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  • But Is It Kosher for Passover? or Only In Brooklyn

  • TT : Thought Tally : Dude, Where’s My Biochemistry Degree? or Kinky Crew Superstar

    is going to like this. As I learned from TV Guide Magazine, Ashton Kutcher majored in Biochemistry.

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    According to one of the most annoying things a customer can do at the checkout line is to say “He heh. I guess it must be free” when the scanner beeps and refuses to scan the code. See, I could never come up with that stupid and apparently common joke. A Null is not a zero.

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    This kind of reminded me about a dude who was playing an electronic one arm bandit in Moscow when the machine crashed with 999999 rubles in the payout window. He stayed at the gaming parlor for days guarding the machine, but in the end the machine was rebooted and he wasn’t given any money. Or so I heard.

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    Coca cola definitely tastes better when it’s sold in those glass bottles. You know the ones that are probably based on the shape of the cacao pod (which was mistaken for the kola nut by the designer or something). They still make those in Mexico and sometimes they are sold in a few bodegas in NYC. I always thought it tasted better because of the glass, but finally found out the true reason:

    “She told me that they were bottled in Mexico and I nodded since I already knew that and said, “I think it is because they use real sugar.”
    She shook her head, “No, no, not the sugar. It’s the water.”
    She leaned in like she was telling me a secret, “Mexican water is the BEST water in the entire world.”
    Just then a smaller woman leaned in beside her grinning with a single eyebrow raised and whispered.
    “It’s MAGIC water!”

    Apparently it is not Montezuma’s revenge that assails unsuspecting tourists, but the magic waters that sour in the bellies of the unimaginative, somewhere South of the border.”

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    Many big corporations in order to retain employees use powerful “cult team building” techniques. One thing that I noticed is that worker ants usually have very peculiar job titles. For instance at Kinko’s the official title is “Co-worker”. At McDonald’s – “Crew Member”. From Gig I learned that Kinko employees unofficially use “Kinkoid” instead of “Co-worker”. And from an lj user in I learned that a McDonalds crew member who has formidable years of experience, but isn’t a manager is called “Crew Superstar”. I guess it’s kind of like “Research Fellow” at Microsoft :)

  • Ach! Bonjurrrrrrrrr! Ya Call That Onion Soup Ya Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys?

    My wife’s parents’ friends visited France. One of their huge disappointments was the French Onion Soup. They went into an expensive restaurant and ordered the soup. After the first taste they called a waiter (who apparently spoke English) and asked if he was sure that it was the famous French Onion Soup. After being assured that it was the classic, traditional onion soup prepared by a chef with many years of experience they were very disappointed. They told the waiter about an Irish tavern in Brooklyn that serves French Onion Soup that tastes ten times better than what they were brought. Like dish water the French version tasted, they said.

    I’ve had the onion soup at Buckley’s, and I’ve got to tell you that it’s very, very tasty.

  • Unrussian Profession or Dig Me My Grave Long Wide and Deep

    Thanks to a recommendation from I bought “Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs“. It’s really a tribute to an older book called “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”.

    Gig consists of monologues of a wide cross section of working people. There’s a porn star, a software developer, prison guard, a prisoner (don’t know if that’s technically a job), an air force general, a high school teacher, a journalist and enough representatives of other professions to make a thousand “x y and z walk into a bar” jokes.

    My favorite little story was about a single mom who had a gig as a psychological warfare specialist. She ended up getting my dream job when an Army recruiter asked her about her specialization preference. Since “spy” was not an option she took the next best thing.
    Modern psywarriors, like this girl, sometimes hail from rather somewhat rural places, so they get a lot of multicultural sensitivity training. One point brought home to them is that it is very important to never refuse native food or drink that is offered to them by friendlies, even if it’s gross. In training they even have a mock dinner during which they have to down “weird” drinks and eat “weird” food. That training kind of came in handy to our protagonist, as she was offered “gruel goat” meal in Africa which you had to eat with your hands. She handled that well.

    Turkish coffee turned out to be a stumbling block for her : ” … Turkish coffee. It’s got like a half an inch of grounds on the bottom. Well, I didn’t know if I was supposed to eat the grounds or not …”

    What to do, what to do? Of course she decided to ask one of the guys. Guess what kind of advice he gave her. Riiight. I’d do the same thing.

