cellulose heroes: an ode to daucus carota

I really like vegetables. I appreciate the bitter, sour, savory, nutty, and crunchy (not in the texture sense, but that too) with relish typically reserved for things not exactly good for you. Today I chose to honor that paragon of beta carotene, the carrot!

So we all know what a carrot is; if you find yourself unable to appreciate its sweetness and modular crispness, venture no further, thou weak-willed dietarian. This post is not for your squinty-eyed, non-orange, untrustworthy ilk.

Sadly, finding heirloom vegetables in general is difficult, so I can't claim to have sampled all the colors of the soil-stained prismatic bounty referenced in the above picture. Yet.


For a long time I had a habit of sampling the traditional mayo-permeated cole slaw of New Jersey diners. A dubious venture, I know. That stopped once we hit the left coast, but upon coming to Pittsburgh, I have been exposed to the wonderful thing that is Amish-style cole slaw. There is no going back for me. Designed to extract maximum refreshment from the thinly-sliced preparation, it is a good deal healthier for you as well.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 purple cabbage head, cored and sliced thinly
3 large carrots, julienned
1 teaspoon sugar (organic cane!)
1/2 teaspoon stone ground mustard
a pinch of salt
a pinch of pepper
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

season to taste (we've used celery salt, garlic powder, and cumin before with success)

1. Combine cabbage and carrots
2. Combine everything else, mix with determination
3. Combine with sandwiches, Primanti's style (the picture front and center should give you a good idea), eat in a small cup, you purist, or try something wacky like mixing it into mashed potatoes (thanks Beth!).

The recipe is less sweet, oily, and sour than most I come across, promoting the great raw taste of the carrot and the cabbage. You are welcome.

an ode to WALL-E or why robots are cool and I love them

I can not express my adoration of robots to its full extent. From their aesthetics to my deep wish to not have to ever do my own dishes ever again, robots are a common theme in my life.

From Roombas to Kusanagi from "Ghost in the Shell", I've always been slightly obsessed with them. I mean, I did get one tattooed on me. One big aspect of my robot love has always been about the idea of consciousness, or how beings learn to understand their place in the world. While I do like robots that just have a task to do, I really love the stories of robots that transcend.

That leads me to WALL-E

I tend to be snobby about the animation I watch and I also tend to be skittish about watching movies that everyone raves about. But yesterday, after a horrible day, I finally sat down and watched it.

I am so glad that I did, because it was as magical and beautiful as everyone had claimed. I watch maybe 1 fictional movie a month (if that), and this movie kept me entertained the entire time. I love that they watched silent movies to learn from the masters (Keaton, Chaplin). I love that the robot noises were made by machines. I love that after the world has failed, twinkies and cockroaches still remain. I love that it taught me lessons and made me giggle. I love that the little cleaning robot was so determined for the ship to be clean and I love the ending of the world being rebuilt.

But most of all, I love that I watched a movie about robots falling in love, and it was one of the most romantic movies I have ever seen.

in which I blow your mind with geography

I figure I've had this soapbox long enough. It is time.

So, you think you know how the world looks, right? No, not it being a giant blue-green-white marble, I mean how we represent it visually. Like this.

Well, you're wrong. This is wrong.

The world is actually not like this at all. The map above is a tool, one developed for the aid of navigation. But the world doesn't actually look like this.

Behold, mortals. The Peters Projection Map!


I had the good fortune to be with a very smart young lady who bought this for me a while back from AK Press, and I proudly hung it up on our wall.

So, you ask, why is this map more correct? Superior? More ethical?!

Well, you could look at the first link, but a) I don't trust you! Why should I? If you read this blog, you are probably quite evil, and possibly chaotic, and b) well, it would deprive me of a good deal of fun.

Ever notice what the typical map, known as the Mercator Map, seems to focus on? Yes, that's right: Europe. Not only does it focus on Europe, but it clearly enhances that continent's size. In fact, South America is 1.815 times larger than Europe (that's almost twice the size, for the mathematically dis-inclined) (like myself).

Perhaps the most jarring (ok, besides the ridiculous inflation of Greenland), is the landmass of the northern hemisphere compared to the southern. One of the most irritating comments I see people make all the damn time is that the amount of the world south of the Equator is much smaller than that north of it. Well, that's true (Booghost Editor: Miketinfoil, that's what hemisphere means! Miketinfoil: Shhh!). But it also hides the fact that the Southern HALF of the world's landmass (which bifurcates itself north of the Equator, obviously) is more than TWICE as large as the Northern half.

