:: Morland.theoretic.org has the number one-rated guest showerhead in all the land
Visitors to this "pedantic" "hole in the web" rave about its many amenities, among them a "consistent bland editorial tone" and complimentary turn-down service. While some balk at the "dizzyingly unproper" grammar and "soul-siphoning" mini-bar, none dispute it's famed showerheads, which release an "adjustable torrent" of pressure over an "adequate" surface area. [4 out of 30]
Let's talk about Honey Crisp apples. Let's talk about eating them raw, drinking their cider, and mixing chunks thereof into pancakes. Then let's assume that, in the course of two days, one could not feed on an uninterrupted stream of apple goodness, and had to break the gluttonous, glorious monotony with some yard work, namely chopping down trees, building a giant fire-pit, and clearing wide swaths of pesky foliage with a newly-assembled weed-whacker. Further assume that - and I'm not implying anything by this - there were a lake adjacent to the property being worked on, with a seaworthy canoe just aching for human ballast. Since it would be bound to get dark and the work couldn't go on forever, throw in satellite television to watch the World Series, a Mean Girls / Shaolin Soccer double-billing, some pork tenderloin, and aromatherapy candles. Now assume I'm joking about the candles.
Then, purely for argument's sake, think of what would happen if you topped it off with a fresh apple cider donut.
It's purely a hypothetical scenario. I'm just throwing it out there as a potential topic of conversation, that's all.
A: I was feeling really guilty about not posting for a full week, but then I found out I'll be heading out of town for a rustic wood-chopping weekend, so basically everyone can put that in their collective stove-pipes and smoke it.
Monday: Leave work about 7. Go to Japanese class with two coworkers. I'm taking it as an effort to be able to understand the fixation with explicit gore in Japanese animated cinema. Afterwards I head down to Chinatown to buy orphaned children on the black market and eat them. By consuming their still-beating hearts, I usurp their strength. I am becoming more powerful than I ever imagined I could be (I can now warp lilacs using only my mind). Needless to say, this gives me a serious buzz, so I head uptown for a cool-down at the racquet club. There, I joke with titans of industry about the underprivileged and leer at the receptionist, who is a robot.
Tuesday: Leave work about 7. Head to the urologist. I visit a different one each week. Since I live in a large city, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. I lie and tell them that I have trouble urinating despite needing to do so frequently, and that on occasion I experience pain in the process. These are symptoms of, amongst other things, an enlarged prostate, so they inevitably perform a rectal exam - which is my reason for going in the first place. Whereas the (cheaper/uglier) whores in the Village charge $50 just to get in your car, I get a vigorous ass-probing for a $15 co-pay, at least until my insurance company catches on. Plus they provide complimentary tissues for cleanup. I return home refreshed and eat a dinner of vodka-soaked uncooked carrots (I live for raw foods) and salami, "accidentally" passing out naked in front of the television while waiting for my roommate to come home.
Wednesday: Leave work about 7 and make a bee-line for the disco. I am usually overcome by intense feelings of vertigo and nausea mid-week, and 12 straight hours of disco-dancing seems to be the only cure. Of course, even with my orphan supplements I don't have the stamina to dance for half a day continuously, so I need a little help from my albino Peruvian assistant. When I tell people that, they usually assume I'm euphemistically referring to cocaine, but I really do have a small Peruvian man devoid of pigment who "spots" me when my legs look likely to give out either physically or by shouting, bilingually, motivational phrases. He also brings me bottled water and fresh towels. About 7am the club patrons start to head out and I have a minute to chat with the owner before heading home, showering, and transmogrifying into a pillar of blue flame, which turns out to be the fastest way to get to work.
Thursday: Thursdays are ketchup days! I ditch work and smear the viscous red condiment all over my body! All day!
Friday: Leave work about 7. I host a poetry slam starting at 10, so I head to the nearest off-track betting facility and dump a few thousand on whatever steed appears to have the firmest backside, all the while chugging Boone's. Somehow I always make it to the Middle-Lower-Dorso-Lateral-Eastern-Side Poet's Cafe and Brothel and start the show on time, though I have no idea how as I only sober up towards the end. The audience always demands I drop some knowledge on them to close the set, which I do because I'm straight hip-hop, and it kills every time. Afterwards I hang out and discuss diverse artistic topics ranging from the specific accounting details of Willie Nelson's tax imbroglio to Solzhenitsyn's feet. I sleep there, surrounded by groupies and hangers-on, because the otherwise I'd be asphyxiated by my overbearing hollow loneliness, and poison (my apartment gets fumigated on Fridays).
