some choice photos plucked from my ever-updating Flickr photostream. bookmark that if you want to keep up!

pk and i are meeting up with some lovely friends, enjoying a fabulous meal, and watching…

oooooh! i am so excited. i slaved away in the kitchen preparing for our picnic and whipped up a couple scrumptious treats: corn, tomato, orange bell pepper, spinach, blue cheese, toasted walnuts and lemon pasta salad (mmmmmm!) and some cornbread muffins topped with brown sugar. and don’t forget the delicious cheese plate with gouda parrano, campo de montalban with fig spread, and cowgirl creamery mt. tam. to wash that all down, pk and i have our mickey 40’s ready! tis going to be a glorious evening!

thought i’d start transferring over the reviews i normally publish on Facebook’s applications. these are the latest books — well, graphic novels — that i’ve read in the last week or so. i’ve expanded on some of my thoughts, too.

Hellraiser: Collected Best, Vol. 2: The stories are just so so, but Hellraiser is Hellraiser. I’ll always enjoy Cenobite stories, even crappy ones. The stories that worked, at least for me, riffed upon the Hellraiser mythos in a way that resonated with the themes of erotic exploitation of the flesh found in Clive Barker’s own The Hellbound Heart. But even ones that didn’t visually feature Cenobites could succeed dancing around those ideas. The stories I started skimming through utilized forced abstraction. It felt too imitative of Barker.

Lovecraft: Wonderful artwork depicting a would-be version of Lovecraft’s real life and nightmares. Too bad it ends so quickly, but that’s part of its charm. You get a glimpse into a what-if scenario that most Lovecraft fans — of which I want to become one, but not unlike Tolkien, his stories are very densely written — would wish was the true backstory. That said, I’m wondering if I wouldn’t enjoy Lovecraft’s stories more if they were all presented in graphic novel form.

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) — The man who designed the Pringles potato chip packaging system was so proud of his accomplishment that a portion of his ashes has been buried in one of the iconic cans.

The man who designed the Pringles can had part of his cremated remains buried in one, his family says. Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice in Cincinnati, his family said. He was 89.

Baur’s children said they honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township.

The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandson, said Baur’s daughter, Linda Baur of Diamondhead, Mississippi. Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur of Stevensville, Michigan, said Monday.

Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970, P&G archivist Ed Rider said.

Baur retired from P&G in the early 1980s.

doctor jones would be proud:

mozzarella stuffed snake breadsticks topped with asiago cheese and fresh basil (roasted red peppers slices used as tongues)

proud chef

finished product: baked snakes with blood (marinara) dipping sauce…of course we ate these delicious appetizers during the first of the trilogy, raiders of the lost ark.

during the temple of doom, pk and i feasted on some tequila lime shrimp, ginger soy steak (pk only), and some monkey brains (a.k.a. spicy thai stirfry).

pk loves him some brains!