A Different Kind of El Niño Phenomenon

Recently eaten: lemon pepper chicken
Recent annoyance: the snow won't last, I just know it

Can you really call this kid a prodigy? Does the nieghborhood brat who shoots cats with his BB gun count as a prodigy? Ok, well, maybe if he did it wearing tight pants and a cape. Just maybe.

Child matador, 11, kills six bulls (via BBC)
An 11-year-old Franco-Mexican boy has killed six young bulls in a single fight, despite moves to stop the event.

Michelito Lagravere has been bullfighting since he was four years old.

Last year several of Michelito's bullfights in France were banned after protests by animal rights groups.

This time the controversial spectacle was given a last minute go-ahead despite pressure from child protection and anti-bullfighting campaign groups.

"Child's play? Methinks not."

There Goes the Neighborhood...And Oktoberfest

Recently eaten: burger
Recent annoyance: if it can be Googled, it can be done

There are multiple things in this article that are very disturbing.

1. The boar population has risen by 320%: If someone told you that America's killer bee population or brain-eating zombie population rose by 320%, you might be a little concerned. It's almost as bad as what's happening in Burma when the bamboo flower explodes every 50 years.
2. If you read on, the article also says that the wild boars are digging up graveyards on a daily basis. Okay, hold the phone. Wild boars are digging up dead bodies to eat. That's where I draw the line. I'll sacrifice Bobo, the family cat, but once you mess with gramps, you mess with me.
3. Why don't they just have a big ol' pig roast at Oktoberfest? There will be thousands of drunken foreigners looking for a greasy nibble.
   

Wild boars wreak havoc in Germany (via YahooNews) Wild boars are breeding at a huge rate in Germany and wreaking greater havoc than in any other European country by destroying crops, killing pets and even attacking people, according to a new study.

Findings by the Hanover-based Institute of Wildlife Research show that Germany's boar population rose by 320 percent last year because of better access to food and bigger litters of young.

"God help us all, I was never educated on family planning or given access to contraceptives"

You're Not the Only Ones

Recently eaten: turkey meatball soup
Recent annoyance: wonderful clipboard-wielding volunteers of Dupont Circle hear this: I donate online so I can avoid interacting with people. Please leave me to my misanthropy.

The lamb-eating eagles aren't just upsetting Scottish farmers. I, myself, have been fighting a pterodactyl reintroduction program in North America. Note to self: only visit Scotland in protective bubble suit.

Lamb-eating eagles upset Scottish farmers (via YahooNews)
Sheep farmers in remote northwest Scotland are furious about a sea eagle reintroduction programme, saying the huge birds of prey are damaging their livelihoods by killing 200 lambs in the past year.

The Scottish Crofting Foundation said some crofts, small farms producing mainly lamb or beef, had seen lamb numbers fall over the past five years because of the sea eagles' diet.

Global Trotters

Recently eaten: thai noodle soup
Recent annoyance: fruit flies...how do they get in and breed so quickly?

I, for one, am excited for the return of the perhaps less desirable cuts of meat. Coming from solid Chinese stock, my people have long enjoyed all bits and pieces of the pig, the cow, the chicken etc. These are the parts that really get to the essence the animal. The literal underbelly. Earthy, woodsy, and some slightly more pungent adjectives are appropriate descriptions of the innards. In this time of financial crisis, I'll have the tripe and laugh all the way to the bank.

Hot to Trot (The Guardian)
Only yesterday I was apologising, albeit a little unwillingly, for my obsession with pig's trotters and cheeks, and the unctuous slippery bits from inside the head. Today comes news that Waitrose is, for the first time in decades, to start stocking all those bits and pieces that usually get left behind, the ones I feared I was eating too often. This is good news on so many levels. The store's spokespeople are arguing it from a credit crunch standpoint, which is undoubtedly valid. Being generally unwanted this stuff is dirt cheap, even in Waitrose. A leading figure in the UN also argued recently that we in the west are eating too much meat, and if that's so, better that we eat as much of the animal as possible rather than just the premium cuts.

Putin It On For the Cameras

Recently eaten: lamb chop
Recent annoyance: a random alarm in my neighbor's apartment was going off for hours

In other news, President Bush saved 2 secret service agents from a squirrel on the White House lawn. And from the international desk, Putin says, "The tiger was a formidable foe, and delicious."

Putin Saves TV Crew from Siberian Tiger (via YahooNews)
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East.

Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild.

Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.

"Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too," a presenter on Rossiya television said at the start of the main evening news.

Oh, The Shame

Recently eaten: satay skewers
Recent annoyance:

This is embarrassing for all of us. Chinese cuisine is one of the great world cuisines and they have boiled it down to kung pao chicken? Will they also have their mascot General Tso running around?

