I could tell you about my experience eating at The French Laundry last month,, but so many people on the internetz have done that already.  I mean what new information or insights about the food and service do I really have to add to the conversation? Meh, not that much. What I do have to add is this: a picture I took of the guestbook in the front entrance when I first arrived.

I couldn’t believe my eyes! The balls on this guy. French Laundry Rickroll FTW!!!

OK, not entirely wordless. But then, it’s not even Wednesday. Kappabashi is the restaurant supply street of Tokyo. Everyone tells you to go and marvel at the many stores full of plastic food. But nobody warns you about the giant chef head and the gigantor coffee cups. To see them yourself: Tokyo metro to Asakusa station.

Bike-powered microphones for this band that was playing at the Alemany Farmers Market. Only in SF!

There are so many free printable Valentines out there on the series of tubes – here are some of the best. You still have 2 days to print them out. I am going to preemptively give full snaps to Neatorama which is the original source of the first three.

• Bitter Superhero Valentines – get them at Shirt.Woot

• Pun-laden Science Geek Valentines – get them at Neatorama

• Pun-laden Science Geek Valentines, the cartoon version – get them at Ironic Sans

• Edible Dog Biscuit Cards for your Dog – yikes – get them at Crunchkins

• Anti-Valentines by Dylan Edwards- get them on his site

• Disturbing Pimp Valentine’s Card – see it at StrangeCosmos

No words needed. Maybe just a heavy gagging sound. Or the sound of me choking on my own vomit.

UPDATE: as a commenter noted this is not a real product, but a ThinkGeek.com April Fool’s joke. Real or fake, it’s still gag-worthy.

One thing I did not consider when naming this blog was that the google search on the names and terms would yield daily doses of gross. You may be surprised to know that people do really GROSS things with meathooks that have nothing to do with meat. Like this. Or this. Or even this. Spoiler alert: the last link is a person hanging from a tree by a meathook. On purpose. Alive. Oops, did I ruin the ending for you? My bad.

Anyway, this week the google alert involved how to clean a pig you just killed and I wanted to share it with you because the setup is that a guy asks the question on this forum, and this OTHER guy, a total stranger, writes like a 6 page manual on how to clean the pig, just as one long run-on comment. Meanwhile, the other commenters just post links. So here you go- it’s not as tasty as what happens on this blog, but it’s still a lot less gross than the other things we talked about. Thank you, internetz. Now I know the first step post-kill is to “plug up his rectum then use your gut hook to unzip him clear to his chin.” That will come in handy someday, I’m SURE of it.

My friend Eliza gave me these awesome little containers. They are about an inch and a half high and super frickin’ adorable.

Their sole purpose is to allow you to bring a little bit of soy sauce with you wherever you go, just in case. They come with a little tiny eye-dropper so you can fill them up with soy sauce. So far they have never leaked and they always make me smile when I pull them out at lunchtime! Something about those vacant, beady eyes and perky ears- they are really endearing little pals to have around.

Eliza got these for a couple bucks at one of my very favorite stores in the world, Daiso Japan. Daiso is kind of like a super cool Japanese Dollar Store, except most things cost two dollars instead of one. Daiso has a crazy cross-section of stuff, from garden supplies to kids’ toys to dishes to cards (many in hilarious Engrish) to fake flowers to, er, individual soy sauce holders. With ten bucks in hand, you can have a GREAT time in there.

There are 3 stores in the Seattle area and 6 in the Bay Area- here’s a list of all U.S. locations.

I was out in Boston a while ago, and spent a couple hours in Concord, Mass, which is you know, where that whole “shot heard round the world” thing went down. Right in town there’s an old cemetery with some Revolutionary era gravestones. We spotted a couple of odd ones, like this one where they misspelled the guy’s name and had to fix their “typo”:

And this one, which due to the old-timey script, I first read as “Having laid down the f-word with honor…” but it’s sword. Not fword. Heh.

Yeah, I know. I’m immature. What can I say.

I have kind of been on a no sugar thing lately. However, my nephew Gus, who is is celebrating his 5th birthday tomorrow, is decidedly NOT on any such diet. I asked him what kind of birthday cake he wanted and he requested strawberry, but he’s picky so he clarified that he didn’t want any actual strawberries involved in the cake. He was talking pink strawberry cake from a box. Since most 5 year olds are simply sugar fiends as opposed to cake connoisseurs, I am completely OK with making him a cake from a box.

Now I have made cake from a box before, but never the strawberry kind. As you can see from the photo on the box, the cake should turn out a rather putrid color of pink. I poured the dry mix into the bowl and was rather surprised when the mix was pure white, like powdered sugar. Hmmm.

Adding the wet ingredients yielded some anomalous red spots, like little sores breaking out in the batter. Iwww.

A little mixing and you get that Pepto-pink you’re looking for. WHICH TOTALLY BLEW MY MIND. How do you go from pure white mix to My Little Pony Pink? It’s MAGIC. Or maybe it’s chemicals. Magical chemicals.

I would classify the batter as sickeningly sweet with artificial overtones and a strong Starburst nose. It’s baking right now and it’s making me nauseous. It smells like Strawberry Shortcake puked all over my kitchen. In other words, the kids will go crazy for it.

A note: While I enjoy a box cake from time to time, one thing I will not accept is frosting in a can. I just think it tastes nasty and chemically. So I’ll be making this pink cake into a car shape (somehow) with some tasty frosting tomorrow.