Midget Retards Lost and Found... 3000 Years Later

NYTimes recently revealed the rare remains of a race of our ancestors found on Palau. They had all these traits that were thought to be prehistoric to humans. But these bones weren't all that old. There were also tons of them in a burial cave and they were between 1400 and 3000 years old. That's nothing! These bones are from people who living and thriving all through Greeks, Romans and Christ.

Lee Berger - the dude who found them on vacation - seems to think that these people were a mutation that happened when some people were blown off course and just started inbreeding on an island. He likens it to the birds of the Galapagos that inspired Darwin. The thing is that these are people, so the differences between them and us are so much easier for us to process.

From their skeletons, it appears that they were very small people (about three feet tall) and looked like they suffered from microcephaly (or little-headedness). Like the 'chuas' or 'rat people' of India, like this lady.

It seems that these people were likely retarded - they certainly had brains smaller than average normal humans or pygmies.


View Larger MapThe most likely way that they landed on Palau is that they got horribly lost in an outrigger canoe and blew their way there. Once there, they were stuck and just set up shop and started making babies.

Allow me to recap the way I'm understanding this story: 3000 years ago, a boatload of retarded midgets blew off course in the middle of the Pacific and founded another species. This sounds like that urban myth about Midgetville, USA. Except it's coming from an anthropologist in the NYTimes.

Weed Prank - Do you know the Muffin Man?

About a month ago, I blogged about the rebellious rage that might have provoked two teens to put weed on a cop's burger. I ran across another story that is from about two years ago, but it's so eerily similar I have to draw the parallel. In a senior prank in Dallas, two kids baked pot-muffins and delivered them to the teachers' lounge in their high school. Here's the news clip...



Stoned Teachers - Watch more free videos

Again, like the New Mexico case, both kids got probation - here they're pretty clear the maximum sentence for food tampering could have been 10-20 years.

Both kids here were also striking out against an authority figure. And they were doing it in an anonymous rather than targeted way - at least in neither case, were they targeting individuals, just adults with a particular job.

In Dallas, though, they actually cooked the weed and therefore activated it. So, their prank worked. The kids in New Mexico, just wasted their weed as well as they burgers they sprinkled them on.

I remember having thoughts about how funny this kind of prank would be when I was in high school. I can see their side of it. But now, I just see all the downsides - like the cops driving, or getting called to a murder while stoned. Or the teachers who wouldn't know what was wrong with them and becoming very paranoid. Or potentially eating too much cafeteria food at lunch and getting the runs during class...

But there's something going on here that's Kids vs Adults that I find fascinating and disheartening. I believe teens should be able to look up to adults and try to learn from them. They're going through some weird, spooky, hormonal shit. We've decided to shut them off and let puberty and adolescence run its course away from the rest of society. We use teachers, schools and police to keep the acne-studded-oddballs off the streets. But then, that appears to foster some ill-will in some kids, doesn't it?

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Easy Bake - Pot Brownies in the Microwave

I've always been a little dubious about the power of eating pot. In most cases, I have failed to do a controlled experiment because I always end up smoking at the same time as I'm eating. Now, this weekend, I had a sore throat and felt like I shouldn't be smoking, so I had the perfect opportunity to give this a whirl.

Usually when I'm baking brownies, it would be a social affair, so I'd make a big pan. But this weekend, it was just me. That's a lot of pot to reach the right level of potency in one or two brownies. And let's be honest, if there's a whole pan - when the munchies kick in, I'll end up eating the whole thing anyway.

So along comes 'Warm Delights' the portion control dessert product pitched for single professional ladies. This is a really exciting breakthrough in pot browies for the same two reasons this appeals to the single gals: 1) it's wicked easy and very quick 2) portion control means you're economizing on the pot.





















Here's how you can bake the perfect pot brownies for one or two people:

1) Crumble or chop the weed into a saucepan and cook with about a tablespoon of butter or veg. oil (butter is better). You want to sautee it on very low heat until it releases that distinctive odor and turns light brown and is crispy to the touch (watch your fingers!). Keep stirring the pot pot - DO NOT BURN IT!















2) Empty the mix into the plastic bowl they include. Pour the hot butter over the mountain of chocolate powder and start to mix it in with a spoon. It will be very thick. You will need to add a little water at a time until it mixes into a smooth batter (like the traditional brownie mix you know and love).















3) Microwave for just 45 seconds. Ah sweet sweet technology. No pre-heating. No waiting. And voila!

4) Then you can fancy it up by squeezing on the chocolate frosting.















5) Eat it.

6) Wait 20-30 minutes and SURPRISE you're easy baked!

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Update: June 2012
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I just stumbled on this post several years after forgetting about the blog entirely.  I am happy it is still up on the web. But I'm shocked to realize this particular post has over 30,000 views - not to mention a whole lot of really helpful comments.  If even a small percentage of you people who have viewed this page get yourselves Easy Baked as a result, I'm so happy to have helped!!!

A few of my own opinions in response to the comments:

For me, the dosage in a brownie is about the same as I would smoke to get the result I want.  If the weed is really potent, I use less, like a bowl.  You can see the size nodule I used in the top picture.  That's about a gram of potent weed, and the brownie was a very strong high.

If I'm using outdoor weed of the sort I'd probably smoke most of a joint over an evening - I use that much.  I don't want to eat more than one brownie in an evening.  I might start with half and eat the other half later.

Baking is like science, you can keep track of how much you use and how long things take in your microwave.  Next time, vary your inputs.  From my experience, my digestive fullness has a big influence on how quickly I metabolize the weed.  If I eat a brownie on a relatively empty stomach, it kicks in much faster and has a bigger impact.  So even though you might be tempted to save the brownie for dessert... you'd be better off starting with it.

I recommend cooking your weed a bit in butter or oil.  Don't skip that step.  That's the slow controlled heating when you're going to activate the psychoactive junk.  The quick heating in the microwave acts primarily on the water molecules.  Steam bubbles in the batter and cooks the cake.  The quick microwave blast doesn't cover you for activating the cannabis.

Eating is preferable to smoking in a lot of situations:

• For people with breathing problems
• On airplanes (finish before security)
• If you're a teenager living in a city
• Family dinners
• Dormitories
• Movies (so you're not most high during the previews)

Enjoy and let me know how it goes :)

Hotels.com - Truly Funny Commercials

I saw this shampoo ad on the plane (thank you, JetBlue) and started laughing out loud. It was kind of embarrassing for the first minute. But whenever I thought about it for the rest of the flight, I just started laughing again. This was more embarrassing because I was flipping back and forth between Top Chef and American History X. You know whenever someone is laughing, you look at their screen... so I'm not sure what conclusions my seatmates came to about me. You have to admit this is funny shit...



They're all collected at thetalentjungle if you want to see a few others.



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Get High for Dinner

Holy Shit! This company seats you and 25 of your guests for dinner and then lifts you up a couple hundred feet in the air while you eat. The chef is there with you and you get seat belted in like a roller-coaster. Costs about 8000 Euro.

