GPOY, as the kids say
This really is a gift: the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. I should start a Tumblr dedicated to this rarefied art form: the inspirational fitness quote, overlaid on a photograph of someone determinedly working their way through a bender.
Originally stolen from TheChive.
Turkey a la Kardashian; it’s all natural! We swear!
Unlike the Kardashians themselves, Turkey a la Kardashian is at least comprised of biodegradeable materials. And it’s not high maintenance: a couple of lemons under the skin is as spicy as this dish likes to get! Five minutes and you’re good to go, although we understand certain chefs may prefer to spend a lot more time with the butter and the spice rub.
Then of course there is this season’s biggest hit, the Twerky. (more…)
Iceberg wedge with homemade Russian dressing. Perfect salad for the onion soup lunch pic.twitter.com/KQatWUKUdl
— Martha Stewart (@MarthaStewart) November 17, 2013
Martha, Martha, Martha! First of all, as Jezebel rightly points out, your phone photos of food are even worse than my own, and constitute an aid to the burgeoning anorexia movement.
Secondly, that is way, way too much dressing.
Thirdly, wedge salad is crap. There, I said it. Sometimes you feel like crap, okay? I get that. I’ve been there. But nobody should be expected to pay for this crap; certainly not the $5 and up you’ll see it priced at (I once saw wedge salad at $14, but the place went out of business shortly thereafter). There’s no amount of pinky-beige dressing that makes it okay to charge for 25 cents worth of iceberg lettuce that can’t even be thoroughly washed because you won’t take it apart. You want to feel nostalgic for “old diner food?” Go to an old diner, m’kay? They wouldn’t dare charge you for this.
And if someone presented this to a hungover me at brunch, what do you think would happen? EH? Well, the plate wouldn’t look any different afterward, and that’s a fact. The nastiest practical joke I ever heard consisted of someone filling an airplane sick bag with Thousand Island Dressing and pulling it out when the plane hit turbulence, to retch ostentatiously in it before spilling it all over the aisle. Yes, vomiting is contagious, in case you were wondering.
That’s probably the REAL reason you can’t take more than 100ml of liquid on a plane any more.
Meanwhile, at the cool kids’ table:
SHOTS
Candle Salad
According to the blog from which I stole this, the woman who submitted the recipe makes it for her husband Dick. Yes, really. Once again, proof that the housewives of the 50’s and 60’s had a lot of repressed issues, Freudian or not.
your colon will be as slick as a water slide!
Not sure exactly what kind of patronage those patrons are providing, but I have more than a suspicion the original audience for this delightful poster were denizens of the demimonde.
UPDATE: I am reliably informed that this comes from Dark Horse Comics’ series Devil Chef, which I must now keep an eye out for on Amazon
This guy is legitimately eating a 3 lb block of stinkie ass cheese on a rush hour train. @Gothamist #subwayproblems pic.twitter.com/MWIGmnWjrE
— Jim (@jimgh141) October 10, 2013
This man is my hero (with a few caveats).
According to the guy who twitpic’d him, this blithe cheese fiend was digging into the wheel of Brie
Also, Miss Manners will certainly back me up on this: stinky cheese should not be shared in enclosed spaces without the consent of those enclosed in the spaces. Also, if your Brie
To get your transit picnic right, remember these key things: No stinky cheeses! Or you’ll get mocked all over the blogosphere! And either a knife (really, who does not carry cutlery with them at all times? It is for such emergencies the Swiss Army gadget was invented! Get the one with the corkscrew, of course) or crackers of sufficient strength to both cleave and provide a satisfying textural contrast with the creamy cheese. Bonus points: an actual cloth napkin, because you’ll never get the grease stains out of your $300 leather satchel.
Well, that’s how you know you have too god damn much money: when you go into a bar in the Yukon, ask for the infamous Sourtoe cocktail, the one with the actual preserved human toe in it, swallow the thing whole including the toe, slam the $500 fine down on the counter, and walk out.
As one does.