And, of course, the Mercator obscures the enormity of Africa, which is after Asia the largest continent on the planet. I mean, just one look at the Peters Projection tells you all you need to know; Africa DOMINATES the map, in terms of size and centrality to our normally (by which I mean the way our maps here in the US usually look, can't speak to how the maps look in, say, North Korea) accustomed view of the world in two-dimensional terms (as opposed to, say, this).

Not to get all political on you, but think about this the next time you see someone from one of these "big landmass" countries on the Mercator speak about some of the "small landmass" (like China, which is four times larger than Greenland) or "southern" ones. And if you're an American, think about why we don't see these more often.

terrible and aweseome

Can you see the glassy-eyed, frenzied, and delusional excitement on my face? And that's before I consume the immense amount of caffeine contained within! Direct sales, baby! Totally worth the harrowing trip to the North Side UPS depot!

Also, am I alone in preferring the inclusion of the second comma in a series of three items before "and"? Whenever I see people skip that last comma, I totally feel cheated.

If the logo on the side of that box doesn't ring bells in your head, I would be remiss in not providing you an appropriate gateway.

Things I Heart

Hi blog. My arm is less sore, my head is more clear, and I'm ready for some happy times.

1. My New Tattoo

It's still healing, the photo could be better, but I love him. Jason Lambert at Black Cat Tattoos in Pittsburgh is just awesome.

2. Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales, and Michael Bair

 
I was crying by the end of this. I've never really gotten into DC. My mom is one of the biggest Batman fans in the world, but I haven't really read that much of it. This was just well-written, suspenseful, mournful, and, for me at least, a great introduction to the DC universe.

This week, I've read "Superman : Red Son" and "Batman : The Dark Knight Returns". It is a great week for comics.

3. Glee

I can not wait for this to come back.

Idina Menzel+Madonna+Rachel/Finn=Awesome

4. Marchesa Fall 2010 RTW

I've been dressing more like a dystopian sci-fi future city resident in tunics and leggings, but these dresses want me to only wear adorable dresses.

When does spring start again?

insert witty alliteration here

As she does every single day, Beth has showed me a brilliant piece of the internet in the form of a wonderful article featuring a diverse bunch of excellent writers giving the kind of literary advice I really relish. It's not the "this is how you deal with publishers/make deadlines when you have writer's block/overcome being a retiree trying to peddle cutting-edge cyberpunk" stuff I typically see (although I will admit, it does remind me of some of the quotation collections people have bought for me over the years, but those were always fun). There's a lot, so I will only mention some of the ones that really scream at me and my writing.

Elmore Leonard:
"3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary."

I have a really severe, pathological aversion to repeating the same word twice in a single sentence. I don't even like them in the same paragraph (it kills me to even be starting this sentence with "I" but frankly if I didn't get over myself in this regard, I would fail to muster a single blog post). So this is something that really galls me, but I can't help but accept the wisdom of it. I am constantly looking to substitute ever more novel words for what will inevitably be a cascade of dialogue. So the idea that I can absolve the guilt my syntactical reproduction generates is a weight lifted off my shoulders. Because I wouldn't do it unless I thought it was "bad writing", and not just because it is a weird compulsion I've developed. Right?

Diana Athill:
"2 Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no ­inessential words can every essential word be made to count.

As you may have noticed, I absolutely love unnecessary exposition and superfluous description. Though I like to think that in terms of my blogging, this is an ironic feature, and not a bug.

Margaret Atwood:
"9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page."

This is the least entertaining of her tips, but probably the most useful. Often I try to force something through because I am owned by it, and have managed to forget the lessons of my childhood teachers. Editing is detachment.

Roddy Doyle:
"4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy."

What he said. See the title to this post.

Helen Dunmore:
"2 Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices."

This applies equally to roleplaying characters, except with a great deal more immediacy. Writing is hard, but this part should come easy, or it is probably wrong.

Geoff Dyer:
"6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire."

I don't know about you, but I find this strangely empowering.

Richard Ford:
"1 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea."

To summon up a really obscure and impossibly nerdy reference: check-a-roony! If you know what I am referencing, congratulations; you are automatically counted amongst my comrades.

Neil Gaiman (last one I promise):
"5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

These two sentences make taking criticism, something I must admit I am not good at, just a little bit easier.