Saturday: I begin the weekend by tending to my prized dreadnought, the Lützow, which is moored in an undisclosed location about an hour outside the city. Sunk in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland, its current presence above the waves is a testament to several years worth of painstaking efforts by some of the world's most skilled deep-sea divers and salvage experts, all of whom unfortunately had to be executed after completing the project lest they breach the project's veil of secrecy. Mostly I run around it making airplane noises. After a rejuvenating nap and a game of hopscotch I host a séance helping old people contact departed relatives. This proves to be an extremely effective method of bilking the elderly - far easier than prescription drug scams (which I also conduct).
Sunday: I end my week by re-sequencing the human genome by hand with Albert Hitchcock movies playing in the background.
Wired is reporting that a team from Southampton University has won the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma competition and beaten the previous best-performing strategy, Tit for Tat (read the article for details).
Teams could submit multiple strategies, or players, and the Southampton team submitted 60 programs. These, Jennings explained, were all slight variations on a theme and were designed to execute a known series of five to 10 moves by which they could recognize each other. Once two Southampton players recognized each other, they were designed to immediately assume "master and slave" roles -- one would sacrifice itself so the other could win repeatedly.
This is akin to entering a highest-earner-wins poker tournament of 223 with 60 in-cahoots players, having the bulk of the colluders funnel their chips to an elite few, then claiming that those winners are superior poker players. Such a strategy would 1) invariably fail against an unknown opponent 2) not produce the highest per-entrant earning for the total group.
For this particular tournament however, knowing the total field would consist of only 223 contestants with no repeat-entry rules and that the group could win by merely having a single player with the highest score, it's a brilliant strategy. Just be careful about categorically labeling it superior.
G-Unit Records is moving in across the alley from my office. The alley is very narrow, so we can see pretty much everything, and they bump tracks daily at an amazingly loud decibel level, which either makes me hyped or irked, depending on my pre-existing mood, so I posted a message to the forum on their website. No one's responded yet, despite the fact that I can see they'd be quite capable of answering with their brand-new G5 PowerMac with 30-inch flatscreen (which sits unused all day, displaying G-Unit screensavers).
In the early 1800's fear of yellow fever outbreaks in New York City prompted legislation outlawing traditional earthen graves, forcing new city cemeteries to inter their dead in private underground vaults. I toured the twooldest of such cemeteries today as part of Open House New York.
The Coast Guard and Navy seized 30,000 pounds of cocaine from a boat off South America's Pacific coast this month in what authorities called the largest-ever seizure of the drug at sea.
On Sept. 17, the USS Curts, a Navy frigate based in San Diego, intercepted the Lina Maria, a fishing boat, about 300 miles west of the Galapagos Islands (news - web sites). A Coast Guard team boarded the boat and found 30,000 pounds of cocaine hidden in a sealed ballast tank.
I have a genuine, sincere question about this - I'm not trying to incite anything, and I'm not being facetious. What right does the U.S. Coast Guard have to stop, search, and seize a foreign vessel in international waters a hemisphere away? The report doesn't indicate the port of registry, but I'd bet it wasn't domestic. Can one of my multiple legal colleagues help a blogger out?
For the record, I'm not saying capturing 15 tons of cocaine is a bad thing, I'm just curious about the jurisdiction.
:: Solution to global warming by Morland and coworker
Extract DNA of wooly mammoths from fossils
Fuse wooly mammoth DNA with that of alligator
Make demeanor of new creature extremely susceptible to average global temperature: lower temperature = more docile
Incubate and release fast-breeding city bus-sized wooly alligators (like normal alligators, but huge, covered in fur, impervious to bullets and poisons, and with big, curly tusks) into wild
If average global temperature continues to rise, mankind gored en masse, otherwise, everything copasetic
The grating bleat reverberated through every cubic inch of the tiny apartment. In his bedroom, Jens awoke with a start and sat upright, scowling. Looking over at the clock, he saw it wasn't even six yet. A dull glow indicating imminent sunrise outlined the shutters of his window. The high-pitched voice continued.
"How about chunks of hearty steak, fresh onions, and savory carrots? Just set it and forget it!"
Jens flopped back down on his bed and smothered himself with his pillow. A graphic designer only a few years out of art school, he couldn't afford much more than a miniscule one-bedroom walk-up in a decrepit part of town euphemistically pitched by the sales agent as "colorful". The bare walls and threadbare carpeting failed to muffle sounds in the slightest, and for the sixth day in a row Jens found himself prematurely awakened, silently cursing his misfortune. Even the pillow proved insufficient.
