Yeah, so, okay, right, sure ... "Top 10 of the Year" lists are supposed to come out in December, and not at the end of January. Pardon my tardiness, but this list was inspired by a wonderful honor I received today - an honor many of you may have already received, but a new one for me.

You see, when I was 9-to-5-ing it at MacLife.com (well, make that more like 9-to-5, then 7-to-11, six or seven days a week), I read little but magazines (my subscriptions, in no particular order: The Nation, Harper's, Foreign Affairs, Funny Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, and The Argonaut [made you click on that last one, didn't I...?]).

When I was a working stiff I read mostly magazines not only because I'm an inveterate magazine junkie but also because my brain was so fried that I couldn't stretch it around a literary form longer than a magazine article. But after I quit my job on my birthday last July (best birthday present I ever received) my brain started to rejuvenate and I started reading books again.

Oh, and about that honor I mentioned earlier: yesterday I received a phone call from my local bookseller, Cover to Cover, telling me that a book I had ordered as a gift for my daughter and her girlfriend (Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans), had come in. When I dropped by the store today, I told the clerk that a book I had ordered had arrived. Then - marvelous! - without asking either my name or the name of the book, she turned to the shelf containing the ordered books, picked out mine, and handed it to me.

She knew me!

To be known by a part-time clerk in your local bookstore is a true honor. When I mentioned as much to her, she said, "Well, yeah, I suppose it's better than to be known by name at the local saloon." Maybe so or maybe not, but I still felt as if I had been given the title of Official Reader of Books. Nice. (Yeah, I know that with a name like "Myslewski" I'm less than anonymous, but, hey, let me bask for a moment, okay?)

So, armed with my new-found status, I feel ready to announce my 10 favorite books of 2007. Note that a) they weren't all published in 2007, I just got around to reading them in 2007, and b) they're in no particular order - I tried to rank them, but they're all so disparate that ranking was impossible. Some have great ideas but aren't written all that well, and some have reasonable-but-not-earthshaking ideas but are studies in how good books should be researched, structured, written, and edited.

One last note: Although I'm linking the book's titles to Amazon.com, please don't buy from that online megamall. Buy instead from a local bookseller, even if you have to ask them to order the book for you, and even if you have to wait a week or so until the book arrives. Don't get me wrong: Amazon is a wonderful service if you live in Winnemucca or somewhere where your local bookseller stocks only the Left Behind series. If, however, you're fortunate enough to have a decent local bookseller, ordering from Amazon is like sticking a knife in your neighborhood's spine.

My preaching is done. So, without further adieu, my 10 Top Books of 2007 (and not, you'll note, the Top 10 Books of 2007 - who am I to say what those are...?)

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage

Okay, so I lied about not ranking these ten books. In truth, the first three are in the "You gotta read these!" class, while the other seven are friendly also-rans.

Savage is an astonishing journalist - a meticulous researcher, a careful builder of arguments, and a lucid writer. He constructs an ironclad case against the Cheney-Bush White House, and although he comforts us with the fact that such power-grabbing has happened before, he also warns us that it might be harder to fix this time.

A must-read - and a pleasure to read, due to his craft.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks

Equal to Savage's work in Takeover in his brilliance of research and lucidity of argument, Ricks rakes the Bush administration over the coals for its almost unbelievable incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war.

The only at-all-sympathetic character in this book is David Petraeus, he of "The Surge." (No, not the surf band, the current police action in Baghdad.) Ricks's indictments of the others - all the others - are precise, carefully documented, and scathing.

Now that Iraq is Davey's lockdown, we're all waiting to see if any justice can come out of that hideous tragedy. So is Ricks, I assume - and I'm waiting for his next book.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

If you can make it through the first "feedlot" section of this carefully constructed indictment of the American way of feeding itself without upchucking your last dozen dinners, you have a stronger stomach than I. And if you want to eat tomorrow without fear or guilt, the remaining chapters will give you hope.

This book literally changed my life - well, my cooking, at least - for the better. If you eat, read this book.

Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower by Zbigniew Brzezinski

This is a quick-but-interesting read, in which fellow polack Brzezinski excoriates Dubya in comparison to his daddy and Slick Willy, and offers his opinion as to how we might be able to get out of the horrendous international-relations morass into which our current Moron in Chief has sunk us.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs

In this slight-but-fun work, the author of The Know-It-All attempts to spend an entire year living as obediently to the many, varied, self-contradictory, and sometimes thoroughly ludicrous precepts in the Bible.

If you're a Bible-freak like I am, you'll find it interesting. If not, maybe not.

A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent Is Vital to Islam and America by Anouar Majid

An interesting book, but a deeply flawed one. Majid has a solid, important argument to present: that cultures thrive best when they allow heresy and free-thinking. Unfortunately, although his thousand-year-plus historial research is as comprehensive as his reasoning is well-crafted, his writing is disjointed, wandering, and often painful to follow.

Proof yet again that a good editor can be an intelligent writer's best friend.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer

This remarkably detailed account of Al Qaeda's activities and how "the West" distorts and misunderstands that organization provides valuable insights into what's going on in what the Bushies call the GWOT and what Scheuer regards as a serious, though not insurmountable problem.

All you need to know about why you should read this book is that it was personally recommended to Western readers by none other than Osama bin Laden. Seriously.

The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen: Inspired New Tastes by Eric Gower

Ah, you knew I'd slip a cookbook or two into this round-up, didn't you?

This is a lovely group of recipes that awakened me from my Japanese-versus-Western culinary mindset and started me thinking about how to mix elements of both traditions.

Break out the gari and add it to chopped and sauted peppers! (It's really, really good.)

The New American Plate Cookbook: Recipes for a Healthy Weight and a Healthy Life by The American Institute for Cancer Research

Don't let the off-putting byline ... well ... put you off. (Mmmmm, cancer...) This is a strikingly intelligent and more-often-than-not yummy set of recipes that'll help you eat better and feel better.

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

Into each life some fluff must fall - and I've got a soft spot for Carl Hiaasen's brand of well-localized stories (his beat is southern Florida), lunatic characters, floppy and twisty plots, and lightweight fun.

Also, it fulfilled the most important duty of a work of meaningless entertainment: I started it just after Marilyn and I boarded a flight to New York, and ended it just as we began our descent. Perfect.

Oh, and one final little detail to recommend it: it's the only book in my "10 Top" list that doesn't have a colon in its title. [back to top]

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Edwards is gone. Clinton and Obama are feuding. Guiliani has self-immolated. McCain is pandering while Romney remains reprehensible.

Sorta makes you hungry, doesn't it?

How about an extremely easy-to-make dinner - three items - that's good enough for guests? Especially if you like them. Okay, then: Here's teriyaki scallops with wild rice and cucumber salad.

INGREDIENTS:
• three jumbo sea scallops per person - No, I don't mean those tiny bay scallops that look like miniature marshmallows. We're talking the biggest, freshest sea scallops you can find - and if you can't find really big ones, get four per person. Also, ask your butcher/fishmonger/crustanceanist to make sure to give you whole, unsplit ones.
• enough teriyaki sauce to cover the scallops in a bowl - You can make your own teriyaki sauce, of course, but I'm a lazy fan of both Soy Vay's "Very, Very Teriyaki" and a Japanese teriyaki that I get from the local Nijiya Market here in San Francisco's Japantown - it's called "Ohgon Amakuchi" and it's imported by GP Golden Pacific International. Whatever. Any good not-too-sweet teriyaki sauce'll do. (Update: 01/30/08; 6:30 pm: I just discovered that the sainted, Union City-based Chaka, inventor of the world's best shrimp-and-chicken-and-other-stuff store-bought marinade known as "Chaka's MMM Sauce" [and who, on the side, has worked as a Mr. T impersonator and anti-drug crusader] has released "Chakayaki," a tenderizingly ingrediented pineapple-juice-based teriyaki sauce. I'm on it. Stay tuned.)
• one-third cup of wild rice per two people - Don't worry if that doesn't sound like enough - this stuff fluffs up pretty well. If in doubt, use half a cup for every two people.
• one heaping tablespoon of well-chopped walnuts per person - Don't chop them too fine, just nice little tasteable chunks.
• one heaping tablespoon of chopped dried apricots per person - You can also use other dried fruit - I've used dried cranberries and dried pears with equal success. If the dried fruit is quite hard and dry, soak it in hot water (not boiling) for at least 10 minutes, then drain it well.
• one medium cucumber per two people - Standard, Japanese, or English, your call - though if you use the skinny Japanese variety, increase the amount to two cukes for every three people.
• one medium-sized red onion per six people - If you're making this for fewer than six people, I have every confidence that you can do the requisite math.
• enough "sushi seasoning" rice vinegar to cover the cucumbers and onions in a bowl after you slice them - We'll get to the slicing in a minute. The vinegar that I've been using for years is by Mitsukan, which I also get from the local Nijiya Market here in San Francisco's Japantown - I've seen it labeled both "Sushi Seasoning" and "Seasoned Rice Vinegar." You can also occasionally find it on Amazon or other online sources. Great stuff; you'll find tons of ways to use it.
• two tablespoons of butter - If you have a lot of rice, walnuts, dried fruit, and scallops, you'll need more, but two tablespoons is a good start.
• a pinch or three of chopped parsley - This is strictly for looks, so omit it if you'd like.
• one assistant for five minutes - You won't need them until the very end of this process. They don't need to be smart, talented, or imbued with culinary expertise - all they have to do is scoop out some salad and rice onto plates and avoid saying, "What the %$#@! are you doing! You're burning the scallops!!"

