text:
Friday, December 19, 2008
When Gangsters Go "PC"
Friday, December 19, 2008
"Just decoratin' this here Christmas cake, boss."
"Bugsy, you can't write "Christmas" there - it's gonna offend somebody! An' don't call me 'boss'."
"Sorry, boss. Can I write 'happy holidays'?"
"Nah, dat'll offend people who don't celebrate no holidays."
"Can I just use red and green icin' and not write nuthin'?"
"Bugsy, ya knucklehead, think about it: red and green say 'Christmas', see? S'no good. Use a lotta blue - but not blue and white, mind, 'cause dat's all Hanukkah-like. Maybe try blue and poiple."
"Yeah, but what do I write, boss?"
"I dunno; Lil' Antony said it's just gotta be 'completely non-offensive-like, says nuthin' of substance, and don't reference no holidays.' Oh, and it can't start wit' 'happy' or 'merry', neither - people might think we're forcing our 'emotional views' on 'em, whatever da heck dat means."
[sigh] "Ok, boss."
"Don't call me 'boss'."
Wow, Tanya C., I'm getting filled with the holiday spirit just looking at this. I think the underline really sells it, don't you?
183 comments | Post a Comment
Another genius wreck...congratulations...but they would be nothing without your rockin commentary!
- December 19, 2008 at 9:29 AM
HA! I was chuckling all through the commentary and let out a bark of laughter at the cake itself! That's great.
Neither-happy-nor-merry Winter to you too! - December 19, 2008 at 9:32 AM
Oh god...suddenly last year's office party is replaying in my head. We had almost that exact conversation but without the sheisty Brooklyn accents. We also wound up with purple on our cake until my friend looked at it and said, "Purple eh? Trying to force Advent colors on us, eh?"
Gotta love political correctness. - December 19, 2008 at 9:35 AM
it is me or is the cake missing the icing? and why is the snowman so little, there is plenty of space
- December 19, 2008 at 9:35 AM
- Ream O Rama said...
Hey Jen, don't cookie "cakes" fall in the same category as CCCs?
This one is just filled with sweetness and light... - December 19, 2008 at 9:36 AM
- Peachy said...
Ewww brown frosting. I can just imagine that oozing between people's teeth and not looking anything like icing. I suppose on the bright side, it wasn't yellow snow.
- December 19, 2008 at 9:37 AM
- Heather said...
hmmm, did i catch the hint that someone has seen 'Oscar'? If not, you should watch it! Great cake, it's almost as good as "I want sprinkles"
- December 19, 2008 at 9:38 AM
- The Courteous Chihuahua said...
Considering that my daughter had an accident yesterday which resulted in $6100 damage to both cars, Winter offends me.
Brilliant post, Jen! - December 19, 2008 at 9:39 AM
rofl (literally!) - that's my new favorite wreck ever! well, mostly because of the commentary, but you really had me sliding of my chair and rolling on the floor laughing my head off for a solid minute. woah. that's mere genius ^^
word verification: oveisti - sounds like a bavarian christmas song ^^ - December 19, 2008 at 9:39 AM
- Unknown said...
That is Wow!
I loved your narrative! - December 19, 2008 at 9:42 AM
- Mel said...
W...T....? My head hurts trying to figure out this little beauty.
- December 19, 2008 at 9:42 AM
- SkippyMom said...
This is so over the top PC I snorted Christmas Tea ... jeesh, ridiculous.
- December 19, 2008 at 9:42 AM
The snowman's cute...
But is the blank space intended for the customer's personalized message (to be added by a semi-incompetent counter clerk whose skills at spelling, spacing, and penmanship may be up for debate)? If so, what does one write that would not be a non-sequitur with "Winter"? - December 19, 2008 at 9:43 AM
- queenb said...
I want sprinkles.
~Bonnie B~ - December 19, 2008 at 9:44 AM
- Kate said...
I'm confused...is the cake even frosted w/ the preliminary base coat, I mean is it a naked cake w/ a snowman on it and some purple trim, or did they frost it w/ poo colored frosting first?
- December 19, 2008 at 9:44 AM
- Zita said...
Now if they had just added "wonderland" beneath that--but they were probably afraid they would be advocating drug use! LOL
- December 19, 2008 at 9:46 AM
- Unknown said...
uh i don't get it. what's this have to do with gangsters? reaching, much?
- December 19, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Why o why do they have to use that brown poo color as the background always?!! It's nasty. Who buys that? You would think they could at least put a giant snow flake in the middle unless that was meant to be blank for someone to add a message. "Winter, Sorry you have SAD but here's a brown poo cake with a happy snowman!"
- December 19, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Wow... just wow.
Is it a brownie? or frosted with Brown icing? - December 19, 2008 at 9:46 AM
WOW...what a boring cake...the snow man is cute...very nonoffensive... If they didn't tell us that it was winter I would never have known.
wv: mangsts: a badly typed and spelled gangsta - December 19, 2008 at 9:47 AM
- Donna M. said...
Proof that politically correct is....incorrect.
I'm offended that people don't want to be offended *G* - December 19, 2008 at 9:48 AM
- NanU said...
Hey, I am from San Diego, and I find it offensive that winter always has to be associated with snowmen. I think that all snow-related references should be banned!
- December 19, 2008 at 9:54 AM
- Starchasm said...
Um....Wow. Is that unfrosted, frosted with poo, or just plain moldy? And why is that poor snowman all alone over there in the corner? It looks like the word WINTER is about to crush his little head.
Good grief!
@Angela - it's a movie reference. - December 19, 2008 at 9:56 AM
Perhaps the base color choice was to make people in warmer climates feel included. "And no white frosting, ya numbskull, all dem folks down South might be accusing us of only showing a Yankee winter."
Or maybe this is the end of winter when everything has turned to mud but the snow man still clings to life. If that were true though, he's looking too good. His head would have to be peanut sized and his hat would be on the ground. - December 19, 2008 at 9:58 AM
- Dea said...
This reminds me of the South Park episode where they have to remove everything from the school Christmas play that offends everyone....it's the best....
- December 19, 2008 at 9:59 AM
- Dawn Cox said...
LOL! love your dialogue!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:02 AM
- Kathy Perin said...
I'm sorry, but you are the best writer, EVER!! "Poiple." LMAO!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:09 AM
- Unknown said...
I can't believe this is a real cake. Its the saddest attempt at celebrating a season ever. And who buys a winter cake?
- December 19, 2008 at 10:14 AM
- Melissa Hale said...
I just don't get the brown icing....and wouldn't white frosting be much more "wintery"?
Maybe they weren't going for the first snowfall, but the brown sludge that accumulates by Jan, when the dirt and the snow mix? A touch of realism perhaps?:P - December 19, 2008 at 10:17 AM
- @wendydesigns said...
@Sciencegirl - I'm not from San Diego, but snow offends me, too! I'm looking at a *whole* lot of it falling from the sky outside my office window right this second, and I can't leave for home for another 5 hours...
- December 19, 2008 at 10:18 AM
- Angie McCullagh said...
It's 80% YOU, you know. You're a freaking genius.
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com) - December 19, 2008 at 10:22 AM
From the comments posted, yes, that must be the case. An overtly politically correct cake decorator with the hidden agenda of ruining Christmas.
My guess is the decorator had some extra purple frosting in the bag, a blank sheet cake, and a lack of imagination. The story concocted was JUST A STORY (albeit brilliant and hysterical... Jen, I must give kudos for your spelling to make it read as perfect gangsterese!).
Keep up the great posts!
Merry Christmas! - December 19, 2008 at 10:28 AM
- The Chubby One said...
I feel like an essay about Winter should be written beneath that...
- December 19, 2008 at 10:29 AM
- Sick Sad Minion said...
An underline killed my family!
*sobs* - December 19, 2008 at 10:31 AM
- Elizabeth Douglas said...
That commentary was pure brilliance! I especially liked the fact that you spelled the accent...a la "poiple" hahahahah!
A happy...er...merry...er...
Non-offensive winter salutation everybody!
wv: sprong- the new grammar. "Spring has sprong." - December 19, 2008 at 10:31 AM
- An Apron Straitjacket said...
Too funny!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:34 AM
The commentary really set the tone for this one! Love it!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:42 AM
If they were going for realism wouldn't you do that with white frosting mixed with crumbled oreos?
Nope definately poo frosting. - December 19, 2008 at 10:45 AM
- Rachel said...
That's awesome, I mean really. Wow.
- December 19, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Hey, now, you can't be celebrating Winter. That's just pagan!!!
(For the record, I have nothing against pagans. Just making the point that you can always find a way to be offended if you want to be offended.) - December 19, 2008 at 10:47 AM
- Jamie said...
I totally thought this was a cookie cake at first, but on closer inspection it is so much more insidious. Why, why, why should a 'winter' cake simulate tanned leather?
Your commentary had me in stitches this morning!
Word verification: fobbe: a new style in leather jackets, and the inspiration for this cake's frosting. - December 19, 2008 at 10:50 AM
- Shannon said...
Ahh, the cake was very good but the conversation with Bugsy and Boss made it. Poiple is the word of the day!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:52 AM
- jen bryner said...
ah, jen, those were some SWEET "oscar" references!!! one of my all-time favorite movies:) i could just picture them all doing this 'scene' too. i love that you love all the movies that i love!!!! hahahaha have a happy WINTER everyone!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:52 AM
- Jen said...
@Heather: You got me. I was wondering if anyone would catch the Oscar reference. (It's my all-time favorite movie no one has ever heard of. John and I are even forcing our friends to watch it this New Year's Eve. What's not to love about Sly Stallone taking "elocution lessons" from Tim Curry? :)
- December 19, 2008 at 10:55 AM
- Lulubelle B said...
OMG! LMAO!! Love the brown barren earth. I guess all the snow went into the nongender snowperson. Not that persons are superior to any other species, extant or extinct.
- December 19, 2008 at 11:04 AM
- Queen Julian XIII said...
Oh man, I snotted when I finally got to the wreck!!!
Word verification: Plarsl. That is the noise I made when I snotted! - December 19, 2008 at 11:08 AM
- Boozy Tooth said...
The point of this gigantic "white space" on the cake was so the decorator could inscribe the full lyrics of the Christmas classic "Let snow, let it snow, let it snow."
Either that or a fanny imprint, I'm not sure. - December 19, 2008 at 11:12 AM
- Megan said...
I think the snowman is actually kind of cute, if only it weren't so oddly placed. And I love the underline, but I also think it needs a period. "Winter.", as in there's nothing more to say about this horrible, depressing time of year.
Love your commentary, though. That's the best part. It takes a certain level of brilliance to work "poiple" into a cake commentary. Kudos! - December 19, 2008 at 11:13 AM
I've never commented before, but had to on this one. The "cake" in itself is so-so, but the genius dialogue makes it golden. Love it!
- December 19, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Reminds me of this great Brad Paisley song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daBH2IlWcmM.
- December 19, 2008 at 11:27 AM
- HorribleLicensePlates said...
Very... uh... creative.
I probably would have had more snow, and less purple, but that's just me, boss. - December 19, 2008 at 11:28 AM
- Bob said...
I'm not sure but if you zoom in on the snowman, I think it has the head of Jack Skeleton from "Nightmare before Christmas"
- December 19, 2008 at 11:33 AM
That was awesome!! You're such a great writer, every time I read one of your posts I start laughing from your descriptions!
- December 19, 2008 at 11:41 AM
- Vee said...
BWAHAH! that was the best buildup to a cake you've had yet!!!!!!!!!
yer one funny chica! - December 19, 2008 at 11:41 AM
This must be a cake to celebrate, um, winter in Bethesda, MD, where it traditionally rains heavily on Christmas, thereby turning everyone's dry brown lawns to mud.
- December 19, 2008 at 11:42 AM
- Deborah said...
It's so...brown.
- December 19, 2008 at 11:42 AM
- December 19, 2008 at 11:48 AM
- Unknown said...
What? No exclamation points?!!!!!
With the underline, there should be a few! extra! exclamation! points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~Amy B - December 19, 2008 at 11:54 AM
- Feisty Irish Wench said...
I absolutely LOVE the preceding conversation between minions. I could hear it in my head (mostly because locally there's an alarm company that airs radio commercials of similar style). I live in Florida and snow doesn't happen but once every couple decades here. The fact that there's a snowman on it offends me. Except that I have chosen to stay in Florida for the fact that it doesn't get as cold as other states and has no snow, so really...
And Leslie, flippin hilarious honey. Love the coworker's response. - December 19, 2008 at 11:54 AM
- Insanitykim said...
HAHA! Nothing says nothing like, "Winter"
Like the whole Italian speak too...
I have too many "Antnees" and "Vinnies" in my family to count...this would be their MO for sensitivity...love it. - December 19, 2008 at 11:57 AM
If you close your eyes, you can see Joe Pesci and DeNiro having this conversation, with Billy Crystal in the background to do the appropriate hand-wringing. And besides the A-1 commentary (love 'poiple') the only thing missing on the cake is quotation marks. Because, with all that brown ground (not white) it really isn't 'winter,' now, is it? And for those who feel left out because their climes don't get to expereince snow, consider yourself lucky. There's nothing like getting bundled up at 7 AM to go clean the car off and getting a bootful of snow. I'll take sunny and 80 any day of the year, especially in January!!!!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:08 PM
