#161 - WTF?

hey BP! WTF? you've really caused one hell of a mess down in the gulf of mexico, huh? it's been fifty-six days and counting since your oil rig blew up down in the gulf, killing eleven people & releasing oil into the gulf and from what i can tell, there's still no end in site. at first, you tried placing the blame elsewhere & since then, you've deployed a handful of ridiculous methods in an attempt to try & stop the leak and contain the spill, methods with comical names like "top kill" & "junk shot." surprise surprise...none of them have worked & with thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the gulf each day, the spill is now almost as large as pennsylvania.

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snackdown! - 2.19.10

it's official, world. it's been a world-class week ever since they lit up the doobie-inspired olympic flame in vancouver last friday. personally, i haven't watched a single minute of the games but from what i hear, we've already had triumph & heartbreak & even death. throughout it all, we've had copious mcdonald's commercials advertising their "sweet chili sauce," the very same duck saucesque sauce eaten by olympians in the olympic village! the same sauce eaten by all those world-class athletes who've decided to wait until the week of competition to say "fuck all" to the strict diets they've been adhering to during their years of training & start wolfing down athlete-sized portions of chicken mcnuggets. maybe the curlers are able to get away with eating mcdonalds, but i'm even skeptical of that. regardless...world-class week.

• last friday, as part of little debbie's 50th anniversary celebration event, airtran unveiled the "little debbie 1," a boeing 717 jet with little debbie's smiling face plastered onto the side of it. in addition to introducing the plane, airtran & little debbie be cross-promotin', giving away fifty vacation packages to lucky customers. at the event, they also announced the winner of their little debbie look-a-like contest, tennessee seven-year old rhea lynne connor. i don't know. she sorta looks like little debbie. since she won, her face is going to be featured on boxes of little debbie for a limited time. too bad she doesn't get it on the side of a plane. (seattle post-intelligencer)


• in the category of "that's bloody disgusting," starting today chessington world of adventures, a u.k. theme park, will be giving away free sample bags of edible insects to guests. theme park general manager david smith has given the insect treats a test & gives them the thumbs up, but he's general manager of a theme park with an area called "beanoland," so you sort of have to take his opinion with a grain of salt. if it turns out that people actually enjoy the bags of edible insects, they plan to start selling them in "wild asia," the new asian-themed area of the park. what can we learn from this? asian people are synonymous with eating bugs. (the telegraph)


• are you obsessively following the olympics? does anyone even do that anymore? if you are olympic-obsessed, you're probably the type of person who would get a kick out of making your very own olympic-themed snacks. luckily, the philly inquirer has offered up a recipe for nanaimo bars, a british columbia coffee shop staple. the treats, which are named for a town on vancouver island, are made up of three layers, "a chocolate-graham cracker base embedded with coconut and nuts; a buttercream middle enriched with vanilla custard; and a smooth dark chocolate top." if you're fancy, you can even top them with icing in the shape of the olympic rings. they're apparently pretty fattening, but what do you care? it's not like you're competing in the olympics or anything. (philadelphia inquirer)


• i don't know what's up with nicolas sarkozy's conservative-republican party, but they seem to have issues with the french muslim population. first they go & ban burqas & headscarves & now that quickburger (a local chain) has started serving burgers made with beef slaughtered according to sharia law, they've got their panties in a bunch again. apparently they're extremely concerned that the existence of sharia meat will lead to cultural isolation. um, yeah. the best way to promote cultural harmony is to take issue with a certain section of the population's religious-based dietary habits. that makes perfect sense. keep up the good work, france! (ynetnews)


• cnn, the cable news channel known for seamlessly blending disaster stories, celebrity breakdowns & political scandal into award-winning news programs, has jumped on the snack bandwagon with their "snack nation" column, a part of their tokyo-based "cnn go" coverage. the column, which provides coverage of different japanese snacks, has in the past taken a look at items such as "chocolate sparkling soda" & "pepsi azuki" (a red bean-based beverage). this week, they reviewed kirin's "espresso tea," a black tea product. according to the review, it actually tastes more like a cafe au lait than espresso, but what did you expect? after all, it's a tea leaf-based canned beverage. from what i can tell, there's not a lick of "espresso" in it...crazy japanese. (cnn go)

nosh nook #160 - friday, october 23, 2009

to complete your day, the windows 7 whopper (link)
10.22.09 - cnet - by scott stein

it's official, geek faces. yesterday, microsoft finally unleashed windows 7, their latest & greatest operating system, on the world. from what i've read, this time, rather than adding a bunch of useless, buggy crap to their new release, they focused on improving & streamlining what they had. that's right. as of yesterday, if you wanted to upgrade your pc's OS, all you had to do was hop on a torrent site & grab yourself a free copy. thanks, technology! we need to get excited people! this weekend, you should throw a windows 7 torrenting party to celebrate!

