from the comments
Did I ever tell y’all about the time Daryl and I went to a reading by Mark Richard? It was in Dallas at the Border’s at Preston/Royal, and he was doing a tour for Fishboy. I remember being beside myself that we were going to hear him read. Only six or seven people were there — I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, the reading was great, and he took questions, and someone asked whether there was a story behind his writing of “Happiness of the Garden Variety.” And he said, well, he and his friend, Steve, were living in this place where they did work in change for rent, and there was this horse named Buster, and they really did pull it out into the bay after it died of bloat in the tomato patch. But when it washed up at the motel, it wasn’t really at the Armada Inn, like in the story. It was at the Ramada Inn. He’d changed that part.
One Way Ticket to Mars
“This is not a suicide mission. The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony,” Schultz-Makuch, with Washington State University, and Davies, at Arizona State, write in this month’s Journal of Cosmology.
“Their role would be to establish a base camp to which more colonists would eventually be sent, and to carry out important scientific and technological projects,” the scientists wrote.
Because of the harsh radioactive environment in space, the authors propose people in in their mid-50s or 60s would be the right age to go, Schultz-Makuch told Discovery News. The lifestyle would be tough, but the authors figure the space pioneers would have about a decade to work on a settlement.
I would go in a second if Cindy would. We like the desert. Also: I like to look for rocks, Cindy likes to sleep a lot, and we don’t eat meat so growing vegetables would suit us fine. I wonder if UPS delivers, though? We could fix it up real nice.
headline of the day
Mont. woman fends off bear attack with zucchini
the feeling of rust against my salad fingers is almost orgasmic
Update: There are eight episodes.
headline of the day
Space Veggies for Astronauts Grow in Arizona Desert
Pick a Number–Any Number
Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann told supporters shortly after the rally that “we’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today — because we were witnesses.”
CBS commissioned an estimate from AirPhotosLive, a company that provides crowd sizes based on aerial photos. CBS noted that there’s a margin of error of plus or minus 9,000. So, by this estimate, there were as few as 78,000 attendees or as many as 96,000.
I’m sure miracles occured there, too. They just haven’t put the finishing touches on the documentation yet.
Cindy Traveling
…for a visit in El Paso. Haven’t heard from her yet but I’m getting telepathic messages. They are general, though. Like categories.
from the comments
My sister found an overgrown cucumber that had been discarded from the garden. The preschooler drew a face on it and named it Chewie. It got overly ripe after a while and we had to stage a raid when she was asleep, find Chewie’s hiding place and throw it away.
The other day my husband was asking why I hadn’t eaten a cucumber he had brought home to me, produce grown by a co-worker. I love cukes and was ignoring a delicious, unwaxed version.
“It looks like Chewie,” I said.
I did not make this up.
Quote of the Day (from Sheila’s email)
Sheila: I liked it when Mr. Potato Head was just a collection of facial parts that you were meant to insert in a real tuber.
Microman USA
This toast to the Tea Party movement and American freedom stars Microman, the new hero of the conservative right. Microman loves liberty and loves his life. He just doesn’t like the notion of paying taxes on his hard-earned money and watching his country turn socialist.
Presented in a series of original comic strips, Microman’s humorous musings on education, fiscal policy, foreign affairs, healthcare, and more will make readers laugh and feel good about fighting for the principles our Founding Fathers set forth.
Tonight
I am moving from Room 8 to Room 12. On breaks between hauls I am watching “Pink Flamingos” and getting all soppy-sentimental about my vanished youth.
Dear Clusterflock,
What is a woman thinking when she decides to wear 6 inch heels grocery shopping at 9 am on a Monday morning?
— Walt
*Vegetables tag added because she was in the produce section when I spotted her.
Eat Me: I ate a Jewboy at Shopsin’s.
I would like to share with you peeps one of my favorite blogs: The Tipsy Baker. She discusses food, family, and cooking (and drinking) in a hilarious, neurotic, obsessive, honest, and casual way and makes most other food writing seem tedious and f’in boring. She raises animals (often illegally), drives hours out of her way for random and annoying ingredients, and gives serious consideration to the psychological torture she inflicts on her family by cooking everything and anything (including pig ears). She is also a fantastic writer, and it’s a pleasure to read her posts not just for the food but for the witty shit she regularly crafts:
I hope you’re reading this, Kenny Shopsin. Do you have a Google Alert set up with your name? Awesome. Your coleslaw recipe sucks. A full tablespoon of salt for half a head of cabbage? Are you fucking with us?
I’m not generally a profane person, but
a. Kenny Shopsin is, and I spent three hours last night rereading his fantastically entertaining book.
b. He ruined my coleslaw.But here’s the kicker. I had a few big glasses of red wine last night and what with the wine and the supersalty coleslaw, I woke up at midnight with a bit of a thirst. So, I made one of Shopsin’s egg creams. Drank it down. Made another. Worth the price of the book.
