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June 25th, 2004

Ok, weekend's here, so I'm done. You won't have me to kick around anymore. Well, at least until Monday.

Posted by fad at 5:27pm

Someone actually fell for the Nigerian scam.
According to Burbank's confession to the FBI, she got a letter in January 2001 from a Dr. Udo Udoma, who offered her a share of his $21.5 million fortune if she would help him skirt financial regulations in transferring the money out of Nigeria.
I need to add that she is only 49 and used to own a title company. This isn't a case of a pensioner getting fooled.
She raided her escrow trust fund and took money she was supposed to have transferred to banks in real estate transactions, leaving people holding the bag when the deals collapsed.
She ruined lives over this. And look what else she fell for.
[T[wo Udoma associates showed them four packages of black paper the size of currency.

The men washed five of the papers in what they said was a chemical that cost $125,000 a bottle, and the papers turned into $100 bills.
That was the event that really got her stealing.

Best part of the story, though, is that it involves the name Quackenbush.

Posted by fad at 5:14pm

Bill Gates is considering blogging. What great parody would be possible.

But, really, a Larry Ellison blog would be better.
"Tried to go to McDonalds again today, but didn't have any cash. I told them I was good for it, but they still refused. So I bought the place. And fired them all. Didn't teabag 'em on the way out like I wanted to. Damn lawyers."
"My cat is staring at me again. I will brook no insolence. His days are numbered."
"Chuck said he could make more wadded paper baskets in the trash in 5 minutes than I could. He won. So I flew to North Dakota to train under national champion Doug Towback. Came back, whupped Chuck's ass in the rematch. Then I fired him. But only after teabagging him. He better not sue."

Posted by fad at 3:20pm

Soccer -- or "football" as everyone else calls it....for now -- always provides lots of stories like this.
Passions surrounding Germany's final match at the Euro 2004 soccer championships turned violent when a woman stabbed her partner in the head because she didn't want to watch the game on television.
Police explained what happened with the efficiency Germans are known for.
"He wanted to watch football, she didn't," said a police spokesman
Germany lost. And you know they did only because he wasn't watching the game going through all the proper rituals.

Posted by fad at 1:29pm

I smell a rumble coming.
The de Vere Society alleges that Edward de Vere penned the 37 plays officially attributed to the master playwright.[...]

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust says such groups have "the light of fanaticism" in their eyes, which blinds them to the facts, and the de Vere claim was termed "all nonsense."
*tink*tink*tink* Shaaaakespeeeare, come out to play--eeee--aaayyyyyyyy!

Posted by fad at 1:04pm

I had jokes for this story, then it sunk in how immediate such things as severed heads and trophied body parts are right now.

Posted by fad at 12:47pm

Once again, finding old stuff rules.
Pigeons fluttering through a hole in the ceiling of a Spanish cathedral led an art restoration team to discover a hidden Renaissance fresco of winged angels that had been covered by a false ceiling for more than 300 years.
And false ceilings drool.

Posted by fad at 7:25am

Thank God I only eat chocolate once in a while.
World cocoa production could decline if diseases ravaging South American crops spread to other major cocoa producing regions, UK scientists have warned.
And while it is funny on the surface to imagine a chocolate shortage, it helps to remember that it is sometimes the only crop providing jobs.
Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs as the cocoa industry struggles with the "witches' broom" and "frosty pod" infections.
[...]
Once WBD becomes established in a cocoa crop, the yield can decrease by up to 90%. And, despite a century of research, no one has come up with a very effective control strategy.
Hopefully science will be allowed to come up with something.

Posted by fad at 7:19am

At this point, I don't care how many people see Michael Moore's movie or what affect it has on anyone. I just want it to get to a point where his ugly mug doesn't show up on the front page of web sites I visit.

Posted by fad at 7:13am

Great. The Fuckhead Patrol acts out in New Jersey.
Slurs against people of Middle Eastern descent were spray-painted on a house near the hometown of a contractor slain in Saudi Arabia
[...]
Over the weekend, one man posted a sign saying "Stamp out Islam" on a utility pole in Eagleswood Township; another sign in Little Egg Harbor Township read, "Last night I wasn't a racist but today I feel racism towards Islamic beliefs."
There is righteous anger over the hideous murder last week by our enemies, then there's just being a stupid bigot. I have no room for stupid bigots. Beyond the obvious, actions like that do absolutely no good and provide exploitable fuel for anti-American manipulators.