For some reason, when I was reading the commentary, I had the voice of Tony Soprano in my head...is that a bad thing?
Jen, you rock! - December 19, 2008 at 12:10 PM
- Bridgete said...
@LaLa27 And no white frosting, ya numbskull, all dem folks down South might be accusing us of only showing a Yankee winter.
The commentary made me chuckle, the cake made me snort, and that additional comment almost made me spit my coffee all over the laptop.
Word verification: Gledinap. What you say when you first get up from a good nap and are still a bit groggy. - December 19, 2008 at 12:16 PM
- Lady said...
1. I'm puzzled that so many people are grossed out by brown frosting. Maybe it was chocolate?
2. Love the wreck. I was immediately reminded of this Dave Barry gem:
These days, people say "Season's Greetings," which, when you think about it, means nothing. It's like walking up to somebody and saying "Appropriate Remark" in a loud, cheerful voice. - December 19, 2008 at 12:18 PM
- mandy jeanne said...
it's so non-sequiter- it's something i would pick up on general purpose, just to hear everyone stand around and sort of "moo" at the cake:
"..Oh-right! Looks greaaat..." - December 19, 2008 at 12:19 PM
- Das Mutter said...
Wow, that is so inspiring. But more so was the commentary. Nice work, Jen!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:20 PM
- TheDaughterOfTyr said...
Awww it's just sad!
Happy Yule! - December 19, 2008 at 12:22 PM
- Budding Violinist said...
Love your commentary! I couldn't wait to see what kind of "cake" went with it!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:24 PM
- Deborah Godin said...
I know we all gag at cakes with icing overload, but somehow when it's not there...I miss it! This looks way too dry - I'd rather have a big slice of your narrative instead!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:32 PM
A lonely litte wreck... made fabulous by your commentary. Thanks!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:34 PM
I'm totally offended by the orange hat! Like they're telling me what color hat I should put on a snowman!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:43 PM
- MaryO said...
In this case, LESS is MORE!
LOVE the commentary!
ROTFLMAO, as usual! meo - December 19, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Clearly, it's winter in Arizona.
- December 19, 2008 at 12:48 PM
- Charly said...
Haha! Love the 'Oscar' reference!
- December 19, 2008 at 12:51 PM
- Word Ninja said...
Great Oscar nod, love Tim Curry in that one!
Winter to you too, boss. ;) - December 19, 2008 at 12:52 PM
- Lindsay said...
i, at first, thought it was a "cookie cake", too. until i blew up the pic and realized it is a POO colored icing under blue and purple with a snowman...
and as for the empty space, some "snow" would have looked nice so the snowman didn't look like he was sitting in my front yard after the grass dies.
but maybe making snow that looks like snow was WAYYY past the Wreckerator's skill level...and s/he decided against making the cake look bad. *GASP*
great stuff. - December 19, 2008 at 12:53 PM
That's it I'm signing you up for el-o-cution lessons with Doctah Poole, if I gotta do it... you gotta do!
Oscared, BOO-Yah! - December 19, 2008 at 1:15 PM
I love how "Winter" is underlined.
- December 19, 2008 at 1:28 PM
I don't know - that about sums up my feelings on this time of year. But my snowman would look angry.
- December 19, 2008 at 1:32 PM
- Whirlwitch said...
PC, huh? Let me get hold of this cake, I'll take it home, add a big old sun and some holly and under "Winter", I'll add the word "Solstice"! Another perfect Pagan sabotage! Hey - maybe I should put antlers on the snowman as well!
- December 19, 2008 at 1:35 PM
- carrie said...
Jen, you need to ask woot.com if they have any writer openings.
- December 19, 2008 at 1:49 PM
- Leigh Ayn said...
holy cannolis
by the time i got down to the actual wreck I was laughing so hard... I actually made this muscle in my side get really twisted or something and now it hurts... you owe me a get well soon wreck - December 19, 2008 at 2:01 PM
Oh Jen. Your commentary fills me with laughter every day. The "icing" on that perfect joke was the cake. Congrats.
- December 19, 2008 at 2:02 PM
Another awesome wreck! - December 19, 2008 at 2:08 PM
They could have used "Season's Greetings" XP
- December 19, 2008 at 2:09 PM
- Nicole Wilson Conley said...
i was anxious to see the outcome after such a hilarious commentary. so great!
- December 19, 2008 at 2:22 PM
Stinking, rotten hilarious. At the risk of being un-pc...Merry Christmas!
- December 19, 2008 at 2:24 PM
'winter everyone! ^^
too funny ^^ i wonder who can buy this ^^ - December 19, 2008 at 2:26 PM
I haven't seen "Oscar" but it's now on my Netflix list. Maybe Jen should have a side-line of movie referrals for those who love her commentary.
Personally, I heard Bugs Bunny in the episode where the ganster Rocky kidnapped him. Later the police (Irish accent)ask: "Now where did you hide Rocky?" Bugs: "Would I throw my good friend Rocky into the oven?" Police: "You might rabbit, you might."
Key to one's personality, which ganster one thinks of first.
Suzanne - December 19, 2008 at 2:51 PM
It's Sad How Politically Correct we Must be.
Thanks to the Liberal Independent thinkers who want to Ruin Everyones Christmas/Hanukkah.
Ba Humbug on them - December 19, 2008 at 2:52 PM
- Liz said...
Seriously...it does my heart good to see so many people who love "Oscar" as much as I do!
Oh, and this wreck definitely falls under the category of all-time "WTF???"s...
Word verification: "makesi"...as in "This wreck makesi me laugh" - December 19, 2008 at 2:54 PM
- The Lili Effect said...
Jen, seriously. We need to go have a beer together. You love all the same movies, you'd understand that the red converse on my amazon wishlist are actually because of a crush on David Tennant, AND you like the movie "Oscar". No one has watched that film more than I have. Marisa Tomei far outshines her work with Cousin Vinnie.......
- December 19, 2008 at 2:58 PM
- Gloom Raider said...
Oh, wow. Oscar!, Loved that movie...
- December 19, 2008 at 3:17 PM
- *James* said...
wow. i have to say that is a pretty sad 'winter' cake.
word verification: distroym
These cake decorators are cramping my holiday spirit, lets distroym! - December 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM
- Hyena Overlord said...
CC hope everyone is ok after $6100 damage.
Brown icing... is appropriate for our crappy snowless sort of winters.
wvotd sledev...the sound my studded tires make spinning on the heavy lines of paint at intersection. - December 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Megan thought the word winter should have a period. I think the decorator was being subtle and meant winter is over (After all, it is over the underline). And what would symbolize the end of winter more than a lonely snowman.
WV: torrige--Papa Bear's porridge that Goldilocks couldn't eat. - December 19, 2008 at 3:36 PM
I got a great chuckle out of this one. Thanks!
Monshe : When a monster gets the munchies. (I don't know how hungry he might be if he sees that cake!) - December 19, 2008 at 3:36 PM
- Julie said...
I think this is the funniest one yet. OMG
- December 19, 2008 at 3:43 PM
Wow - Brown icing? Shouldn't he have been a brown snowman?
- December 19, 2008 at 3:51 PM
- Bibi said...
Maybe that's a really short haiku?
It's certainly festive. - December 19, 2008 at 3:55 PM
*snorts* WTF. hahahaha
that is EXACTLY how the conversation went down, I'm sure of it!
*snorts with laughter again* - December 19, 2008 at 3:56 PM
Hang on, what about me? I live in Australia... that offends me because it's stinking-hot SUMMER here!
- December 19, 2008 at 3:58 PM
You know... *chocolate* icing is brown.
Awesome cake. My jaw dropped. - December 19, 2008 at 4:10 PM
GREAT "Oscar" references! I was laughing outloud!
- December 19, 2008 at 4:16 PM
- Mari said...
Do they live somewhere there is a drought, or did the decorator get bumped off mid-icing?
- December 19, 2008 at 4:20 PM
- Scritzy said...
Well ... it does kind of look like winter in my state, where everything's brown outside and someone puts up a snowman inflatable to make it seem more "seasonal."
But it still sucks.
The commentary was spot-on, as usual.
Word verification: lakinse. Incense for the lactose-intolerant. - December 19, 2008 at 4:32 PM
- Tama said...
Best laugh of the day so far! love it.
- December 19, 2008 at 4:34 PM
- JennyF said...
One of the best holiday posts this holiday season. I am so glad I read all of the commentary before scrolling down to the picture -- classic!
- December 19, 2008 at 4:43 PM
- Diane Laney Fitzpatrick said...
Howse about them cupcakes to the left? I had to get my sunglasses out.
- December 19, 2008 at 4:59 PM
- Joy said...
LOVE this post! I had this great mental image of the men of the Soprano family standing around the kitchen table in ruffled aprons.
Concerning political correctness, I know a teacher who has "Merry Christmas" on her classroom walls in 10+ languages so it is "educational." - December 19, 2008 at 5:09 PM
- fuzzandfuzzlet said...
- December 19, 2008 at 5:21 PM
Winter! How dare they discriminate those of us who live in the Southern hemisphere... >:)
- December 19, 2008 at 5:26 PM
I have to confess... I actually think this cake is adorable! The snowman is cute, and it's poetic in its barrenness.
Not sure WHAT occasion someone would actually buy this for, though.
Oh, and the frosting is brown because it's chocolate, yes? Either that, or the cake is set in Chicago. We got a half-foot of snow this morning, and it's already turned into filthy slush. - December 19, 2008 at 5:59 PM
- Bri said...
I'll post something Politically Correct when I stop laughing.
Brianna firstname.lastname@example.com
http://briannamccarthy.blogspot.com - December 19, 2008 at 6:25 PM
- Beep said...
Okay. I died laughing.
I read this to my husband out loud (cause I can do voices really well) and we both laughed again.
subtitle: "Yep." - December 19, 2008 at 7:13 PM
Shouldn't the cake be white, to like, you know, look like winter?
- December 19, 2008 at 7:38 PM
It's pretty obvious that this wreck was a phone order that probably went:
"I want 'winter wonderland' in blue."
...which poorly translated into "winter, underlined, in blue."
Yay Mad Gab! (I'm just a loooove machine!) - December 19, 2008 at 7:42 PM
- Kitty said...
Excellent commentary, excellent (in its badness) cake...say, do you dislike "cookie cakes" as much as you dislike CCCs?
- December 19, 2008 at 7:52 PM
I am OFENDED! I grew up in the South Earstern U.S., and we rarely if ever had snow-- even more rare was to have enough snow to build a snowman!
This is OBVIOUSLY a plot to exclude anyone in temperate and tropical zones! I DEMAND COMPENSATION!!!
*tee hee* ^_^ - December 19, 2008 at 8:01 PM
- Mandi said...
BUAHAHAHAHA!!!!... OK...I have to compose myself just to type... I will be giggling to myself about this one for a LONG time! Thanks Jen!
- December 19, 2008 at 8:01 PM
- Unknown said...
the cake was amusing, but the dialogue was hilarious! thanks for the giggle. - December 19, 2008 at 8:25 PM
- Timba said...
Guys, it's just chocolate-flavoured butter cream. It is a surprisingly popular icing in my shop.
Timba - December 19, 2008 at 9:08 PM
- Suzanne Dargie said...
They say that when someone writes in upper and lower case characters indiscriminately, it means they're insane.
(look how WiNter is written) - December 19, 2008 at 9:14 PM
- E.A.D. said...
I totally heard Bugs Bunny while reading your commentary. And the cake is....very....plain? Uninspiring? Blah? Unfinished? Maybe all four?
wv: ciagadri. Sounds like an Italian surname. - December 19, 2008 at 9:36 PM
- Gretchen said...
why is there a snowman in the middle of the dessert?
- December 19, 2008 at 9:50 PM
- Clare K. R. Miller said...
This is basically a perfect post. I was amused throughout the 'conversation', and totally guffawed when I saw that cake itself. Perfect!
- December 19, 2008 at 10:42 PM
- Michele said...
This is a wreck all the way around. When I think of winter I definitely think of brown! lol BUT with a snowman....guess they used all the snow that WAS on the ground to make the snowman, which is why there is no more white on the ground! So take that and have a great winter! LOL
Love your commentary BTW! - December 19, 2008 at 10:55 PM
- Jenn said...
And I thought I was the only one who thought that "Oscar" was genius.
This cake is horribly awesome. - December 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM
- Red Wolf said...
Seriously: is that a cake, a brownie or a cookie? Look at the sides, it seems to be in some kind of metal pan or something. I'm so confused!
Word verification: sessesse. Also confusing. - December 20, 2008 at 12:55 AM
Beyond "all righty then..." there just are no words.
- December 20, 2008 at 1:19 AM
- robyn said...
Well..maybe the cake decorator is pagan.
My husband just survived a round of layoffs at his company. I thought we'd get a cake that says "Congratulations on keeping your job!"
=D - December 20, 2008 at 1:24 AM
- Unknown said...
As an Australian, I am offended by the impliction that Winter is the only season at this time of year, when we are just getting started with Summer!
Maybe they should just go with December?
;) - December 20, 2008 at 2:28 AM
I'm surprised so many people complain about poo-coloured icing. Ever had chocolate icing? I do believe that's what this cake is iced in (there is another row of "shells" border outside of the snowman vignette)
- December 20, 2008 at 3:50 AM
- ksaldria said...
This post made me think of Oscar. I haven't seen that movie in so long. Great writing :)
- December 20, 2008 at 4:46 AM
