Skip to content

Post-it Note Monsters

Don Kenn post it note monsters

Don Kenn posts his post-its for us all to enjoy. Personally, I see Gorey, Jansson, Miyazaki, maybe more….

Related posts

Ridgewood Stone Faces 4

ridgewood queens stone face

ridgewood queens stone face

Related posts

When Is A Side-Car More Than Just A Side-Car?

Related posts

Linocut: boletes mushroom

Here’s a mushroom linocut I just did some prints of, based on a drawing I did in the wedding invite. These are boletes, also known as cepes. They show in the autumn after the rain. Boletes are rarely poisonous, and the bad ones are easy to spot and don’t kill you if you eat one by mistake.

Related posts

Tagged ,

Artichokes, pt2

Here’s what happens when you don’t harvest your artichokes: giant thistles.

Related posts

Tagged ,

You Might As Well Add a Colon After ‘Services’

Iraq Services


NYTimes.


Oh, and bonus: stupid headline.

Related posts

Rockin wreck

While waiting for a client to show way up in North Portland I took some shots of the old cars out back of their building. This one was the best (there was also a hearse that looked like someone had been sleeping in it–but sleeping in the front seat?

Related posts

Tagged ,

Hark! A Vagrant

These oft-time historical (and sometimes not so much) comics by Kate Beaton are really funny. Sometime her people reminds me of that of Dylan Horrocks–can’t say why exactly, but they do. Thanks to Squirky for leading me to these (and causing me to waste a few hours reading them all).

hee hee

Related posts

Tagged , , , ,

Pink Elephants on Parade

Sun Ra cover. Doesn’t sync exactly with the Dumbo clip, but pretty good. Love the elephants becoming clouds at the end.

via WFMU’s Beware the Blog

Related posts

Tagged ,

Accuse your enemy of what you do

OK, I am slow to keep up with all the political news, but this parody letter by the Tea Party Express chairman is just unbelievable. What the hell? This is absolutely appalling (and not funny to boot). How does he keep his job? That he does must say something about the party he represents, eh?

Dear Mr. Lincoln

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

How many steps back does this country have to take before we start moving forward again?

Related posts

Tagged , ,

Cape Lookout beach

A shot along the north side of Cape Lookout, a long narrow ancient lava flow that sticks out into the Pacific. Note that sunny July weather (this is while it’s in the nineties in Portland).

Related posts

Tagged ,

Tsunami working group

You see these along the Oregon coast. Sort of a complicated logo (usually you get something like a neckless guy vaguely doing something in warning signs–this is pretty specific). I like the long explaination of the commiteework behind this graphic.

Related posts

Tagged , ,

State animal

Took a linoblock class tonight and made this fellow (in two hours, so there’s more carving to go, but you get the idea).

Related posts

Tagged , ,

IQ Test at Moe’s West

I am proud to announce that my lovely wife kicked butt at this IQ test. Three times in a row (while waiting on the chowder for which Moe’s is famous)!

I think last time I came to Otter Rock (age 8?) I couldn’t beat this game.

The chowder wasn’t as good as I remembered, but the place is still fun, nice staff, great view, laid back.

Related posts

Tagged , , , ,

Cape Perpetua

It was 100 degrees last week and the experiment in no AC* was showing its weakness, so we took off for the coast. In the Williamette valley it was in the hundreds, but at the coast it was 70, and chilly at night. All that temperature difference also led to some interesting cloud/mist action along the shore.

This is the view from the top of Cape Perpetua on Friday evening.

Here’s the view from the same CCC-built stone lookout the next morning.

*For those who don’t know this acronym, I’m going to say it stands for Adobe Caslon.

Related posts

Tagged , , ,

iPhone 4 desire

I still like the iPhone. But I’m no early adapter of anything technical, unless it’s free. This is made with that XtraNormal animation site Squidocto demonstrated before.

via Christine Gobbo

Related posts

Tagged ,

I’ll be a sunbeam for him

Nice “wait-for-it” moment at the end. Terrible puppetry.

Perhaps the posting of this is an indication of a little too much sun recently.

And yes there’s more of this Little Marcy, uh, goodness:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Related posts

Tagged , ,

Escapee crawdad

Rosauers market in Hood River had live crawdads for sale (a holiday treat?). Of course you want to keep them on ice, but some seemed to have busted out and headed across the polar wastes to the pile of salmon.

Related posts

Tagged , , ,

Nitrates in Bacon

Very interesting note on nitrate/nitrites found in bacon from the always-excellent Cook’s Illustrated.

Nitrate-Free Bacon

I often see “no nitrates or nitrites added” bacon in the grocery store. How does this differ from regular bacon?
— Eric Williams, New Orleans, LA.

Nitrite has long been a controversial food additive, with studies showing it forms carcinogenic compounds called nitrosamines when heated in the presence of proteins, like those in bacon. Regular bacon is cured with nitrite (NO2) or a virtually identical chemical, nitrate (NO3), both of which act as preservatives, though only nitrite has the potential to form potentially harmful nitrosamines. Bacon labeled “nitrate-or nitrite-free” on the other hand, is brined with salt, a bacterial lactic acid starter culture, and celery juice (sometimes listed as “natural flavor”). But here’s the catch: Celery juice naturally contains a high level of organic nitrate, which is converted into the problematic nitrite by the bacteria in the starter culture and also by saliva during chewing. Despite this fact, it’s technically correct to label the bacon “no nitrates or nitrites added,” since the compounds are formed during production, not added as ingredients.

The question is: How do the levels of nitrite and nitrate in uncured bacon compare with those in its cured counterpart? When we fired up strips of our favorite supermarket bacon, Farmland Hickory Smoked, along with Farmland All-Natural Uncured Bacon (“no nitrate or nitrite added”), tasters found the sampled virtually identical in taste and texture. To quantify the nitrite and nitrate levels in these bacons, we sent three packages of each type to a lab for testing. For comparison, we also sent three packages of the Best Buy from our tasting of artisanal bacon, Applegate Farms Uncured Sunday Bacon (labeled “no nitrites added”). As we expected, all the of the bacons contained nitrite and nitrate and the nitrite levels were well withing U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines of no more than 120 parts per million (ppm).

But to our surprise, the uncured bacon actually had higher levels of nitrite than the cured meat: Farmland Hickory Smoked Bacon registered an average of 9.7 ppm nitrite (and 48ppm nitrate), while its All-Natural counterpart showed an average of 16.3 ppm nitrite (and 10.3 ppm nitrate). And the Applegate Farms Uncured Sunday Bacon averaged more than three times the level of regular bacon: 35 ppm nitrite (and nearly as much nitrate, at 44.3 ppm). The bottom line: All bacon is likely to contain nitrite and nitrate, whether added at the outset or formed naturally during processing. If you want to avoid these compounds, you’ll have to avoid bacon – and any other processed meats containing celery juice – altogether.

I think Cook’s Illustrated should post this outside their paywall to drive traffic to their site.

And a huge thread on nitrate/nitrates/saltpeter/curing/definitions of bacon on Chowhound.

A wonderful, magical animal

Related posts

Tagged , , ,

Bodega food review

Ah, the tastes of home.

The Internet Celebrities have a couple videos like this, directed by Casimir Nozkowski.

Related posts

Tagged ,