Food Network has officially crossed the line

Lately, Food Network has been getting on my nerves. For the longest time I enjoyed a number of their programs. Examples: on Good Eats, Alton Brown is brilliant - he makes every aspect of cooking entertaining and educational. Rachel Ray was cool when she was limited to 30-Minute Meals and $40 A Day. But then there was Paula Deen, whose accent alone is proof that evil incarnate can be embodied in sound. But hey, I don't need to watch what I don't like, right? Then they brought me the joy of Iron Chef America - corny, reasonably entertaining, and not too annoying (at first). If you're familiar with the program at all, you'll no doubt realize it's rapidly getting out of control, like a nuclear reactor sans inanimate carbon control rods. It's taking itself far too seriously. (And don't get me started on the new Iron Chef's Hibbertesque giggle.) And Rachel Ray appears to have been injected with huge quantities of "Yummo" (by Nabisco). I think she's trying to be like Martha Stewart, minus the stick up her ass.

One of their more recent "personalities" is this guy, whose appearance alone makes me change the channel. Seriously, step away from the peroxide, and no one gets hurt. During a commercial break, he helped out some poor schmuck whose cranberry sauce is apparently too tart. His prescription included the use of a Food Network skillet, available now at Kohl's. Did I mention that this "help the dork on the street" piece was interrupted by an ad for Food Network brand cookware, available only at Kohl's?

Things inside of things

Discussions in our studio often take odd turns, and today there was talk of fake meat (including the wonderfully named "Not Dog") and holiday traditions involving meat (or not, as the case may be). One classmate mentioned the turducken, a phenomenon some were not familiar with. If you're not aware of this, it's basically a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey. I can only assume it is delicious. After a brief search for images on the interwebs, I found a web site that actually provides a name for the process of cramming birds into each other: engastration. I am hard pressed to believe that this word actually represents the process of stuffing only birds into birds (though all of my searches reveal that to be the only definition offered), and I wonder about other possible applications. For example, could you cram other animals into each other? Could you engastrate veal into a regular cow? What about interspecies engastration? One site described a sausage-stuffed turducken. Another described how to build an "Easter turducken" using items from the Refined Sugar food group. Could a stuffed pepper be considered engastrated? What about Russian dolls? Would they be an example of non-edible hierarchical engastration?

Worst. Directions. Ever. (Graphics edition!)

In preparation for my new lappy, I'm checking out the bargain-priced Micro$~1 software available through the U. On the main page of the University Computer Services web site, I noticed the link "Where can I park at UCS?" The graphic they've put together to point out their parking spaces is hilarious. (I'll post it here, since who knows if it'll disappear after word gets around that the Lady with a Hat, Arbiter of eQuality, has dissed them.)

Suck it Jesus

SuckItJesus.com was set up as a petition to prevent the censorship of Kathy Griffin's Emmy acceptance speech.

In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus." She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "Suck It, Jesus. This award is my god now!"

Needless to say, idiot Christians, unable to cope with the fact that not everyone agrees with them, are flipping out. This is the same type of bullshit that the Muslims pulled back when that Dutch newspaper printed cartoons they didn't like. While this event is unlikely to spark physical violence the way the cartoons did (face it, Islam, as practiced and as represented, is a more violent religion than Christianity - abortion clinic murders notwithstanding), the same sense of entitlement to respect drives both of these misguided systems (as they are currently practiced). Here's some advice for all you religious nutbags out there: GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES. First, "you" never seem to have trouble saying things that you know will annoy/frustrate/offend other people, and are eager to protect your freedom of religion and speech to say whatever you want about those people (the gays, for example - who, incidentally, constitute a large segment of Ms. Griffin's fanbase, and whom God hates, according to some). Second, your cows are "mighty good on a bun," and I'll eat them if I want to.

Irrelevant and obfuscatory

If I ever write a text book, I'm going to try really hard to make it actually useful. And provide relevant content. And make sure it's clear - or at least reasonably so.

Within the first 3 days of classes, I've been frustrated by both of my textbooks.

In one of them, the author(s) is/are discussing the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning, we're told, is informally called "top-down" - it starts at the higher level of theory and works down to details and observations. Induction, in contrast, works from specific observations up to general theories. For this reason, it is sometimes called a "bottom-up" approach to research. Then we get this little gem, inserted parenthetically:

(Please note that it's bottom up and not bottoms up, which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!)

Yes, they include an exclamation point, presumably to emphasize the importance of this clarification between the two phrases. And thank goodness for that, because if I'm in a discussion with someone and they mention inductive reasoning, I don't want to embarrass myself by looking around for a glass or bottle to drain before grabbing my coat, slapping a fiver on the counter, and dashing out the door! Not only was the information irrelevant, but it completely derailed my train of thought. Now every time I see an opening parenthesis, I don't know if I should be paying attention or not.

In my GIS textbook, the first sentence of the first chapter is:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are also commonly known as Geographical Information Systems outside North America.

I had to read it four times to figure out what they hell they were telling me. I wrote technical documentation for 5 years, and I'm pretty sure that sentence would never have made it past my reviewers (and they weren't writers).

Obviously, expertise in a field of study does not translate into an ability to communicate one's expertise. Sadly, it seems that most textbooks are chosen by others who, while experts in that field, frequently share that lack of understanding good communication. I guess it's the college textbook version of the circle of life.

The law of averages

I just got back from the grocery store & noticed this on the bottom of the paper bag:


So if I put 34 items in one bag, and 2 in another, and then give the customer one empty bag, that still counts, right?