    Anyway, you can read her story here tanks to the guy at Amazon who sneaked full text search past the lawyers.

    touched upon the most fascinating topic of what professions “Russian” immigrants never choose. Police officer appeared rather often on the list of professions suggested by her readers. Well, a guy who’s desk was right next to mine in a High School pre-calculus class finished the Police Academy here in New York. I am not sure if he actually became a cop though.

    One story that he told me was kind of funny (I can’t judge it’s truthfulness though) . He smokes a lot. And once he was caught smoking right next to what he described as an “ammo dump”. The instructor who caught him came up with a creative punishment. My friend was forced to dig a proper human size grave and then bury the cigarette butt in it. Yeah, being an NYPD cadet is tough.

    Another “Russian” classmate of mine became a US Marine. I wonder where he is right now. “Semper Fi” means the same thing even with a Russian accent. Yeah. By the way, the motto of NYPD is “Fidelis Ad Mortem”.

  • One Hundred Views Of the Empire State Building #7 and #8

    Only 92 more and I’m done :)

  • One Hundred Views Of The Empire State Building # 6

  • Space Panties

    From an article at space.com :
    “Space lingerie is one of the major components of psychological support which we provide to women in orbit,” Yarov said. “The goal of this support is to make women on board feel like women, not just astronauts or cosmonauts. Shannon Lucid and Elena Kondakova liked their lingerie very much.”

    Psychological support? Don’t know about that. Those granny panties look ugly and uncomfortable at the same time.

  • Beaux Arts Of The Brooklyn’s Mother Road

    Starting out as a dirt road that was named after King George III more than 200 hundred years ago, Kings Highway had a very rich history. You can still see remnants of it’s former glory in the dilapidated remnants of it’s buildings.

    How would you like to enter your apartment building every day under the gaze of two titans and two griffins?

    Caw, caw!

    How the hell is Beaux Arts pronounced anyway?

  • The Sonic Quality of My Fridge

    I recently learned that there is such a thing as “hospital grade” electric outlets and plugs. Apparently they are slightly more robust and have stronger, springier contacts that keep power cords from unplugging. Here’s an example of a Hubbel brand 20 amp outlet (that’s why it has a T-shaped slot) and surge protection (that’s what the light is for, I guess).

    The prices range from 8 to 70 bucks per outlet. Of course audiophiles could not pass by such highly priced electrical components.

    Greg Graff writes in this Usenet post:
    “I was stunned at what a hospital grade electrical connection could do in my system. Much tighter/deeper base (which is saying something for the WATTS), larger/deeper soundstage, fuller midrange, and a sigificant increase in dimensionality. ”

    That’s nice, Greg. But some are a bit more skeptical :

    “Personally, I use the hospital grade plugs on almost everything, because I used to work at a technician at a medical center and salvaged several dozen plugs off surplus equipment. I strongly recommend them if you don’t pay anything for them. I doubt they’ve improved the sonic quality of my fridge, though…”

    I wrote about audiophiles before in my article Brilliant Pebbles, Lost Marbles or The Proud Audiophile.

  • TT: Though Tally :: Gratuitous Linkage And Stuff

    I’ve got a postcard from Eritrea. writes that there is no television and no radio there, but he had 3 different people asked him if he had a copy of TV Guide to give them. God knows I have a sizable stack of them here in my cubicle. :) It’s so nice to get a postcard. If any of you want a postcard from me, email me your address. It’ll probably be one of my photos.

    is so much better than . Check out this amazing photo. I wonder what their story is.

    A deep philosophical question from : “The Triple Chocolate Meltdown…is that chocolatey?” (The comments are hilarious too. “I like vegetables, but what’s in the chicken vegetable?” – another deep philosophical question.)

    My High School chemistry teacher was absolutely sure that drinking a half liter bottle of vodka would inevitably lead to alcohol poisoning. Well, of course it depends on a person, but I know a lot of people who can handle a bottle. Three bottles in a short period of time is rather deadly of course. is pretty good.