Visions of the not-so-distant future don't get much more (deliberately) puzzling than this satiric comedy. Word is out that an atomic bomb is about to level an unnamed American city, and a family of three living near ground zero -- father, mother and teenage daughter -- ponder what to do in the face of certain doom.
While waiting for the apocalypse, the family discusses their many bizarre nightmares, bargain with God (who communicates in the form of notes slipped under the door), experience bizarre physiological changes (such as the daughter giving birth to a steak) and dress Dad up as a giant infant so that he may return to the womb. Once the bomb finally drops, the family unexpectedly survives, but trapped inside their home, their anger towards one another grows as they openly express their bitterness and anxieties.
What's most significant about Final Flesh is not the narrative but how it was produced. Vernon Chatman, co-creator of the TV series Wonder Showzen and Xavier: Renegade Angel, wrote a purposefully absurd and pretentious screenplay about thermo-nuclear doomsday, and then divided it into four acts. Each act was sent to a different independent adult video company, each of which specializes in enacting fetish scenarios submitted by amateurs for a price. Chatman then assembled the four completed segments (which feature nudity but no actual sexual content) into Final Flesh, with none of the actors, technicians or directors supposedly the wiser about the satiric nature of the project.
1. Handicapped parking is not the same as expectant or new mother parking.
Ugh. Yes. It. Is.
I don’t need the stupid placard and I don’t care that my son can walk on his own. I’m a mother. It’s like a disability. I should be able to park near the front of the store.
2. You shouldn’t smoke near your child.
Oh, I shouldn’t? Why, because he might think it’s cool? Because he might start smoking if he sees his ‘cool’ mom smoking cigarettes? Newsflash idiots: children never think their parents are cool, despite the fact that I am much, much cooler than my Beyblade-enthusiast son. Really, you shouldn’t correct me in front of my child because then he’ll think it’s cool to go around policing the actions of others. That’s a bigger detriment to his health then smoking, really. If he starts smoking, he shaves maybe 10, 20 years off his life – either way it doesn’t matter, I’ll be dead by then. If he goes around, like you, telling people how to be good parents, he’s liable to get his ass kicked.
3. He’s so well behaved.
Yeah, right now. We’re out in public. You think he’s going to throw a temper tantrum in the store? He knows I’ll just hit him twice as hard when we get back home. Trust me, this kid is not well behaved, he’s a god damn monster and when you go up to a mother and tell her that she’s done a good job of taming her child, it doesn’t come off like a compliment – it feels like an insult. You’re basically downplaying the struggle of parenthood and robbing me of my victimhood status.
4. I’m hungry.
This one is especially a nuisance when it comes from a male child. I don’t know how many times I have to tell my son that I’m a feminist and that when he asks me to make food for him, he’s participating in the patriarchy and therefore has lost his Nintendo DS privileges. You know what, Mason? I’m hungry too. You know what I do when I’m hungry? I find a man to buy me dinner. Maybe you should try wearing mommy’s makeup instead of just eating it for a change, and see what kind of sugar daddy you can find for yourself.
5. I have to get to school.
Oh, so I’m suddenly supposed to get a DUI just because you have to learn subtraction and you can’t ride the bus anymore because of “the bullies.” You know, Abraham Lincoln walked 5 miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, and even then, he still had it a hell of a lot better than the slaves that he freed. If you want to learn, why don’t you show some initiative and figure out how to use Uber.
6. When is Dad coming home?
When is… what? You know god damn well you don’t have a father. Who even told you to say that? Oh, you saw it on TV and you said it because you thought it might be cute? Well, it’s not cute, it’s annoying, and it feels like a criticism of my mothering abilities. You’ve just lost seatbelt privileges for the next week, and we’re going to be doing a LOT of driving.
7. You’re hurting me!
Yeah, that’s the point. It’s called spanking and I’m doing it because I love you and because I had a hard day at work. If you don’t learn now that the world is an awful place that hurts you without justification or remorse, you’ll have a rude awakening in store when you finally strike out on your own.
With this new feature from Hasbro, you can print stickers of your Instagram and Facebook photos to customize your game pieces and properties. #TBT is the new Reading Railroad.
Put them on your nails.
This is a Kickstarter-funded project to turn your Instagram photos into nail stickers.
Have them made into a bamboo shadow box.
For $20-$30, Hatchcraft will build you a sustainable bamboo shadow box with your photo mounted inside.
Many teachers say they strive to teach their students to be critical thinkers. They even pride themselves on it; after all, who wants children to just take in knowledge passively? But there is a problem with the widespread treatment of critical thinking as a skill to be taught.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, marijuana use among Colorado teens has gone down slightly since the state legalized recreational cannabis use in 2012.
If the trend holds, it would undermine a key argument of anti-legalization forces in other states, who often stress the potential for increased marijuana use by teens.
Even more interesting is that surveys indicate that teens now view pot as less risky than they did back in 2011 by 4%, from 58% to 54%. This sort of bolsters my personal theory that teens pretty much only do things that they believe they’re not supposed to do and at least one marijuana vendor in the state seem to agree. According to cannabis businessman Kayvan Khalatbari:
“Cannabis, now that it’s legal, kind of is an old person’s drug,” he said. “It’s something that kids are seeing adults use all over the place. It just doesn’t seem as cool to kids anymore.”
New suggested marijuana slogan: “Pot, the Facebook of recreational drugs.”
Hasta hace algunos años, a nivel internacional se creía que el frijol tenía sus orígenes en la región de Los Andes, ubicada al sur de América, sin embargo las investigaciones han señalado que todas las variedades de esta leguminosa proceden de un ancestro común que surgió en México.
El nombre en náhuatl de esta planta y semilla es ayocotle, aunque la fonética española la derivó en ayocote, mismo que en realidad es una especie grande del frijol. La especie fue llevada a España en 1522 por los conquistadores, desde donde su consumó se extendió al resto de Europa gracias a que se adapta fácilmente a los climas húmedos y fríos.