PREPARATION:
First, wash and pat dry the scallops. You'll notice that many (or all) of them have a tougher-than-the-rest muscle lump somewhere on their sides. I prefer to peel off that lump and toss it, because it tends to cook up tougher than the rest of the scallop. Your call. In any case, put the scallops into a bowl and pour in enough teriyaki sauce to barely cover them. Wiggle 'em around a bit to make sure that the sauce gets in between them. Put them in the fridge to marinate.

Then the wild rice. The nice thing about cooking wild rice (which isn't really a rice, per se, but a grass) is that it isn't as finicky as real rice about the amount of water you use, as long as you use enough. That is, it's hard to use too much - you'll just drain the excess away when you're done. A good rule of thumb is about four cups of water to every half-cup of wild rice.

Dump the water into a pot for which you have a good fitting lid, then dump in all the rice, then a pinch of salt, and get the whole thing going into a well-rolling boil. Then turn the heat way down to a low simmer, cover the pot, and let it simmer for a half an hour. At that point, turn off the heat, and let it sit for another half hour. Tough, huh? Oh, and now would be a good time to take those scallops out of the fridge to let them begin to come back to room temperature.

While the rice is cooking, chop up the walnuts and dried fruit, and soak the fruit if need be. Also, it's time to slice up the cucumbers and onions. What you need to do here is slice both of them very thin - about a millimeter, if possible. I use a mandoline, but a steady hand, good eye, and sharp knife works well, as well. (Side note: If you do use a mandoline, be careful! I wasn't, once, and quite literally sliced off about a quarter inch of the tips of two of my fingers, nails included. And, yes, it does hurt as much as it sounds like it might.)

When you've sliced the red onion into thin rounds, quarter each round and break them up into individual pieces. Put the cucumber and onion slices into a small bowl, mix them up well, then pour on enough sushi-seasoning vinegar to cover them. On a hot day, you might want to cover this and put it into the fridge to cool. Or not. Your call. Oh, and if you'd like, add few thin slices of tako (octopus) - I like it, though I don't know may others who do.

When the rice is done, you're nearly done, as well. Drain the rice as completely as possible. Using a frying pan or heavy-bottomed pot with a lid, toss in a tablespoon of butter, melt it on medium heat, then toss in the walnuts and saute them for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Then throw in the dried fruit and saute for another minute or two - you may want to add a bit more butter, if that's your to your taste. Then dump in the rice, stir the whole thing up really well over medium heat, then lower the heat to as low as it'll go and cover the pan or pot.

Now it's scallop time. Drain the excess teriyaki sauce from the marinade into another heavy-bottomed frying pan - if you have a lot of scallops, you may have too much sauce; all you need is just enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Plop in another tablespoon of butter. The trick here is to get the pan as hot as your range is capable of getting it, then sear the scallops very briefly - say, a minute or so on each side. When the pan is bubbling almost to the point of burning, it's ready.

