Robot Toilets!

San Francisco's answer to the public restroom. These pod-shaped toilets dot the city every few blocks; they come with a page-long set of operating instructions and power doors that slide back when you push a button. When you are done, an electronic readout tells you it's going through a "55-second cleansing cycle," which I can only assume involves zapping the inside with ozone or something, because one can't observe it directly.

I keep expecting Dr. Who to come bursting out of one of these things and go save the world.

Mondegreen

Sarah McLachlan's song, Building A Mystery, has a pair of lines that go:

You strut your rasta wear
And your suicide poem
And a cross from a faith that died
Before Jesus came

I had long interpreted these lyrics to be, in fact, about x-treme yoga:

You spread your ass to where
In a suicide pose
Across from a faith that died
Before Jesus came

Now, Kiss This Guy confirms that I'm not going crazy. (At least not for that reason.) This site keeps a database on all the mondegreens on all the popular songs people have ever heard. Other people think McLachlan is singing about extreme yoga, too, and in fact, one user has proposed an even better interpretation of the lines:

You strap your ass to a suicide machine.

Unexplained Mediumship Fragment

This is a plotbunny orphan; it doesn't have any story to go with it.

Most of us have this traumatic incident in our childhoods where we realize we're different. Mine was at my dad's funeral. I was five years old, tired of the velveteen dress they'd put me in and wanting to go home, and I stood up and said, "Why is everybody so sad? You can still talk to him!" That earned me a quick trip to the child psychologist, who decided it was my way of coping. At least Dad understood.

Lentil Curry

I discovered that this recipe works quite well.

LENTIL CURRY

1 package (1lb) lentils
2 onions
4-5 cloves garlic
1 package (1lb) tofu
10 cups broth
handful of dark green leafies
curry powder to taste
half & half to taste

Rinse lentils, then cover in broth and simmer ~30 mins. Meanwhile, cube the tofu and sauté on high heat. You want the outside of the cubes to get nice and crispy. Caramelize the onions and garlic in the same pan. Add dark green leafies of your choice – I used the green tops of leeks because that’s what I had, but it should be very tasty with collards. Once those are wilted, add the whole caboodle to the lentils. Season with curry powder (maybe also some salt and pepper) to taste, then add half & half until it’s creamy. Serve on rice.

This makes a ton, probably enough for about 6 people.

A Visual Tour of Berkeley (Well, San Francisco, Really) Part 2

Never, ever go to Fisherman’s Wharf on the Fourth of July. I let an old friend from high school talk me into it, and man. Between the hour spent looking for parking, the hour-long waits at every single restaurant, and the twenty-minute line at the restroom, it leaves one wondering how the entire population of the Bay Area has managed to squeeze into a space about the size of three blocks. We had a good time, though. I got to try sharkmeat (It’s like tuna but without the fishiness; that is to say, extremely mild. It would be good with horseradish.) and we saw some pretty sweet fireworks.

And I managed to get some cool shots of the carousel at the end of the wharf:

The Art of Rough Travel: Advice from a 19th Century Explorer

Sir Francis Galton, inventor of the standard deviation, psychometrician, and distant relative of Charles Darwin, is one of those remarkable people of the Victorian Era who did a little bit of everything. In 1850 he joined an expedition to what is now modern-day Namibia for the Royal Geographic Society and lived there for two years. When he returned to England, he decided the best way to use his knowledge was to write his own version of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being a Victorian Explorer, for the benefit of future generations of pith helmets.

Thankfully, this peculiar text has not been lost to the mists of time. The Mountaineers Club had it reprinted in 2006 with modernized spellings. The result is highly entertaining.

The text is divided into several sections, beginning with “Preparatory Inquiries,” on through “Beasts of Burden,” “Food,” “Game,” and “Bush Remedies,” and finally winding up at “Miscellany” and “On Concluding the Journey.” Each of the chapters is logically organized and clearly written, so if an explorer can find what he needs to know to avoid being trampled by a charging rhinocerous.

There are places where it’s hard to believe this book is not a parody. What pith-helmety type would take a how-to manual along to dip into from time to time? Galton devotes two whole pages to how to make a proper pot of tea out in the bush, and now and then you run across un-PC little zingers like this one:

“Savages rarely murder newcomers; they fear their guns, and have a superstitious awe of the white man’s power: they require time to discover that he is not very different to themselves, and easily to be made away with.”

Therein, however, does not lie the value of The Art of Rough Travel. It is an absolute treasure trove for fantasy writers. Galton has inadvertently written the Idiot’s Guide to Problems that Fantasy Characters Face. How fast can I expect my hero to travel on his way to Mount Doom? Well, he can go about 3 miles per hour if he’s walking, or 4 if he’s walking fast. What if he’s traveling alone in hostile territory? He should tie his horse’s reins on a short leash to his wrist. If the horse hears something wrong, it will jerk its head up, and serve as an alarm clock. Okay, but what should he do if he runs out of food? See “Revolting Food, That May Save the Lives of Starving Men.” How much can his elephant carry? “The average burden, furniture included, but excluding the driver, is 500 lbs., and the full average day’s journey 15 miles.” The book is studded with little examples that would not just make one’s story more believable, but inspire stories of their own. Galton recommends that a traveler should get some jewels, encased in silver (it’s a non-irritant), inserted into the flesh of the arm and allow it to heal over. That way, if thieves steal everything including the clothes off your back, you still have a little money to fall back on.

Most of the time the advice is real, serious, and useful. The invention on flashlights has made Galton’s section on improvised candlesticks somewhat less relevant today, but the human body and keeping it alive in bad circumstances doesn’t change, and the wilderness is precisely the place you might find yourself without the modern conveniences that make you so different from the Victorians. Any good backpacker could find something to learn from this book, be it the right way to rappel down a cliff, tie a knot, or waterproof one’s bedding. I heartily recommend it to anybody writing an adventure story, or just anybody on the lookout for weird and fabulous ways to stay alive.