Check out the video. Unreal!

cLASSIC cONCENTRATION

I had to concentrate really hard, but I sure did get it...



I'll never hit a bicycle again!

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There Will be Bud...

Whoah! That's Deep

Awhile ago, the NYTimes online had a piece about all the crazy critters we're discovering in the middle and deep ocean. It prompted me to get The Deep by Claire Nouvian which is a total mindbender of a coffee table book full of pictures you'd swear were aliens.

I just watched this TED talk with some cool video footage of octopus camouflage. If you watch nothing else, check out the final 30 seconds...

This has all got me wondering how much the web has come to approximate the known ocean. There's a ton of churn in the surface web. Things are always turning over and getting kicked/digged to the surface. But there's so much more that exists well below in the far and unknown reaches of the land.


WebScout of LA Times points out that nobody can possibly be watching all the shit getting posted on YouTube. It's fun as hell to watch the videos nobody else has seen.

For example, as an amateur Jacques Cousteau, I choose a character at random in an alphabet I don't know, for example: を Then I sort the resulting videos by date and I get to see something nobody else has seen. In this case, I was the very first person to view a video of a guy flying a parachute with a snowblower engine...



I just feel so special for being the first person to see something, ya know? It's like the solitary and special feeling of seeing a weird and wonderful creature in The Deep. You don't know at all what to expect and you're kind of prepared for anything... that appears as a streaming video in a 3"x5" box.

GuestBlog: And Now For Some Meth Cooking!

Let me just say--Vince Gilligan is a flippin' genius. I've had a screenwriter fetish for him since he wrote my favorite X-Files episodes (possibly my favorite of the 90s) "Home" and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" which to jog your memory involved an inbred team of brothers that kept their quad-amputee mother under the bed as a sex snack and Alex Trebek as a Man in Black, respectively. That and about thirty other classics.

And really, in some ways Breaking Bad is all Gilligan's rotten small-town cheerfulness wrapped up in his increasingly sophisticated and cinematic lens. In fact, I have to echo the finally (two weeks ago I couldn't find a single one) tons of positive critics when I say: "Holy crap this is AMC? As in re-runs of It's A Wonderful Life AMC of yore?" Yeah not anymore.

And Bryan Cranston is ungodly great in this role, Walter White, the uber-mild mannered high school chemistry teacher that is dealing with his pregnant Ebay-entrepeneur wife, disabled son, and oh yeah, terminal lung cancer with the same blank, beaten facade til somewhere along the line he snaps--and becomes the man he was always meant to me.

Flashbacks in future episodes bear this out, but all you really need to see are the first, brilliant minute of the show, where Cranston in all his glory is kitted out in a gas mask, tighty whitey underwear, tearasses out of a wildly careening RV, and pulls a gun out of his saggy waistband and aims. Here is a guy who really embraces death, and starts doling out his fair share of it too.

Aaron Paul as White's former/future student Jesse Pinkman deserves some serious props too and if there's any justice, there should be casting agents knocking his door down as the new Colin Farrell or whatever. There's a jumpy, agitated vibe that just screams misguided teenager and yet his soaked in despair meth-fiend downward spiral seems as degraded and world-weary as it gets.

The funny thing is? It's at least as much Walter's fault as his. Here the old steer the young into increasingly fucked up scenarios with little regards to the consequences and Jesse, more than likely desperate for a father figure, obliges. Hapless, and hopeless, he suddenly attaches to his mentor like a gosling to a rubber boot. Walt's at his height when he finally realizes that if he has power over chemistry, and over Jesse and the ripe drug market of New Mexico, he just might have power over death.

At least he'll have a stack of green to burn.

So yeah, what I'm saying is watch it, yeah. I'm definitely more partial to this than reading something about the chairs on In Treatment on the NYT. The series finale is coming soon, but I'm just tickled pink that hard drugs, black comedy and white undies have seemed to found themselves a permanent roost on basic cable.

Beautiful and Entrancing

There's something mesmerizing about this giant puppet girl. You can see all strings attached, but yet it's not hard to make the leap and assume life. In fact, I ended up believing this giant girl must be aware of all the ropes attached to her body.



The tongue is a little creepy though, huh?

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heAD Space

Manny: Ever wish you could defragment yer brain?

Plunge: Compact and repair storage

Manny: Unload bad sector

Plunge: Delete unwanted memories of commercials

Manny: Purge commercial memories

Plunge: Or I guess I could charge for that brain space. Like a banner or a billboard.

Manny: Sounds like a sweet business model when WE charge THEM to post ads in our minds.

Plunge: I best get paid for remembering some shit like Honeycombs commercials from Saturday morning cartoons in the 80's.

Manny: I’ll issue cease and desist letters if they don’t payfrit

Plunge: “Dear Sirs, We're going to stop remembering your shitty commercials… this is a takedown notice. I heretofore refuse to acknowledge that I know who Tony the Tiger is.

Manny: And I sure as shit won't use constructions like "Got Milk?"

Plunge: I didn't like saying "got x" anyway. Now if someone asks, “Got herpes?”
I be like “I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by that”

Plunge: Got ‘Got Milk’?

Manny: Oh yes - we used to carry that catch phrase - but we discontinued memory of that last year.

Micro rage

There are buttons on my microwave for everything except the shit I want to do. There's one that says 'chicken dinner plate' and then 'reheat pizza.' The 'popcorn' button is ubiquitous. The easy-on button makes it easy to only get 30 second increments. I actually puzzled for a long time before figuring out how to get my cheese-crackers to the right level of meltiness without standing in front of the door absorbing radiation waiting to snatch it out.

Clearly 30 seconds is way too long for a little cheese over Triscuits. That's my favored munchie food at the moment. Using the flavored Triscuits is unbelievably delicious with a little slice of cheddar... Mmmm... My favorite flavor is rosemary/olive oil. They're pretty tasty plain too.

The issue is that for a plate of crackers, the optimal moment of melt comes around 12 to 15 seconds. If I hit 'easy on' I have to watch it and stop it around 18 or so. But that requires me to do math and to avoid being distracted for a full quarter-minute!

My attention span is not that reliable. This is what I want my new microwave to look like...

Breaking Badass in the tumble-Weeds

Breaking Bad is oh so good.

It has really satisfying episode chunks. Within each, it manages to fuck with your expectations. It also leads you forward (make no mistake, you'll want more) but without obviously annoying cliffhangers. The first two episodes are available on online at AMC. After that, if you don't have cable, it's torrent time.

Basically the plot theme is Weeds, but in every way jitterier, edgier, more hopped up... Somehow, it's also got me remembering a bit of high school chem. In that vein, here's a way to think about it in an SAT analogy kind of way...

