perfunctory

Wee Racist

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:18:51 +0200

‘It was the search for televised cricket that took me into the Porter Bar in suburban Edinburgh on a Saturday lunchtime, and possibly the funniest incident I have witnessed while watching broadcast sport.

The Celtic v Rangers match was on, playing to an audience of enthusiastic Celtic fans, one of whom took to jumping on the table and

jabbing the screen with his finger at any outrage he felt the Rangers players had committed, accompanied by imprecations containing our two best known four-letter words, used as verb, noun, adjective, and adverb.

Thus Rodriguez was dubbed ‘a little f***ing Dago bastard f**k,’ and worse; Prso was told to ‘get the f**k away back to Croatia and feed your f***ing family,’ and various other players in blue were given similar treatment, with the choleric fan showing an almost uncanny knowledge of their provenance, and the appropriate racial slur for the occasion.

This continued unabated until the referee booked Celtic’s Senegalese defender Camara, at which the fan leapt up and spluttered at the referee, utterly without irony: ‘Get away to f**k, you wee racist c**t.’

Is [insert name of celebrity] jewish…

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:22:30 +0200

Is [insert name of celebrity] jewish…:

Fascinating.

Pretty. I want. From Autoblog

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:04:55 +0100

Pretty. I want.

From Autoblog

For the teachers out there. Listen. Memorize. Perform....

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:47:00 +0100

For the teachers out there. Listen. Memorize. Perform. Profit?

From Livewire

Allure of the mean friend. From This American Life.

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:36:02 +0100

Allure of the mean friend. From This American Life.

Coffee

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:29:50 +0100

I only drink coffee once a year. To do so I must travel to Celebes and build rapport with the locals, seeking out a different village every time in order to preserve some semblance of authenticity. Coffee is not to be taken lightly, after all. Once the village has accepted me I ask them where I might find the palm civets in that area. Armed only with my equipment and mind, I take to the jungle and scour the floor for their characteristic droppings. The next week generally consists of locating excreted coffee berries that have passed through the civets’ beautiful digestive systems.

Once enough partially-digested coffee berries have been located, the brewing process begins. This is very similar to the way coffee is normally brewed (the exotic locale and stellar beans being somewhat out of the ordinary):

First, the ripe beans are cleaned and washed by hand with boiled water from a pristine local spring. It may take a while before a fitting source is located - an inappropriate balance of trace minerals can harm the taste. After this customary cleansing comes the familiar ritual of roasting. I will not go into details here because I trust most of you are familiar with this step. The process is somewhat more complex in a jungle environment, but as always dedication, roast profile and individual skill are the most important factors.

Following the roast and subsequent cool, I like to take around two hours to contemplate the history of coffee and the impact it has had on human society. I find this meditative step is necessary to fully understand and enjoy coffee. Most people neglect to do this, resulting in an intellectually-impoverished, incomplete experience. As soon as I have arrived at the correct mental state I hand-grind the beans in a purpose-built, multi-stage grinder. This is a crucial step that requires a level of concentration and skill that is wholly alien to most - speed, coarseness and throughput volume all affect the end result and the slightest error can ruin a batch completely.

Near the end stages of grinding there is a self-evident need to multi-task. I boil around ten cups of water and rinse out my insulated French press nine times. The final cup is left to cool for around half a minute (depending on ambient temperature) while I place the ground coffee in the press. With cool anticipation, I then poor the water on the coffee and stir briefly so as to ensure a perfect mix. I let it steep then, resting my weary mind and enjoying the aroma that lazily drifts up from the maturing brew. Having settled and developed, the coffee is finally strained and poured into a bone china cup.

All is now in place. As I sit down in my hand-carved chair of ivory and teak, pausing to pick up my cup and put my feet on a kneeling servant’s back, I am generally overcome with my own awesomeness. It is only fitting. Then, in a fleeting instant, I have the first taste. Sadly but inevitably, it is a moment uniquely indescribable to mere mortals. As heavenly music drifts through the warm air the sun shines down on me - and me alone. The taste is so perfect that it sends shivers down the spine of every man, woman and child in a radius of 1500 km. Illnesses are cured, ancient friendships rekindled and generational fueds abruptly ended, all in the blink of an eye.

Naturally, I do not expect you all to understand this. The preparations involved in making a single cup take about a month, but the sense of superiority lasts throughout the year. The taste is superior to any coffee any of you will ever pour into your boorish, uncultured mouths.

From here

Yahoo Answers: What are Norwegian women like?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:36:05 +0100

Yahoo Answers: What are Norwegian women like?:

I have thought about getting a bride from Norway. I am so tired of American women. I guess Norwegian women and Scandinavian women are more traditional, just like Russian women. I think Norwegian women look more beautiful than American women. I have heard that they are better at cooking, more submissive, dress better, are more innocent, don’t drink as much, don’t smoke as much etc. Is it true? I have also heard they are not wearing pants, due to their viking culture. Do they dress like that everyday?

When a Chef Can't Taste His Food

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:56:41 +0200

When a Chef Can't Taste His Food:

I grabbed a pinch of salt, put it directly on my tongue, and it tasted—no, felt—like slowly dissolving sand. And just like that my sense of taste was gone.

Monty Python Videowall

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:32:12 +0200

Monty Python Videowall:

Monty Python, and not Monthy Pyton that I sometimes write.

Ooops

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:24:45 +0200

Ooops:

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

Birds as notes

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:27:14 +0200

Birds as notes:

Music by birds.

Jani's at the mercy of her mind

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:16:03 +0200

Jani's at the mercy of her mind:

Jani talks about living in Calalini. Where is Calalini? She leans in to whisper her secret. “Calalini is on the border between this world and my other world.”

Heartbreaking

The yin and the yang

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:37:35 +0200

The yin and the yang:

She’s the messiest person I’ve ever met in life,” Mr. Davoli said of the woman who never closes the kitchen cabinets and loses her keys regularly. “I have to pick up after her.” But he also has obsessive-compulsive disorder, a common condition for those with Tourette’s, leading to excessive tidiness. “If I didn’t have to pick up her stuff, I’d still have the O.C.D. compulsion and I would end up reorganizing the kitchen cupboard. Her being messy is helpful, in a way, for preserving my sanity.

Backstreet Spice

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:01:32 +0200

Backstreet Spice

New Spice On The Block

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:59:14 +0200

New Spice On The Block

Fascinating.

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:54:52 +0200

Fascinating.

The eBay creation myth and other corporate origin stories

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:08:39 +0200

The eBay creation myth and other corporate origin stories:

Along the way, it’s mentioned that the whole story about eBay being founded to trade Pez dispensers is a myth.

A little bit funny considering the latest items I bought on eBay was some giant Star Wars Pez dispensers.

Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Leia, Luke Skywalker and R2D2

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:21:00 +0200

Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Leia, Luke Skywalker and R2D2

How do you beat a guy who throws righty and lefty? You don't

Wed, 06 May 2009 23:56:44 +0200

How do you beat a guy who throws righty and lefty? You don't:

You’ll probably never witness an unassisted triple play in your lifetime, right? (There have been only 14.) Or see an intentional walk with the bases loaded. (Six.) Or watch one player hit two grand slams in an inning. (Once.) But you can see something right now that hasn’t been around in baseball since the late 1800s: a switch-pitcher.

Brutus and me

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:53:52 +0200

Brutus and me:

Brutus’ face says it all: “What? Don’t act like you’ve never seen a bear in a jacuzzi”.