“We are making steadfast progress.”—Washington, D.C., June 9, 2003; and it’s moving nowhere fast.

“One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end.”—Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 2003; it is possible that this was a time-traveling George W. Bush.

“In other words, I don’t think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family.”—Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002; everyone has the right to screw up their family if they want to.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002; No foolin’?

“I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.”—Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002; and in those Arab nations, too.

“But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it’s important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe.”—Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001; –more proof that Bush is a cockroach.

“I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.”—Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001; again with the time-traveling.

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”–CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000; this explains a lot.

“We ought to make the pie higher.”—South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000; Whah?

“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.”—San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000; there he goes again, trying to win the crucial transvestite vote.

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000; yeah, they keep moving around.

I just can’t resist. Took this one only a few minutes ago. Came out very nice.

Got another beautiful Sunset on my way home again tonight. My new schedule lets me get home earlier than before, and I’m seeing some nice ones. The first one I caught early, but was not in place to take great pictures–but I was able to get to a good bridge in time, and got the following ones there.

This last sunset shot I was able to capture blind–my digital camera’s battery had quit twice, and only let me take shots with no viewfinder. But it turned out great:

And then, when I got home, I got a great moonrise to boot.

In subsequent variations on the gyoza recipe that I’ve attempted, I’ve discovered a few things that help round out the rough edges to the formula.

First off, when using meat, it is important not to use lean meat; this results in the gyoza being dry. Some fat content in the ground meat is desirable.

Second, use cheese. A good amount of shredded mozzarella, I’ve found, can help contribute to a softer texture.

Third, remember that gyoza is a malleable thing; you can change the ingredients and their amounts to your taste.

If the GOP is the “party of the people,” is supposedly for the common man and not just the wealthy and corporations, why are they so intent to cut taxes for and give juicy handouts to the wealthy and corporations, and so eager to cut the pay and benefits for the common worker?

Right now, a majority of those in the Senate have followed the Democratic lead to turn down President Bush’s plan to eliminate overtime pay for eight million workers, but the Republicans, with a razor’s edge of a majority, are refusing to allow it to come to a vote, at least as long as the Democratic candidates are in D.C. The GOP hopes to wait for a dark and lonely evening, like they have done so often over the past two years, when no one is looking, to pass this law. And this Bush pay decrease would come at a time when countless American families depend on both parents working overtime just to get by.

It comes on the heels of other Bush proposals to cut pay, benefits, and education funding for the same working stiffs and soldiers in the military who are fighting Bush’s wars, as Bush ladles out lucrative, non-competitive contracts to businesses the administration has close ties to.

Add to this the measly token of a tax cut given to many, but not all of the middle class, while people making millions or billions get huge amounts of what little they still pay in taxes returned to them because “it’s only fair.” And the GOP’s traditional grudge against ever raising the minimum wage–each and every time, they claim it will put companies in a crunch and cause workers to be fired, and every time nothing of the sort comes close to happening.

Party of the people? For the common man? Just like Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and the GOP’s claim to “inclusiveness,” these are lip-service platitudes that have no standing in reality. Ever wonder why labor unions so regularly support the Democrats?

In my previous article on the Cut-And-Run Straw Man, I mentioned a right-wing politician on CNN blaming the Democrats for suggesting we retreat from Iraq. Here is the quote, with supporting evidence to demonstrate what an outrageous lie that is:

Republican National Committee communications director Cliff May:

… But if you have a Democratic candidate who says what you heard Tom Harkin saying and Kennedy saying, which is essentially, we should cut and run, we should turn our back, we can get away from these — well, they’re implying that it is.

Here is what Harkin and Kennedy actually said:

Ted Kennedy:

“It’s not enough to go to the United Nations with a resolution. We must go with the right resolution, and it’s not clear that this administration is ready to swallow its pride and do that. Words don’t matter. We need deeds.”

“[I] had hoped to hear acknowledgment from the president of our failures in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the administration’s concrete plans for solving them with our allies and through the United Nations.”