Weeds is to Breaking bad as...
(or to use the annoying symbols)
Weeds : Breaking bad ::

Marijuana : Meth
Suburban mom : HS chem teacher
Agrestic : Albequerque
Hippies : Crank whores
Secret husband DEA agent: Brother-in-law DEA agent
Grow house in Agrestic : Winnebago in the desert
Son who's a nerd : Son with cerebral palsy

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Dig if you will, the .ppt

Oh, I dig! But I don't think this one quite fits the lyrics. I might be like my father, but you might be like my mother. I parsed and parsed until I realized that the lyrics themselves may not be all that logical. Then I, like the doves, had a good cry.

OG Sexy Hands...

You know, Aurorasbored, you can't say the things the NY Times said about Gabriel Byrne without making me think of another great listener:

Taking in the world from the depths of his leather armchair, Paul is all ears. And eyes. And hands. Steepled, clasped in contemplation or lingering at his cheek, those hands, especially, express empathy better than words.



I got all nostalgic for the show and satisfied my jones with this hilariously confrontational interview with Vanilla Ice...

This Just In: NYT Notices Gabriel Bryne Is Attractive

Lingering photographs of his hands at 8!

I admit myself stuck in a non-watching spree with the show. Schedules and a disarmingly fiction-turned-real relationship arguments have kept me from catching it On Demand and HBO has cruelly turned off the free ep pipeline. Though frankly, if you, the "Greatest Network Of Our Time," bleep an adult themed show (I can't imagine anyone younger than twenty tuning in, feel free to correct me) I'm not biting anymore. But you know, curiosity will see me through. I'm placing my bets on Alex having a PTSD episode and shooting everyone, from Paul and Laura to Paul's wife's lover and Sophie's coach.

Anyway, least the Times roots up some veery mild professional criticism of Paul's methods: “At this point in the series,” Dr. Kanaris [clinical psychologist in private practice in Smithtown, N.Y.] added, “I have to say Paul’s counter-transference is not going very well. It makes for good television but bad therapy.”

Also it seems like Byrne is running for cover: "A publicist for Mr. Byrne, who was born in Dublin and who earlier in his career starred in “The Usual Suspects” and was married to Ellen Barkin, declined to make him available to comment about the unusually personal feelings some audience members have developed for him and his character." If you see him on the street and start yelling, "Paul!" remember your grandmother, and her propensity to call soap stars by character names. I mean, this is just a high-minded soap, right?

The creator of the show, Rodrigo Garcia, seems hellbent on making Paul grotesquely unappealing--though I bet by his methods (more Laura attraction, more Gina abuse, calling his wife a whore some more) are just gonna froth everyone up: “Sure, Paul is a sex symbol,” he said. “But he makes mistakes along the way. And now that we’re seeing his real problem, maybe he’s not a god after all. It’s like my mother used to say: Being that close to someone, you are seeing his dirty underwear.”

We shall see--or rather I will, once I catch up.

Google Trends - Can't Get Enough

This Google Trends thing has grabbed me like a catfish. I've definitely been enjoying it. My interest here has been a massive spike over the past three days since my first post on the topic. In fact, my interest and use of google/trends is exactly represented by the world's interest in Walter Mondale. Spooky, right?

Coincidental as that may be, it's clear I'm well behind the curve on this one. Entering "Google Trends" in google/trends indicates the big spike was back in April of 2006 when they launched.

In a spiral down the meta-toilet, I was also curious how many times people Google Google. As it turns out, it's been steadily on the rise.

Penis Fencing

Cracked.com has an absolutely hilarious article on The 15 Most Bizarre Animal Mating Rituals. Among them, is the flatworm's. This hermaphrodite runs into a potential mate, and like two cellmates on Oz, they battle it out to determine who gets to be the male.

Leslie Newman has caught them on film. And I don't mean to spoil it, but here's an excerpt from the dramatic narration. Imagine this being read nature narrator style:

It's known as penis fencing, and the worms are the swordsmen. From the midsection of each flatworm, double daggers protrude. Each dagger is actually a penis. The first one who can make a successful jab can deliver its sperm.

Flatworms Penis Fencing

Pineapple Express has a release date...

August 8, bebe! And here's the trailer...

Google Trends Dirty

This much dugg screen shot comes from Google trends. Being curious/skeptical, I checked and sho-nuff - the world got real curious about "anal fisting" abruptly at the start of 2006. Specifically, Prague and pretty much all of the Czech Republic got real into anal fisting. Truly weird.

Once you start screwing around with Google Trends, it's really engrossing. For example, the trend for "hangover cure" has massive spikes around the holiday season and the leading cities are the stereotypically drunken centers of English language: Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, London... In fact, there are only two U.S. cities in the top ten...

For "police brutality" as a search term, 10 out of 10 top cities are in the U.S. Chicago tops the list and Minneapolis beats out L.A. for second place.

A search on the word "hymen" reveals Iran is very interested in this topic and the U.S. is 10th behind mostly Muslim nations. We are losing the war in born-again virgins.

Your Way Right Away

Someone sent me a story that got me thinking this afternoon. It starts with two kids who were stoned at work in a Burger King in Valencia County, New Mexico. For some dumbass reason, they decided to sprinkle weed on the Whoppers ordered by a police officer (Henry Gabaldon) and consumed by two police officers (Mark Landavazo)- both on duty. The officers ate about half the burger and found leafy green bits that tasted like weed then had it analyzed. Sure enough - it was weed. The kids admitted they did it.

This all happened a few months ago. Just this week, the second kid got probation, just like his partner did a little while ago. All told, I think it was a pretty fair sentence although one of the cops definitely does not agree...




Once you've seen the video, you realize that one kid is Latino (Armijo) and the other one is African American (Nuckols). You also learn the judge is Santa Claus - or possibly a homeless wizard.

Some people - like on the Breitbart.tv forum are mindlessly defending the kids. Some maintain it's "no big deal" since it's just weed and essentially harmless. But there's also a lot of knee-jerk, fuck-a-police type of polemic (if you can count mistyped/mispelled one-sentence comments polemic).

It's clear that many of these comments come from people who feel vindicated by the teenagers' pot sabotage. They are happy that someone 'struck back' against police.

On the other side of the thin blue line,the police reaction shows a lot of frustration that these two kids were not locked up for assault. I don't think these kids should have gone to jail, but I can see why this i really unsettling. The officers were not targeted for being dicks, but because the guy ordering was a cop. This was a random anonymous attack like minor league terrorism.

What's interesting about this incident - and people's reactions - is that they're not about the individuals involved. This was a minor skirmish in a grand struggle battle between cops and teenagers - with some added twists of cops vs minorities.

Cops live in fear of the people they police for reasons just like this. Some of them respond by trying to inspire a little more fear in the people they encounter. That's the way things go with an armed occupation. Is it fundamentally different than our occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan?

I might be making this connection because of the bullying cop videos I've seen recently. This one was big on Digg last week...



When we see these things, we'd like to think these are isolated individuals abusing power. My first reaction was WOW what a cock! This guy definitely shouldn't be a cop. But surely he's in a class by himself... This was kinda what we tried to believe with the pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib when they surfaced. Then I saw a nearly identical one...



