I am having another use-the-smoker party. This is the e-mail I sent out.

(If I forgot anyone in the Philadelphia area, let me know if you’d like to stop by. It will be fun and delicious.)

DEAR FRIENDS, ROMANS, COWORKERS:

THE TIME IS AGAIN UPON US to put more formerly-alive foodstuffs (yes, soybeans count*) into my beautiful vertical water smoker oven contraption. (* Because if turkeys and I both have souls — a big if — then so do soybeans.)

THE CONCEPT FOR THIS EVENT will be something of an early Thanksgiving. A warmup, if you will. A practice round. The centerpiece will be a brined, smoked, basted, delicious turkey. Apparently smoking is a really nice treatment for turkey, and the recipe is coming from the same cookbook as the pork shoulder from last time (i.e., I have high high expectations).

I WILL ALSO SMOKE A TOFURKEY (or something similar) for the herbivores, and probably sausage, mushrooms etc to make meat and vegetarian stuffings (though it won’t actually go into any avian orifices).

THEREFORE, GOOD PEOPLE, it is incumbent upon you to bring your favorite Thanksgiving side dishes. Or beer. Beer is always good. Last time we had 2.5 cases and went through them like they were, well, beer at a barbecue. (That is to say: very quickly.) But I have good, tasty, easy recipes for mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, sweet potato dishes, and various vegetables if you would like to flex your culinary muscles.

THE DATE OF THIS SHINDIG is to be November 21st, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. (Probably. If there’s a popular uprising against the 21st, the 14th may be considered.) The festivities will begin at 5 pm to catch the last of the late Fall twilight. Come early to soak up the sun (along with the best of the beer selection). I live at 1130 S 26th St. It’s a bit out of the way, but very easy to bike to (I have space on my back patio to secure bikes) and there’s always plenty of parking.

PLUS ONES ARE WELCOME. Please RSVP (again, yes, I know that’s redundant) when you can; let me know if you’re bringing anyone, any dietary restrictions, and let me know what you might be so kind as to bring along.

YOU WILL BE REMINDED approximately a week before the event.

CARRY ON, GOOD PEOPLE.

–Patrick
(Henceforth known as Señor Coconut. See below.)

You might have noticed that Halloween is coming up, sooner than expected even. This year I decided to team up with Liz and get back to my nerd-child roots: Star Wars, my first obsession ever. (I won’t go into detail about how deep that obsession was.)

So we’re going as Han Solo and Princess Leia. I have a costume on order, but since it comes with a holster (a badass one), I needed a blaster. Instead of paying through the nose for a replica (on eBay, no less), I figured I could make this toy a little more authentic. (It looked like this when I got it.) The results:

I think it turned out pretty well. I used the replica as a guide, and the only part I’m not really happy with is the grip. I need to darken the brown, which I may be able to do by wearing away at the brown paint (there’s black underneath). If that doesn’t work, I’ll get darker brown spray paint and use the leftover black to try to give it a bit of a gradient.

Hey— Penn 2009 grads made it to the Huffington Post headline photo:

The article that the headline links to, though, is awfully depressing, and makes me very very thankful I have a job.

Speaking of which, I should probably get back to that…

Tomorrow is the big day— I am eschewing my scientist lab coat for a pitmaster’s apron (not really; I don’t/won’t wear either) and taking a stab at “real” barbecue. The smoker that I mentioned getting recently (this one, on deep deep discount) is going to be, well…

This is the recipe I’m using. (Probably this one too.) I can barely look at it without my mouth starting to water.

And now, just because, a piano that was hacked to talk… almost intelligibly:

I tweeted excitedly about this yesterday, but in case you missed it, House used a mirror box on this week’s episode to cure (okay, treat) a belligerent neighbor’s phantom limb pain.

I sat there and giggled for five minutes straight (Liz will confirm) because it’s a treatment invented by one of my favorite scientists — certainly one of my favorite neuroscientists — V.S. Ramachandran. I credit his excellent book Phantoms in the Brain (along with a few excellent professors) for getting me into neuroscience, and the mirror box features heavily in that book.

So check out the episode when it hits Hulu. It was also good to see House’s old team back together— I hope it holds up. The dynamic is priceless; I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

Tell me this guy isn’t creepy to the max:

They’re all pretty solidly head-desk-y (especially the baby cage). Worth a click through.

Plans for January:

Guess what band these lyrics are from:

In December
Drinking horchata
I’d look psychotic
In a balaclava

Answer and embedded music after the break.

(click here to read the rest of this article…)

Today’s XKCD is nerdier than I’ve seen in a while:

Here’s a hint. Make sure you do the “hover” bonus joke.

I found this new bike from Fuji online (and Tweeted it) on Thursday, and I kinda can’t stop thinking about it:

I mean, come on. Tell me that’s not a hot piece of steel. Do any other companies make a road bike with this kind of classic, flat-top-tube geometry?