Cuenta también la historia, que fue en Italia donde surgió el vocablo fiesole, de donde proviene el término actual frijol, mientras que en Francia recibieron el nombre de haricots, y fue precisamente este país el que se vio profundamente beneficiado de esta semilla en 1575, año en que sufrieron una gran escasez de su grano tradicional: el trigo.
Los frijoles han formato parte importante de la dieta de los mexicanos y de su economía desde tiempos prehispánicos, por lo que forman parte de la cultura gastronómica de México y gracias al mestizaje se ha mezclado con prácticamente todos los ingredientes principales de nuestra cocina: epazote, cebolla, cilantro, queso, pápalo, jitomate, carne de puerco, leche y otros y se consumen principalmente en caldo, en enfrijoladas, refritos y hasta en tamales.
Tipos de frijol
Variedades se conocen más de 150, de las cuales sólo una tercera parte se encuentran en México, entre ellas figuran el frijol blanco al que también se le conoce como alubia, el frijol negro procedente de Querétaro y Veracruz y que es el más usado en la zona centro del territorio nacional, el flor de mayo, el frijol morado, el frijol pinto, el frijol canario, y el ayocote.
Otra variedad importante y muy usada es el frijol verde, que es la vaina tierna de esta leguminosa y que conocemos como ejote, y es una de las hortalizas más importantes de la alimentación debido a su contenido de vitaminas y minerales. Fuera de México a los ejotes se les conoce como habichuelas, porotos verdes, judías verdes, chauchas o simplemente vainas.
Beneficios nutricionales
Nutricionalmente hablando, el frijol es una fuente importante de proteínas y fibra dietética y poseen un bajo contenido de grasa y no tienen colesterol. De hecho, la fibra que se encuentra en los frijoles ayuda a reducir los niveles de colesterol en la sangre y ayuda a reducir el riesgo de enfermedades crónicas como lo son la diabetes, la obesidad y el cáncer.
Pero los frijoles también contienen carbohidratos complejos, lo que provoca que nos sintamos satisfechos y con energía por más tiempo. Entres las vitaminas que aportan se encuentran el complejo B, la tiamina, la riboflavina, la niacina y el ácido fólico, las cuales ayudan al buen funcionamiento del aparato digestivo y del aparato nervioso. Recordemos también que los alimentos ricos en ácido folico deben ser consumidos por las mujeres embarazadas o en periodo de lactancia.
Seguramente, habrás oído que los frijoles son una fuente importante de hierro, un mineral fundamental en la formación de la hemoglobina de la sangre, pero para que nuestro organismo absorba dicho mineral es necesario combinar los frijoles con alimentos que son ricos en vitamina C, como los jitomates.
Por último recordar que los frijoles forman parte de más del 60% de los platillos de la gastronomía mexicana, y es aquí en nuestro país donde tiene más usos culinarios, pero también está presente en los platillos europeos, africanos y asiáticos.
Os voy a comentar algo que a lo mejor os deja un poco descolocados: una de las razones para ir de turismo culinario a México es para poder probar los helados. No solo tomar tacos, huaraches, cochinita pibil. Los helados hechos al estilo mexicano son una delicia, y no es un estilo que se haya exportado a otros lugares, así que hay que venirse a México a probarlos.
Lo primero que hay que decir es que en México se hacen helados estilo italiano (los menos) y estilo gringo (lo más habitual). De hecho son los más habituales. No esperes llegar a México y que en el hotel o en restaurante al lado del hotel o en el supermercadao o en la farmacia (sí, en México se venden helados en la farmacia) tengan helados que no hayas probado ya. En México tambien tienen los helados de Unilever (Frigo en España): allí se llaman Holanda. Y más o menos tienen lo que aquí, con algún sabor un poco diferente. Y sí, por supuesto, a México han llegado los frozen yogourt: hay más que en España, por todos lados. Pero no, vamos a hablar de otro tipo de helados.
Si quieres probar helados diferentes hay que salir e ir a visitar sitios diferentes: mercados, en la calle, en algún restaurante o cantina tradicional, o alguna cadena de heladerías mexicana (por ejemplo La Michoacana).
Empecemos por la calle:
Paletas de "cubo"
Despues de comer si paseas por el DF te encontrarás con unos señores con unos carritos, unos calderos de madera haciendo sonar una campanilla. Son los vendedores de helados. No se sabe muy bien de donde vienen pero parece un negocio totalmente familiar. Todos tienen un cubo grande de madera relleno de hielo picado, y dentro del hielo picado llevan unas capsulas metálicas. Les enganchan unos papeles de colores para hacer más fácil la apertura y para sabe de que sabor son. Les preguntas de que sabores tienen, y miran en el caldero: si es rosa y blanco, es fresa, si es azul nuez, si es verde pistacho ...
Se lo pides, le saca la tapa que tiene en un extremo, le clava un palo de madera y lo mete en otro caldero con agua templadda. Con el agua templada el metal se templa un poco y sale. Estos helados como puedes ver en las fotos, siempre tienen forma de cohete.
Todos estos helados son bastante cremosos, y tienen un sabor bastante dulzón. Por el sabor deben de llevar leche condensada. Los de frutos secos (nuez y pistacho) llevan las semillas troceadas. Algunos sabores tradicionales no les salen demasiado bien, por ejemplo la vainilla y la fresa saben bastante artificiales. Los otros por contra estan rebuenos. Tres de mis favoritos de este tipo están en la foto:
Mango
Pistacho
Nuez
A los mexicanos les encanta la nuez. No sólo en helado, pero el helado de nuez es uno de los tops. En México les gusta que la nuez esté aún tierna, no demasiado seca. Aquí en España por contra somos más de la nuez más seca. Así que sabe un poco diferente. Si podeis probarlo. Y si podeis tambien, probad los chiles en nogada.
