Erin H

The Food and Drug Administration has been forced to suspend all routine food safety inspections for the duration of the government shutdown, FDA spokesman Steven Immergut confirmed to The Huffington Post on Friday afternoon. Until funding is restored, the FDA will be inspecting only those facilities that it has cause to believe "present an immediate threat to public health."

While it has been clear for weeks that the FDA would not be sending its own employees on food safety inspections during a federal shutdown, agency officials had suggested that state officials would be conducting some inspections on the FDA's behalf. FDA budget documents [pdf] show that state employees inspected 9,736 of the 21,169 facilities screened for food safety in fiscal year 2012, so it seemed reasonable to suppose that about half of the normal number of routine food safety inspections would continue during the shutdown.

But the FDA normally pays state agencies a contractually dictated fee for each inspection its employees conduct. (While the amount varies from state to state, the budget documents suggest that the average was about $1,300 in fiscal year 2012.) Funding for these state-contracted inspections was eliminated as part of the shutdown. A few states have leftover money from the FDA's contract last year, though most do not.

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It's been over a month since Ariel Castro (the Cleveland man found guilty in August of the kidnapping, sexual assault and imprisonment of three women over a 10-year period) was found hanging dead in his jail cell in what appeared to be a suicide. Now, just when we were figuring out how to feel about it, new information has emerged, suggesting that Castro's true cause of death could actually be auto-erotic asphyxiation.

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Ah, Norway! Land of my people! A Norwegian television station has announced that they plan to broadcast the world knitting record for the fastest time from "sheep to actual finished sweater"—earmarking a full five contiguous hours for the purpose. That's five hours of shearing, spinning, and knitting (plus four hours of fleece-themed knitting pre-show). On TV.

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VIEW SLIDESHOW: First Impressions: Honey Butter Fried Chicken

[Photographs: Joe Roy]

Say you want to open a restaurant. How do you make sure you have enough customers when you open the doors to prevent closing them after a few months? One way is to build up hype for the concept based on the success of your previous ventures (hello, Parson's). Another is to build up hype the old fashioned way: by rolling up your sleeves and slinging a dish so good that word of mouth spreads like wildfire, the demand elevating from a loyal clamor to a dedicated roar.

In opening Honey Butter Fried Chicken, Josh Kulp and Christine Cikowski of the Sunday Dinner Club chose the second route. According to Josh, the brick and mortar spot in Avondale is about 10 years in the making, when the Dinner Club transformed from a side project to this pair's full time job. These "referral-only" dinners, each centered around a theme, have garnered a cult following: With barely any prodding, the woman in front of me in line couldn't stop gushing about them: "they won't serve you anything bad." And boy, is she right.

First, the chicken. It's good. Really, really good. Josh has always been averse to fried bird, so when they decided to include it in a Sunday Dinner Club menu a few years back, he wanted to make sure it packed more than a greasy crunch. A spice laden buttermilk brine ensured it was plenty flavorful, while a healthy shake of smoked Hungarian paprika post-fry added enough complexity to appease his palate.

The honey butter side of the equation involves a dubious origin story that I am duty bound as a food writer to promulgate forward: one fateful night, during staff meal, a hapless cook accidentally dropped a morsel of fried chicken into the butter vat. Not wanting it to go to waste, he fished it out, and before they knew it, the rest of the cooks were shamelessly dipping their chicken in butter, too. True or not, it's a damn good story, and as good an explanation as any for why butter dipped chicken has now become a thing.

The rest of the menu is solid as well. The creamy slaw is enhanced with kale and dried pomegranate seeds. The mac & cheese is of the pimento variety. Still, the food is not so much pushing the envelope as nudging it along, and it never veers too far from the familiar. This is accessible food, prepared well, and served by an ever-smiling, far from pretentious, staff. I could get used to this sort of treatment.

It's too early for a full blown review, but at first blush, I like what I see at Honey Butter Fried Chicken. Click through the slide show to see how specific dishes stacked up, but as long as your order includes fried chicken in some capacity, you'll leave happy.