The common element I see is fear and confusion on the part of the officers. They confront the kids head-on. They single out an individual in front of his friends - probably in a semi conscious decision to 'make an example' of him. To break him. Then things just escalate.

Once you enter a confrontation, there has to be a winner and a loser. You can't just stop and say - look this was a big misunderstanding. This is true of individuals, groups and nations.

Cookin with Coolio - Second Episode

I was not impressed with the first episode of this show on My Damn Channel, but the second - has fixed most of my earlier complaints! The recipe is an actual recipe - he's sort of braising a cheap cut of beef with a salt-n-peppa rub (can't believe that joke didn't come up). He probably should have seared the steak first to get a crust, or maybe added the liquid after broiling it on each side for a minute - but his aim is simplicity and he's definitely got a simple attack on the meat.

The garlic bread also totally impressed me. He makes the spread with mayo base along with shredded cheddar and some hot sauce. I pretty recently made the discovery that you can make a pretty mean grilled cheese with mayo instead of butter. This seems bold, simple, and I'm definitely going to give it a shot.

In terms of the gags, he's settled down a bit with the catch phrases and worked them into the framing of the show - good move there! I didn't really laugh too hard at the college kid thing - but it was quirky and helped keep the energy up, so I guess it worked.

I'm really impressed with the turnaround! I'll keep watching after this.

All Aboard the Stoner Express!

Following on that theme about anticipated stoner movies, it's worth mentioning Pineapple Express. I was watching Superbad - first time since the theater - and the special features included the trailer (sorry can't embed). Got me all fired up and bubbling with excitement! The script is by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who grew up best buds and wrote Superbad together. In fact, they starting writing Superbad when they were 13, and probably one (or both) of them were still in the cock-a-doodle-ing phase themselves.

I'm pumped about seeing Seth Rogen together with James Franco again. I was pretty crushed that Freaks and Geeks didn't make it past one season. It was the same hurt I felt as I worked my way through Undeclared on DVD realizing all the while that it was a finite pleasure. It was like falling in love when you know there's a shelf-life on the relationship... when your new lover is about to get shipped off to war - or college. It makes the feelings so intense but bittersweet.

Not-so-randomly, the name Pineapple Express also reefers to a meteorological phenomenon like a warm El Nino blowing off Hawaii. My pot-sulation is that there's a real strain of weed named for the event. Certainly if there wasn't before, dealers are definitely going to be naming weed after this movie. Another case of life imitating art imitating nature.


The pineapple bong. Tasty. (from CollegeHumor)

Super High Me

Doug Benson is a comedian making a documentary where he smokes weed for 30 days and then does not smoke weed for 30 days. Doctors check him out and measure his visual and mental acuity and assess the damage... I got all this from the trailer and/or making it up to fill in the gaps.


Some people are undoubtedly going to think this is a ludicrous and unhealthy experiment, like SuperSize Me! Instead, I first wondered what the fuck is so exceptional about smoking pot for 30 days in a row? Now the 30 consecutive days off... I've definitely tried that from time to time, but agree it's an ambitious goal. I wonder what the side effects will be - will it make him paranoid or maladjusted? ...bored? ...active outdoors?

It seems to me Mr. Doug Benson is a pretty funny dude. There are some clips on ComedyCentral. First time I've seen him...



I'm tickled to note that IMDB - while it has an official sounding plot summary - has pegged this as a 2007 film, but nobody seems to be committing to a release date. That's prolly wise.

Computers are Bad

This site, Computers are Bad, is oddly entrancing. I have probably spent too much time on it trying to figure out the trick - if there is one.

I've been reading a bunch of anti-web anti-computer polemic in the last week. My mom kicked it off by sending me an op-ed from the WaPo called 'The Dumbing of America' and forgetting how to read because of the advent of video. Of course, the article was too long for my atrophied attention span so I ended up googling "computers are bad" when I figured I got the gist.

My solace from this fear comes... in the form of a video...

Catfish Noodling - With Gator

I said I like Internet Superstar and now there's Lil' Interet Superstar, which I'm guessing is a more daily dose or something. Gator hosted one alone on one of my all-time favorite topics... catfish noodling! Basically, noodling is when you wiggle your fingers in a muddy hole so they look like a worm and entice a catfish to swallow them. Then you stick your hand in it's throat and haul it out. So, the catfish bites your hand... and that's the objective! This first-finger account is the one that hooked me about a year ago. I gotta confess that Gator's clips are tight, but here's a decent look at some guys flexing their skills...



These catfish they're hauling out of the water can be up to 50 or 60 pounds. Imagine jamming your hand down a first-grader's throat and trying to haul him away from the telivision. Now imagine that kid is a badass swimmer and you're battling underwater. That's a rough wrassle. But imagine if you picked the wrong hole and got a truly giant catfish. How big could that be?

A pretty big man could be two hundred pounds. A big fatty lineman could be 300. Now double that and you've got the giant catfish. That's right, in the Mekong river, National Geographic reported that fishermen caught one that was nine feet long and 650 pound in May, 2005. If you tried to noodle that, you'd have to play Jonah and have a partner hold your ankles as that monster swallows you whole.

Native American Songs Gone Indian!

Here are two priceless outcomes of the global village...

Smoke on the Yangtze:



And then my personal favorite... Sweet Adoptive Child of Mine

In Treatment - Offline

Aurorasbored made a good point about what's so disappointing lately with In Treatment. I think she nails the major unravelling here...

This was supposed to be a different format - five strands on five days. That's what got me excited! I wanted to watch Paul's patients grow internally and change through dialogue only. Instead, we see everything devolving and revolving around Paul himself.

The patients are foils for Paul and are helping illustrate his character arc. Instead of watching them grow, they're remaining flat.

The patients in two dimensions are reflecting different aspects of Paul and helping to fill him out. By connecting Alex and Laura, they're reflecting more of him, but less of themselves.

Paul was entrancing in Week 1 as a foil for his patients. As of now, I've lost patience.

If this was an effort to hook me with the free online viewing, it has not worked. I won't pay for HBO to get this show and I won't make the effort to download the torrents.

If Soprano's didn't get me to pay for HBO and The Wire didn't get me to buy Showtime, this prescription's gonna have to be a whole lot stronger.

Anyone know anyone

..who can get me some of this shit? Poverty poisons the brain, according to this old newspaper wank. And like a man said, anything that poisons the brain--I'll take ten. Throw it in a nice piece of blue blown glass and bic, click, burble, ahhh.

...that's the good stuff. Makes you feel stupid and apathetic, like I like it. In fact, shit! Amazing it's not illegal. They should do that. It'd boost demand and decrease supply--make poverty all-ass hard to come by. Resulting in a poverty arms race. People will stop settling for that shwag-ass poverty. Like I'm shelling out my hard earned benjies for a bunch of dried out no-future dirt seeds? No, let's get that dank stuff. The high grade. Gimme them greens.

Sure, the real primo will be so hard to cultivate that you'll need to be rich to afford it, but it's gonna be worth it. Every last penny.