Now tell your assistant to put the cucumber salad and wild rice onto plates. I find it easy to just grab the salad from the bowl using my hands so that I can squeeze out the excess vinegar - you don't want the vinegar running all over the plate. While you're cooking the scallops, have your assistant cover at least one-half of each plate with the wild rice.

Pop those scallops into the hot, hot pan and let them sear. In about a minute, turn them over and let them sear again. Depending upon how hot your pan is, total cooking time should be somewhere between two and four minutes. When they're done, put three or four scallops on top of the wild rice on each plate, dust them with a wee bit of parsley for looks, and serve.

Oh, and since your frying pan might look like a total disaster area, you're going to want to get it soaking a bit before you eat so that cleanup after dinner won't be as difficult. As your assistant is serving, splash a little water on the pan, watch it go crazy, then a little more, swirl it around, then a little more until the pan is cool enough that you can fill it with a half-inch or so of water to begin softening those baked-on sugars from the burnt teriyaki sauce. Now go eat - your scallops are getting cold. [back to top]

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Okay, I know I criticized Hillary Clinton in my last post, and I don't want to open myself up to accusations of either piling on or becoming fixated on the woman's candidacy, but when a politician makes as baldly self-serving a move as did Clinton over the weekend, the entire blogosphere should rise up and say, "You can't get away with that!" Even if - since she's such a well-connected pol - she just might.

Let me explain what has me so riled up.

As you probably know, the rules panel of the national Democratic Party overwhelmingly ruled that Michigan and Florida would have their nominating-convention delegates stripped from them if they moved their primaries to before February 5. The Michigan and Florida state Democratic Parties, however, ignored that threat and moved their primary dates anyway.

The national Democratic Party then stripped the delegates, as is their right. With no delegates at stake and presumably to avoid angering the Democratic National Committee, most Democratic candidates - including Obama and Edwards - removed their names from the Michigan ballot; I'm not completely clear about who's on the Florida ballot, but I do know that Obama and Edwards aren't campaigning there.

With only Clinton on the ballot in Michigan, guess who "won" that primary? Of course - except that that "win" garnered Clinton no delegates due to the Democratic Party's ruling. But now Clinton wants that ruling changed, and "her" delegates reinstated. She also wants the delegates restored in Florida, which is voting as I type these words on Tuesday the 29th.

Ms. Clinton, what part of "playing by the rules" don't you understand? You knew going into Michigan and Florida that no delegates were to be gained there. Then after the other candidates pulled out, you got your hollow victory - and now you're trying to change the rules retroactively in a bald attempt to enlarge your delegate count before the nominating convention.

If I were that selfishly sneaky when I was a kid, my dad would have swatted my skinny little behind.

Imagine, if you will, that Clinton's ties to the party's old guard succeed in getting her those delegates - an outcome which I predict has a better that 50-50 chance of occurring - and by doing so she squeaks by Obama (Edwards, I fear, is dead meat) and wins the nomination. A few ramifications:

• The Democratic party will be torn apart by internal conflicts, with old smoke-filled-room Clintonites versus young-and-restless Obamites.
• The Republicans will gleefully exploit those conflicts while at the same time attacking Clinton for her sleaziness (while also secretly admiring her gall, I'd imagine...).
• Then, if Clinton should somehow still win (which I personally believe is impossible since she's as hated by the right as Bush is by the left), we'd have a president as unworthy of admiration as the current inhabitant, resulting in four more years of slime and shame.

Does anyone remember Yakov Smirnoff, the heavily accented "Soviet Russia" comic back in the '80? His then-famous tag line comes to mind:

"America: What a Country!" [back to top]

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About ten days ago, there was still doubt about the outcome of the Democratic party caucuses in Nevada. Barack Obama had just received the endorsement of the state's powerful Culinary Union, and the Hillary ("Billary?" "Hillbilly?") machine had launched a court case against a state Democratic party policy that allowed working-class members of their party to caucus on the Las Vegas strip rather than forcing them to take time off work to travel to their home precincts - an impossible burden, in most cases, for an hourly wage-slave.

