Here's another link brought to my attention by the talented web-surfers of BoingBoing.

At www.lileks.com, you'll find a compilation of some of the most horrific recipies of the mid-twentieth century. The author has organized them into categories and annotated the blurry food photos with his own commentary, including this one from "Meat Meat Meat!":

One of the more popular cuts: pressed shank braised with smoker's phlegm. It may take a few tries to get Uncle Hank to hack up enough Lucky sauce, so be patient.

Some of these recipe photos are truly alarming. If you ever needed an argument for becoming a vegetarian, these photos should suffice.

Link: Gallery of Regrettable Food: Specialties

My dinner last night was a spinach salad from the drive-through window at Wendy's. Now, I can understand that there's a lot of pressure on the drive-through staff, and sometimes it's not easy to make a snap decision about which utensil would best suit the food. But really. You gave me a knife. Not a fork -- or even a spoon -- but a lonely plastic knife.

A bit of nonsense verse that I read as a child sprang to mind, though I can't remember where it's from:

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on my knife

Replace peas and honey with spinach leaves and Italian dressing and you can picture how my meal went.

I made a trip to the office supply room recently. I needed Post-It™ notes -- or "yellow sticky notes" if you want to be generic.

Is it really necessary to have 5 billion different formats of sticky note? They really do come in all sizes and shapes. You could probably write a novel on notepad-size self-adhesive paper.

I can understand that you don't need the big ones all the time. I sometimes use the smallish ones for little notes while I'm editing, and I cut them into strips if I need bookmarks. But there are also stickies that have "Sign Here ->" pre-printed on them. Wouldn't it make more sense to get blank ones and just write "Sign Here" on them? Why would anyone need a whole pad of "Sign Here" stickies? Why can't you just design your documents so that it's clear where you should sign?

I've seen such waste. I've seen entire pads of large stickies used for nothing but bookmarks -- on every second page of a 500 page document! Shocking, but true!

Something must be done about this. Somewhere, entire forests of little yellow trees are being clearcut.

www.khaaan.com brings you the single most dramatic moment in cinematic history. Why, I get cold shivers up my spine just thinking of it.

(Link via Kottke.org)

Isn't "deracinate" an excellent word? It kind of slips off the tongue to curl delicately in the air and linger... like a wisp of smoke from an extinguished candle.

It's a shame that if you use it in casual conversation, you'd be considered a pompous twit.

Note to self: even when you're bored, do not remove the labels from your canned foods.



If anyone has any idea what this is, please let me know.

I've been sick this week, and daytime tv is driving me slowly, but surely, insane. As I explained to someone earlier today, this thing is lingering like a... lingering thing. And then it occurred to me to wonder about other lingering similes. Writers so often struggle to compare one lingering thing to another. Besides the usual selection (like a fog, like a cold, like a hangover), some lingerings stand out, like a vegetarian at an NRA banquet.

Here they are, some random "lingering like a..." similes pulled from the web:

lingering -- like a train passing dysfunction junction
lingering like a fog on the lowlands
lingering like a just extinguished candle
Lingering like a ghost that / Was determined to finish that song.
lingering like a toxic cloud
lingering like a series of smoke signals
lingering like a train's lonely whistle on the night wind
lingering like a river smooth / Along its grassy borders
lingering like a dreary January afternoon with no sun in a dimly lit room
lingering like a shallow wind
lingering like a well loved guest
lingering like a fart in a hot car
lingering, like a woman?s pique when she is disappointed in her lover
lingering like a great big elephant that has been sleeping next to the Prime Minister
lingering like a benevolent ghost dog protector
lingering, like a village maiden
lingering like a salsa stain on a white shirt
lingering like a running canker in the nation?s psyche
lingering like a fine tasting cigarette that he doesn't want to burnout
lingering like a ticking time bomb in the archives
lingering like a buoy in the lake
lingering like a retarded parakeet in an unlatched cage
lingering like a lizards dead kiss
Lingering like a stolen god / That threatens to destroy our sin
lingering like a balloon nearly out of helium
lingering like a moth in a flood light
lingering like a small river through an ancient town
lingering like a palm print on the city's face
lingering like a raincoat across my teeth
lingering like a whale at a buffet

Some similes are best forgotten, lest they linger like an anteater at an all-you-can eat ant bar. Like a copy of Police Academy 5 on the video store shelves. Like a grungy teen at a hemp rally. Like a one legged ring-tailed lemur at that place where they give free stuff to one-legged ring-tailed lemurs. Like a flock of ravenous vultures circling over the carcass of this blog entry.

