christine-murphy dot net

Yep…it’s the EZCracker.  (WARNING:  website has annoyingly loud auto-play audio/video which I saw no way of turning off)  All it does is crack eggs.  Seriously, how hard is it to crack eggs?  So, it comes with an egg separator attachment.  Big whoop-di-do.  I have an egg separator gadget.  The only reason I even have that is that it came with a set of measuring cups I bought; I doubt I’d have gone out of my way to buy an egg separator.

And a free bonus of an “egg scrambler” that is allegedly a $20 value?  Give me a break!  For one thing, this thing is probably made of 10 cents worth of cheap plastic, and for another, whatever happened to just using a whisk or a fork to scramble eggs?  Sheesh!

I had posted a couple of weeks ago about dumb kitchen stuff.  But when I heard of this egg cracking gizmo, I knew it warranted a post of its own, it’s so stupid.  I had not seen the commercial for this, but @homebrewchef did, and he Tweeted it:

Just saw a commercial for a egg cracker for $20. Really? Www.ezcracker.com. Hands don’t work anymore. Alton Brown would die if he saw this!

Alton Brown would have been the first person to come to mind if I had seen that commercial, too.  Alton, as you may know, is a leader in the war against kitchen unitaskers, and this gadget is right up there with the worst of them.  I’d rather sit through hours of commercials for colon cleansers, acne treatments, and the best night cream, than look at dumb crap like this.

Who buys this stuff, anyway?  I guess somebody must, otherwise, they’d not be selling it.

By the way, if you are interested in beer and food, both cooking with beer, and what beer to drink with your food, please check out The Homebrew Chef’s website.  Lots of great recipes and info there!

No, not cats appearing on TV!  I mean that I am tired of kittehs sitting on top of the TV, dangling their tails over the screen, so I can’t see anything!

Someday, when our old TV dies, we’ll have to buy a new, flat-screen plasma TV.  I am tempted to toss the old one out the window,  just as an excuse to buy a new one.

Then, we can just mount it on the wall, with one of those plasma mounts, so that no cat can sit on it ever!

I want a flat-screen computer monitor, too, for the same reason.

I am such a bad catmommy!

I’m really starting to think so.  You probably heard that CBS has cancelled “Guiding Light”.  Now, it looks like “As The World Turns” is next on the chopping block.  Here’s an article about this.

Basically, CBS plans to replace “Guiding Light” with an updated version of the classic game show, “Let’s Make A Deal”.  Now, I’m old enough to remember the original with Monty Hall, I loved it as a kid.  But, as often happens when someone tries to update a classic, it’ll likely be very lame.  And so will whatever game show they come up with to replace ATWT, should that soap be cancelled.

Over at ABC, it’s just been announced that “All My Children” is moving from New York to Los Angeles, as a cost-cutting move.  “One Life To Live will be staying in New York, but moving to the studio that AMC will be vacating.  Article here.

The problem with AMC’s move is that it’s possible that many of the long-established actors may not want to make the move.  For example, Susan Lucci, who has played Erica Kane since the show began back, has a long-established residence in New York, and she may not want to move to L.A.  But maybe that is part of the cost-cutting…if these highly paid soap veterans get dropped to recurring status or simply decide to leave completely, that eliminates their salaries.  Then  they can create new characters and hire young unknowns to play them, people that are willing to work cheaper.

But this could really backfire, because people will stop watchng the show if their favorite characters leave because of this move.  Then ABC will have a great excuse to cancel it completely, no doubt putting another lame talk or game show in its place.

NBC may soon be soap-free.  All they have now is “Days of Our Lives”.  The cancellation of “Passions”, a show I never watched, but I know a lot of people liked it, resulted in NBS showing yet another hour of “The Today Show” in its time slot in many markets.  But how long before Days tanks, now that many of their big-name stars have left, mostly due to budget cuts.

