Some people are more frosting specialists than thinkers: What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
This is apparently a continuation of this photo.
Month: August 2008
Dave Barry on the Beijing Olympics
Dave Barry is writing again, blogging about the Olympics.
Baby Bjorn Airlines
Mom and dad hooked us up with, among many other things, this awesome baby carrier. Thanks!!
Max didn’t like it before because he was too small to be placed in it face-forward so his face was always pressed up against daddy’s sweaty chest. Now it’s his favorite mode of transport, for up to 30 mins. at a time…
View from our stoop
In an effort to destroy the cattails, because her son is allergic to the snowy fluff it produces this time of year, the development manager instructed her minions to burn them. On a windy day. With gasoline.
Fucking oops.
Nam says that once they realized the fire was out of control and blowing towards said manager’s newly-erected wooden houses (as in, houses she built to live in herself) they called out all the workers in shouting distance to form a bucket brigade. That had no buckets.
Oops again.
Luckily, the fire eventually burnt out when the wind died down. I just I wish I could’ve been here to see it too, so I could educate the natives about a few things. Like how cattails were used by Native Americans for kindling (so maybe they should use less gasoline or something). Or by people around the world for food as well as down for stuffing. Or how cattails are being used in pilot “carbon capture” farming schemes. Then again, I probably would have just stood there laughing wickedly as the world burned just across my pond and attacked the intelligent beings who started it.
Luckily, the red-tailed pheasant-like birds seem to have returned and don’t seem to mind roosting in their newly-roasted environment. I need to get a photo of one someday I suppose…
The Romeros Playing Bach
The Romero Guitar Quartet
Japanophilic trivia: Bach, in Japanese, is pronounced Baha.
Culinary subversion (Pancake Puff vs. Moffle)
A while back, G-man tipped me off in the comments that he’d found something pretty funny: Pancake Puffs, which seem an awful like something we’re used to seeing in Japan all the time (incidentally, I love how Google asks if you meant “teriyaki” when you search for “takoyaki”). Check it out:
I guess this can only be described as the result of a firesale at a takoyaki pan factory.
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Word of the day: Moffle
What is a moffle?
Waffle is Mochi + Waffle, much in the way that “lion” + “tiger” = “liger” (or “tigon”)
I don’t have a problem with the moffle in theory, however, there are certain aspects of its execution that lack a certain, erm, appetizability. Case in point:
Front and center is a shiokara moffle… Um.
Shiokara + mochi + waffle = interesting projectile vomit
Let me explain. From the wikipedia entry on shiokara:
Shiokara (??) is a food in Japanese cuisine made from various marine animals that consists of small pieces of the animal’s meat in a brown viscous paste of the animal’s heavily salted, fermented viscera. The raw viscera are mixed with about 10% salt, 30% malted rice, packed in a closed container, and fermented for up to a month.
Bon appetit! One of the worst kitchen chores I can possibly think of is having to clean burnt shiokara off of a waffle iron, but to each his own I guess.
Liukowleezation
This photo has been floating around for a month, usually with a variant of this explanation:
“Preparing for English-speaking visitors, a restaurant in China recently ran its name through an online translator, took the result, then purchased and mounted a large sign displaying the English version of their name: Translate Server Error.”
I tend to be a bit more suspicious – whoever thought up this viral photo strategy is a freakin’ genius! I hope they make money hand over capitalism-loving fist as a result of this brilliant web strategy.
Calvin and Jobs
Oh my. If only Susie Derkins could have seen this: Calvin and Jobs Kick Steve’s Nuts
