popplers

Steve Dallas doesn't really seem like the vegan type

For a limited time only: Opus takes on Thanksgiving dinner.

Whistling is next on the list.

I love the Onion: RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs. (And reminiscent of another all-time favorite headline: RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music.)

Grateful panda

Maybe it's just me, but every time I look at this panda cub pic, I think he's lighting up.

Aeon Flux, Part II

Even better: Mike Russell's culturepulp.com offers a slightly expanded version of the Not-so-secret History of Aeon Flux. It's also nicer, because it all loads on a single page, instead of having to step through frame-by-frame. (He's also got a single-page color PDF version.)

He's done other fun, celebratory cartoons on diverse topics; Ravioli Day, marble fest, comics fest, and Oktoberfest! are the four most recent entries. I like this guy!

I am the edge.

Don't-miss comic from Mike Russell: The not-so-secret history of 'Aeon Flux'. Fantastic!

Home for the holidays

The tech support generation got off easy during this most recent visit. I didn't check Download Squad's list of Top 10 things to do for mom's PC over Thanksgiving, but I did:

• install an updated version of Java (so that mom can play Yahoo! bridge using Firefox instead of Internet Exploiter)
  
• get the sound working on the desktop system again (speakers were plugged into an auxiliary power switch, and the switch wasn't turned on)
  
• check the antivirus defs (up-to-date) and update the spyware detection stuff
  
• install Quicktime and a newer version of the Palm desktop software

Music review and road trip

Last weekend, Chris and I took the S2000 and headed into New Hampshire. It was sunny and in the 50s (although it grew steadily colder as we drove north). We went to a concert at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. The theatre opened in the 1920s as a vaudeville theatre, and later became a movie house and concert hall. It fell on hard times, but was beautifully restored in the mid-90s.

The opening act was The Mammals, a folk/ bluegrass/ newgrass band. They started off with a spirited rendition of Hangman's Reel, then shifted gears hard with their surreal cover of Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Picture, if you will, the song being performed by the Kingston Trio with Margot Timmins (of Cowboy Junkies) on vocals. Or listen to this snippet. The rest of their performance was quite good, with lots of spirited jamming and folk-rock goodness.

Arlo Guthrie was touring with his son Abe and friend Gordon Titcomb. The show was a fun mix of storytelling, songs, and lengthy digressions. Arlo told an amusing story about Bob Dylan coming to visit his father, and followed it up with Mr. Tambourine Man. They played all the hits that you'd expect: Coming Into Los Angeles, Darkest Hour, City of New Orleans, and of course, Alice's Restaurant. The Mammals came back on stage for several of the songs, including a singalong version of This Land is Your Land.

After the show, we (and about 50 other concert-goers) headed over to Hermanos Cocina Mexicana for dinner. Chris and I started off with Melissa's Chipotle Dip (served with veggies and blue corn chips), which was quite yummy (and somewhat healthier than the usual nachos and salsa appetizer). I ordered the veggie Enchilito. I should have ordered the veggie & bean one instead— it was a little too much like a salad rolled up in a tortilla. Chris ordered Bruce's Chimichanga, which rocked. The desserts were fantastic, but we should have split one. After eating the Mexican chocolate pecan pie and a banana chimichanga, we needed to call the paramedics. We rolled to our car and headed for home.

Happy trails

Travel safely, everyone.

p.s. This pic courtesy of the Warning Label Generator.

It's still snowing!

I really wish we'd moved the car into the garage last night. It looks very sad.

It's snowing!

First snow. Pix later.

Just for the Halibut

I am somewhat relieved to find that not all weird news originates in Troy, NY. The land that brought us baked beans on toast, The Smiths, and Monty Python's fish-slapping dance also gives us today's headline: Attacker struck passer-by with fish he wouldn't kiss.

[…] Mr MacGregor said: "The accused asked the complainer 'Do you want to kiss my fish?'

"Mr Bennie made no reply and walked on, at which point the accused said: 'You answer me next time I ask you to kiss a fish', and slapped him round the face with it."

The attack caused reddening and left fish scales sticking to the victim's cheek. Police were called and apprehended Evans nearby. He admitted the offence. […]

Can I help you find something, sir?

