I've got a lot of strange stuff stuck to my refrigerator door.
There's a McDonald's double-cheeseburger wrapper from Moscow (roughly
transliterated from the Cyrillic, it's a "dvoinoi chizburger" --
hamburgers are called "gamburgers" because there's no "H" in Russian);
a birthday limerick written for me
by my friend Jeff Mandelbaum; a take-out/delivery po-boy menu from the
Royal Street Grocery in the French Quarter in New Orleans;
my grade cards from Principles of Cooking I-V at UCLA Extension (an
"A", natch).
I've also got several nifty refrigerator magnets, such as the one
depicting a cockroach saying "Let's eat!" as well as some
Bunny Matthews characters, the KCSN one, the Magritte one that says
"Ceci n'est pas une pipe", the White Castle one, the one from
Staromëstké Námesti in Prague, the Frank Lloyd Wright "Tree of Life" one,
and several more. My refrigerator door is a weird catch-all place for things I find interesting, amusing, or of
sentimental value.
Here's a wildly varied collection of interesting, useful, amusing and/or
silly stuff I've plucked from here and there on the Net, text-packrat
that I am (and I'm a paper/book/record packrat in real life too,
aaaaack), that I thought I'd stick up here for all to see, instead of
just having it virtually rot in non-world-readable directories at my
Internet provider. Look around, there's some fun stuff in here.
This page will constantly grow as I clean out my home directory on
Netcom and as I gather new stuff from cobwebby corners of the Net.
- Astronaut Chuck
- I spent my entire childhood wanting to be
an astronaut. Here's a certificate naming me as an honorary member of the crew of Space Shuttle
Flight STS-67/ASTRO 2, in March of 1995. You can't imagine how cool I
think this stupid thing is ...
- The Balkan Top Ten
- One of my best friends is from Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, and we've talked a lot about the appalling situation being perpetrated there by
both our governments. One of the ways the Yugoslavs are dealing with it all is through gallows
humor, much of which has strong elements of truth within, as you'll see in this series of lists
of the Top Ten Reasons to be Serbian, Croat, Bosnian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, Montenegrin
and Yugoslav.
- BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!
- This dangerous chemical is planetwide. Here's
how you can learn more about its dangers, and how you can help get it banned.
- Banned Books
- In the '90s, people are still censoring and
banning books. Here's a list of some of them. Kids, if any adult tells you you can't read these,
RUN, do not walk, to the nearest library or bookstore and get it, because
you need to know what they don't want you to know.
- How to Sing the Blues
- You may get the blues sometimes, but you
can't just up and sing the blues. There are rules, you know.
- Food Spoilage Chart
- From the Chefs' Mailing List. How to tell if
your food is spoiled.
- If architects had to work like programmers,
- we'd all be living in tents, I think.
- A bit about the Irish-style bouzouki
- For all you Irish music fans who may have wondered what that
terrifically ballsy string instrument is in all those Planxty, Bothy Band
and Altan albums.
- The Chef's Rules
- As posted to the Chefs' mailing list. The definitive set of rules as
to how a kitchen is run. What am I getting myself into??!!
- Church Bulletins
- Several amusing examples of butchery of the English language,
supposedly taken from actual church bulletins. Apocryphal? Maybe, but
still good for a chuckle.
- Constructing a Logical Argument
- People, particularly Usenet and IRC users, generally can't put up a
decent, logical argument to save their lives. Here's a gentle
introduction to logic and reasoning.
- Here's what happened when a guy tried to rob
Mr. Logic
- Cops
- What to say and what not to say to them; or, how not to get arrested
and/or get the living crap beaten out of you.
- DO NOT CLICK HERE
- Whatever you do, do not click this link.
- "God's Judgment on Heterosexuality and the Church's Caring Response"
- A marvelous work of
irony by Tobias S. Haller,
BSG, pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in
Yonkers, NY. He has more excellent writings on his own website as well.
I thank him for his permission to reproduce this work here.
- God's Total Quality Management Questionnaire
- In order to serve you better ...
- Gourmand Syndrome
- Oh. That's why I love fine food. I have a brain
injury.
