Recently eaten: charcuterie
Recent annoyance: why don't they make meat-flavored oatmeal?
I back this. I think it's better separate the brain-eating from the non-brain-eating, especially in the dating pool. I am pretty sure I have dated some brainless zombie victims. This tragedy could have been avoided if the zombies had just used ZombieHarmony
ZombieHarmony (Digg)
Recently eaten: spanish omelette
Recent annoyance: oatmeal crust in my mug
I might as start a new tag called "monkeyschoosingstuff" because this is the second monkey-selection-related article I've posted in a week. Apparently, this is a monkey matchmaker. Does it work if he's bribed with bananas? Is he just looking for the picture the most resembles another monkey in heat? Who knows. You can ask the Washington Post.
Date Lab
Recently eaten: shrimp and mushroom lo mein (homemade)
Recent annoyance: the CFL bulb in my desk lamp burned out
So, did you think I wouldn't report on this important and breaking news? Of all the things that make me a Bostonian -- loving the Pats and the Sox, eating scrod, complaining about the weather -- the New Kids is my last and best hope for immortality.
Yup, they're getting back together.
Recently eaten: pork meat cake
Recent annoyance: my browser still thinks I am in China
All right, I admit blogging about my trip was way more labor-intensive than I thought it would be. And taking my camera out at every meal just wasn't going to be possible especially when I am hungry. When my family sits down to eat, it's best not to put any fingers or valuables in jeopardy. So I'll slowly leak the remainder of the details of my trip now that I am back Stateside. I do have some things I am thankful for now that I am home:
Recently eaten: saltenas empanada
Recent annoyance: my hands smell like bleach
I was drooling this morning imagining how tasty this little treat below would. Sold in Korea, it's an entire potato, cut open and deep fried then sprinkled with some sort of cheesy powder. It's simple, ingenious, and fried. What else is there?
Go ahead, because you're worth it!Recently eaten: vanilla heath bar crunch ice cream
Recent annoyance: packing
The Russians are starting a new cold war and this time they're not stockliling nuclear weapons or missiles...this time it's BABIES! Tiny, camouflaged bundles of biohazard designed to ruin lives faster than you can say dasvedanya.
Russian Government Sponsors Conception Day
A Russian region best known as the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin has found a novel way to fight the nation's birthrate crisis: It has declared Sept. 12 the Day of Conception and for the third year running is giving couples time off from work to procreate.
The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia's national day. Couples who ``give birth to a patriot'' during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.
Ulyanovsk, a region on the Volga River about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held similar contests since 2005. Since then, the number of competitors, and the number of babies born to them, has been on the rise.
Alexei Bezrukov and his wife, Yulia, won a 250,000 ruble prize - equivalent to $10,000 - in June after she gave birth to a baby boy, Andrei. Bezrukov said patriotism wasn't their motive for having a child, their third, although the money was welcome.
``It was a patriotic atmosphere, you know when everyone around is celebrating, but I wasn't thinking of anything but my son,'' he said. ``The whole thing is great, it's great to get 250,000 rubles when you have a new baby to take care of.''
Russia, with one-seventh of the Earth's land surface, has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled countries in the world. With a low birthrate and very high death rate, the population has been shrinking since the early 1990s.
It is now falling by almost half a percent each year. Demographic experts expect the decline to accelerate, estimating that Russia's population could fall below 100 million by 2050.
In his state of the nation address last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced a broad effort to boost Russia's birthrate, including cash incentives to families to have more than one child.
Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov has added an element of fun to the national campaign.
When he held the first competition in 2005, 311 women signed up to take part - and qualify for a half-day off from work. In June 2006, 46 more babies were born in Ulyanovsk's 25 hospitals than in June of the previous year, including 28 born on June 12, officials in the governor's office said.
More than 500 women signed up for the second contest on Sept. 12, 2006. Exactly nine months later, 78 babies, triple the region's daily average, were born. They were welcomed into the world as Russia's national anthem was played, the officials said.
Since the campaign began, the birthrate in the region has risen steadily and is up 4.5 percent so far this year over the same period in 2006, according to the regional administration's Web site.
Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection.
The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, an SUV made in Ulyanovsk. They told reporters they were planning to have another child anyway when they heard about the contest.
Irina Kartuzova had to have a Caesarian section to deliver the baby and it was scheduled for June 12.
The selection committee chose the Kartuzovs from among the 78 couples because of their ``respectability'' and ``commendable parenting'' of their two older children, a spokesman for the governor said.
Other contestants won video cameras, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.
Under the federal program, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are to receive certificates worth $10,000, which can be used to pay for education or to improve the family's living conditions.
Monthly support payments were raised this year to $60 from $28.
Recently eaten: beets
Recent annoyance: those poor misguided Greenpeace, WashPIRG and Save the Children street fundraisers
There's a lot going on at this wedding. First, he's almost 8 feet tall. Check. Second, she's not even close to that. Check. AND, they are getting married at Kublai Khan's tomb. Awesome. Getting married on 7/07/07 was the latest wedding craze, I think getting hitched at famous mausoleums should be the next great fad. Although you might want to leave Tomb of the Unknown Soldier off your list.
Tallest man marries 'tiny' woman
he world's tallest man married a woman who's two-thirds his height and half his age, holding a traditional Mongolian ceremony Thursday with great fanfare at the tomb of Kublai Khan.
Bao Xishun, a 7-foot-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia, met his bride earlier this year after searching high and low, sending advertisements around the world. It turns out he didn't have to look far -- 5-foot-6 saleswoman Xia Shujian hails from his hometown of Chifeng.
Bao wore a specially designed light blue gown topped with a gold vest, and rode to his bride's camp in front of the tomb in a cart pulled by two camels, AP Television News reported. A limo followed the cart.
In keeping with Mongolian tradition, the bride's attendants tried to "stop" Bao from getting into the camp. But they relented after the giant groom's sincere appeals, and he was offered tea by the bride's relatives, symbolizing that he had been accepted into her family.
He did not kowtow to his parents and in-laws because of his extraordinary height and arthritis in his knees, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Bao, 56, and Xia, 28, married in a civil ceremony in March. This time, more than 2,000 people turned out for the ceremonial nuptials, including relatives, locals and a large crowd of journalists.
Bao was confirmed last year by Guinness World Records as the world's tallest person. Xinhua said his growth was normal until age 16, when a growth spurt shot him up to his current height within seven years.
He was in the news in December after he used his long arms to save two dolphins by pulling plastic out of their stomachs.
The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province. Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins' stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, Chinese media reported.
Recently eaten: chicken parm
Recent annoyance: people who refuse to move when walking three-across on the sidewalk
It's going to be one of those weeks, so posts might be few and far between. To entertain you in the meantime, check out my new widgets in the sidebar. The clock is for obvious reasons, and the little robot dude is for you other nerds out there that might want to throw a Beef in the city blog widget on your own site.
Yeah, shameless self-promotion.
And here's a link to someone who baked a red velvet cake to look like the Death Star.
Recently eaten: sundried tomato sausage, eggs, toast
Recent annoyance: hotkeys
Did they really need to put this guy in jail? He's got no job. He steals all this food and eats it with his friends. There but for the grace of God go the rest of us.
Man convicted of stealing buffet for 60
A jobless German has been handed a five-month suspended jail term for stealing a buffet for 60 people and eating it with friends, authorities said on Tuesday.
Using a false name, the 46-year-old from the western city of Dortmund ordered the 3,700-euro (2,500 pound) feast to be sent to the club house of a garden allotment colony.
Shortly after the caterers delivered the food, he called the company to say they had made a mistake and he would return the order. As puzzled club house guests looked on, he loaded the buffet into his car and sped off.
The food was never seen again -- but the man was recognised one day by one of the club house guests, who told the police, the presiding judge at the court in Dortmund said.
"The man said he wanted to treat his friends to something special," said Judge Gerhard Breuer. "I told him his story would make a good movie." As well as receiving a suspended jail term, the man must repay his debt to the caterer, the court ruled.