Paletas de tienda
Estas ya nos parecen un poco más familiares. En muchas tiendas venden paletas ya hechas, envueltas en un poco de celofán. La diferencia con España es que los helados son de sabores muy exóticos, y que parecen hechos de manera más o menos artesanal (no son simétricos, el palo puede estar mal colocado).
En este tipo de paletas, no es extraño que encuentres sabores picantes. Es bastante habitual tanto el de chile con mango, como el de chile y limón.
Nieves
En muchos mercados, en algún restaurante tradicional y alguna heladería podrás ver que venden nieves. Como en el primer caso, el sistema de fabricación es muy siglo XIX: barreños metálicos rodeados con hielo picado, y los helados se amasan constantemente con unas palas enormes de madera. Un trabajo improbo.
Evidentemente, los helados no quedan con la cremosidad y perfección que se hace con las máquinas modernas y el removido constante. Pero es auténtico, y los sabores que ofrecen son muy originales. A nivel de la heladería más original que podais conocer en España.
Esta foto es de Oaxaca, donde son bastante famosas sus nieves. A ver, antes que nadie me corriga, en principio las nieves son los hechos con hielo y jugo de fruta (o esa un sorbete). Pero yo he visto que generalmente usan el término de nieve tambien para los que llevan crema.
Entre los sabores más populares, están (como no) la nuez. Otro que es muy popular es el de queso. Es un helado de queso fresco dulce, como si tomases un petisuis natural azucarado y lo congelaras. Y finalmente el helado que tiene más filias y fobias de todos los helados de Oaxaca: el helado de leche quemada. Sabe a leche quemada, si, de hecho para hacerlo dejan una olla con leche hirviendo varias horas hasta que se quema. A mucha gente (por no decir a casi toda) le es un sabor desagradable. Pero a quien le gusta, se vuelve loco.
Y finalmente mi nieve favorita: nieve de tuna roja (tuna roja es el higo chumbo rojo - hay tambien higo chumbo blanco). Una delicia:
R&B legend Darlene Love works on a new album with 'Miami' Steve Van Zandt (E-Street Band, Undergound Garage, Silvio Dante of the Sopranos)!!! Of course the recordings will be out of Van Zandt's garage rock & roll label, Wicked Cool Records. Photos from the recordings taken from the Wicked Cool's Facebook page. Can't wait!!!
El pasado mes de enero, Charlotte Benjamin, una niña de siete años de edad, escribió una carta a la empresa de juguetes Lego para quejarse de que las figuritas de la firma danesa eran “casi todas de chicos y apenas ninguna de chicas”. Su propuesta fue recogida en Change.org, recabando más de 69.000 apoyos, y acusando a la compañía de sexista.
Dicho y hecho, Lego ha lanzado una colección llamada Instituto de investigación, diseñada por la geofísica Ellen Kooijman, con figuritas que representan a una paleóntóloga, una astrónoma y una química. Poco después de salir a la venta, la colección de figuritas, a un precio de unos 20 dólares, ya está agotada en la tienda de la empresa.
Oregon Zoo's African pygmy hedgehog couple Hakuna Matata and Barundi welcomed a litter of five hoglets in early July. The tiny babies weigh just a tenth of a pound, and their sex is yet to be determined.
As cute as hedgehogs are, Oregon Zoo staff member Tanya Paul, who supervises their education program animals, warns the public against keeping them as pets:
"They're very difficult to care for because of their diet and the need for special veterinary care. Many vets don't specialize in treating exotic animals like a hedgehog."
Learn more and see a video of the hoglets at Zooborns. Images Credit: Oregon Zoo/Michael Durham
That’s a long and weird title, and the answer is: 78 rpm records. Then there’s a rather involved story to connect all the pieces. Music critic and reporter Amanda Petrusich explains what a chair factory has to do with blues records.
Paramount is this incredible label that was born from a company called the Wisconsin Chair Company, which was making chairs, obviously. The company had started building phonograph cabinets to contain turntables, which they also were licensing. And they developed, like many furniture companies, an arm that was a record label so that they could make records to sell with the cabinets. This was before a time in which record stores existed. People bought their records at the furniture store, because they were things you needed to make your furniture work.
So the Wisconsin Chair Company, based in the Grafton-Port Washington area of Wisconsin, started the Paramount label. And they accidentally ended up recording whom I believe to be some of the most incredible performers in American musical history. Paramount started a “race record” series in the late 1920s after a few other labels had success doing that model, by which African American artists recorded music for African American audiences. Through a complex series of talent scouts, they would bring artists mostly from the Southeast up to Wisconsin to record, which in and of itself was just insane and miraculous. These are Mississippi bluesmen, being brought to this white rural town in Wisconsin, and you can’t imagine how foreign it must have been to them to see that landscape. Sometimes the performers would record for Paramount in Chicago, but later in Paramount’s history, the company built a studio right in Grafton, and it was a notoriously bad studio. It had shoddy, handmade equipment, and then the records that Paramount was pressing were really cheap. It was a very bad mixture of shellac, and Paramount records are infamous for having a lot of surface noise.
But as I said, they captured some of the best performers in American history, folks like Skip James, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Geeshie Wiley—all these really incredible singers. At the time, Paramount didn’t know what it was doing. It hasn’t been until now that people are like, “Oh my God, this label rewrote American history.” I don’t think Paramount was remotely cognizant of the significance of the work that was being recorded in their studio. They were just trying to land on a hit. And they had some success with Blind Lemon Jefferson. They had a little bit of success with Charley Patton, but I think for the most part, it’s obvious these performers didn’t sell super well because not a lot of their 78s have survived.
