“Red Delicious, which is to a fruit bowl what plastic surgery is to beauty, is still the most popular apple — a polished piece of fruit that can keep its buffed pose year-round in near-freezing warehouses, but is utterly tasteless.”
Timothy Egan blogs about the harvest.
No wusses on the kindergarten playgrounds in Virginia.
I hope this is stating the obvious, but if somehow your car keeps accelerating even after you take your foot off the gas pedal, like the recent crash in California that killed four, keep calm and PUT THE CAR IN NEUTRAL and coast until you can safely pull over.
The engine is what powers your vehicle. The transmission is what transmits that power to the wheels. Putting the car in neutral disconnects the engine from the wheels.
Why the off-duty police officer in California did not realize this in time, I do not know. But the solution, whether automatic transmission or standard (stick) is to PUT THE CAR IN NEUTRAL.
This is safer than turning the ignition off.
Do NOT try to put the car into PARK or REVERSE while going forward unless you are intending on buying a new transmission. Put the gear into NEUTRAL (N), which is next to DRIVE for this very reason.
The New Yorker’s Nancy Franklin has as good a take on Letterman as you’re likely to find. It includes this:
Then, in a hilarious but very smart take on Letterman’s … what? peccadilloes? ethical breaches? bad behavior? shameful power trips? … [Craig] Ferguson used the word “situation.” Well, for lack of a better word—I’m not saying there aren’t better words, but, as a deeply admiring fan of Letterman, I admit that I’m reluctant to come up with one—that will do. For the time being. We watch and wait. We shall see.
Key point: “I noted in a piece last week that Leno, O’Brien, and Letterman have no women writers on their shows. Fifty men, and zero women.”
All Nippon Airways (ANA) claims that empty bladders mean lighter passengers, a lighter aircraft and thus lower fuel use.
Airline staff will be present at boarding gates in terminals to ask passengers waiting to fly to relieve themselves before boarding, The Independent reported.
ANA hopes the weight saved will lead to a five-tonne reduction in carbon emissions over the course of 30 days.
“Eight-year-old girl to eight-year-old friend: You see, I love him, but I can’t make that kind of commitment right now.”
–Carroll Gardens
“Safe to use around pets and children, although it is not recommended that either be permitted to drink from the toilet.”
From a Safeway-brand toilet bowl cleaner. Jill has the discussion at Dinner without Crayons.
I bought a package of brownies at Costco — OK, I bought a big package of brownies at Costco.
The woman behind me in the checkout line was eyeing the brownies and said she couldn’t get them because she’d eat them all.
Feeling self-conscious, I said I was just buying them in case my grandkids drop by this weekend.
The first is “Don’t eat egg salad from a vending machine.” Sounds like good advice.
There are 19 more rules at Michael Pollan’s Favorite Food Rules.
As noted, author Sherman Alexie is 43 today. For a brief introduction to his attitudes if not his fiction, I recommend you read this 2002 five-paragraph essay from Time, Lewis & Clark, What Sacagawea Means To Me.
If you can’t do that, here’s an excerpt:
After all, Lewis and Clark’s story has never been just the triumphant tale of two white men, no matter what the white historians might need to believe. Sacagawea was not the primary hero of this story either, no matter what the Native American historians and I might want to believe. The story of Lewis and Clark is also the story of the approximately 45 nameless and faceless first- and second-generation European Americans who joined the journey, then left or completed it, often without monetary or historical compensation. Considering the time and place, I imagine those 45 were illiterate, low-skilled laborers subject to managerial whims and 19th century downsizing. And it is most certainly the story of the black slave York, who also cast votes during this allegedly democratic adventure. It’s even the story of Seaman, the domesticated Newfoundland dog who must have been a welcome and friendly presence and who survived the risk of becoming supper during one lean time or another. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was exactly the kind of multicultural, trigenerational, bigendered, animal-friendly, government-supported, partly French-Canadian project that should rightly be celebrated by liberals and castigated by conservatives.
Mary Badham is 57 today. You know her as Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. She was nine going-on 10 when they made the film and she received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination. Badham has just five other film and TV credits.
Yo-Yo Ma is 54.
Simon Cowell is 50.
Sherman Alexie was born 43 years ago today on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
He has written many novels, books of poetry, short stories, and screenplays, including The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), Reservation Blues (1995), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007). His most recent books are Face, a book of poems published earlier this year, and War Dances, a book of short stories that just came out this week.
He wrote, “He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
Alexie’s books and stories are good stuff, and the movie Alexie adapted from Lone Ranger and Tonto, Smoke Signals, is delightful.
Desmond Tutu is 78.
Number two Sweetie Kiley is 7 today; a California girl, daughter of a California girl. That’s Kiley above enjoying one of her mother Emily’s classic stories. Below she takes the ball downfield last month; on the right just looking pretty at the playground last May.
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For six days The Sweeties are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
“Detroit led Minnesota by seven games on Sept. 6.”
“My youngest daughter, who these days is sometimes a kid and sometimes an adult when it comes to menus, got a kid’s menu. You know, with word puzzles, tic-tac-toe layouts, mazes, and figures to color in. It used to come with a pack of 4 crayons — red, blue, yellow and green. Yesterday it had a pack of two — red and blue.”
A reader in Kirkland, Washington, reporting on Red Robin’s cutbacks at NPR’s Planet Money Blog
I don’t know what some parents are thinking, the way their kids dress and style themselves.
Oh, wait, that’s my Sweetie Aidan. He calls that style “teepee on my head.”
“Convertible lovers who take to the open road with the top down may be risking hearing damage, according to a new study out of the U.K.”
OK, I won’t drive with the top down in the U.K.
Can’t get motivated to write about the birthdays or much else today. I’m just exhausted from all the quilting.
I was driving home through the nearby rural-like nature of Sandia Pueblo last night, feeling for a few minutes like I was on another great American road trip. And just then Booker T. and The M.G.’s came up randomly on the iPod with “Green Onions,” the greatest of all road trip music.
And I thought, I need a road trip mix for the Z4. “Green Onions” obviously, Del Shannon’s “Runaway” of course, but what else?
And, come to think of it, why do The M.G.’s have an apostrophe in their name?
“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
Erasmus, quoted at Roger Ebert’s Journal
“Hummer drivers get almost five times as many tickets as the national average for all vehicles, according to a new study.”
The staff of the entertainment review site Pitchfork has listed The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s.
The link is to the top 20.
Apple has joined Nike, Pacific Gas & Electric and our very own electric utility PNM Resources in resigning from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the organization’s stance on climate issues is so unthinking opposed to any plans to reduce greenhouse gases.
“Violations of the proposed ethical standard will cost wayward bloggers an $11,000 fine. That’s roughly 22,000 years’ revenue for the average blog.”
Tom, who also says, “I Would Enjoy It If Someone Tried to Corrupt Me, but No One Has.”
His context is the Federal Trade Commission’s intent to regulate blogging. Not drug ads. Not beer ads. Not smoking by characters in movies (or possibly not until lately, I forget). But bloggers, hang ’em high.
“I knew I would marry her when, instead of scolding me and complaining that video games were more important than her, she sat down beat my high score.”
One of the many reasons I don’t ride in hot air balloons
Click link above for the story and to see a larger version of the photo.
What most people fail to realize is that the Balloon Fiesta is primarily an excuse for a 9-day tailgate party. Having to take the balloons up for 20 minutes and chase after them is the price balloon pilots and their crews pay to attend the party.