Squirrel on a Rampage

BERLIN - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with a crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind onto a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local policeman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped onto a construction worker, injuring him in the hand and arm before he managed to shake it off with a measuring pole.

"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand, and thigh," the spokesman said. "Then he killed it with his crutch."

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.

(This is totally a story for Germany or Florida?)

Why I like my running buddy

Text communication just now:

Linda: Tomorrow?

Katie: Uh...I am accidentally high from a brownie...probably not.

Riding in cabs

There is something funny about riding in a cab alone. When I'm a backseat cab passenger sitting on the side next to the curb and we pull up near people, I always feel totally awkward. I think this is because it looks really silly to me sometimes when other people scoot around alone in the back of cabs. I don't know what it is but it makes me giggle.

Scooting on Segways

Actually I do know what makes me giggle about people riding around in cabs. It's the posture. People being transported with upright eager posture it is funny. Segways for example. People scooting on Segways is one of the best visual images ever.

When Magda was here in February we meant to do a Segway tour of San Francisco and make a photo montage. Getting chowder bread bowls, gesturing to butchers at Fisherman's Wharf, and scooting up Alamo Square with the skyline in the background (Full House-style). You know, things real San Franciscans do.

Gay Gym

In another lifetime, I was a common guest at the Jo-Tel. At one point I took a pretty fantastic picture that was posted by its subjects (straight frat dudes) on flickr. This morning Magda informed us it was used by Gawker to illustrate a post about how Anderson Cooper goes to the gayest gym in Manhattan. The post is called "Understanding the Gays: What's the Gayest Gym in New York?" Click it and see my art.

PS: In my defense I dated none of the featured gentlemen. Especially not the land pirate.

Tunafish

The word "tunafish" grosses me out. I don't understand why people insist on saying "tunafish sandwich." It's already embarrassing enough to order a "tuna sandwich," why go and enunciate the whole "tunafish"? Yuck.

Normally I cringe when I hear tunafish. But today watching an interview with the National Spelling Bee Champion, I was already cringing hardcore at his extreme social retardation. So when she said "You like to eat a Subway tunafish sub before every competition?" and holds one up on screen I just laughed out loud.



Also regarding tunafish, we were little bitches in high school and often said "tunafish" when referring to popular girls we thought slutty. Recently looking through an old yearbook I saw Kendra had written "I didn't order a tunafish sandwich!" near a picture of three such girls.

El Cajon, CA

Karl's Corner really highlighted why I dislike my hometown of El Cajon, CA.

The strip malls, tract homes, stucco, weeds, smog, oppressive heat, and general depressing suburban brownness tainted my feelings toward the entirety of San Diego County such that I wanted to flee to the Pacific Northwest for as long as I can remember. I craved mist, grass, evergreens, climbing vines, shingled houses, rainy mornings, and cuddliness. In the last few years I've realized there are cool parts of San Diego, but still this passage from Sleepless Nights hit home (she moved from Kentucky to New York):

"It is not true that it doesn't matter where you live, that you are in Hartford or Dallas merely yourself. Also it is not true that all are linked naturally to their regions. Many are flung down carelessly at birth and they experience the diminishment and sometimes the pleasant truculence of their random misplacement. Americans who are Germans, Germans who are Frenchman, like Heine perhaps.

The stain of place hangs on not as a birthright but as a sort of artifice, a bit of cosmetic. I place myself among the imports, those jarring and jarred pieces that sit in the closet among the matching china sets. I have no relations that I know of born outside the South and hardly any living outside it even today. Nevertheless I am afraid of the country night and its honest slumbers, uneasy even in the daylight with 'original settlers' and old American stock. The highway, the asphalt paths, the thieves, the contaminated skies like a suffocating cloak of mangy fur, the millions in their boroughs - this is truly home."

Karl's Corner

"Melissa took this picture two weeks ago as we were driving through El Cajon, headed east on Washington Avenue from a taco shop back to mom and dad's house. We saw the sloppy, sunburned asshalf and knew immediately it was imperative to slow down and get a good picture. But, after unloading the pix from the camera yesterday, I discovered that what I originally thought was a Mountain Dew turned out not to be a Mountain Dew at all, effectively making the image about 420 times funnier."

Failure is No Option

The awesome Michael Cera video posted below is a parody of this video featuring Aleksy Vaynor (Yale grad, douchebag extraordinaire) applying for ABS AG (global financial services company, Swiss-based).

Also features a Hans Zimmer soundtrack (Rain Man, The Thin Red Line, Spanglish).

Dressings of the '80s.

• Catalina
• French
• Thousand Island
• Russian

You've probably wondered many many times in your life: These dressings, so popular in the '80s, how are they different and how are they similar? Let Linda tell you.

Catalina. Same as French dressing, but plain oil is often used instead of mayonnaise.

French. Totally American and not French at all. Contains sugar and ketchup. People in some parts of the South pour French dressing on pizza. Midwestern folklore has it the name stems from its invention by the wife of Lucius French. French's intense aversion to vegetables brought him to the brink of scurvy several times; his wife supposedly created the tangy, unconventional dressing as a means of coaxing the bellicose French to consume salads. Similar to Russian except more ketchup and less mayonnaise.

Russian. Orange in color, it is commonly made of mayonnaise or yogurt with ketchup, horseradish, pimentos, chives, and/or other spices. It ws named at a time when the ingredients typically included caviar, a food often thought of as Russian. In the 50s, it was known as "commie sauce" (then what's vodka?).

Thousand Island. Pink in color, it is commonly made of mayonnaise, ketchup, and a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, most often pickles, onions, bell peppers, and/or green olives. It is used on ruebens as well as in fast-food chains. Pizza Huts in Hong Kong use Thousand Island instead of tomato sauce. Kraft "sandwich spread" is simply thicker Thousand Island. Created as more of a commercial version of Russian for restaurants and bottling companies. Some argue the name comes from the many little pieces of pickle or relish.

A paragraph on Thousand Island obviously isn't complete without a quick mention of "special sauce", "fry sauce," or "salad cream." Not salad dressings but sauces, these items are some combination of those old American standbys: ketchup and mayonnaise. Special sauce is often used on burgers. Fry sauce is found in fast-food chains in Utah. Salad cream is the UK's gross version of salad dressing.