Updated, being that I’m at work at 10 p.m. and can’t log into the fucking server and I need to do something creative with my time. …
I don’t have time to answer right now (read: it’s a furlough day and I am working unpaid!), but Feel free to steal ’em and answer ’em. The credit should go to the cool kids linked in Question 5. …
1. Weird uses for animal excrement: scientists in South Korea are developing a medicine from pig urine (note: American scientists did this first!), and yuppies worldwide are shelling out $200 per pound for a rare coffee bean harvested from animal feces. What is wrong with yuppies, that they pay hundreds of dollars to literally consume shit? If you had to use waste for any reason other than its intended use (ie., to be flushed), what would you do?
No poop. Will not touch it. But I hear that there is cow dung in my beloved Nag Champa incense, and it smells damn good, so use it for that. Just don’t ask me to touch it in its raw form.
2. When alt-weeklies fight: it’s rare a city has more than one alternative newsweekly, if at all, but Seattle, lucky home to thousands of young, angsty, hipsters, has two, and they are waging a war against each other right now for market share. What do you think of the alternative press?
Pittsburgh had two as well. I used to pick them both up — the IP had better editorial content and the City Paper had the Savage Love and better personal ads. I can’t remember which one had better cartoons, but at least that was the main difference between the two. They were fairly interchangeable, because the alternative press thrives on advertising and not much else — same ads, different papers.
That said, I can’t ever find a Washington City Paper to save my life, and they even print at Gannett, like I do, but I can’t even find a fucking draft of it floating around the print shop. Sure, if I would actually go into the city, I’d find one, but who’d want to do that? I made two trips to Old Town today (and one more tomorrow), and that’s enough city driving/parking for me for a lifetime!
3. From News of the Weird: University of Southern California researchers announced in February that they were able to breed mice with a certain skin gene “overexpressed,” resulting in the mices’ growing thicker hair, more whiskers and “significantly larger” “external genitalia.” How do you feel about cosmetic surgery? Genital enhancers? If you were given a coupon worth one free visit to the neighborhood surgeon, would you use it? What would you change?
Oh HELL yeah, I would do cosmetic surgery! I want to be on “The Swan,” FOX’s latest reality show disaster. I want the lipo and everything that follows. Sign my homely ass UP!!!
Genital enhancers? Who doesn’t want a bigger cock? I like to feel “filled up” — and it wouldn’t take $30 to fill up my tank!!! 😉
4. Summertime in DC means heat, and heat means…water sports! (No, not that kind, pervert!) Community swimming pools: neighborhood fun, or a percolator for disease?
Is this a rhetorical question? Bah. I keep hearing in the Pittsburgh news how they have no money to open up the community pools, and I say so be it. We had some creative names for the public pools (especially the one at Highland Park), but suffice to say I won’t mention them here other than to say that you have to look at what kinds of people are attracted to free pool access … namely, the unwashed masses. *twitch*
5. And now a selfish question from the writers of the Friday Five, who are having a cookout today: what are the keys to grilling a perfect piece of meat?
Marinades and spices can fix up any piece of meat and make it special. Try some Creole seasoning or any kind of chipotle or raspberry marinade. Can’t go wrong!
I also like to tenderize meat as a stress reliever. Take a hammer and whack the fuck out of it, I say. My mom, when she was fighting with my former and always evil step-father, would pretend slabs of meat were his head. Our steaks were always so tender after that. …