Category Archives: Lush Life

US National Sandwich Month: what’s your dream sandwich?

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Sandwich art

Go on, you know how to use the Comments section!

UPI, in a healthy-eating initiative, has spread the word that August is National Sandwich Month in the US, if not in the land of the Sandwich‘s birth. And indeed, the sandwich is an invention to be celebrated: you’ll note there is no such thing as “National Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Month” or “National Misogyny Month”.

With or without mayonnaise, seafood- or meat-based, buttered or margarined or dry, the sandwich is truly one of the highest achievements of the culinary arts and should be rightly honoured in its course.

As with anything that lays as close to the human heart as the sandwich, we all have our own preferences and prejudices. We all have our unique tastes. And I invite you to contribute yours, twofold, in the comments section.

I’ll go first:

1) Clooney, raincoaster, Rickman.

2) Croissant, avocado, shrimp, mayo, sprouts.

Yeah, bit of a comedown, so to speak. But a girl has to keep her strength up somehow!

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quiz: can you tell your Jackson Pollock from your Pigeon Droppings?

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Jackson Pollock

While this quiz is all too easy to ace, it raises some disturbing questions () about the nature of art. Is everything Art? Is Nothing Art? Or is only Nothingness Art? Or, is it all just a pile of shit?

Pollock or Pigeonshit?

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if I had a hammer…I’d make a cocktail

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Hammer, femmeI understand that not everyone keeps their hammer in their kitchen to facilitate the production of mojitos and manhattans, but more people should.

Except the people who live directly above me, that is.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of an uncracked bottle of fine Havana Club Anejo Blanco rum must be in search of a mojito.

Which is where the hammer comes in.

Please don’t labour under the misapprehension that all Communist symbols are dour, utilitarian objects. No, indeedy. Why, ask any druid about the many, merry uses of the sickle. And we here at the ol’ raincoaster blog have our own uses for the hammer which include, as stated above, solidarity exercises with our Cuban Comrades.

So…the hammer is under the sink and all is well with the world. To make a mojito I take the hammer out, take two plastic bags, dump an ice-cube tray’s worth of, yes, ice cubes, into the double-bagged apparatus, and proceed to smash the hell out of it against the concrete floor of the apartment. Since it used to be a parking garage, I figure it can handle the abuse, and since there’s nothing downstairs but a few Acuras and Kias, I figure nobody is going to whine to the manager. And the ice gets nicely crushed and the cocktails get nicely made.

I actually have an official ice crusher, but since it’s a retro-Seventies model made out of cheap plastic and tin, it doesn’t function except as a visual reminder of the heyday of Playboy. So I keep it in the box next to the dusty Margarita glasses (I haven’t been able to afford tequila since the great Agave Plague of 2004).

Coming next week: where the electric drill comes into it…

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Beer! In! Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

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Beer in spaceHot on the (slightly wobbly) heels of tales of drunken astronauts at the controls of the Space Shuttle comes a delightfully scientific report on the theory and practice of, yes,

Beer! In! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!

…Graduate student Kirsten Sterrett at the University of Colorado in the US wrote a thesis on fermentation in space, with support from US beer behemoth Coors. She sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit aboard a space shuttle several years ago and produced a few sips of beer. She later sampled the space brew, but because of chemicals in and near it from her analysis, it didn’t taste great by the time she tried it.

Did anyone else note that, had it tasted good, it would have been the first beverage produced by Coors that ever did.

orbit beer

But there are drawbacks. Despite advantages like no lanes in space and not much to run into, turns out there are some compelling reasons not to chug your Spud in orbit.

Unfortunately for thirsty astronauts, beer is poorly suited to space consumption because of the gas it includes. Without gravity to draw liquids to the bottoms of their stomachs, leaving gases at the top, astronauts tend to produce wet burps.

On the upside, although in the oxygen-enriched atmosphere astronauts cannot partake of beer bongs, they can, thanks to advanced and high-priority Dutch research, partake of beer balls.

I once dated a guy who had beer balls, or so he tried to tell me in the backseat of his father’s Caddy.

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Samuel L. Jackson’s New Year’s Resolutions

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Samuel L. Jackson. Sam is the man!

Basically, this is How to Be Badass 101, and who better to teach it than the king of Badass, Samuel L, eh? I’m stealing it from HighAdventureGames because they stole this from me and I’m badass. We take names and follow up.

Now, I know you might find it shocking that someone as cool and together as myself has New Year’s resolutions but believe it or not, there are things that even Samuel L. Jackson can improve upon. Forthwith – if I could have a little music, please. At the top of my list:

  • “Continue to kick ass“
  • And then I hope to “Be as bad as I know I can be“.
  • Also, to “Really put it out there, and by it I mean Sammy’s mojo”.
  • In addition, I plan to “Give it as good as I get it“, “Be all that and more“, and “Lose my shyness, vis a vis the rocket in my pocket“.
  • Plus, I plan to “Work my voodoo on the lady fans“, “Take a thorn out of some cat’s paw” and “Build a shrine to my own bad ass“.
  • Then, it’s time to “Give the demons what for“, “Spare the rod and spoil the face“, and “Continue to kick ass“.
  • After which, I’ll “Show the bad men what it’s all about“, “Release a dove from a ghetto rooftop“, and “Cradle a newborn baby in the ruins of a church“.
  • Finally, this year, I will “Stick it to all the suckas“.
  • And I’m gonna “Show the Man that I mean business“.
  • And I’m gonna “Take a computer class“.

[Saturday Night Live, December 1997]

Sadly, it appears that, although I am certainly badass, I am not Samuel L. Jackson. Well, who could be? The world could not stand twice that much cool.

 


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