I saw this on a license plate frame, and I took it in what I assume was the intended spirit: as an example of everything that is wrong with the religious right’s slide from Christianity to Christianism.

“Angels are watching over me”

I think it would have been infinitely more Christian to have said “Angels are watching over us.”

My mother was telling me about a book she read wherein the the protaganist has a rule (I forget why) that she can only own 100 items at any one time. If she gets a new thing, she makes herself sell/discard an old one.

I really liked this concept and thought about how to apply it in Real Life, to reduce clutter and keep life simple (do you really need your copy of Monkey Ball?). Some sort of Rule like this would force you to carefully weigh the relative worth of your Clutter.

The first change of rules is that, rather than a hard number, you just freeze at your current level. Every new item from now on would require a loss of one item. No one wants to go around counting all their possessions, nor is it easy to come up with an arbitrary number of items that works for everyone.

Second, it’s probably wise to ignore temporary/necessary things like money, food, important documents, or medicine. The goal is not to be a burden to life, but to sharpen the focus on how we live.

Third, there needs to be some heuristic for grouping items. If I buy a box of matches, that’s not really 30 items worth of clutter or hassle. Matchboxes are an easy example (“of course they’re one item”), but what about pens? Nails? Silverware? What are good grouping metrics? I don’t have an easy answer here.

One way of approaching this problem is to ask yourself what you’re optimizing for. Volume, weight, amount? I think amount is probably the easiest, so that’s what I’ve focused on. But I could see declaring that “henceforth, I will only own 400kg of crap!”

Sigh. It seems that to be practical, this Plan requires so many exceptions and provisos that it implodes and becomes impractical again. But I like the theory of it.

This is a twofer because I’ve been slow to deal with my Estevez mail.

Looking at the phrase “Estevez mail,” I don’t think my life is exactly what I hoped.

What do you call Charlie Sheen’s brother when Alfred Hitchcock casts him instead of Cary Grant?

Click the head to find out!

Courtesy of Candice.

And!

What do you call Charlie Sheen’s brother when he’s taking a nap?

Click the head to find out!

Courtesy of Rebekah.

Elaine got a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, a cooking magazine. I have to say I like it a lot more than I expected. It’s like MythBusters for food.

Everything is tested. For example, a reader will write in with a question like “I’ve heard meat goes rancid faster if I leave it in my car.” And the Illustrated is on the case, replying with “We left prime cuts in our fridge, on our lawn, and in our car for a week, and yup, the car steak went racid the fastest in one day.”

A typical recipe of theirs will be a small guantlet of trials before they settle on the perfect version. For example, the writer will set out to make pork buns. They’ll start with some recipe and have a couple ideas for how to cook it. So they’ll do both and give the results to a panel of tasters. Then they’ll continue down the cooking path of the tastiest.

I like the whole thing because cooking to me is a bit mysterious, and that puts me off. Illustrated explains why they do what they do with a bit scientific method.

I’ve tried several veggie burgers in my life, but my favorite has been Morningstar. Boca is livable (they do make a good black bean burger), but Morningstar is tastier. They make good veggie hot dogs too.

I recommend cooking their burgers a little longer than you would expect. It gives them a nice crunchy texture. Cook it long enough so that running your spatula across a top makes a scratchy sound.

Dave made me realize that today is the one-day anniversary of a very tragic event.

Let’s have a moment of silence for the good chunk of my Many Worlds brethren that died yesterday as the LHC spun up.

These many-mes never knew what hit them.

Elaine put Julia Child in our Netflix queue.

I have a great idea for a new cooking show. Every episode would have a new guest co-host. This co-host would help cook the day’s item and invariably be murdered by the host.

Think of it! The kitchen is a very dangerous place. Knives, flames, salmonella. Plenty of ways for the creative. Initially, it would be a bit of a shock, but the audience would learn to look for it.

The host could leave little clues for the audience or fake them out. A slow, post-production death would be acceptable (as in the case of salmonella), as long as the audience got to see it.

Eventually, the co-hosts could start to catch on and fight back. Maybe refuse to eat things or never turn their backs. Eventually start insisting that the host taste first. Maybe go for the knife first. Sort of a Battle Royale feel.

The host would never explain it. It was just something he/she did. “And then we spread a half cup of cheese, oh whoops a knife in the back.” “And now we add some iocane, uh, I mean iodine powder.”