Did Everyone Rip Off Bill Hicks?

Via Milk and Cookies

Damon Weaver, Ace Reporter

The future of reporting begins now and it is an adorable and poised future at that.

Jen Want Eat This

From Serious Eats

Lemon Chickpea Stir Fry

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons ghee or extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion or a couple shallots, sliced
1 cup cooked chickpeas (canned is fine)
1 cup chopped kale, spinach, or other hearty green
1 red pepper, roasted, skinned, and chopped
2 small zucchini, cut into half moons
Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon

Procedure:

1. In a large skillet, heat one tablespoon of the olive oil or ghee over medium-high heat and stir in a good pinch of salt. Add the chickpeas and sauté until beginning to color, then add the onion or shallot. Continue cooking until the chickpeas are deeply golden. Add greens and cook until wilted, then remove everything in the skillet onto a large plate.

2. Heat the remaining oil or ghee in the same skillet over medium heat, and sauté the zucchini until lightly browned, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the pepper and cook for an additional minute, then add the chickpea mixture back in.

3. Mix well, taste for seasoning, and remove from the heat. Add the lemon zest and juice, and toss well. Serve with freshly cracked black pepper.

Intense Stories

Burned By Love
via

Have a lovely day.

Very Mild Superpowers

I Adore

The Fun, the Frolics, the Excitement

...of cow volleyball.

"BEAT DRUMS! DRIVE FAST! WOMAN!"

There has been a serial speeder racing along the streets of the Bavarian city of Bayreuth. An Audi TT treating the roads like a personal Autobahn.

Speed cameras have caught an image of the driver but this has done little or nothing to slow him down. Why?

Because the driver is Animal.

That's right, the frenetic drummer from the Muppet Show.

But Animal isn't alone.  Grover and Bert’s rubber-ducky-loving sidekick Ernie are also along for the joy ride.

A German police source said: “The number plate is not enough. We need clear evidence of who is driving the vehicle too. But because this is a British vehicle we can never get a decent picture. The driver has obviously worked this out because he has placed a large puppet in the passenger seat. This may be an example of the famous British sense of humour but it is still dangerous driving.

“The driver has been caught on camera on several occasions and the puppet is on the passenger seat every time. We suspect he positions the toy deliberately before accelerating past the camera.*”

*Ya think?

Temple of a Million Bottles

Originally from TreeHuggerr:

Fifty years ago, the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building block. 

Even the washrooms and the crematorium are built of bottles, a mix of green Heineken and brown local Chang beer.

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple, about 600 km (370 miles) northeast of Bangkok, is better known as "Wat Lan Kuad" or "Temple of Million Bottles" because of the glittering from countless glass containers on the walls.

The temple first started using discarded bottles in 1984 to decorate the monks' shelters. This attracted more people to donate more bottles to build other buildings such as a pagoda, ceremony hall and toilets. Bottle tops were also used to decorate murals.

Many bottles and tops are from alcohol containers even though alcohol consumption is a sin in Buddhism.

"The more bottles we get, the more buildings we make," Abbot San Kataboonyo told Reuters.

Mullet. James Mullet

Commitment

Look no further...

A plethora of banyans...

"Come down and eat chicken with me, beautiful. It's soooo dark."

THE STAND turns thirty, Stephen King, like Neil Young, keeps on rocking in the free world by continuing to write apocalyptic books that are, one would dearly hope, not too prescient in their telling of mankind undone by mankind and the evil perpetuated in the human heart. A timely interview in Salon.com let's us inside the mind of the master.

It's 30 years since the publication of "The Stand," which was written, as you say in "Danse Macabre*," "during a troubled period for the world in general and America, in particular." We're in another troubled period now. Do you feel yourself itching to write another apocalypse?


I just did. I finished a very long book called "Under the Dome," and it isn't like a worldwide apocalypse or anything like that, but it's a very long book, and it deals with some of the same issues that "The Stand" does, but in a more allegorical way.

I understand where Bill Maher is coming from when he says, basically, the world is destroying itself over a bunch of fairy tales about talking snakes and men who are alive inside fishes. I'm very sympathetic to it, but at the same time, given the cosmos that we're living in, it's very persuasive, the idea that there is some kind of first cause that's running things.

His latest collection of stories, "Just After Sunset," arrives in bookstores in November.

