ESI Motif Roundup

Jet Packs: 25 Nov 2008 - Eric Scott took 21 seconds to cross Colorado's 335 metre wide Royal Gorge at 120 km-h. [Google News]

Ways to make money that we've been scooped on: Unconventional Naked Calendars

• Red Hat Ladies,
• Women who ski with rifles,
  
• Clowns,
• Australian Paramedics,
  
• Women of Curling,
  
• Oxford Students,
• Builders,
• Bus Drivers, but
• Why it's maybe good we didn't try this.

Rural Predators:

• In the event you have a livestock loss due to one or more of the noted predators, claims for compensation can be made to the City of Ottawa.
• CBC: Ontario's most dangerous city for deer-vehicle collisions should make it legal to hunt deer with a bow within city limits, a local hunter says.

Dating:

• Someone else is researching Friends with Benefits, so I don't have to.

Metablogging:

• The New York Times has picked up on Slow Blogging:
  

  Ms. Ganley, who recently left her job as a writing instructor at Middlebury College, compares slow blogging to meditation. It’s “being quiet for a moment before you write,” she said, “and not having what you write be the first thing that comes out of your head.”

• And the Slow Blog Manifesto:
  

  4. Slow Blogging is a willingness to remain silent amid the daily outrages and ecstasies that fill nothing more than single moments in time, switching between banality, crushing heartbreak and end-of-the-world psychotic glee in the mere space between headlines. The thing you wished you said in the moment last week can be said next month, or next year, and you’ll only look all the smarter.

• Did you know there is a formal mechanism for grading blog posts? It's Ryan Bretag's Blogging Rubric.
• New mom, Tiana blogged something this week that I have no doubt is true in every sense, but I still think she's going to get in trouble for it:
  

  It's been just over 5 months and so far, I feel like I'm doing not only a good job, but a fantastic job

Dysfunction and Politics:

• Carleton University Students Association, the Town of Caledon, and Stephen Harper demonstrate that misguided decisions happen at every level of politics.

Breaking News*

Nymphs not wearing tank tops

Here are the results, so far, of your voting for which t-shirt or tank top I should order:

Coming Through: 8%
Woodsy's Web: 25%
Putting Out: 25%
Mad for Tea: 42%

You have two more days to vote before I place my order, and unlike with the Canadian Blog Awards, you can vote as often as desired.

Audrey and Harmony, I haven't forgotten your two votes for Romantic Gestures.

*OK, so maybe it isn't.

Playing Along - Nursemyra and t shirt friday

Nursemyra invites all to play along on the last Friday of the month by showing off our favourite t-shirt. A short story explaining the t-shirt can also be included.

I decided it would be fun to play.

I don't wear this t-shirt anymore. It is too big, stained, worn thin, and rather tacky, but I can't seem to part with it.

I credit Iggy Pop's music for providing me with much needed ambition and raison d'être when I was 17.

When the world catches Spamish flu

It's another odd little "Who'da thunk it?" sign of global recession: Apparently when times get tough, the tough buy Spam. My secret coyote sources tell me that Hormel Inc, manufacturer of the delicacy, is already cheering it's fat(ty) windfall profits. Even added extra shifts to the assembly line to meet surging demand.

But anyone warming up for a swan dive into the dietary Spambyss should note that, though we coyotes will eat most any damn thing, we won't touch that stuff. (Note to early Christmas shoppers: We prefer chocolate, and large, slow cats, and sugary baked goods but really, we're not fussy... I digress)

You're baffled, you say? All of Great Britain lived on the stuff during the Second World War, you say? It can't be that bad, you say? Who wouldn't like unidentifiable parts of porker, frappé-ed to vaguely pinkish molecules in some industrial-sized Cuisinart, then suspended in gelatinous yellow goo comprising half fat and half salt, you say? Then welded into a metal-jacketed brick of maybe-meat, you say? Resembling food? You say?

Oh, wait, you say. Except that Great Britain immediately after the war had to invent the National Health System to counteract its effects. One 12-ounce block (Remember ounces? I digress again...) serves you 180 per cent of an average human's normal daily dose of salt, 150 per cent of the total fat, and 170 per cent of the saturated fat. Oh, and, like, rather more than a thousand calories. That's a lot of goodness in one unassuming little can.

Which, judging by my speed-reading-on-the-fly the last time Hartman's Independent Grocer stockboys were chasing me out with brooms, ain't that cheap compared to like, food, anyway. It's all so... unappetizing.

Let's get very clear here: buying Spam is not about economizing, it's about self-flagellation for goin' all greedhead and buying those sub-prime mortgage futures your idiot brother-in-law was flogging, even when you knew the economic model sounded like utter lunacy. Is it coincidence that penitence and penury share prefixes? But for those that feel a need to maintain certain standards of social decorum and gracious living in a global meltdown, we look to Hawaii for a ray of hope: Spam sushi. Because even while you're killing yourself, you can hang onto a vestige of your old panache doing it.

Workout Wednesday

Because a mind is a terrible thing to waste