Recently eaten: homemade calzone
Recent annoyance: District of Columbia, hear this, if you only salt the roads, it will melt and freeze again. It's science.
I guarantee that there is no better valentine than a drunken old man, especially if that old man is Orson Welles. An oldie but a goody:
Recently eaten: spanish rice, banana bread
Recent annoyance: itchy sweaters
Boy, back in my day revenge was a labor-intensive affair. Now, there are these new-fangled websites and everything is done electronically. Gee, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but nothing can replace the visceral feeling you get when you slash someone's tires with your own two hands.
Won't be my Valentine? Fish and wreath in the mail.
"Roses are red. Violets are blue. Our love died, now why don't you? With Valentine's Day approaching, love is the air -- and so is revenge, with jilted lovers sending bitter notes, funeral wreaths and even dead fish to former partners.
"We definitely get a bounce in our business at this time of year," said Alan Harris, founder of the Web site www.Poisonpen.com, which, for a small fee, will send an anonymous poison pen card or letter to a former lover.
"Sometimes, people find it very cathartic. It's like therapy, only cheaper," said Harris, whose motto is: "When you care enough to send the very worst."
Among his best sellers at this time of year is a card that features the phrase 'Words Fail Me' written in red ink on a black background and opens to reveal an illustration of a hand with a raised middle-finger.
Yahoo! Personals has dubbed the period between the December holidays and Valentine's Day on February 14 as national break-up season.
The online dating service survey asked 2,583 of its users and found that couples were more than twice as likely to think about separating during this period than at any other time of the year.
"People tend to 'put up' with current relationships in order to have a partner for holiday gatherings, but once the festivities are over, it's time to decide whether to fish or cut bait," said Anna Zornosa, vice president of Yahoo! Personals.
So while the romantics are in the stores ahead of Valentine's Day with Americans estimated by the National Retail Federation to spend more than $13.7 billion (7 billion pounds) on gifts this year, those feeling bitter about a break-up are finding way to exact their revenge.
At the subversive motivational Web site Despair.com, co-founder Lawrence Kirsten's offerings include a photograph of a red rose with the phrase: "You were meant for me. Perhaps as a punishment."
"This is our busiest season of the year" at www.deadroses.com, said founder Verne Weidler.
Since 1998, he has sent dozens of dead roses across the United States, Canada, and as far away as Sweden and Germany. He makes sure to include the thorns.
"They're carefully dried so they won't fall apart during shipping, unless of course you want them smashed. We don't charge extra for smashing," he said.
Other Web sites also offer to send black roses, just the stems of roses or funeral wreaths.
Rather than chocolates you could also send melted chocolates, bittersweet as well as milk, to an old flame.
If none of the above satisfies the desire to get even, www.ThePayback.com offers to send a smelly, dead fish to the one who did you wrong.
"You know the saying: "Don't get mad, get even"," said a notice on the Web site. "
Bunny soup, it is.Recently eaten: chicken parm, banana bread
Recent annoyance: all you cold-phobes...you had your unbearable summer so just shut your cake-holes
When I visited mainland China with my aunt, uncle and cousin back in the day, I thought they were being paranoid when they wouldn't let me go to the bathroom by myself at the local mall. "Sometimes, " they warned, "girls go in and never come out." Holy hat, they weren't kidding. Maybe in Bangkok, or North Korea, but I would assume I could keep all my limbs and organs in China unless I tried to steal a panda or something. Remind me not to sell myself into an arranged marriage that next time I am hard up for some cash.
China arrests men for murdering ghost brides
"Chinese police have arrested three men for killing two young women to sell their corpses as "ghost brides" for dead single men, a Chinese newspaper reported, warning the dark custom might have claimed many other victims.
Yang Donghai, a 35-year-old farmer in western China's Shaanxi province, confessed to killing a woman bought from a poor family for 12,000 yuan ($1,545) last year.
She thought she was being sold into an arranged marriage, but Yang killed her in a gully and sold her corpse for 16,000 yuan, the Legal Daily reported on Thursday. He and two accomplices then killed a prostitute and sold her for 8,000 yuan before police caught them.