A few of those records are still out there, and collectors are hot to find them. Read more about the blues artists of the 1920s and ’30s, and the furniture company that recorded them for posterity, at Collectors Weekly. There are a couple of music tracks to play while you read.
No matter what you’ve been told, the original ouija boards were not ancient, nor were they based on an ancient tradition. They were a fortunetelling trick that grew out of the American spiritualism movement. They were first marketed as a fad that was a simple do-it-yourself project.
In 1886, the New York Daily Tribune reported on a new talking board being used in Ohio. It was 18 by 20 inches and featured the alphabet, numbers, and the words yes, no, good evening, and goodnight; the only other necessary object was a “little table three or four inches high … with four legs” that the spirits could use to identify letters. The brilliance of the board was that anyone could make it—the tools suggested in the article are “a jack-knife and a marking brush."
But of course, it didn’t take too long for someone to think of patenting the ouija board as a game of sorts. Read the story of where the ouija board came from, and how it ended up on toy store shelves, at mental_floss.
The internet and Metafilter are abuzz over Maddie & Tae, the teenage country duo whose first single strikes back against the pervasive and much-maligned trend of "bro country" sweeping the country charts. But Maddie & Tae are hardly the first female country singers to bring a decidedly feminist message to the genre. Here are some highlights, in chronological order, for your listening pleasure.
1927--The Carter Family, "Single Girl, Married Girl" Challenging myths about marriage, family and fulfillment...in 1927! Hot damn.
1935--Patsy Montana, "I Wanna Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart," It sounds like what she really wants is to be a cowboy herself. Bonus points for yodeling.
1951--Maddox Brothers & Rose, "I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again," expanding on the same themes brought up by The Carter Family
1952--Kitty Wells, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," the first number one Billboard country hit for a solo female artist was a response song to Hank Thompson's slut-shaming "The Wild Side Of Life."
1957--Jean Shepard, "Act Like A Married Man," condemning the sexism of a would-be adulterer
1967--Norma Jean, "Heaven Help The Working Girl" Here is your pink-collar solidarity anthem.
1968--Jeannie C. Riley, "Harper Valley PTA," The only crossover country superhit against suburban slut shaming you'll ever need.
1968--Dolly Parton, "Just Because I'm A Woman," another classic anti-slut-shaming anthem.
1969--Bobbie Gentry, "Fancy" Made famous by Reba McEntire but originally from the fabulous Bobbie Gentry, this complex and weird song nonetheless humanizes sex workers and their difficult decisions.
1969--Dolly Parton, "Down From Dover" A super-depressing picture of how the burdens of pregnancy fall disproportionately on women.
1969--Wanda Jackson, "My Big Iron Skillet," Combines two evergreen themes on this list, the revenge fantasy and disillusionment with domestic roles.
1973--Hazel Dickens, "Don't Put Her Down (You Put Her There)" Another anthem on sex workers and the men who disparage them.
1975--Loretta Lynn, "The Pill" Loretta Lynn is country music's biggest badass. Here she celebrates reproductive choice & freedom. Hearts.
1978--Tammy Wynette, "Womanhood" On the tension between frank sexual desire and Christian faith
1994--Martina McBride, "Independence Day," In addition to being yet another awesome revenge against abuse song, it also co-opts patriotic language and imagery for its own glorious purposes.
1996--Iris DeMent, "Letter To Mom," one of several contenders for the title of "saddest song on this list," it still contains empowering messages to survivors of victimization
2000--Dixie Chicks, "Goodbye Earl," Oh, but this list would not be complete without the ultimate "revenge against your abuser" song. And the video features Jenna Maroney!
2002--Neko Case, "Pretty Girls," An ode to women seeking abortions and the many forces aligned against them.
2006--Dixie Chicks, "Not Ready To Make Nice," A nice big fuck you from Natalie, Emily and Martie on the subject of whether or not it's okay for female artists to have political opinions.
2008--Miranda Lambert, "Gunpowder and Lead," Lambert's entry into the popular "revenge against an abuser" genre
2014--Kira Isabella, ""Quarterback"," easily the catchiest song about rape culture this year.
What am I forgetting? Any suggestions for the un-represented, backlash-tainted 80s?
Today marks Tove Jansson's 100th birthday. She was a free spirited artist, painter, political cartoonist, illustrator and author who defied the conventions of her time. Earlier this year, a postage stamp and a 2-Euro coin depicting Tove Jansson have been released in celebration of her birthday. She is probably best known for creating the Moomins, a beloved children's book series that was translated in over 40 languages. Unsurprisingly, some call her the queen of the Moomins. A current London exhibition [Tales from the Nordic Archipelago] allows a glimpse into her life and shows unseen photographs from her private island in the archipelago of Finland, where she spent over 30 summers. The English translation of a new biography is due later this year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala. Photo via Flickr user Presidencia Perú
On Wednesday, a survey released by the Levada Center, Russia's premier independent polling outfit, revealed that a record-high 87 percent of Russians approve of Vladimir Putin’s performance as their president. This will no doubt galvanize the Western press, since whenever a study is released indicating a spike in his approval rating (as was the case with a recent Gallup poll), journalists tend to leap at the opportunity to use the data to present Russia as a sort of Mordor and Russians themselves as half-breeds gleefully worshipping their power-hungry, evil overlord. The same overused adjectives to describe Putin are always bandied around, words like “stony-faced” and “bare-chested,” as though Russians love Putin because he can flex his pecs while insouciantly fishing out in the wild. In reality, many Russians laugh at his nudist hunting fetish just as hard as their Western counterparts.
But it’s easy for these crass caricatures and misunderstandings to develop when the data is presented, as it always is, without any cultural context. From a Western perspective, and especially from a right-wing/left-wing binary, it’s only natural to assume that Russians must approve of Putin because they are all radically homophobic, misogynistic, muscle-idolizing megalomaniacs. But Russia is not the West, and in the course of interviewing dozens of people in Russia about their views on Putin in the last month, I found that the perception of the man is rather different when looked at through the prism of Russia’s own culture.
