Good Morning
It has been a busy week…Bebe has her first official boyfriend, that means she went on an official date where he drove and everything.
So you can see why I have been a little distracted.
All this back and forth reminded me of this old skit from Saturday Night Live, that aired on March 30, 1985.
I saw this episode live when it aired all those years ago and one of the lines remained in the back of my mind…I quote it quite frequently. In fact, I used it on Bebe to find out her relationship status just a few hours ago.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — Episode 15 — Pictured: (l-r) Christopher Guest as Bull, Martin Short as Percival Dickerson, Jim Belushi as cellmate during ‘House of Shame’ skit on March 30, 1985 — Photo by: Alan Singer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
Here is a description of the scene with a couple of photos I could find, it sucks there is no video clip available.
SNL Archives – Season 10 Episode 15
Number one: Fin-de-Siecle Prison Homosexuality. As I recall, the title of the bit when it aired was Shame Of The Prisons. Martin Short plays a terrified new prisoner named Percival, and his cellmate is the threatening Jim Belushi. Belushi doesn’t ravage him immediately, because he says, “I can’t have you until The Bull has had you.”
Guest plays The Bull as a gallant Gaylord Ravenal sort of character, and the first date is just a walk in the moonlight, with genteel idle chit-chat, until The Bull finally turns and asks “Percy? I must know this. Will you wear my ring… and be my bitch?”
“Sweetheart of Sigma-Chi” by Edward Eggleston, circa 1919
Short goes back to his cell and he and Belushi start acting like high school girls, thrilled to discuss the particulars of a date.
Bold quote is my emphasis, and actually I believe what Guest says to Short is “Will you wear my pin… and be my bitch?” Which goes along with the old fashioned idea of short getting “pinned” by the Bull…it was funny as hell.
I tried so long to find pictures of just that set-up. Like that first image up top, but no luck. The rest of the illustrations are various couples. Meh…
Ah…now we will just move on to the links for this morning’s post. They start with the South and move through child rearing to fruit and hand-baskets. Hopefully the stories will be new to you…
This first link should be introduced with the joke…if your local Waffle House is held up by a man in overalls wielding a pitchfork…you might be a redneck. Man accused of robbing Waffle House with pitchfork
He’s accused of using a weapon to force Waffle House employees into the back of a restaurant so he could steal money.
But it’s the weapon he used that really caught witnesses’ attention. The suspect was carrying a pitchfork.
The suspect, identified as Jeffrey Willard Wooten, 50, was wearing coveralls and a ski mask when he entered the Buford Highway breakfast eatery Thursday night, according to Norcross police. After forcing employees into a back room, Wooten went after cash, police said.
“When he realized he couldn’t get the cash register open, he took the whole cash register and exited the store . . with his pitchfork,” Norcross police Chief Warren Summers told Channel 2 Action News.
I think the best part of the story however is that the employees got a piece of him, uh…see here:
Outside of the Waffle House, Wooten allegedly dropped his pitchfork, according to police. But he held on to the cash register.
Two restaurant employees than grabbed the pitchfork and used it to smash the back window of Wooten’s truck, police said. Wooten may have been injured while attempting to leave the restaurant.
“It wouldn’t be an offensive weapon in your garden, but it was in a Waffle House,” Summers said.
It also is a deadly weapon when used during riots in Transylvania.
But if that seems crazy to you, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. Y’all ready for a WTF moment? Alabama’s chief justice: Buddha didn’t create us so First Amendment only protects Christians
Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.
“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”
He then noted that he loves talking to lawyers, because he is a lawyer who went to “a secular law school,” so he knows that “in the law, [talking about God] just isn’t politically correct.” He claimed that this is why America has “lost its way,” and that he would be publishing a pamphlet “this week, maybe next” that contained copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thereby proving that all the people “who found this nation — black, white, all people, all religions, all faiths” knew that America was “about God.”
Oh, the batshit nutjob’s speech gets worse, look at this jewel:
Chief Justice Moore later defined “life” via Blackstone’s Law — a book that American lawyers have “sadly forgotten” — as beginning when “the baby kicks.” “Today,” he said, “our courts say it’s not alive ’til the head comes out.”
