Mind power, Swede. Mind power!

If you read Robyn Straley's blog (and if not, why not?) you know that I recently tied for second/first place in her very first reader contest. If you were wondering what I won, then wonder no longer!

Handful of Salt magazine (which Robyn writes for!,) pistachios, foil stars ("as a 'grown up' you have to give them to yourself," says Robyn) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which I have not read, and looks awesome,) The Space Swimmers (which I have not read, and looks awesomely horrible,) Bon Apppetit magazine, Hibiscus Tea, Salt from the Meadow, and a test tube o' salt from Robyn's wedding favors.

And, for some reason, my foodsaver and coffee maker are crashing the picture. I call that vanity.

Big thanks to Robyn Straley for these prizes!

Which I will now review.

MRE Review: Menu 8, Marinara Sauce with Meatballs

Getting soldiers, sailors, and marines to eat their rations is not as easy as you might think. Well, for soldiers and marines, anyway. Getting sailors to eat is as easy as serving food that actually tastes good. Crazy concept, but it works.

For the rest, under-consumption was a major problem in the first decade after MRE introduction, but a problem that went unnoticed by the top brass. Then, in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of American troops were flown off to remote stations guarding the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, and the ration issue came to a head. Stuck in these desert outposts, without regular resupply, troops had to subsist on nothing but MREs for months at a time.

Who Approved This?

Okay, take a look at this and tell me what you see.

So, uhhh, yeah. I found this in the marine pornography aisle of my local supermarket.

Sequel to Eternal Darkness Is (Hopefully) Coming

Everybody please stand back. I'm going to plug a video game.

Did you know that the people who made Eternal Darkness, one of the best damn video games of all time, are currently crowdfunding a sequel called Shadow of the Eternals?

It's through Kickstarter, which...  I know, fucking Kickstarter, right?

This is, however, a very good match for crowdfunding, even if I'd have picked a different crowdfunding clearinghouse. You see, despite blowing the minds of almost everyone who played it, the original game did not sell very well and the big money boyz have been reluctant to fund a sequel. What could have become an incredible franchise has therefore been collecting dust for the past decade.

I pledged $50, on the theory that going in at this level gets me a copy of the new game—which I was definitely going to pick up anyway, no matter how good or bad it ends up being. Shit, I bought Deus Ex 2, didn't I? Clearly, my loyalty to a great game extends to its sequel, no matter how much they screw it up.

Anyway, ya'll can decide for yourselves whether you want to support this project. I can't tell you what to do. I'm not your God-Empress (yet.) But take a moment to consider kicking in a few bucks so they can make something potentially awesome.

And if you still haven't played the original, you're really missing out. Go play it.

Now.

Now that you mention it, it does look broken

So, I went to a sinus specialist recently, and they did a CT scan of my skull to see if there was anything in there. (There wasn't.)

While looking over the scan, the nurse asked me, "When did you break your nose?"

I stared at her for a moment, then answered, "Uh, I think never."

"No, seriously. When did you break your nose?"

"I never broke my nose. Are you looking at someone else's scan?"

"Look here... See how it healed weird?"

"Holy crap. That nose isn't broken, it's shattered."

"That's your nose."

"There's no way that's my nose."

"This is totally your nose. Your sinuses look fine, by the way, but your nose is broken."

"When the hell did I break my nose?"


Now that you mention it, though... it does kinda look broken, doesn't it?

My working theory, at this point, is that aliens wiped my memory to protect the secret of their existence. Like, remember that time on Next Gen, when the whole crew had their memory wiped and Data was the only one who remembered what happened?

I think it was like that.

Digestive System, Part 5: The Duodenum

Image CC Olek Remesz

Nutrient digestion kicks into high gear when we reach one of the most lyrically named organs in the human body: the duodenum. Have a listen to the accepted pronunciations, from Wiktionary:



Aren't those lovely? I especially like the second one. Why the duodenum doesn’t appear at least once in every song ever written, I can’t understand. That's going to be a rule when I conquer the world.

Enough of that talk, though. You'll know more than you ever wanted to soon, soon.

When we left off last time, chyme (another of those wonderfully lyrical words, referring to the soupy mixture of chewed food churned up by the stomach) was squirting into the duodenum through the pyloric sphincter. When there's little or no chyme in the stomach, the pyloric sphincter has a semi-relaxed posture—chill but not too chill—which allows stomach contents to drain slowly into the duodenum.

Yeast Bread Falling: Robyn Straley Edition

Whaaaaaaaaat?

You mean Robyn Straley ("Other-Robyn", around these parts) made me the subject of this month's Yeast Bread Rising version of the Proust Questionnaire? Where can I find this historic interview, you ask? Well, right here, of course. (And if you're curious about what the Yeast Bread Rising Questionnaire is, all shall be revealed in this informative article.) So follow that link right over there. When you get back, we'll talk further.

Doot doot dah dah doot doot dah.

Back? Okay.

By now you can see that there's only one appropriate retaliation for this kind of thing: I need a questionnaire of my own. One that combines my obsession with MRE's and low-class food with my patented brand of whimsical evil. And guess who was blackmailed graciously agreed to be my first subject?

If you guessed anyone apart from Other-Robyn, then you're pretty bad at guessing games, aren't you?

So, without further ado, I present my questions, and Other-Robyn's answers to...

The Yeast Bread Falling Questionnaire
Being the Darkside Version of the Yeast Bread Rising Questionnaire
Inaugural Edition
With Guest Robyn Straley
A Robyn Bennis Joint
Executive Producer: Marcel Proust
If you haven't laughed at this gag by now, you ain't gonna.