quacky: —–+—+—–

So, my hot heterosexual life-partner and I have decided to stop smoking. As much as possible. For the forseeable future. It’s pretty hard to do. But, not that I’m thinking up some new school of thought on the matter or anything, but something is stuck in my head right now, and it seems to be a nice like mental note that works. For me. For the moment.

I’m doing a lot of not smoking right now.

Not, “I’m trying to quit smoking.”

It makes a difference. It’s active, and doesn’t seem to have failure built in to the grammar.

Anyways.

No Need to Click Here - I’m just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:d263710f86241d88993fe0dd82187682

the other day walking home from the bus and thinking about a project, i decided that the format for a slogan could always be like this: “combining the ______ of _______ with the _______ of ________”

Here’s what google says

• combining the flavors of India with the lyricism of French culinary tradition
• Combining the societal morals of The Scarlet Letter with the lyricism of The Red Tent
• combining the lyricism of Chinese scroll painting, with the loose expressiveness of nouvelle vague
• ombining the soft lyricism of Middle Eastern dance with the technical precision of classical tradition
• ombining the importance of letter writing with the importance of photography

what I really meant to say was “Combining the hell I dunno with the hell I dunno”

if you find an interesting picture, set it free

originally found on the some MSN news page. or something.
I had to recaption it. My friend Josh_bomb came up with the plan, and I fotochopt it. YAH!

I haven’t been so crazy excited about the beta launch of the mysterious google base. Because it’s one of those HUH? kind of webplications. What in the world could it be FOR?

Of course, you try out some new way of putting things on the internetc, you think, well is there PORN in it? And sure enough, porn has already found a way to use the google.base. Then you think, what else could this thing be useful for, besides used cars?

FOOD! is the answer recipes / mexican quisine / google base.

Now I’m going to find out how to make the super-tender chicken I’ve always wished for.

NB: under NO circumstances should one attempt to find recipes in google.base for the following search terms ‘creampie’, ‘breasts and thighs’, ‘fish tacos’.

TVgasm - Food Network: Too Many Cooks….

Sort of makes me snort a few times. Good stuff from a Food network junky reviewer. He loves the Giada, and his perspectives on the mental fitness of Rachael Ray are spot on.

Matt Cutts, whose name I *love*, works at the Google I guess. Has a fairly new blog. Writes a nice funny piece about what you do when you start a blog, depending on what kind of blog you have.

His point, or rather the point made by a friend of his, is that if you are writing about tech you have to post a list of your favorite Firefox Extensions.

Here is a list of Firefox Extensions I have at one time found worth putting in del.icio.us:
del.icio.us/quacky/extension+firefox

NB: I’m not writing about tech, necessarily, This isn’t a list of my extensions either, because the “List of Extensions” extension won’t work in the particular beta of Firefox I run. And, I couldn’t tell you what’s on my iPod cause I don’t fucking have one yet!

This guy over on Slate, who gets PAID to write such things I believe, does an article considering electric tea kettles. He picks a really awful looking unit called the Bodum Ibis, as the superior method for boiling water.

I have one lament: he pitted a single electric kettle against MANY other stovetop teapots. Okay, stack the deck, why don’t you? It would have been much more enlightening to have evaluated several different models of electric kettle alongside your one Bodum Ibis and all those expensive pots.

Idle carping, I know. But the guy gets PAID for this, and gets evaluation models of all these pots and kettles to boot, no doubt.

Where’s the fairness and impartiality we expect???

The other day, riding the bus, I overheard many parts of a conversation between a larger woman, and a space of air about 28 inches directly in front of her gaze. She had with her, in a fairly ordinary looking black stick-of-butter-shaped gym bag, “the breathing machine.” She also had a teen aged daughter, and a mobile phone hands-free earpiece. I believe the conversation was conducted with a remote acquaintance via the hands-free unit.

She said she was unable to choose a custom ringtone for her mobile handset, because: “all the music sounds the same to me” which was further amplified by disclosure of her tone-deafness, and reiteration of her absolute inability to distinguish at all between any of the melodic ringtones available by default or by purchase.

This made me shudder. She described an aspect of life that for her is simply a matter of fact, but which sounds so nearly intolerable to me. I can’t comprehend it. To this person, music means nothing. It is a noise. That’s all. She wouldn’t even be able to prefer a kind of music.

I’m reading this book about a guy on a boat. He’s stuck out in the middle of the Pacific on a boat with a Tiger. I think the manuscript must have been faxed to the printer. Here’s why, except for about 10% of the time, when the text refers to the rear part of the boat, the word ’stem’ is used. I mean, I think anyways. I always get confused about parts of boats, and now that I’m checking the Wikipedia, I find that ’stem’ is indeed a part of a boat, at the front.

Still. I think it’s a mistake every time I read it, and I never really can tell whether the guy is at the front of the back of the damn boat.

But … Who Really Cares…
a fun read, for spelling/punctuation/grammar nazis, or nazi’s. Some good things to read are linked therein.

Gosh now I’m sounding all grammarian. I should stop. I should stop at the parenthesis:

(I must admit, especially with blog writing, that it’s often fun to creatively break some of these rules.)

sometimes you just post fawning links to things, where, like you don’t have a real reason, except you’re awed by the source, you end up somewhere neat, some little detail strikes you, or you go “hmm.”

This happens all the time. It’s happened before via Warren Ellis, too.
Warren Ellis’ Engine Gear : Online Store

I want the shirt, I’m appropriating the slogan.

Money from the sale of Enginewear is used for the purchase of controlled substances.

Business Opportunities Weblog | How Much Is My Blog Worth

That’s a lot. I have no idea what the methodology is behind this. If I’d asked myself the question, I’d have probably answered “two fish tacos.”

It ocurred to me as I was wandering past the desk of someone in the “Front Office” today, that there are no “savory muffins.” All muffins, with the possible exception of a jalapeno/pepper/cheese corn muffin here and there, are sweet, fruity, breakfast fare.

Maybe it is something about the culinary structure of cake, that it depends on sugar for its texture, or cohesion or something. But surely, it might be possible to formulate a prosciutto, parmesan & basil muffin; or a Yankee pot roast muffin. How about a Forty Cloves of Garlic Chicken muffin? I’d totally hit that!

There are, of course, endless possibilities here. And it’s a step towards one of my dreamed-of perfect foods: People Chow. Think of it, a room-temperature delicious, almost entirely handheld, nutricious and flavorful, meal cake. You could still call them muffins.

Or is there some taboo I’m unaware of?