“Now,” he continued, “if technology’s supposed to increase our knowledge, how did we become so stupid?” Discussing Thomas Jefferson’s use of “life” in the Declaration of Independence, he said that “when [Jefferson] put ‘life’ in there, it was in the womb — we know it begins at conception. Why aren’t we going the right way instead of the wrong way?”
He later said the “pursuit of happiness” meant following God’s law, because “you can’t be happy unless you follow God’s law, and if you follow God’s law, you can’t help but be happy.”
Video at the link. It all is too ridiculous to even discuss. Makes me think of Chris Rodda who wrote the book Liars for Jesus. Wonder what she would say about Moore’s bullshit.
Next up, another In Deep South where GOP Rejected Obamacare, tens of 1000s die Unnecessarily every Year | Informed Comment
The Center for Disease Control house found that 900,000 people a year die of five leading causes every year in the US, and that 20% to 40% of these deaths are preventable (i.e. 180,000 to 360,000 needn’t die). The five are heart disease, cancer, lung disease, stroke and unintentional injury. Smoking cigarettes contributes to several of them.
What is striking is that the preventable diseases occur at a much higher rate in the Deep South than in the rest of the country, especially in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. AJC.com notes that only 2% of Oregon’s heart attacks are considered to be “preventable” by the CDC, but 58 percent of Mississippi’s are.
Graphs and picture goodies at the link, plus lots more, so go read it.
More news and “stuff” after the jump.
This past week, 55 Universities and Colleges where being investigated by the Feds:
Fifty-five colleges and universities – big and small, public and private – are being investigated over their handling of sexual abuse complaints under Title IX, the Education Department revealed Thursday.
The Education Department’s decision to release the list is unprecedented and comes as the Obama administration seeks to shed greater transparency on the issue of sexual assault in higher education and how it is being handled.
The schools are as follows:
State Institution
AZ ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
CA BUTTE-GLEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT
CA OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE
CA UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
CA UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
CO REGIS UNIVERSITY
CO UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
CO UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT DENVER
CO UNIVERSITY OF DENVER
CT UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
DC CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
FL FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
GA EMORY UNIVERSITY
HI UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
ID UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO
IL KNOX COLLEGE
IL UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
IN INDIANA UNIVERSITY-BLOOMINGTON
IN VINCENNES UNIVERSITY
MA AMHERST COLLEGE
MA BOSTON UNIVERSITY
MA EMERSON COLLEGE
MA HARVARD COLLEGE
MA HARVARD UNIVERSITY – LAW SCHOOL
MA UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-AMHERST
MD FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY
MI MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
MI UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR
NC GUILFORD COLLEGE
NC UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
ND MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY
NH DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
NJ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
NY CUNY HUNTER COLLEGE
NY HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES
NY SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE
NY SUNY AT BINGHAMTON
OH DENISON UNIVERSITY
OH OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
OH WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY
OK OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
PA CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
PA FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE
PA PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
PA SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
PA TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
TN VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
TX SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY
TX THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS-PAN AMERICAN
VA COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
VA UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
WA WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
WI UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER
WV BETHANY COLLEGE
WV WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE
Was your alma mater on the list?
Then you have this asshole, Did Floyd Mayweather Use Abortion Rumor to Punish His Ex? | Care2 Causes
He’s a powerful, famous, rich athlete. She’s his ex-fiancee, who apparently broke his heart, potentially interrupting his training for an upcoming bout. At least that’s the story told by the sports news world when discussing the relationship of boxer Floyd Mayweather and his ex, which the prizefighter claims ended when he lied to her about miscarrying, actually procuring an abortion instead.
That version of the events comes straight from a world that is obsessed with its public figures and revered athletes and is incapable of seeing potential faults like domestic violence, intimidation and manipulation, and physical or emotional abuse. It comes from a media that can interview an athlete extensively about game day preparation, yet ignore jail time for domestic assault, such as the sentence Mayweather himself served for one of a number of instances of domestic violence he was accused of committing.
“This kind of coverage makes me so angry because most people probably didn’t even think twice about the reason Mayweather went to jail because the way most sports media works, we are supposed to see athletes as the protagonists in their own story,” writes Jessica Luther, who specializes in tracking abuse and assault in the sports world, regarding Mayweather’s domestic violence past. “It isn’t about what Mayweather did but what was done to him.”