“The president owes our troops and their families a plan before we give the administration a blank check.”

Tom Harkin:

“As we move ahead in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, we must ensure that we think about the needs of people with disabilities up front and not later on.”

“This may not be Vietnam, but boy, it sure smells like it. And every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it’s costing like Vietnam, too.”

“We’ve got $13 billion a month for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we can’t fund [education]?”

There is not a single word that they have said that even hints, much less “implies,” at the idea that we should “cut and run” from Iraq. Harkin spoke of the underspending on Education and the overspending on the war–a result of “going it alone.” He never implied that we should desert Iraq–rather that if money can be found to fund the Iraq mess, we should be able to find the money for education as well.

Both he and Kennedy positively stated the need for funding our presence in Iraq and bringing in international assistance to help rebuild and police Iraq.

For May to claim that any of this is “cut and run,” even by implication, is a complete and utter fiction, a lie that is being repeated and amplified by the GOP.

These kinds of fabrications must be pointed out whenever and wherever they occur. Please pass on the word.

Boy, conservatives sure love to fantasize. This one, in the New York Post, imagines that as Bush’s numbers drop, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore will jump back into the race, and that if Dean makes it to the nomination, Bush will clean the floor with him. He also calls Dean, a governor with many conservative leanings, an “ultra-liberal.” A month or so ago, conservatives like Tucker Carlson were talking seriously about Al Sharpton winning the nomination, which, of course, the GOP would have fits of glee over.

Of course, none of that is happening. Gore and Clinton have both ruled themselves out in such clear and unmistakable terms that it is pretty much impossible for them to go back on that without taking major hits. And Sharpton isn’t really even on the radar screens as far as the numbers go.

What’s happening is that the right is starting to sweat over Bush’s plummeting poll numbers. And now a Democrat emerges who not only has the moxie to tear into Bush for his failures, but has the moral authority to do so as he criticized Bush from the start. And now Dean’s leading the entire party out of kowtow mode and into full-blast Bush-bashing mode. And Americans are warming to it. And oh yeah, he’s balanced his budgets.

Nor does the “ultra-liberal” label work, either–if anything, Dean has a history for leaning to the right, with a record of being pro-gun, and favoring businesses, sometimes over the environment. In his state, he was seen as a moderate who was fiscally conservative; a right-wing think tank analyst remarked, “The Howard Dean you are seeing on the national scene is not the Dean that we saw around here for the last decade.” His now-famous civil unions law and the progressive financing of education were, according to many, not Dean’s agenda; he just went along with the courts. Many believe that if he wind the nomination, he will steer back to the center.

So this conservative Fantasy Island mentality is, at best, panicked wishful thinking.

What do you do when your political opponent catches you in a major blunder and holds you publicly accountable for it?

You claim that your opponent said something despicable that they never said, and then criticize them for it.

That’s the latest tactic from the conservative side, with their claim that Democrats are calling for us to cut and run from Iraq, to retreat and leave it behind. And it is a ludicrously false assertion. But they know that if you act like it’s true with enough sincerity, enough people will believe it and your opponents will be blunted by it.

You know that Bush botched the war effort, trying to get it done quick so he could win an election, and not have the U.N. bog it down with irrelevancies like weapons inspections and diplomacy. He insulted our allies and cobbled together a skeleton “coalition,” leaving the U.S. and Britain holding the bag, the U.S. most at stake economically. With no exit strategy and no projection on how much it would cost, Bush flew in to do the job before anyone realized the scam. And in the end, we found out that Bush’s arguments were not much more than hot air: no WMD, no nuclear program, no terrorists, no threat to the U.S.

In short, he rushed to war, broke the bank doing it, and there was not enough of a good reason in the American national interest to have done it.

So the Democrats made the reasonable charge that Bush planned and executed the war in an incompetent manner, and now we’re stuck with the quagmire. Now that the damage is done and we’re in Iraq, we have no choice but to follow through, whatever the cost. But there is excellent reason to criticize Bush for having brought us into this mess.