Any hints of your own you'd like to add?

modifications

Beth is out of commission today, recovering from the color work on her new arm piece (pictures forthcoming!), so she's taking the day off from posting. While she was there, I had an opportunity to get a consultation on what will be my first tattoo. Trying to conceptualize and decide on something has been a bit of a struggle for me, but now that I have happened upon something I like, I thought I would take some time and talk about it.

I have been a lifelong fan of the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, thanks to my parents deep love of the trilogy (that's right Smith, it IS the trilogy! Suck on that!); I first started reading the Fellowship when I was about 8.

Needless to say, I'm really into it, and happily own a well-worn copy of the Silmarillion. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a collection of writings detailing the origin mythology of Middle-Earth, and the more important elements of the setting's history, stretching beyond the Lord of the Rings (in fact, to give you an idea of the scope, the events of the Trilogy take up just a few pages at the end of the final chapter).

My concept is taken from my favorite chapter, "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien", featuring perhaps my favorite character from any of those works, the faithful wolfhound Huan. He stands vigilant set before a woods (perhaps those of Doriath), flanked on the top and bottom with a banner that will read, from verse in the Lays of Bereland:

No wizardry, nor spell, nor dart/No fang, nor venom devil’s art

Beneath will be perched the three Silmarils, which I intend to be aspected to their fates; one that lies in the sky, one in the ocean, one in a pit of fire.

It is funny how I arrived at this decision, despite the fact that I've always approached tattoos as requiring some really deep symbolic meaning (yet, this also accomplishes that). I don't even really like dogs that much. But, the concept reached out to me, rich with the the themes of fidelity and selfless loyalty. And, naturally, the inherent badassness of the character.

I think I'll have earned a choice spot in the nerd club hall of fame for this one.

space pirates

A long time ago, Beth and I were walking down the street, and I was zoning out. Beth asked me what I was thinking about. I answered in a fairly terse way for me; "space pirates".

That is, in fact, what I was thinking about; a PC in the homebrew tabletop game I was running had, as part of her backstory, been captured and enslaved by space pirates, and I was fleshing out that organization in my head.

Since then, space pirates has become a favored term for whenever I find myself idly thinking about any of my gaming pursuits. I find that I do this a bit less often than I used to, and this is probably a good thing; much of that thought was heavily recursive. Thinking about gaming lead to more thinking about gaming, which would eventually lead me back to where I started, should a distraction arise and pull me back into the real world. Or not. I would often loop the same considerations over again, perhaps tweaking something slightly, like a mental labyrinth where everything looks the same.

So my idea is not to eliminate this sort of though; if I am planning to run a game, it is wholly essential, and sparks my general enthusiasm. Instead, I'd like to start putting it down onto the page!

Here's what the Space Pirates are doing currently;

1. Vampire! My tt group is currently playing a game of heavily modified vampire set in the Legacy of Kain gameworld (or Nosgoth, for those who are familiar with it). The GM uses a mixture of Masquerade as a base, with choice concepts from Requiem (like Blood Potency). Add in a dash of Exalted-level power, and you get a heady brew I may like better than either by itself. Currently, my character is biting off way more than he can chew; industrial agreements with three other major sects in the city to produce advanced weaponry (he has a jacked version of Path of Conjuration), baiting an army of zealot vampire slayers (the Serafin) into all-out war, and attempting to save reality by chewing through a legion of psychotic and powerful psuedo-vampires to re-seal a plug in the bathtub of existence (I think). Oh, and he just embraced a total noob, who has already got him in trouble with a local elder ("Don't call me Your Dark Lord, damnit!") on our side. Can't go back to the haven until I smooth that one over.

Good times, good times...

2. Fallout 3. I got this recently, and, well, it rocks my socks. I eat this open-world garbage-collector head-exploding kind of stuff up. Btw, if you have any good tips or secrets, send them my way...

3. Mage. I've been in the works of starting a game of Ascension (which is my favorite game ever, fyi) for several months. I've done a pre-session for the players, but haven't gotten to sink my teeth into the full start yet. Scheduling nightmare! The awful weather here lately hasn't helped. The game is set in San Francisco (for now) and has a heavy focus on digital technology and the Digital Web (don't you dare call it the internet, you heretic!). I relish little else as much as getting to run something in a city I know well, but the players don't.

That's it for right now, but at some point, I intend to finish reading Eclipse Phase...and then, watch out! I will write stuff about it!

Top 5 Current Songs on my IPod

Not my top 5 favorite songs of all time.