The Sourtoe cocktail is a real thing, and has been a real thing in Dawson City since the Seventies, 1973 to be exact, when a severed human toe turned up in a boat. You know, as they do. It’s even inspired a book: The Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey of a Father and Son in Search of a Mummified Human Toe … and Everything Else
Well, being Northerners, it occurred to the locals that the best thing they could do with their toe booty would be to preserve it in salt, then charge tourists outrageous prices to drink a cocktail with this most Goth of all garnishes in it. In the beginning, the cocktail was a beer mug full of Champagne, but soon enough they realized that using expensive ingredients cut into the margin and besides, they wanted to cater to the Bacardi and Coke crowd too, so they allowed people to order whatever they liked, “Sourtoe style” and charged them premium rates.
Sourtoe Cocktail in the flesh
The rule was, the toe had to touch the lips, and many a toetippler would pose for commemorative photos brandishing the brown and shriveled appendage like a stubby cigar. Naturally, when tourists are paying $20 a shot for Canadian Club with a toe in it, and $5 a shot for CC without, it behooves one to take care with one’s toes, and to put exorbitant fines on anyone who would masticate or otherwise abscond with or damage said tootsie-section. In the Seventies, $500 was a big fine. Not so much today, as one American tourist reportedly knew. He was the (hero? No. Protagonist? No.) nouveau riche or at least nouveau flush in the first paragraph, who apparently had done his homework (there’s a website whose design apparently dates from the 90’s. The 1890’s) and thought the boasting rights were worth the money.
Hell, any fool can get bottle service, but how many can talk about the time they committed cannibalism legally?
You Are What You Drink
“I assumed they were already in the public domain on other wine review sites and liquor store sites.”
So says Canada’s #1 wine writer, Natalie MacLean, in a statement as disturbing as it is wrong-headed. It seems that, despite seeking legal advice (where, in a bar after closing time?), MacLean is under the bizarre notion that just because copyrighted work is posted to the internet, it is thereby stripped of copyright.
Allow me to disabuse her, and everyone, of this notion once and for all.
All original work published online, whether paid for or not, from CNN.com to the humblest Tumblr, is copyright the creator, as of the moment of publication, automatically and by law.
MacLean, as you can see here, has been copiously copy/pasting reviews written by other writers into her blog and website. Previous to this going nuclear in the media towards the end of last month, the posts said “By Natalie MacLean” with only the initials of the original writer, and no link to where the reviews had first appeared. And, apparently, no permission requests whatsoever.
As PalatePress says:
Ms. MacLean’s use of others’ work clearly fails the Fair Use test because she publishes entire reviews, they are appropriated for commercial purposes and her use is not for any of the legally permitted reasons.
There is a difference between an attributed quote, which you can see here or right above this sentence, and is protected by fair use law, and an outright theft. In her defence MacLean claims that she always included the initials of the original writer…which is a bit “other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln” of her.
I’m a writer. I write for a living. That still leaves me time for several hobbies, one of which is seeking out people who have stolen my writing and posted it elsewhere without permission, attributed or not, and having their websites taken offline with no warning. And now, in case any of you also write and value your own talent and original expressions (paid or unpaid), I am going to teach you how to do it too. I wish we didn’t live in a world where you had to have these skills, but selah, we do.
Web hosts are legally obliged to take offline copyright-infringing content, and they don’t really give a rat’s ass how “important” the blogger is in his/her niche. If they don’t act on a DMCA notice, they risk losing their entire business, and they are not going to take that chance. That’s why this is the heavy-handed, but more productive, way of dealing with copyright infringement. It’s rare that anyone with a blog is stupid or ignorant enough to think they’re really allowed to do this, so asking them is often a lesson in fruitlessness. When their web host removes their entire site from the internet, that teaches them a lesson they won’t forget.
Now, go forth. Go forth and Google, and I raise a toast to your splogger-hunting success!
EDITED TO ADD: if you’re super-extra nasty like I am, go to the stealing site, click on their ads, not the ad itself, but the part that says “Ads by Google” or “Federated Media” or whatever, and report them there. Every ad network has a way to report sploggers, and when they confirm what you say, they will pull all their ads and probably NEVER let that person have another ad account. Hit them where they live, people!
Hat tip to the ever-vigilant Marquis Wine Cellar on Twitter
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