OK, I'm done. Your turn.

In my latest big project, I decided that it was time to give my futon couch the ol' heave-ho and replace it with a real couch. The futon served me well over the last ten years -- and by that I mean that it held me up off the floor. Beyond that, it's the worst piece of furniture that I've ever had the misfortune to own. As a futon bed, it's lumpy and hard; as a couch it's misshapen in a way that makes me think that it was designed for aliens. Either that or the Swedes who designed it were mutants.

I originally bought it as a student, when I needed inexpensive but functional furniture. It has followed me around from home to home (to home to home to home to home, etc. -- I moved a lot in the 90s). Now I'm an adult, or like to think that I am, and I feel it's time to graduate to a real couch. I want a couch with cushions. I want a couch that I can sit or lie on without bruising myself on the wooden frame. I want a couch that doesn't make my living room look like the "before" shots of the crummy bachelor's slum in "While You Were Out".

So...

Step One: disassemble the futon to make way for the new couch. There's no point buying a new couch if there's no place to put it.

Done.

Step Two: move futon frame pieces out of the living room.

Right, here's where things went wrong. My hallway is now full of pieces of unfinished pine futon frame. I can't sell it or give it away (I've tried -- no one will take it). I can't throw it in the dumpster because the pieces are too big. I can't cut it up because I don't have a saw. I can't put it in my car because the car's too small.

It's stuck. This is a serious problem. I need solutions here -- and keep in mind that no one in their right mind would want this thing. (That would explain how I came into possession of it.) My living room is now couchless and my hallway is almost impassable. And did I mention that this started in late February?

It's time for a creative solution.

This entry, written on March 27, 2004, was recently found in my "drafts" folder.

It's so reassuring to see an American senator weilding his political power in the name of the downtrodden wealthy, and defending Americans from the threat of the evil file-sharers, who are of course all pornographers of the worst kind. (Self-described musician and) US Senator Orrin Hatch equates the people and technology that permits that sharing of files between computers with the exploitation of children and pornography. God help you if you have allowed a file to be copied from one machine to another. Evil! You are evil, all!!

Unscrupulous corporations could distribute to children and students a ?piracy machine? designed to tempt them to engage in copyright piracy or pornography distribution.

Link: Orrin Hatch website "News Room"

Link: via BoingBong.net: Congress moving to criminalize P2P

I found this entry, originally written on April 12, 2003, in my drafts folder. Apparently I either forgot about it, or felt that it was too pointless to post... which would be odd, because that doesn't usually stop me.



O noble red shirt: Crewman Jones
You left this life the way you entered it:
Screaming your bloody head off.

On the scifi.com bulletin board, a user by the name of Guerticus Maximus provides a count of red-shirt deaths by episode:

The Apple = 4
The Changeling = 4
Obsession = 4
Mirror, Mirror = 3
And The Children Shall Lead = 2
What Are Little Girls Made Of = 2
Arena = 1
By Any Other Name = 1
The Devil In The Dark = 1
Elaan Of Troyius = 1
Friday's Child = 1
The Omega Glory = 1
That Which Survives = 1
The Ultimate Computer = 1
Wink Of An Eye = 1

While visiting my parents on the weekend, I noticed a sign at the entrance to one of the trails. Apparently, the people in charge of the parks in Richmond felt that a series of pictographs would be the best way to communicate the rules.

Here they are: the rules of Richmond's West Dyke Trail:


The first one seems to indicate who should yield to whom. Either that or it shows who gets run over by whom. Apparently the guy on the bike can run over either the person with one hand or the drunk sailor with pegs for feet.


Dogs should be attentive? Dogs should point the way? Dogs should run on AC power?


Cyclists should break wind at hitch-hikers? Or is that a one-legged man on a pogo stick?



Always leave your fingers next to a flower.



Tiny dogs should be buried? Tiny dogs should be struck with a shovel? I didn't care for the implications of this one.