What was done to him, in this recent case, was allegedly a refusal by his ex to bear him children when she got pregnant. Mayweather callously disregarded her personal and medical privacy, posting an ultrasound of two 6 week old embryos and claiming that she aborted them against his wishes. “The real reason me and Shantel Christine Jackson @missjackson broke up was because she got a abortion, and I’m totally against killing babies. She killed our twin babies,” he wrote, although later he removed the picture and comment.
You must have seen this story already…I just have to quote the rest of this post from Care2 because it really states the truth.
Damage, obviously, was already done. Besides making her private decisions public, he essentially called her a murderer, as well as inferred that she may have had the abortion because she was pregnant by someone else. In fact, there is little more that Mayweather could have done to attack the woman online, setting publicity off after her as well as his own fans.
That Mayweather, who already had a history of violence against him, is somehow seen as the victim when he purposefully set into action this systematic emotional abuse is baffling. In fact, anti-abortion groups are hailing him as a hero and using him as a symbol of how “harmed” men can be if they can’t stop women from having abortions. “How horribly ironic that one of the greatest Professional Boxers in the world is powerless after Roe V Wade to defend the life of his unborn children,” writes Priests for Life’s Kevin Burke, who then hopes that he will come for “healing” with their post-abortive counseling group.
With a history of abuse towards women, the idea that his fiance may have chosen not to continue a pregnancy with him, and potentially told him that she miscarried in order to hide the truth, as Mayweather claims, isn’t too surprising. While some may feel unable to leave a relationship with someone who is physically or emotionally abusing them, the thought of raising children in that dynamic may be terrifying enough to make them seek out an abortion, not wanting her child to be a part of that relationship or fearing it may tie them together forever.
This idea of being owed control of children, and using them to control or punish the mother, isn’t Mayweather’s alone. We saw the same sort of emotional manipulation and using of potential life in the Bode Miller case, where he accused his ex of stealing his baby in the womb when she left the state to seek better educational opportunities and a better future for herself and her unborn child.
Mayweather is no victim for outing an ex’s abortion, and the media and anti-abortion activists are wrong to treat him as such. When someone exposes a partner’s personal medical decisions, using that as a means to rally the public against her and punish her for her choices, that is emotional abuse, and it needs to be called what it really is.
I don’t know, do you think Maweather’s problem is all do to the fact that his food was not cut up as a child? /snark: Cut up Your Kids’ Food So They Won’t Be Jerks: a Study | Geekosystem
Apparently kids are not only what they eat, but how. A study from Cornell University suggests that children are more likely to act aggressively when eating food with their hands and front teeth. So, cut up that apple and un-cob that corn! Future generations depend on it!
Published recently in Eating Behaviors, the study Biting Vs. Chewing: Eating Style and Social Aggression In Children (what a mouthful!) claims that letting a kid eat like an animal also makes them act like one. Brian Wansink, Professor and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, says the team’s research showed that children whose food wasn’t cut up “were twice as likely to disobey adults and twice as aggressive toward other kids.”
If you suspect your offspring might be chomping their way into assholery, relax—the research was conducted over a short period of time and on a very small pool of participants. The study observed 12 elementary school students at a camp over two days. Participating campers were given chicken either on or off the bone one day, then the two groups switched. Children in the cut-up and non cut-up groups were instructed to stay inside a circle with a 9 foot radius while eating, and the meals were videotaped and then evaluated for atypical aggressive behavior. Although, can you blame the kids for having a bone to pick? Sounds like that camp blew.
Yeah, alright then. But as the article points out, it was a very small survey of kids…so BFD.
Then again, maybe if those kids have a big sister to cut up their food, it won’t be so bad: Big sisters do better: New study of siblings finds eldest girls have the edge — ScienceDaily
A new ISER study reveals that oldest children are the most ambitious, especially girls, and a wider gap between siblings increases the chances of children achieving higher levels of qualifications.
The study by Feifei Bu looked at the impact of sibling structures on children’s aspirations. Previous studies, particularly in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands have revealed that first born children are more likely to achieve higher qualifications but the new ISER research has found that this could be partially explained by the fact that they are statistically likely to be more ambitious than their younger brothers and sisters.