The Clintonians wanted to deny those working folks the chance to caucus at their workplaces - that is, to express their opinions without hurting their family's incomes. Why? Well, obviously, because the Clinton machine thought that if those working-class folks had a chance to vote the way their unions had suggested they should, they'd vote for Obama rather than Clinton.

I thought naked disenfranchisement of the poor and working class was a Republican tactic. I was, apparently, wrong.

Clinton's win-at-any-costs worldview led her to sue to block the caucus-at-your-workplace system, using a transparent "unfairness" argument that did little to hide the fact that all she wanted to do was ensure that the caucuses would go her way.

Her's was a move straight from the Republican playbook. Pure Florida. Pure Ohio. Pure Katherine Harris. Pure Kenneth Blackwell. Pure Karl Rove. Pure Lee Atwater.

Pure bullshit.

The Nevada courts then denied her request - but she squeeked by with a narrow vitory in the caucuses anyway.

Up until she filed that court case, I had been torn about Hillary Clinton. Much of what she says is admirable, but her tactics have often been reprehensible. Her Nevada machinations were the last straw.

I then wrote her an email in which I lied about my actual situation, but in which my true feelings were, indeed, expressed. It read as follows:

"Ms. Clinton:

I and many of my friends have been debating about whom to support in the upcoming California primary. In our cranky coterie of 50- and 60-somethings we've got Clinton supporters, Obama supporters, and then there's me, the lonely Edwards supporter. We're all middle-class-and-up, educated liberals - you know, your average well-to-do white-folk Democratic Joes and Janes.

Last night a bunch of us got together at an unrelated social event, and the topic of your Nevada "stop the caucuses on the Las Vegas Strip" effort came up. I gotta tell you, each and every one of the pro-Hillary folks were totally and thoroughly appalled. Seriously appalled. The names "Karl Rove" and "Lee Atwater" were bandied about. They were all so ticked off that they're now morphing into dedicated Obamites (though I'm hoping I might still bend a few towards "Angry John").

You lost them, Ms. Clinton. I can only think - hope, actually - that you also lost many, many more with that old-politics, low-blow move. And you're hoping that the average California voter won't notice your chicanery - and, sadly, you're probably correct.

But even though the average California voter may have missed your campaign's Las Vegas mendacity, your potential California donors didn't. Your move to shut down working-class folks’ chance to have their voices heard was not "American," in its truest sense - if "American" can ever mean anything wonderful anymore.

Hey, if you want our votes, convince us that that it's possible for America to be wonderful again. We of your generation remember when it was. It isn't anymore. And do realize that "wonderful" doesn't mean "powerful." It doesn't mean "rich." It doesn't mean "right." It doesn't mean "better." It means a transcendent sense of participating in a shared sense of a greater - inexplicable, but trusted - good.

But, y'know, I don't even know why I'm writing this, since no one will ever read it. The chance of you ever reading this middle-class non-donor's thoughts is, well, about the same as that of Dennis Kucinich ever becoming president.

Ah, Ms. Clinton, in the words of Marlon Brando, "You coulda been a contender." And in the words of Peter Fonda "[You] blew it."

Yeah, so, I turned into a politician for a moment or three, lying to advance my cause - but, hey, she never read it and I never received a response. (Well, duh ... I'm certainly not going to be a contributor to her campaign, so why should they waste a nanosecond on me?)

But now I have a problem.

I'm a big-time Edwards supporter, primarily because he's the only one in both parties who seems to understand the stranglehold that corporate power has over our government. He's also seriously strong on gay and women's rights. But he has no prayer whatsoever of being nominated. None. Hey, he's anti-corporate, and who runs the freakin' electoral process in today's America if not the corporate media? Hmm...? I rest my case.

So, I need a bit of advice. For whom should I vote on the 5th? The California primary actually seem to have some meaning this year - for the first time in this 57-year-old's memory. Should I vote for Edwards out of principle, or for Obama to keep Hillary and her increasingly strident husband at bay?

