Who knew fried tripe tasted like pig skins?

December 16th, 2007 • chatter, food

We at dinner at Tacos Al Carbon in Lake Worth tonight and I was feeling adventurous so I ordered up a taco de tripa (beef tripe). For those of you don’t know, tripe is some fancy word for ‘stomach’ and it looks disgusting. White, slimy, honey-combed shaped, overall unappetizing. But I made the dive. At first look I thought I got an order of fried intestines since I expected a glob of white reticulum on my taco. At second look, I still thought I’d botched up my order and some how gotten a tortilla full of upper intestinal tract, deep fried for my delight. I was reluctant to even eat it, much more than I was when I sampled beef tongue, but I plunked down $2 for this and I was damned sure I was going to eat it. To my delight (and confusion!) it tasted just like pork rinds, then I thought I’d somehow ordered a taco de chicarron (pork skin). The lime and pepper sauce couldn’t detract from the strong pork taste. Had I gotten a chitlin taco instead? I had no idea so I finished the rather tasty treat and finished off my other tacos.

While Jess noshed on her tamales, I was befuddled by the fact that the gross white tripe I see in Publix tasted this good. Just to make sure I got tripe, I went and ordered another taco. Bam! Same thing. I had no idea that something so unappealing from a cow was going to taste like the deep fried skin of a pig. Boy, I’m glad I made the jump because it was quite good. Now I’ve only got one taco left on their menu that I haven’t eaten so I’ll get that next time.

I’ve very reluctant to try their burrito la combinada simply because their English translation is “other meat”. Are they trying to pawn off a Spam burrito on me?

I thought Atheists were supposed to be well informed people?

December 16th, 2007 • atheism, idiocy

It’s now days after the House of Representatives passed a House Resolution recognizing the importance of Christmas to Christianity. In those ensuing days, all manners of non-theists have been up-in-arms about it, saying it violates the First Amendment. I’ve voiced my opinion in a number of comments on various blogs on how delusional secularists have become and how hypocritical they act. I once thought secularists, and Atheists in particular, were intelligent, well read, and well informed people. The public outcry from secularists on this resolution has truly led me to believe otherwise.

The resolution does nothing more than states “Christmas is a holy holiday for Christians and we, as the House of Representatives, recognize this.” Guess what? They have one for Ramadan and one for Diwali too (where’s Hanukkah? Or Kwanzaa?). I don’t hear people bemoaning this fact at all. And why is this? Because many American secularists just want to keep the Christian church out of our government, they don’t care about the other religions. It’s purely misplaced vitriol for Christianity. I’ll admit that I was taken aback by the resolution when I first read it until I remembered that resolutions are not laws, they have no affect on national law until they pass from resolution to bill (or act) to law. My middle school Social Studies teachers would be proud at the fact that I remembered such a basic principle of our government. You secularists would be well fit to do the same.

This trio of resolutions is nothing more than pomp and a waste of taxpayer’s money. While I will agree that passing such baseless and pointless resolutions does very little to lend credibility to what being a Representative means — the function is clearly defined by the name, you represent — I can’t fathom how people have made the leap from “this is something we’re recognizing” to “the government is trying to authoritatively assert Christianity as the foremost religion of the United States”. I wish I was making this up but the general consensus from Digg to Reddit to various blogs and their comments clearly points out that people grossly misunderstand what the resolution means — and what resolutions do — and that they think Big Brother is marching with jackboots to declare some kind of state religion. I would say it’s amazing that so many people are this ignorant but it’s not amazing at all, it’s frightening.

Maybe secularists should get together, form some committees, and devise a national secularist holiday. Then we could raise hell that our important holiday isn’t recognized officially by the government and claim some kind of restitution for this gravest of omissions from national accordance. Or we could realize this was probably passed in order for them to waste time do a little more work before their session is over.