(no subject)

From hbthomas... Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

(Yes, I've done this. But always happy to do it again. :) )

I was asked about:

1. Alton Brown is the host of several Food Network TV shows, including my personal favorite: Good Eats. He explains the science of cooking in fun and nerdy ways. Good food, silliness, and chemistry lessons! What more could you want?

2. Comic Books. (In particular, my subscription list.) ( Long answer... )

( Subscription list, plus a few discontinued titles )

3. Egrets are pretty white birds who live mostly in estuaries (half-saltwater, half-freshwater habitats found in and around the mouths of rivers). Like herons, they're wading birds. There are a good number of them who live on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where we spend some time in the winter. They're just really beautiful, especially in flight.

4. Flolloping. "This is a thing that only live mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage." From "Life, The Universe, and Everything" - book three of The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy. You can read the relevant excerpt
here. If you're wondering about live mattresses:

Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit it quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin which crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what it is supposed to gain from this.

Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it. No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures which live quiet private lives in the marshes of Squornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seem to mind and all of them are called Zem.

So, in short... somewhere out there (in the Guide universe, anyway) there's a planet with a species of living mattresses. The mattresses bounce and play in the endless swamps. And just as only a pig in a nice big mud puddle can properly wallow, so it is that only a happy, springy mattress in a swamp can flollop. I can't do it, and odds are rather good that I'll never even see it done. Still, it sounds like fun. And it's a neat little obscure reference to the series. :)

5. Girl Genius Online is one of my favorite webcomics. I first picked it up in graphic novel form, and then found that I could read the whole series for free on the web. Including the stuff that hadn't made it into the ever-more-rarely published books. It's about, as the motto goes, "Adventure! Romance! Mad Science!!" Takes place in a steampunk world. (Kind of retro sci-fi. A romanticized 19th century Europe filled with things like artificially intelligent robots, but built with period hardware - steam engines, gears, and a lot of gleaming metal.) It follows the adventures of Agatha Clay, a young woman who turns out to be a Spark (someone with the "spark" of genius unique to mad scientists). One with an unexpected history and a significant destiny. It's really cool. Check it out.

( And a list of other webcomics... )

6. Porcini mushrooms are a type of mushroom native to certain parts of Italy. IMHO, they're better than tuffles. Rich earthy flavor that goes great with beef. You can find them dried in some US supermarkets. Reconstitute them in hot water, and you get not only delicious mushrooms, but also a quick mushroom stock.

7. Whirled peas are, as expected, pretty much self-explanatory. A nigh-homophone for "world peace" (which is also on my interests list). Saw the phrase on a bumper sticker, thought it was fun, added it to the list for the heck of it. I am not actually a fan of mushy, blended-up peas (though I know at least one person on my flist enjoys them as a french fry topping). I do, however, sometimes like frozen peas.