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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. Can we talk about old-school joints that aren’t “Top 50,” but are great in their own right and place? Because it will surely interest and please y’all to know that it’s the time of year in Wharton county when the ranchers turn their bulls out into the herd (gotta get that spring “planting” done), hay yield has looked pretty good thanks to some recent rains, and hay is actually moving for sale. The prices aren’t great, but bales are moving. The fella next to me only has 20 bales left, even after all that hay he baled this year (according to what he told his buddy, the John Deere dealer sitting across from him). Also, even though he may be going to the county fair this year, it’ll just be to watch, he’s too old to rodeo anymore. Just some of the chat over lunch at Vincek’s in East Bernard, where I stopped to grab a few slices of brisket for lunch on my way to court. Cuisine-wise, it’s very good barbecue, but not in that top tier that gets all the Texas Monthly buzz and whatnot. The brisket is plenty good, nice pecan smoke to it, good bark, could be a bit more tender. But it’s not shiny and new, no hipsters to be found, no glamorous online presence or Instagram account. Anthropologically? Vincek’s is a treasure and a shrine. Community gathers. People shake hands and talk about what’s going on at their place, how the kids are doing, how that new project is going. Old Czech farmers and ranchers, Hispanic ranchers and work crews, constables on break, young, old, all ages in-between. Places like this exist in small towns, old city neighborhoods, and are a focal point of community. They provide a good business and a living for the family that owns them, a good place to work, and a place to be in community and, to use a theological term, communion. I’ve been in places like this all around Texas, the US, and even all over the world. They are monuments and cultural treasures, no less so than the pyramids and the Louvre. Next time you’re near one of these places, - and there are still plenty of Texas bbq places that meet the description - go inside. Soak it up. Talk to the people next to you (like the lady who told me to be careful not to get BBQ on my white dress shirt, or the man who sat next to me, grinning, and said “now let’s not get into any trouble, my wife told me to behave.”). Spend a little extra, you need to bring home some good pecan-smoked bacon and some pork hocks for a pot of beans anyway (that was my move today). So anyway, there I was, attending church on a Tuesday, taking my communion with all God’s people. Amen.
  2. Blah blah blah words. They don’t have the votes. Unless he’s mobilizing mass strikes and crippling of US infrastructure and economy, it’s a waste of time. Seriously, my pointless posts on this board are just as meaningful.
  3. Yeah, come on, people. I mean, sure.....we're living in a time where satire is dead, and nothing is too absurd to be real, but at least TODAY, exercise a bit of scrutiny. Now, I have to get back to my torrid affair with Sela Ward. She beckons me from yonder bedroom.
  4. Well, our VP lies. It's kinda what they do. It's kinda what they are. Same dude who just said "Greenlanders want us to take over" in the face of an election just a couple of weeks ago where Greenlanders overwhelmingly voted the other way. We need to quit using the term "misinformation" -- they are liars who traffic in lies, it is their very essence. If you took lies away from them, they would have nothing, do nothing, and say nothing.
  5. “Objective truths.” Please continue as to how the university of Harlan Crowe will be the champion of that value.
  6. This. If the Trump regime can disappear someone and not be subject to court enforcement because “oh well, we don’t have our hands on him anymore,” they can do and say that as to anyone and everyone. Including you. This is how it goes, and this is how it ends. The Trump regime now has full power - with no accountability or consequences - to disappear US citizens, political opponents, or anyone it doesn’t like. It will use that power.
  7. Now we’re getting somewhere. Let it out. Say it all. Own who you have become.
  8. It’s a lie. A complete lie. The terms of our agreement with El Salvador absolutely allow us to repatriate a detainee. If they do not, then the agreement is illegal in that we are sending people to be imprisoned in a separate country with no due process or means of correcting any error. If what they are saying is true, they could absolutely 100% 1) send a non-criminal US citizen to a Salvadoran prison (so, any of y’all), and then 2) have no power to get him back. Of course, if true, the arrangement is unconstitutional as fuck.
  9. So…none of that bothers you. At all. Perfection.
  10. Dude. It’s a unaccredited right wing grift. It defines itself as “anti-woke,” it’s yet another outfit that all Elon-like claims that it’s all about “FREE SPEECH” but is a pet project of Harlan Crowe and Bill Ackman and Bari Weiss. Dude. Just put on your MAGA hat and be done with it. At least you’ve given up on the “both sides” thing, so good for you, I guess.
