With the Democratic National Convention and the US Open upon us, speculation and punditry will be in full swing. Consider this public service announcement a reminder not to do either on an empty stomach. Being glued to the television or interweb is no excuse for not fueling your brain properly. The key is to choose tasty, quickly prepared dishes.

Begin the beguine by mincing a large clove or two of garlic. Mix with the raw shrimp. Set aside. Shred, slice, or otherwise apportion a handful of cheese. Set aside. Next, in a saucepan briefly sautee a handful of broccoli florets in the oil of your choice. Shortly after they start to green, remove to a container for addition later.

Add a bit more oil to pan if needed, then add your shrimp. Keep heat high and stir shrimp as they start to pinken. Add a heaping tablespoon or so of chili mix to the shrimp. Stir to minimized the powder sticking to pan. Drizzle a tablespoon or so of fresh lime juice (preferred) or a good balsamic vinegar over the shrimp. Reduce slightly and add shrimp mix to broccoli. Deglaze pan with a bit of water or wine before adding enough water to cook the noodles.

Bring to a boil, adding the seasoning packet. You can actually reduce the amount of seasoning added since the shrimp are chili coated. Add a few sprigs of fresh rosemary to the water. Also add some dehydrated onions (teaspoon or two) to the boiling water. Boil long enough to soften the onions and rosemary, then add the ramen and cook al dente. Turn heat off and drain most of the broth, leaving a few tablespoons to allow for the noodles continued expansion.

Add the shrimp and brocolli mixture along with the cheese. Toss lightly to distribute ingredients and seasoning. Decorate with crushed red pepper and serve hot. The variant above was prepared with fig infused balsamic and cotija from a local panaderia.

I’ve been cheating on my blog, sorta. Nah, let’s face it; it’s a full-blown affair. A while back I was offered an opportunity to participate in the closed beta of a blogging community. A social network of bloggers basically. My fellow writers and I shared similar tastes in online journalism and essaying. Most of us were Salon.com members. The blogging experiment, Open Salon, is now open to the public.

Things have been a little chaotic as membership shot up from a bit over 1000 to just under 3000. The constant stream of new posts and comments have jostled the closed beta members who are at least familiar with each other, if not attached at the hip. Content ranges from balmy to banal, with large doses of political punditry sprinkled with photos and food.

The site is a live animal, just finding its legs. Most of the technical growing pains have been hammered out. But emerging personality differences remind me of life with maladjusted siblings. Recent peeves have centered around the cover page content: too many Olympic ass shots, too many pretty boy photos, and more personal revelations than a shrink hears in a year. Well it’s true you can’t please everyone.

If you’re a new visitor, the best course of action may be to browse a few tags that interest you. There’s been a push from the editors for bloggers to use tags more appropriately. Geez… a quick peek and it seems they’ve removed the tag cloud. OK, you can search at the top of the page. A word of caution, politics will return posts for days. Any way you find content, if you like the writer I suggest you subscribe to his/her RSS feed. The link is beside the author’s photo.

So that’s it, the explanation for the freshly accruing coat of dust around here. For a while I’ll be back and forth. Hope to see you at OS.

OK, I admit I’m a little busy to pen what might be considered substantive posts at the moment. So I’ll keep plugging brief things that are on my radar.

Being in video production and communications means I have a soft spot for good advertising. I love the ad below and happened to find the entire song on (of course) Youtube. It means a lot to me because I’m a longtime FOTL wearer and Vince Gill fan. Apple really holds it down too, and yo… no cell phone interruptions!

Tim Gunn of Project Runway saying “Holla at your boy!”,… precious.

Based on David Rees’ comic of the same name, the animated Get Your War On series looks to be piss yourself funny. For those unfamiliar with Rees’ work, the GYWO comic strip satirizes the ongoing terrorist fear mongering and proliferation of Bushocracy (figure it out). It’s eerily unreal how much the animated voices sound like the ones I imagine when reading the strip. The premiere is embedded below. A warning: this is languagy and probably NSFW, unless you work for MoveOn.org. Also, if you’re a staunch supporter of the War for Oil (v2), the current administration, or if you’ve ever muttered Kill ‘em all; let God sort it out, don’t watch. Your head might explode like Dave Chappell’s black Klansman.

Kudos to Madame Bitch at the newly opened Open.Salon for putting the animated series on my radar.