So who's got $5 on it? Let's smoke this mess right up!

Revision3

These guys have put together some great content in a bunch of formats. The one I've been enjoying is the Internet Superstar podcast. It's got one doofus (Martin Sargent) with a sidekick (Gator) and highlighting a bunch of sad, pathetic, inspiring and just plain weird stars of the interweb.

I've really enjoyed it, and it's right up my alley. In fact, I can't get enough of the show. I'm a little hesitant to recommend to others because two people's I've shown it to find Martin Sargent too grating to sit through.

Do I have a high tolerance for doofus-dom? I wouldn't have thought so... Somehow, I find Martin sincere and open in his dorky doofus-dom. Not too abrasive for my tastes and the content he's digging up is great.

How else would I have learned about The Disintegrator? Some kid spent a year coming up with a rubber-band gun that launches 40 rubber bands per second. Good luck smuggling this into the lunchroom...

Guest Blogger Aurorasbored: Dismay and Discord to All Therapists! (In Treatment, Week Three)

First thing I want to know (aside from who would be so foolish as to let me guest write on their rather fantastic blog) is: what compels television writers to reach for sex?

I mean, not as a personal habit but as a professional one. I have in my day been attracted to "searing," "passionate" sexual plots that tanked such once-great shows such as The Practice, The X-Files, Grey's Anatomy, et al. I personally find The Practice the most egregious, and most apt to compare to In Treatment in that it started off noble, sober, and deeply intriguing on a moral level then just ended up with Lara Flynn Boyle, naked, on a kitchen counter. No, I'm really not joking.

And dear god, after only two weeks, has In Treatment suffered the same fate? I'll be damned!

The Laura night gave us a damn rocky start, that's for sure. Paul Weston, rattled by his wife's affair and dogged by his old mentor Gina, wakes up in his office on Monday morning. A good a start as any, as Laura promptly busts in and starts her now-tired, histrionic shrieks about how she is in love with Paul, Paul is in love with her, they are going to make love right there on the coffee table, and how dare he treat her as something as mundane as a patient. Oy.

I tuned out a lot of it, I admit. Paul gets up the courage to at least slightly imply she ought to be transferred (which, delicacy of the treatment aside, should have been done immediately, in my highly unprofessional opinion. Like, six months ago so we wouldn't have to deal with The Laura Problem all damn week.) Laura, predictably, flips. There's not much to say about this except dun dun DUN, after she walks out? (as Mssr. Stoner has pointed out) boom, she's right into the Alex narrative.

Okay, I see why it figures of all the characters to be drawn together, it would be Laura and Alex. Alex has some fearsome daddy issues and has projected a great deal of them onto Paul. And Laura is of course, Laura and despite every writerly protest to the contrary, is turning into damn ol' Glen Close. Must we?

It's not all bad, though. In fact, therein lies the grief: Blair Underwood and Melissa George have marvelous chemistry, even in one short scene. It's sneaky, it's sly, they both know on some level they're pulling Paul's chain, but they don't care. Paul just seems utterly wearied by Laura, not ferociously intrigued as Gina seems to want him to be. But Alex and Laura? Not a bad fit, it seems, if it didn't drive everybody else into distraction.

I'm not going to address the end of the week yet except to say OH COME ON but I will say that Gina is rapidly spiraling down in my estimation, as a shrink and a person. She seems to be dragging Paul by the yoke of a natural attraction to a patient, though I suppose it's being revealed that Paul's feelings go deeper than that. Please no.

Cut out SOON, I do not care if Laura is hit by a bus and Paul has to explore whether he subconsciously pushed her into the street, but Sex. Ruins. Everything. If at all possible, dear ambitious TV writers, when you have such a thinky show, at a very intense, very unique pacing (5 half hours a week is a huge commitment, which is why we fans are a tee biddle insane) and then you just do that thing. That everyone does. And so early too. So enough of the teasing. Either full sex, right there in the office her next session, toss Alex in there to wave around a Desert Eagle, and have Gina confess to Kate that she raped Paul eight years ago. Anything. A rut is a rut is a rut, but I am willing to forgive.

And so should you! If you're watching, that is.

*

Aurorasbored is your handy dandy ranter for all occasions. I'm available where suds and bud roam freely through the plains. She also does not actually get HBO, so she may be in trouble with this show sometime soon. Thanks E. Stoner!

Jake and/or Amy - Week Three

I don't know where to start with Jake and/or Amy this week. I think it was a great reveal about how Jake and Amy got together. So she was pregnant within a month, eh? Suddenly tied down with his baby. I sort of remember that they got together while Amy was still with her last husband. If so, this chronology may not make tons of sense.

You know what else doesn't make sense? Paul's complete passivity about Kate going on a week long fuckaytion.

Kate's clearly trying to provoke a reaction in him. He's all broken because he's reacting like an analyst and refusing to get in the game. He needs to fight for her, not with her.

Cookin with Coolio and the Mock-you-structional

I don't know what I expected from Coolio's Cooking show. It kinda looks like they're having fun, but it's walking a really weird line between serious cooking show and crazy.

In a way, this is the same sort of pseudo-instructional video genre I talked about last time with My Damn Channel, but it's less funny than "You Suck at Photoshop" and I think I can pinpoint a couple of reasons that may help figure out what you need to to in mocku-structional genre:

The biggest failure is that Coolio can't seem to cook for shit. His first recipe is caprese salad. YOU CAN'T FUCK THIS UP! But he's got each ingredient spread all over the place on the plate in ways that can't get in the same bite... I take my munchies seriously. If you're gonna slice a big tomato, slice a big ball of mozz. If you're going with little chunks of mozzarella, split up grape tomatoes or something. And then onions? I dunno about that one bit. The photoshop dude was clearly good at photoshop and using it to fuel the humor.

Dumb gags unrelated to the frame - it's kinda funny to have the spices look like drugs... kinda... but remember, if you're gonna get stones from weed when you cook, you gotta hot-it-up. Ain't gonna work otherwise.

Coolio is trying WAY too hard. He tries to make at least three different catch phrases stick in the span of five minutes. It's like when the dumb girl in mean girls keeps trying to make "fetch" into a catch-phrase. That's can't work can it? The photoshop guy is pretty subtle about being crazy. It seeps out in the framing and it's related to the picture he's doctoring in each webisode.

I do think Jerez is kinda funny. Like so ridiculous that he makes his end of it work. He just repeats everything Coolio says and helps jump in on his tag-lines.

In conclusion - to be funny in a mock-you-structional: 1) know the content, so the basic frame is believable and can save you. 2) Be quirky funny within the frame 3) Don't force it.

Week Three - Crossing Paths

Woah!

Alex and Laura, sitting in a bee.
Em, dou-ble, you,
Driving East

First comes Laura,
Then comes Alex
Next comes the couple
with the miscarriage.

The crossing over between patients seems like another oh-so-convenient contrivance to get crossover between the days. Today is the first day I remember Laura talking about getting a cab. Where the fuck are they that she doesn't drive?