There are, for one thing, plenty of Russians who are rabidly anti-Putin. Generally, they tend to be well-educated, cultured libertarian types who dissociate themselves with Russia (which they find barbaric) and refer to themselves, somewhat vaguely, as European. There are also, of course, many Russians who are rabidly pro-Putin. These tend to be your average machos who can never give any rational reasons (much less political ones) for liking him, suggesting that, like many extremists, their opinions stem from ideas pounded into them by parents at dinner tables—or else the type of family tragedy that led the main characters of American History X to become neo-Nazis. But these extremes are just that—polar opposites—and the vast majority of Russians is composed of people who half-support Putin. They largely fall into two categories: what I call the “Nobody cares” camp on one hand, and the “At least he’s better than what came before!” crowd on the other.
I use the term “half-support” quite consciously. In the West, we have a tendency to see issues through strict binaries: something is either right or wrong, good or evil, fresh or rotten. But Russians live in more of a gray area, and when you ask a Russian a question the answer is almost always some form of: “Well, on one hand [x] is true, but then, from another perspective, so is [y].” The same multi-faceted mentality can be seen in their take on virtually everything, including their president. While in the United States, most people tend to be either vociferously pro-Obama or anti-Obama, just as they are often staunchly Democratic or Republican, the sentiment among Russians who claim to support Putin is not nearly as strong, and is usually accompanied by a shoulder shrug and a half-hearted, “I guess he’s OK.”
This reticence to sing Putin’s praises derives from the fact that most of his citizens are perfectly well aware of the man’s multi-layered corruption, not least of all because corruption has been an integral part of the Russian government since its very inception.
Russians rallying against Putin after he reclaimed the presidency in 2012. Photo via Flickr Vladimir Varfolomeev
“Putin is the main crook, and everyone knows that,” Vadim, a director at an English language school, told me, reclining comfortably into his swivel chair. “Everyone knows that he controls the entire legal system and the press and so on, in part because he’s very transparent about it. But he’s a strong leader, so people like him. Russians like leaders with a big pair of balls, and his are huge. Putin is a bad guy, but I think one of the reasons Americans hate him so much is also because he makes Russia a strong country, and that scares Americans because they’re still afraid of Russia. But, anyway, what can you do?”
This amiable expression of indifference is common here, particularly in the vast “Nobody cares” camp. There’s a remarkable word in Russian: “pofigism.” It comes from the slang term, “pofig,” which means “not giving a shit.” It’s a darkly funny term, the addition of the suffix “-ism” speaking to the fact that, in Russia, not giving a shit has transcended from a state of emotional apathy into a full-fledged ideology. This is important to consider because one of the greatest differences between America and Russia is that while America is a highly politicized society, Russia is not.
“You have to understand that Russia is a country that went from having a string of tsars to a string of dictators,” an elderly hospital director named Seryezha told me. “So people don’t care about politics because we don’t have a frame of reference to a time when anyone had any influence on it. People in America seem to think that, in Russia, if people don’t protest against something, that means they implicitly support it (like the gay propaganda laws, for example), but that’s not true. It’s just that we don’t have a culture of activism here. In fact, protesting is considered vulgar, insecure and simply a form of personal attention-seeking. Just be who you are and let others be.”
Sergey’s view that protesting is more often than not just a self-involved PR stunt is echoed by many other Russians and backed up by research. A 2011 Gallup poll found that, out of 130 countries, America has the highest civic engagement score while Russia has one of the very lowest on Earth. What that means in practice is that people’s convictions are considered an intensely private, as opposed to public, matter, and thoughts do not manifest as frequently into actions, because the idea that one has the right to act on one’s beliefs comes from a “freedom of speech” culture that Russia just does not have, and never has had.
It’s easy to shake one’s head and think, “Oh, those poor, backward Russians,” but it’s worth acknowledging an uncomfortable truth instead: lofty ideas are a luxury of the well-fed. The reason that we can afford to keep up with all the news on Twitter and then have heated debates about current affairs over glasses of wine at French restaurants is because, on a global level, America is a relatively rich (and therefore spoiled) country. People in other parts of the world simply can’t indulge in conceptual ideals.
Putting on his serious face at a 2009 meeting in Davos. Photo via Flickr user World Economic Forum
The vast majority of Russia consists of lonely little villages frozen in time, places that often have no internet, no cellphone reception, no indoor plumbing, and certainly no Twitter. Russia is populated largely by people like my aunt, who lives in a desolate, isolated rural area near Samara in the southeast. She wakes up at the crack of dawn to feed the livestock, then spends her afternoons trying to sell produce at the market, her evenings taking the cows out to pasture and back, and her nights running around the village asking everyone whether or not they’ve seen her alcoholic husband—and then dragging him home once he’s been found. Any spare minute is spent looking over her son, who has permanent brain damage as a result of a bad polio vaccine administered to him as a child. Her entire emotional state is determined by a very simple philosophy:
“When there are potatoes, it’s a good day,” she says. “When there are no potatoes, it’s a bad day.”
When I ask her how she feels about Putin, I immediately feel embarrassed and suddenly very aware of just how entitled my “life of the mind” in New York is. Her response is characteristic of the responses I received from many people I interviewed in the provinces, and her so-called support is automatic and a product of what to Americans would seem like woefully low presidential standards.
“Oh, dearie, I don’t know about such things. We’re not being invaded by Nazis and there’s food in the stores, so as far as I’m concerned he’s doing a good job.”
