microscopic noodle bowl.
Continuing my fascination with all things ramen, I bring to you the news that Japanese scientists have created the world’s smallest bowl of ramen, using carbon nanotubes (which are not tasty, as far as I know) â?? it’s only visible under a microscope. “We believe it’s the world’s smallest ramen bowl, with the smallest portion…
dr. cheezenstein.
As promised in this week’s Food & Drink feature, here’s a recipe for making your own ricotta cheese, courtesy of writer Michelle Gienow. Enjoy! Ricotta You’ll need: * Large, heavy pot (nonreactive; enamel or stainless steel is best) * Thermometer (any kind of cooking thermometer; I use a candy thermometer) * Cheesecloth (sold in grocery…
Contemplating your own death makes you shop more
An article on New Scientist today suggests that one of the factors motivating our insatiable lust for material possessions and our thoroughly American compulsion to keep sticking more and more food into our food-holes is, in fact, existential despair. “The authors believe people with low self-esteem use consuming as a way of subconsciously escaping self-awareness,…
NOT THE QUIET ONE
Steve Albini and David Gedge return to the rough
SAVAGE LOVE
I’m a straight male and I love my fiancee. She’s perfect. But while I am physically attracted to her, I find myself masturbating rather than having sex with her. She knows, but we don’t talk about it – we can’t – and recently she walked in on me, and it was very awkward. I put…
BLISTER
Long gone are the days of Saturday mall mornings swirling in the fiber-optic electro symphony of tuneless bleeps that smelled like burning plastic, all set off by coffee mugs with penis handles at Spencer Gifts. The hair-too-long mistaken identity cases that led Burdines bitches at Swatch counters to lead this “pretty little girl” over to…
LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES
Miss me? Sorry to disappear last week, but the perfect storm that was the 17th Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival blew my regular musings right off the map. Attending more than two dozen different shows (some more than once) in just over a week, while at the same time producing a show of my own…
POLICE BEAT
May 19 (2008-217771) 1:13 a.m.: Warning: This is a pretty boring week in crime. So do what I did: Slam three shots of Jack Daniel’s and a fistful of Vicodin and let’s get on with it. And don’t bitch. I have to write the damn column; all you have to do is read it. Anyway.…
HAPPYTOWN
Because we are good journalists committed to bringing you the news in an evenhanded manner, the Happytown™ Mobile Election Center yes-we-can–ed our way down South Orange Blossom Trail all the way to the Kissimmee Civic Center to cover Sen. Barack Obama’s May 21 town hall meeting. Some 1,500 hopemongers and change addicts packed the civic…
MAIL SACK
Kicked out Thank you for your piece on the homeless evictions and camp conditions `Happytown™, April 24`. I have been a homeless woman in Seminole County for between five and seven years. During my homelessness in this area I have endured seven evictions for various reasons. The most recent was quite widespread. The officers told…
DIGGING A HOLE
Bad Money is a short book by a practiced artist who specializes in identifying the defining trends of American life. Here Kevin Phillips takes on financial practice in the age of Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson and the global rule of Goldman Sachs. It’s not meant to be pretty, and it isn’t. Phillips argues that financial…
OUR DUMB STATE III: STILL STUPID
Here we are again. The earth has orbited the sun. The continents have drifted farther apart. The seasons came and went, as they do. Que sera, sera. But through it all, one ironclad reality remained: Our state is stuck on stupid. We continue to be the country’s laughingstock, a place where the forces of dumb…
CHEESED OFF
I’m funny about my food: I like it to be made out of, you know, food. But, you might reasonably ask, isn’t that what the stuff we eat is made out of? Well, yes and no; more and more often the answer is no. Take sour cream. The kind I normally buy, Daisy Brand, has…
HISTORY IN THE MAKING?
“We have enough buildings in this area! We don’t want any more, especially a 20-story monster tower right across from a playground with a dead-end road! Surely you can build your tower on Orange Avenue where it belongs! Go away!” Those strong words, anonymously written on a comment sheet, reflected the sentiment of many Lake…
GUILELESS SONS
“Let’s meet up at Big Tree Park!” Stephen Lighthouse, a lanky, ardent bassist just old enough to drink in the bars he plays at a few times a week, stirs me from my midday doldrums with a breathless phone call. I’d mentioned that I wanted to meet with him and his band, Mirror Pal, at…
TIME AND TIDE
Don’t bother trying to nail down the sound of the Ocean Collective (better known as simply the Ocean). Teutonic metalcore? No. Conceptual math-rock? Please. “A one- or two-word tag could never adequately sum up what the Ocean is all about,” explains Robin Staps. Staps is the composer-guitarist of this symphonic undertaking out of Berlin. Granted,…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
If you’re a fan of true country, then you’re a George Jones fan. Widely considered by even his most accomplished peers as the finest voice in acoustic music, Jones is the velvet quintessence of the country crooner. And he’s finally gotten the loving box-set treatment by those librarians at Time Life with The Hits Then…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Ernest Hemingway said that his best work was a very short story consisting of six words: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” Alan Moore’s brief masterpiece of fiction is, I think, just as good: “Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time.” Here’s another gem, written anonymously: “The last man on earth heard…
FIRST SHOT
Who says nothing is sacred anymore? Look at the uproar that resulted when the makers of the Sex and the City movie (released this week) held its premiere in London instead of New York, where its heroines famously reside. Talk about your tempests in a mimosa glass! If we ourselves were to one day learn…
So, our governor likes â?¦ CHICKS????
Breaking! Charlie Crist is not a fag! Or maybe he is. Or maybe not. Or who the hell cares? Anyway, according to some blog – and these are always reputable sources of information – a GOP operative of the dirty variety (and is there any other) claims to have a TAPE of Charlie MAKING OUT…