Posted by fad at 7:10am

And now, Unrelated Things:

Posted by fad at 7:08am

I've been seeing the commercials for the new "King Arthur" movie a lot lately. Most of that "a lot" comes from watching the "Quest for King Arthur" special that just happened to come out, with a minor star of the movie doing the bumpers, coincidentally. Wonder how that managed to happen. Actually, the special was pretty good, especially considering the last few History Channel efforts (the "Barbarians" one was really sad). Even Patrick "Just bring me the bread; I'll supply the ham" Stewart managed to be restrained in his role as narrator.

But I was talking about the "King Arthur" movie, which, judging by the commercials, is really "Guinevere: Warrior Princess". In this case Guinevere is being played by Keira Knightley, who has been neither good nor bad in anything I've seen her in, but, as I've said before does a fine job of acting with her nipples (the typical "small breasted former model who finds herself in wet t-shirt situations all the time" roles). Which, I must add, is just fine with me.

The description at IMDB says this movie is a "demystified take on the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table." Yeah, that's what I'm looking for in an Arthur movie. I have no problem with the reimagining of great tales and legends to match the needs of our times. Hell, that's what the whole history of the Arthur legend is all about. While I know I'm judging the movie before I see it (and, truthfully, I'm unlikely to see it, at least in theaters), I'm going to over-generalize anyway. It seems too often today's "reimaginings" are little more than "changes from producers' notes" which rob the tale of all its power and meaning. "The female characters need to be stronger." "She already is a central source of the (melo)drama and demonstration, along with Arthur and Lancelot, of how human weaknesses can lead to great consequences." "No, no, no. We mean she needs to kick butt! Synergize! Paradigm!" Ok, we'll leave the producers alone as they descend into buzzword tourette's.

I admit, my wishfully thinking mind would like to see the development of new legends and heroes rather than the too oft plucking around in the public domain garden (heh, heh. Goddamn I write bad). One reason I don't think that will happen any time soon is that today there is no sense of evil, nor sense of something for which to fight, at least amongst those who produce these things. The only evils are greed and intolerance. And both are combatted via understanding and teaching to understand. The greatest parody of this, though I'm not sure it was intentional, was the ending of Goldmember when Dr. Evil is reformed once things are explained to him and a hug offered.

The only heroes are those who fight against greed ("Erin Brockovich" and "The Insider" come to mind). Yes, there are occasional attempts at hero movies, but they are almost never contemporary (the only ok "Gladiator for example).

I guess, after writing all this, I don't really have a point other than "modern interpretations" of legends and stories almost always involve breaking out the bland stick and beating the hell out of anything that made it compelling in the first place. And after reading that last sentence, I could have saved time by just typing, "Damn kids today."

Posted by fad at 6:39am

June 24th, 2004

Check it out, a chance to be in the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie!
To do this, we need photographs of some of Earth's best bits. Here's where you come in: we want you to send us a photograph of the place on Earth you think deserves to survive the planet's destruction
Submissions must be in by tomorrow, though.
The competition is open to UK residents only, of 18 years or over. Overseas players are not eligible.
Bah! Damn BBC refusing to acknowledge there is a rest of the world out here. Damn nationalist of them, if you ask me. Typical, though. Totally unaware of the world outside their borders. Hell, I'll bet they don't even know what a "bubbler" is.

Posted by fad at 5:58pm

Sometimes crazy old manism comes in handy.
Hidden deep inside Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles from Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.
The sites are almost completely undisturbed by any looters or anyone.
"I didn't let people go in there to destroy it," said Wilcox, whose parents bought the ranch in 1951 and threw up a gate to the rugged canyon. "The less people know about this, the better."
[...]
He said he gave up the land on a promise of protection from the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, which transferred the ranch to public ownership.

The promise barely assured Wilcox, but he said he knew one thing: "I'm getting old and couldn't take care of it."
At least he transferred it now and got something for it rather than having it trampled and fought over after he dies.

Posted by fad at 5:54pm

AOL is trying to reclaim its title as source of all internet evil.
AOL [...] has bought online marketing company Advertising.com for £435m in an all-cash deal.

America Online said it had made the purchase to better capitalise on the expected upturn in website advertising.
Oh boy!