Put down your coffee. Swallow. Then read Lileks on shopping for underwear:

[…] Yes, you can help me find something. That underwear you carried in 2003 that you no longer stock. It fit perfectly. It was like the underwear you get in heaven on Orientation Day. You know how sometimes the size is not quite right -- one size rides up like a Munchkin thong, and the next size feels like you're wearing a grocery bag? Not these. […]

The strangest thing that I've seen at work today

So, I'm looking up an address, trying to make sure that we are sending a submission to the correct office of the FDA. The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) went through a re-org recently, and one of the divisions split into two.
While looking through the new org charts, I came across the improbably named Office of Counter-Terrorism and Pediatric Drug Development. Perhaps they are there to combat the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society?

Panda quickies

• Giant Panda Culture Festival
• Panda centenarian
• Panda tickets
• Pleistocene panda
• Panda cam

Cryptozoology 101

I woke up early and went adventuring in Paragon City this morning. While I was making the rounds in Croatoa, I noticed one of the rarer beasties. Sally apparently spawns every ~45 minutes or so, but rarely persists for long. She's a Monster, but she only has one hit point. And you have to defeat her twice to earn the Believer badge. Since I already had the badge, I swam around for a while and took some pictures.

Unfortunately, it looks like my /screenshotui setting got toggled back to "0", so you can't see the Info box for Sallie. But you can check out this humorous article from the Paragon Times: DOES EVIL LURK BENEATH THE WAVES IN CROATOA?

Friday Night Food Blogging

Chris made all kinds of yummy goodies this week, but the African Groundnut Stew was especially good. The weather turned cold this week (it was 34° when I left work on Wednesday night); the stew was spicy, stick-to-your-ribs comfort food.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 1 medium-size yellow onion, diced
  
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
  
• 1 habañero, seeded and chopped
  
• 1 ½ teaspoons peeled and grated fresh ginger
  
• ½ tablespoon dark brown sugar
  
• ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  
• ½ teaspoon ground cumin
  
• 1 ½ pounds winter squash, (we used Hubbard), seeded, peeled, and cut into bite-size cubes (about 3 ½ cups)
  
• 1 ½ cups water
  
• ¼ cup creamy natural peanut butter
  
• Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
  
• 1 15-ounce can black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed
  
• ½ cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, cover, and cook, stirring a few times, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, chiles, ginger, brown sugar, cinnamon, and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Add the squash and stir to coat with the spices. Add 1 ¼ cup of the water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low.
2. Put the peanut butter in a small bowl and slowly add the remaining ¼ cup water, stirring until smooth.
3. Stir the peanut butter mixture into the stew, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes. Allow 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time, add the black-eyed peas and peanuts and simmer until heated through. Before serving, taste to adjust the seasonings.

27 8x10 colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one

While driving home from work (late) last night, I won tickets to Arlo Guthrie at the Capitol Center for the Arts! It's kind of frightening that this is the Alice's Restaurant 40th Anniversary Massacree Tour 2005.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Chopper run

Hard to believe, but it seems like the Capital District has gotten even weirder since I left.

It's hard to figure where city resident Joe Amash might have made his first mistake.

Was it in using an allegedly stolen debit card to buy $500 worth of groceries at a Central Avenue Price Chopper on Aug. 24?

Using his own Advantage card to get deeper discounts?

Getting caught on the store's videotape arguing with a check-out clerk about being overcharged?

Or could it have been the alibi that had grand jurors and police in hysterics that he got the stolen KeyBank Mastercard in a trade with a one-legged man in a bar for a bag of marijuana? […]

Son of a Witch

The Gregory Maguire article in today's Globe prompted me to check the Harper Collins website to see if he will be doing any readings in the area. Sadly, the Events/ News page has precious little information. I went to The Concord Bookshop and saw that he will be reading TODAY at 3:00 pm. Gotta run!

[…] "There's very little about politics in fantasy worlds," Maguire said. "I thought this will be my contribution to the genre, if possible. Make it political, make it dirty, make it sexy."

Maguire started writing when he was in sixth grade in Albany, N.Y. The middle child in a family of seven kids, he found escape and privacy in his own writing as well as in more famous literary lands.

Narnia, Neverland, Wonderland, Middle Earth. Maguire explored them all. And like the precocious sixth grade fictional character he also read, Harriet the Spy, Maguire documented all of his adventures in a spiraled loose leaf journal -- which he keeps to this day.

"There are ways in which I feel the most fully alive when I'm actually engaged in the most total fabrication of life," Maguire says of slipping into his world of talking animals and colorful landscapes. […]

Today is new comics day!