Just the top 5 that I've been listening to the most lately. I really considered if this list should be a little more focused on the more unique stuff, or if I should be picky about what I list. However, I am pretty comfortable with my nerdiness, so some of my music is really cool, some of my music is pretty dorky, and all of it is really fun to shake my butt to.

And at the end of the day, that is all I can ask for, something that makes me want to dance.

1) How You Like Me Now - The Heavy



You might recognize this song from the Kia commercial featuring the Yo Gabba Gabba cast.

First off, best commercial ever. It has a sock monkey getting an embroidered tattoo, that is just amazing.

Second off, how did I not hear about this band earlier?

You must listen to this song, love this song, and dance. If you can listen to this song and not dance, then I feel sorry for you.

2) Amazing -Kanye West (feat. Young Jeezy)



I am not embedding Kanye's video, because its a little pervy and because the reason I bought this song is Aziz Ansari's special "Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening". I'm not necessarily sure how I feel about having a song by someone named Young Jeezy, but I love hip hop, I enjoy Kanye, and I'm okay with that.

3) Moth's Wings - Passion Pit



I did not like this song at all the first time I heard it. I thought it was a little boring and was ready not to listen to any other songs off the album. But it happened to be on a mix CD that we had in our car, and eventually, I did fall in love with it. It is just a magical song.

4) Won't Want for Love - The Decemberists



If you haven't heard the "Hazards of Love" album, try getting a hold of it and listening to the story. This was the first album in a long time that had be crying by the end. It is just so beautiful and tragic.

5) Grounds for Divorce - Elbow

click!

Their video didn't allow embedding, but this song has been on constant rotation for months since it appeared in a "House" commercial. This song makes a good pair with the first song, good to get down to. Plus, I really like the lead singer's voice. I really do just need a nice voice and a good bass player.

dynamite job!

Of the many tepid waters I wade in (subjects I am interested in but that I recognize their ultimate pointlessness/riggedness), the study of economics is a particularly dirty and well-paddled one. Naturally, I've had a lot of garbage data and opinion to keep that pond topped off for many months.

So naturally, what is often needed is a little levity at the poolside. Behold; the internet vote! An institution of greatness.

Dynamite Prize in Economics

And you get to vote for three of them! So many good choices...I'm tempted by the obscure theory-cranks, but then, if I was going that way I'd pick Ayn Rand, who isn't on the list anyway (and who no one should be seriously considering as an economic theorist. Shame on me/you!).

They're sealing the vote until the poll is closed too, which is rare on the internet, I think (and if you're asking, yes, this post is a way to remind myself to check the poll when it is finished to see who won :P ).

Update: Voting has closed! Wouldn't you know, the guys I picked for won! I didn't even have to rig it!

motivation

Since this site is strongly bound up with the search for and nurturing of motivations for personal work, I figured I should do something I haven't in...well, perhaps ever, and read up a bit about it. I'm not normally one to go into scholarly writing about psychology, which made it doubly eye-opening when I burned through Daniel Pink's Drive last week. At the heart of Pink's argument is to stress the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and the dearth of the former in our professional and educational lives, even after many decades of very smart people having already gotten a very good handle on it.

I think a smattering of real-life experiences and a band-wagon rejection of the philosophy of the behaviorists made me highly receptive to this, as if I had recognized it as a distant conceptual relative. That didn't make the contents any less revelatory, though. When Pink says "intrinsic", he means motivation derived from the joy of doing, to be motivated by the inherent satisfaction and engagement you get from creatively acting at something. Once we start to add in extrinsic motivations, classically identified as the "carrot and stick", things start to get screwy, work suffers, and morale and morals can enter a decline. And once you go back, it is very difficult to recapture your own internal motivations.

Both with art and writing, I've felt for a long time that I suffer from a motivation gap of sorts. I have enough ability with both to get a genuine pleasure from the doing of either. So has Pink handed me a golden ticket to excuse all the time I am not doing art and unmotivated to start by letting me blame it on school, work, and the demands of well-wishers and fortune seekers infecting me with their feeble murmurs that I should start cashing in on my creativity?

That would be easy, but no. There's a better path here, and this blog is part of following it, as I will be unpacking in the weeks to come.

If you are at all interested in behavioral psychology, or just want to get a grasp on what really motivates people, you will likely find this quick read (only 256 pages) time well spent.

evenings at the booghost abode

I'm from a family of Scrabble hustlers.