  11. This shit is actually happening. Please stop thread shitting and doing the baghdad bob, Rex. Problem: Rex and “people like him” like this. Because let’s be honest, brown folks like Mr Garcia aren’t real people anyway and aren’t entitled to any legal protection. Want to avoid trouble with the law? Then don’t do stupid things, like not being an affluent white person.
  12. Plenty of us see multiple huge problems with the current university admissions and education process. Not a one of us is stupid enough to think that “the University of Austin” is the answer, though. We might all agree that there are a lot of problems with assembly line fast food, we’re just not dumb enough to think that a handcrafted shit sandwich is the solution.
  13. My father died just over two months ago. Maybe two weeks after, I was running some Saturday errands, driving around town. I decided to pull up the 70s Country Essentials playlist (or some similar list) on Apple Music. 70s country was the soundtrack of my childhood. Lots of LONG family road trips, visiting grandparents in the valley, then Sonora, then Midland, and of course my other grandparents all the way into Mexico. Summer “vacations” were often tagging along on dad’s work road trips to Louisiana and New Mexico. But there was that one trip in June of ‘79, we went all the way to Colorado and Utah. It was a pretty big chapter in our family’s life. And all along the way, we’d tune in to whatever station we could get that was playing Crystal Gayle, Don Williams, Dolly…all of it. So I’ve got the playlist going. Lovin Her Was Easier by the Glaser Brothers. Charley Pride. Linda Rondstadt. The feels were bubbling up. And then John Denver’s Annie’s Song came on. Sounded like Colorado. Sounded like the summer of 79 on the road in my dad’s new Mercury Marquis that ended up begin my first car. And it washed over me to drown me. I just fucking broke. I wept. I don’t know how I finished the drive home, I don’t know the last time I cried like that. I walked in the door, and my wife immediately sees my face and asks “are you ok?” I shook my head, and the tears and sobs came all over again. At that moment, on a Saturday afternoon, in the shadow - or light, I’m not sure - cast by my dead father, the music got me.
  14. Don’t get saucy with me, Bernaise.
  15. This. If you wanted to pursue a path that incentivized every single country on earth to get nukes of their own, it would look IDENTICAL to the path we're on right now. Dumbest. Fucking. Timeline.
  16. Will "this isn't good government" move the needle for "people like you?" Of course it won't. Not even a little bit. Because the alternative -- that is, NOT voting for Republicans, straight-ticket -- is too unimaginably horrible. Why, a trans kid may play volleyball in East Possum Dick on the JV squad, so......nope, "this isn't good government" is just fine, and we'll stick with what we're getting. That's the point -- this is not just a case of "this isn't good government." It's a case of "what we're getting is the kind of thing that destroys republics." It's the difference between eating a McDonald's hamburger and saying "this isn't good food" and eating a McDonald's burger loaded with salmonella which will fucking kill you. You'll sit there and keep munching your Quarter Pounder saying "I know this isn't good food," when the point is "dude....that particular burger is loaded with salmonella and is going to kill you." And your response is the same as all the people like you - "look, we know that mickey d's isn't great for us, but you're coming off like a stick-up-the-butt puritan telling us what we should or shouldn't eat." So, you keep scarfing down the salmonella, and making sure the rest of us have to eat it too. Completely missing the point that what we're warning about isn't garden-variety "make healthy choices," it's "this shit is actual poison and it is going to kill us all."
  17. Which is why we're in full "leopards eating people's faces" land now. Because the only way that people like you will EVER grasp that this regime is not just "not good government," but is actually a grave threat to us all, is when they feel immense pain of their own. Point out policy disagreements? That ship has sailed. "People like you" like the policies of this regime. Point out that other people are suffering significantly? "People like you" either give ZERO fucks, or they actively ENJOY it ("other people suffering tells you the policies are working"). Nope. The only possible path (and it's a narrow one, for which I have very little hope) is one where the fire burns enough people - either in somewhat targeted fashion (like a specific policy crushes them/their family) or in an all-consuming fire of collapse of the Republic and descent into full-on authoritarian hellscape -- that they go "holy fuck, that hurts! We should stop that!" But don't you worry your head, I'm sure that path will not bear fruit. By the time the pain gets intense enough to actually turn people against the regime, it will be way, way too late. We won't be altering course at all, no matter how many of us are up front correctly yelling "iceberg dead ahead!" The rest of y'all will be in your dinner jackets, sipping brandy and saying "I don't know what they're yelling about, we haven't hit anything yet and anyway, this ship is unsinkable." Which is stupid, because we are ALL gonna end up going down and drowning along with Leonardo DiCaprio and that's just stupid because who wants to spend eternity with him?