The right-wing play on that: the Democrats are saying it’s too expensive and they want us to retreat, to cut and run, but we conservatives are too brave for that; we’re staying and we’re gonna beat the terrorists. And so on.

Of course, no Democrat ever suggested we “cut and run.” In fact, they have been the first ones to make it crystal clear, in the debate last week and elsewhere, that we cannot and must not retreat from Iraq. Carol Moseley Braun, one of the more liberal candidates, said simply, “We don’t cut and run.”

But the truth doesn’t stop conservatives when they feel they’ve got a good thing going.

This columnist says we should not follow “the Democrats’ cut and run advice.” Huh? This one takes a more subtle course, claiming that “the constant carping of the media and the Democrats gives the terrorists and our other enemies in the region the hope that the Vietnam experience will be repeated and we’ll cut and run.” That, of course, is in line with Rumsfeld’s recent charge that anyone who criticizes the Bush administration is giving aid and comfort to the enemy and hurting our armed forces, so just shut up and give us the money.

And now the talking heads on TV are disseminating the charge, claiming that Democrats want us to give up and run, tail between our legs. I’ve heard it more than once from the left-right guests brought in on the news shows, one just a few minutes ago on CNN–the right-wing guest making the clear assertion that liberal criticism means they want us to just high-tail it out of Iraq.

Something tells me, though, that this high-speed spin cycle won’t really buy much slack from the American people. A new Zogby poll puts Bush down to 45%. There’s only so far you can lie outrageously to them before they start to tire of it and wonder how they’re going to fare in the future with half-trillion dollar deficits, rising unemployment rates, and what little money we have going to places like Iraq.

There’s no question we have to finish the job there. The point is, we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place, and Bush is to blame for that.

“Iran would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon.”—Washington, D.C., June 18, 2003

“I recently met with the finance minister of the Palestinian Authority, was very impressed by his grasp of finances.”—Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

“Our nation must come together to unite.”—Tampa, Fla., June 4, 2001

“I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.”—Interview with the Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2001

“Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work.”—60 Minutes II, Dec. 5, 2000

“They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program.”—St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000

“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”—Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000

“I think we agree, the past is over.”—On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

President Bush just finished his well-prepared speech, posed to ask Congress for seed money to clean up the mess in Iraq. Predictably, Bush uses the opportunity to try to justify the Iraq war as part of the war on terror.

Here are my comments, point by point, on Bush’s speech:

In Iraq, we are helping the longsuffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East.

Baloney. That’s the last thing the Bush administration wants. Since Japan and Germany, there has hardly been a country we’ve “liberated” that has become a democracy. What America wants is yet another puppet government. If Iraq were let alone to be a democracy, another theocracy like Iran may very well be the result.

The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and on the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace.

Then why was Iraq free from terrorist attacks when Hussein was in power, and besieged by what Bush calls “terrorism” today?

Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations.

As I have stated before, there has not been one shred of evidence to support this claim. It is a back-door attempt to usher in a justification for the war in Iraq by linking the country to terrorism.

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal.

Okay. Now they’re all “terrorists” apparently. The metamorphosis (killers, to terrorists and loyalists, to terrorists) in complete. We went into Iraq because there was terrorism there, and this is a war on terror. Right. After the middle of the speech, Bush never again mentions killers or loyalists; he only repeats “terrorist” again and again. During the speech, he says “terror” four times, “terrorism” twice, and “terrorist” 16 times.

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.

Like I said, he’s trying to justify Iraq as part of the war on terror. This must be spoken on, publicly–the president cannot be allowed to get away with this blatant revisionism to justify a grab for votes and oil and to satisfy the hawks.

Iraq is not a front in the war on terror. It is a distraction from it.

And even the “war on terror” itself is a bogus war–one of those unending political wars rather than an actual war, and for the Bush administration, an excuse to carry out the real wars they want to, and to slip into place the policies and programs they would never be able to get the American public to agree to otherwise.