That there’s food on the shelves of stores is a basic statement I heard echoed over and over again—which is now somewhat ironic given the ban on some food imports from Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States enacted by Moscow this week. While Americans tend to admire Mikhail Gorbachev because he “brought freedom to Russia,” Russians remember the last leader of the Soviet Union with a shudder because so many people starved to death or were forced into a life of crime thanks to capitalism’s shaky footing. With all due respect to the noble cause that is democracy, freedom is a pretty small consolation prize on an empty stomach. Or, as my friend Seva puts it, “Americans love ideas, but you can’t eat ideas.”
My friend Anya, an aspiring music therapist, protested against Putin in 2012, but has since started leaning toward the kind of tepid support of the president espoused by most of the people I interviewed.
“He’s a terrible human being, but at least he can hold himself with a degree of composure," she said. "He can formulate a sentence eloquently, he’s well educated, he’s always in control of the situation. It gives ordinary citizens a measure of peace to know that they’re being led by a fully-functioning adult. He’s not a drunk, like [former President Boris] Yeltsin, who was just embarrassing. He doesn’t lose his temper and lunge at politicians, like that lunatic Zhirinovsky [the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party]. And he isn’t a paranoid schizophrenic, like some of our former dictators.”
To Americans, Putin seems horrible, because they compare him to outwardly decent men like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. But to Russians, he is at the very least an improvement because they compare him to former leaders who set the bar awfully low.
And what Anya, an urbane intellectual, is saying is in some ways connected to what my aunt, a provincial farmer, meant as well. In the absence of transcendent ideals, people are instead concerned with tangible outcomes. And here’s where one needs to acknowledge another uncomfortable truth: While Putin is unequivocally terrible in regard to human rights and general human decency, he has tightened up what used to be a mess of a country in quotidian ways.
You can’t smoke in most public places anymore, which is a godsend because it means you can have a drink at a bar without choking to death in a steam-room of smoke. You can’t buy liquor in stores after ten at night, which seems to have significantly reduced the number of zombie-eyed men zigzagging through the streets on sunny afternoons. There’s a card now that you can use to ride in the metro, trolleybus, and marshrutka (a little minivan), which eliminates the hassle of constantly scrambling for change when late. In big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, the streets are shockingly cleaner and safer, and the highways are packed with BMWs instead of the boxy Ladas that used to ubiquitously sputter black smoke into the air as recently as three years ago. There’s a Starbucks on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in St. Petersburg. The appearance of this global coffee corporation may seem completely frivolous, but it isn’t to Russians, for whom, like McDonalds 24 years earlier, the Starbucks is a tangible if illusory indicator that they finally—finally!—get to have some of the same consumer goods as those in the West.
An ad for Putin and then-presidential candidate Dmitri Medvedev near Moscow's Red Square in 2008. Photo via Flickr user maailma.net
It’s easy to dismiss all of this as materialistic, even Faustian, but to a country that had so little for so long—many rural inhabitants still have next to nothing—smart phones and cars that don’t drive backwards of their own accord are a good enough reason to put up with a seemingly soulless leader. In the absence of abstract ideals, it is the minutiae of daily life that most matters, and it is these very minutiae that, up until now at least, Putin has cleverly provided.
That’s what makes the materialistic nature of his recent round of bans and prohibitions such an interesting potential turning point. There seemed to be little outrage in Russia over the laws that have made headlines all over the West in the last few years, like the gay propaganda laws, the swear-word censorship, and the blogger registration rule. But there was a visibly negative reaction to this month’s ban on the production and distribution of certain types of synthetic underwear, and the internet is as of now going apeshit over Wednesday’s decree restricting or banning for a period of one year food imports from European countries that have sanctions against Russia. You can take our so-called liberty, but you can’t take our lacy panties and our fancy French cheese. Russians lived too long without it in the black-market days and they will not give it up lightly. So perhaps we’ll get that revolution after all.
But perhaps not. For every person on the internet complaining about these recent laws there’s another one saying, “Putin is doing the right thing. Yea, I like McDonalds, but fast food is bad for you so I’m glad these chains are closing down. Yea, I like lacy underwear, but synthetic material is bad for the skin so I’m glad he’s making them illegal to obtain.” Choice, as psychologist Sheena Lyengar pointed out in her book The Art of Choosing, is considered inherently good in America, but that’s not always the case in other countries, where choice is viewed as a dangerous tool in the hands of human beings. We are, by nature, too weak to do what’s best for us—too lazy to go to the gym even when our doctor warns us it’s pivotal to do so and too self-indulgent to quit alcohol even when it’s destroying our lives. So for these societies it’s beneficial, if irritating, for a leader to eliminate the problematic paradox of choice.
Government systems are like parenting styles. America is an authoritative type, encouraging its children to exercise their free will responsibly; Russia is, it goes without saying, an authoritarian parent, setting strict rules and punitive measures. The highest achievement for Americans is to be “happy,” the highest achievement for Russians is to be “good.” It’s very subjective to suggest which style is better than the other, but the fact remains that for many Russians the authoritarian style is preferable because, on a cultural level, the perception remains that humans are dark and lazy by nature, so it is in fact beneficial to have someone forcing you to be your best and most productive self. And, for many Russians, Putin is precisely that stern father figure whose rules, while undeniably onerous and often cruel, are ultimately for their own good. So while the majority may admit that he is a competent but corrupt politician whose blood runs cold, to them Putin represents the human incarnation of a necessary evil.
Diana Bruk is a freelance writer who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and raised in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
Vulture dug up this photo from Buscemi’s elementary yearbook, from his school in Valley Stream, Long Island, thanks to Vulture’s Jesse David Fox’s mom having gone to the same school. Buscemi said he didn’t find the Buscemi Eyes meme as funny as everyone else. But surely he’s got to appreciate he may be the only child any of us has ever seen who looks like a crazed Nosferatu on acid.
What it means to most people: A hunch or conjecture. What it means if you're a scientist: An entire system of well-substantiated and testable ideas that explain something about the natural world.
