section by section.
CAPSULE PACKAGED INDIAN DINNER REVIEW: Indian Cottage Cheese w/Spinach Sauce and Tempting Fried Yellow Lentils: Experience has taught that it's a good idea to keep things fresh in a relationship by trying new things, which explains why 1) I was with The Woman in some Indian bazaar supermarket in the first place, and 2) consenting to try some boxed Indian dishes for dinner.
Yeah, Yeah, Whatever: Look, I was probably wasn't going to get out of there without the purchase of some foodstuffs (I forget what our original purpose was, maybe getting some incense) so better to grab the bull by the horns and get something that didn't resemble barf.
So Easy, Anyone Can Do It: The package offered three different ways to prepare the dishes: microwave, heating in a frying pan, or putting the packages into a pot of boiling water. None of these methods resembled the way the chubby, middle aged Indian guy behind the counter said to do it, which was to put it in an oven for a few minutes.
The results looked nothing the tempting pictures on the box, of course. The cottage cheese and spinach deal was depicted as tasty morsels of cheese - which was I chose it - in a moderately tasty looking gravy. In reality it was not tasty morsels of cheese in some moderately tasty looking gravy, it was some bit of cheese smothered by what looked like moss.
And In This Corner: The tempting fried yellow lentils, chosen by The Woman, came out looking like creamed corn, which isn't a slight because we grew up liking creamed corn.
What was funny was that both dishes tasted alike. You could tell the difference if you tried hard enough, which led us to joke that these were actually MRE's rejected by the Indian army and re-packaged and shipped to the States to be fobbed off on gullible Americans who thought eating them would get them closer to nirvana.
Standard Internet Disclaimer: Gaylon is not a professional food critic, nor is he Indian, making him singularly unqualified to judge Indian cuisine or, frankly, to judge anything more than hotcakes and macaroni and cheese. However, as with other cases of non-expertise, this does not stop him from doing so.
We Interrupt This Program For A Word From The Ratings Department: Following Is The Official Writer's Shack Capsule Review Rating scale:
EX - Excellent; as good as the medium can produce in every respect.
VG - Very Good. Well worth your time.
GD - Good. More or less worth your time.
AR - All Right. Not completely without merit.
SP - Nothing of substance; a steaming pile, utterly without merit.
Final Rating: GD. We almost bumped them up to VG because they were buy one, get one free, but the integrity of the Capsule Review Ratings System (CRRS) means too much to us. They were pretty tasty, actually, especially when combined with some brown rice, and they're vegetarian and the ingredients don't read like a pesticide list. The company that makes it is Kohinoor and the brand is India on Platter.
Thought For The Day: …the ultimate opponent is the warriors own self…To actually overcome one's own defects is the nature of victory. - Deng Ming Dao, 365 Tao
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The CSS Virginia was originally the USS Merrimack, which had been burned and sunk by the US Navy in Hampton Roads, Virginia at the start of the Civil War. The Confederacy, in dire need of warships, raised it and rebuilt it.
Today's Stumper: Who was the first animal to be sent into orbit? - Answer next time!
Comments? Recipes? Complaints? Email the Writer's Shack here!
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