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Bacontarian: Diggin’ on Swine!

Okay, vegetarians: you’re going to want to skip this post. We have some

Real Man (and Real Woman) stuff we’re talking about and I don’t want

you getting all woozy or getting your foo-foo all over me. Maybe you

could go rub tofu blocks all over yourself, follow it with a good cry

and then write some unbearable poetry-accompanied-by-acoustic-guitar

afterwards.

Are the hippies gone? Good.

Let’s talk about pork.

Better yet, let’s first look

at pork. Pictured below is the area just outside the kitchen at my

grandmother’s house in the town of San Juan, located in the province of

Batangas, Philippines. On the table is a lechon, which is a whole roast sucking pig, served with a crispy rind and sweet and sour liver dipping sauce on the side.

Photo: Lechon being served at my grandmother's house in San Juan, Batangas, Philippines.

In Balayan, another town in Batangas province, there’s the “Parada ng mga lechon“, which is basically a giant roast pig parade: people carry the spits of roasted pig around town and eat them afterwards.

Lechon is so beloved by Filipino people that we’ve even made hipster clothing about it! Check this out:

Photo: 'Lechon' baseball shirt.

Oh, dude, I am soooo getting one of those.


Graphic: Title graphic for startrek.com Klingon advice columnist K'plett.

In Robert Asprin’s sci-fi humour novel Phule’s Company, the pork-lovin’

Filipinos were renowned as the best cooks and fighters on old Earth. In

the Star Trek universe, Klingon cuisine is catching on, and we all know

that they’re the ass-kickers of the Alpha Quadrant. On the Star Trek

site, you’ll find an advice column written by K’Plett, a Klingon who

until recently worked at the Klingon Embassy. He’s also a big fan of

pork. Here’s his last entry:

…allow me to express my unending gratitude to your planet for

introducing me to bacon. O, meaty ambrosia, I worship at the alter of

your salty tastiness! I have acquired replicator recipes for bacon, and

I have also arranged for fresh bacon to be delivered to the homeworld

several times a year. It has been suggested that upon my retirement, I

should open up a bacon restaurant back home, and I am considering it,

although others have noted that such an arrangement would be akin to an

alcoholic opening up a liquor store.

As the Klingons would say: Qa’pla!


My friends who keep kosher (or halal or ital) may think that they can’t enjoy the goodness that is pork, but remember: Chinese food is safe treyf!


All of the above, however, is merely porcine preamble for the main point of this posting: allow me to direct you to Bacontarian.com, the blog for bacontarians (people who supplement “an otherwise normal diet with large amounts of pork”). Ethan “GeekCorps” Zuckerman — who happens to be the husband of one of the officiants of our wedding — is a contributor and bacontarian.

(Somebody should let Anthony at The Meatriarchy know about this site.)

Give the site a look-see and then: pig out!

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Amen!

Sooner or later, we all pray for this…

Graphic: Christian-style 'inspirational' image -- boy at prayer, with caption 'Dear Lord, please grant me the ability to punch people in the face over standard TCP/IP.'

If you don’t want it to sound so tech-y, feel free to replace “standard TCP/IP” with “the internet”.

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Speaking of Out-of-Fashion Words…

…when’s the last time you saw the word “chortle” in a newspaper headline (see the previous entry)? Or heard it in a conversation?

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Look Out, Batman, Here Come the Boners!

Comic: Panel featuring the Joker saying 'So! They laugh at my boner, will they? I'll show them! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!'

“First, I’ll need two dozen oysters, some of that Harry Potter ecstasy,
a bottle of Viagra and a subscription to Maxim…”

Have you ever used the word “boner” mean “an embarassing mistake” rather than “manifestation of male sexual arousal”? I haven’t, but the writers at DC Comics have — in fact, they devoted an entire issue of Batman to boners!

Comic: Panel featuring the Joker saying 'This emphasis on boners has given me an idea for a new adventure in crime! Gotham City will rue the day it mentioned boner!'

So will the guy who wrote this comic.

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Video: The "Jump the Shark" Moment

In 1985, one Sean J. Connolly coined the phrase “jump the shark”,

which his friend John Hein would use as the name of his web site 12

years later. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with your pop

culture, here’s the definintion of “jump the shark”, taken from the

site:

Q. What is jumping the shark?

A. It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite

television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all

downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it “Jumping the Shark.”  From

that moment on, the program will simply never be the same.

“Jumping the shark” comes from the fifth-season episode of Happy Days

in which the Fonz accepts a challenge from a rival to waterski-jump

over a shark. The rival chickens out at the last minutes, but the Fonz

is too cool to win by forfeit and makes the jump anyway. I have vague

memories of this episode (remember, this was September 1977 and I was

9) but I understand how “jumping the shark” became synonymous from

“it’s all downhill from here.”

If you’ve never seen the “jumping the shark” moment, you’re in luck:

someone recently posted it in Windows Media format [2.5 MB, enclosure],

and it’s even cheesier than I remember. Especially since the Fonz does the jump wearing his stolen-from-Brando trademark leather jacket/white T-shirt combo.

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And Here I Thought It Was a Contradiction in Terms

Kirrily “Skud” Robert has started a blog on a little-covered but much-needed area of discussion: Geek Etiquette.

Kudos, Kirrily!

Photo: T-shirt with rude integral.

A free giant Santa “Pez” dispenser to the first person who can tell me in the comments why this T-shirt is rude.

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The Masked Grader Strikes Again! [Updated]

Update: The papers have been taken down; the links now lead to this notice:

At the request of UT Austin’s Student Judicial Services office, I’ve

taken down the files pending an appointment I have with them next week.

Ah, the joys of non-academic discipline.


I love this panel from Achewood:

Comic: Panel from Achewood.

It would seem that a number of future car stereo magazine subscribers

were taking an astronomy course at the University of Texas in Austin,

as a prankster discovered:

At the UT Austin physics department, you have several grades of physics

tracks. There is the “this is going to hurt a lot but you will learn

from it” engineering physics. There is the “you learn the concepts but

you are useless in any practical sense” biomed physics (which I’m

taking). And then there is the “I’m taking this because for some reason

my liberal arts degree mandates it.” physics.

I was

walking through Painter Hall when I saw a pile of graded papers waiting

to be picked up. It was a short writing assignment on how the practical

applications of lasers has affected your life.

From a quick look

at the grammar and incomplete sentences, I knew it was a freshman

course. So I took the papers, added my own… comments… and placed

them back in the pile. The grades on them were put there by the

original grader.

Both the papers and the comments he added are hilarious. The latter, intentionally so:

Bad paper #1

Bad paper #2

Bad paper #3

Bad paper #4

Bad paper #5

Bad paper #6

Bad paper #7

Bad paper #8

Bad paper #9

Bad paper #10

Bad paper #11

Bad paper #12

Bad paper #13

Bad paper #14

Bad paper #15

Bad paper #16

Bad paper #17

Bad paper #18

Bad paper #19

Read the full entry here.