I find all of this very sad.  People like me like to watch soaps as a form of escapism.  I hate the new trend of these cheaply-produced talk and game shows, as well as reality shows.  I’ll take well-written fictinal stories any day.  Talk shows, especially have gotten ridiculous and often depressing.  Even long-established shows, such as Dr. Phool, have gotten too tabliody.  He sunk to a new low this past season with all of that crap about Octo-Mom.

If soaps go away completely, a lot of us may not even bother to turn our televisions on during the day. I do know that I will NOT be watching the new “Let’s Make A Deal”, and I certainly will not watch anything that replaces “As The World Turns”…which is actually my favorite soap right now.

Such a crying shame.

Seriously.  If we hit the lottery, and Mike could retire, maybe it would be fun to drive all over the country in a state-of-the-art RV.  Think about it, we could go to visit baseball parks all over, without the expense of hotels.  We could even save on having to eat at restaurants by cooking either in the kitchen of the RV, or, my favorite idea, BBQing at the campground.

Just as long as our fellow campers are not like our neighbors, who douse their BBQ fire with lighter fluid.  Well, if it did smell that bad, at least we could drive away and go elsewhere…hard to do when you come home, and the stench of burnt lighter fluid hangs in the air, and even seeps into the house through the air conditioner.

Of course, we’d have to visit www.goodsamvip.com to buy RV insurance.  So worth it, though, as you never know what could happen.

And, finally, when we get tired of hearing the neighborhood children screeching at the top of their lungs, and giving me serious headaches, we could always drive up to Potters Place Campground and get some peace there.  An adults-only campground in the boonies of Maine…now I can get into that!

Maybe someday!

Because there is NO WAY we can attend one and not be asphyxiated to death.  For one thing, they both smoke like chimneys, and second, they completely douse their charcoal in lighter fluid.  In my opinion, LIGHTER FLUID IS EVIL.  It not only smells bad, but it DOES get into the food, I don’t care what anyone says.  If we were to attend a BBQ of theirs, just to be polite, we’d have no need for fat burners or anything, because we’d have a hard time choking anything down!

They are perfectly nice people, just not people we’d want to hang out with.  Once we ran into them at a local ball game, and the wife came over to us, and it was kind of awkward.  We just kind of run in different circles, we really have little in common enough with them to ever really be friends.

Also, in that relationship, the husband is the GRILLMASTER, and I suspect he would not take too well to grilling advice from a mere woman.  And I know I’d have a hard time keeping my mouth shut about the lighter fluid.

So we always told them we had other plans, and actually made other plans to be out of the house, if we didn’t already have them.  I mean, they can see where we park our car from their yard, so it’s best that the car not be there on the appointed BBQ day.

Eventually, they stopped inviting us, but they still wave to us if they are out in their yard.  We wave back.  That’s about it.

Still, on days we know they will be BBQing, always on Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day, we vacate the premises just so as not to have to smell the lighter fluid.  It seeps in through the air conditioners, so there’s no escape unless we leave the house for a few hours.

Today we went to the local TGI Friday’s to watch the Red Sox game and have some lunch.  Since most of the world was probably having BBQs with way too much lighter fluid (IMO, ONE DROP of it is too much), the bar was pretty quiet.

When we got home, the neighbors’ party was still going on, but they’d finished cooking, thank goodness.

Pictured above is a chimney starter.  This link provides detailed instructions on how to use one.  Notice that no lighter fluid is involved.  If people used chimney starters, they’d not only not stink up the neighborhood with lighter fluid, but they’d save money on not having to buy the stuff, as well.

As for those briquettes that come already doused in lighter fluid…Match Light, I think they are called…they are even more evil than lighter fluid.  I knew people who used them, and the taste of them gets into the food even worse than regular lighter fluid and briquettes.  And they smell worse, too.

SO…DON”T USE ANYTHING THAT IS OR CONTAINS CHARCOAL LIGHTER FLUID!  Your neighbors will thank you!