Pacificapocalypse

Glad to see people find that cursed “Saved By Zero” commercial as freaking annoying as me.

Nice work.

Via The Consumerist

“We are made to believe when we cannot understand, and to obey so that we will never understand”

It’s been 30 years, and I still remember exactly where I was when I heard the news that a bunch of crazy people had killed themselves in some jungle somewhere. I was at the now closed James D. Phelan middle school in San Jose, and I had just turned 11 years old.

Crazy people in a jungle somewhere.

That’s all I knew then, but as time progressed and the story unfolded, I and the rest of the world, learned how absolutely bug shit insane the situation was.

I still don’t understand what really happened. There is, and always will be, a strong San Francisco connection to the People’s Temple. The majority of his followers came from Hunters Point, Bay View and Vis Valley and they still have relatives here. He had his fingers in City Hall and was courted and valued by politicians, as a guaranteed ‘vote getter’. So perhaps that’s why, people, good people, looked the other way (shame on you Chronicle, you fucking knew better) when word got out, before they fled to the jungle, that things were going very wrong inside the People’s Temple.
What force drives, what are to all expectations, reasonably intelligent people, to give up their lives, their homes and deny their families and move to a jungle, an absolutely primitive campsite really, thousands of miles away on an entirely different continent.
What makes committing, logically and methodically an incredibly illogical and insane act, seem reasonable?
They killed their children. They squirted the Kool-Aid down their throats and killed their children.

Kool-Aid in a jungle or new Nikes in San Diego. Something moves these people to commit these horrific acts.I don’t think I’ll ever understand, and frankly I’m not entirely convinced that I want to understand what drives these people.

There’s a lot of info out there; here’s a good place to start.
Jonestown 30 Years Later – SFGate.com

Flying car.
As fortold in the prophesy of the ancients.

Holy crap, I want this thing more than Christmas.

From the Times Online:

To Timbuktu by flying car: it sounds the most unlikely journey on earth; a sci-fi voyage from the pages of Jules Verne. But this is no fantasy. The car really flies. And the journey will become reality early in the new year when two explorers set off from London in a propeller-powered dune buggy heading for the Sahara.

Ok so it’s not the classic Jetson’s flying car but it has a certain Mad Max appeal.

DUDE! FLYING CAR!

So sad, after 92 years, a California institution, Mothers Cookies, is no more.

If you’re a fan of those pink and white frosted Circus Animal cookies from Mother’s, either stock up or start priming your nostalgia, because this week the company closed its doors abruptly. They’ve cited the expected reasons—the rising cost of raw materials, and an inability to borrow in the frozen credit market.

That sucks.

So, I did what so many of my generation do in times of grief, I bought a commemorative t-shirt online.
Got the package and couldn’t figure out why it rattled, open it to find that in addition to the shirt, they sent me a memento mori bag of cookies. Check it out!

Stopped by the Ocean of India last night, didn’t feel like cooking, and Farz whips up a mean Chana Masala Karahi and Saag Paneer.
While waiting for our dinner, I glanced through the pass through window and saw an absolutely beautiful whole leg of lamb waiting on the kitchen table. All lovely fresh oxygenated blood muscle red and fatty bone white. If you’re a vegetarian, that’s the kind of thing to send you into a weeping fetal ball.
But if you’re a meatatarian like us, it’s a thing of transcendent beauty, all lamby and delicious.

On a hunch I asked Farz if the lamb was Halaal. He seemed sort of surprised and pleased that I knew the term and said that yes it was; all the meat and poultry he uses in the restaurant is Halaal.
I think that’s nice, makes me feel good to know he’s using quality product.

I need to stop watching Kitchen Nightmares…