I need you guys to do me a favor and settle a game: which pictures are better?

The status of a dinner date is riding on it, you see. Vote early and often, you get new choices each time, it’s terribly exciting. Also, I’m really starting to like this php thing.

First off, I made some fruity tofu kugel tonight, and it was quite good. The sort of recipe I’d recommend to my family, except it really needed some cream of mushroom soup and maybe chow mein noodles on top. Mom, here’s the recipe site I was talking about.

Second off, there has got to be a Scandinavian take on the tamale. I’m enthralled by the form—clever little flour pockets! It’s like frozen food with corn husks and kitchen cred!—but not by the filling. Initially I thought: bacon, cheese, more bacon, ham. Then I thought: I’m off red meat, what about pickled herring? Some rye flour, some herring, a little parsley and a lot of remoulade - it’d be fiskilicious!

Do bad things happen when you boil pickled herring? Someone please tell me what a bad idea this is. And remind me not to watch two-hour Iron Chef fusion cooking specials.

Way back in the day last April, I had a Mystery Box O’ Stuff. I still have a Mystery Box O’ Stuff, and it’s not getting any more interesting in my closet. Kat said I should have a contest, and I did - anyone who read through a godawful trivia entry saw a request for an mp3 version of “West Virginia, My Home”. Shockingly enough, no one responded.

So I’ll try again. But I still can’t think up a good contest subject. So, motley readers, the contest is this: what kind of contest should I run on my weblog?

Submit your answers in the comments, in a standard fixed verse form (including haiku). The contest will close after two weeks or when I get tired of it, whichever comes first. Limit three entries per person. Anyone may enter, but winners outside the United States will receive a smaller, lighter alternative prize, probably a postcard.

(more…)

http://www.happymunkee.net/

Happiness is spelling things with extra double letters, as the people at happy munkee seem to at least sort of understand.
The larger issue, obviously, is not the pursuit of happeeness but the pursuit of identity: if you were a uni-faceted cartoon monkey, which character trait would you have?

I’d want to be marmalade monkey, but I’ve eaten marmalade perhaps once or twice in my life. Reading about something in British picture-books does not make for sticky-sweet cartoon misadventures, so me being marmalade monkey is right out. I might have to settle for fuzzy monkey, or metal monkey, or something. It’s a tough call.

The Italian word for “smalt” is “smaltino.”
Realgar is colored because of a reason that Michael and Juraj have not yet determined. Pigments through the Ages is full of fascinating tidbits like that.

A personal message just for you. Sixth-grade animation stylings at their best.

My cable modem has been out cold for two days. I’m getting jittery - but I’m sure that’s just the caffeine.

The way my internet connection was set up makes everything extra-fun. There’s a wire that comes from my closet, which comes from a hub in my neighbor’s apartment, where the actual modem is. I’m not quite sure where the bills go, but they don’t go to me. This all makes it very easy to provide account numbers, MAC addresses, and all the other things tech support wants to know before they let you email a real person.

I have a sinking feeling that I might end up paying for my broadband after all - or else finding a real hobby.

Someone points out the following:

anarchists can’t cook

Right, that’s why they need a cookbook. But what about their odd bedfellows the anarcho-syndicalists? Can they cook?

I’m glad I have a firm belief in the usefulness of Law and Order. I made bread yesterday - challah, my first time baking yeasty bread - and it went off without a hitch. w00t! Also chicken liver, but that’s much less intimidating.

Someone has a mundane question for once:

how are the jobs coming? Have you started already?

Oh yes, that. I’ve started work, with a bit of an erratic schedule, but it’s work. It’s okay - enough of a challenge to be interesting, but not so hard as to be stressful. After all, your average faculty member doesn’t have much of a web page - so life only gets hairy when they want it pretty in Netscape 4. Why hasn’t that browser disappeared yet, again?
*grumble, whine*

I telecommute the two blocks to campus. They won’t give me an office. Which is fine, because the Abba Euro Mega Mixx has become my indispensible productivity tool and I doubt anyone else could stand it. I can’t stand it myself, half the time.

My current work playlist consists of Abba, Aqua, endless remixes of the Safri Duo bongo song, a smatter of Latin pop, and punk covers of television theme songs. It’s bouncy. It’s relentless. It’s sickening. It’s addictive. It’s getting a bit old.

Help?

Possibly the strangest email I’ve ever received:

From: xxxxx
Subject: ASK GOOGLE

Could you tell me more about Radioactive Waste Experiments in the 2020’s or
2020’s around Greeley school (now known as anderson school) in Minneapolis,
Minnesota?

Is this some kind of new spam fad, or did some poor soul confuse Ask Google with Google Answers? I’ve missed out on most of the other spam fads so far (well, okay, I’ve gotten one email from a desperate Nigerian, finally) so it might be nice to be avant garde for once.

Speaking of avant garde, here’s my latest fad thing, days behind everyone else’s. It was a bit of a crunch naming parents - I started blogging after reading an article in the New Yorker, where the torrid love triangle of megnut, kottke, and that girl on the bicycle was put in a flattering light. It wasn’t ’til a good week afterwards that I actually found another blog to read; I have never been much for megnut or kottke.

It’s too bad that girl on the bicycle doesn’t have her own blog.