Posted by fad at 5:50pm

Well yay. Activists against that stupid group trying to pressure theaters into not showing Moore's propaganda film are searching for that group's name -- and searching specifically for blogs with comments -- so they can post links to their propaganda against this propaganda group. They are doing this even if your post has really nothing to do with the group; it's just mentioned.

I'm tempted to post the guy's supposed email, fully hyperlinked for the greedy spambots, but I don't control everyone who slips by here. I don't want some joker to send nasty things that somehow link back to me.

UPDATE: Yup. I visited a couple other blogs hit by the same search. Similar posts in their comments. The IP is from somewhere by London (which may not mean that's where the poster is located, though). It's nice to see someone over there taking so much concern in which groups are or aren't "grassroots" in the US. I can give him a hint: pretty much none of them are.

Posted by fad at 5:49pm

When I grow up, I want to be divorced three times and run away with a then 15 year old girl who plays on the softball team I coach all by the time I'm 39 years old. It's the American dream.

Posted by fad at 5:46pm

This news is going to upset that Center for Scary Science and Telling You How to Live Because We Know Best, You Stupid Unwashed Hicks.
Acrylamides, a family of chemicals recently found in cooked foods that is known to cause cancer in rats, pose little threat to the U.S. population, an expert panel has reported.

People do not eat enough of the chemicals in their daily diet to risk the genetic damage that can lead to cancer
This chemical was primarily spotted in fried foods. So butter up that bacon, and beer batter the shit out of it!

Posted by fad at 5:29pm

Berkeley hides effort to increase tourism as civil rights issue.
Residents of this left-leaning city will have a chance to vote in November on whether they think prostitution should be a crime.
'Bout time!
The measure would have little more than symbolic value, since it wouldn't undo laws against prostitution.
Damn.

Posted by fad at 1:22pm

It truly is a sick world out there. I just got a search hit for: hobbit pelvic. I don't want to even begin imaging what could inspire such a search....but I don't always get what I want. Damn brain.

Posted by fad at 1:05pm

Mmmmm......gmail....

Though all my usual login names were all taken, and my extended versions were all a bit too much towards the obscene, so I ended up picking "cheesedip".

I regret that decision now.

Posted by fad at 11:05am

June 23rd, 2004

Two more letters to end the day for a couple people I just ran into.

To the guy in the grocery store giving me unsolicited health advice:

Yes, I know my cholesterol, triglycerides and liver are all in terrible shape. I had a real live doctor tell me that. But you see, sir, I just don't care. Please take care of yourself if you wish and leave me alone.

Thanks,
me

To the guy driving the car with the Bush is Dumb bumpersticker visually right next to your open fuel door completely with missing gas cap:

Thanks. That made me laugh.

Sincerely,
me

Posted by fad at 6:44pm

Man...I might have to drive the 3 hours to the Illinois State Fair.
The grandstand events also will feature [...Clay Aiken,] 1970s rock groups Kansas and Styx,
[...]
Also appearing will be the "Rock-N-Soul Revue" with singers Daryl Hall and John Oates and Michael McDonald, the Average White Band
If anything's going to finally trigger my rampage, I think that fine sampling of song stylings would be it.

Posted by fad at 3:57pm

You know, no matter what I believe on an issue, I still really hate it when elected officials use this phrase.
Commissioner Joseph Moreno, who said his son just bought one of the scooters, voted for the ban because "we're trying to do things for the greater good."
Emphasis added for the greater good.

Posted by fad at 1:55pm

This story loops around trail of interesting idea, cruel joke, and parody.
Embalming fluid, metal caskets and marble headstones won't be permitted at Fernwood Forever. Instead, the dead will be placed in biodegradable boxes or shrouds
I can see someone wanting to take this option, though the "shrouds" thing is a little creepy. But here's the next bit.
and interred in nondescript graves
Um...ok...I dig the potter's field idea as much as the next guy. Now the last part.
that mourners can dig themselves.
Wouldn't that just be thrilling, after all other arrangements, havint to dig the regulatory compliant hole for your loved one?
To ensure visitors pay their respects at the right spot [Remember, no grave markings -- me], the cemetery will provide global positioning system devices and native boulders as markers.
You'll hear that "native" line again later. Now, the idea just goes sitcom.
Along with a GPS device, visitors will be given hand-held audio-video units that display mini-documentaries about a dead person's life.
Like those self-guided tours at our nation's finest museums! Actually, Bill Cosby used to have a routine about recording a looping message to play as mourners walked by his casket. "Hello there! Don't I look like myself?"
Staff members will be called "stewards" instead of funeral directors and - when they aren't assisting grieving families - will build trails and remove nonnative plants.
So these guys are part of the movement to try to turn the landscape back to the pure way it was in 1491 before the white man had a chance to get to it. I had heard about the obsession with removing non-native plants (many believe you should not eat anything that isn't native to the narrowly defined area), but I hadn't heard it extended to native boulders as well.

