WombatNation

Sometimes there are obvious connections between the books I read consecutively, but I never expected a fistula-based connection. A month or so ago I finished reading the bicep builder Quicksilver (Volume One of the Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson. I don’t often read 900+ page books, but this one was worth it. Not sure I will make it through the similarly long volumes two and three, though. Life is only so long.

Quicksilver is a historical novel set in Europe covering a few decades around the year 1700. The Sun King, Louis XIV, plays a small, but very influential, role. Louis also has an anal fistula removed using state of the art medical practices for that time. That is, a doctor performing the operation the first time using a pair of scissors. Although based on historical events, Quicksilver is, of course, fiction. The retelling of the surgery is fiction, but the actual operation really did happen.

Next up, I decided to read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by fellow Oakland resident Mary Roach. So far, I’m finding Stiff to be even more enjoyable than Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.

Well, stuff my mouth with biscuits if not more than 28 pages into Stiff I’m reading about Louis’ anal fistula operation again.

By the way, I recommend all three books. While Amazon reviewers agree with me on Stiff, Quicksilver and Spook get only 3.5 stars. Poor Neal is condemned like William Gibson to get bad reviews for not writing every book to be exactly like earlier cyberpunk novels. Spook gets dinged for making fun of the people she interviews and writes about. Excuse me, but those people are looney. I’m amazed she gave them the benefit of the doubt for more than ten minutes. I think she did a great job with the topic.

My sister-in-law and her husband hosted a great pre-Christmas party with an excellent twist on the gift exchange game. The basic rules were the same, i.e. you can open a new package or steal something already opened, but on the third steal it’s yours to keep. In their version, though, everyone had to bring two gifts. One gift was supposed to be the best thing you could buy for $1 and one was supposed to be the tackiest or kitschiest gift you could buy for $1. We did a round with the “good” gifts first and then a round with the “bad” gifts.

The timing worked out perfectly and I was able to make the third steal of a stunning gift contributed by Craig’s daughter. This is the kind of diorama I wish I had built in grade school. I’ve enhanced it slightly with Binky, the three-eyed fish, and a little clay figure from China, but it was already amazing by itself. This beautiful seashore scene now occupies a prime spot in my office at work.

The red light district style illumination is courtesy of a Christmas tree bulb circa 1954 that is more or less stapled down to the base behind the clam shell. The wiring for the bulb is fairly terrifying. The wires on the plug end are completely exposed, making each act of plugging and unplugging it a game of Russian roulette shock therapy. So far I’ve managed to keep myself out of the circuit.

The Beach Jesus diorama was generally considered to be the best of the bad. Craig’s contribution of a cigarette burned Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus dancing on a plastic base that was wrapped with a tattered red-and-white checked cloth taped together with transparent plastic tape was a close second.

The New York Times ran a good article by Patricia Cohen on rats in cars with the headline “Under the Hood, a Cozy Rat Retreat“. The article mentions someone who had a problem with rats chewing on the knock-sensor wire on his Honda Accord.

Looking on the Web, he found other Honda owners complaining about rats nesting in their knock-sensor systems.

Hmmmm, where do you think that location on the web might be? I’m sure there are other websites describing this problem, but I would be surprised if any of them have as many independent confirmations as on that blog post on my site.

About eleven days ago I had a minor crash on my new bike (the acquisition of said bike remains to be blogged). Fortunately, my bike came out of it with just a few small scratches. That’s because my body cushioned its landing.

I got the standard hip contusion with the attractive purple and yellow bruise that rose to the surface after about a week. The worst damage, though was suffered by my forearm.

Although I was descending at a safe speed and being very careful in the corners, I crashed when I came around a sharp turn and ran over some rocks that had fallen from the hillside and rolled out into the road. My front wheel caught the outside edge of one of the rocks and twisted out from under me. My right forearm came down on and then ground across a rock, carving a small trench out of and a hole into my arm just below the elbow.

Fortunately, I was near the end of a two and a half hour ride with friends, so they followed me the remaining mile or so down the hill to make sure I could make it home. Still, I was hating life, specifically the part where wind blows past an open wound.