Is there any indication of where this is supposed to take place? Sophie has taken the bus, so we can assume it's urban enough to have a bus. I think Laura works at a hospital. Alex ended Monday's episode saying he'd drive Laura downtown.

After intense consultation with Google maps and accent analysis, I've narrowed the setting to the outskirts of Glasgow. Although, I feel like I mighta did something wrong there...

George Lopez - Underbite of the Century

The Grammy's sucked dog dick. Well eulogized here. Within the 10 minutes before I bailed entirely, I saw George Lopez take a shit on stage:

He starts by noticing that only in America could a black man and a women be running for president of the United States.

Then he has some can't-believe-he-bit this joke about how a Latino vice-president would be a great insurance policy for either Hillary or Obama.

Didn't Chris Rock make this joke about a black VP about 10 years ago on SNL?

I thought so. Then I checked the original version on weekend update...

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

No, no, wait... Chris Rock is funny. What's so odd is that George Lopez didn't even bite the joke. He sort of reversed, copied it, and took out the funny.

Coolio and Kool-Aid Pickles

I spent a little time on My Damn Channel. The thing that pulled me in was a trailer for Coolio's cooking show - which strikes me as a great thing. BUT, it's not available yet.

The oddball mixed genre thing that really got me laughing was this show called "You Suck at Photoshop." It's actually decent tutorial of photoshop, but it's also really funny.

Worth a smoke-n-giggle. I'll also have to remember to check back next week when Coolio's cooking show is up and running. The Ghetto Gourmet. Mmmm... Maybe he'll do Kool-Aid Pickles. Did you know that's a thing? Anyone tried one?

Shit, I'll try anything once. If ever there was a snack conceived of while stoned, this is it. In the Times article, they're endorsed by a kid as “I like it the same as dipping hot Cheetos in ice cream.”

Equal Pooper-tunity Employer

Hiring-by-ass: Choosing employees based on how they look from behind in a face-to-fesse interview.

Hiring-by-ass-sees: pl. Choosing employees based on based on reviewing resumes with tail-shots.

Hiring-by-ass-sieze: pl. Not recommended.

In Therapy - Week 2 - Jake and Amy

If we're going with the assumption that the format is made to cater to specific audiences, it's a little too convenient to see Paul and Kate have it out on a Wednesday, during couples-therapy night.

The opening of this episode has Amy smoking on the stoop - poisoning the unborn. Then we see Jake sexually excited by this sabotage. During the session, they're getting along fine - as long as Amy is continuing to sabotage her life - both her health and her profession - by pretending to be fine with the baby.

Then we see Amy's miscarriage. At the moment she's forced to look at the contradictions within herself, the pain she was feeling earlier manifests itself and rejects the fetus. And then they rush out and Paul needs Kate - his protective wall - to come in and scrub away the pain.

It seems clear that Kate and Paul lost a child somewhere along the line, right? Could that be what all the stacked photography books are about? Sophie noticed them in week one. I may be wrong, but it seems there's been some kid's name mentioned beyond the two we keep hearing about.

Face Transformer

Face of the Future is a set of exhibits and tools that allow you to explore "the latest advances in facial computer vision and graphics, and what they mean for society." It's a ton of fun to screw around with.

With the face transformer, you can upload a picture of yourself - prefereably with a plain background - and then transform it a bunch of different ways. As a Super-Tuesday treat, here's George Bush.


That's his real picture (not the 50% chimp transform as you might suspect). And apparently, I'm not the only one to think he looks a bit like a chimp. Check this guy's set of comparison photos.

You can also go for an ethnic transform. Here's one of George Bush as a South Asian:



You can also do the face averager to see what it would look like if you had kids with someone. You just need pictures of the two people and you can slap them together. How much fun is that? Is that reasonable precaution before a second date? "I like you and all, but I just don't think this is going anywhere. Our kids are going to look like George Bush... "

In Therapy - Second Week is Up...

It's on! How could I wait? That certainly defines the evening. That's all from me for five delicious half-hours. Or 2.5 hours... plus snack breaks...

Gerrymandering is Fun!

It's always baffling and frustrating in an election season to learn how it's possible to lose even with a majority of the voters. The way our districts get defined is amazingly partisan. It's so unbelievably rigged, it feels like a game... and that's the way the USCAnnenbergCenter is presenting it in The ReDistricting Game.

There are a few objectives, but basically, you're trying to rig the next election by redrawing district lines based on knowing who lives where. You can tip the scales by throwing a district to the opposition and stacking as much of the opposition as you can there. You want to spread your support across as many districts as you can win - but not by too much.

It's totally worth screwing around with. What blows my mind is that this is the type of system that we hear about in social studies and very few people in the country ever need to understand in detail. It's nice to put this type of tool in the hands of the regular (sloppy) joe. I would hope it provokes some questions or even outrage. At the very least, it can get lumped in with the grouchy sentiment about 'the game' or 'the system' which very clearly is rigged.

In Treatment - Comes from 'Betipul'

'In Treatment' recreates an Israeli original, called Betipul. They ran it with the same format - one patient each day of the week.

When it was launched here, a Ha'aretz review seemed dubious that it will succeed because of Americans' "familiar and inflexible viewing habits." I love it!

Has anyone seen the Israeli version or know where I can watch it?

In Treatment - Watch Online

In Treatment is a new show that launched this week on HBO. I'm really into the format - there are episodes every day where Paul sees different patients. Then on Friday, we'll see his own session with his therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest). Produced by M&M (marky-mark?) Wahlberg, it's an American version of an Israeli show (Think of pitch people saying 'Well, The Office crossed the Atlantic just fine...).

Each episode uses a single session as it's narrative structure. It's like the ultimate psycho-drama. Character-arc is everything here and it works because the writing is tight and the acting is great. Gabriel Byrne, in particular, is a totally convincing therapist. Not only that, but he's a good therapist - he's making the connections for his patients and helping them uncover them for themselves whenever possible.

The first week had a few first visits and just one long-time customer (Laura). You get the raw feeling of a duel from a few of the sessions which feels authentic. Everyone approaches him with so many defenses (or by going on the offensive). In the end, when he sits down with Gina, he gives what he gets. They do such a good job of showing how engaging with the process of therapy is engaging the therapist.

Maybe the fun here is the fact that we get to play both shrink and patient. We're getting Paul's help but we're also yelling at the screen like "don't go up the stairs" when we see something before he does. Then on Friday there's the big reveal of what he thinks.

While they're not archetypes, each of the four patients is likely to appeal to different audiences to varying degrees. I wonder if different people will watch on different nights - or if HBO is trying to hit different demographics this way.

It could be vicarious therapy for people who can't/don't want to go to therapy themselves. They can pick their character and transfer the process of exploration onto themselves. But then, everyone should watch Friday's episode to see what Paul thinks of them.