"I did it for the money; it was a quick buck," Yang said, according to the paper. "If I hadn't slipped up early, I planned to do a few more."
The women were victims of an old belief, still alive in the yellow-earth highlands of western China, that young men who die unmarried should go to their graves accompanied by deceased women who will be their wives in the afterlife. Often these women die natural deaths.
Police in Yanan, the poor and dusty corner of Shaanxi where Chairman Mao Zedong nurtured his Communist revolution, said the dark trade went beyond these cases.
"The actual number is far from just these," the paper said.
Yang and two helpers sold the bodies to Li Longsheng, an undertaker who police said specialized in buying and selling the dead women for "ghost weddings." It was unclear what happened to Li."
Baby, you were worth every yuanRecently eaten: chicken sandwich, lentil soup
Recent annoyance: people at the gym who don't put the weights back in the right place when they are done
It seems to me that this only adds insult to injury. What if you can't even remember that you have herpes? And we all know that the rate is STDs in senior citizens is growing at at an alarming rate.
Herpes Might Cause Alzheimer's
"New research supports growing concerns that herpes plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.
The latest work, announced today, shows a link between a gene and herpes simplex 1, or HSV. The form of the ApoE gene called ApoE-4 is the leading known risk factor for Alzheimer’s. And HSV is the form of herpes that causes cold sores around the mouth. More than 80 percent of Americans are infected with HSV.
The researchers, at the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that ApoE-4 effectively puts out a welcome mat for the herpes virus, allowing it to be more active in the brain.
“The data suggest that ApoE-4 may support the ability of HSV to be a more virulent pathogen,” said Howard Federoff, lead author of the research published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
The research involved measuring the activity levels of HSV in the brains of mice with different forms of the human ApoE gene.
The team found that the virus infiltrates brain cells about the same whether or not mice have the ApoE-4 form of the gene. But in mice with the ApoE-4 version, the virus is less likely to be latent and thus more likely to multiply.
Scientists have known for several years that the ApoE-4 gene plays a role in Alzheimer’s but the idea that it works in concert with the herpes virus is new.
Ruth Itzhaki of the University of Manchester has conducted several studies showing a correlation between herpes and Alzheimer’s. Patients suffering from the dementia disease who also have the ApoE-4 form of the gene also have more herpes DNA in the brain regions that are affected by Alzheimer’s, she found. And people with the ApoE-4 version of the gene who have HSV are more likely to get Alzheimer’s than those who lack either the gene version and the virus.
Also, other scientists have found that people who frequently break out in cold sores are more likely to have the gene that makes them more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s."
P.S. I will never be able to go out again because of THIS
Recently eaten: sesame chicken
Recent annoyance: Paula Abdul toe -- I may lose it at any moment
Sure, make a movie about the same topic and Andrew McCarthy becomes America's sweetheart. Act out your mannequin fetish in real life, and you're bustng through plate glass windows for a little plastic lady action. I don't know, better the mannequin than me.
Mannequin Fetishist Could Get Life
"A man who has a history of smashing windows to indulge his fetish for female mannequins could draw a long prison term for his latest arrest. Ronald A. Dotson, 39, of Detroit faces up to life in prison if convicted of a charge of attempted breaking and entering at a cleaning-supply company in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.
The potential life sentence is because prosecutors charged him as a habitual offender. Authorities say he has at least six convictions for breaking and entering and a stint in state prison over the last 13 years.
Ferndale District Judge Joseph Longo ordered Dotson to stand trial following a preliminary examination on Thursday, The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak reported. The judge ordered him jailed unless he posts a $15,000 bond.
Dotson was arrested Oct. 9 after police say he smashed a window at a cleaning-supply company to get at a female mannequin dressed in a black and white French maid's uniform. He had been out of prison for less than a week.
Dotson was arrested in Ferndale in July 2000 and later convicted for breaking and entering at a women's clothing shop to get at a mannequin in a pink dress with bobbed hair.
Ferndale police also arrested Dotson in 1993 after finding him in an alley behind a woman's store with three lingerie-clad mannequins. He also has similar convictions in Detroit and suburban Oak Park."
