During my senior year of college I took a cultural Anthropology class on sexuality. In it, I wrote a paper titled “The Politics of Homophobia.” I had taken the project on in hopes of trying to understand (at least partially) the mindsets, arguments, and perspectives that allow some people to be so adamantly against homosexuality. To help narrow the topic down I chose to focus on the issue of “gay marriage” specifically.

In light of yesterdays decision by the California Supreme Court validating same-sex marriages, I have decided to post that paper.

Download here: The Politics of Homophobia and the Annotated Bibliography

Last night’s dinner was the easiest thus far to make.

First, I prepared all of the ingredients: multi-colored spiral pasta, onion, garlic, spinach, portobello mushrooms, olive oil, pine nuts, salt, and a little dry white wine. While boiling the pasta, I sauteed the garlic and onions in olive oil, then added the mushrooms, then the spinach, and finally the pine nuts and wine. When this was done cooking through I simply drained the pasta and mixed everything together in a big bowl.

Aside from the fact that I accidentally didn’t throw in as much spinach as I should have (I misread the recipe), it all came out quite well. This dish was simple, quick, and fun to eat.

After coming back twice for more helpings however, I may instead make this in the future as a side dish for a more hearty main course.

If you find yourself wanting some pasta, but aren’t necessarily feeling excited about the sometimes boring “pasta and pasta sauce,” then you should consider something like this spinach pasta recipe.

[Cookbook, ISBN, and page numbers coming soon.]

Last night my close friend came over and helped me cook this amazing dinner. It would have been a little intimidating all by myself, and we worked very well together to make a healthy, somewhat well-balanced meal together.

I can’t forget to mention that he brought over some beer (3 Blue Moons and 3 Kona Wailuas) - and every great chef needs a beer in their hand! Yes, beer is good. Yes, I love beer. The important thing to remember is: if you are paying attention to the beer you are drinking, then consequently you are not FUCKING AROUND and poking at your dish which needs to cook itself.

We cleaned and chopped up a lot of delicious veggies - eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and garlic. After letting the onions and garlic bleed, we threw everything together (with a little fennel seed and pepper for seasoning), poured some water in, covered it, and cooked it on low heat for a good 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, we whipped together some dumplings made with parmesan, ricotta, flour, baking soda, salt, egg, and basil. After letting this cool, we boiled them like pasta and then fried them up in a pan.

The meal was served by pouring the ratatouille into a wide bowl, garnishing with cilantro and parmesan, and placing the dumpling around the bowl.

WOW

I thought this dish was amazing. It was so yummy my mouth is still watering. My skills at making dumplings from scratch weren’t so amazing, but that will improve with time - besides, they still came out delicious and golden brown around the edges. Who doesn’t like fried cheese anyway? Together with the soup/stew they helped balance out the flavors beautifully.

My girlfriend liked it as well, but she wouldn’t go so far as to say it was better than the Thai Tofu from the night before. They were such different dishes that she would rather appreciate them on completely different levels, and that’s OK. But, for me, this one takes the cake. MMMmmm cake, I wanna make THAT soon too…

For the recipe, please see: “Vegetarian Planet” (ISBN: 1-55832-115-2) pages 317-318.

This work (including the entire contents of this website [evil.desinc.net], including text, images, and audio files) is licensed under a:

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

The first dinner we had for dinner night was Thai tofu with red curry sauce over coconut-scallion rice. It was pretty easy to make, although there were a few steps involved - cooking the rice, making a peanut-spice sauce, cooking the tofu and broccoli, and chopping quite a few veggies. Overall, the dish was delicious, although it lacked a little bit of savory flavors. I imagine the dish would have been even better with some chicken or better yet some beef. In any case, for a vegetarian option we were quite pleased. The coconut-scallion rice balanced out the spicy tofu/broccoli quite well. In the future, I will add some bell peppers and something else to help sweeten up the dish, and I may try to use meat instead of tofu. We have plenty of food for leftovers for both of us too. :D

For the recipe, please see “Vegetarian Planet” (ISBN: 1-55832-115-2) page 213-215. Ingredients included : lime zest, coconut milk, water, salt, rice, cilantro, garlic, peanuts, thai fish sauce, canola oil, hot chile sauce, tofu, broccoli, and scallions. Total preparation and cooking time took me just over an hour.

I would like to add that the spicy chile sauce I used for this dinner was “Sriracha Hot Chile Sauce”. It has a clear plastic squeeze bottle and a green top. This sauce is fucking amazing - I highly recommend it and I plan to use it generously in many meals to come.

In my quest to cook more, I have decided to give my girlfriend her own “Dinner Week.” She went through a bunch of cookbooks and picked 5 recipes. I’ll do my best to buy all of the ingredients and then cook her 5 yummy dinners.

I just finished designing my first tiled wallpaper:

The following autoexec.cfg is configured for high quality graphics and network performance:

//——-GENERAL SETTINGS
cl_forcepreload “1″
jpeg_quality “100″

//——-AUDIO SETTINGS
snd_digital_surround 1
snd_surround_speakers 5

//——-NETWORK SETTINGS
cl_cmdrate “101″
cl_interp “0.01″
cl_interp_all “1″
cl_interpolate “1″
cl_lagcomp_errorcheck “1″
cl_lagcompensation “1″
cl_smooth “0″
cl_smoothtime “0.01″
cl_updaterate “120″
net_graphheight “-10″
rate “30000″

//——-VIDEO SETTINGS
cl_c4dynamiclight “1″
cl_ragdoll_physics_enable “0″
cl_ragdoll_collide “0″
fps_max “0″
mat_antialias “4″
mat_aaquality “0″
mat_bumpmap 1
mat_forceaniso “16″
mat_forcehardwaresync “1″
mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware “0″
mat_monitorgamma “1.6″
mat_parallaxmap “1″
mat_picmip “0″
mat_reducefillrate 0
mat_specular “1″
mat_vsync “0″
r_decals “2048″
r_decal_cullsize “0″
r_drawdetailprops “1″
r_drawflecks “1″
r_drawmodeldecals “1″
r_lod “-1″
r_rootlod “0″
r_shadows “1″
r_shadowmaxrendered “8″
r_shadowrendertotexture “1″

The following autoexec.cfg is configured for high quality graphics and network performance:

//——-GENERAL SETTINGS
cl_forcepreload 1
cl_ragdoll_collide 0
cl_smooth 0
cl_smoothtime 0.01
mem_max_heapsize 1024

//——-AUDIO SETTINGS
dsp_enhance_stereo 0
snd_legacy_surround 1
snd_surround_speakers 5

//——-NETWORK SETTINGS
rate 25000
cl_cmdrate 66
cl_updaterate 66
cl_interp_ratio 1
cl_lagcomp_errorcheck 0

//——-VIDEO SETTINGS
fps_max 66
fov_desired 90
cl_showfps 0
jpeg_quality 100

mat_monitorgamma 1.6
mat_antialias 4
mat_forceaniso 16
mat_picmip -10
mat_parallaxmap 1
mat_motion_blur_forward_enabled 1
mat_forcehardwaresync 0
mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0
mat_framebuffercopyoverlaysize 0
mat_clipz 1
mat_colorcorrection 1
mat_reducefillrate 0

r_shadowmaxrendered 10
r_waterforceexpensive 1
r_waterforcereflectentities 1

//——-MULTI-CORE SETTINGS
mat_queue_mode 0
r_threaded_renderables 1
r_threaded_particles 1
r_threaded_client_shadow_manager 0
cl_threaded_bone_setup 0
cl_threaded_client_leaf_system 0
r_3dnow 0
r_sse2