Sibling Configurations, Educational Aspiration and Attainment followed 1503 sibling groups and 3532 individuals through the British Household Panel Study and its successor UK panel study, Understanding Society.
The research found that the firstborn superiority which means firstborns are more likely to achieve better educational outcomes, could be down to a pronounced higher level of ambition which pushes them forward. Controlling for parents’ levels of education and professional status, the research found first born children were 7 per cent more likely to aspire to stay on in education than their later-born siblings. Girls were 13 per cent more ambitious than boys. The probability of attending further education for firstborns is 16 per cent higher than their later-born siblings. (Girls are 4 per cent more likely to have further education qualifications.)
The study also looked at gender mix amongst siblings and size of families (excluding twins and only children) and found that this had no bearing on their ambitions or achievements later in life. However, a bigger gap between brothers and sisters did make a difference on educational attainment.
Now that is a study sample, am I right?
The rest of the links, I will give you a quick two paragraphs or so, just be sure to go read the rest of the articles.
More science news, on a depressing note: Diving Birds Have 45 Percent Fewer Viable Babies after Oil Spill – Scientific American
Oil spills kill a lot of wildlife quickly, but their long-term effects are hard to establish because to compare the situation before and after a disaster, a study would need to have been already up and running before the disaster occurred. Fortunately, this was precisely the case for a Spanish team of researchers.
Back in 1994, marine biologist Álvaro Barros and his colleagues at Spain’s University of Vigo started looking at the reproductive activity of 18 colonies of a diving bird known as the European shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis). Then, on November 13, 2002, the hull of the Prestige oil tanker broke in half off the north-western coast of Spain, releasing 63,000 tonnes of oil. The oil heavily coated regions near seven of the colonies, and mostly missed the other 11, creating ‘oiled’ and ‘unoiled’ populations for the researchers to compare.
The team now reports in Biology Letters that reproductive success was 45% lower in oiled populations compared with unoiled colonies, whereas it had been much the same before the spill. The researchers measured reproductive success by counting how many fully grown young emerged from each nest. This number averaged 1.6 for both oiled and control colonies before the spill. Afterwards, while the control colonies maintained the 1.6 figure, the number for the birds in the oiled colonies dropped to 1.0.
There is also a fiber art connection brewing in WASHINGTON: Controversial Armenian rug will go on display | White House | McClatchy DC
A lobbying campaign led in part by California lawmakers has borne fruit, with a White House agreement to allow display of the politically contentious artifact known as the Armenian Orphan Rug, though where has not yet been determined.
Lawmakers with large Armenian-American constituencies pressed administration officials to liberate the 89-year-old rug from storage. Their success marks the latest turn in the conflict over remembering an Armenian catastrophe.
“We’ve been in a constant course of discussion,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s been a long process.”
That’s because the rug surpasses mere decoration.
Measuring somewhat more than 11 feet by 18 feet, the rug contains more than 4 million hand-tied knots. Armenian girls in the Ghazir Orphanage of the Near East Relief Society, located in what is now Lebanon, took 10 months to complete it before it was presented in 1925 to President Calvin Coolidge.
The rug was meant to thank the United States for relief provided to victims of what President Barack Obama last week called the Meds Yeghern, which is Armenian for “great calamity.”
By some estimates, 1.5 million Armenians died at the end of the Ottoman Empire, between 1915 and 1923. Historians and governmental bodies have characterized the catastrophe as genocide, a term first recognized in international law in 1948 as referring to actions intended to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Diplomatically and militarily, the term is loaded.
This next two stories deal with books…old ones, but from very different sources:
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories to be republished with the sex, drugs and profanities put back in via the Independent
The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth collection of stories are to be re-published with all of the sex, nudity, drug-taking and profanity originally censored by editors of The Saturday Evening Post reinstated.
The author’s short stories were written for The Post during the late 1920s and early 1930s and while he was heavily in debt despite his popularity.
The Post, fearing it may upset its middle class readership, removed references to sexual acts, innuendos and nudity, including a scene involving a woman running a bath naked, amending it instead to a fully clothed woman running the water.