  18. Huh. When I see a fire start, I say "fuckin' a, that's bad, we should put that out." When someone asks "why?", the only sane answer is "because I've seen moderate fires like this turn into all-consuming infernos, and the time to put out a fire is BEFORE it gets that bad." So, yeah....I compare a 1 acre grass fire to the Palisades fire, because.....the Palisades fire was once a 1 acre grass fire too. We know exactly how this specific type of fire burns. We have literal books chronicling it. When you pick one up, and you realize "holy shit, our current spreading fire looks a shitload like these past historical fires," you get a renewed sense of urgency about how dangerous these fires are. Yet, we will all burn, because we are a nation full of Rex Kramers who will not agree that there is a problem until the fire covers 10,000 acres with 0% containment....by which point it is far, far too late, and we're going to fucking lose it ALL. It is the same historical head-in-the-sand idiocy that gets us the same results, over and over. But this time, I'm sure, the autocratic theocracy will be different.
  19. Huh. I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines. Until then, there's no comparison. Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law. Nope, no pattern of that at all.
  20. I'm crazy for seeing the similarities between the Taliban and the American Christofascist movement in power in many spots of our government. Yep. I'm clearly alone, out on an island, to be the one person to see the similarities.
  21. Thankfully, I kept the papers for my watch. I'm not gonna toss something worth a cool $9.75.
  22. Ahh, you get lost in the fallacy of degree. These images can be of the same fire: Just because one has been allowed to burn longer doesn't mean the other isn't just as great a threat. "Only somewhat as theocratic and hasn't killed as many people yet" is not a good distinction. Fundagelical theocratic regimes see the "other" as inferior, and almost always view women as lesser (worthy of fewer rights and such). The common threads are in plain sight. And waiting till the fire is burning out of control over 100,000 acres (so you can finally say "okay....NOW it's bad") is a really, really bad strategy.
  23. You're probably staying in Nyhavn. SUPER touristy, but picturesque, so why not? You'll want to visit Amalienborg (active royal house), Rosenborg palace (cool museum, pretty grounds, although it's going to be early fall so the flowers will be done by then). Walk the Stroget for shopping, your wife will dig it. Illums Bolighus is a Danish department store there....it's one of our favorite stores ever. Seriously, there's just cool and handy stuff there, and it's not outrageously expensive. My wife still wears as her house shoes these great wool slippers we got there 6 years ago: Don't be afraid to go to Tivoli garden (amusement park) and just be a kid for a bit. There's also a nice food hall next door. For food, don't be afraid to eat a hot dog from a cart (Stroget, Nyhavn - they'll be around). Nordic hot dogs are a thing. Torvehallern is an AMAZING food hall, with incredible variety. You have to eat plenty of smorrebrod at a variety of places, but Torvehallern is a good place to try it. They also have an outpost of Grød, which is one of my wife's favorites places on the planet. It's a....porridge restaurant. But trust me, it's all good. Finally, one of our 2-3 favorite restaurants in the world -- in a city with plenty of michelin-star type places (it does at least get a michelin reference) - is Høst. It is a gem, for several reasons. The space is beautiful, and simple. We ate in the warm basement in the winter, as snow fell outside. The food is a tasting menu, but it won't break the bank - the 5 course menu is $75 a head. Here's a current menu: Scallops with cucumber and horseradish ( + Caviar 100,-) - Cod with broccoli and trout roe - Potatoes with peas and truffle - Chicken with morrels and browned butter Beef tenderloin (+125,-) Lobstertail (+150,-) - Rhubarb with cardamom and caramel 500 dkk Seriously, it's all great. On one visit we had dinner in the basement against warm old stone walls. One of the courses was the best mushroom soup I've ever had. Then we walked back home in the falling snow, breaking up the city lights and Christmas decorations. There's also a park right nearby, makes for a nice stroll, just seeing folks out and about living their lives, walking their dogs, etc. Copenhagen is a cool city.
  24. Gosh. It's interesting that this large swath of east Asia is banding together for their mutual benefit. Kind of like some, I dunno, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or something. What could go wrong?
  25. Had a great dinner at Den gyldene freden on Gamla Stan (one of the oldest restaurants in the world). Palace and such at the north end of Gamla Stan worth a visit. Vasa museum is a can't miss - there's several museums, including the outdoor one, on that same island. Copenhagen is f'n cool too.
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