since they love new technology in japan, they're wicked excited about windows 7. according to cnet, to commemorate the release, japan's burger kings started selling "windows 7 whoppers" yesterday. the sandwich is seven patties & five inches tall & when they introduced it, it was "for a special price of 777 yen ($8.50); at least, for the first 30 customers." burger king's been known for pulling some slightly inappropro promo stunts over the last decade or so & this one has to be up there in the top three.

as cnet points out, it's interesting that they're pairing an OS "touted as 'leaner and meaner'" with a gut-busting sandwich. seriously, i don't see how anyone but kobaishi could eat this thing. as it is, a triple whopper has 1160 calories, so the windows 7 whopper has to be somewhere in the 2500 calorie range. that's like a whole day's worth of calories for a salary man. on a related note, the this is why you're fat book comes out next tuesday. i guess the windows 7 whopper won't be featured until their next book.

nosh nook #108 - wednesday, august 12, 2009

james brown hawks miso soup in japan (link)
08.11.09 - the village voice "fork in the road" blog - by sarah degregorio

hi there village voice. i hear that your "fork in the road" food blog/column just had a cat set up their twitter account. that's cool. i'm following them. heck, i even have the fork set up in the ol' google reader so i can absorb or quickly forget the full versions of their various stories. to my surprise, tonight, i got an email letting me know that you, the village voice, are following me on twitter. that's really nice of you, especially considering that fork in the road hasn't even bothered to acknowledge me yet. can you tell them that they should follow me? send out an interdepartmental memo or something? i'd DM them myself & ask, but i'm trying to move on to web 3.0 & i'm pretty sure that doesn't involve DMs. it'll be all about the PMs, baby.

anyway, speaking of the google reader, one story from the fork in the road blog came up in my reader & it totally grabbed me by the horns & made me like get on up now & stuff. it's a blog entry linking to a youtube video of james brown hawking miso in japan. seriously, call your friends & co-workers round & queue this puppy up, give a call to your tech-savvy relatives & get them to queue this puppy up. whatever you do, queue this puppy up round as many people as possible & dream of soup. it's a gem & if the view counter on the youtube video goes above its current 240 level, we'll know peeps are actually reading either this blog or fork in the road. ah, whatever. the video...



oh james brown. what happened to you? i mean, i'm a supporter of miso soup & love slurping it pre-meal & all, but i wouldn't sell my soul for it. wait...do they even have souls in japan any more or have they advanced beyond that? they must have advanced beyond that. after all, they got james brown to sing & dance in a miso soup commercial. souls & human advancements aside, at least he inspired janet jackson to fly high. that's advanced! good god y'all!

nosh nook #79 - thursday, july 2, 2009

obese apes trim as snacks dry up (link)
07.01.09 - the japan times

haven't you always wanted a monkey? who hasn't? i know i sure have. on top of being genetically related to us (except in kansas), they're often bouncy & playful & fun & feisty all at the same time. homer got one in an episode of the simpsons & that worked out splendidly.  it doesn't always turn out that way though. as this funny or die clip (featuring the waitress from it's always sunny...) shows, you need to make sure you get the right kind of monkey. if you don't, the results can be disastrous, but if you do, you can dress him up in cute lil outfits & he'll be your bestest pal & he'll hang from your back waving/swiping at passers-by as you stroll about town. not just any monkey will do though. you need to get the right kind & unlike a fish or cat, you actually need to take care of your monkey.

in japan, they take care of their monkeys...or at least they do now. according to the japan times, the rhesus monkeys at ohama park (in osaka prefecture) were getting a little too big for their britches...or they would have been, if they had thought to dress them up in cute lil outfits. two years ago, "more than 30 percent of the troupe of about 50 monkeys were considered obese and weighed more than 10 kg (22 lbs)," which is a few kg too many for your average rhesus monkey. the heaviest one got up to 30kg (66 lbs). the culprit? snacks thrown to them by visitors.

to combat the monkeys' excessive snacking & "keep the monkeys away from the tempting snacks," park officials put them on a diet & set up "a new pen with metal screens that make it impossible for visitors to feed them." this helped the monkeys slim down to a more normal weight & the super fatty one even got down to "17 kg, although his skin is now wrinkly and sags." poor saggy-bellied monkey.  sounds like he needs to find himself a good plastic surgeon post haste!