I can't help but think that the request went something like "I'd just like it to say 'Winter' y'know? A snowman would be nice; go with that."
I also have 'flu so I can't manage anything that isn't really obvious, sorry.
Excellent writing as ever :D - December 20, 2008 at 11:08 AM
Ha ha ha. This is brilliant.
- December 20, 2008 at 11:51 AM
I think I'm more freaked out about the neon yellow, orange, and blue cupcakes to the left of the Winter cake!
Oh, and that icing may be chocolate, but it is still grossly poo colored and there would be lots of good jokes around my office - since I work in a GI (Gastroenterology) doctor's office! - December 20, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Where did the gangsters part come from? And the snowman is white, so that makes blue and white.
- December 20, 2008 at 1:12 PM
- Giusi. said...
FLMAO!!! that's so awesome!
btw.. i recommended yer site to the bakery manager at my store. she was highly amused when I told her about it
hehehe ;D - December 20, 2008 at 5:07 PM
- RooManda said...
- December 20, 2008 at 5:24 PM
- Eva said...
i actually like this cake! it could be my hatred for christmas and all the stupidity associated with the holiday and this time of year.....
- December 20, 2008 at 8:24 PM
- Ro said...
I am from the Southern Hemisphere and find this cake extremely offensive.
- December 20, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Actually, this cake is still completely and totally politically incorrect, simply for the reason that it is not winter in some parts of the world - including Australia, where I live.
This cake does not fully appreciate the needs and requirements of the world community living in the southern hemisphere. - December 20, 2008 at 11:53 PM
But... but... this cake is offensive to people living in the southern hemisphere where it's currently summer!
- December 21, 2008 at 6:29 AM
Very funny. I think this may be a case of a mostly unfrosted cake. Maybe that was the goal... for people who don't want alot of frosting. It still looks pretty bad, though. Winter is an odd theme for a brownish colored cake with hardly any decorations. Oh, word verification: peniza... uhuhuhuhuh.
- December 21, 2008 at 11:49 AM
Ruin Everyones Christmas
Really? Your enjoyment is that fragile? You poor thing.
Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Saturnalia, since a generic greeting MIGHT RUIN EVERYTHING!!! - December 21, 2008 at 2:28 PM
ROFL too funny....
May I wish all here a GLAD YULE!
Tonight is the solstice, after all!
And no, I'm not really being sarcastic. Yule is a source of so much joy to me, and I'm showering everyone with sunny good wishes at this holy tide.
Tonight is the all-night vigil we have around a bonfire, with entirely too much "holiday spirit" (in liquid form) and tasty treats and whatnot making the rounds of all the participants. I'd share it all with everyone here if I could!
GLAD YULETIDE to all!! - December 21, 2008 at 5:04 PM
- Red Wolf said...
The brown frosting is obviously there to represent the way snow looks in late January when it's been laying around getting stepped on for a month and a half. Yuck...
- December 21, 2008 at 7:53 PM
- greenbean said...
LOL. Poiple! Awesome commentary boss.
- December 22, 2008 at 9:30 AM
- Serr8d said...
"Dear Santa:
As the days grow shorter and the nights colder, a correctness has settled upon our land. All of our traditions are questioned; our values, weighed and measured against the newer world's orders that everyone should be treated exactly equal, and not be put in a position of disproportionately feeling any better or worse than anyone else. Eventually, all that's not feelings-neutral will be discarded for new, happy, shiny memes. Santa, there's just no place left for you in our new world.
I won't be leaving milk and cookies for you this year. I bought you a cake instead.
Merry Winter!" - December 22, 2008 at 9:34 AM
Ha! Funny commentary as always. It does make me wonder though... If next year there's a cake that says "Spring" with a weird little flower on it, will it be a normal cake wreck or will it be the beginning of a War on Easter?
- December 22, 2008 at 10:08 AM
You are a bright spot in my day!!!!! - December 22, 2008 at 7:26 PM
- Lauren Winsor Stenmoe said...
Oh. My. God. That cake is too much. I am 100% sure the conversation went down as you transcribed.
Man... I laughed so hard my eyes are watering. - December 22, 2008 at 7:48 PM
Clearly Santa has his hands up asking "WTF is up with my thighs?"
- December 22, 2008 at 8:34 PM
The snowman is just setting decorators up for failure. Clearly snowman do not have legs or arms of that sort.
- December 22, 2008 at 8:36 PM
- stuckonsushi said...
the conversation piece you put before the picture really sounds exactly like what happened in the development process for this... creation.
- December 22, 2008 at 9:40 PM
I think the writers of "Oscar" have a case for copy-right violation...
- December 23, 2008 at 1:35 PM
Why do you hate Italians and Blacks?
- December 24, 2008 at 5:56 AM
- Serr8d said...
Anonymouse 5:56AM, why do you look for hate where no hate exists?
Project, much? - December 24, 2008 at 3:53 PM
It's a bleak, bleak winter.
- January 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM
The thing is, I was just happy to see he spelled the word correctly.
I was expecting "Wintuh"
That snowman could have used a friend, maybe a deer or something? If only the brown frosting hadn't all been used up...
Word Verification: Lingso = it's pig latin, right? - January 21, 2009 at 4:30 PM
who said minimalism was dead?
- January 29, 2009 at 10:39 AM
Did anyone else notice that a couple of those cupcakes have fallen over in the box?
Clearly this place takes great pride in their products. - February 13, 2009 at 4:12 AM
I love so much about this post... but mostly for the Oscar reference!! :)
- June 5, 2009 at 6:50 PM
- Kerri said...
I am offended. It doesn't snow enough down here to make snowmen.
I'm going to sue. - June 30, 2009 at 6:24 PM
Best. Post. Ever. I mean...nice poiple, boss.
WV; calne. Call me, too. - July 29, 2009 at 1:06 PM
@Gretchen said...
why is there a snowman in the middle of the dessert?
Actually, the snowman is in the lower left-hand corner of the dessert. - August 17, 2009 at 8:45 PM
I recognize that dialogue... Oscar is my favorite movie ever. Nice!
- October 4, 2009 at 1:08 AM
- Ricebubbles said...
Has everyone else noticed the huge gap where there is absolutely nothing? What are they intending to do with the brown space?
- October 8, 2009 at 9:23 AM
This is set up astonishingly like a first-grader's drawing. The only thing missing is the smiling sun in the top right corner.
Regarding the persistent brown, really now, dirt's a pretty much universal background, no? And how do you expect a decorator to make a white snowman show up against a white background? Remember, they're operating on a first-grade level. Things like outlining or horizon lines don't occur to them. Cut some slack ;D
wv: "forivat" "I-ah deed all of zees vurk on my cake--and forivat? No one et eet." - October 14, 2009 at 4:41 PM
I wish it ended with a period. Winter.
- October 21, 2009 at 10:30 PM
- Unknown said...
I get it! It's the color of salted/sanded snow on the sides of the road during winter time! Genius!
- October 26, 2009 at 10:43 AM
Loved the Oscar movie references!! Thanks!
- November 22, 2009 at 12:34 AM
- VeggieT said...
I think that this might offend those who don't like snow or winter... I think we should just go with a plain cookie, or and it has to be sugar free, with no artificial ingredients... and non-dairy...
- December 24, 2009 at 3:44 PM
Even THAT would offend people. What about those who love frosting or hate cake? Or those who don't have winter or those who have snow? You can't please everyone. The only type of cake that would not offend people would be no cake, and even THAT would offend people who want cake!
- December 24, 2009 at 5:50 PM
- H.H. said...
Is the post from Angela a joke?! haha!
- March 4, 2010 at 1:05 AM
Really? A Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder cake ? Really??
Tif - March 31, 2010 at 10:26 AM
- Amy Harris said...
I just bought your book and may I say that the Goodfellas would have been in good company here. While I haven't had a chance to really search your old posts yet, this one has proven to be my favorite thus far.
After all, who can't see Robert De Niro in a chef hat and apron with the Godfather logo on the front with his hands on his hips saying, "You eat dat or you gonna get an offer you wanna refuse." - May 5, 2010 at 1:57 AM
As someone who lived in North Carolina during the 2001 ice storm (from which we had an 8-foot drift of snow in our backyard) and the 2009 Oklahoma winter storm (4-5 feet of snow outside my apartment building), I have to roll my eyes. Oh no, we neeeeeever get snow below the Mason-Dixon! Ugh. Really, are Northerners as ignorant as you so often portray yourselves? - June 29, 2010 at 10:55 AM
If I may make a suggestion: Y'all need to make some Winter-underlined Greeting Cards. I'll even design it for you:
*ahem* Standard card, brown background, snowman in lower left corner, blue and purple trim, Winter (underlined) in the top 3/4. Blank inside.
You're welcome. - September 28, 2010 at 12:04 AM
- Unknown said...
I think I like your blog, but then again I am constantly accused of having no taste!
- October 17, 2010 at 1:42 AM
- Happy Winter said...
That is a serious "COME'ON MAN" moment. I'm offended because there was a snow man but not a snow woman on the cake
- January 9, 2011 at 1:08 AM
Holy crap. I was supposed to be productive today, but I can't pull myself away from this website! I am having trouble seeing through my tears of laughter trying to type this! God, I haven't laughed this much in years! LORDY!
- May 4, 2011 at 1:57 PM
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A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.
Now, don't you have a photo you want to send me? ;)
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text:
The Wild West in the far north of Germany
A festival that takes you back to your childhood: the
Karl May festival in Bad Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein, brings Karl May's
characters to life like nowhere else. Winnetou, Old Shatterhand, Old Surehand,
Sam Hawkins and all the others bring a flavour of the Wild West to the town,
whose huge open-air arena provides a spectacular setting for these legendary
The adventure stories written by Karl May, who was born
in Saxony in 1842, have captivated generations of young readers – which is why
the spa town of Bad Segeberg decided in the 1950s to use its impressive stadium
on Kalkberg hill for the Winnetou Festival, the forerunner of today's Karl May
Festival. The stories featuring the Apache chief Winnetou are still the most
famous of Karl May's works.
Since that time, many actors have played the coveted
role. Pierre Brice, who found fame playing Winnetou in the films of the 1960s,
was secured for the part in 1988. From 1992 to 2006 the role was given to Gojko
Mitic, the 'Winnetou of the East'. His successor in 2007 was Erol Sander, whose
portrayal of the virtuous Apache chief is the most popular to date.
It is a long-established tradition for guest stars to
support the cast – Tanja Szewczenko, Mathieu Carrière, Peter Hofmann, Elke
Sommer, Ralf Wolter, Martin Semmelrogge, Freddy Quinn, Lisa Fitz, Ingo Naujoks
and Ingrid Steeger are among those who have played the roles of gallant heroes,
sinister villains and gentle squaws. And after the show, anyone wishing to
experience the Wild West for themselves can enjoy a taste of 1880s America at
the Indian Village – right next door to the open-air theatre.
Further information
Latest information:
In 2013 Winnetou I
Upcoming dates:
22-Jun-2013 - 01-Sep-2013
Ticket prices:
Standard tickets costs between €14.00 and €25.00, there
are concessions for children and groups.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Project Members
- Tom Güldemann
- Roland Kießling (Universität Hamburg)
- Christfried Naumann
- Gertrud Boden (University of Cologne)
Student assitants
- Juliane Böttger (Universität Leipzig)
- Nadine Borchardt (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
A Pan-dialectal Documentation of Taa
This project aimed to document the language complex Taa spoken in southwestern Botswana and central-eastern Namibia. The project was funded within the DoBeS framework of the VW-Foundation and was carried out by an interdisciplinary team of three linguists, one anthopologist, and two student assistants.
The dialect cluster Taa (also known by the term !Xoon a.k.a. "!Xóõ") can be characterized as the last vital language of the Tuu (a.k.a. Southern Khoisan) family and is spoken by a socially and economically marginalized group of ca. 4000 people. The present project followed a first phase which was restricted to the Namibian varieties, West !Xoon and 'N|ohan, both of which had previously not been subject to in-depth research and documentation. While the linguistic differences between the two varieties turned out to be much greater than expected, the two speech communities are today heavily intermingled and depend socio-politically on each other in many ways. A reasonable analysis of Namibian Taa and a full understanding of the recorded data are only possible if the documentation includes the Taa communities in Botswana, at least in the form of a survey. The second project phase of two years, which started in August 2007, dealt with this topic, in addition to further work on the Namibian varieties. The linguistic work gave special emphasis to the identification of click parameters, the tonal system, semantic and morpho-syntactic aspects of noun classification, and serial verb constructions. Anthropological research focusedon ethno-history, cultural mapping including land use and subsistence patterns, as well as selected aspects of social organization.
Data archive
- 55 sound files (wav)
- 56 text files (txt, doc)
- 23 annotation files (eaf)
- 2115 pictures (jpg)
- 38 video files (mpg)
Contact: lingarchive@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de