We are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people.

Again, baloney. If so, then why not allow the U.N. to share in the authority in rebuilding? They have a much better record than we do in building democracies. Bush wants to keep the authority in Iraq precisely because he does not want a true democracy, he does not want to truly liberate the Iraqi people. He wants a lapdog, not a country with its own agenda, which probably will not go along with ours.

I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion.

Two things should be noted here. First, a year after Bush started his drumbeat to war, this is the first time Bush has presented a figure to the public stating how much the post-war clean-up will cost. Second: this is the first figure presented, and these things always end up costing way more than the initial estimates.

And, incidentally, better start revising the deficit numbers upward again.

It should be noted that Bush did not mention that Saddam has not yet been captured, nor that WMD have not yet been found. It was just terror, terrorists, terrorism.

Then there is the oil question: why is no one mentioning this as a means of financing the rebuilding? Bush did not mention oil once in the speech. Oil should be able to pay for this whole thing, and certainly, America now has its hands on that oil. So who is making the money from that?

In the post-speech analysis, Bob Graham made the solid points that Bush did not mention who would pay for the $87 billion for Iraq, and that it would represent more than we spend on education in the U.S., and twice what we spend on repairing our own failing infrastructure. It may be true that we need to do this in Iraq–this is not being challenged. The complaint in that (a) Bush waited more than a year after he started seriously pumping the whole war idea before he finally predicts some costs, which were very much predictable ($100 billion was predicted a year ago), and (b) that we shouldn’t have gotten into this war in the first place, as we cannot afford it, and Saddam was no threat in the first place–Bush just lied about that to get us into the war. Again, it was about votes, oil, and the desires of the hawks.

And those are not good enough reasons for all of this.

We should not be here right now. We should be rebuilding our own country, not invading and then rebuilding others that really were no threat to us in the first place. We should be concentrating on working, both in enforcement and in winning hearts and minds, to reduce the hatred against us and to be a positive force in the world.

But now? Now, we have a huge mess on our hands. The world alternately laughs at us and virulently resents us. Bush has done more to encourage terrorists than to discourage them. We have a half-trillion dollar yearly deficit where we should have surpluses. Wealthy people are in a good place, but the rest of us suffer from wars, unemployment and the burden of debt.

The state of the union is not good. We need better than this.

“What is life choices about?” —Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2003

“In other words, what is your ambitions?” —Speech to students in Little Rock, Ark., Aug. 29, 2002

“The true greatness of America are the people.” —Washington, D.C., July 2, 2001

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“Our priorities is our faith.” —Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000

“Laura and I really don’t realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis.” —CNBC, April 15, 2000

“Reading is the basics for all learning.” —Announcing his “Reading First” initiative in Reston, Va., March 28, 2000

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

A new Time/CNN poll put Bush’s popularity at 52%, but their polls usually come out on the high end favoring Bush. A CBS poll just out has him treading water at 46%. Another CNN poll shows that 41% of Americans will “definitely vote against him,” with only 29% definitely voting for him. It’s kind of hard to find these poll numbers on CNN’s own site, but they’re there, buried somewhat. Gallup had him at 51% a few weeks ago.

Take his Gallup numbers since March, plug them into an Excel chart, and extrapolate a linear trendline (best outcome for Bush). It shows Bush dropping to as low as 35% by the end of the year. Hey, you might interject, those numbers might go up. Well, not really. So far his numbers have only gone up twice: after 9/11 and after the Iraq invasion. That’s it. Aside from those two blips, his popularity has followed a downward trend at a surprisingly steady rate. Look at the chart for yourself.

Okay, it seems like a large number of people visiting my site are coming to read about eyelid twitching. In my fourth post (I am now over 250), I simply mentioned that I had one of those eyelid twitching episodes a lot of people seem to get, and it was irritating the heck out of me.

Suddenly, this site became the Mecca for Eyelid Twitchers. I can only suppose that there is relatively little out there about it, or that more people link to my site than they do to sites all about Eyelid Twitching, so I rank higher in Google.

