I thought this, the Tasting Menu from a restaraunt called "The Fat Duck", was a joke. It reads like a Monty Python sketch. Some of the choices:

• Snail Porridge
• Salmon Poached with Liquorice
• Mango and Douglas Fir Puree
• Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream

Crazy stuff. But, I was wrong; it's a real place. And not only is it a real place...

The Fat Duck Restaurant in Bray, Berkshire was described by a global panel of 600 chefs, food critics and restaurateurs, as the Best Restaurant on the Planet. (here)

Well then. I should get out more.

Gilbert Gottfried has been declared less sexy than Osama Bin Laden.

I just punched my iPod.

Two Fridays ago, I accidentally dropped it as I was walking out of my office. It fell on carpet, and when I got it home, it seemed to be working OK, so I thought everything was fine. Then, last week, back at work, while it's playing I noticed little sounds in the background - like little electronic crickets, steadily chirping.

After a few day's worth of poking, I discovered that if I push down on the case a little bit, the noise stops. It's not a grounding issue, because I can get the noise to stop by putting a full coffee cup on top of the iPod, too. I also found that I can get the crickets to stop for a long time if I thump it just right with my finger. So, I'm guessing there's something slightly loose inside the iPod.

Today, I couldn't get the thump to work. So I beat upon my iPod with my fist - just once. It didn't care. And now I hate what I've become - an iPod abuser. Such a long journey from the iPod worshipper I started out as.

Class, your assignment over the weekend is to read the following paper: "Origin of the Novel Species Noodleous doubleous: Evidence for Intelligent Design", by Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.

Abstract

Penne Rigate will spontaneously insert itself into Rigatoni (order pasta) under liquid to gas transition conditions of H₂O to create the previously unobserved species Noodleous doubleous. The estimated probability of this spontaneous generation event is too low to be explained by thermodynamics and therefore apparently represents intelligent design.

There may be a quiz on Monday.

The Quincunx, in a nutshell:

There are only 30 people in all of England; and no matter how you choose them, in every group of five people, three will know each other, two will be working to kill or rob one of the others, and one will have two names; and it's been that way for a hundred years.

The plot is absurdly complex (and not just because it's tightly bound to the intricacies of 19th C. British estate and inheritance laws and procedure!) ; and every few pages the main characters have to take time out from implementing their idiotic schemes and explain the whole thing to each other - because even they can't keep it straight without periodic recitation. But when they do that, you can be assured that a Big Plot Twist is about to happen ! And that means everything they just explained will need to be revised ! Frankly, I think they probably know that's exactly what will happen and are just helping refresh the reader's memory so he'll know where to put the new information when it arrives.

But after more than 700 extremely dense pages (dense in typeface and in language), the author ends it without answering the Big Question. And I'm all like ... Now you pull out the subtlety? After 700 pages of melodramatic wankery, you decide ambiguity is the way to end this thing? What The Fuck?

But, at least I got to learn that there was a brisk trade in human flesh (from stolen corpses. for meat.) in mid-1800's London.

(And, you should really read the link I stuffed up there. It brings a whole new dimension to bad writing ! )

(repost)

news from me has a link to a video of a Rice Krispies commercial from 1964, the music for which was written and recorded by the Rolling stones.

The Pensacola News Journal has a story:

It may have been built with heavenly intentions, but a judge has ruled that the creationism theme park known as Dinosaur Adventure Land still must obey earthly laws.

Escambia County authorities this week locked up a museum building at the theme park on North Palafox Street in Pensacola after Circuit Judge Michael Allen ruled the owners were in contempt of court.

Owners of the park, which shows how dinosaurs may have roamed the Earth just a few thousand years ago, did not obtain a building permit before constructing the building in 2002. They have argued in and out of court that it violates their "deeply held" religious beliefs, and that the church-run facility does not have to obtain permits.

After almost four years of litigation, the judge disagreed and said the county has the authority to close the building until the owners comply with regulations.

The judge also fined two church leaders $500 each per day for every day the building is used or occupied. If church officials continue to refuse to comply with local ordinances, the judge may decide that the building can be razed, Allen's ruling said.

County commissioners showed no sympathy to members of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry who spoke out Thursday night at a commission meeting about the county's actions.

"Scripture also says 'Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.' And right now, Caesar demands a building permit," County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead said.

tee hee.

(via The Panda's Thumb

Digby's sidekick, tristero, wrote a little post where he says:

If this country so much as opens the question to serious consideration "whether first-strike nukes are justified in the present world," then we are already halfway down the path to a nuclear holocaust. All it will take to tip it over is one more major terrorist attack, and Bush will guarantee the nukes will fall. And if you don't think there will be another major terrorist attack in America, either a real one or one faked by this administration, you have not been paying attention to what has been going on.