If Edwards gets enough votes, he could acquire enough delegates to move into a brokered convention with some bargaining clout. If, however, Clinton acquires enough delegates to leapfrog a brokered convention, my vote would have been wasted, and I will have helped "old politics" continue its mendacious, bullshit stranglehold on all of us.

On February 5th, should I vote for Edwards or Obama? I really, really don't know. I realize that I have only one measly vote, but I'm still idealistic enough to think that my lonely li'l vote still matters.

Am I wrong?

Damn...

1/29/08: A note from blog reader Jeff Carlock: "Sounds to me like you’re leaning to Obama as the last remaining anti-Hillary. I like Edwards on the issues too, but I’m not sure why he didn’t drop out after South Carolina - he can’t want another shot at Vice, can he? or maybe Attorney-General, he’d be good at that." [back to top]

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Remember Real Men Don't Eat Quiche? No? Then - especially if you're a guy - consider yourself lucky. Quiche is a great, simple-to-make dinner that has three great advantages: First, it's hard for a couple to eat an entire quiche in one sitting, so you have a made-to-order lunch for the next day. Second, you can fill a quiche with practically anything, so it's a great depository for leftovers. And third, if your significant other just had some dental work done - as did Marilyn yesterday - it's easy on the choppers.

It still being Dungeness crab season here in the Bay Area, I decided to splurge a bit and pop for some of that sweet, sweet crab meat. Yeah, it's expensive, but, hey, here at Chez Polonaise we treat ourselves well. One heads-up, though: The flavor of crab is muted when it's quichified, so if you prefer your crab to be more prominent in a dish, don't go the quiche route. If you like subtlety, however, read on.

INGREDIENTS:
• one Pillsbury "Just Unroll!" pie crust - If you prefer to make your own pie crust, more power to you. I don't, and I've found that these Pillsbury crusts - which come in packs of two - are better than what I can muster. Use one, freeze the other - it'll keep for two months or so.
• three-quarters of a pound of crab meat - Since we live in Dungeness country, it'd be silly to use any other kind at this time of year - but use whatever you can find.
• one-quarter cup of Stilton cheese, crumbled - You can use other blue cheeses, if you'd like, but Stilton is my hands-down favorite - and using only a quarter cup allows me to indulge myself later in the week with a snack of Stilton, crackers, and olives.
• one cup of mozzarella, shedded - A lot of quiches use Swiss or Emmenthaler cheeses as their base, but mozzarella doesn't overpower the crab as much as those others do. You can also experiment with Monterey Jack, if you're feeling frisky..
• one-quarter cup of Parmesan cheese, grated - If you use that pre-grated crap in the green cylnders, your grandmother will roll over in her grave. Don't do that to the poor woman.
• one or two jars of artichoke hearts - Cut them up into, say, three pieces per. Get rid of any tough leaves.
• a cup and a half of half-and-half - Feel free to use milk, but I prefer half-and-half. Do note, however, that I do weigh 210 pounds ... mmmm, milk fat...
• six eggs - Always buy eggs from free range chickens - you don't want to be party to Guantanafowl torture camps, do you? Let the eggs get to room temperature, then crack 'em open and blend them with a fork or whisk.
• salt and pepper to taste - The pepper goes in before you cook the quiche, the salt waits until serving time.
• a pinch of nutmeg - I bought a jar of Morton & Bassett whole nutmeg about a decade ago, and at the rate I'm using it, I'll will it to my grandchildren. However, freshly grated whole nutmeg is infinitely to be preferred over ground nutmeg, even when it's been sitting in an air-tight jar for years..

PREPARATION:
Preheat your oven to 350°. Toss some flour on your counter or cutting board, unroll one of the Pillsbury pie crusts onto it, and roll it out a bit with a flour-dusted rolling pin so that it'll easily fill a nine- or ten-inch pie plate. Pop it into the plate, and carefully press it firmly onto the botom and sides, then over the lip. Trim off any excess over the lip of the pie plate.

Get a cookie sheet or some other baking tray. Cut a circle of aluminum foil about three inches wider than each axis of your pie plate, and set it on the cookie sheet. Place your pie-plate-with-crust on the foil.