China makes kung pao chicken official for Olympics (Yahoo News)
It's official. Hungry foreign hordes craving a fix of diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts during the Beijing Olympics will be able to shout "kung pao chicken!" and have some hope of getting just that.

As it readies for an influx of visitors for the August Games, the Chinese capital has offered restaurants an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names and alarming translations can leave foreign visitors frustrated and famished.

General Tso says "my face burns with shame."

Meatwater

Recently eaten: beef noodle soup
Recent annoyance: severe leakage from nose and eyes ( I look like a cocker spaniel)

I don't know if this Meatwater is for real, or maybe it's an April Fool's joke. But, the pages look pretty legit. I think the most beguiling flavor is the Hungarian Gulash. I don't even know what that is. I thought that's where they sent prisoners to break rocks, or something.

Fresh Ink

Recently eaten: meatless tacos
Recent annoyance: something has up and died in the walls at work

It Matched My Shoes

Recently eaten: pecan-crusted trout
Recent annoyance: misty rain

What does one do with a stolen crocodile? Do you keep it alive as a pet? Or maybe you eat it? I think that alligator meat is available online these days for a reasonable price.

Crocodile stolen from Norway aquarium
A thief walked unnoticed out of a Norwegian aquarium carrying a crocodile at the weekend and now risks losing a finger or two, the head of the aquarium said on Monday.

"I think whoever did this knew what they were doing," Bergen aquarium director Kees Oscar Ekeli told Reuters, suggesting the young crocodile was smuggled out in a bag during the busiest hours on Saturday.

The stolen reptile, named "Taggen" (Spike), is a 70 centimetres (2.3 feet) long smooth-fronted caiman also known as Schneider's dwarf caiman (Paleosuchus Trigonatus).

Taggen eats "a good mix of fish and meat" and can grow to be about 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) long. "It has a solid bite. Considering it is not bigger than it is, you could lose a few fingers, but no vital organs," Ekeli said.

It is normally found in much warmer habitats in South America and is one of the world's smallest species of crocodile.

Ekeli feared that the four-year-old would have poor chances of surviving outside its habitat in the aquarium, and said it would probably die from stress.

The theft was immediately reported to the police. "We have offered a reward of 25,000 Norwegian crowns (2,500 pounds) to anyone who can give us a tip that leads to finding the crocodile," Ekeli said.

Meat Your Maker

Recently eaten: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with ricotta cheese
Recent annoyance: the lacks of people actually moving at the end of the year

I suppose this isn't really a surprise. USA Today found out that most recalled meat is never recovered and likely eaten. Who keeps their flank steak in the refrigerator long enough to find out a week later that some meat plant worker sneezed into your stuff?

A little food poisoning never hurt anyone, right? ("The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the United States alone, food poisoning causes about 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and up to 5,000 deaths each year. One of the most common bacterial forms of infection, the salmonellae organisms, account for one billion dollars in medical costs and lost work time.")

I'll Have Some Food With My Rice, Please

Recently eaten: duck
Recent annoyance: no internet

So the Mom assures me that where we are going in China has no internet. I am not entirely sure about that, but still worried I might suffer the same fate as some Chinese blogger.

Last night all of my Mom's 6 brothers and sisters came from all over for a big dinner. I must have seemed like some poor unfortunate outlander with no knowledge of Hong Kong culture. Had my cousins not been placing food morsels in my bowl, I might not have gotten anything to eat. Having grown up with just 4 in our nuclear family here, the 17 people sitting around the table all jockeying for control of the lazy susan holding the dishes was a little overwhelming.

One cousin noticed my poor shrimp peeling abilities (I kept quirting the brains everywhere when removing the head) and peeled a small mountain for me. another cousin noticed my chopsticks weren't fast enough or adept enough to pick up the food I wanted before it whizzed by to the other side of the table. And the ultimate humiliation, my Mom still had to remove the bones from my fish for me like a baby. I am pretty sure that this is rite of passage is like a Chinese barmitzvah. Once a young person is able to eat whole fish and remove the bones without choking on them, only then are they able to say "Today, I am a man." Even my youngest cousins stared at me like I was some backwards country bumpkin that had never seen the right side of a piece of duck before.

So expect radio silence for the next 7 days. I'll be in the wilds of an internet-free China.

I'll Be The Fat and Red-Eyed one

Recently eaten: fish balls and pig skin
Recent annoyance: smog makes my eyes dry

Full day number one in Hong Kong. I slept about 4 hours last night...

This morning, the mom and I woke up starving at around 7 AM. She sent my uncle, and her younger brother on his bike to find us some food...and quick. Thank goodness for my mom's seniority in the family. He returned with a morning favorite: little rolls made of rice and water in soy sauce and peanut sauce. See pic below.