Worth noting is that HBO has allowed us to watch the full streaming episodes for this first week online. (This is what execs would tell screen writers is a 'promotion'). I'm not sure if they'll keep that up, but I hope so. HBO's online viewer has no full-screen, but it's totally uninterupted by commercials.

How Humanoid Aliens Built Stonehenge...

Wally Wallington of Michican has solved one of the great stoner debates of all time: Given the technology available at the time, could humans have built stonehenge? I have never been to stonehenge, but I've remembered thinking the same about the massive stones involved in the pyramids in Guatemala and Egypt. For those bigguns, we're generally taught that there were armies of slaves involved rolling rocks up ramps on cylinders. From the dioramas and animations I've seen, it's believed to have been a brute-force operation.

In Stonehenge, the stones were quarried a long ways away. There are real doubts about transport and then how to lift these monsters up in the air. The bigguns are over 25 tons. That's like 50,000 lbs (or 25 buffalo if you're studying to be an air-traffic controller)

Wally Wallington, an ingenious retired carpenter has applied some lessons he learned on the job and spent time figuring out how he could lift and move rocks of this size using only levers, fulcrums and gravity. What he's been able to conclusively demonstrate is that each part of this construction is possible using significantly less human power than the hundeds of pushers and pullers that most people assumed.





In light of this demonstration, a great mystery is solved about the construction of Stonehenge: Since most aliens we have come into contact with through science fiction are about the same size and shape as human actors - we can now recreate how the aliens might have built Stonehenge.

Funny Shit!

Not just well animated, this is really well scripted. Enjoy!

Grilled Cheese Taste Test

In an earlier post, I maintained that mayonnaise is as good as butter in a pinch when it comes to the grilled cheese.

Last night, in a controlled experiment, I put butter and mayonnaise to the test of fire. That is... I got ripped and made grilled cheese both ways.

There is no question in the mind of our esteemed tasting panel - in my head - that butter emerged victorious in terms of taste. Mayonnaise performed adequately, and may only have gained the edge by forming a brown crunchy crust more quickly and evenly in a non-stick pan.

In short, don't despair if you only have mayo. But butter betters mayo mainly

Gay Marriage

I was just testifying in my mental moot court on the role of government in marriage/civil union and realized I never really understood how entrenched everyone's views are on these topics. It's kind a fun sliding scale to illustrate the same arbitrary balance point as you get on many moral/cultural issues when everyone agrees on something only because it's comfortable or pleasing to the majority. These are like consensus laws - no grounding in logic, just history.

The government vests a lot of different religious figures with the power to marry. They allow Christians, Muslims, Jews, Universal Life Church, whoever the fuck, to perform marriages between men and women. The idea there is that we're a pluralistic society - don't matter your stripes n all that...

But it's a little bit creepy that the government does vest these religious institutions with that power. It's not quite right that a judge can marry you, or a voodoo medicine man can marry you. We don't take this approach with your legal defense should you be charged with a crime, do we? You can use your public defender, hire a lawyer who passed the Bar, or... just bring your rabbi? I do seem to remember that you can choose to represent yourself, so maybe we do allow for some quirks more consistent that others related to personal freedoms.

If, from a legal standpoint, marriage is a legal arrangement, I'm not sure it matters who it's between. If it's about taxes and insurance beneficiaries and all that. Why should I not be able to enter into a legal contract with my roomate, my sister, or my three best friends? If we all agree to bear liability for each other, what's the difference?

Clearly it's something about the sex involved, right? We have a somewhat consistent and logical basis for most arrangements or partnerships that imply financial and legal obligations. Do people act so funny about marriage because the sex is implied in this one?

Fro Hat

Nuff said. This rocks!

When Animals Attack

There was a really well written article in GQ this month about animal attacks. I would paraphrase it for you, but Stevereads has basically synop-sized it for you. Totally worth checking out.

The animals are changing. We used to learn that the ability to use tools was the unique dominion of humans. Then we learned that chimps go fishing for ants. In David Attenborough's 'Life of Mammals' you can also see semi-domesticated chimps using manufactured tools - like a saw to cut wood.

As it turns out the definition was revised to allow that while certain animals can use tools, no other animal uses tools to hunt. Over the past 20 years, that too has slipped away. Chimps are now hunting using spears - and it seems that a younger generation is picking the skills up from one individual. This was the same deal with the nut-cracking technique in "Life of Mammals." If you don't learn it young, you can never master it. Kind of like a French accent.

One of the scariest things that's started happening according to this GQ article is the bird attacks. I find it seriously frightening. I guess I've always been a little scared of birds, but seriously - pigeons are everywhere in NYC. If this doesn't scare you...

Everyblock... creepy cool

Everyblock is basically geography based reporting. Described like this:

The easiest way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city — like restaurant inspections in Chinatown, crimes in the Loop or everything around 475 Kent Ave.

I messed around with it and found it eerily entrancing. It's all the great pseudo-stalker-y things that make the internet fun... Like that feeling when you first joined The Facebook and got to check everyone out. This is like that, but more real and intimate.

You get to check out all the forms of public information that you would never check - or even know existed. From restaurant inspections, to building violations, noise complaints, arrests... and that's just the background of the tapestry.

You also get the mentions in the news, the photos from flickr, and juiciest of all... the missed connections on craigslist.

From all of this, you get the sense of what's going on in people's homes. What's going on out on the street. Where you definitely need to stop eating. It's all there.

It's fascinating, but maybe not endlessly... I worry that it could fall the way of The Facebook. That after a few aggressive bouts of geo-stalking, and neighbrowsing, I might have enough.

There are probably practical reasons that this type of data bundling will be really valuable - like for realtors or people thinking of moving in. It could even be a great way to check out what's going on this weekend if I feel like going out... but not too far... if I went out...

Wake-and-pee-dia

Wake-and-pee-dia: When the thing that gets you up is the daily pee boner.

Juno

Just saw Juno- and juno what? I really liked it. It felt honest and specific. The dialogue was really tight and snappy. Ellen Page was incredible. Michael Cera is the business, but he doesn't actually figure too large. Juno is the central character and she totally carries the movie.

I think specific is a good way to describe what I liked about this movie. When you feel like you're really stepping into a particular world or reality for a bit. It doesn't feel like the characters are archetypes put in a quirky situation. It's much more authentic than that. The story feels like it's driven by these particular quirky characters. Kinda like a Noah Baumbach movie.

I've heard a bunch of people debating back and forth whether this movie is pro-choice or anti-abortion. One of the greatest points I've seen on that is made by FWright in the New Republic Blog. It is hard to imagine a conservative motive when the alternative to abortion is a baby adopted by a single working mother.

The Global Sandwich

There is no doubt that we're falling behind in the international sandwich race. In a more global economy, our classics are now competing with a broader range of potential sandwiches. We've got some classic models in the US - I think we're probably leading the volume question with offerings and exports like Subway, Quiznos and others. Our best offerings are going to for fresh soft bread - toasted - and loaded up with a whole variety of fixin's.