Scholar James West has since restored the stories using final drafts to present them in their original form for the latest volume of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of F Scott Fitzgerald,
Vatican Library plans to digitize 41 million pages via Medieval.net
The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana has begun the first phase of a massive digitization project and over the next four years will digitize over 3000 manuscripts. The Vatican library hopes to eventually digitize all 82 000 manuscripts in it collection, which covers over 41 million pages.
Last month the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana selected the Japanese firm NTT DATA to digitally reproduced images. The 18 million euro project will last until 2018.
Among significant manuscripts of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana to be digitally archived in the first phase of the project:
Vatican Virgil: produced in Rome around 400 AD, one of the few surviving examples of ancient illustration of a classic text (Vat lat. 3225).
Bilingual Iliad, with Greek text and Latin translation, double facing page. The manuscript, written in the fifteenth century by the Greek copyist Giovanni Rhosos and copyist from Padua Bartolomeo Sanvito was illuminated by Gaspare di Padova (Vat gr. 1626)
Pre-Columbian Aztec manuscript, written probably near Puebla (Mexico) at the end of the fifteenth century. The code had a ritual purpose, perhaps divination with mythological subjects, fairy tales, a calendar and family trees of the venerated gods (Borg. mess . 1: Codex Borgianus).
It turns out our biggest threat may not be the aliens from outer space issue, even though we have enough shit to deal with “illegal aliens” here in the US (again snark): Stephen Hawking warns of possible dire threat to mankind from artificial intelligence
Author, physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking co-wrote a dire warning to the human race about the danger of unintended consequences from our current fascination with artificial intelligence (AI). In an open letter with three other scientists published in The Independent, Hawking contended that dismissing “the notion of highly intelligent machines as science fiction” could be “our worst mistake in history.”
Consumers use AI each day in the form of the iPhone’s personal assistant Siri, Google Now and other programs. Breakthroughs like newly developed self-driving cars herald a generation of products and services to come as computers become more and more adept at solving problems quickly.
“The potential benefits are huge,” wrote Hawking. “Everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone’s list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.”
However, the letter warned, these developments do not come without risks and dangers. Already, defense firms are exploring the use of fully autonomous weapons that are sent into the field to track and kill specific targets.
“Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organized in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains,” said Hawking…
But then what does that matter when: Butterflies Continue to Be Nature’s Greatest Monsters, Also Drink the Tears of Crocodiles | Geekosystem
Fun fact: the phrase “crocodile tears” comes from an ancient belief that crocodiles cry for the prey that they’re eating. It’s completely false, of course, but who knows? Maybe they would be crying if a whole bunch of asshole butterflies didn’t swoop down and suck the tears right out of their scaly faces first.
It’s been pretty well established that certain species of butterfly engage in drinking of other animals tears for their sodium, (it’s also called “lachryphagous,” for you butterflies out there who want to explain it to your friends without sounding like the terrible dicks that you are) but video of just such an event is obviously pretty rare. That’s why the below footage of a Caiman crocodilus getting his eyeballs licked by a butterfly and bee tag team along the banks of the Río Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica is so compelling. Well, that and it’s of a butterfly drinking tears.
The next link is an update of sorts: 6 Tales of Amazing Survivors (Who Were Babies) | Cracked.com
There are few things more terrifying than seeing a helpless baby in danger, partly because they represent the continuation of our species, and partly because they’re dang cute. However, maybe we should give the little bastards more credit: There are babies out there who have survived dangerous situations that would have likely killed a grown man, sometimes because their smallness actually protected them, and sometimes because we’re pretty sure they’re just indestructible.
After reading that article, y’all should have some feeling of hope, I mean there is nothing like a survival story to make you feel better about this world going to hell in a hand-basket. World Wide Words: Going to hell in a handbasket
Can you please tell me anything about the origin of the phrase going to hell in a handbasket?
A This is a weird one, which has puzzled and confused many writers. The meaning is clear enough, that some situation is getting rapidly out of hand and is going downhill fast. That explains hell, as the ultimate bad destination, but why a handbasket, of all things?
