Phantom Limb - Pig Destroyer

How can you not love a band named "Pig Destroyer"?  I don't know how to classify them, but I've always been a little confused about genre labels.  Their songs are pretty short, some just over a minute long.  The songs are fairly complex, which reminds me of Cryptopsy's "None So Vile", but somewhat more hardcore like Nails' "You Will Never Be One Of Us".  In fact, they sound like the connection between those two albums.

Those two albums are full of memorable riffs and vocals.  I'm not quite sure how this Pig Destroyer fares in that department, but time will tell.  It has promise though - stylistically, I love what they are doing.

The album cover art is cool too!!

The ultimate

I love heavy metal.  Music with fast drums, distorted guitars, and most of all, the energy of metal is like a drug to me.

There have been lots of bands that I love who have a combination of musicians that write / play magically together.

For me, those rare bands that have made magic are early Metallica, the mighty Pantera, Vivian Campbell-era Dio, Ozzy's original Blizzard of Ozz band with Randy Rhoads, Vital Remains with Dave Suzuki and Glen Benton, Cannibal Corpse's current line-up, Angela Gossow-era Arch Enemy.....

But the ultimate band for me is the original Slayer line-up.  Dave Lombardo is just about THE sound of Slayer, and his drumming is so musical.  Tom Araya's voice and swagger is the face of the band, lyrically and sonically, and Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King's riffs and ridiculously unmusical leads propel their songs forward with aggression and drive.  Their song structures are complex enough to weave them through different forms of aggression, but have the simplicity of hardcore punk that get delivered with more evil than hardcore that brings a brutality to the music.

Sadly, the passing of Jeff Hanneman means that the original Slayer line up will never play together again.  And unfortunately, Lombardo will probably never get along with Araya and King.  Fortunately, I've recently discovered the entire World Painted Blood album, which update the sounds from the classic three albums (Reign, Seasons, South).

I finally got to see Slayer in 2015, and though Gary Holt and Paul Bostaph were fucking excellent, it still wasn't the classic Slayer, even though they were still mighty.

I didn't forget pi day yesterday

I made a peanut butter and chocolate pie and had a slice last night.  As you can see, my piping wasn't so good.  I should have made more chocolate to pipe, but I would have wasted some.  Is it more important to look nice, or not to waste?  :)

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

The format of this book is very simple.  The author lists each spiritual law, then gives examples of how to put the laws into practice.

1. The Law of Pure Potentiality: Take time to be silent, to just BE. Meditate for 30 minutes twice a day. Silently witness the intelligence within every living thing. Practice non-judgment.
2. The Law of Giving: Today, bring whoever you encounter a gift: a compliment or flower. Gratefully receive gifts. Keep wealth circulating by giving and receiving care, affection, appreciation and love.
3. The Law of Karma: Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind. Choosing actions that bring happiness and success to others ensures the flow of happiness and success to you.
4. The Law of Least Effort: Accept people, situations, and events as they occur. Take responsibility for your situation and for all events seen as problems. Relinquish the need to defend your point of view.
5. The Law of Intention and Desire: Inherent in every intention and desire is the mechanics for its fulfillment. Make a list of desires. Trust that when things don’t seem to go your way, there is a reason.
6. The Law of Detachment: Allow yourself and others the freedom to be who they are. Do not force solutions—allow solutions to spontaneously emerge. Uncertainty is essential, and your path to freedom.
7. The Law of Dharma: Seek your higher Self. Discover your unique talents. Ask yourself how you are best suited to serve humanity. Using your unique talents and serving others brings unlimited bliss and abundance.

After contemplating this book and meditating on how this book is put into action, I've started to see that the core premise of a lot of these books imply a certain degree of dissatisfaction with what your current state of life is.

Certainly, none of the above laws imply that, but examples given in the book point out that people can apply these laws, as the title suggests, to the end of "fulfillment of your dreams", and the subtitle of the book is "Creating Affluence".  I believe in constantly improving oneself, but when the pretext for a methodology is somehow garnering more for oneself vs. cultivating happiness, satisfaction and altruism, then I'm a little more cautious about that methodology.

Still, I believe one can put these laws into practice in a non-selfish way.

Busy cooking weekend

I had lofty ambitions for cooking this weekend, and am proud to say I made everything I wanted to.

Saturday's lunch was a different kind of nikujaga, made with chicken wings (supposedly the collagen is good for your skin), and kabocha.  It's kind of like nishime.

For dinner, I made a Thai beef salad, with a savory tangy sweet dressing of fish sauce, sugar and lime juice.

Next I pickled two things - mustard cabbage (below), and (not pictured) escabeche, a Mexican pickle consisting of radishes, cauliflower, carrots and jalapeno.

