respublica

A whole meal in one bite

When food creators are bored with the same old same old, they come up with some off the wall things. Take this new Thanksgiving snack food from Trader Joe's for example: Thanksgiving Stuffing Flavored kettle Chips.

Actually the chips have the flavors of roast turkey, stuffing, and gravy, and as they advertise, "All the flavors of Thanksgiving in one bite." And you can get some of their cranberry sauce for dipping those chips.

My feeling is this it a bit much, meat should know its place and stay out of my potato chips.

 

Following the sun

Since being back in Collinsville we've noticed that our street is not square to the world. We considered that years ago, but had forgotten it. When we stand on our front porch in the morning, the sunrise is diagonally to out and to the right. In the early evening, standing on our back deck, we see the sunset again out diagonally to our right, but on a different side of the house. It's weird and thinking about all the other streets around us, it appears as though the early builders in this city all did this.

Dale has long wondered about this "not being square to the world" business, I've just recently come to pondering it.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

It's Friday the 13th, isn't that just perfect for this unsettling year? Are you one of those who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia, which means a fear of Friday the 13th?

I was surprised to learn there is actually a term for this and a term which seemed to be created by someone who just threw 23 letters into a hat and pulled them out in any order to form a word. People who suffer from this are likely to have even the smallest belief that some form of bad luck will show itself on these dreadful Fridays.

Ok. And it gets better with these word creators. This phobia is closely associated with triskaidekaphobia, defined as an irrational fear of the number 13.

The linked article about this gives a few reasons why a Friday, coupled with 13, has come to be thought unlucky, much of it coming from the Bible so take that for what it's worth.

I'm not unsympathetic to anyone who dreads this day, but seriously, these words made up of a bunch of letters is making me laugh today.

 

 

 

Now for something new and different

I never expected this.

Costco Pulling Products Allegedly Made with Forced Monkey Labor

Yes, you read that right. Monkeys in Thailand are being treated like coconut picking machines. An investigation found chained-up monkeys can pick around 400 coconuts a day and are then stuffed in cages until their next shift. And, the coconut picking monkeys are now something of a tourist attraction and Costco wants no part of it.

The main product Costco, Walgreens, Food Lion, Giant Food and Stop & Shop, have pulled is coconut milk.

I can kind of see why the company feels this way.

Popular or...not so much?

A headline which basically sucks you in and then you realize this is a big nothing burger. Here is the story headline: 55 Clever Things Getting So Popular They'll Start Selling Out In Fall & Winter

Ok, I admit I clicked the link to see if these things were really clever enough to buy. In reality, most are just nonsense. For instance: a warming butter knife that keeps your bread intact.

Or, a cozy sheepskin seat belt cover

In any event if these things sell out before Christmas, I'd be surprised

What strange thing happened the year you were born?

Someone went to a lot of trouble to sift through weird things that happened from 1940 til now. So if you were born from 1940 on, you can see what that someone believed was the strangest thing that happened in your birth year. In my year it was a city bus driver in the Bronx who took a detour to Florida.

About those newspaper wrappers

For years we've subscribed to two or more newspapers each day. Before we moved over to the Concordia Seminary campus we had the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Belleville News Democrat tossed on our lawn each day. At the seminary Dale went to three, the Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is a dedicated paper reader who not only reads them, but underlines sections so he can go back to them. And, much to my dismay, he keeps many of them, often having front pages framed. Now that we are back in Collinsville we still get the same 3. There is no Belleville News Democrat to speak of anymore. Yes, it exists, but as thin as a sheet of copy paper so we declined to re-up that.

But during the Corona Virus era, I've given lots of thought to the wrappers the papers come in. How are the papers put into them and how are the knots tied? Is there a machine which does this, or does the delivery person have to get up in the middle of the night and roll papers into the plastic and then tie each one. And then that person has to know which house gets what or how many papers. In St. Louis the wrappers were blue, over in Illinois they are yellow.

We've rarely had a delivery issue so there must be a method to how this is done. This is all in aid of nothing earth shattering, but I just wonder.

 

Holes in the ground

All of a sudden i'm seeing holes in our backyard. They are in various areas and have popped up almost over night. I have no idea what is causing them but have to guess it's some sort of animal. But what kind of animal. We have long had a huge hole behind the garage which we know is from a groundhog. Our next door neighbor has the same type of big hole under his deck. We all figure one hole is the groundhog's front door and the other his back door. But these other holes are small but well formed. Rabbit? Too small and I don't think they are from squirrels digging areas to bury nuts. It's a puzzle.

More weird news

The news we get just keeps getting stranger and these stories are no longer confined to The National Examiner type papers. This story is on every mainstream news site.

"Dentist who extracted a tooth while on a hover board has been convicted on dozens of charges." 46 charges to be exact.

How weird we've become.

I don't get this choice of photo

WTOP, in Washington DC put up a picture with the caption: Apple picking Fauquier County. Does this picture seem kind of creepy to anyone but me?

Of all the apple picking pictures in this country, they chose this? Maybe there is some fad out there I have missed.