*which I read until my copy feel apart.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives

Mark Everett, frontman of the genius band Eels, talks explores the life of his father, Dr Hugh Everett III - originator of the Many Worlds Theory, based on quantum mechanics.

Found on Nerdcore, the rest of the series from this BBC 4 show are on this page.

Miss

Bipartisan Flummoxery

It's here!

Update: It was packed in pilfer proof tape!

Updated update: It is plugged in! Oh! Stickers!!!


The latest update: Oooo, it smells goooooooooood!

The crackingest update: argh, how long does it take to charge!?!?

Best update so far: I am using it right now!!!

Don't Hesitate

Staring at the Sun

Gorgeous photos of the Sun.

Stunning under water photos for those seeking a different element.

Fabulous photos of sub-worlds captured in dew drops.

Smatterings

Firstly, something I always suspected: Bright ideas come to us at night, not in office hours

Secondly, something I've needed to know: Eight reason you can't pay attention

Thirdly, because this is under Smatterlings: Top Misconceptions

Fourthly, did you know: India is counting down to it's first lunar mission?

Fifthly, what could be creepier than being stalked by an undertaker in a hearse?

Off to scape the land, my dear friends!

Sad Shark

Who knew sharks could be misanthropic?

What is it?

Walking along the streets of Baltimore after running away from the Bouchcercon convention with my legs encased in rubber boots and my mind flying in the treetops. I and my camera encountered this. It sums up my stay in that fair city quite beautifully.

Steven Fried

Laugh 'til you weep, my Monday Blues hounds.

“The only reason I’m here is that I don’t yet have the moral courage to turn down the money.”

“A sensitive person receives fifty impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; they’re so easily brutalized and hurt just because they are sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much."

Marlon Brando in a profile of him done by Truman Capote for The New Yorker magazine in 1957 titled,
The Duke in his Domain.

On the Beach Mullet

Swinging Mothers

Double Standard

Dennis Hopper is one hell of a good photographer/artist.

Beware the Neutrophil!

If you're an evil bacterium.

The neutrophil to the right is smiling at you.

So is the one below.

They don't want you to be sick because you rode on an airplane with coughing, green-faced people. They are fighting for your right to breath. They rock!

A "Damn the Deadlines" Cuteness Buffer

A Star Forming Region from Hubble

Putting It Twogether

McGrrrrrrrrr

It is not unprecedented:

Why...

... can't Superman have a beer with his dad? It's about time the uber nerd of comics kicked back.

Question: if he is "super", how does Superman get drunk?

Thank you.

To bed!

Cheeky Monkey

A First

Collecting my thoughts and photos from a fabulous Bouchercon convention - thought I'd share one Ali Karim took of me heading to the podium to accept the Crimespree award for Best Anthology.




Hilarious. Me, in all my refined grace and glory.



May the second anthology, UNCAGED, have people reaching for mental soap all over the planet.


Has anyone seen my brain?

Maybe it's back in the hotel....

I Have Returned

...and boy, is every muscle in my body tired.

There was a blackish pile of Jen huddled next to the window on the two flights it took to reach home. My iPod majestically bubbled me from coughing, frat yapping and turbulence as I only occasionally winced when my head smacked into the window during a cloud bust.

My bed is lovely and warm and soon I will leave this swively seat to go there.

I miss my family (lord, what a huge family it is) and I am going through major hug withdrawal. There is never enough time...

More as blood returns to my brain, dear people.

To the right, is me, spiritually.

Below, me in scant minutes.

Your grateful girl.

And Boy Are My Arms Tired

My shoes and I are off to Bouchercon.

Packing for this trip has made me grateful for:

• iPods
• very large suitcases
• The internet
• wine
• vitamins
• alarm clocks
  

Getting to Baltimore means seeing people I care for dearly and becoming, quickly, so over stimulated that I will be like the Energizer Bunny on crack when I make it back here.


Be safe, everyone. That is a bipartisan 'be safe.'

Behind the Scenes

"Well, the front fell off!"

An oil tanker looses it's front off the coast of Australia and dumped 20,000 tons of crude oil into the ocean.

Senator Collins , a member of the Australian Parliament, appeared on a TV news program to reassure the Australian public. And it, in his own special way, entertain the pants off of viewers. This is pure Monty Python sans the need for writers and pure fakery via John Clarke and Brian Dawe.



Hilariousness via Bits & Pieces

I Am Iron Man!

Tuesday Evenings Sucked Into a Void