text:
Mario Tagliati and Gustavo Cosaro founded Picnic Time in 1982 with one simple mission: to sell affordable traditional European-style picnic baskets in America. Since then, Picnic Time has become famous for developing innovative and practical outdoor leisure products that inspire people to spend quality time with family and friends.
Over the years, Picnic Time's line of products have evolved far beyond the picnic basket to include coolers, chairs, tables, BBQ sets, totes, umbrellas and more. But one thing has remained the same: its commitment to customer service. Picnic Time's staff is committed to creating quality products that serve you time and again.
You can find everything you need for camping, hiking, beach trips, pool trips, or picnics in Picnic Time's collections. Life's a picnic with Picnic Time!


text:
Camping Is Fun, Pests Are Not: Keep Safe in the Great Outdoors
by Puneet Khurania
21 June, 2019
As fall sets in, many families begin thinking about Halloween: the costumes, the decorations, the parties and, of course, the trick-or-treating. Although rubber spiders, plastic bats and other ghoulish creatures are part of the fun of the holiday, real pest invasions can be quite a fright. The National Pest Management Association (NPMA) advises homeowners to take precautions against creepy pests, which may look to take up residence during the cooler months. "Whether they are hiding in boxes of Halloween decorations that have been in storage the past year or looking for an easy way through a crack or crevice, creepy crawly pests can and do easily find their way indoors," noted Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for the NPMA. "Because real spiders, cockroaches and rodents are surely not the spooky décor most homeowners have in mind, we encourage them to take a few easy steps to prevent infestations." The NPMA offers the following tips for pest-proofing your home against unwelcome pests this fall: * Check all decorations before bringing them inside for any pests that may have nested over the past year. * Seal all cracks and crevices around the foundation of the home. Mice, often in search of warmth, can fit through holes the size of a dime. * Check for gaps under exterior doors, and install door sweeps to close them. Spiders can fit through openings as thin as a piece of paper. * Trim branches or bushes that touch the home. These wooden pathways can provide direct pest highways right into the house. * Store firewood several feet away from the house. Wood that is next to the foundation of a home offers a welcoming environment for rodents, termites and other pests. * Properly cap chimneys, and keep flus closed when not in use. Certain types of nuisance wildlife see chimneys as a potential home-sweet-home.


