Soylent Brown

Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces
http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientists-creates-meat-out-of-feces/
Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

"Throw another $#!* on the barbee!" Maybe they could aim for catfood or dogfood instead. Algae? Biodiesel? Wouldn't you rather eat soylent green?

Kujira Katsu くじらカツ

Kujira Katsu くじらカツ, or Whale Cutlets, in the cafeteria of a university where I teach. You can see the dark beefiness of the meat compared to the lighter-colored chicken cutlets on the left. The price is right. Add a ¥31 bowl of negi-tofu miso-shiru and a bowl of rice for ¥100 and you're set for under ¥400. I wouldn't order it but I have tasted whale before.

Octoracle

The lyrics as well as I can make out:

Paul the Octopus
by Aiden Ajar

I'm just a cephalopod
I'm only 2 years old
oh--but I'm the 8 legged oracle
or so I'm told

oh wonderful octopus
you're the great prophet of our time
we need a leader to reveal us truth
if I feed you mussels will you please be mine?

all attention will be on your tank
we'll base our lives on the way you behave
be our master, be our saviour
most of all be our slave

I'm just a cephalopod
I've never even seen a tv
oh you think that I control your destiny
oh I don't even know I live in Germany

oh terrible octopus
you're the worst mollusk of our time
we needed you to reveal us truth
--well, I suppose you did but we do not like the truth--
we hold you responsible
off with your tentacles
I will eat you
I will eat you
I will eat you

I'm just a cephalopod
I don't even know what FIFA is!
don't barbecue me
don't cut me into pieces
don't crucify me
I never asked to be your jesus...

(edited 2010¤07·16°)

Ubuntini

To Serve Man

Best Twilight Zone… Ever? -tho I have half a dozen favorites near this level.

What's *your* excuse?

"Awesome. I saw it, too! It came out of the sun and vanished behind the Starbucks Drive-thru. The craft resembled nothing so much as the delicate first impression of steamed milk from a Starbucks latte, or possibly a cappucino. It was hard to tell from the distance and speed at which it moved, which I would estimate as 4000 miles per hour."

This illustrated fictional episode grew out of a friend's forward of my own e-mail back to me. He later said he had mistaken me for his mom because he got the message (which did include the words "love, Mom" written by a tornado-stricken person) on his iphone as he went thru the starbucks drive-thru. I responded that the iphone/starbucks tale was the new "Dog-ate-my-homework." Today I was sent a picture of the confusing establishment, which, when visually enhanced over my lunch hour, revealed new evidence of illegal aliens working in the Los Angeles basin.
Uptweak 20080609: iPhone=I.

Popcorn Geomancy

We people-of-the-corn use corn in all of our important rituals, such as foretelling the future. Many popcorns in this batch were fused together, indicating either love, war, the collision of Earth with another planetoid, or the convergence of technology. The oddest one was this sword-wielding popcorn. The sword is of a decorative West Asian style, and the width of the blade indicates the large number of deaths in the coming conflagration. (Or it could be a ski.) Persia and Saudi Arabia are indicated. We can also see that many babies will be born with doglike mouths and double-rows of reptilian-like teeth, indicating the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, an impression strengthened by the appearance of skin boils. A war seems to last 8 to 10 years before attrition forces a settlement. A man with a sloping forehead and strange, powerful buttocks will be involved. Not sure who that is, as the creation of an Interpol Buttocks DataBase (IBDB) for the identification of bad guys has been a low priority, even with the lobbying efforts of Jim Baker. It's probably Putin or his successor, setting a trap for the Americans and British. Several ninja-like characters will be looking on, watching closely but staying extremely Swiss.

This is the popcorn talking, not me. I'd like nothing better than for the Bush administration to be slowly brought to justice and disempowered, if not necessarily disemboweled. I expect so, too. The popcorn says otherwise, that Iraq was just a warm-up, but that's just one popcorn talking, a minority report. Perhaps it has nothing to do with Bush but is a spontaneous explosion (in the smoldering post-traumatic geopolitical wreckage left by Bush). Each kernel represents an alternate future. The future is still unpopped. Consult your local maize for further information. The medium is the message.

By the way, if you still have the (soon-to-be) banned microwave variety, you should know that popcorn is a health hazard. (I have a supply that will last until winter). The volatile butter flavorings cause lung disease and the components of the bag migrate into the corn and are highly carcinogenic. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. All those medical complications and it doesn't even get you high, well, not really. Try removing it from the bag and popping it in a well-ventilated area. Get a Fresnel lens and make solar popcorn to reduce your carbon gore-print.

Final prediction: popcorn will be found to contain neurotrophic proteins.

Papaya Dolphins

Because a day without papaya dolphins is like a day without… surrealist poetry. And somewhere in an alternate universe kids are eating Dolphin Papayas, tender cakes of processed dolphin shaped like bright tropical fruit. Flipper is the new supper. Somewhere else, kids are going to bed hungry, unable to enjoy the simple pleasure of a can of papaya dolphins with the handy pop-n-peel lid. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, or mother Fool Nature. I think that's what I said.