I was lucky that my wife was home, so I got help cleaning and bandaging the wound. My nerve endings were already on full alert, so thoroughly cleaning out the dirt and rocks didn’t really increase the pain much. Maybe going from an 8 to a 9. My doctor took a look at it the next day and said I did a good job of cleaning it up.

I’m on vacation now and just visited with my mother for a couple of days. She’s a nurse, so she did a good job of redoing the bandages and making sure my arm was healing. While cleaning it last night with hydrogen peroxide, she found two little rocks that I had been smuggling across state lines. The rocks had been ground in so deep into my arm that it took eleven days for them to come up to the surface.

Of course, when you tell people stories like this, you open yourself up to hearing their stories about bits of glass, ammunition, etc. taking years to come to the surface. But that’s okay. It’s not like I don’t do the same.

Al Gore, Gore-Tex, movie full-o-gore? Nope.

I’m talking about what regularly happens during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Do not, I repeat, do not, click on the link below if you are even remotely squeamish. Of course, how can you not click on it, now? Just don’t blame me. Or tell my mother.

Gnarly goring in Pamplona

The winter of 2004-2005 brought a deluge of rain to the Bay area. Heavy rains will cause underground mice tunnels to flood and collapse. While I was away on vacation for about 9 days during the heavy rains that winter, some of the neighborhood mice decided to take up residence in the engine compartment of my car. Read the story, stay for the 35+ comments.

Well, the rains have returned with a vengeance, and so, it appears have the mice.

Yesterday morning I was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper when my dear cat Nicholas walked up about two feet from my two feet. I looked down and noticed he was carrying one of his felt mice in his mouth. Nick sometimes does this, so I didn’t initially suspect anything was awry. But, I next noticed that the tail seemed entirely too realistic. When I stood up quickly, Nick lost his concentration and the mouse leapt wildly from his mouth and scurried past my toes on his way to the relative safety of the floor beneath the couch.

Nicholas immediately began to patrol the perimeter of the couch, and Alexi quickly joined in on the stalking. The instinct is strong in these two. My wife was not amused, and she quickly edged away from the excitement. The instinct is strong in her, too. I chased the mouse away from the couch and cornered him behind a fake fireplace log. Alexi and Nick were at the other end of the couch and didn’t notice the escape, leaving me to finish the hunt.

Then, my trapping instinct kicked in. I set up a plastic grocery store bag with its large opening at one end of the log. I then slowly pulled the log away from the wall and started moving toward Mickey Mouse with another bag. He turned and ran straight into the gaping maw of my plastic bag trap. I quickly snatched up that bag, dropped it in the other, and then tied off the top.

My first inclination was to blame him for last year’s car engine wire, hose, and insulation gluttony. I won’t share the brutal visions of retribution that flashed before me. But, then I realized that mice have short lives and he was unlikely to be the cretin responsible for my automotive nightmare. So, I tossed the bag in the car (our other car, just in case the scent of tasty wire harnesses might lead him to attempt an escape from the bag), drove to some nearby woods, and released him well away from other houses. He darted from the bag and scampered into some tall grass. With any luck, he made a tasty snack for a bird later in the day.

Handy Reference: Difference Between Rats and Mice

New Scientist recently ran an article on an unusual infectious cancer that has killed one third of the wild population of Tasmanian Devils. I took this picture of a Tasmanian Devil at the Tasmanian Devil Park and Wildlife Rescue Center in Taranna in Tasmania, Australia. Several of the Devils there had terrible facial scars along their snouts. It looked as if chunks of flesh had been torn away. I was told that the injuries were caused by other Devils at feeding time.

Supposedly, the Devils have terrible eyesite and they would accidentally bite each while ripping into the roadkill they were served for dinner. While the careless biting may have caused some of the damage, it now seems more likely that it just contributed to the spread of the cancer, and was not the direct cause of the wounds.

More photos from my trip to Tasmania, including a sleeping Devil.