text:
Aviano Future
A new member of the Aviano Family
A new member of the Aviano Family
The Aviano series returns with a vigorous and futuristic sans serif. Aviano Future's powerful squared forms lend intensity and authority to your designs. Aviano Future's extended forms give the face strength and muscle. Aviano Future is a versatile new addition to the Aviano titling series.
Aviano Future comes in six different weights with "fast" Fasts and is packed with OpenType features. Want to use more traditional rounded forms? Need swash forms? Art Deco alternates? Aviano Future includes 390 alternate characters. Eleven style sets are available, two sets of art deco inspired alternates, small forms, tough swash, constructivist titling and traditional stylistic alternates. Aviano Future also includes 40 discretionary ligatures for artistic typographic compositions. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action.
OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Aviano Future is a great choice for a professional designer that wants to achieve a technological, futuristic or epic look.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Aviano series which can be used as complementary faces, including Aviano, Aviano Serif, Aviano Sans, Aviano Didone, Aviano Flare and Aviano Slab.
1/3rd off for a limited time!
1/3rd off for a limited time!


text:
So we have moved into the stage where Harper is getting into EVERYTHING. If she's not going out the doggie door, she is crawling as fast as lightening into the kitchen and opening every drawer and cabinet. Or the bathroom. "What to Expect when you are Excpecting" failed to tell me just how exhausting being a mom of a toddler can be. Maybe it's because I'm pushing 40.
She found her food drawer REAL fast. ha! Do all of you with babies have those things that you put on your cabinets to baby proof them? I'm trying to decide if we want to do that or not. Is it worth it? Or is it easier to say no or divert them elsewhere?
Here is my own personal Clark Grizzwold putting up our outside lights today. He spent ALL day doing it. And it was like 20 degrees. And we laughed at our neighbors who put them up in October. At least they did it on nice days. ha! We were the only house on our street without lights but we can no longer be labeled the Scrooge house. (We were actually just the "we have been out of town almost the whole month of November" house).
I'm so glad he didn't fall off the house. My baby needs a daddy.
Even though I'm a Southern Baptist girl - I like to think of myself as having a Dancing Queen somewhere inside of me waiting to get out. It looks like Harper is following in my footsteps. At OBU - we didn't have dances.....we had "functions". I think Harper might break it down at some functions one day!
And just some more family fun!


text:
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text:
Sixty years ago, the book Charlotte's Web first appeared in print. This children's classic is often seen as a story of a spider and a pig. But when E.B. White recorded a narration of the book, he said something different: "This is a story of the barn. I wrote it for children, and to amuse myself."
And the way he describes it, Homer Zuckerman's barn is a character with its own, complex personality — smelling of hay and manure, of grain and axle grease and new boots and fish heads for the barn cats, but mostly hay, which was a familiar smell to White. He grew up in a New York City suburb at a time when people rode horses and carriages, and his parents had a stable.
"His favorite thing was to care for animals," says author Michael Sims. "Chickens, ducks, mice, dogs of course." Sims is the author of The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic.
"In 1933, [White] and his wife, Katharine Angell, moved to Maine, bought a farm and settled into a whole different kind of life that brought back all of the favorite joys of childhood," Sims says.
And it was White's experiences in his own barn that led him to the story of Charlotte and her web. "One of the pigs he was raising died," Sims says, "and while he was carrying the pails of slops every day to the replacement pig in the barn, he noticed there was a spider attending its web every day, expanding the web, rebuilding what had happened the night before, and then one day he saw that it had spun an egg case."
When White had to go back to New York City, he cut down the spider's egg case and took it with him. Eventually the baby spiders hatched, and after that, White finished spinning his now-famous tale. And in 1970, he sat down in a studio to record the narration.
"He, of course, as anyone does doing an audio book, had to do several takes for various things, just to get it right," Sims says. "But every time, he broke down when he got to Charlotte's death. And he would do it, and it would mess up. ... He took 17 takes to get through Charlotte's death without his voice cracking or beginning to cry."
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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text:
Shedding light on how to choose the best bulb
About five years ago, various provinces began working toward eliminating old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs from our lives. The idea is that since such a small part of electricity used by incandescent bulbs actually gets turned into light, these bulbs must be wasteful.
The true situation is more complicated and I believe incandescent bulbs are not the bad things they're made out to be. But whether you agree with me or not, we all face the need to buy different sorts of light bulbs in the future and choosing wisely isn't as easy as it looks.One of the brightest lights on the new bulb horizon is offered by LED technology. This acronym stands for Light Emitting Diode and it's much better than the transitional technology of compact fluorescent bulbs. LEDs offer the potential for much greater lifespan and lower energy consumption than anything else. That said, I use the word "potential" for a reason.
The high price of LED bulbs has attracted hucksters to the market. Sooner or later, you'll be standing in a hardware store aisle, looking at two 100-watt LED light bulbs. One bulb costs $45, the other one $8. Which is the more economical choice?
Tom Herstad knows more about the flood of bad, expensive LED lights than most people because he's trying to counter this deceptive trend. It's not easy. He makes it his business to bring high-quality LEDs to market through his company, Regal Lighting Designs (regalleds.com; 888-900-0702) and he offers several things to look for as you assess LED bulbs.
The main issue is something called thermal management. Even though LEDs do use less energy than incandescent bulbs, they still need to get rid of waste heat - more waste heat than you might think, in fact. Greater surface area on cooling fins (thin, fin-like protrusions that increase surface area to boost the rate of heat loss) is better than less and that's something you can compare by eye in stores. In tests I conducted in my shop, full-sized LEDs made to thread into conventional sockets had fins that become too hot to touch after 15 minutes of use. Fins are definitely an important issue. "Cheap LEDs have no heat-management features," says Herstad, "and that's one reason they fail more quickly than they should."
Another thing to watch for is price. Bargain-basement $8 LEDs deliver less value than $45 equivalents because they burn out proportionally faster while delivering less light. Herstad says that of all the offshore LED manufacturing countries, Taiwan currently shows the highest commitment to quality along with reasonable price levels. Country of origin is another thing you can look for as you shop.
Today's best LEDs offer warm tones of light equal to incandescents. Look for lights rated to deliver light in the 2700 kelvin (K) range of colour temperature. Many people find colour temperatures higher than this to be too white and clinical looking.
There's a growing citizens' movement to halt the various bans on incandescent bulbs in Canada, mostly based on the high cost of alternatives. Whether or not these bans are actually repealed, it still makes sense to know how to choose and where to use today's best lighting technology, even if inventor Thomas Edison's famous light bulb is not the big bad threat it's made out to be.
Source: Ottawa Citizen