- "Grits"
- A poem by Steve Melton, who hated grits. I hate 'em too. Well, not
so much anymore ... I did as a kid, until I learned to cook 'em right!
(Andouille cheese grits with fried eggs and Creole sauce, mmmmmmm ...)
- "I'm My Own Grandpa"
- The lyrics to a song I've loved since I was a kid.
- Irishness
- The readers of the Irish Times select six ways to know you're
really Oirish.
- Frankie Kennedy
- On the passing and funeral of the brilliant Irish musician, at age 38 in 1994.
- Keeping the Peace, Clinton-Style
- Using the Clinton
Administration's finely-crafted logic in bombing Yugoslavia to free Kosovo,
we can certainly see that there are lots more places around the world that could use this kind of
treatment. Let's bomb 'em all! (Cue Randy Newman's "Political Science" ...)
- A killfile tutorial
- Killfiles can be great Usenet sanity-savers, by automatically junking
articles by flamefesters, jerks, morons, eejits, bozos, Nazis, homophobes,
and their ilk. For those of you who are still dinosaurs like me (and
therefore still cool), here's how to do it for the UNIX shell newsreaders
rn, trn and strn.
- The Layman's Guide to the Supreme Court Decision in Bush v. Gore
- Or, how the guy who got the second-highest number of votes in the 2000 Presidential election got to be President.
- Morel mushrooms
- Some tips on using morels from members of the Chefs Mailing List.
- Bob Mould
- A 1993 interview.
- Puirt a beul
- Or, Scottish Gaelic "mouth music". What is it?
- Murder Ballads
- My friend Steve Gardner has an odd hobby ... he collects murder
ballads. Here's a list of 459 of 'em. Oh well, don't worry, Steve's a
nice guy, and harmless. Well, mostly harmless.
- The O. J. Simpson Trial
- What if it had been covered by Dr. Seuss?
- Operating Systems
- What they'd be like if they were beers ...
- The Right-Wing Christian Dictionary
- What some people really mean when they say certain things.
- Sampling the Cardboard Bouquet
- A highly amusing tidbit from the Los Angeles Times that begins thusly:
"More than 15% of wine drunk in this country is dispensed from a cardboard box. Does that mean
the stuff is socially acceptable? To find out, we called some restaurants celebrated for their
extensive wine lists and presented the following fiction: A father-in-law with a passion for
wine-in-a-box would like to bring his own supply, OK?" (*giggle*)
- Things to Avoid When Being A Rock Critic
- You'd be surprised how few rock critics manage to avoid all these points.
- Sex For Brides
- An 1894 guide to "Instruction and advice for the young bride on the
conduct and procedure of the intimate and personal relationships of the
marriage state." Over 100 years later, much of it is amazingly true
today, according to some opinions. I think it's funny. And let's not
forget that Cardinal Rule of Marriage, ladies ... "GIVE LITTLE, GIVE
SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY". (I've recently heard that this is a hoax, written
in modern times. Maybe. But it's still funny.
- The Shakespearean Insult Kit
- The cool way to insult people. Thou cockered, beef-witted tallow-keech!
(Temporarily offline.)
- "Titanic": The Condensed Version
- I initially got this
in email from a friend. It's a perfect condensation of James Cameron's
wretched Academy Award® non-winning screenplay. (IMNSHO, "L. A.
Confidential" should have won out of that field of "Best Picture"
nominees.) As it turns out, it was a copyrighted piece that the author
asked be removed from my site, but I've retained a link to it on his site,
with his kind permission.
- tld.pl
- A neat little perl script written by Sean Burke, that
takes a server access log and spits out a nice little report listing by name each top-level domain that's accessed your
site, and how many hits you got from those domains. Here's a
sample report, generated by
piping the output into sendmail: tld archive | mail chuck@(xxxxxxxxxx).com
- Top Ten Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Jesus
- If you don't like mildly blasphemous humor ... jeez, lighten up! I personally believe that
Jesus had a sense of humor. (I don't drink much beer, anyway...)
- What does the Bible say about abortion?
- Fuel for thought and (one would hope) rational arguments. Try not to shoot anybody, okay?
the gumbo pages |
search this site
Chuck Taggart
(e-mail chuck)