They're also hoping to host weddings.

Posted by fad at 1:48pm

Surprisingly realistic. All that's missing are the multiple stops to empty out a bit along the route home.

(You play by moving your mouse from side to side. It does have sound, so be warned.)

Posted by fad at 1:35pm

The headline:

"Toxic pollution rose 5 percent in 2002"

The outraged reaction:
Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the 2002 increase "proves that the policies of the Bush administration have moved us backward, not forward, on the environment."
The facts:
Kimberly Terese Nelson, the EPA's chief information officer, blamed the "extraordinarily large change" on the 1999 shutdown of BHP Copper Co.'s San Manuel plant in Tucson, Ariz., where 2,000 people worked. Dismantling a plant turns components and product into waste.

"If we were take that one facility out we would see a 3 percent decrease,"
[...]
EPA reported a 10 percent increase in releases of mercury - which Nelson blamed on a single gold mine - and a 3.2 percent increase in releases of lead. It is the second year in a row that the EPA is requiring facilities to tell state and federal authorities about lead releases of more than 100 pounds. Previously, only much larger releases were reported.
Not saying all the shit smells of roses and Lemon Pledge, but it's clear, at least from this article, that a change in samples as well as one time skewers are the largest influence on these numbers, not an overall large scale worsening. A 6 percent increase, the last reported increase, occurred in 1997. I would suspect similar factors played there as well.

Posted by fad at 1:32pm

Every year some group of scholars always publishes some study declaring that a famous dead world leader either had syphilis or was gay. Bonus points if you can peg 'em with both. Now these efforts are helped along quite well by the fact that many famous dead world leaders indeed were gay or had syphilis. Today's example is Lenin who managed to enjoy a quite horrible death from something.
In an article this month in The European Journal of Neurology, three Israeli physicians sift through historical references to build what they regard as a probable diagnosis that Lenin contracted the sexually transmitted disease in Europe years before he led the October Revolution in 1917. Not long after the socialists' victory, the authors write, the illness strengthened its grip, leading to an agonizing decline and, in 1924, his death.
The "socialists'" victory? No, no, no, dear article author. Lenin's crew weren't socialists, you see, because their system failed. Everyone knows socialism hasn't been tried right, yet (with the exception of a couple months in Paris in the 19th century which prove that it would work for ever and ever if it were only given a chance). So, since it has never truly been tried, no leader or supporter of a system that failed could ever truly be called a socialist. A true socialist only supports systems that have never been tried, no matter how slight the nuanced differences, since no system that has been tried has worked meaning they weren't socialism.

Hope that's clear now.

Posted by fad at 1:29pm

To one of my fellow motorists this morning:

When you choose to drive a white Impala through an area known to be rife with twitchy cops who drive unmarked cars of the same make and color, do not get all pissy when, as they notice your car in their mirrors, everyone around starts hugging the speed limit like it were the last bottle of whiskey in town. It's a consequence of your choice.

Thank you.

Posted by fad at 8:41am

From about late April to late September is air-conditioner season around here. Or at least around my apartment complex. It's during that time that more days than not the humidity is at that "gnaw through your wrists in hopes of ending it all" level that makes the midwest (and pretty much all the other places I don't want to live) ever so charming.

However, there are always a few odd days of respite from this oppressiveness. The last near week has been one of these. Unusual, at least from my vast four Junes experience here, for late June it has been downright pleasant to cool for days now. So much so that my airconditioner, and I'm psychotic over my need for it, hasn't been on the entire time. Just threw open the window wide and enjoyed the cool. The only disadvantage of this is, like last night, the occasional angry person shouting in the parking lot at 2:00am during one of the bare few hours I actually sleep a night.