text:
A Series of Disappointments by Stephen Gill
In July of 1955 Walker Evans published an article in Fortune magazine called the Beauties of the Common Tool. As an introduction he wrote, 'Among low-priced, factory-produced goods, none is so appealing to the senses as the ordinary hand tool. Hence, a hardware store is a kind of off-beat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear "undersigned" forms…Aside from their functions -- each of these tools lures the eye to follow its curves and angles, and invites the hand to test its balance…In fact, almost all the basic small tools stand, aesthetically speaking, for elegance, candor and purity.'
For this series he photographed in black and white and with his 8X10 camera pictures so reductive that his strategy was to have the viewer notice -- as if for the first time -- the beauty of form that can be experienced in everyday items found at a local hardware store..
Art photography today also has turned the corner where the individuality of the "photographer" is not witnessed through their prowess in picture-making but simply through their wit and imagination in drawing your attention to particular objects that they describe in similar plain-stated ways. For Evans it was the common tool. For Stephen Gill, one of
For me Stephen Gill's books have mostly amounted to illustrating well thought out and somewhat entertaining gimmicks that suit the idea of a book whether it is buying a cheap camera at a flea market and using it to photograph the flea market and surroundings (Hackney Wick) -- burying photographs of Hackney Wick in Hackney Wick and then burying the books too (Buried) -- photographing street workers wearing yellow safety jackets (Invisible) -- or photographing folded toilet paper (Anonymous Origami).
Christoph Schaden called Gill's strategy 'form follows technique follows topic.' For me this naturally leads into the dangerous territory of gimmickry. To pile a lot of backstory about a camera bought for 50p from a man selling items out of his car boot in Hackney and then using that camera to photograph the place somehow makes these images more interesting? As much as Hackney Wick was touted as "one of the most important photo books," do the owners of that book pull it frequently from their shelves for the actual pictures made with that 50p camera? I don't know the answer obviously but I suspect that most of the copies need a good dusting.
If there is one aspect to most of his books that cannot be upstaged even by the attention arresting gimmickry is a sense of true affection for this
Hackney Flowers was the first book of Gill's that I was actually compelled to get and I have enjoyed it over the course of many viewings. This was the project in which Gill laid flowers, plants, seeds and other material from Hackney over his photographs as well as over "found" photos and re-photographed the results. What we get are exquisite combinations of color and form that confuse distinction of scale and depth but most importantly, they are the first images from Gill that have an extended life beyond the conceptual gimmick. 'Form follows technique follows topic' that works for me. The affection felt in this body of work amounts to no less than a beautifully constructed love letter.
Gill's latest book A Series of Disappointments is, as I mentioned before, a collection of folded and discarded betting slips that Gill gathered and photographed against a plain grey background. The title of each photo is of the betting details that are often found after performing unfolding "autopsies" after the photography had been completed.
This book has an appeal of "readymade" art just waiting to be discovered by a witty and imaginative artist but within each twist and turn, fold and tear of the slips, are the emotions contained in the hands that shaped them. One is shredded while another is twisted into a straw. One looks worn due to sweaty palms while another is formed into a curly-cue. Gill draws our attention to these plain-stated objects that sit as fictional guides to the original owners personalities at the moment of loss.
I like this book but after holding it to the same critical standard of some of the others I wonder if it will continue to spur thought. In time I may find my hands twisting the pages with the same frustration of one of the betting slip owners frustrated after losing $75.00 USD.
All of Stephen Gill's books are wonderfully designed and made and A Series of Disappointments is no exception. This time Gill employs an accordion fold which allows all 36 plates to be displayed at once. The cover (with three different designs and colors) can be removed from the book block and holes at the top of the pages allows for hanging (clever, clever).
A Series of Disappointments was co-published in 3000 copies by Gill's Nobody press and the Archive of Modern Conflict and judging from the retail price and past success of Gill's books - once again the house is sure to win.


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Why Choose an Endodontist
Reason 1: Experience
On average, endodontists perform nearly 25 root canal treatments a week, while general dentists perform less than two.
Reason 2: Efficiency
Because they limit their practice solely to endodontic treatment, endodontists are efficient and precise. This equates to positive experiences and faster healing.
Reason 3: Availability
Most endodontists offer tremendous flexibility in accommodating emergency cases, so delays in treatment are kept to a minimum and patients can be relieved of dental pain quickly.
Reason 4: Advanced Technology
Many endodontists use state-of-the-art technology such as operating microscopes, digital imaging, ultrasonic instrumentation and fiber optics, to treat their patients quickly and comfortably.
Today, getting root canal treatment is often no more uncomfortable than having a filling.


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A Cortez woman charged with killing two people on a motorcycle while driving drunk has pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide in District Court.
Stacie Pierce-Green, 41, faces up to 16 years in prison after signing a plea agreement with the 6th Judicial District Attorney's Office.
Sentencing is set for 2:30 p.m. April 5.
She was scheduled to face trial next month.
Green was driving a green Mercury Tracer westbound on U.S. Highway 160, a few miles west of Hesperus, when she crept over the center line by a couple of feet and sideswiped an oncoming motorcycle, killing two riders - Frank Steward, 66, and Jessica Steward, 65, of Tahoe Vista, Calif.
The 2011 Harley-Davidson motorcycle was traveling eastbound close to the double-yellow line at the time of impact, but the Colorado State Patrol said the motorcycle was in its own lane.
The crash occurred about 4:45 p.m. May 22, 2012.
Pierce-Green told troopers she drank four Bud Light beers and smoked marijuana, but she denied causing the accident.
Pierce-Green has a prior criminal record.
She pleaded guilty Nov. 30, 2007, to felony assault with a deadly weapon in the heat of passion. She was on probation at the time of the accident, and therefore was facing up to 24 years in prison on each count of vehicular homicide.


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Aspirin Video No. 16
Acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin, is well known for its properties as a nonnarcotic analgesic and anti-inflammatory drug. A derivative of salicylic acid, the drug crystallizes in the form of a white, needle-like powder with only a faint odor. It was first synthesized in 1897 by chemist, Felix Hoffmann, an employee at the Bayer® Company in Germany to relieve his father's rheumatism. The compound later became the active ingredient in aspirin named - "a" from acetyl, "spir" from the Meadowsweet plant Spiraea ulmaria (now called Filipendula ulmari) that yields salicin, and "in," a common suffix for medications.
Salicylates are naturally occurring compounds that have long been used by humans for their medicinal properties. To relieve pain and fever, the Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed teas made from the salicin rich bark and leaves of the willow tree, Salix alba. Historically, many other cultures throughout the world have utilized plant extracts high in salicin compounds.
Salicin, the parent of the salicylate drug family, was successfully isolated in 1829 from willow bark. Sodium salicylate, a predecessor to aspirin, was developed along with salicylic acid in 1875 as a pain reliever. Although sodium salicylate was widely used during the 1800s, it was very irritating to the stomach lining and caused problems for people taking it on a regular basis to treat painful conditions such as arthritis. This was the dilemma Felix Hoffmann's father encountered, which motivated the chemist to develop a form with less serious side effects.


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ORLY GELFX Vitamin-Infused Easy-OFF Base Coat Gel
The ORLY GELFX gel manicure system ensures incredibly durable, chip-free manicures that last for two weeks with superior shine and easy removal.
This revolutionary formula nourishes nails with feel-good ingredients for durability, strength and shine. Antioxidant vitamins A and E help to promote healthy nails while pro-vitamin B5 protects the structure of the natural nail.
Made in USA!!!
No reviews found


