I made a pumpkin spice latte last weekend, having heard of them for years but not wanting to spend money just to taste one. It was pretty good, and actually had pumpkin in it. Which suspended surprisingly well. Although I’ll probably just stick to black coffee because effort.
While cleaning up, I announced that next weekend I was going to make us turmeric lattes. Because certain woo types are big on turmeric, and it’s fun to make fun of them. But then the coupons that come with the Sunday Washington Post had a page with spice coupons. And what did they feature on the page? A turmeric latte recipe.
what is the woo surrounding turmeric? All I know about it is it has a musty, earthy scent and you don’t want to wear anything white while eating something containing it.
I used to keep an ice cream maker in my locker at work and we would make ice cream on weekends. There was a guy who loved the ice cream and decided to buy his own ice cream maker. This guy also happened to love spicy food; he’d always be adding things like hot peppers or hot sauce to what he was eating. So when he got his ice cream maker, I found a recipe for jalapeno sherbet and gave it to him as a joke. A week later, he made a batch of it.
Years ago my Mom was fumbling with coupons and I made a joke that they should do a show called “Extreme Couponing” (this was the era everything was “X-TREME!”)
I found out shortly after that there really was show with that title.
Speaking of ice cream, there was an old National Lampoon cartoon with a guy in an ice cream shop, and the flavors are something like Wood, Corn, Glue, and Vanilla. The punch line of course is the kid behind the counter saying “Sorry, we’re out of vanilla.”
Many years later I worked with a woman from Malaysia who told me corn ice cream is very popular there.
another ice cream one- about 15 years ago there was a contamination outbreak at one of the bigger ice cream parlor chains (salmonella or listeria or something.) SNL did a bit about it during “Weekend Update” and the anchor said “the company is not yet sure which flavor is the source of the problem- the vanilla, Rocky Road, or Uncooked Pork Swirl.”
Years ago, I wondered why one substance they used to build lasers that was placed in solid matrices couldn’t be placed in liquids instead – it would make a lot of things easier. Then I learned that it had, in fact, been used dissolved in liquids, but these liquids were:
1.) unbelievably toxic, to the point where you shouldn’t breathe the vapor. a spill of 2 milliliters (the amount in a container of “Crazy Glue”) once cleared an entire building
2.) Very Acidic and corrosive. It dissolved Teflon.
3.) Expensive and difficult to obtain (fortunately!)
Not only that, but almost all other liquids you could dissolve it in were similarly nasty (except for one that I found – only it wouldn’t laser very well in that one).
“The only way this stuff could be worse,” I announced, “Is if it was radioactive.”
well, you know what happened.
It turns out that they could improve the efficiency of fluorescence (and of lasing) if they mixed in a radioactive salt.
If you say anything bad out loud, it comes true.
Twenty years ago, the girl I was dating quipped that since tattooing and piercing and even branding had become too popular, amputation was surely around the corner.
She really WAS joking… but it was a real thing not long after.
I was at a table with many women, we were laughing about commercials, I made a long and stupid remark about a certain ad about social anxiety, and the meds for it. A woman got up and walked out of the restaurant. Apparently I gave her social anxiety.
Similarly, oyster stout made with actual oysters was and is a real thing. (Many oyster stouts do not have oysters or are so-called because they’re supposed to be served with oysters, or something like that, but stout with oysters was made by at least one brewery in England from the late 1930s to the late 1950.)
I also thought up another great premise for a reality TV competition show: “Who Wants to be a Reality Show Producer?”. You have a dozen or so wannabe reality show producers going head-to-head every week in various wacky competitions to see who can produce the most compelling reality TV show. The prize for the winner? That should be pretty obvious, right?
I’ve made corn ice cream. It was okay but not great.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we made ice cream most weekends. We quickly got bored with normal flavors. So we started taking challenges. Some of the flavors I made: almond, cheesecake, Coca-cola, egg nog, grape, Irish cream, orange, penuche, pistachio, plum, root beer, watermelon, and wintergreen.
People on the Dope Board like playing with dangerous things, or at least reading about them.
The liquid in question was a mixture, but the main ingredient was thionyl chloride, AKA sulfer oxychloride, SOCl[sub]2[/sub]
The Wikipedia page doesn’t adequately convey its scary possibilities. Try here:
It’s highly reactive, to the point of being explosive in some circumstances. It’s very corrosive, and will cause blisters on skin. If you inhale it, it’ll do that to your lungs, causing pulmonary edema. Since it reacts with water, it’s also bad to get it near your eyes or mucus membranes. If you mix it with water, it creates hydrochloric acid and sulfur dioxide and heat. In moist air, this reaction will be going on continuously at a low level, so it’ll fume, releasing acid into the air.
Fun stuff. You can see why even a minor spill cleared building.
So they tried to find substitutes for it that would not be as dangerous, but most of the substitutes were other oxychlorides, which are all pretty corrosive and reactive, so that wasn’t much help.