Mom and I are staying in a house that my family built when my grandfather was still alive. Most of the houses around here are mostly made of concrete and tile. Seems as though most houses are constantly in a state of either construction or repair. One nice change is that there are many fewer stray dogs running around. When I visited as a child, one of my greatest scares came from stray dogs running through the streets between the houses and barking ym cousins and I. I was probably about 13 or 14 when I found out that you could thoroughly confuse a charging dog by opening an umbrella in its face.

After our early breakfast, Mom, two aunts and an uncle went to dim sum. if you've never been, there is an art to it and especially in Hong Kong. Dim sum may be eaten at almost any time of the day, although the earlier yoou go, the older the crowd is. When you sit down you get one pot of tea and an empty pot. The empty pot is for the tea yoou use to wash your plates, bowls, cups and chopsticks. This is not considered rude, but a necessity in a aplce where the running water is not sanitary. The plate is for your cup of tea and any bones or wrappers you discard in the course of the meal. And for god's sake, do not leave your chopsticks crossed on the table or stuck in the middle of a plate of food. It is all right to use hands for buns etc. but you should grab that with your chopsticks first. These rules can be more lax when dining with family.

Eating in Hong Kong is like a religion. There are as many if not more small cafes and restaurants lining the streets as shops and stores. My mom asked me if I was full after brunch, but noted that we would probably just eat later before dinner anyway. Sounds about right.

I also snapped a pic of this odd toilet in the tea house before we left. The toilet seat had an automatic system to put a seat cover on it and it was possible to have the seat heated. Pretty posh.


We stopped at the train station to get some fare cards and I noticed this disturbing ad for a weight loss system of some sort.
I'm not exactly sure if the weight is in pounds or kilograms or whatever, but if I weighed 120 anything, I'd be jumping for joy. 120 stone, 120 bags of flour. I have already been referred to as "big-boned" numerous times by my relatives and my mom. Apparently, I am quite the oddity. My cousins noted my "broad shoulder" but stopped short of calling me fat. Nice to know that I would have to get down to 105 boxes of butter before I could fit into any jeans sold here.

While walking back from our afternoon snack of sweet tofu and fishballs and pig skin, my mom saw a bird she had never seen before. She asked my aunt what kind of bird that is, to which she replied, "the kind that tastes good in soup." Gee, I wonder where I get it.

Break A Leg

Recently eaten: tunafish sandwich
Recent annoyance: luddites

Legally, I believe that they ahve to adhere to a law that dates back to the Code of Hammurabi: Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers. Or, they can threaten to cut the leg in half to split between the two men. the man that stands up and refuses to see the leg cut is the true owner.

Man seeks shared custody of severed leg
Shannon Whisnant found a severed leg in a barbecue smoker.

Now, he wants to keep it in hopes of fame and money.

Whisnant plans to make his case personally Monday when John Wood, the Greenville, S.C. man who lost the leg in an airplane crash three years ago and stored it in a barbecue smoker, comes to Maiden, N.C., to pick up his lost appendage.

Wood says they can meet, but he's not interested in using the leg to make quick cash.

"I just think it's despicable," he said. "I don't mind having the 15 minutes of fame, but I'm not looking to really profit off this thing."

The story of Wood's leg goes back to 2004 when it was shattered in a plane crash that killed his father and injured two other family members. Doctors tried to save the leg for eight months, but had to amputate. Wood told them that when he died, he wanted to be buried a whole man and asked if they could ship the leg to him.

They obliged. The leg -- foot, ankle and most of the calf -- spent time in Wood's freezer until his electricity was cut off. Wood then hung it on a fence post in his front yard to dry.

He was later evicted from his home and spent time living in his van. His mom said she'd pay to store his belongings for a couple of months, but after that, the $42 payments were his responsibility.

The leg, carefully wrapped in paper and stored inside the smoker, went into storage. But Wood wasn't making the payments, and last Tuesday the owner of the storage facility included the smoker in a sale of items from people who got behind on their rent.

Whisnant bought the smoker, opened it and "thought it might have been part of a missing person or someone's ex-wife." He contacted police.

Now that Whisnant knows the leg isn't evidence of a murder, he feels it's his property.

He says he called every lawyer in the Catawba County yellow pages looking for someone with experience in "cadaver law."

The leg has brought both men some fame. Both have done interviews. Wood said he became a celebrity at a charity golf tournament that benefited amputees. Whisnant put a sign on the empty smoker charging for a look inside: adults $3, children $1.

He figures there could be more opportunities if he had the leg in hand. He knows there's interest; he's Googled the phrase "man finds leg in smoker" and got close to 2 million hits.

Wood said he was livid when he got the request from Whisnant.

"He's making a freak show out of it," Wood said. "He wants to go on 'The Tonight Show' and he wants to sell it to the National Enquirer and call Ripley's Believe It Or Not. He wants to put money in his pocket with this thing."