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Which new features do you want the most?
What do you want us to work on next? (we can't guarantee all suggestions will become a reality or that they'll happen anytime soon…or at all, sorry :)
EDIT: We know the thread is really long, so don't worry about combing through the whole thing to see if your idea has already been suggested. Just go ahead and let us know what you think, we'll take care of the rest (hopefully in a timely manner).
If you have a specific problem or encounter a bug, send an email to jason at steepster.com.
Love the updates! Any chance that you'll add the ability to sort by tea name or company name in the Shopping List or Cupboard?
We'll add that to our list. It'd be especially great to have the shopping list teas grouped by company to make it easier to order all at once.
I can only assume that Steepster users would have such amazing teas in their cupboards that anyone would want to purchase them all. That's why I think we should add a "purchase all teas in cupboard" button and just make it easier for everyone ;) (jk, don't look for that anytime soon)
Speaking of updates for Cupboards, I wish there was a way to mark a tea you see on someone else's Cupboard as 'log this!' for when you're curious about a tea and you want to encourage your friends to chat it up. But I am thrilled with the Cupboard addition – this is what I was using my Shopping List for! X-D
Interesting idea…we'll take a look at that and see where we can fit it in. Thanks!
I'd also like to be able to "sort" my cupboard – specifically by tea type and/or company name. I also like Suzi's idea above logging (or "bookmarking") a tea that you are interested in and want to try or read more about.
@Teaspoon, that's similar to my "request" button next to teas in a person's cupboard, but I don't think the teaspoon idea will work literally. Most cups of white tea take much more than that. I'd only get about a 2oz cup out of a teaspoon.
An iPhone application would be cool. I have my iPhone around me a lot more than my notebook.
I second @ge0ff73's request for an iPhone app! I'd love to be able to rate teas and add tasting notes on the go! Other than that, keep up the great work here. I really feel like this is a productive place to be every time I log in, and that's saying a lot amidst all the other social networks out there! ;P
i think it would be great to have a log of what teas you are drinking – instead of adding a tasting note every time i drink the same tea…almost like a last.fm i've listened to an artist 5 times this week. i've had 5 cups of genmaicha this day/week/month etc.
@Britt Wight- then just click "save" w/o adding anything to the tasting note. Although this line is gettng particularly confusing since most have nothing to do w/ Auggy's suggestion.
You "like" it by pressing the word "like". The heart is read if you've already "liked" the tasting note.
To expand on Susan's post, a how to guide or help section for common commands would be much appreciated by newbies.
If you are going to include sorting by tea company name, then some clean-up of tea company names is needed. For example: "The Boston Tea Co." vs "Boston Tea Co." and "The English Tea Store" vs "English Tea Store".
@Little Yellow Teapot. Just PM Jason w/ the companies that need to be merged and he will do it.
Hi, @Cofftea, I sent them a couple of samples to spur them to do a check thru the database, but I think they stopped with the 2 that I sent. This is their site and they need to keep it up properly, not put it on us. It only took a couple of minutes to find those 2. Pretty obvious.
Jason, Mike, and Jack shouldn't be bribed. They can't do everything and they can't know something needs to be fixed if no one brings it to their attention. This is the steepster community. If you think it's so important then send them a PM volunteering your services.
A tea blog would be cool. I am into flavored teas and there are a lot of blends I would like to see. I would also like to talk about my favorite herbs and spices.
@cofftea: I think LYT meant they sent us samples (examples) of companies that needed to be merged, not tea samplers :)
LOL (cracking up at my stupidity) Duh. See how much tea consumes my thoughts? Sorry LYT=D
It'd be great if a specific tea we're given a cumulative score based on the ratings from all the shops that offer it. For instance, Pi Lo Chun would have one overall rating for the tea itself, but it's derived from the scores for all the tea shops. It'd be way easier to find new teas without seeing the same one 30 different times, and less confusing for people who are trying to expand their tastes in tea.
Is there a way to continually update/ change a previously reviewed tea, so that you can just add or change the same tea reviewed, over time. Then you could have one Big tea review for the same tea, or have the Option to start another review of the same tea if you want to, say for a new lot of the same tea-from the same company-should the tea be a better or lesser quality?
Well, I'm not sure why anyone would want to, but you can edit an existing note at any time. Just click "tea log", go to the tasting note that you want to edit, click "edit", make changes, and click, save changes." You can also write a new tasting note by clicking on the name of the tea and clicking "add tasting note". The only thing you can not do; however, is assign more than one numerical rating for a certain tea. This has been suggested many times and is one of my biggest pet peeves w/ Steepster.
I'm sure this has probably been said, but I just joined up. On the home page on the right hand side, the list of tea types with the check boxes — is there a way to de-select all? I usually only want to look up just the black and green teas, and it takes several minutes to unclick all those check boxes. Thanks!
I hope I'm not being repetitive (in case it was mentioned before), but will there will be an iPhone or Droid app to steepster? I think that would be EPIC!
Would like to post Ingredient of True chai or simply Masala chai being an Indian, I have travelled half of the world and never had the same Chai we drink in India. How I can post it if there is no wall like in facebook.
A section for teas I had in the past.
A list of companies that have some sort of single portion sample service. Photoalbum for our teacups , teapots etc
This may have been suggested but a way to export the tea log to an excel spreadsheet and to download our tasting notes into a file.
I would LOVE to see a mobile app for smartphones so that all of this information would be available on on the go in an easy to use platform. Had a wonderful matcha the other day and had to make notes on it in my phones "notebook", then transfer it into Steepster when I got home later.
I am a new tea connoisseur and I would love to see and educational section on Steepster including:
- a dictionary for tea terminology,
- an index of tea categories explaining the history and characteristics of the different categories of tea,
- an index of common tea ingredients explaining what type of plant they come from, the taste profile of that ingredient.
- How to section teaching newbies some basic theory on traditional, popular as well as newer techniques for steeping tea.
An iphone app that rates teas and notes so when I'm in the store and see something new, I can tell if it's worth bothering without logging in and search the website.
An easy way to log the teas I drink that show up in the cupboard. I'm probably not going to write about a tea every time I drink it but it is an entertaining thing to know what I'm loving.
Love the discussion boards! I think it's a great idea!
I'd really love to see Personal Messaging, and a convenient way to set up tea swapping!
Ditto! Also, maybe an e-mail notifications on when we get comments, that way we don't have to check back to see if someone said something awesome. Like that little box under this box that I just noticed.
Haha, those little boxes can be hard to spot. Personal messages are on the list and coming soon!
Maybe bulletin boards for ISO and haves for teas and one for books. A book swap would be cool!
Yes to tea swapping! I swap now on swap-bot but would love to do it on steepster so that I could read the recipient's reviews afterwards!
http://swap-bot.com/ is for swapping all kinds of stuff (esp. handmade crafts and postcards). Some people swap tea – mainly pre-packaged teabags since it is cheap and easy to mail a few in an envelope, even internationally. I think steepster would be a great site to use for swaps since you can easily see what types of teas a member likes, what they already have, etc. Plus it would be a more appropriate venue for exchanging loose tea too. I would love to be able to mark some of my cupboard teas as "willing to share" or "willing to swap" and then negotiate a trade and share addresses privately on Steepster.
I love it! By each tea in the cupboard there could be two buttons to click, "TAKE PLEASE!" and "request".
yea it would be great if you could mark up the teas in your cupboard that you wanna swap and then people could request them
Oh discussion board! Awesomesauce! I'm notoriously bad at using these things, being used to more journal-like social places like LJ and, well, this place. :) I'll do my best though. :)
Since you're asking, just yesterday I was thinking perhaps some very simple html availability in posts? Just the very basics like bold, italics and underlined and making a link? I've sometimes wanted to emphasise something or other, and I prefer to do it with bolds or italic font rather than caps. Caps just look like I'm shouting.
Also I agree with Teaplz about the private message systems.
Second the discussion board search feature, and the forum and sub-forum organization principles. At present, I choose not to contribute much to the discussions, because my usually-careful writing is just scattered and lost in the shuffle. Kudos for all you've done and the exacting, staged way you are implementing things! Very few bugs and very little system down time, considering the number of features being added. Being a career computer systems person, believe me, I know good work when I see it. Just keep on being measured and methodical, as you have, and don't be swayed by arguments for adding stuff before it's proper time. It's hard to do, but you've been doing it. I'm 65 yrs old and so bleeping envious …..
Hey folks, I found one of the types available this afternoon by accident. I usually use asterisks to denote an exhalation of sometype (e.g., a sigh) but when I put 'asterisk sigh asterisk' in a comment this afternoon, it translated into bold such as sigh.
If this is BB coding as opposed to HTML, I'd appreciate it if Jason or one of the Steepster set-up folks would list them for us when we prepare to post a Reply.
I think there should be a way to incorporate several teas into a tasting – as when a person blends teas, or they have multiple teas in a sitting, and want to talk about how they balance/compare.
I also think maybe it would be helpful if we could possibly rate reviews people leave on teas. That way, reviews that give an especially notable insight into the tea can be given more attention. Granted, this site is useful as a personal tea log, but if I want to want to make an educated opinion on a tea before purchasing, it would be nice to have instant access to the detailed reports on taste, scent, nuance, brewing temperature, quality etc, rather than having that be buried amongst logs of "I like it. Really tasty!"
Number three…. It might be useful if there were umbrellas for major types of tea, like gunpowder, dragonwell, dragon pearls, Lapsang Souchong, and so on, so people can make more general statements about the teas themselves, when they don't want to speak about a specific brand, just their experiences, opinions, and brewing practices with the tea itself. If this is done, some precaution should be taken to assure that teas with multiple spellings of the name (ti kwan yin, ti guan yin, Iron Goddess of Mercy) (Pi Lo Chun, Bi Lou Chun) are under the same category.
So, just some ideas to throw around.
Good job on the board and new logging page, by the way. Very nice.
Really good thoughts. I like! These are things we've considered and may do in the future, but I also just wanted to expose some of our reasoning on the different features.
Discussing multiple teas in a single tasting is something we haven't done because we've found that focusing on describing a single tea experience helps keep things organized. But this is something that does happen and we'll keep in mind for the future, we'll have to think about that one a little more and come up with a good UI for it.
We have considered allowing ratings for tasting notes to help direct people to the best ones for a specific tea. There's some considerable work involved and we didn't want it to be too overwhelming for users at the beginning. We added the "likes" to help raise the best tasting notes to the top, but more detailed ratings could help that even more. Plus, most of the tasting notes on the site were added before the "like" functionality was available.
For the "umbrellas" for major tea types, I think this brand new discussion board might be the perfect place for those. There could be a topic for each major type where people talk about all the things you mention. Plus, once we have those filled out, we could even link those onto the the tea pages for each type of that tea. Thanks for the suggestions.
As for the message board thing for the umbrella-ing, I think that could work rather well. I think it would work well if there were sub-forums in the forums (like, a topic for "Green Tea", and inside of that, a topic for "Gunpowder"), so the conversations can be kept kind of organized. Regardless of what happens, though, the forums open a lot of doors for expanding and sharing tea knowledge.
Also, another small suggestion – kinda dorky.
Maybe a forum for tea literature. That would be prose, poetry, journalistic articles, how-to articles, historic writings…
I know I have a few articles on tea I've written, and… as lame as it, some poetry about tea.
Re: Tasting Note Ratings
I'm sure most of you are familiar with Yelp, but I love their Useful, Funny, Cool rating system. Succinct and all-encompassing. Perhaps something similar would work nicely on here.
I think there should be a way to incorporate several teas into a tasting – as when a person blends teas, or they have multiple teas in a sitting, and want to talk about how they balance/compare.
We're already looking into the best ways to help organize the discussions using things like sub forums and search and will be ironing out the details soon.
We're also looking at different ways to help draw attention to the best and most recent tasting notes. Thanks!
I have to agree with the desire for multiple teas in a testing, maybe flagged as "blend" and with a spot to list other teas so that one can update once but find similar blends without searching for every tea used. Finding good blends has been one of the main reasons I use Steepster, and it'd be great to have that versatility.
Thanks :)
Ditto on everything people have said here. Would love to see HTML options, notably. I prefer bolding to CAPPING. [BUT I CAN E-SHOUT IF NECESSARY.]
I feel like I should add something constructive, but you guys are layering on the hotness so fast I can't think of anything. OH! How about making Liam and Noel Gallagher get along so they can create something good again? That should keep you busy.
I'm just wondering who will be the first non-Steepster employee to create a discussion topic – make it a good one, no throwaways :)
Well I was tempted to do a "First Post, LOL!" but I figured your guys would lynch me if I did. XD
I was thinking of just a generic "List your favorite teas!" one, but since I'm relatively new, I figured I'd give it to one of the oldies-but-goodies on the site.
So, uh, where's my Reward? Trophy? Honorable mention? Horde of screaming, tea-drinking fangirls?
I'd love a quick and easy way to flag spam posts as well as duplicate companies/teas. I also second Angrboda suggestion of being able to use basic html tags in our posts.
I agree about the duplicates. The Metropolitan Tea Company is a wholesale distributor where the original names they give different teas and blends of teas carry over to to the individual retailers and retail companies that sell the tea such as The Tea Table etc. It's easier to spot when a retailer uses the same name such as Queen Mary, Lady Londonderry, Windsor Castle etc., and much harder to spot when the name is something even more general like Cherry, Earl Grey, etc. What does everyone think about this?
LOVING the new features! I was wondering about more features specifically for the Steepster Select…maybe adding Add to You Shopping List and/or Cupboard right on that page. I know there is a BUY NOW but I would like to add to my shopping list for another time…if you could!? Thanks again!
Well, I absolutely love the new features!
I checked my dashboard this morning, and I find it is getting rather unwieldy in length, with everyone putting teas in their cupboards, and posting messages on the new boards. Maybe we could select the activities that we are interested in following?
I agree with this. Or maybe some kind of filter system where you can first check reviews and then all the other stuff afterwards.
After playing with the 'new' dashboard yesterday and today I want to add to this request for some sort of filtering device. As much as I love reading reviews, the notifications for Cupboard additions/Shopping List/Discussion Notes are getting really overwhelming really fast!
I do have to agree with Cynthia however. My dashboard is officially blown up! I don't think all users following someone need to see when they add a tea to their cupboard. While I think it's totally fun to add to my own cupboard, I'd like to see some tea reviews without all of the clutter.
New feature idea:
I would like to get some sort of notification when someone likes or comments on one of my reviews. I know it shows up on the dash, but if you are following several people…or cannot check the site daily, it gets covered up. Maybe a daily email that condenses your likes/comments. Maybe I'm just vain. HA! :)