Ignoring the problem was evidently not the solution. A weary Jens removed the pillow from his head, launched out of bed, and strode across the room to the door. He paused before opening it. It was going to be ok, he told himself. This was nothing new. He took a deep breath and flung the door open.
"L-look," Jens spoke into the dim half-light of his kitchen, "it's way too early for this. I have to be at work in a couple hours and I really need my sleep." For a moment the room was blanketed in silence. He reveled in it, knowing it would be fleeting.
"Well good morning! Wouldn't you like a hot n' hearty meal waiting for you when you get home? Just add two cups of chicken broth, a half a pound of celery-"
"Please be quiet!" Jens' voice cracked in the midst of barking the half-order, half-request. He walked over to the cheap Formica counter to the left of his sink. There sat a Hamilton Beach six-quart oval slow-cooker, better-known as a crock-pot - the over-enthusiastic cause of his current sleepless nights.
"If that's too much trouble," the lid of the slow-cooker flapped comically in time with its speech, "you can always toss in some potatoes-"
"We had a deal," Jens reasoned, "I said I'd use you once a week - on Saturdays, when I have the time to chop vegetables - and you'd keep quiet for the remainder of the week so I could get some rest."
"There's no need to chop vegetables! Throw in ground beef, tomato sauce and spices for a tender chili." The slow-cooker was persistent.
"Yeah, ok, I know you're... versatile. I know you're this great time-saving device that will cut my prep time in half and make clean-up a cinch, but fact remains we had a deal." Jens wondered how he found himself standing there, debating a binding oral contract with his crock-pot. Sure, he'd had talking kitchen appliances before, but none so obsequious. His building was constructed above ancient pagan catacombs, had been the site of several lurid murders, and was the epicenter of the infamous 1979 "poltergeist summer", so there was bound to be a fair amount of demonic possession. Mostly it occurred in his kitchen, and the bulk of these incidents were harmless, even humorous. His toaster oven, for example, had been for two years now harboring the spirit of a fallen djinn who, while on occasion prone to reciting scripture, was eminently servile. If Jens requested silence, he got it, and whenever he baked bagel-pizzas it made sure not to burn the grated mozzarella.
His favorite had been the deep fryer, which had been imbued with the harried soul of a 1954 Chicago Bears linebacker, Gil. Although a bit of a drinker, and given to using racial epithets too frequently, he and Jens enjoyed a friendly coexistence. During the NFL season, Jens would drag the television into the kitchen and the two would spend Sunday afternoons downing beers and watching football. All that ended the past Thanksgiving when Jens, attempting to fry a turkey for the first time, placed the still-frozen bird in Gil's compartment, resulting in a flash-fire that would have immolated the entire place had Jens not purchased an extinguisher ahead of time at Gil's behest. When the smoke and sodium bicarbonate had cleared, all that remained of Gil was a melted husk. Jens still wondered why Gil had insisted on the extinguisher. Granted he was surly and downbeat, but Jens never thought he had a death wish. Well, a re-death wish. It must be difficult on the other side. Maybe one day Jens would cross over.
So why now was he afflicted with this whiny crock-pot and its affected folksy vernacular?
"Well, partner, a deal is what you're getting: I'm talking about tender slow-cooked pork and apples, complete with-"
Jens grabbed the crock-pot and turned the dial to "High".
"Now you're talkin'! Throw in some honey BBQ sauce if you're feeling frisky," the pot encouraged. Jens stopped bottom of the sink and turned on the faucet. This pleased the pot even further. "Whatcha doing there? Gonna defrost some sausages? I know a great gumbo recipe!"
Jens gave the slow-cooker a cold stare as the sink continued to fill. His inaction began to cause the pot some concern.
"Now... why... don't you grab some peppers from the fridge? Maybe... a Serrano chili for zing?" Jens remained motionless. When the sink was nearly replete, he shut off the water.
The pot by now was quite warm, and the condensation of some residual moisture on its lid gave the impression it was sweating. As Jens gripped the stubby plastic handles on each oblong side, its tone supported this.
"Hey, don't be hasty... we can work something out!"
Jens, too fatigued to relish the moment, dropped the cooker in the sink quickly and deftly. The electrical outlet at the other end of the pot's power cord sparked briefly and the barely-audible hum of the refrigerator ceased, leaving him with a silence bordering on ecstasy. Jens reached over to the light switch and flicked it on and off several times to no effect. He sighed to himself as he walked to the bedroom to retrieve his slippers and keys. The circuit breakers were in the basement, and when he got back he didn't want to return to bed with dirty feet.