For lunch on Sunday, I made Taiwanese gua bao.  I braised the pork belly, and made the buns.  I knew that I hadn't used enough yeast because after an hour, the dough hadn't risen much, but it was too close to lunchtime to make a new batch.  It was still good, though the buns weren't fluffy and airy.  Here it is, topped with cilantro, mustard cabbage, and peanuts.

Next, I started the first and second steps of making a Jewish deli-style pastrami.  I took a big corned beef and soaked it in water to remove as much salt as possible.  After a day with a few changes of water, I removed it, dried it off, and rubbed it with a mixture of black pepper, coriander, garlic, onion and brown sugar.  Next, I smoked it until it reached 150 degrees on the inside.  I'm still working on getting my smoker's temperature stable and accurate, but it's hard to keep at 225 degrees while still having smoking wood provide the smoke.  After it came off the smoker, I let it cool, then wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator.  The next step will be to steam it for 2 hours, and then I can slice it and serve it on rye bread.

I made two pies on Saturday afternoon.  The first was a peanut butter pie, which I'm saving for 3/14/17=3.1417 (close enough), pi day.

The second pie was for dinner, a British style meat pie filled with a savory filling of prime short ribs, carrots, celery and onions, wrapped in a super flaky butter crust.  I managed to crisp up the top and bottom crusts and it was very rich.

You Are a Badass

You Are A Badass is a motivational self-help book, and reads exactly as the title suggests.  It's written like a girl talking to her girlfriend.  It seems geared towards women, though she sometimes suggests more gender universal things.

The book is separated into 5 parts.  The first explains why you're not badass, and the next 4 focus on how to become a badass.  In general, the themes revolve around increasing self-esteem, forgiveness, and motivation, as any good self-help book will advocate.

She lost me at the end though, when she overly emphasizes the importance of money, and the need to hire a coach (if I'm borrowing a book from the library, obviously I'm too cheap to hire a coach).

Overall it's a good message, but if I bought this book, I'd probably review the second through fourth chapters and skip the beginning and end.

When Breath Becomes Air

This book was Paul Kalanithi's story of his career as a neurologist and the time he spent between being diagnosed with lung cancer and having his child.

Paul states that "You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote towards which you are ceaselessly striving", and this philosophy was reflected in the things that he described in the book.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, I thought that certain sections were a little too pedantic and focused on the prose of poetically describing the technical details of surgery, with graphic details of slicing skin open and removing skull portions.  Much of the book focused on the uncertainty of Paul's life expectancy, and his decisions to work as a neurosurgeon vs. becoming a researching faculty or becoming an author.  I was expecting to read about some kind of transformation, but the book read more like a personal memoir than a lesson on how to live life.  Nonetheless, my expectations for the book aren't a fair standard to judge it by.

On the other hand, as the fulfillment of a man's dying wishes to become an author, I was very happy for him.

A few years ago, I lost two friends to cancer.  They were both the same age as me.

One was one of my best friends, Shirley.  After meeting her, we quickly became good friends, often having lunch together.  My barometer of friendship is how much I know one's family and friends, and though I hadn't met her brother and sister, I knew about them and the details of their lives.  I met her mom and dad, and some of her closest friends, and knew them all by name, if not by face.  She had given me two books to read, both of which focused on the platonic but intimate relationship between two people, and the death of one.  The books were Tuesdays With Morrie and The Little Prince.  It was a little odd to me that the only two books she gave to me foreshadowed our friendship and her death, as though she was telling me that it would be okay for me after she died.

The second of my friends to die was Pat, who I had only befriended and came to know after his diagnosis with terminal cancer.  We had sleepless nights where we'd text and e-mail each other, talking about mortality and our dreams.  He wanted to learn how to play three songs on guitar and asked me to teach him.  He came over to my house, and we spent hours together, probably talking more than playing.  When he left, I walked him to his car and we made plans to go out to eat shabu shabu.  We never got to have that meal together, and he got too busy for another guitar lesson.

I sometimes wonder about the journey that both Shirley and Pat went through, as they discovered their cancer, to their passing.  Though I had lots of conversations with both of them as they dealt with their cancers, I couldn't possibly know everything that went through their heads.  "When Breath Becomes Air" shares one man's experiences and thoughts as he deals with his terminal illness.

Listening to the book and not thinking that I was getting a feeling of personal attachment towards Paul Kalanithi, I thought in my mind that I wouldn't cry the way that I cried after reading one of Mitch Albom's books.  Then this morning, while listening to Lucy Kalanithi's epilogue, I found tears streaming down my face.

New microwave

I installed a new microwave above my stove this weekend.

I like installing things and fixing things, and this was a relatively easy installation.