After meeting with a lawyer this weekend, Whisnant decided his best move was to convince Wood to share custody.

"It's a strange incident and Halloween's just around the corner," he said. "The price will be going up if I get the leg."

Well, Do You Have a Better Idea?

Recently eaten: noodle soup, fruit tart
Recent annoyance: complete and utter disorder on the 42 bus line for the past 2 days

After 2 harrowing days of late buses, crowded buses and generally crazy drivers on my usual bus route, I might resort to the what the Nepalese airline company has done to right things. A little goat sacrifice. I guarantee it will work better than complaining to WMATA.

Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet
Nepal's state-run airline has confirmed that it sacrificed two goats to appease a Hindu god, following technical problems with one of its aircraft.

Nepal Airlines said the animals were slaughtered in front of the plane - a Boeing 757 - at Kathmandu airport.

The offering was made to Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection, whose symbol is seen on the company's planes.

The airline said that after Sunday's ceremony the plane successfully completed a flight to Hong Kong.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," senior airline official Raju KC was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Nepal Airlines has two Boeing aircraft in its fleet.

The persistent faults with one of the planes had led to the postponement of a number of flights in recent weeks.

The company has not said what the problem was, but reports in local media have blamed an electrical fault.

Cause for Pause

Recently eaten: greek salad
Recent annoyance: pens that seem like they are running out of ink, and then write fine

I have had a real tough time cutting seriously high-cholesterol foods out of my diet. Ever since they told me that Crisco runs through my veins, I have tried every mental tactic in the book to stop eating bacons and eggs. Well, I think I have discovered the best dieting tool ever.

Behold, the Bacon Tomb
This is what happens to bacon and eggs over 2 years...

START

FINISH

I Feel It In My Fingers...

Recently eaten: tuna salad
Recent annoyance: warm milk in my cereal

I think they should really implement this threat level system. On the plus side, more people might actually pay attention to threat level changes, and number 2, the wiener industry gets some free, in-kind advertising. And what's more American than hot dogs?

Homeland Security Level Raised to Chicago Dog with Everything

What's A Robster Craw?

Recently eaten: rosemary chicken sandwich
Recent annoyance: the one fruitfly that has made it into my office

Here's some old-time family fun! Catch aa live lobster and somehow get it home and into that steaming pot of boiling water without getting the business end of those pinchers.

Vending machine game for winning live lobsters

Maneater

Recently eaten: corn chowder
Recent annoyance: it's so hard being a gangsta all the time

In the words of the great Nelly Furtado, "Maneater, wish you never met her all." I think this is a good idea to internalize " a little piece" of your loved one, literally. Don't forget that my funeral celebration blowout will include many gastronomical delights, some of which may be laced with a little bit o' me. Delish.

The Modern Man Eater Diet

Anthropophagy meets the health supplement movement with Modern Man Eater, a site that processes the corpses of your dearly departed into a wide variety of protein powders, vitamins, shakes and slurries!

Their FAQ is a hoot:

Q: Is this legal?

A: Well, lets put it this way: It is legal to have a dead body shipped anywhere in the world that you'd like. It is legal for us to do what we do in the country we do it in. Finally, the product we return to you is indistinguishable from similar agricultural or non-controled pharmaceautacal products, thus It is legal to be imported back to any country.

And this testimonial ought not to be ignored:

I've been bodybuilding since the seventies and, trust me, I'd put anything in my body to blast my quads. But I still couldn't add mass to my calfs. Since I've had the protein shakes from MME, I've been totally gunning my lats like never before, just gunning them!

Regretfully, all my relatives are still alive, so my fitness regimen still requires frequent nocturnal visits to the graveyard for my homemade protein powder.

Modern Man Eater Official Website

I'm Not Dead Yet!

Recently eaten:chicken saltimbocca
Recent annoyance: blister on little toe

Sometimes I get this feeling after a long week at work. They're not even waiting for me to die.

Starving vultures prey on living animals
Huge flocks of starving vultures have started attacking live animals in northern Spain, officials in the city of Burgos said on Thursday.

In one incident, about 100 vultures killed a cow and her newborn calf, a rancher from the Mena Valley said, according to the Spanish government's office in Burgos, quoted by state news agency EFE.

Ranchers have complained that vultures started attacking livestock several months ago when a feeding station set up in the Ordunte mountains was closed by the neighbouring province of Vizcaya. Vultures prefer to feed on the carcasses of dead animals, but carrion is scarce in modern Spain.

Meat Me in St. Louis

Recently eaten: chicken sub, ripe green pear
Recent annoyance: pile up at lunchtime to use the microwave

I thought I would be really good at the little puzzle, but I was stumped from the get-go. Maybe the beta version will be a taste-and-place kind of game.

Place the Meat