No posts recently – I’ve been sick since last week. Bleh. No fever (merci à dieu!) – but miserably achy and per usual neither aspirin nor Wal-profen are providing any relief. Wish I had some Percocet lying around… But enough about me!
Anyway, this did manage to elicit a wan smile from me – and I’m sure if I were my usual vibrantly healthy self, I’d’ve guffawed. Enjoy!
from The Hairpin
OK, I seldom use this forum to toot my own horn (heh, yeah right…). But I decided to use up the rest of the cream I bought this week with another serving of pasta with peas, shallots and lemon. And, as I often do, I made a few adjustments to the recipe based on previous experience – which, if I do say so myself, resulted in an amazing bowl of pasta. Just enough salt, cream, lemon and parmigiano – plus the shallots were cooked exactly right and the peas (yes, frozen) were still bright green and both crispy and tender… It was perfect (though I suppose I should’ve added some pignoli…) and I feel sorry for everyone who didn’t get to have this for dinner.
I knew I had some leftover pasta from last night waiting at home for dinner this evening – Gemelli con Pisselini, Scagloni e Crema al Limone, to be exact. But sadly, as I suspected, it wasn’t quite a dinner-sized portion and I was still a bit peckish after finishing…
Luckily though, I had cucumber, roasted peppers, ceci, scallions and feta cheese – all I’d need to create a nice hearty salad to round out dinner. But then I thought to myself, “Self, that really sounds like quite a production, having to chop and peel and make dressing – ugh, I’m exhausted just thinking about it…”
So I decided to have a secondo piatto of all the ice cream left in my freezer. Turned out to be a wise decision – so much easier! And really, I was just tidying the place up. Not to mention that a major reason I commute by bike is so that I can drink more wine eat more ice cream…
Ordinarily I’d run out and buy these magnificent dolls, because really who doesn’t love some Kate and Wils dolls – or any kind of dolls, for that matter? They are not weird or creepy at all!
But on closer inspection, I’m pretty sure that these two come to life while you’re sleeping and eat your face off, so I guess I’ll pass. Oh well!
from Dlisted
Diana Vilibert over at The Hairpin posted a recipe for a Chocolate Bramble – apparently a good way to use up leftover gin (do people really have leftover booze? Not a big problem in my place…) that you don’t want to pack when you’re moving. But my favorite part was her definition of packing panic that sets in during the last days before having to move – the moment when you realize that you are nowhere near finished and you have no idea how you’ll ever be ready in time and why did you ever decide to move in the first place?
One minute you’re carefully wrapping your candles in tissue paper before setting them down in the shoebox you’ve carefully marked (with a brand new Sharpie and a newly discovered talent in calligraphy) as the candle shoebox. And the next, you’re sweating and throwing your vibrator in with your shoes and Tupperware, and you’re hunched over and limping for some reason, and marking all of the boxes “miscellaneous” and then “misc.” and finally just telling yourself you don’t need to mark the boxes; that you’ll definitely remember that, obviously, the sort of smallish, but not the smallest, maybe third smallest box is the Nair and baking supplies box.
The “Nair and baking supplies box” continues to kill me. Also, I am never moving ever, if only to avoid having to pack.
I got a beam rack for my bike, along with a pack designed to work with it. I’m the first to admit, a bike trunk is going to seriously impinge on my bike’s faux-hipster cred – but on the other hand it seems to be perfect. I can fit in my gym gear, my locks and one bottle of wine. Or no gym gear, three bottles of wine and a pint of ice cream. And I could probably fit in a small box of Kleenex, since I’m usually crying when I eat the ice cream…
Happily, though, the rack has a quick release lever – so I can remove it for weekend rides and thus continue to elicit “What is that wrinkly old guy doing riding such a cool bike?” stares from all and sundry.
It’s German designer and glamor puss Harald Glööckler! He is the master of the house of Pompöös and apparently a fixture on the German version of QVC. He is also (obv) a paragon of Teutonic elegance.
Here he is with the dewy, natural and always fun-loving Brigitte Nielsen. Just be careful not to stare into their eyes – they might eat your soul.
Also, this!
from Dlisted
The folks over at Arc90 have come up with ideas for a few new apps – and Appathy is far and away the best.
With its groundbreaking ClearDisinterest(tm) technology, Appathy senses and captures the seemingly un-capturable: the unimpressed gaze, the rolled eyes, the brief moment of disdain.