And in a needed break from the mostly depressing hurricane news, I bring you news (though many of you likely are ahead of me on this) of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So far, Intelligent Design proponents have put forth an extremely narrow, dogmatic proposal on how the universe must have come about by intelligent design. Since they claim they just want schools to teach alternative explanations to evolution, surely they will be open to alternative intelligent designs. Right? Right? No, of course not, because there is no science behind Intelligent Design. Why couldn’t the Intelligent Designer have been the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter led me to a fine bit of unusual food sampling and review at The Sneeze, part of a hilarious series of culinary experimentation from Steve, Don’t Eat It (highly recommended for the not easily offended). Ah, this was a blog post I would have been proud to have written myself, albeit my review would likely have been more favorable. I’m clearly a bigger fan of huitlacoche than Steve, but perhaps what I have dined on in restaurants is finer quality, and fresher, corn fungus than what he aquired by the can. More on huiltlacoche - 1 and 2. Here’s a photo from GourmetSleuth showing a tasty looking ear of huitlacoche on the cob.

My first experience with huitlacoche was at the long lamented Pinch a Pollo restaurant in Austin, Texas. The biggest draw at that restaurant was the fabulous grilled chicken that had been marinated in a yellowish-red marinade that was kept in a large rubber trash can lined with a grabage bag. Most likely, the marinade was achiote-based, though it looked as if might have been lemon-plutonium based. After taking a colleague there for the first time, he walked out the door immediately upon seeing a bright yellow, flattened, whole chicken being lifted with tongs out of the garbage can. I later lured him back and got him to taste one, and he admitted to the error of his gut instinct.

They also had a great selection of salsas that were made daily. Pinch a Pollo was also my first introduction to chipotles and habaneros. Just for the record, I’ve been enjoying chipotles and chipotle salsas since around 1990, long before chipotle showed up as a sauce ingredient on the menu of every largemass-produced chain restaurant in America. I’ve even made my own chipotles by smoking fresh jalapeños in a smoker in my backyard. So there. Never mind.

Pinch a Pollo also made a delicious salsa they called Xnipec, from the Mayan word for “nose of the dog” or “dog’s breath”. Billy at Pinch a Pollo translated it for me as “panting of a dog”, since your mouth would often drop open from the heat of the habaneros. “Nose of the dog” is also appropriate, as the opening of your sinuses would produce a wetness similar to that of a dog’s nose. Pinch a Pollo’s version of this classic salsa was made with habaneros, lime, tomatoes, and onions. Surprisingly, you could taste the rich, fruity flavor of the habanero through the intense bite of the capsaicin.

Pinch aPollo also sometimes offered huitlacoche, I think served in tacos. I suspect their huitlacoche was fresh from Mexico, since they offered it only seasonally. Since then, I’ve had huitlacoche at several Mexican restaurants in the SF Bay area. Since we’re approaching the end of the corn season, now is a good time to look for it on menus.

Good huitlacoche has a very earthy flavor and a moist, mushy texture. If you have trouble with the idea of eating a fungus, I think you need to think twice before you dine on another mushroom.

The more daring restaurants will describe huitlacoche on the menu as corn fungus. The more marketing oriented spots might call it a mushroom or Mexican Truffle. I’ve yet to see it described via the literal translation from the Aztec language - “raven’s excrement”. That really seems unfair, but, hey, the Aztecs probably found it first, so we have to leave the naming rights to them.

If you don’t live in California or you’ve never lived here, this post may not be very meaningful to you. Then again, maybe your State does something similar.

For a long time, I’ve wondered what was the meaning behind the stickers I would often see in the rear windows of cars, typically in the upper left part of the window. No, I’m not talking about the stickers with Calvin peeing on something or the stick figures representing family members (which is a whole nother story). I’m talking about the white numbers on a red background with white trim.

Finally, I decided to ask my police officer brother-in-law about the stickers, figuring that he would likely know the explanation. It turns out that these stickers are given out to people who have requested an extension for renewing their license tag sticker. Often, the excuse is that they need more time to have their car repaired so it can pass the smog inspection. The number represents the month by which they need to renew their tags.

In hindsight, I should have seen the pattern in the numbers. Surely that mathematician guy from the TV show Numb3rs would have figured it out. Anyways, mystery solved.

Surprisingly, the red background does not change from year to year. My brother-in-law told me that he suspects that some people reuse the stickers from year to year, or simply save them until some future time when they might need them. You would have to be a little careful about putting on new ones too early, though, since all the cops know how far in advance (usually only 2-3 months) the stickers are given out.