ThinkStock / gpointstudio
"Chemist"
What it means to most people: Where you go to buy cough medicine when you're feeling under the weather. What it means if you're a scientist: A person who wears lab coats and blows things up (sometimes on purpose).
Jovanmandic
"Hypothesis"
What it means to most people: A guess, possibly an educated one. What it means if you're a scientist: A proposed explanation for something that we can actually test.
What it means to most people: A person employed to display clothes by wearing them, or pose for a photographer or artist. What it means if you're a scientist: Something that represents a phenomenon or physical process; a simplified version of reality.
Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.
Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?
In any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.
On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.
One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.
Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there.
I feel safe calling Fight Club a “dude book.” It can certainly be enjoyed by anyone but it was also clearly targeted at men. And that’s perfectly fine. But when author Chuck Palahniuk took part in a Tumblr Q&A recently to promote his new book, he said a few things about what’s out there “for the menz” which have us tilting our heads.
But in Palahniuk’s Q&A session (which lasted over a week), there are two replies which have since been deleted (never a good sign). One was a response to a question about his books being taught in college courses. He replied:
That fact that ‘Fight Club’ is being taught seems — to me — to underscore the dearth of novels that explore male issues. The past years have given us so many books, from ‘The Color Purple’ to ‘The Joy Luck Club’ to ‘How to Make an American Quilt,’ which depict women in groups and relationship, but almost no books depicting social models for men. That’s my two cents worth.
Just because you’re seeing more female-led projects in the spotlight does not mean there’s a shortage of books focused on male issues. “Thank you, Chuck, for standing up for male writers, a desperately marginalized group,” was a seemingly sarcastic follow-up to his answer. Which, to be fair, is not quite what the author was getting at in his answer. He never mentioned the authors, just content. Though he did trip up with that as he replied:
Consider that reading has become a mostly female pastime and that males are being better served by other media: the web, film, gaming. Of course publishers will skew toward the most profitable audience. Otherwise the world is still chasing the golden demographic of the ‘young male.’ If male writers could better serve that readership, it would explode. We’re only marginalized if we accept that status. What troubles me is the seemingly high number of younger male suicides: David Foster Wallace, Alexander McQueen, plus older men such as Spalding Grey [sic] and Hunter S. Thompson, not to mention ‘accidental’ deaths like Heath Ledger and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“We’re only marginalized if we accept that status.” Stop. Stop right there. You’re not marginalized. You’re absolutely not. When another tumblr user called him on that specifically it played out like this:
Anonymous said: I hope you understand how disheartening it is to hear a prominent male writer say male writers are ‘marginalized.’ As someone who should be in touch with marginalization since that’s often a theme of your novels, I would just hope you realize the ignorance in that statement and realize how the groups that are actually marginalized–women writers, lgbt writers, writers of color–feel when reading that.
Hey, no wait. If you look again, it was the original questioner who used the ‘M’ word.
Ok then. Let’s backtrack for a second – what in the world was that tangent into suicide? He took something which would have been interesting to explore – are men reading less these days than women, and why – and derailed the conversation into an unrelated, serious issue. I’m completely boggled.
The extended question and answer session was otherwise filled with sarcastic replies about sex and some really great writing advice, so it’s unfortunate Palahniuk took a huge misstep. And while it wasn’t related specifically to the previous questions, I couldn’t help but notice this one:
alltimepoop said: what do you think of the fault in our stars? how about 50 shades of grey?
What’s to say? Sex and death sell. But I lived through “Love Story” so I don’t need to see ‘Stars.”
Considering the tumblr asks were deleted, it’s quite possible the author realized what he said was boneheaded and would rather forget the whole thing, but this is the internet after all. What do you think of Palahniuk’s main argument – that there are almost no books depicting social models for men?
El epazote, (Dysphania ambrosioides), era cocnocida ya por los Aztecas como epazōtl, epatli - zorrillo + zotli - hierba, en vocablo Nahuátl. Es una planta aromática, que se usa como condimento y como planta medicinal en México y muchos otros países de Latinoamérica: Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, Perú, y en el sur de los Estados Unidos.
El epazote puede crecer de forma silvestre, alcanza hasta un metro de altura, es de sabor fuerte y a muchas personas les cuesta trabajo encontrarlo agradable en su primera experiencia. Sus hojas tienen bordes dentados, son alargadas y delgadas de color verde y en forma de lanza, aunque hay la variedad de epazote morado o púrpura. Está adaptado a distintos climas: cálido, semicálido, semiseco y templado. Desde el nivel del mar hasta 3,900 msnm. Se dice que ayuda a adelgazar, a mejorar la digestión, a eliminar parásitos intestinales, trastornos nerviosos, a humectar la piel en mascarillas, etc. y otros beneficios.
En la cocina mexicana, el epazote es muy utilizado, sobre todo en la zona centro de la República. ¿Han probado una quesadilla con epazote? En muchos platillos populares, es impensable que no lleve epazote, como las quesadillas, los esquites, sopa de hongos, chilaquiles y frijoles de la olla. Por supuesto, no en toda la República se le utiliza para este tipo de platillos.
Es una planta muy simple de cultivar en casa en una simple maceta, pero si no puedes hacerlo y prefieres comprarla, puedes lavar y secar las hojas que no pienses utilizar en la semana, y ponerlas a secar o en racimos colgados por el tallo en un lugar bien ventilado y seco, o simplemente, comprando esta hierba en hojuelas secas, para tener siempre a mano. A mi, me encanta.
Algunas personas aseguran que en exceso puede resultar abortiva, por lo que aconsejan que las mujeres embarazadas no la coman, no se ha demostrado que así sea, en las cantidades utilizadas para aromatizar o dar sabor a los platillos mencionados. Sin embargo, sugiero que en caso de embarazo, se tome todo tipo de precaución para evitar riesgos.
