It's time to butcher another Sacred Cow! I call the short ribs and brisket!

This time Apple will be the subject of my ire. Not so much Apple themselves, as I have a hearty respect for their marketing staff which has succeeded in making highly desirable products merely by sticking a lowercase letter in front a noun (any noun) and encasing them in fancy white plastic.

But let's get down to it, shall we?

1. Using a MacBook Makes You Nothing More Than a Technology Consumer
Mark that. Owning an iBook/MacBook/iMac or whatever does not make you, inherently, any of the following:

• Intelligent
• Creative
• Discerning
• Stylish
• Ahead of the curve
• Environmentally friendly
• Quirky or unique
• Productive
• Attractive to the opposite (or same) sex

2. A Linux Distribution You Have To Pay For
Apple ditched 17 years of its old operating system, Mac OS, to create a Unix based operating system in OS X. You want Unix? Get it for free in one of hundreds, maybe thousands of different Linux distributions. There's nothing particularly special about Mac OS X versus other Unix-based operating systems other than a few bundled freebie apps with clever "i" based names. And with base PC laptops for only a few hundred dollars with a free Linux OS, how much was it you paid for that MacBook Pro?

3. Get Over It, Apple Is Not Ahead of the Curve
Apple has done the about-face a number of times, and each time they move further away from their own independent path and closer to the mainstream of Microsoft and other companies. Examples include:

• The final inclusion of right mouse buttons
• Ditching Apple's PowerPC processor for mainstream PC Intel chips
• Again, the dumping of Mac OS for an OEM-branded version of Unix
• AppleTalk to TCP/IP

4. Don't Be Evil
Apple consumers tend to feel that Apple is a much more peaceful, friendly, and non-evil corporation than the Dark Lord Gates and his MS Empire. I'm not sure where this impression comes from...perhaps the friendly looking Happy Mac icon on boot-up:



But seriously, Happy Mac notwithstanding, you're talking about a company that mass-produces electronics in China, and is more restrictive than any other consumer software company in existence about what hardware you can use. They've relaxed their stance on this slightly in recent years (see Point 3) but Microsoft simply provides an operating system and allows you to install on any system you want, with generally open standards on what parts are inside the computer. Apple is much more restrictive about you buying their parts. Forcing consumers to pay out the nose for Apple authorized accessories sounds a bit like a greedy evil faceless corporation doesn't it?

5. Apples Don't Get Viruses?
Well, neither do these:

Behold the mystery meat!



So I had a frozen 2lb pack of what were labelled "St. Louis Style Ribs" in the freezer. To a BBQ fiend, St. Louis style ribs mean only one thing, a rack of pork spare ribs trimmed substantially into a much more palatable rack of ribs. I unthawed these and unfolded (yes, unfolded!) them into some very thin racks of "mini ribs". Rather confusing! Nonetheless I smoked them for 3 hours, followed with an hour in the oven in some liquid, covered with foil. When they came out, the meat had shrunk an enormous amount, as you can see above. After posting the items on a grilling forum, I was informed that what I most likely had was beef short ribs, trimmed Korean style.

Still, it was good. Shown with a cherry mead (the acid of the Montmorency cherries and the overall sweetness of the mead pair wonderfully with rich, fatty meats like ribs) and a bottle of LC's hot BBQ sauce. The beans are plain old canned beans with some BBQ sauce, smoked with the ribs and finished up in the oven. Strange stuff though...likely a labelling mishap with the meat packing company.

Yes, another zoo post ("don't you judge me!"). This one after I had splurged for a larger memory card, so yes, it's a bit longer.

First up, a quick stop on the way to Africa at the well hidden "Poultry Section" to see a rather friendly turkey. No wonder he's friendly. What a great gig for a turkey, comparatively speaking.



Now a few pictures of the warthog in all his glory:



Would you say dry rub, or marinade?



I think the tougher meat would benefit from a marinade, something acidic to tenderize it.



Certainly a prime candidate for a low and slow hickory smoke.



Back on track. This bird was doing such a strange trick I had to get a picture of it. It looks like one of those strange distorted perspective tricks, but he is really sitting down on the lower half of his legs, with his "knees" bent 90 degrees THE OTHER WAY. Looked really strange, I tell you.



A yawning duiker.



Now onto the African birds exhibit. Forgive the blurriness but this was an interesting enough bird to include anyway.



A pair of brightly coloured...oh who am I kidding, "birds" is as specific as I am going to get.



I remember this hairstyle from the 80s.



Ahhh! The Mister Burns bird!



Seriously, how can you not love a bird that looks like Mister Burns?



Strange sort of duck. Hey, at least that's more specific than "bird". Don't-you-judge-me!



I used to have the inexpensive version of this bird, mine was a budgerigar. This is a parrot or parakeet of some variety.



I think that is a bird...



Blue billed ducks. No, that is not their name. That I know of...maybe it is!



Another shot...



...and we're out of the aviary. Next up, the ever-fierce sausage roll of a rodent, the comically neck-less Rock Hyrax, striking a "I will feed on the entrails of your progeny!" pose.



The rhinoceros.



A pair of zebras:



A pair of zebras: (wait didn't I already do this caption?)



A pair of zeb....*ahem* I mean here's the weird velociraptor bird over by the zebra/giraffe area:



A closeup...he appears to share the same interest in ascertaining the colour of my insides as the Rock Hyrax.



Asleep maybe?



Nope!



Finally an unusually modest photo of our favourite exhibitionist primates. No, I am not referring to _______ [fill in the blank to make your own popular culture joke].