We don't play for fun, we play for blood.

However, two competitive people being married meant learning how to play for enjoyment. My Mom always insisted on playing without keeping score, so that was our first step, just trying to make the best words and ignoring the score.

We've now decided to keep score again to see if this maturity we've been working at actually exists.

While swiping a triple-word score still makes overwhelmingly happy, I'm much more excited to see our game overall improve. Last night's game was an example of our family Scrabble skills leveling up.

Beth: 272
Mike: 252

Our pizza making skills also improved this week as Mike made our first pizzas in our cast-iron skillets. Normally we would just use our pan because we don't have a pizza stone and because after spending hours making the dough, we just want it in the oven for a dependable method. Lately, we've been buying our dough premade at Trader Joe's because our winter apartment is kryptonite to rising dough, so we decided to make it in the cast-iron as we've seen all over the internet.

This was a successful and yummy pizza. We made two with whole wheat dough: one spinach and mozzarella/romano w/tomato sauce, and one smaller one with rapini and whatever left over cheese we had (some cheddar, some manchego).

We did all of this while watching our HBO on-demand and waiting for the Olympics to start. We watched a new documentary, "Outrage" about closeted Gay politicians who openly fight against the interest of Gay Rights groups. If you have HBO, definitely check this movie out. It was really well made and, while I was familiar with some of the stories, some of them were brand new to me. As Harvey Milk once said:

Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.

the second opinion review

While my taste in media is, at times, questionable (yes, we tried to watch the remake of "Fame" this weekend. no, we couldn't finish it), I am trying to expand my horizons a little bit more outside of episodes of "InfoMania" and my Google reader. So, gentle readers, here are my reviews of two comic book trades I read this weekend and Mike's follow-up for the full household opinion.

Preacher Vol. 1 : Gone to Texas by Grant Ennis, Steve Dillon, Glenn Fabry

Beth: The Preacher series of comics is about a preacher from Texas given the power of the word (the ability to make people do whatever he says) by a spiritual force escaped from Heaven. He travels with an Irish vampire and his ex-girlfriend searching for an absent God. Overall, this was an enjoyable read that just wasn't my taste. Sometimes, it is easy to recognize that something is good, entertaining, and well-written, but the humor/writing/art work just isn't for you. I do really enjoy anything featuring Christian mythology and I love the idea in the book that God is traveling around trying to find his way. But the humor wasn't really my taste. I'll probably try to read a few more to see the direction it goes in.

Mike: I've been meaning to read Preacher for a long time, based on the recommendation of friends. Happy that I finally got around to it. Elements of the basic premise had been described to me before, and to its credit, the book expressed that premise in a far more nuanced and interesting way than I had cooked up in my head. The characters are probably what stood out to me most, and of course I get an indulgent satisfaction from reading hard-swearing/hard-drinking angels gripe. I would probably keep reading just to get more of Cassidy.

100 Bullets Vol. 1 : First Shot, Last Call by Brian Azzarello

Beth: The idea of "100 Bullets" is one of the strongest things that series has going for it. The idea that an agent approaches ordinary citizens with the ability to enact revenge on the person that has harmed them most is dark, intriguing, and is what drove me to request this from my local library. I wasn't the biggest fan of the artwork, and at times, I wondered if the premise was actually stronger then the story. But overall, it did leave me wanting to read more and find out the organizations behind the story. I will definitely be reading another volume.

Mike: I have mixed feelings about the sort of comic "100 Bullets" is; on the one hand, its episodic format and lack of a consistent protagonist makes it accessible in a way I wish more comics were. On the other, it can make some scenes feel arbitrary or superficial. In both cases, it left me wanting more of both episodes, and you know what? That's a good thing.

public radio nerd

While I enjoy holidays because I like buying presents for people and I like sending greeting cards, I'm not a huge Valentine's Day person. This year, I did make cards for some people but we mostly used the long weekend to relax and run errands.

Don't get me wrong, I love running errands. I've finally hit that weird stage in life where I like feeling accomplished in a way checking things off of your to-do does for me. That can be true romance sometimes, enjoying the time spent in the car or pushing a shopping cart.