The 2010 whooping cough outbreak in California — the worst in 50 years — may have been fueled, at least in part, by clusters of parents who refused to vaccinate their children, a new study suggests.

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg is taking a stab at dismantling unattainable beauty standards through an uplifting campaign aimed at improving girls' self-esteem that's way less of a bummer than the city's anti-teen pregnancy PSAs.

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iOS/Android: We've shown you how to sell your unwanted stuff, but if all the effort of Craigslist listings and eBay postings is too much for you, Sold is a new service that does the dirty work for you. All you have to do is pack and ship your item when it sells.

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Cosmetic procedures requiring injectables and implants have been around for a while. But apparently now the quest for a youthful look is not about filling in wrinkles in the face but making sure the face stays frozen in time like a wooly mammoth.

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Think you make the best apple pie in Chicago? Then register for the Bucktown Apple Pie Contest now. [ more › ]

"There's no way I could have got it to Midway or O'Hare." [ more › ]

Visual Anatomy is a company that’s selling edible anatomy. They’re chocolates shaped like different body parts, organs, limbs, etc. There are over 20 shapes to choose from, like a brain, ear, hand, heart, vertebra, pancreas, liver… even a colon! Yeah, it’s basically the only way you can eat a butt and it not taste like [...]
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If you're a fan of Simon & Garfunkel, Katy Perry or the Roots (most of us like at least one of them), then you will love this Katy Perry cover by Black Simon & Garfunkel (a.k.a The Roots' Questlove and Captain Kirk Douglas). Turns out that when you put 'Roar' in the hands of a couple of troubadours like these two, it becomes downright hymnal.

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On Tuesday, Playboy got major press and for the first time in awhile, it wasn't because they were selling off parts of their company or moving their headquarters from Chicago to Los Angeles or going private, things that would all individually spell trouble for legacy organization, but when pushed together look downright worrisome. They got press – good press! – because their brand, which has become synonymous with doing things to women looked like it was focused on doing things for women.

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In 1941, as the British War Office searched for ways to help Allied prisoners escape from German POW camps, it found an unlikely partner: John Waddington Ltd., the U.K. licensee for Monopoly. “Games and pastimes” was an approved category of item to be included in care packages sent to captured soldiers, so Waddington’s set about creating special sets to be sent to the camps.

Under the paper surface of each doctored board was a map printed on durable silk showing “escape routes from the particular prison to which each game was sent,” Waddington’s chairman Victor Watson told the Associated Press in 1985. “Into the other side of the board was inserted a tiny compass and several fine-quality files.” Real French, German, and Italian currency was hidden in the stacks of Monopoly money.

MI-9, the intelligence division charged with helping POWs escape, smuggled the games into prison camps, where prisoners would remove the aids and then destroy the sets in order to prevent their captors from divining the scheme.

“It is not known how many airmen escaped thanks to these Monopoly games,” writes Philip Orbanes in The Game Makers, his 2004 history of Parker Brothers, “but 35,000 POWs did break out of prison camps and reach partisans who helped them to safety.”

(Thanks, Ron.)

"I don't know why it is such a big deal," Carranza said. "The bigger deal is how I'm improving that shitty neighborhood." [ more › ]

ESL Trouble

"Hello class!" 

HELLO

"Today we are going conjugate verbs. Did everyone complete their worksheets?" 

YES

"Very good! Let's begin. Repeat after me: I say." 

I SAY

"You say." 

YOU SAY

"It says." 

IT SAY

"No no. Remember, we change the verb when we talk about a single other thing. It saySSS." 

IT SAY

"Almost. We just need to add an 's' at the end. It says." 

IT SAY

"Sigh. Good enough. Moving on..." 