Her photos are at times unappetizing and often horrifying, but I make no effort to hide my deep desire to make this cardamom cake.
p.s. posted by Ronya. I’m good with the first name.
Paolo Bacigalupi’s Novel The Windup Girl Recommended
Science fiction readers here will probably already know of this novel, but if you don’t often read in the genre this would be a good place to dip in. I will leave the plot summary to the reviewers at Amazon, but let me touch on what I see as compelling features of the book. Set in a future Thailand, the world presented is one in which oil is a rare source of power and the genetic modification of food sources has led to “calorie wars,” with food-borne plagues introduced that compel the use of resistant seeds. Those of you who have seen documentaries such as The Future of Food, and know of the connivings of Monsanto corporation, will have an immediate grasp of the foundations of Bacigalupi’s fictional projections. Climate change is another burden those in this novel must confront.
The novel may be described as dystopian, but what stands out is resilience and ingenuity–the persistent will to find ways around obsolete approaches to survival. And just as in our day, some of the new approaches generate unforseen consequences that give rise to new global threats.
“What it is hanging is not a dumbbell, but loneliness.”
In the end, that french fry was able to hold firm, and I was moved by the french fry’s unwavering determination, so I did not continue tormenting it, so it can live out its old age…
A Chinese netizen set out to test the claim that an unwrapped McDonald’s Happy Meal does not rot, even after being left out for a year. Conclusion: bullshit.
Does McDonald’s rot or not? Photos refute American dietitian’s fallacy
(Via @fugueur)
Doomsday Protection Under a Desert
BARSTOW, Calif. – A company with a doomsday plan is taking money for what it promises will be a comfortable, nuke-proof bunker under the Mojave Desert, with an atrium, gym and jail, and sloppy joes and pearl potatoes on the menu.
See here. What would we want in a clusterbunker? Probably not sloppy joes and pearl potatoes.
I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth
Things Not to Say When Visiting
Talking to you is like having to live in a beige house.
When you speak my teeth hurt.
Try to forget more.
What you say makes me not want to eat ever again.
point, counterpoint
Towns: You’re saying they pay cash? For organ transplants and cancer and heart cases, they pay cash?
Bell: I said they pay cash or work out other arrangements. I know for a fact. I know someone in the medical field who has been paid with vegetables from the Mennonite community.
Between paying for heart transplants with chickens and broccoli or protecting us from Department of Defense implanted vaginal-rectum microchips, I’d say our current political discourse is pretty robust.
Update: The economics of a chicken-based health care system.
Total U.S. health care costs in 2008: $2.3 trillion
US population: About 300 million
Average cost of health care per person: $7,681
Average weight of a chicken: 5.9 lbs
Market price per pound: 85 cents
Average spot price per chicken: $5.02
Average number of chickens per resident needed to cover health care costs: 1,530 chickens
Total number of chickens needed to cover United States health care costs: 459 billion chickens
Estimated worldwide chicken population: 16 billion chickens
Current worldwide chicken shortage to cover U.S. health care: 443 billion cluckers
Do the math.
from the comments
I dreamed last night that Daryl invited someone for dinner (that right there is pretty dreamy because he’d never do such a thing), but anyway, he invited this youngish guy and his wife, and the youngish guy had what looked like a tommy gun or some kind of semi-automatic weapon and somehow I got into a shootout with neighbors and took out, oh, a couple dozen of them. I was a surprisingly good shot, everyone thought so. Then we went to the back yard where we were going to eat, and the wife took a phone call and presumably the caller asked her if we were barbecuing and she told the person no, they were going to have to eat just vegetation.
from the comments
A friend of mine went to some big asparagus festival in Galt, or some place like that, and didn’t pee for the entire day for fear of the port-o-pot stench.
Who Needs History
AUSTIN – Republicans on the State Board of Education soundly rejected a Democratic-backed proposal Thursday that would have required Texas students to be taught the reasons behind the prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights.
See the whole sad tale here.
pepper
As our landscape has gone from crisp frozen white to gray, brown, rust, charcoal, dripping with rain and the slush that gets over the edge of your shoes, leaving you with wet socks, and more freezing rain in the forecast… I look inside the house for something brighter.
the first legal male prostitute
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.
Congratulations.
(via marginal revolution)
noah | networked organisms and habitats
An open-source citizen science project by three of my classmates.
I don’t have an iPhone, or even a data plan for the smartphone I do have, so I can’t submit critter spottings to Project Noah. All you people with your fancy iPhones can contribute, though, using Noah’s beta iPhone app; sign up on the site to be a tester.