Spent all day yesterday at the SF Superior Court as a prospective juror. Things started off well enough – I was to be there at 8:45 AM. I live fairly close by and it was a quick ride on La Nuit Verte, so I got there with plenty of time to spare. Or so I thought… When I drove into the Civic Center garage to lock up my bike, I discovered I had left the keys to my locks at home. Ugh. Zoomed home, retrieved my keys, changed shirts as I was now drenched with sweat due to exertion and stress from my phobia about being late and then headed back.
Amazingly, I was at the courthouse right on time – only to discover that the package inspecting x-ray machine was on the fritz, meaning hand searches of all bags prior to admittance. The line to get into the building was a block long, extending from Polk all the way to Van Ness. I finally made it in inside after half an hour. Good thing I rushed back!
After an hour or so of sitting around in the jury assembly room, was sent up along with 60 or so other poor saps to sit through voir dire.
Voir dire – from Old French and derives from Latin verum, “that which is true”. It is not related to the modern French word voir, which derives from Latin vidēre (“to see”), though the expression is now often interpreted by false etymology to mean “to see [them] say”. It is a process in which counsel asks prospective jurors a variety of questions to determine if they harbor any bias related to the case being tried. Answers are generally provided in a rambling and nonsensical manner and are most typically unrelated to the question asked. It is a delight.
What is especially enjoyable is that there were basically four questions: Have you filed a workers’ comp claim? Have you had any dealings, good or bad, with liability insurance carriers? Have you been sued? Have you ever had an accident involving an elevator? Yet, even after four hours of the same line of questioning, every prospective juror responded as if they had never heard the questions or considered their answers. And many took it as an opportunity to deliver long-winded monologues, on subjects including expounding on the philosophy that “facts” don’t exist and are merely a construct; the difficulty their daughter is having during her studies in London; that elevators make them “uncomfortable”; and their membership in the Christian Fellowship Club while attending UC San Diego.
By 3:00 in the afternoon, I’d begun to groan audibly (though not sufficiently so to risk being found in contempt of court) and was cradling my head in my hands. But, thank Vishnu/Odin/Flying Spaghetti Monster/et al., I escaped unscathed, dismissed from serving and not eligible to be called again for another year.
Here he is! My new baby, La Nuit Verte a.k.a. François Stein a.k.a. Frankie. I could not be more delighted – and he is even more awesome than I imagined.
My new bike is a way better mid-life-crisis-mobile than a red Porsche convertible – and in this town, probably more likely to get me laid.
Thanks to one-and-all at Mission Bicycle Company for setting me up with such a sweet ride.
This is amazing.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Be sure to watch the other two films made by the same fellows.
Here’s the President signing the debt bill into law – along with some enhancement of the photo courtesy of Wonkette. This explains everything…
Hooray! Obama and the Dems gave away the store and got nothing in return. I’m really looking forward to working until age 85 or death (whichever comes first)! But at least the Tea Party learned a valuable lesson – extortion works!
If you’re like me and your head has been constantly and repeatedly exploding, here’s some relief. It’s a chimp bottle-feeding a baby tiger! Just ignore the part where the chimp is chained to the floor and focus on the tiger-monkey wrestling at the end!
Of course, if you’d prefer to have your head continue exploding, here is Michelle Bachmann explaining why she continues to reap the financial benefits of government programs she excoriates.
from The Awl
It’s hard to imagine us Americans – fat, lazy, energy-hogging, wasteful Americans – responding in the same way as the Japanese have to a significant reduction in their capacity to generate electricity.
And the Japanese are clearly adept at making the obvious and correct decisions as to what they can do without – and what they can’t.
Sakuko Saeki, 75, said she had not only switched off but also unplugged her household appliances. She barely turned on the air-conditioning, instead using a fan in her living room. But there was one appliance she could not give up after all: an automatic toilet, called a washlet, the kind that flushes by itself, raises and lowers the lid on its own, and never ceases to amaze foreigners visiting Japan for the first time.
“I’d turned off my washlet,” Ms. Saeki said, “but I stopped doing that.”
You can take my Washlet when you pry it from my cold dead cheeks!
And what’s with the NYT not even mentioning the primary and most delightful function of the Washlet? It washes your ass (and your hoo-haw, if you’ve got one of those) with a refreshing and invigorating stream of warm water – and it is the crowning achievement of civilization. Talk about burying the lede…
from NY Times
It's a Complete Outrage 