Plus we get to listen to Public Radio which is the best reason for having an IPod Touch (the NPR app). This weekend was all about:

Radio Lab this week was amazing. We just started listening to this after I saw it mentioned on another blog described as 'This American Life' about science. It was about Animals and Emotions, or how creatures other then humans feel. There were an amazing story about a National Geographic Photographer interacting with a seal who cared for him and about the animal blessing day at St. John the Divine in NYC. One of the most interesting ideas was how humanizing animal emotions ruins the uniqueness of the experience of life, as if saying that animals feel the same way humans do lessens the importance of their special world. As a vegetarian, this was very powerful for me, so I really recommend listening to it.


This American Life this week was one of the most engrossing and intriguing stories I've ever heard. If you ever liked mysteries or you like genealogy or you just want to spend an hour living in a new world, go listen to the "House on Loon Lake". It is about a group of young boys who break into an abandoned house, and the mystery that they discover. One of my big goals for last year was to start more regularly listening to NPR, and this show has really changed me in a powerful way. It's also a really wonderful TV show so if you have Netflix, go add the DVDs to your queue, because it is better then I can really explain. It is not always happy ending but the episode "John Smith" about 6 different John Smiths made me cry like a little baby.

Public Radio kept us company all the way to IKEA. I have a serious love/hate relationship with IKEA, I love cheap cute things, I hate disposable culture and how time seems to work differently within an IKEA. You go in all upbeat, and somewhere in between lamps and textiles, you realize 6 hours have gone buy and you have a cart full of things that you are sure you can't live without (even thought you've been living without them).

But we had ordered ahead to pick up our new couch! I posted a picture of it on twitter, but I'll take a nicer picture later this week (my cell phone picture did not do it justice). It's super cute, but its mostly just nice to have a comfortable couch. It's a nice print and matches the chair my parents gave us for our anniversary.

Today was mostly spent playing video games, reading, and a brief trip down to the Strip. For those of you not from Pittsburgh, this is an area of town jam-packed with cute food-related shops featuring one of my favorite all-time stores, Reyna's. Reyna's is a specialty store of Mexican and Caribbean food. Jarritos in all sorts of colors, Sugar Cane Coke, freshly made tortillas, every known Goya product, and probably some of the best burritos I've ever had. Plus, a huge hot sauce selections.

We are a big condiment family, we have tons of random hot sauces, fancy mustards, and foreign mayo. Reyna's gave me my new favorite, a honey mustard sauce that I've taken to putting on everything.

So far, this weekend has been great and we've launched our site! Plus, Olympics pairs skatings and plans to make cake balls.

Life is pretty awesome most of the time.

Opening Move

Hi. I'm Mike. And I am a news junkie.

I obsess over the glacial floe of bad legislation, triangulate international reports to try and get the big picture, and regularly wince at the stuff that comes out of the American MSM (and then continue to watch it).

If all goes according to plan, I will not be writing about any of those things here.

This blog is a tool to help me realize several somethings. One of these is to help focus my critical eye and written reaction on subjects more likely to give me some creative satisfaction.

So now is a highly opportune moment for some mental rejuvenation as I attempt to shed many months of intense news following. Here are five reasons I should stop paying attention to the Wayang Kulit that is the public world:

1. Laser interferometer in Germany inadvertently reveals that space-time can breakdown from a continuum into "grains". This was discovered in part due to a strange noise coming from the detector. Oh yeah, and the guy who predicted it thinks it means the Universe might be a hologram (yeah, I know, I've heard THAT one before!).

2. Some black holes can move through space at high velocities.

"Second, GRO J1655-40 and its companion are moving through the galaxy at about 250,000 miles per hour (400,000 km per hour). This supports the idea that the black hole formed from the collapse of the core of a massive star. As the core collapsed, its outer layers exploded as a supernova. The explosion was a little off-centered, though, so it sent the system racing through the galaxy."

Egads.

3. CERN may annihilate the planet (unlikely). But it can be defeated by air-to surface complex carbohydrates (likely). Kind of a mixed bag that. World annihilated, why worry. World annihilation prevented via glutinous intervention, we're safe. Win/win!

4. There's a rather fresh looking Hellmouth in Uzbekistan. Not as in it just happened though. Well, just look at the picture. Darvaz is pretty far from me, but you know, what if demons can tp bomb? I have no good intelligence that says they can't.

5. We have finally achieved augmented reality mesh in real time. Humanity levels up externally? No, probably not (cue advertisements). I mean, it isn't even being beamed directly into your optic nerve. But this and other things make me suspicious that we may in fact be in the "future". The Font of All Knowledge Beth actually has this on her Android. She says it still doesn't replace Yelp in her heart for finding cool places to go to. But still.

Well. I feel better already.