A couple of similar expressions give a clue. An early one was going to heaven in a wheelbarrow, which paradoxically meant “going to hell”. This may relate to a famous stained-glass window in St Mary’s Church in Fairford in Gloucestershire, which shows a scolding wife being taken away in a wheelbarrow by the devil. The saying is obliquely referred to in a sermon by an English clergyman:
Oh, this oppressor must needs go to heaven! what shall hinder him? But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him.
God’s Bounty, by Thomas Adams, c1618.
Another version was head in a handbasket:
A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it.
Diary, by The Reverend Samuel Sewell, 23 Mar. 1714.
This second expression is rare. I can find only one later example, which looks very much like a direct reference:
When Murray first refused the certificate of election to Cannon, the Mormon delegate, there was an almost universal howl, especially from republican papers, and the governor’s head was demanded in a hand basket.
The Daily Ledger-Standard (New Albany, Indiana), 28 Mar. 1881.
Some writers have read into this version that it refers to execution by the guillotine, in which the image — as in the terror associated with the French Revolution — is of the executed person’s head dropping into a basket. Guillotines certainly predate both the French Revolution and Mr Sewell’s time (a famous sixteenth-century one is associated with the Yorkshire city of Halifax) but to make this connection would seem to stretch the imagination.
Actually I thought their may have been a French Revolution connection before I read this…read the rest of the answer at the link above.
You know what is going to hell though? The shit you see at the fast food joints and in the grocery stores…and the way it is being sold to you: Artisanal Everything « The Dish
Brianne Alcala observes how fast-food chains are jumping the shark and onto the bandwagon:
McDonald’s is not the first to co-opt “artisan.” Its rival Subway has “sandwich artisans”; Domino’s offers ARTISAN™ pizzas, such as Tuscan Salami & Roasted Veggies; Dunkin’ Donuts promoted Artisan Bagels; and Wendy’s sells the Artisan Egg Sandwich. No doubt the fast-food giants are trying to muscle into the higher-priced foodie realm, and sure, the ad copy is enticing. Wendy’s description of its “Artisan Egg Sandwich”: “fresh cracked Grade A Eggs, natural Asiago cheese, freshly cooked applewood smoked bacon or all natural sausage and Hollandaise sauce all atop a honey-wheat artisan muffin toasted to order.” What does “fresh cracked” eggs even mean? …
Yeah, what the fuck is that? Does that mean free range eggs? Like the ones Kramer is talking about here…from the Little Jerry episode of Seinfeld:
New scene – Jerry and Kramer in a booth at the coffee shop.
KRAMER: So, I noticed you bounced a check at the bodega.
JERRY: How did you know about that?
KRAMER: Because Marcelino, he taped it up on his cash register with all the other bad checks.
JERRY: He can’t do that.
KRAMER (sternly): It’s the only way you’ll learn. (Tastes his eggs.) Aw, these eggs are disgusting. This chicken should be ashamed of himself.
[...]
<Elaine enters with her new boyfriend, Kurt.>
ELAINE: Hey! Look who’s here! Hey Kurt, this is Jerry, and George, and Kramer.
KRAMER: Hey, Kurt. Taste these eggs.
KURT: Uh, no – I only eat cage-free, farm-fresh.
KRAMER: Yes! These are sweatshop eggs. <Kramer gets up to leave by climbing over the back of the booth. He loses it and falls on the floor, then regains his composure and walks out with his napkin still tucked in his collar.>
Of course you all remember what happens when Kramer gets that chicken aka Little Jerry:
I love that episode.
Well, if cage-free farm-fresh is your thing, then you probably don’t need this website: Never Eat a Fruit Out Of Season Again With RipeTrack | Geekosystem
If you’re looking to get more (and tastier) fruit for your buck, though, then you can do a lot worse than RipeTrack. While not necessarily a new or novel concept, the site uses a very easy-to-understand color-coded scale of ripeness for pretty much every produce item you can think of — including dandelion greens, which are apparently a thing that people eat on the regular. You can check what’s currently in season, or you can search for individual fruits and vegetables to check yourself when you have a particular craving.