Anyway, I started feeling bad for all those poor twitchers who came to my site seeking information or relief, and just found a really small note saying that my own eyelid was twitching as well. I mean, misery loves company and all, but it really isn’t useful outside of that. So I figured I might as well write something more substantive about eyelid twitching, so here it is.

First off, there’s a name for this: myokymia. “Myo-” is the Greek root for “eye,” and “-kymia” means “I’m making up this etymology.” But the name, at least, is for real. They’re also called eyelid “tremors,” as it sounds kind of psycho to have a “twitch,” or worse, a “spasm.” Nobody likes spasms. “Tremors” sounds cooler.

Myokymia is, according to doctors, “a common condition where a few of the muscle fibers of the upper — or more commonly the lower — eyelid contract irregularly. … Myokymia is closely associated with stress, fatigue, lack of sleep and too much caffeine.”

That’s doctorese for, “you’re eyelid’s twitching, moron. Try changing something.”

This doctor says that myokymia is associated with “brainstem neoplasms,” which sounds even cooler than “tremors.” “Brainstem neoplasms” is bound to get people at the office to pay attention when you talk about your problem. But then, the treatment for that includes a “lumbar puncture with examination of cerebrospinal fluid,” so maybe it’s best not to milk the neoplasm idea too far. Especially for a stupid eyelid twitch.

Frankly, when I get The Twitch, I’m not usually stressed out, I am getting as much sleep as ever, sometimes more, and I don’t drink coffee (I even have decaf Coke). Maybe it’s my Evil Plan to Dominate the World, we usually get eye twitches when we do that.

Some people stand by the theory that it is a vitamin deficiency, usually potassium (because someone once heard that potassium has something to do with muscles; we’re still trying to track that one down), and others swear that it’s a B-vitamin deficiency, saying they lose the twitch immediately when they start taking the pills. I have the strong feeling, however, that this is more to do with something that rhymes with the “flacebo effect.” For all of you who want the above remedies to work, I cleverly disguised my opinions about it there.

Treatment: Reduce your stress, get more sleep, nix the coffee, eat more bananas and B-complex pills. Throw in a couple of sugar pills for good measure. Save the cerebrospinal fluid exam for emergencies.

Or, you might just wait for them to go away on their own. Whatever.

“I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will.”

OK, here we go again.

It seems like every fundamentalist in the country, especially those holding political office, has his or her undies in a bunch about the Alabama thing and feels the need to act on it somehow. This time it is Alabama Representative Robert Aderholt (R, what else?), who has submitted a bill that would essentially make it OK for state government offices to display religious monuments. Because, after all, that is the answer to all of society’s problems. A big piece of granite. Yeah. That’ll do it.

“The simple display of the Ten Commandments can in no way be considered an establishment of religion,” Aderholt claimed. Apparently, Aderholt does not possess a dictionary. Or maybe he just got tired of reading after the first three or four definitions of the word “establish” and figured the rest were just gonna be boring.

It’s gonna be a long Autumn….

I love Bill Maher, even when I don’t agree with his politics. I liked watching Politically Incorrect, and greatly enjoy his new, uncensored, let-it-all-hang-out show on HBO (Real Time with Bill Maher), where they have a better set, much better graphics, and, presumably, executives who won’t chicken out and fire his ass for saying something reasonable but unpopular on national TV.

Now Bill has a blog. It’s a cool blog, too, because (a) he actually seems to be the one writing it, instead of a stream of guest bloggers, (b) he actually says things rather than just presenting quotes and links like other celebrity bloggers do, and (c) some of the things he says are actually funny. The posts aren’t very long, just a short ‘graf for each, but they’re worth reading.

Check it out.

UPDATE: after seeing that a lot of people were finding this post by Google, I decided to verify the links and, alas, found that Bill’s blog is no longer where it was. He is, however, blogging infrequently at Arianna Huffington’s new site, The Huffington Post. Also, his “New Rulest” section on his show’s web site could arguably sit in for a blog in some ways.

