Barbarian's Curmudgeonly Rantings

I cooked bacon on the grill tonight. I learned a few things:

• When cooking bacon on the grill, there will be fire. Lots and lots of fire.


• Don't bother with the cute little water sprayer, go ahead and close the lid


• This will result in lots of smoke, but at least the bacon will stop burning away.


• Use long tongs and something to protect your hands. I suggest welding gloves. (They're what I use in the kitchen anyway.)


• Some of the bacon will be 'sacrificed' to the Gods of fire. Accept this.


• Oh dear Gods this bacon is GOOOOOOD!

Oh yeah, there are burgers too ... but I keep getting distracted by the bacon.

I'm shopping for popover pans on Amazon. I found a perfect set for not a lot of money, so I'm going to order those. No problem so far. The set I'm ordering has 17 reviews, all five star. There's also a listing under the usual "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" section with what looks like an indentical pan with a review rating of 1. Of course I had to check this out ... they looked identical, so what's wrong with them?

Here is the one and only review for the other pan:

The pan did not work for me. It wound up costing me more in shipping to get and return the pan than the item itself cost, and those costs were non-refundable. I am not happy.

Wha ...? How, exactly, did it "not work" for you? Were the pans warpped? Were they a different metal than listed? Were they some sort of fourth-dimensional hyper-cube construction that leaked popover batter all over your spleen, perhaps?

I'm trying to not sound like too much of a curmudgeon or an elitist, even if I do know how many homes I own, but I'm almost to the point of regarding amature reviews as completely useless. "I couldn't get it to work." Well gee, have you considered that perhaps you're a complete moron? The GPSr really works better if you're smarter than the little plastic box.

I'm feeling the same way about comments on Youtube or even worse GoComics.Com. This is a "feature" that they started recently wherein subscribers can make comments about the comics and add to the tags. I've written them and told them I'd be happy to be a paid subscriber if they'd give me a way to turn this off. I have yet to hear back from them.

Mmmm ... popovers.