Pop the crab, artichoke hearts, and Stilton into a bowl, and mix 'em up (I've thought of maybe adding some capers at this point, but haven't yet tried it. Hmmm...). Grate some pepper into the bowl as well, and mix it up. (By the way, if the spirit so moves you, now would be a good time to toss in some thyme, scallions, or cilantro - or even a squirt of lemon juice. Your call.) Distribute the mozzarella on the bottom of the pie plate, then distribute the crab etc. on top of the mozzarella.

After you've beaten the eggs, add the half-and-half (or milk - or even cream, if chubbification is not a personal concern), then pour this chicken-cow mixture over the stuff in the pie plate. Next, grate some nutmeg over the whole shebang - not a lot, just a mere dusting. Then distribute the Parmesan over the entire floating swamp of goodness.

Put the thang into the oven. After 20 minutes, pull it out, and wrap that excess aluminum foil over the lip of the crust, protecting it so that it won't get burnt. Put the quiche back into the oven, and after 20 more minutes, stick a toothpick or skewer into it - if it comes out clean, take the quiche out of the oven. If the toothpick or skewer is still damp, give the quiche five more minutes, test again, then five more minutes if it's still not ready.

Take it out and let it sit for five minutes. Then cut it into slices and serve it with a green salad and a warmed sourdough batard with an oil-and-balsamic-vinegar dipping sauce - rip off chunks of the sourdough, dip 'em, and eat 'em. All good stuff. [back to top]

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If you keep your savings in the bank, just like mommy and daddy taught you to, the Federal Reserve Board just picked your pocket.

Yesterday the Fed jumped in with a hefty 0.75-percent funds-rate reduction, staving off the stock-market insta-crash that I had pessimistically predicted on Monday. While this was good news for those folks who keep their savings in the market (or in mutual funds - same diff...), it's bad news for folks who have money in a good ol' traditional bank.

Money-market funds, savings accounts, and CDs (no, not the copy-protected ones by Celine Dion) are tied to the funds rate - their returns will drop as the funds rate has dropped. And, of course, if - when? - the Fed drops the funds rate again, those returns will drop even further.

But who actually keeps money in the bank anymore? After all, don't all we sophisticated, smarty-pants middle-classers listen to our money managers and diversify our holdings among a raft of different "instruments" or "products?" Of course we do - and don't the wealthy also steer clear of lowly bank accounts? Sure - they may own the banks, but not the accounts in them.

So who got hurt by yesterday's Fed finagling? C'mon, take a wild guess. Yup, you're right: the working class and the poor - those folks who don't have enough savings to risk the uncertainty of the mutual-funds market, or who don't live in a culture that shares investment savvy among its members.

On the bright side, if any of those folks got suckered into a predatory adjustable-rate subprime loan in the last couple of years, the Fed's move will take a bit of pressure off of them - though not immediately.

However, pity the poor, prudent souls who held off on buying a home with a deceptive adjustable-rate mortgage, and who, instead, actually saved their money so that they could afford a hefty down payment and a reasonable fixed-rate loan.

Those thrifty folks are being hit by a double whammy: First, the Fed's move will reduce the returns on their savings. Second, there's a better-than-even chance that the dropping funds rate will induce inflation. When inflation increases, the interest rates on long-term fixed-rate mortgages also increase, since lenders want to ensure that the payments they'll receive down the road keep up with inflation.

Bottom line: The Fed's move halted - temporarily? - a market dive that would have been bad for everybody, rich and poor alike. But in doing so, it put the squeeze on the working class and poor.

Surprised? I thought not. [back to top]

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It's been a busy-but-enjoyable couple of weeks. Some serious job-hunting, some familial fun, plus a trip to New York to see Kevin Klein in Cyrano de Bergerac and the recently discovered Mark Twain farce, Is He Dead? Both were quite wonderful - which is something I couldn't at all say about the Richard Prince exhibition that I caught at the Guggenheim entitled Spiritual America, which was - with the possible exception of his most recent work - an almost total crock.

I consider myself relatively sophisticated when it comes to contemporary art - well, more sophisticated than most Bush appointees to the management team at the National Endowment for the Arts, in any case - but Prince's "importance" as an "appropriator" is totally lost on me. I could go on - and maybe someday I might - but it seems that he was seduced into becoming the latest darling of the know-nothing rich, and simply cranked out work after essentially identical work, satisfying his market and fattening his financial portfolio. Rephotographed Marlboro advertisements and biker chicks from the back pages of Easy Rider? Puh-leeze!