After eight years, Moto has done away with the edible paper menu. They've replaced it with a "menu" made of tiny bites of the food to come. [ more › ]

Janelle Monáe was on The Late Show With David Letterman last night to promote her new album The Electric Lady (out today!) and she performed so hard that the show was actually killed DEAD. Singing "Dance Apocalyptic," Monáe bashed up a microphone stand, danced on the desk and brought so much energy that even the consistently bored Letterman was impressed. Unfortunately, it was all too much for the 31-year-old program's heart to take and CBS president Leslie Moonves was forced to declare the show dead immediately following Monáe's killer performance.

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What movie would be far more boring if the plot was literally about the title? : AskReddit:

My favorites so far listed in the comments thread:

• Law Abiding Citizen
• The Constant Gardener
• Men Who Stare at Goats

On the outside, I seem like a clean-cut, normal guy. My friends and neighbors no doubt think of me as a healthy, productive member of my community. But I’m tired of living my double life. I’m going to make a confession that may surprise you.

I have a private, windowless room in my house. I’ve had the floor and parts of the walls covered in plain white tile, which gives it a certain antiseptic appearance.

But that appearance is almost hideously deceiving. With appalling frequency, I enter this room alone and use it to deposit the foulest-smelling ejecta possible from my body cavity right out into the open, befouling a small pool of clear, clean water. You wouldn’t believe the sounds and facial expressions I can make in the process. At times, they’re almost akin to those associated with great physical pleasure or exquisite pain.

The worst part is that I have to do this. It’s like a physical need. If I haven’t seated myself in my private little room in a while, I can feel the urge within me build and finally I just have to give in and do the filthy, nauseating deed. Afterwards, once the repulsive ordure has been produced, the compulsion is gone. I can meticulously take care of any residue and pretend that I am once again clean. But the need always comes back. Sometimes I feel compelled to return to my private room more than once a day.

There’s nothing pleasant about this confession, believe me. I’m as disgusted as you or anyone else would be, when I catch a glimpse of the feculent results of my secret little practice. But I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of the years of pretending to everyone that I meet that I don’t have to do this. But I do. Oh, how I do. Oh, the shame of it.

Even in making this confession, I know that it will change nothing about my perverse, loathsome condition. Soon I will return to my little room and, once the deed is done, I’ll send the abhorrent evidence away as soon as possible, through a cunningly devised series of underground pipes. (How complete, how complicated my design! How monumental my deception!) I’m afraid I feel the need building even now. Even now.

I am so sorry.

Have you always wanted to live in a secret 15,000-square-foot Cold War bunker built 26 feet below ground, complete with pink '70s toilets, "outdoor" astroturf lawns, and a fake starry sky? Well, today's your day! (We're claustrophobic just looking at the pics.)

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More news for e-readers: Oyster, a New York-based startup, has just launched a subscription service for digital books. For a $10 monthly fee, members have unlimited access browse and read e-books from participating publishers. Currently on board are HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, and some digital-specific and indie publishers. Oyster launched with just an iPhone app, though an iPad version is expected later this fall.

In other news, preview the US pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and PayPal's latest app hopes to eliminate waiting to pay. See the headlines after the jump.

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Janelle Monae is streaming her entire new album, The Electric Lady, online, and it sounds amazing. So good. Guests include Erykah Badu, Solange, Miguel, Esperanza Spaulding, and Prince. Yes, PRINCE! So far the bubbly "Dance Apocalyptic" and the steam-funk soul "Givin' Em What They Love" are my favorites.

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You already dress your pup like a Star Wars great, why not hook them up with some fan gear for everyday use? As an added bonus, you can think of the new Star Wars Collection at Petco as a bit of geeky home decor too. In addition to a fresh series of dress up items, [...]
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jadebloodedfeminist:

hellbound-gatestuck:

I-I want to… no…

… I NEED to do this…

halloween costume found

Tip Junkie contributor Marcie brings us this tutorial on how to make your own bloody human hands salad tongs. The project seems simple enough — all you need is a pair of tongs, 2 plastic hands, and hot glue. And presumably a hot glue gun, basic motor skills, and some scissors. I have none of [...]
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I didn’t even know a mermaid tail was something you could spend 3 grand on…

Trade you a book for $10?