I had to prepare the microwave by rotating the exhaust fan 90 degrees, also cutting the sheet metal holes on the back by removing the tabs on the plates.

A bracket on the back against the backsplash holds part of the weight.  This bracket was screwed into two holes, which I drilled through the Corian and drywall, and into the metal studs.  I drilled pilot holes and then used self-tapping metal screws, and the bracket was firm.

Next, I drilled holes using the provided template into the cabinet above the microwave.  It took two of us to mount the microwave to the rear bracket, then screw the bolts from the top of the cabinet.

Fortunately this is the second microwave I've installed so I knew how to do it and saved $70!

You Will Never Be One Of Us - Nails

This is one of my favorite albums of the past few years.  It clocks in at 21 minutes, which makes it sort of like a modern day "Reign In Blood".  It's an amazing album, and as the band puts it, really takes out all of the extraneous stuff and just gets to the good stuff.  No guitar solos, and the production is gritty and distorted (in a good way, not in an old black metal way), but the songs and riffs shine, as do the incredible drumming, replete with blast and thrash beats.

As far as extreme metal goes, it's probably in my top 10.

In fact, if I were going to list my top 10 extreme metal albums, they would be (in no particular order)

Demigod - Behemoth
None So Vile - Cryptopsy
Stench of Redemption - Deicide
Icons of Evil - Vital Remains
You Will Never Be One Of Us - Nails
The Wretched Spawn - Cannibal Corpse
I, Monarch - Hate Eternal
Xenosapien - Cephalic Carnage
AssassiNation - Krisiun
Antithesis - Origin

Apple Music finds

I love Apple Music.  I can listen to most anything I want to, and discover a lot of music I haven't heard before.  It's perfect for someone like me, who likes to find new things.

This week, I'm listening to Make Them Suffer's "Neverbloom".  It's blackened death metal with breakdowns.  I like the classical style piano.  They remind me of a cross between stuff like Abigail Williams and Chthonic.

I'm also listening to "Snyder" by Feared.  Once again, I discovered a band because of the guitar player's endorsement of musical instruments.  Ola Englund is the guitar player, and while I've watched his YouTube gear videos, I've never heard his band.  This week I decided to check out Feared and they are really good death / thrash metal.

I'm pretty sure that my musical tastes are not very popular, especially among my age group.  :)

Many of these bands I like are from all over the globe.  Make Them Suffer is from Australia, Feared is from Sweden, Sepultura was originally from Brazil, Behemoth from Poland, Chthonic from Taiwan, Fleshgod Apocalypse from Italy, Carcass from England, etc.

The Food of Taiwan

My fascination with Taiwan (and food) continues.

The author, Cathy Erway, is an American born half-Taiwanese.  She visited Taiwan in college and became fascinated with the food.  When deciding upon the recipes for her cookbook, she wanted to include only recipes that had a deep cultural foundation in Taiwan.

I love that much of the book talks about the history and people of Taiwan, setting up the context for her recipes.

She talks about the history of Taiwan, from the original aborigines, to Dutch settlers looking for sulfur for gunpowder and establishing forts in the early 1600s, to the Ming Dynasty transplants forced from China by the Manchurians (the founder, Koxing, was half-Japanese and half-Chinese, like me!) in 1660 and ousting of the Dutch in 1662, to the defeat by the Qing Dynasty in 1683, to the ceding of Taiwan to Japan after China lost the Sino-Japanese war, resulting in Japanese rule from 1895-1945, and then the People's Republic of China's ousting of Republic of China's supporters to Taiwan after a long Chinese civil war.  She talks about the changing political climate leading to the first presidential election in 1996.

In the next chapter, she talks about the diversity of the ethnic groups in Taiwan.  She says that there are 23.3 million people there, divided into 4 major groups.  She says the majority are of Hoklo descent and originally from the Fujian province in China.  There are another group that came over after the Japanese ceded Taiwan, and these people are from all over China.  She says that the aboriginal Taiwanese only account for a small percentage of the population, while the Hakka people from China represent another large group.

She then talks about the geography and the resulting agricultural practices.  She says it's wooded forest and jungle over about 50% of the island, and there is an overall hot and humid climate.  She says that the island is well suited to grow sugar cane and rice, and tea in the high mountainous region.  There are also tropical fruits that are major exports.  Fishing is abundant, and they raise their own livestock with imports making up for any demand not met locally.

She has very nice recipes in the book, from the very popular dishes like three-cup chicken, beef noodle soup, pork belly buns, and minced pork on rice, and there are also dishes I've never seen before like Taiwanese burrito, coffin cake, and deep fried sweet potato balls.

I read this book on my phone, borrowed from the library, and last night I went to my mom's house and she had the hard copy.  I love this cookbook and I plan to buy the hard copy!