And then there was Macworld Expo, and with it my first gig as a new contributor to Macworld magazine and Macworld.com. (I've severed all my ties to Future US - maybe I'll write about the complex professional and cultural reasons for that decision some day.) If you're at all interested in my coverage of this annual gathering of the Mac-intoxicated masses, check out my analysis of reactions to the Apple announcements, an overview of some more-important cameras and printers that were introduced at the show, a full-on storage-system geekfest, and, finally, a breezy look at some iPod accessories and other gadgets. It was a fun week, but oh-so-time-consuming. Early mornings, late nights, and sore, sore feet.

But great theater, bad art, RAID controllers, and sore feet aren't the reasons that I've returned to Myslewski.com after a few weeks off. I'm here today to warn you about tomorrow.

I don't pretend to be financially sophisticated in any way, shape, or form, but I'm willing to bet that the Recession of 2008/2009 will begin in earnest tomorrow when the markets open in New York. That is, I would be willing to bet, but I think it'd be better for me to hang onto every stray bit of cash that's floating through Bancel-Myslewski Enterprises these days.

Let me explain: Although the NYC markets were shut down today (in honor of The Noble Black Man Who Accomplished Quite a Lot but Didn't Really Shake the White Power Structure All that Much and Thankfully Was Taken out of the Picture Right When He Was Starting to Really Rock the Boat), the European, Asian, and South American markets weren't. And here's a bit of news from them:

• Britain's FTSE-100 - down 5.5 percent
• France's CAC-40 - down 6.8 percent
• Germany's DAX 30 - down 7.2 percent
• China's Shanghai Composite - down 5.1 percent
• Japan Nikkei - down 3.9 percent
• India's BSE - down 7.4 percent (and was down over 10 percent earlier in the day)
• Hong Kong's Hang Seng - down 5.5 percent (its biggest drop since 9/11)
• Canada's S&P/TSX - down 4.8 percent
• Brazil's Bovespa - down 6.6 percent
• Argentina's Merval - down 6.3 percent

And that was yesterday (January 21st in Asia). The rout is continuing as the sun rises in Asia on the 22nd (I'm writing this at 5:15 PST): The Nikkei, for example, has already dropped over 4 percent down to below 13,000 for the first time since 2005.

Much of this insecurity - a stock market, remember, is about tomorrow, not yesterday or today - is, of course, due to the subprime debacle initiated in the U.S. and emulated in other countries. A recession caused by the loss of capital by large banks and, thus, the tightening of credit is, of course, not fun for, as the old anti-war poster said, "for children and other living things," but this time it may be even worse here in the U.S.

Again, I don't pretend to be wise in the ways of economic theory, but here's my fear: To a degree unmatched at any time in U.S. history, our banking system is awash in foreign capital - much of it recently poured into our financial institutions in an effort to keep them afloat (which is A Good Thing for capitalists worldwide). If, however, that capital is sorely needed back in its home country, it may quite reasonably flow back out to rejuvenate the systems of the countries from which it came.

Not good. Starved for capital, our economy goes into no-growth or even reverse-growth mode. And, remember, the forclosure-induced squeeze on the U.S. capital markets is not scheduled to peak until late this summer - in other words, we have a lot farther to go down this road to perdition.

One final thought: If we do, indeed, stumble into either recession (which some economists say we are already in) or depression, who benefits in the presidential race? My money would be on my particular bête noire, Mitt Romney - he of the "I'm a businessman and I fixed the Olympics and I'm a hard-nosed money manager and I can set the ship right!" And, on the Democratic side, Ms. Experience herself.

Or maybe the Republican masses with vote for the newly trim bass player, 'cause they all think it'd be a good time to start a-prayin'.

Or maybe I'm dead wrong, and the markets will be solid tomorrow, with folks snapping up bargains and thanking those who panicked today for allowing them to acquire solid securities at rock-bottom prices.

I dunno. Do you? [back to top]

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