While most of us there have opened our windows to enjoy this brief time, there is still a large percentage whose airconditioners have been running non-stop through these pleasant days, even last night as the temperature dropped to the low 50s overnight. Since I have plenty of sleepless time over nights, I often wonder just how damn cold it has to be in those apartments. Are they preserving the bodies of loved ones? Bathtub hockey? Or have they simply never learned to use the "Auto" setting on the thermostat instead just flipping it to "On". Of course my favorite theory is that they do use "Auto", but have built a small fire that must be continuously stoked all day and night in front of the thermostat in order to guarantee continual cool so that the grandmacicle doesn't puddle away like grandpa did.

Posted by fad at 7:36am

June 22nd, 2004

God bless lawyers.

Posted by fad at 6:51pm

Caffeine may be good for more than just getting my sleepless ass through the day.
Everhart and Ruhl found the more coffee and caffeine these people drank, the less likely they were to develop liver injury. This finding was the same for all age, gender and ethnic groups.

In addition, the protective effect was stronger for caffeine than for coffee.
Good on that last bit. Coffee tastes like someone boiled a turd in piss. Forget the patriarchy or any other hegemonic false consciousness; whoever started the trick of convincing humanity otherwise was the greatest huckster of all time.

Posted by fad at 6:31pm

The Onion's AV Club checks out celebrity blogs.

Posted by fad at 6:12pm

The animals are beginning their revolution starting with the French.
The southern French city of Marseille called off a three-week hunt for a black panther on Tuesday after the animal sighted by several residents turned out to be a large house cat.
Admittedly, cats are completely evil creatures spawned from the unnatural coupling of a coked up Satan and a dirty toilet, so they had good reason to fear, but it's too bad I decided to retire all my French surrendering jokes a couple years ago.

Posted by fad at 6:10pm

And now to continue the series of posts -- hell, the entire theme of this site -- demonstrating how much of a moron I am. Just now I heard the end of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy". When that first came out, I thought the scene in the video when the kids shift from pledging to the flag to giving it a Nazi salute was really, really clever and deep.

Posted by fad at 6:02pm

Kinda sad when a Senator actually showing up for a vote is, in fact, noteworthy news, even though actually voting is little more than a campaign stunt. That's some fine representin'.

Posted by fad at 12:30pm

It always bugs me when important artifacts are left lying about.
The Browning pistol that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and sparked the crisis leading to World War I has been discovered gathering dust in a Jesuit community house in Austria.
But it's always cool when they are finally found or revealed.

Posted by fad at 11:21am

As usual, I'm going to ignore the actual point of this story to get to the really important stuff.
A mother and daughter [...] say the cops were called on them after they refused to pay for jambalaya they say was so spicy it was inedible.
Too spicy to eat? Now that I have to try just as a personal challenge!
"If you feel that strongly that you think people shouldn't return food ... sue them civilly," Kandyba said. "You don't threaten them with jail. We don't live in a police state the last time I checked."
Check again, baby. This is ameriKKKa and the Ashcroftian night has fallen. Next week Bush is issuing an executive order renaming executive orders to "imperial orders". Then he's going to issue an imperial order requiring everyone to salute every bush, but not shrubbery, in the land.

Posted by fad at 11:18am

Bleah. Don't you hate it when you spend an hour or more on a really long post then suddenly realize, "Wait a minute...who the fuck wants to read this?" So, now I'm disinterested in typing anything except bitchy posts about being disinterested and bitchy. At least I can do them well. No one wants to read these either, but they require less effort by both of us.

Posted by fad at 10:55am

You cannot mention Greece in front of an aquaintance of mine without him instantly informing you how great the prostitutes are there.
Aid agencies and experts in Greece and the southern Balkans are warning there could be a big increase in the trafficking of women and children to Athens because of the Olympic Games being held in the city this August.

One leading expert in Greece has told the BBC he has information that traffickers will try to bring 2,000 extra women into the country and force them to work as prostitutes.
He doesn't seem to have given much thought that they might have been enslaved.
He also says the police argue that there are not the facilities in Greece to look after the thousands of women who would be freed from slavery.
That is too often the excuse for not stopping slavery. "But what would we do with them? At least now they are more or less being taken care of." It is a real, practical concern when you think about it, but deeply immoral.

