The referee-in-chief in the previous post called me up to let me know he wasn’t referring to the five woman in the previous post with the c-word, but to the sky-writers in the, er, sky.
So I unequivocally apologize to him.
An apology
Reply
Category Archives: Wacky and Weird
It’s 87 degrees and humid in Jacksonville, and Jaguars fans are swimming in mayonnaise
Chris Thompson of Deadspin writes the Jacksonville Jaguars, at 1-0, are off to their best start since the 2011 NFL season, when they opened up with a narrow win over the Tennessee Titans.
Jaguars fans, in their euphoria, have rocketed all the way to the Belly-Flopping-Into-A-Vat-Of-Mayonnaise stage of celebration.
You just don’t want to be, like, the fourth person to belly flop into a vat of mayonnaise. It’s bad enough to be coated in mayo; imagine being covered in mayo and stray body hair and various other effluvia. The worst. The Jaguars host the Titans today—you hate to even imagine the kind of shit those fans might get up to if they find themselves at 2-0 next Sunday.
Compassion, Richard Gere, and getting over myself
I spent the last 10 weeks going through a rather intensive investigation of myself.
I can hear my Kansas friend Mary already saying, oh, Dr. Richard Gere. You’ve become a Buddhist.
I’ve revisited a lot of old wounds, tried to make amends, and learned – sorta — to be compassionate to myself.
I’ve always been my biggest critic.
I use barfblog.com to write about food safety, and other stuff, because, I can.
Don’t like it, go start your own thing.
Guess that was drilled into me when I was appointed editor-in-chief of the University of Guelph student newspaper, The Ontarian in 1986, with a weekly circulation of about 20,000.
After one semester, I left, because I had a 6-month-old child, was trying to finish my MSc in genetics, and was really pissed off that the advertising and business managers made about double what I did.
I took it to the Board of Directors, who assured me they would back me, and then bailed once they saw which way the wind was blowing.
Those folks are still employed by the University of Guelph, which says a lot about ethics, and sucking dick.
I’ll just do my thing.
Diversity is beauty: Harry Dean Stanton, an appreciation
I knew my first 16-year marriage that yielded four beautiful daughters was doomed when we watched Paris, Texas, on a VHS, the day she agreed to marry me.
Not a rom-com.
Still love the evocative music of Ry Cooder (who should sing my eulogy when I die).
The movie, written by the recently deceased Sam Sherphard, was difficult to watch, but had the angst of the Midwest U.S. all over it.
I didn’t know I’d eventually live in Kansas and experience that angst firsthand.
Harry Dean Stanton, the iconic character actor with a distinctive face and hundreds of credits marking collaborations with many of America’s best filmmakers, has died at age 91.
Amy remembers Harry as the dad in Pretty in Pink.
I always have Paris, Texas, which Amy and I drove through about nine years ago.
Stanton was born and raised in Kentucky, the son of a tobacco farmer. He served in the Navy during World War II, where he was a ship’s cook during the Battle of Okinawa, then returned to Kentucky and began studying journalism before quitting to work with the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949.
Stanton’s acting career spanned more than a half-century, beginning with small and often uncredited parts in films and on television. His breakout role came three decades after he began working, in the 1984 movie Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard, who died this July. Stanton had been playing mostly bit parts until that point, but Shepard spotted him in a Santa Fe bar while they were both in town for a film festival and offered him the role of the protagonist, Travis, a silent loner with an estranged family. It made Stanton a star.
Stanton went on to work steadily in both film and television, making him one of the most recognizable actors in the business: You might not know his name, but you definitely know his face. He appeared in many famous movies, including The Last Temptation of Christ, Alien, Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather Part II, Twister, Repo Man, and The Green Mile. And on TV, he had a recurring part as a fringe polygamist leader named Roman Grant in the first three seasons of the HBO drama Big Love.In 2012, the documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction was released in theaters and garnered strong reviews from critics.
Stanton also frequently worked with filmmaker and Twin Peaks creator David Lynch, appearing in such Lynch movies as Wild at Heart and Inland Empire. But he’s particularly memorable as the Twin Peaks character Carl Rodd. Rodd first appeared as a character in the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992 and returned for five episodes of the recent Showtime revival Twin Peaks: The Return, which concluded on September 3. The character of Rodd went to school in Twin Peaks with the “log lady,” Maggie Coulson, and owned the Fat Trout Trailer Park, where Stephen and Becky Burnett lived.And Stanton’s filmography is not yet complete. In the upcoming John Carroll Lynch film Lucky, slated for theatrical release on September 29, the actor plays a 90-year-old atheist experiencing a sort of crisis of faith. He also completed filming on Frank and Ava, a film currently slated for late 2017 release.Fans, friends, and collaborators paid tribute to Stanton on Twitter, testifying to how beloved he was to everyone who worked with him and watched him act throughout his long, varied career.
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/lists/harry-dean-stanton-10-essential-movies-w503557/lucky-2017-w503562
Hockey and asparagus
My cousin Tim and I would play road hockey up in the upper level of the barn, during the two weeks I would spend at their farm while my parents goofed around.
Tim is about 6 months older than me, he grows asparagus, I write about asparagus, and we both ended up coaching hockey.
Tim wrote on his facebook page tonight that, hockey season starts for our Ayr Cens and is about to start for my son Will’s Midget Flames. For some reason (other than i am obsessed with #4) i started thinking about the time i met my hero Bobby Orr at a camp Will won an invitation for. We had a pre-camp reception for the kids and parents and there was a question/answer period with Bobby. Obviously i was 1st to raise my hand for questions LOL. My question to Bobby was “when you were a kid and were so much better than everyone else what did you do on the ice?” Bobby’s answer was simple…”My Dad always told me to make sure i passed the puck to a player that hadn’t scored a goal”. Hope this makes all of us think as we head into hockey season. Best of luck to all kids of all skill levels for an enjoyable and most importantly FUN season
My cousin embraces the values that I and anyone else who coaches should embrace.