Vietnamese sandwiches are a totally different bird and gaining ground in the states. that's a more crusty bread with some killer flavor combinations - like a great funky pate pulled chicken - and interesting texture touches like shredded carrots.

Felafel offerings in sandwiches also offer some great options and are growing in popularity around here. Great sauces and realy nice textures from whatever you load in there. I think felafel - with all the loading up is a lot more like an american sandwich because of all the stuff we jam in there.

One of the big things these two other imports are getting right is on the cost of ingredients. We're getting some delicious sandwich options at much lower prices.

One of the annoying things about Quizno's - and to a slightly lesser extent - Subway is that they're almost $10 for a big-ole sandwich.

Felafel and Vietnamese sandwiches are real good, but rely on cheaper ingredients. Mmmm delicious.

How do Torrents work?

I've been hearing a lot about torrents and how easy it is to get and share files this way. I decided to give it a shot and found it pretty easy. What I also found is that the system is initially hard to understand, but really a pretty simple context. I read the wikipedia entry and then talked with a few friends who were a little more conversant in the systems (and helped me figure out what to download to give it a shot.

Here's how it works: remember the heydey of napster when you could share any song in the world peer-to-peer? It's the same idea, but with a twist. When that was happening, we were actually sharing entire files with other users. I remember how annoying it would be when people would cut you off or they would go offline before the song finished downloading.

This worked okay when the files were song-sized. Now they're so many times that size because they're video files. Epsodes of TV or even whole movies. The great insight is that you split these big files up into a bunch of tiny chunks and create an index file. The index file is like a corn-cob that organizes the little kernels of the big file and indicates how they fit together.

Once a file is broken into the little chunks, you can download pieces of a movie from lots of different uses at the same time. The group is called a swarm - cool name, eh? The people you're downloading the kernels from are seeders. The people downloading the kernels to assemble a full ear of corn are called leechers.

One of the cool things about this system is that you can start to seed the kernels that you have complete before you have the whole ear of corn finished. I guess it's possible that you could be in a swarm with a few other leechers and complete each others' files even if nobody has a complete file to begin with.

Somehow, I think this also limits your liability for sharing proprietary files. Not sure about that. Does anybody know?

The Market is in the Toilet

Commode typically means a crapper. I think of it that way - as a fancy word for toilet. Apparently it comes from a word for convenience or measure because of the low sorts of cabinets that would house the chamber pots when fancy people began shitting indoors.

There's gotta be an etymological connection to the word commodity. Usually a commodity is something that is basic - not yet processed - and is traded. I'm having fun imaging the reciprocal connection between the meanings of these two words derived from 'convenience.'

Commode:
As consumers (in the sense that we eat) we take food as raw materials and we process it. Our output goes in the commode for convenience and we have greatly reduced the value of the raw goods we processed. The byproducts of this operation - the energy we burn - is the desirable product. The rest is shit we have to dispose of.

Commodity:
The raw materials of the world are traded and transformed. Ultimately they are combined and processed in a way that adds value. Then they are re-sold. Often the production requires a whole lot of energy and the by-products are a bunch of shit we have to dispose of.

Grilled cheese - art and science

Grilled cheese is one of those god-given pleasures that is very hard to get wrong. There are so many types of pleasures and additions that can really make a grilled cheese something special. There's a video on MSN about a $50 grilled cheese made with Fontina and truffles... that's definitely one way to go. There's sharp cheddar with some smoked turkey or tomato... mouthwatering.

I've enjoyed making grilled cheese in the waffle iron, lean-mean Foreman machine, frying pan and even under a broiler (more cheese toast than grilled that way). Really it's all fair-game except for the microwave. Don't bother with grilled cheese in a microwave- it's too easy to go all rubbery that way. Cheese can be microwaved on triscuits, but not more than 15 seconds for a plateful.

Butter is an absolutely essential component of successful grilled cheese - and about the only essential component. Butter on both sides of the bread is a great idea and buttering one side and then flipping it over is my preferred approach.

Today, I found myself without any butter and some good bread and cheese and a healthy case of the muncheese. My lady friend convinced me that the restaurant she used to work at would use mayonnaise. I was doobious, but a thin coat on the outside of the bread formed a perfect crust. I would definitely give this a shot in the frying pan. Haven't given it a whirl in the waffle iron yet. If you give it a try, keep the heat on medium and try not to let it smoke :)

Movies and Theaters

Obviously a lot of people go to the movies stoned. Pot gives any movie a half-a-thumb handicap. Many of us only go to movies stoned... If you're like me, choosing a showtime, you just add the smoke time into your calculations. If you've ever opted for a later showtime because you could make it, but might not have time for a decent session beforehand - you know what I mean.

Most often it's better to smoke-n-go, which requires a little bit of time at home and works best if you're near the theater. Danger is, it makes the whole process of choosing a movie and buying a ticket VERY challenging when you get to the theater. I recommend pre-ordering your tickets. In my mind it's well worth the extra $1 fee to pick up your e-ticket at the kiosk: avoid the line and the awkward human contact. There have been way too many times when I find myself saying an actor's name and forgetting the movie title when I actually make it to the ticket window. Not worth it... total buzzkill.

You can also choose to go-n-smoke somewhere near the theater. I used to do this more as a teenager or when life revolved around a car. If you're in the suburbs this probably means you end up smoking in a parking garage - or even more dangerous while driving. If you're in the city, this means smoking on the street. Either way, it's pretty risky. The only advantage there is that you're not blowing your high on commute time.

Once you're in, you've got decisions about snacks. I've always figured if you're going to get a soda, get a big one. My logic here revolves around the increased volume that will keep the soda cold more of the movie. A large can still be cold after an hour, but this all ends up leading to the inevitable need to take a piss during the movie. For me, it's not a question of whether or not I'll have to take a leak, but when... and how many times.

I always try to take preemptive action on the way in. In a group or on a date, I try to choose a seat first, but I definitely want to get to the bathroom before the movie starts. This is also helpful because I figure out the route so the during-the-movie-dash can be more efficient - it's less likely I'll get lost on my second visit somewhere.

The second piss - can be unpredictable. Usually the previews and the snack roller coaster are pretty good times to be in the theater - since you're at your most baked at that point. The demonstration of the surround sound is a good indicator of how well you've timed your high. This should be a religious experience if you've worked it out well.

After the movie is rolling - it's all about anticipeetion. I always try to time for a moment of exposition. Like when two people sit down for a heart-to-heart. Get up to and run out. I also try to leave after a big action sequence or comedic montage. In the end, when you gotta go, you gotta go. That's the way things are. I just try to hold out long enough that I only duck out once. When I'm stuck in the middle of a row at a crowded show, that's all I think my neighbors will tolerate.

Zoom Quilt

This has gotta be one of the greatest online collaborations I've seen. It's called a zoomquilt. Take yourself a couple of good rips and situate yourself with Weird Fishes or Air or something in your headphones. You're about to start falling through one digital drawing after another. Each of them is by a different artist and they must have worked out with each other how one was going to fit into the next one.