Rambling Rhodes

Garlic On A Massive Scale

I'm a fan of garlic. I've been a fan ever since I lived in Japan. A meal infused with garlic, in my most humble opinion, is a meal infused with awesome.

I have, however, been made acutely aware of the after-effects of garlic ingestion. Over the years, I've been able to pick up on the body language of those around me who absorb the wafting waves of my garlic aura. Garlic that's gone through the human digestive process and is being excreted via the skin, lungs and brainwaves smells considerably different than garlic in its fresh, unsullied form. And that revamped smell is, quite honestly, repulsive.

I've been both on the receiving and administering end of the garlic bodily excretion treatment. Back in my wrestling days in Japan, grappling with a sweaty individual who had eaten ten cloves of garlic the previous day was the aromatic equivalent of trying to subdue an inexplicably-animated corpse that had been rotting for three weeks.

It's a very peculiar smell: it's not quite like overpowering body odor, but there's that component mixed with a gasoline/paint thinner/turpentine/nuclear radiation thing going on. If you can successfully wrestle with a garlic afficionado without passing out from the fumes, you're probably a good candidate for a lucrative career cleaning Port-O-Potties.

Given my experience wrestling with those oozing garlic from their pores, it's perhaps a bit surprising that I became one of their ranks. I suppose it's a bit like being bitten by a vampire: oh, sure, it appears horrifying on its surface, but curiousity tells you there's maybe something more to it.

And there is! I've found garlic to be a great addition to practically every meal, except for maybe cereal. I genuinely enjoy ridiculous amounts of garlic in some of the food I prepare, and I approach the preparation of such meals fully aware that I'm entering into an unspoken and unwritten social contract that stipulates I'm foregoing any close human contact with the non-garlic population for at least the next day-and-a-half. If I have important meetings or engagements within the next couple of days, I make a mental note to keep the garlic locked away.

Of course, in some instances, human contact in the post-garlic quarantine time just isn't avoidable. When I'm training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, for example, I just know the taint of garlic is coming off my skin in clouds, and my grappling opponents are enduring aromatic hell. I think of it as kind of an advantage, really.

Well, about a week ago, my future wife, herself a garlic enthusiast, discovered "elephant garlic," which is basically a form of garlic that's roughly the size of a softball. This stuff is HUGE. She broke off a clove to include in a dish we prepared last night, and it was like slicing a potato.

So, today, I'm basically a walking WMD for anyone who gets within sniff-shot, and I apologize to no one.

Basement Dweller

I've spent the last four years slowly gutting the basement so as to prep it for remodeling. I honestly can't believe the amount of time and effort that was required to gut that mofo. Pickup load after pickup load of detritus trucked off to the recycling center. Probably more than ten trips all told.

Next came the wall preparation, coating the cinder blocks in a sealant substance that smelled like dirty socks dipped in formaldehyde. Now we're having plumbing work done, which is not a particularly cheap undertaking, which sucks, because I'm a cheap guy, so it's kind of a matter/anti-matter confluence.

I try to tell myself it's all an investment, but given the housing market, I'm not all that convinced.

Yeah, But. . .

LeBlanc sent me this via e-mail (for those not familiar with LeBlanc, she's here).

It's an interesting read, another in a long line of articles over the years about the decline of newspapers and the need to change, and I agree with quite a bit of it. Not all, though.

National and world news is now, in my opinion, practically the sole domain of the Web. If you're consulting a hardcopy newspaper or a magazine for your worldly news, you're at least 24 hours behind anyone with an Internet connection. I gave up my TIME subscription years ago, because I had read about all the main topics a week earlier. It was like watching a re-run.

Still, there are newspapers that recognize in-depth, local reporting is the key to remaining viable. The Rochester Post-Bulletin, for example, though I do so enjoy taking jabs at them from time to time, is a newspaper that's taking bold steps to focus on local stories, while at the same time opening up their articles to virtually unfettered reader commentary (which can get immediately tiresome, believe me).

On the other hand, you have the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which seems to regard the Web as some sort of annoying Ham radio, that's bound to go away if they just grit their teeth hard enough and wait it out. Oh, sure, they're dipping their toe in the water with such endeavors as buzz.mn, but seeing as how they've been promising a redesign of that site for almost a year, and we're still being subjected to the image of the dog-faced boy, I don't get the feeling they're taking it all that seriously.

All that said. . . er, written. . . I have a confession to make. As much as I like blogging/ThunderJournaling, and as much as I've been a proponent over my six years of penning content, I see blogging on the decline. Oh, sure, you have your old guard, the bloggers who have been in the thick of things for four or more years and show no signs of letting up, but I've deleted a lot more abandoned blogs from my blogroll than I've added over the past couple years. MySpace and FaceBook have exploded in popularity over the last couple years, because their GUIs (yes, GUIs; get off my lawn) are a lot more intuitive and user friendly than even Blogger can provide.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I see a shift taking place where people are gravitating back towards more traditional news outlets, except that they're gravitating towards those outlets that have evolved a bit to include some of the community aspects of blogging/myspace/facebook/forums.

Unfortunately, that shift has given birth to such online embarrassments as "Minnesota Monitor," which has devolved into a parody of a parody of itself. If you take that site seriously, there's not much modern medicine can do to help you. Even MSNBC.com seems to be yelling headlines at you in the hopes one of them will stick.

On the other hand, there are media outlets, such as the aforementioned Post-Bulletin, which do seem to understand how to move forward and survive.

I guess I have no real point to this post, other than to state that I'm awesome, and my ThunderJournal's not going anywhere any time soon.

That's a bold claim!

This was an ad I saw on MSNBC.com. It made me laugh, then it made me wonder if it's not, in fact, an example of "flagrantly false advertising," as Otto on "The Simpsons" might say.

You Stay Classy, InterWebs

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Via.

I give up

I just can't keep ahead of the spam. I've blocked countless IP addresses and deleted hundreds of comments, but still they wash in, wave after wave. It's not worth my effort any more. With over six years worth of posts, there's a smorgasbord of comment spam targets.

I don't honestly understand the reasoning behind comment spam, frankly. I don't quite see how it can in any way benefit the spammer. I mean, I'm sure there IS a way to profit/benefit from doing it, otherwise they wouldn't do it, but I'm generally at a loss as to how any benefit/profit is realized.

Then again, I suppose it is nearly a cost-free method for propagating a message/site, and eventually SOMEBODY will actually take the bait, although it would require several layers of hoops to go through to get to that point, but I can see how it's POSSIBLE.

Freakin' annoying though, that's for sure.