(my emphasis)

I thought this was a bit of a stretch. It's one thing to think BushCo is corrupt, dishonest and criminal - it's quite another to think they'd be complicit in a "major terrorist attack in America". Of course, that was enough to bring out the "Bush was involved in 9/11!" gang, guns a-blazing: "explosives in the towers!", "the alleged hijackers are still alive!" Now, nobody seems to have any actual evidence that BushCo was involved in 9/11 - all they can point to are coincidences or things that are not completely understood; and those places, they claim, are where we find The Hand of Bush in action! Like Intelligent Design, with Bush as the designer, things are just too perfect for them to have happened without the hand of their favorite supernaturally-clever designer. And so Bush is both the evil mastermind and the incompetent boob - he's genius enough to have brought down the WTC while making it look, to most of the world, like the work of a handful of angry young Middle-Easterners (and evil enough to have done it at all) - he's even got Bin Laden and the rest of Al-Q playing along with the charade. And now Bush is supposedly going to start a war with Iran which will end up a horrible mess because, ya know, he's an incompetent boob - as proved by how he's handled everything else during his Presidency.

The designer invents the vast complex web of Life On Earth, and for kicks, arranges the Universe to make it look like it's billions of years old when it's really only 6,000 - but he can't come up with a reasonable human immune system or a digestive tract that can handle beans.

You just have to have faith that he's behind it all.

And for doubting that Bush is both a supernatural genius and a bumbling idiot at the same time, I get the following comment:

Cleek. Listen closely. You'll be the first one clubbed and left hanging from the lamppost.

Now, I can't tell if that's a death threat towards me or not. If it is, I guess that means death threats aren't just for right-wing wackos, the leftiest lefties are more than happy to get down in the gutter, too. If it's some kind of warning that I'll "be the first one clubbed" because I don't see the grand conspiracy, then... well, OK - if you say so.

Either way, what a fucking crazy world...

Wife's in Vegas at a bachelorette party (oy). So, I was over at some friend's house last night. They had just come back from Panama (while we were in Japan) and they hd some rum that was made for sipping, not for mixing. Here I thought I was a man of the world, and I never even considered that rum was something anyone would ever drink in the absence of some sort of whipped fruit mixture. "So, you just... sip it?" I forget exactly what the rum was called (Payrat?) , but it was absolutely delicious. It was as good as the tequila I had in Tokyo. Among other things, we talked about fish - my expereince wish raw fish in Japan and their's with fried in Panama. They told me I should go to the fish market at the farmer's market in Raleigh, for the freshest fish around. So, I went there.

It took a bit of wandering and driving to find it. I took a stroll through the Nahunta Pork Center, where I got to see all the kinds of pork parts people eat - hearts? But I finally found found the seafood place. It was a smallish building, across the street from the farmer's market proper, with a gigantic counter full of whole fresh fish. They had fillets of cod, whiting and tilapia (which confused me cause I though tilapia was a south american fish), but 80% of it was. I was the only white person in the place. I puzzled that over for a bit: is it only white people who like their fish filleted ? Are whole Croakers and Rockfish something boring ol' white America hasn't caught onto yet? Why can't I find whiting at Whole Foods ? So many tough questions... Before I left, I was this close to buying a chunk of cod, even though I don't think cod has anything to do with the NC coast, when I remembered: when the wife is out of town, and you don't have to work in the morning, it's time for ribeye and alcohol! And so it was written, and so it was done, medium rare. Tomorrow I'll eat a stupid fish.

So, off to the fancy supermarket to find a nice steak. On the way I listened to the Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party and the Libertines - all relatively new British bands. Before I'd heard any of them, I'd heard on various blogs there's some controversy about who's more "authentic": the Libertines or the Arctic Monkeys. I considered myself lucky to not know WTF the discussion was about, at the time. Now, I'm happy to be able to appreciate them on their own merits, completely outside the context of British popularized opinion. I don't have a favorite of the three - they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses. They're all good with the top down and nothing specific to do.

So, I bought a monster ribeye, a bottle of wine and a potato, and had myself a feast - watching VH1 Classic and FUSE (which I guess is MTV for angry young men). They had a full half hour of White Stripes! Now, I like the White Stripes, but I had no idea they were actually really popular with the "kids". And I had no idea that they had a dozen videos - I'd only ever seen one, and that came with the iTunes download of their latest album. I don't even know where you'd find a video these days, MTV is all game shows. But, Jack White talked and talked between 15-second clips of the videos, and made himself sound a little flakey, while Meg White sat there like a lump. I guess there's a whole philsophy behind the red/white/black colro scheme and the "third man" name and all this other junk - yadayadayayda. But, I don't buy their records for their interview skills. They do a great job of stripping away all the fuiller and getting down to the guts. It's a totally different scene from what was going on the channel above (which filled-in during commerical) - the BlingBling rap channel, I think. So, I was a bit surprised to find that the Strips were popular enough to warrant a whole half-hour special.

I guess I should get out more... ?

On the other hand, we went to a club a few weeks ago (pre-Japan), where they have a jukebox that can download songs off the internet - so you can get almost anything you want. My party hogged the jukebox, played mostly speed metal and classic punk for hours. I played The New Pornographers, Pixies, White Stripes and the Arctic Monkeys and they were met with a general shrug. During the 20 minute live vesion f Inna Gada Davida (no shit, the guy who played the Misfits and Metallica played that thing) some 20 year old girl came up to me and asked when we'd be done so she could to play some "classic 80's hair metal".

Can't keep up I Can't keep up
I Can't keep up I Can't keep up
I'm Out of step, with the world.

(yeah, I finally bought some Minor Threat of my own)

Love that wine