Posted by fad at 7:08am

As is too typical, it takes until something burbles into the media for it to be taken seriously.
In England and Wales police are reinvestigating more than 100 murders they suspect could be honour killings.

Detectives from London's Metropolitan police are examining murder files going back 10 years - 52 in the capital and 65 in other parts of England and Wales.
That's an average of 5 of these murders per year just in London itself. I would guess an all too real threat of murder is quite the powerful force against assimilation by future generations.

Posted by fad at 7:04am

June 21st, 2004

Speaking of life imitating bad sitcoms/comedy routines.
A motorist's decision to stop a deputy for speeding escalated into a series of incidents than ended with his entire family joining him in jail.
You just have to read the story as things escalated. Makes me think of the Mendelbaum family from "Seinfeld".

Posted by fad at 4:27pm

Cell phones truly are invading every area of life.
Prison officials across the country say inmates' possession of cellphones is a growing and serious problem. In recent months it has led to arrests or convictions of scores of inmates and of prison staff members who have smuggled phones to inmates.
Sometimes they catch them during searches; sometimes the information just falls to them.
Then there was the mother who wrote the warden complaining about the poor reception for her son's cellphone.
That sounds like something out of a sitcom.
Cellphones are harder to smuggle in than drugs, both because they contain metal and because of their size, Mr. Horn said. So the person doing the smuggling is more likely to be a guard or other staff member. "Often it is nurses," Mr. Horn said, "because they are manipulated into a romantic relationship with an inmate."
Dames. Always causing trouble. First it was that damn apple, now this.

Posted by fad at 3:45pm

Well, this would be an unpleasant nick before sleep.
A 59-year-old West Seattle woman is recovering at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle this morning after being shot in the chest by a gun fired from an upstairs apartment unit, police said today.
[...]
A 19-year-old man who lives upstairs has been arrested and booked into King County Jail on investigation of assault. Investigators found what appeared to a bullet hole in his floor, which is her ceiling.

It's still unclear why he fired the gun, Whitcomb said.
I have at least one guess about what might have been a factor.

A few years ago, my brother came home from work to find a hole in his ceiling and another one going through one of his walls. The upstairs neighbor actually claimed he was cleaning his gun and it went off.

Posted by fad at 2:55pm

Really freaking tired today -- I'm typing sudden dozing off on the toilet and dreaming of Elvis tired -- so may not be much. I'd hate for my sleepiness to result in any decline in the high, high quality of brilliant writing and ideas you expect from this site. Below are some quick things to tide you over until I can get at some caffeine:

  • So cool.
    History was made high above the Mojave Desert Monday when a rocket plane soared out of the Earth's atmosphere in the first privately financed manned spaceflight.
    Somewhere someone is griping about how much medicine or how many teachers that money could have bought. These are people who have forgotten how to dream.

  • This is unpleasant.
    Justices had been asked to rule that forcing someone to give police their name violated a person's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

    Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said that that it violated neither.
    Cops still have to have a suspicion or reason to stop you before they can ask your name. I mean, it's not like a cop would just stop a person walking the 1/4 mile home from the 7-11 after purchasing a bottle of diet Dr Pepper, make them hand over identification and sit in the headlights while he runs your name. Oh, wait....

    • Posted by fad at 7:48am

    The day has finally come. Humanity has achieved perfection.
    For years people here have loved pork fat, known as salo.

    Normally, small slices of the white fat are eaten with black bread, raw garlic and vodka.
    Though I think in terms of quantity, that list is probably reversed. After a bunch of vodka, most people would try anything. But that's not the perfection, as wonderful as a pork fat 'n' garlic sammich may sound.
    For the equivalent of £1 you can now get four small sticks of salo covered in chocolate at Kiev's poshest Ukrainian restaurant.
    Chocolate covered pork fat. What a way to go.

    Posted by fad at 7:12am

    June 20th, 2004

    I'll be tinkering with the RSS feed over the next few days to make it a bit more robust. One main problem is that I don't use titles, which screws up most RSS readers. Also, my implementation was pretty half-assed in the first place. In the meantime, I have disabled the feed. I hope to have it up again by midweek.

    Posted by fad at 9:09pm

    Hi, Dad!

    (Ok, he doesn't read this site, but my folks are off in the middle of Montana, so this is the best I can do.)

    Posted by fad at 9:47am