I just received a big box o' goodies from Bob at Aquilonia Comics (Troy, NY). It's been well over a year since I've stopped in to pick up my file, so I've got lots of reading material: 1602, Hellblazer, Planetary, and more. I needed to send a check, but didn't have the shop's address handy. When I Googled to try and find the (now apparently defunct) wizvax.net Aquilonia website, I accidentally stumbled across a web meme that I somehow missed: 10 Places of My City.

10 Places of My City apparently started out as a "Chinese blogger social movement, using [the] Technorati tag system to encourage bloggers to showcase the top 10 places of their own city." Lots of other folks have hopped on (Dallas, London, Toronto), and this morning I found Dan Nugent's entries for Troy, NY. (Aquilonia Comics clocks in at #1.)

I'm inspired. I have to charge up the batteries for the digital camera, and head out into town to take a few photos. Cataloging 10 interesting places in Maynard sounds like a fun project, and I'll post the pix to a Flickr photoset in the near future.

It's Pocky Day!

Today is Veteran's Day (or Remembrance Day, if you are Canadian). But 11/11 is also Pocky Day. (I didn't realize that there were so many different flavors!) To pay tribute to this wonderful snack food, let's take a look at some favorites from Glico's Pocky website:

• Pocky Decorer: "just like a decoration cake on a stick." Any food is better "on a stick."
• Mousse Pocky (which I always want to read as "Mouse Pocky"): "Lighten up your day with Pocky's super […] chocolate." Mmmm… super-chocolate.
• Pocky Kurogoma: "Please enjoy the fragrant flavor of black sesame" and Pocky Kinako: "Please enjoy the fragrant flavor of soybean flour." So polite, they're begging to be liked. Try us, even though we're freaky and don't contain chocolate!
• My personal favorite: Men's Pocky (bitter chocolate). It looks like they have changed the packaging, which used to read: Crispy pretzel dipped in dark chocolate for the type of person who enjoys the finer points in life.

Happy Pocky Day, everyone!

I think today is weird news day

Or perhaps every day is weird news day.

• Those Wacky Japanese (#8,174 in a series): Cute Japanese girls from J-pop band morning musume, inexplicably wearing meat on their heads in the presence of a carnivorous lizard. Mayhem ensues. That is all.
• Those Wacky Japanese (#8,175 in a series): the stocking stuffer that is sure to be on every woman's Christmas wish list: hooter heaters. "The bra has special pads filled with an eco-friendly gel that can be easily heated in a microwave or with a hot water bottle."
• Dog bites man: not news. Man bites dog: news. Man stuffs roast chicken down his pants, bites store manager's arm: just plain fucked-up.
• Signs of the Coming Apocalypse: Home Spa Book for Dogs. Excerpt from the book description on Amazon.com: In this fun, informative handbook, you can easily learn how to treat your pet as well as you should. From tips on grooming, massage, and even canine yoga, The Home Spa Book for Dogs instructs you in the many ways of keeping your dog healthy and happy. Canine yoga. Riiiight.

Varmints in the news

Forget avian flu— what about squirrel-pox?!

Red squirrels, immortalized by British children's author Beatrix Potter as the engaging, nut-obsessed "Squirrel Nutkin," were once common in gardens and woodlands across Britain before coming under threat from the grey variety, which steals the reds' food and carries the squirrel-pox virus.

Well, I feel much safer now. Public health info on squirrel pox from Michigan, where they apparently eat the little buggers:

The carcasses of affected animals are safe for human consumption, since current knowledge indicates the virus is not transmissible to man. Furthermore, the tumors are confined to the skin and are removed when the animal is skinned.

Panda Trifecta!

• Panda matrimony
• Breadwinner panda
• Panda news from The Onion

Ask your doctor

No, Panexa is not the drug that I've been working on.

No matter what you do or where you go, you're always going to be yourself. And Panexa knows this. Your lifestyle is one of the biggest factors in choosing how to live. Why trust it to anything less? Panexa is proven to provide more medication to those who take it than any other comparable solution. Panexa is the right choice, the safe choice. The only choice.

The Swedish are coming! The Swedish are coming!

Boston Globe on the IKEA impact:

No doubt part of the attraction is its exoticism. In a nation of retail uniformity, IKEA, founded in Sweden in 1943, offers shoppers the pretense, at least, of being someplace else, and more interesting. It's not only the Swedish signage, restaurant menu, and the Scandinavian furniture design; but the strikingly un-American egalitarianism in the corporate structure: The curious way employees are referred to as ''co-workers," for example; the way IKEA designers with refreshingly unfamiliar names like Monica Löfven or Carina Bengs get acknowledged in the catalogs; the collegial we're-in-this-together spin to the marketing.