I’m proud to call him my cousin (except when we talk about genetic engineering or he does his Bob and Doug SCTV impersonation).
Adidas’ new Oktoberfest sneakers are beer-and vomit-proof
Amateurs are drunks who vomit on other people’s shoes.
Oktoberfest, whether in Bavaria, or Kitchener, Ont. (that’s in Canada) is full of amateur drunks.
I once got invited to give a talk in Madison, Wisconsin.
Sure, it’s not Milwaukee, but the German influence was everywhere.
I was taken to dinner at some ordinary looking pub, but out back was an entire room devoted to beef-eating and polka music.
It was awesome.
And it wasn’t Oktoberfest, so it was enjoyable.
However, for those looking to gear up for Oktoberfest, because you can’t get enough of drinking warm beer in a concrete hockey arena (the Kitchener version), Adidas has you covered.
The Bavarian-based company is celebrating Oktoberfest in style this year, bringing back its classic lifestyle model, the Adidas Munchen, but with a couple of slight alterations for a much sloppier audience.
Presenting the Adidas Originals Munchen Oktoberfest.
Aesthetically, the brown-and-gold Munchen Oktoberfest are apparently inspired by traditional Bavarian calfskin pants, featuring rich embroidery to match your lederhosen and an inner lining with a red-and-white micro-check tablecloth pattern, which evokes that special alpine sense. Pragmatically, they’re made from fine leather with “DBPR” coating, which, according to Adidas, makes the trainers durably beer- and puke-resistant (thus the DBPR).
Chicken sashimi is risky; and gross
A year ago I was in Japan for a few days and my hosts took me for sashimi every night. I think they thought it was funny taking a food safety nerd for a bunch of raw seafood. I did my best to be polite and steered towards more cooked foods. And lots of rice.
Earlier today Sara Miller at Live Science and I exchanged emails about chicken sashimi, a food that has been popular on twitter over the past couple of days. The same food that was linked to 800+ illnesses in the spring of 2016. Even Japanese public health folks were urging against eating it.
It’s not uncommon to find raw foods on a restaurant menu — think sushi or steak tartare — but if you see uncooked poultry as an option the next time you’re dining out, you may want to opt for something else.
Several restaurants in the United States are serving up a raw chicken dish that’s referred to as either chicken sashimi or chicken tartare, according to Food & Wine Magazine. Though the “specialty” hasn’t caught on much in the U.S., it’s more widely available in Japan.
Eating chicken sashimi puts a person at a “pretty high risk” of getting an infection caused by Campylobacter or Salmonella, two types of bacteria that cause food poisoning, said Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist and an associate professor at North Carolina State University.
Chapman noted that eating raw chicken is different from eating raw fish, which can be found in sushi dishes. With raw fish, the germs that are most likely to make a person sick are parasites, and these parasites can be killed by freezing the fish, he said. Salmonella, on the other hand, “isn’t going to be affected by freezing.”
Chicken sashimi is sometimes prepared by boiling or searing the chicken for no more than 10 seconds, according to Food & Wine Magazine.
But these preparations probably only kill off the germs on the surface of the chicken, Chapman said. “But even that I’m not sure about,” he added. In addition, when a chicken is deboned, other germs can get into the inside of the chicken, he said.
Peppa Pig episode telling kids that spiders ‘can’t hurt you’ banned in Australia
Australia is home to all sorts of weird creatures, including me and the peacock spider (which does not affect humans; others do).
Parents complained the episode encouraged their children to play with the dangerous creatures and gave the “inappropriate” message they were harmless, The Sun reports.
The 2004 episode Mister Skinny Legs has been taken down for a second time after it was first removed from the internet in 2012.
The Evening Standard reports how in the episode a terrified Peppa Pig is told by her dad that spiders “can’t hurt you”.
The cartoon pig picks the spider up and tucks it into bed before Peppa says: “We are all going to have tea with Mister Skinny Leg.”
The ABC banned the show but it was aired again on Nickelodeon channel Nick Jr on August 25 this year, although they have since agreed to remove the show.
While Australia is home to some of the most deadly spiders on earth the UK — where Peppa Pig originates — has almost no spiders that are dangerous.
10 students hospitalized after drinking vinegar in Norway uni hazing
Fourteen students were transported to St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim after the hazing incident at NTNU.
This still goes on?
Marit Kvikne, communication director at St. Olavs Hospital says the students “have taken a mixture of vinegar and water, and have had an eternal damage in the oral cavity. There are 14 patients who have come to the emergency room, 10 of which were sent to the hospital. Three are for observation and one receives intensive care.”
New fathers older than ever
Today is father’s day in Australia.
It’s all a bit confusing between North America and the southern hemisphere, so I just say, no formality, nothing, just ignore it. Researchers at Stanford University reviewed data on 168,867,480 live births from 1972 to 2015, making statistical adjustments for missing paternal records. The average age of the father of a newborn in the United States, the investigators found, has risen to 30.9 from 27.4 in 1972.
Paternal age increased across the country: the oldest fathers lived in the Northeast, and the youngest in the South. There were average age increases across all educational levels, races and ethnicities. The report appears in the journal Human Reproduction.
In 2015, fathers with college degrees were 33.3 years old on average, compared with 29.2 for those with only a high school diploma. Asian fathers were the oldest on average by ethnicity, and blacks and Hispanics the youngest.
My first kid was born when I was 24.
I’m 54 and have an 8-year-old.
I get to go watch my daughter play hockey this afternoon, and will sit in the stands and enjoy the moment – mindfully.