I bought some cans of Papaya Dolphins at an old-style mom-and-pop grocery near Nezu Jinja two years ago for the ridiculously low price of ¥80 and gave some to friends as earthquake survival chow. Ate them around the time they expired. Never saw them again. It would be the perfect solstice food, except for it being canned and all. Like if you were in Antarctica and had no access to fresh fruit. Or if you were working six days a week in the rainy season and had no time to go out and get real food, and it was an alternative to crappier food like cup-noodle. I like the mix of Japanese and English on the label, even though they were made in Thailand. Reminds me of a brief gig I had teaching English to Thai managers of a joint venture with British Metal Box (a wireless horseless Britishism for "can") near Songkhla or Hat Yai. Click on the label on the right to see a large scan of it. Hey, there are some errors in the English. Come to think of it, I suppose the "Dole" label is fake, too.

Laughing Mothers' Milk

or The Effect of Charlie Chaplin on Melatonin Levels in Lactating Mothers.

According to New Scientist, a Japanese researcher in Osaka has found positive effects on atopic eczema in babies fed by mothers who had laughed hours before breastfeeding them. Hajime Kimata of Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital reports his findings in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol 62, p 699. Using a Charlie Chaplin film (which one?) as the experimental condition and the weather information channel as a control, he took samples of breast milk and…

Two milk feeds later, he also measured their babies' allergic reactions to dust mites and latex. Those infants whose mothers had laughed had markedly reduced reactions.
…
Kimata also found significantly higher levels of melatonin in the laughing mothers' milk. The hormone is associated with relaxation, and levels are reduced in people with eczema.

Laughing Mothers' Milk sounds like a good name for a band. It only gets 2 results on Google as of now but once the Star-(*$$)-bucks execs get wind of this information you'll find it in your latte con madre grande. Laughing mothers' milk -- the best medicine.

Deeppresso-matic

Georgia DEEPRESSO coffee. From Coca-Cola. Seems like a potential marketing disaster to me, but what do I know? Coke is a big company, and they must have done their homework, like they did with the New Coke a few years ago.

Rummy & Bushie Bolt-on (in the Journal of Contemporary Comparitive Snackology)

Rummy (AKA Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Dumsfeld) the Secretary of Defense (War Department) may be (almost) gone, but Rummy the alcoholic Japanese chocolate (chocoholic?) bar will live on. Containing 3.7% alcohol, it carries a warning not to be used when operating a motor vehicle. I haven't tried it yet. It may be a more appropriate snack for Mr and Mrs Bush and the Vice-Executioner Cheney.

I wonder if John Bolton (also past the expiration date) can't inspire his own candy bar. Bolton is recognizable as the man with the bushy bolt-on mustache, known domestically as "a kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", and known in North Korea as "human scum and a bloodsucker". That's beautiful. The North Koreans understand him, and he understands them; each side recognizes themselves in the other. They each have their second-generation dynastic dear/deer leader, and they both share the same fear-based way of ruling. For that reason, Bolton was actually pretty good at dealing with them, if you overlook the fact that they refused to talk with him. Bolton couldn't even get the approval of enough US Sedators in the Repuglicant-controlled Senate, let alone those outside the beltway, and had to be satisfied with just being W's personal emissary to the U.N., yet he brazenly displayed UNITED STATES on his desk as if he represented the United States. He is now politically doomed.

Kiss-up or Bushie would both be good names for a snack, and he looks a little like a confectioner, so having his face on the label would be no worse than the Colonel. (But it ain't fingers he's lickin'.)

Annals of the Journal of Contemporary Comparitive Snackology: Air Crunky

Air Crunky awadate matcha chocolate looks like it could be really good, but it is way too sweet.

Archives of the Journal of Contemporary Comparitive Snackology: American Soft Matcha Cookies

These are the American Soft Matcha-Chocolate Chip-Macadamia Nut cookies, just like Gramma used to make, if your Gramma was a tripped-out hippie who mistook her Japanese roommate's matcha (抹茶) for flour, perhaps due to wearing dark green sunglasses to hide her dilated pupils. The green texture takes some getting used to, but will appeal to the ecologically conscious. We taste-tested these right next to some macadamia-nut choco-chip cookies from Starbucks (matcha not included) about six months ago. That probably wasn't fair. These looked small and sickly next to those, and had a soft, and somewhat additive-heavy taste. There was something mysteriously familiar and nostalgic about them, that became clearer when my co-investigater used the word "PlayDo" to describe them. By themselves, though, when not being compared to a Starbucks cookie or PlayDo, they really weren't too bad, and I would consider eating them again if I were eating non-fresh snacks. They also may be worth keeping in stock as earthquake survival food, if the expiration dates are a year or so out… (I don't remember). Now you can eat your tea and drink your corn (just like your nightmare hippie Gramma used to tell you to do).

Journal of Contemporary Comparitive Snackology: Corn Tea Field Notes

I have been looking for ginseng tea, but I can never find it anywhere. It has dropped out from the top ten tea drinks to somewhere below the top forty, with lots of English teas and herb teas covering the shelves of the stores. I couldn't find ginseng tea, even in the Korean stores, so I decided to settle for corn tea -- also a yellow vegetable -- and try that. It's cheap, too.

Corn tea is nothing like corn soup. It has a roasted toasted flavor, but isn't like corn flakes or doritos, either. It tastes a lot like mugi-cha 麦茶, roasted barley tea, (which is a popular summer drink in Japan) but with a naturally sweeter, corn-like flavor after the first mugi-cha-impression.

It's no substitute for ginseng tea, but not bad. I wonder if the ancient civilizations of central america also discovered this drink.

The Korean name for it is oksusu-cha 옥수수차. The packaging you can see has added Japanese to the Korean for marketing to the one or two million Koreans in Japan and anyone else in Japan who might like to drink it.