I’m taking a quick little break for the weekend, but this is in no way an HTTP Error 447, as proposed by Mark Pilgrim:

The requested resource is not currently available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition SHOULD NOT be considered permanent. The server owner wishes you to believe that this condition is permanent, but it isn’t really. If the resource is going to be permanently unavailable, the status code 410 (Gone) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cachable unless indicated otherwise.

Rather, I’m just enjoying the short period of silence that starts the holiday season before I start scraping the bottom of my cookie jar. That way I can buy a fresh hundred-stack of blank CD-Rs. Pleasures of the flesh always make for cheap holiday presents.

Vegging out on the couch watching the James Bond movie marathon on TNN Spike TV is a far more appealing choice for the rest of the afternoon.

(I found the E-447 link from Mog-ra — Mog after calling on the honor of grayskull in order for her to preserve her sanity.)

In the Philippines it is called sisig, a pork dish whose preparation methods vary with every household. It’s no big surprise, since just about every household’s recipe for something is the “only” recipe for it. Barbecue, turkey, stuffing, whatever. The attitude is common with Philippine families too, and if it’s something you can’t cook on your own, you’d have this one place you’ll always go for. It applies with sisig as well.

Sisig is simply pork, grilled on open coals or deep fried, and then chopped and seasoned well. As I’ve said, the choice of seasonings differ. The choice of the cut of meat also depends on the person cooking it. Usually, the cheeks of the hog are used, but it can turn some people off. The following recipe, written a la Joy of Cooking, is how my family does it.

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Michele takes the role of Thanksgiving guru for the evening and I couldn’t resist asking the question:

Hi Michele. Usually family holidays when everyone is actually together in our extended-family home (Mom and Stepdad, Sis and her brood, and feisty me) are the most tense, since it’s during days like Thanksgiving that everyone is actually with everyone else.

What is the polite thing to do when the unavoidable Massive Family Conflict™ over the dinner table that ends in “Fine!” “Fine!” happens? Does everyone silently stuff their faces? Or does everyone go their separate ways to the Thanksgiving Party that each person’s friends invited them to? (Sister gets to stay at her house with her nest.)

Her answer:

I feel your pain, Jay. I have a sister who has perfected the “Fine!” routine. She even adds an “Phhft!” to it once in a while and storms off into another room, where she proceeds to ignore us all.

There’s an easy solution to this, Jay. Just place a big bottle of Jack Daniels in the middle of the table. Give everyone, even the kids, a shot glass. Everytime someone starts a fight, everyone take a shot of Jack. Within an hour you’ll all be too drunk to care about fighting anymore, or you’ll have all died from alcohol poisoning. Either way, the fighting is over.

Mmmmm. Jack Daniels. (An aside to the webmasters of that damned site: anyone who can compute ages, say, ten to eleven years old, can enter your site. Eschew the entrance page will ya?)

I knew it. Coffee really didn’t lead us to great family fun and togetherness. Maybe alcohol could help this time. Maybe I’ll set aside some wine coolers for the kids instead, so that if every adult does die of alcohol poisoning, at least there would actually be people left behind to inherit our meager possessions. I wonder if their aunties would squander the little money we’d be leaving the wee ones.

Anyhoo, thanks dahlin’. I suppose a bottle of Jack would be cheaper than the cab ride to the party fifteen miles away, coupled with the potential for great embarassment brought about by being drunk after a family “Fine! Fine!” Fight.