One quick mention, aside from all this stuff above:
Hullabaloo-Saturday Night at the Movies
RIP Bob Hoskins: 1942-2014
According to most of the perfunctory obits on the network newscasts and such over the past several days, the only work of note by the late great British actor Bob Hoskins was his starring role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes, I’m sure we can all agree that was an entertaining romp (if a wee bit overrated) and Hoskins (who never gave a bad performance in his life, despite the material he may have had to work with at times) proved that he could hold his ground against a bevy of scene-stealing cartoon characters, but as far as I’m concerned, that was strictly a paycheck gig. Granted, at a casual glance this guy may have reminded you more of your 10th grade shop teacher than say, George Clooney, but hand him a juicy character role that he could really sink his teeth into, and he’d go straight for the jugular, tearing up the screen like a fucking Cockney Brando. Standing 5 foot 6 and built like a fireplug, he could appear as huge and menacing as a killer grizzly, or as benign and vulnerable as a teddy bear. For a true appreciation of what Hoskins was “about”, just check out his more “actor-ly” movies…like my top five picks:
Felicia’s Journey- Due to its disturbing subject matter, writer-director Atom Egoyan’s 1999 psychological thriller/character study does not make for an easy watch, but it does provide an ideal showcase for Hoskins to fully flex his instrument. He plays an introverted, middle aged man named Joseph who works as a catering manager. He is obsessed with his late mother, who was a TV chef. He whiles away evenings in his kitchen, cooking in tandem with Mom via old videotapes of her program (while Egoyan’s film is not a comedy, Hoskins’ portrayal has echoes of Rod Steiger’s creepy “Mr. Joyboy” in The Loved One ). As he strikes up an unlikely friendship with an equally insular young Irish woman named Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), who is in search of the cad who left her in the lurch after getting her pregnant, there are disturbing reveals about Joseph’s past that will have you wishing that Felicia would magically heed your fruitless pleas to get herself far away from this man, and quickly. As he does in most of his films, Egoyan uses a non-linear narrative and deliberate pacing to build up to a powerfully emotional denouement.
[...]
The Long Good Friday - If I had to whittle it down to my “#1” favorite Hoskins performance (no simple task), it would be the one he gives as “Harold Shand”, in John Mackenzie’s 1980 Brit noir. Harold is a “hard” Cockney gangster boss, on the verge of cementing a “visionary” alliance with an American crime syndicate. Unfortunately, a local rival is bent on throwing a spanner in the works, using any means necessary. Harold finds himself in a race against time to find out who is responsible before “they” succeed in sabotaging the deal. Screenwriter Phil Meheux has a keen ear for dialog, and applies dabs of subtle dark humor throughout that may be easy to miss upon a first viewing. Cinematographer Phil Meheux makes great use of London locales. Helen Mirren is a standout as Harold’s mistress, who also serves as his unofficial (and formidable) consigliere (Hoskins and Mirren reunited onscreen for the 2001 film Last Orders). During the film’s closing scene (a lengthy, uninterrupted close up of Harold’s face) Hoskins delivers a master class in acting, without uttering one word of dialog. Gritty, brutal and uncompromising, this ranks as one of the best British crime films of all time.
Mona Lisa- Hoskins gives a nuanced, Oscar-nominated turn as a “thug with a heart of gold” in Neil Jordan’s brilliant crime fable. Fresh out of stir, Hoskins is offered a gig by his ex-boss, a London crime lord for whom he took the fall (Michael Caine). Hoskins becomes the chauffeur for a high class call girl (Cathy Tyson) who serves select clientele in discreet liaisons at posh hotels. The pair’s “oil and water” personality mix gets them off to a dicey start, but their relationship morphs into something unexpectedly rich and meaningful (and it’s not what you’re thinking). The twists and turns keep you riveted up to the end. Hoskins and Tyson have great screen chemistry (like a streetwise Tracy and Hepburn) which injects this otherwise unsettling tale with much genuine heart and soul.
More Hoskins movie reviews at the link above, if you get a chance to see any of these films, do it!
Finally, a goodbye note that rounds out the post well…which I don’t think is something we have to worry about with Bebe for now: Little Girl’s ‘Brake Up’ Note Offers A Serious Dose Of Real Talk
http://instagram.com/p/nfkMzrEkq2#
There is a gallery of notes there, over ninety of them. I think Dak will appreciate the kale one…I love this next one:
Oh, that is so awesome, and I could see my daughter doing that when she was little…
Damn, this post is extremely long, go figure!
Have a great day!