Also note that the link to his transcripts is still working fine.

Conservatives in Washington are venting anger at Democrats for derailing the nomination of Miguel Estrada for a D.C. Court of Appeals seat. “Racism,” the National Review calls it. A “hate crime,” according to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “Two- faced Democrats,” rages Robert Novak.

Crocodile tears, all of them. The assertion that Democrats are racist and refused to rubber-stamp Estrada just because he is Hispanic is so completely ludicrous that the GOP must think Americans will believe anything. Even the timing of the withdrawal is suspicious, coming on the same day Democrats gathered in New Mexico for a debate to be broadcast nationwide on Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S. The GOP is already trying to make this a campaign issue for the coming election.

Of course, it’s all nonsense; Clinton nominated far more minority judges than Bush has, and the GOP blocked the nomination of not one, but three Hispanic judges. Richard Paez, a Mexican-American nominated by Clinton, was held up for four years by Republicans, including a filibuster, which the GOP is now demonizing the Democrats for (the same kind of filibuster that Bush now wants outlawed). It is hard to get more hypocritical than that.

Estrada was one of a line of ultra-conservative minority judges Republicans have been trying to get through so they can put on the token appearance of multiculturalism without having to actually accept multiculturalism itself. Just as with Clarence Thomas–an embarrassment to the Supreme Court–the GOP is looking for young, militantly conservative minority judges with little or no track record so they can stack the courts and at the same time look like they are being inclusive. It is racial exploitation at its worst, using members of an ethnic minority against the plurality of the members of that minority–and then calling whomever objects a racist.

It is especially galling for the GOP to hypocritically play the same race card they always accuse the Democrats of playing, and to pretend that they are somehow the champions of Hispanic values, at a time when the administration and its party are working to attack issues that Hispanics tend to favor. The GOP is dedicated to wiping out Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity laws to promote fair hiring, to require English-only education, cut off education and medical services for illegal immigrants, and have been on the wrong side of just about every issue important to the Hispanic community. But hey, the president speaks Spanish! That oughta be worth something! And he managed to find a token ultra-conservative Hispanic judge to nominate. Well, you sold me!

The reason why the GOP is so hot on trying to win over Hispanics is because they know the demographics as well as anyone. Hispanics passed blacks as the largest minority in the U.S. in 2001, comprising 13% of the population, and are growing very fast. Already a key voting bloc, Hispanics will be invaluable in the future.

The GOP is trying its best to attract that demographic without actually serving the interests they deem valuable. Instead of actually trying to do things to help the Hispanic community, Republicans are giving little more than lip service, are standing up token Hispanic appointments in front of a nearly all-white membership, and are taking every effort to smear Democrats as racist and anti-Hispanic.

Well isn’t that special?

Hiromi taught me a new trick with popcorn–curry powder.

When she first started shaking large amounts of it into a pot of popcorn I was making, I thought she was nuts–curry powder in popcorn? However, the result surprised me–it was delicious! Now, most times I make popcorn I use it.

I only use olive oil to cook popcorn, by the way–and I find that putting a few squares of paper towels on top of the pot before placing the cover over it catches and collects whatever moistures gathers at the top, which otherwise falls back into the popcorn and damages it. The popcorn I get in 1 kg bags at Niku no Hanamasa, most outlets located in central Tokyo; the kind they carry pops well (better than the standard supermarket stuff, at least).

After starting the popcorn in the oil, just start shaking in the curry powder, and be liberal about it–at least half a dozen, maybe even ten hearty shakes. Then make sure to swirl the corn and spice in the oil to distribute it well. Get lots in there, until it really colors with the spice, as shown above. If that’s not strong enough, try more the next time.

The popcorn you get should be half yellow (the half that pops first), as shown here. Salt it to taste. I use American-style popcorn salt–I always bring over a year’s supply when I come back from a visit home.

Enjoy!