Link: An hors d’oeuvre of an unexpected species

Waiter, I'd rather have the fly in my soup..

For whatever reason, many of my blog hits are on the posts with animals involved (Britain’s Biggest Dog  and Man Finds 41 Snakes In Crawl Space).

Well, here’s another article today that shouldn’t be narrated over lunch out of , erm, good taste. Today’s blog post comes from the  Albany Times Union, where a New York resident found a snake head in his broccoli (h/t Overlawyered.com) . 

In brief: It came with his chicken sandwich, looked like a mushroom but had a V-shaped jaw and other distressing bits remaining from decapitation (tendon, spine).

Full article here.  I’m standing by for comments along the lines of ”They already ate that on Fear Factor”, snakes make good medicine, etc.  Oh, and kudos to the man who has said he won’t sue.

Link: Fill-In-The-Blanks Journalism For Budget-Challenged Newspapers

This is funny, though some of them are a little too close to reality..

Bob Franken from North Star Writers has an idea:
How about fill-in-the-blank stories? These generic scripts and articles would report on the most commonplace current events. They could fill the pages and airtime between the advertising..

It would be a snap. Look at how many of our stories are so similar:

* ________ has asked Treasury officials for federal funds. In a statement, ______ CEO ______ argues that it is only current economic conditions that have brought the _____ industry to its knees. Decades of inept management have had nothing to with these problems, and if billions are not forthcoming, bankruptcy and massive layoffs will be the only alternative.

*______ travelers were stranded at ______ airport when all flights were canceled because of ______. Officials at all of the airlines announced they would be charging a ______ dollar rebooking fee.

Read and laugh/cry at the full article.

San Francisco to Stockholm the Tortuous Way: Dec 2008

We just got back from our vacation to Sweden. Our trip went well (there should be another post once I get over jet lag), but I wanted to describe our journey there because nothing quite went the way we expected. Perhaps it is a cautionary tale for winter vacation travelers.

NB: I hesitated between using “torturous” and “tortuous” in the title of this post. Tortuous won out because the software developer in me likes accuracy more than artistic license. Alternate titles included: I am sick of airport food, 24 h in limbo, ‘Terminal’ (Tom Hanks) in real life..

Accidents Do Happen

Blood on the doorstep.

Something nobody wants to see, especially a mother.

I push open the unlocked door, and see chaos – books and toys strewn everywhere. I notice a blood stain on the door as well, and, mystifyingly, a meat hammer on the sofa. I look for Peter…

I will stop scaring readers here. I already knew to expect something bad because 20 minutes ago, our au pair had called. She told me that Peter had fallen while running up a flight of metal steps and cut his teeth. I’ll be right there, I said, and started the drive home.

A ‘Visitor’ to Our Home

Here is a visitor that came into our home via some vegetables (I guess they really were organic).

The hapless spider chose the wrong home to visit. It was the most colorful I’ve ever seen, so I ran for a glass jar and tried to take some representative mug shots.

View of visitor from top

Spider's 'face'

The closest match I could find in my book (A Golden Guide – Spiders and Their Kin) indicates a Phidippus Spider. KaweahOaks states that it is also known as “Jumping Spider”  and that it can “cause a painful bite”. Yikes – glad I didn’t see either of those behavior (especially when I was sticking the camera lens into the jar to get a picture).

Oh, and I released it. I took the jar to the yard, opened the lid and tried to shake it out. It clung to the side, so I’m leaving the jar out overnight and hoping not to have a return visit.