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Hail Seitan!

I love this from the bottom of my black heart. It does figure that a black metal vegan chef would have to make seitan at some point, and he’d have to make the obvious pun. Just so you know though, it’s pronounced “say-TAN”, emphasis on the second syllable. Won’t affect your delivery in a metal voice though!

MAMelby linked that video to me in response to a thread on Facebook where I asked for some of your favorite seitan recipes. Here’s some of the ones that were sent my way:

Surly Amy apparently makes a mean shiitake mushroom seitan, and I’m not just saying “mean” because she’s a fellow feminazi bully.

And Josh, Token Spokesgay has an all-purpose basic seitan recipe, which apparently can be made in 20 mins in a pressure cooker. One of these days I’ll get a pressure cooker, and it’ll be all Josh’s fault. This is almost certainly what I’ll use as a base for my own experiments.

There’s this recipe, which is apparently vouched for by both Corrine Zimmerman and Steve Fritz, for barbecue “ribs”.

The recipes appear to be versatile enough to make sausage too. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this.

The common factors all seem to be beans and nutritional yeast. Some have vital wheat gluten, so if you have friends with Celiac’s or gluten intolerance, be careful. There are some variants to take care of different textures, too. Otherwise, everything else appears to be “season to taste”. And that, I can definitely do. For what it’s worth, my taste would likely entail garlic, smoke, onions, and soy sauce and/or worcestershire sauce. I would start there and add spices for different intended effects.

Hail Seitan!

The Epic Rap Battle I never knew I needed: Renaissance artists vs TMNT

Growing up, I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — the comics, the cartoons, the video games, the movies, everything. Who am I kidding — I still do. I always wondered how the Renaissance artists after whom the Turtles were named would react to the idea of having ninjas — who were also mutated turtles, mind! — named after them, having their names’ value polluted for at minimum an entire generation.

Well, apparently so too did the folks in charge of Epic Rap Battles of History.

Fair warning — these rap battles often use problematic language, including this one which has a brief (but rather tame) instance: “you guys draw more dicks than New York Pride”.

The Turtle costume used in this video is awesome.

The Epic Rap Battle I never knew I needed: Renaissance artists vs TMNT

What Does the Donkey Say

Some Christians just can’t leave well enough alone, apparently. They have to Jesusify even weird meme songs like What Does The Fox Say. The River Christian Reformed Church is responsible for this particular mess.

Wow. Really, wow. May your god have mercy on your souls and not throw you in the pits of eternal suffering for making bad things worse.

If you want to see the equally ridiculous but less offensively Christified version, go here instead. Hat tip to Christian Nightmares.

Happy holidays, everyone!

What Does the Donkey Say

Trailer: ChristCORE

I very much enjoy heavy metal music, with sounds that evoke imagery of primal battles and emotional release. Hardcore music is the genre’s intellectual successor in many ways, coming out of the punk rock movement in a sort of convergent evolution. And yet… even such a rebellious, discordant and anti-authoritarian genre of music is apparently not immune to being Jesusified.

ChristCORE Trailer from Robin Schlaht on Vimeo.

I don’t know how anyone can mistake the sort of subservience to arbitrary rules handed down by an authority that is completely out of reach one must evince to be a Christian, for the sort of rebellious attitude apparent in hardcore music. The mindsets do not overlap in any way, so I’m completely at a loss as to how people can compartmentalize to such a degree. It would be like being a vegan trying to spread their food philosophy by actively cooking and eating meat right in front of others.

Trailer: ChristCORE

Erock does Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger is probably my favorite RPG of all time.

I bought it on the day it came out, having to sell half my SNES collection to afford it, and I sucked the marrow out of that game. I played through to all 14 endings, I got probably every secret, I did every side quest. My characters were all level 100 (Star Star). I could beat Lavos in one round, by the time I finally bored of it.

I still pick it up now and again, and grind through the opening Festival, doing everything I can to get Chrono acquitted at the later trial. I was convinced by the urban legends as a kid that it was possible to avoid the whole prison portion of the game. Of course, no, it isn’t possible, but urban legends in video games are still fascinating in their grip even decades later.

Erock does Chrono Trigger

Saw nothing at all like this on my flight to Minneapolis

They didn’t seat me in row 666, there were no pamphlets on salvation, and the seats — cramped though they were — were a hell of a lot more comfortable than those pews look. And frankly, the pilot’s rapping wasn’t nearly good enough to cause the spontaneous generation of breakdancing angels.

Via Everything Is Terrible, where they know their quality whargarbl.

Saw nothing at all like this on my flight to Minneapolis