Author: Joey deVilla

Seriously, Melanie, Dracula’s trying to “do you a solid” here…

Click the comic to see it at full size.

Quick Grammar Lesson: When Dracula says “It is I,” he’s using correct grammar. “It is me” (or “It’s me”), while seemingly less formal, is also incorrect. “It is he” and “It is she” are also the correct forms, while “It is him” or “It is her” are wrong. That’s because in these cases, the pronoun is the subject and “it” is the object.

Seen while shopping around for a new vacuum cleaner:

For some reason, I can’t remember the economics term used to describe the fall in value of certain types of goods after a specific date. If you know, could you refresh my memory in the comments?

(Also: $185 is a lot to ask for a mangy-looking tree.)

And no, the term I’m looking for isn’t “SALE”, as my smart-ass schoolmate William Merlet suggested on Facebook.

How does Certified Bullshit Technician find all the good pictures?

The TSA has a special version: “Maybe You Touched Many Other People’s Genitals”.

Click the photo to get a closer look at these knives in all their former glory.

I find myself in a situation where I have no kitchen knives save a motley assortment from my “Bachelor 1.0” days, all of unknown provenance. My guess is that they’ve come from the dozen or so housemates I’d had over the years. I hear that the young people, like these two, might refer to them as “janky”. The knives have been kept in a drawer for years (the good ones lived in a proper knife block). The photo above shows the sharpest of the bunch, based on some experimental onion-slicing.

While cleaning out the kitchen, I found this modern-art-looking-thingy. It’s a knife sharpener, and like the knives, it too is of unknown provenance. I ran the santoku-ish knife (in the topmost photo, it’s the one closest to the lower right-hand corner) through it a half dozen times and it seemed to do a better job at slicing onions. Of course, this may just be a placebo effect and I may have made the knife even more worthless. Time will tell.

“Knives” Chau from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

I can easily go out and buy a new set of knives, but I plan on making do with the janky set for as long as I can. In fact, The Current Situation is such that there’s a lot of household stuff that I need to replace, but I’m resisting the urge to make a beeline for the store. My reasoning is as follows:

• Holding off on replacing those household items buys me time to do a little research. I can read reviews, shop around, and as you’ll see in just a moment, call on the collective smarts of my readers.
• Holding off also buys me time to find out what things I used to have that I don’t really need. Whatever I need will become glaringly obvious through its absence and I’ll buy it. Whatever I don’t need will neither be missed nor bought.

Gentle Readers, I’d love to tap your collective smarts: do you have any recommendations for knife sets? I’m no chef by any stretch of the imagination, but I cook a lot. I work from home a fair bit, so not only do I prepare dinners at home, I also find myself in my own kitchen for lunch. While I’m not aiming to buy an expensive set, I know better than to go cheap.

I did a quick check of the Costco Canada site and found these two sets that were in the neighbourhood of what I wanted to spend. The first is this ten-piece Henckel set, which sells at Costco for CDN$200:

Here’s what’s in this set:

• 23-slot birchwood knife block
• Vegetable knife: 7.6 cm (3 in.)
• Paring knife: 10.2 cm (4 in.)
• Utility knife: 12.7 cm (5 in.)
• Santoku knife (with Granton edge): 17.8 cm (7 in.)
• Carving knife: 20 cm (8 in.)
• Chef’s knife: 20 cm (8 in.)
• Bread knife: 20 cm (8 in.)
• Sharpening steel: 23 cm (9 in.)
• Kitchen shears

The second is this nine-piece Sanelli set, which also sells at Costco for CDN$200:

Here’s what’s in this set:

• 1 oak wood block
• 1 flexible fillet knife: 19.7 cm (7.75 in.)
• 1 narrow boning knife: 15.9 cm (6.25 in.)
• 1 roast knife: 24.1 cm (9.5 in.)
• 1 bread knife: 24.1 cm (9.5 in.)
• 1 japanese knife: 17.8 cm (7 in.)
• 1 paring knife: 10.2 cm (4 in.)
• 1 Edgemaker®
• 1 Castor peeler

Do either of these sets make sense? Are there better sets at the same price? Is it a fool’s dream to hope to get the right knife set for me at the the CDN$200 price point? Should I forget sets, go to a “proper” kitchen store and perhaps build a set, spending more and building a set a knife or two at a time?

Let me know what you think (especially if you’re a chef or very avid home cook) in the comments!

I love these recent photos of Williamsburg (which, like the rest of New York City, is still covered with snow) with scenes from the ice Planet Hoth (from The Empire Strikes Back) photoshopped into them.

[ Found via Gothamist ]