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Interestingly, the researchers also carried out an analysis of the populations which included the HapMap populations:
When data from HapMap Han Chinese+Japanese and Yoruba individuals was included in the analysis, the MDS plot of IBS formed a triangle of the three continents in the first two dimensions, with the third dimension separating the European populations clinally from each other (Fig. S3). In the histograms of IBS between the five European populations and each HapMap population (Fig. 4a), the studied populations were most similar with the CEU and least similar with YRI. Interestingly, the similarity with the Asians varied between populations, being higher for Eastern Finns, Western Finns and Swedes than for the Germans and British (p less than 10−14 for all comparisons except for GER and BRI whose distributions did not differ). The same pattern was also observed when comparing the allele frequencies in the study populations and in CEU and CHB+JPT: the Eastern Finns had the largest proportion of SNPs deviating towards the Asian frequencies (Table S2; p less than 10−5), also when markers with smallest differences were excluded (data not shown).
To study the extent of eastern influence, we counted in each of the five European populations the number of markers where the population's allele frequency and the CHB+JPT allele frequency deviated from the CEU allele frequency to the same direction, and the number of markers where the allele frequencies deviated in opposite directions. We then compared the numbers to the null hypothesis that all the five populations stem from the same proto-European population (approximated by the CEU frequencies) from which they have subsequently diverged via genetic drift in the absence of admixture. In such a case, one would expect the number of markers drifting into a given direction (e.g. towards the Asian frequencies) to be similar across the populations, whereas a varying degree of eastern admixture in each population would result in disparate marker proportions. Using the number of deviating markers instead of the absolute size of the deviations should even out some of the effects of differing extent of drift in the populations.
This parallels my comment of an earlier study:
Under the theory of "drift due to isolation", the Finns might be distant from other Europeans, but not specifically at an East Eurasian direction.The paper also discusses genetic structure within Finland:
The information about the grandparental birthplaces of the Finnish samples enabled a more detailed analysis of population structure within Finland. In the multidimensional scaling plot of IBS within Finland (Fig. 2c,d, Fig. S1b), the first dimension showed the division to Eastern and Western Finland; the Häme samples settled between the clusters. The second dimension showed a north-south gradient within Eastern and the third dimension within Western Finland. Here the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnians showed no separation from their Finnish-speaking neighbours, whereas in the MDS plot of the European populations, the Finnish samples closest to the Swedes were almost exclusively Swedish-speakers (data not shown), and in the Structure analysis the Swedish-speaking Finns showed twice as large an admixture with the Sweden-dominated cluster as the other Western Finnish samples did (48.9% versus 24.6%, data not shown).
PLoS ONE doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003519
Genome-Wide Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Uncovers Population Structure in Northern Europe
Elina Salmela et al.
Genome-wide data provide a powerful tool for inferring patterns of genetic variation and structure of human populations.
Principal Findings
In this study, we analysed almost 250,000 SNPs from a total of 945 samples from Eastern and Western Finland, Sweden, Northern Germany and Great Britain complemented with HapMap data. Small but statistically significant differences were observed between the European populations (FST = 0.0040, p less than 10−4), also between Eastern and Western Finland (FST = 0.0032, p less than 10−3). The latter indicated the existence of a relatively strong autosomal substructure within the country, similar to that observed earlier with smaller numbers of markers. The Germans and British were less differentiated than the Swedes, Western Finns and especially the Eastern Finns who also showed other signs of genetic drift. This is likely caused by the later founding of the northern populations, together with subsequent founder and bottleneck effects, and a smaller population size. Furthermore, our data suggest a small eastern contribution among the Finns, consistent with the historical and linguistic background of the population.
Our results warn against a priori assumptions of homogeneity among Finns and other seemingly isolated populations. Thus, in association studies in such populations, additional caution for population structure may be necessary. Our results illustrate that population history is often important for patterns of genetic variation, and that the analysis of hundreds of thousands of SNPs provides high resolution also for population genetics.


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- MsC-122
- Fonds
- 2006-2009
The fonds consists of promotional materials, most notably full-colour posters, surrounding the shortlisting and adjudication of potential winners and the subsequent selection and celebration of winners of the prestigious prizes. Also included are media clippings and press releases surrounding the event.
BC Book Prizes


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Did I mention that I love beans? I do, and here is one of my favorite lazy meals that I fancied up a bit last night because the leftover planets were all in alignment.
My normal beans on bread typically amounts to some baked beans dumped on some bread and doused with hot sauce of an appropriate variety. On occasion I'll go the beanie weenie route. This time I'm going top-shelf with some leftover tri-tip from Sunday night, some new beans, and sauteed onions and peppers. Oh, and although we're going into tall cotton, we'll keep things well-grounded with a slather of Cheez Whiz.
4 Good hoagie rolls
1 can (21 oz) Bush's Black Bean Fiesta, undrained
1/2 lb Leftover grilled steak
1 bag (12 oz) Frozen peppers and onions
1/2 cup Cheez Whiz
1/4 cup Molasses
1 tsp Your favorite hot sauce
1 tsp Garlic salt
1 Tbsp Oil
Preheat your oven to 350º.
Combine the beans, molasses and hot sauce in a medium sauce pan over medium heat.
Bring the beans to a simmer, uncovered, then reduce the heat to medium-low.
Slice the steak thin, then chop to approximately 3/4" and set aside.
Defrost the peppers and onions in the microwave and drain the liquid.
Heat the oil in a medium saute pan or on a griddle over medium-high heat.
Put the hoagie rolls on your middle oven rack.
Add the peppers and onions to the pan/griddle.
Season the veggies with the garlic salt and saute until they are just starting to brown around the edges (about five minutes).
Add the steak and the onion/pepper mixture to the beans.
Remove the rolls from the oven.
Smear the inside of each roll with Cheez Whiz and put them back in the oven.
Turn the oven to broil for about a minute.
Remove the cheesy rolls from the oven.
Ladle a good portion of the bean, veggie and steak mixture on the top of each roll.
Serve and enjoy!


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With summer here it is grilling season and one of my favourite things to grill is meat on a stick! I mean, what's not to like? You have meat, sticks and fire! Mmm… Although I generally think of chicken first when it comes to meat on a stick, you can't go wrong with plump juicy shrimp either! I came across the idea of pesto grilled shrimp on Gina's Skinny Taste a few months ago and I was just itching for summer to arrive so that I could use some fresh basil, fire up the grill and try them out! The recipe could not be easier, you simply make the pesto, marinate the shrimp, skewer is on sticks and grill it and this is good since you will want to be making it every week this summer!
Serve with lemon wedges for a hit of citrus-y freshness!
I am so looking forward to grilling up more meat on a stick over the next few weeks!
What are your favourite grilled shrimp recipes?
Pesto Grilled Shrimp
Light fresh and summery basil pesto marinated grilled shrimp.
- 1/2 cup basil, packed
- 1 small clove garlic
- 1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted
- 2 tablespoons parmigiano reggiano (parmesan), grated
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice (~1/4 lemon)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deviened
- Pulse the basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a food processor or blender until smooth.
- Marinate the shrimp in the pesto for at least 20 minutes, up to overnight, in the fridge.
- Skewer the shrimp and grill over medium-high heat until cooked, about 2-3 minutes per side.
Chipotle Lime Shrimp
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Grilled Jerk Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers
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Pesto Grilled Chicken, Zucchini and Tomato Skewers
Cajun Butter Garlic Grilled Shrimp with Cilantro Lime Avocado Sauce


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