That's right. Can it. Canned food advocates are rolling up their sleeves this month and crashing all those raw food potlucks. If you've enjoyed some canned classics recently, you'll want to give a quick salute to Napoleon, who bribed all of France to surface a quality inventor. Enter Nicolas Appert, who pocketed the Francs after logging 14 years behind a workbench littered with glass, wax, and wire. Canning is clearly more popular, but what about pickling, smoking, and drying? They don't... READ ON
It was a rainy night in LA, and I woke up this morning to find all my plants stretching their necks into the windowpane to try and cash in...Which got me on an anthropomorphic kick & thinking about the Backster Galvanic response studies, which conjecture that microbial life responds to our emotions. When interviewed, Backster talks about what happened one time he made... READ ON
Happy... READ ON
  Wear insanely cute spandex tubes...Especially good for keeping them "tight-hided" and dirt-free until show time. Being born is hard enough, but if you're a lamb growing up on the tundra, you're going to be fighting hypothermia on the off-times you don't have your full coat. If these dears are awakening a long-buried breeder's urge, it'll be heartening to learn they're quite affordable: you can buy commercial ewes for $30-$125/head. Dr. Helen A. Schwartz recommends asking: "Are... READ ON
We all love the sound of our own names--Dale Carnegie and his ilk have been capitalizing on this vanity for decades--but is it really as special when the person invoking ours can remember everyone else's? Kevin Trudeau posited that it was. In the 90s, I can home from school to find his MegaMemory audio tape set sunning in our kitchen, and while it was my mother's lark, I was the one who skulked around with the tapes...He was slick, and made it seem like committing grocery lists to memory was some arcane... READ ON
It's a prime month to be loving (or missing) New York--you can distract yourself from the windchill by attending Westminster, or V-day-induced power ballad parties, or...by crashing the Toy Fair! But if those exhibits inspire you to head back to your loft with an awl, a crescent wrench, and some Puffy Paint, here are some examples of toys you might not want to mimic... The outright dangerous & the legally suspect... The syncretistic...... READ ON
If you're living in a part of the world where you're at risk for Seasonal Affective Disorder and you're sick of logging time in front of a light box (especially since your fungal infection is cured), maybe it's time for a... READ ON
 While we're talking diamonds...My sister works customer service for Tiffany & Co., and I'm always psyched to hear all the reasons people call to harangue a luxury marketer. I've done the phones circuit, too--have been guilted into listening to stories about kidney stones and estranged beloveds after reporting someone's shaming password--but her stories are different: Um, yeah, so I saw that movie? And I think I have a blood diamond? So like. I want to return it. And as my sister... READ ON
Any decent spammer is familiar with the sting of a blighted recipient list--there's the mourning that goes with bouncebacks, the chagrin over wrong pronouns, and over the "ie" vs. the "y" strains of spunky names. In a recent UNC college admissions incident, 2,703 students were incorrectly extended admission due to a "clerical error" that occurred at some point during the mailing. I don't know what mailer they were using, or even if they used one at all, but if you should ever find yourself on... READ ON
As of today, Saturn has fifty-six moons. And at the rate new ones are shyly popping up, one might say that the planet is, um, bringing sexy back. Why so many moons, Saturn? Perhaps the planet is overcompensating for all the hating going on around the weary campfires of astrologers. The current planetary weather features an opposition between Saturn and the Sun, and since the Sun is always the home team, everybody's groaning in anticipation of the next dour event we can blame on the old ball of... READ ON
5 Questions: Maybe, Maybe Not
Troy McClure Film or Actual Terrible Movie?
Kool-Aid was originally marketed as Fruit Smack.