Who in the world can look at a cast iron skillet and not instantly crave fajitas? The way they sizzle and steam as your waiter carries them out to you, setting them on the table and reminding you that they’re very hot so you shouldn’t touch the skillet. You look around and it feels like the whole restaurant is staring at your meal. You’re sure you heard a few people whisper, “I should have gotten that, it smells amazing,” and “That looks delicious!” You take a bite, and they’re every bit as flavorful as you imagined.
Full sensory experience, you know?
I always think of that when I pull out my cast iron skillet, but I’d never craved fajitas as strongly as I have since I came up with these Saucy Cajun Shrimp Fajitas.
These fajitas feature the traditional bell peppers and onion, as well as tomatoes and Cajun-seasoned shrimp, but what makes it really special is the sauce.
First, the vegetables are sauteed with Cajun spices until soft and slightly browned in areas. Then, they’re removed from the pan and the shrimp is cooked in the same manner.
Resist the urge to eat all of the shrimp at this point. It will be hard, but you can do it.
Then, the pan is deglazed with wine and chicken broth to create a tasty sauce using the browned bits of Cajun spices, and mixed in with cream sauce until golden. I totally stole this idea from Ree Drummond’s Cajun Chicken Pasta recipe, by the way.
Gotta give credit where credit’s due! It’s so simple and delicious.
Then the shrimp and veggies are added back in and heated in the sauce as it reduces.
Once the sauce has thickened up, sprinkle with cilantro or parsley and serve with tortillas, cheese, and a wedge of lime or lemon!
These Saucy Cajun Shrimp Fajitas are so absolutely delicious, you’re going to want to make them all the time. Try it with chicken, too, or even add in some crumbled Andouille sausage to kick up the Cajun factor. YUM!
In a small bowl, combine the Cajun Seasoning ingredients. Toss the shrimp with half of the seasonings and set aside.
In a cast iron skillet or heavy-bottomed pan, melt 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon oil. Once the butter has melted, add in the peppers, onions, and garlic. Sprinkle with the remaining 1½ teaspoons of seasoning. Cook on medium-high heat until the vegetables have softened and begun to brown a bit. Add in the tomatoes and cook for another minute. Remove the vegetables from the pan and set aside.
Add the remaining butter and canola oil to the pan. Once warmed, add in the seasoned shrimp. Cook, stirring occasionally, until shrimp are opaque. Remove the shrimp from the pan and set aside with the vegetables.
Turn the heat up to high and pour the wine and chicken broth into the pan. Deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom with a wooden spoon to loosen up the browned bits from the spices. Cook for 5 minutes.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and slowly whisk in the heavy cream. Cook until the sauce begins to thicken, and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Add the shrimp, vegetables, and any reserved juices back into the skillet with the sauce. Let the sauce come to a bubble and stir everything together to coat. Let the sauce thicken up as it heats the shrimp and vegetables back up. Once thickened, sprinkle with parsley or cilantro, remove from heat, and serve.
Serve with warmed flour tortillas, shredded cheese, and lemon or lime wedges.
Hasta hace algunos años, a nivel internacional se creía que el frijol tenía sus orígenes en la región de Los Andes, ubicada al sur de América, sin embargo las investigaciones han señalado que todas las variedades de esta leguminosa proceden de un ancestro común que surgió en México.
Variedades se conocen más de 150, de las cuales sólo una tercera parte se encuentran en México, entre ellas figuran el frijol blanco al que también se le conoce como alubia, el frijol negro procedente de Querétaro y Veracruz y que es el más usado en la zona centro del territorio nacional, el flor de mayo, el frijol morado, el frijol pinto, el frijol canario, y el ayocote.
Otra variedad importante y muy usada es el frijol verde, que es la vaina tierna de esta leguminosa y que conocemos como ejote, y es una de las hortalizas más importantes de la alimentación debido a su contenido de vitaminas y minerales. Fuera de México a los ejotes se les conoce como habichuelas, porotos verdes, judías verdes, chauchas o simplemente vainas.
Nutricionalmente hablando, el frijol es una fuente importante de proteínas y fibra dietética y poseen un bajo contenido de grasa y no tienen colesterol. De hecho, la fibra que se encuentra en los frijoles ayuda a reducir los niveles de colesterol en la sangre y ayuda a reducir el riesgo de enfermedades crónicas como lo son la diabetes, la obesidad y el cáncer.
Se lo pides, le saca la tapa que tiene en un extremo, le clava un palo de madera y lo mete en otro caldero con agua templadda. Con el agua templada el metal se templa un poco y sale. Estos helados como puedes ver en las fotos, siempre tienen forma de cohete.
En este tipo de paletas, no es extraño que encuentres sabores picantes. Es bastante habitual tanto el de chile con mango, como el de chile y limón.
Evidentemente, los helados no quedan con la cremosidad y perfección que se hace con las máquinas modernas y el removido constante. Pero es auténtico, y los sabores que ofrecen son muy originales. A nivel de la heladería más original que podais conocer en España.
Esta foto es de Oaxaca, donde son bastante famosas sus nieves. A ver, antes que nadie me corriga, en principio las nieves son los hechos con hielo y jugo de fruta (o esa un sorbete). Pero yo he visto que generalmente usan el término de nieve tambien para los que llevan crema.
I feel safe calling Fight Club a “dude book.” It can certainly be enjoyed by anyone but it was also clearly targeted at men. And that’s perfectly fine. But when author Chuck Palahniuk took part in a Tumblr Q&A recently to promote his new book, he said a few things about what’s out there “for the menz” which have us tilting our heads.
Es una planta muy simple de cultivar en casa en una simple maceta, pero si no puedes hacerlo y prefieres comprarla, puedes lavar y secar las hojas que no pienses utilizar en la semana, y ponerlas a secar o en racimos colgados por el tallo en un lugar bien ventilado y seco, o simplemente, comprando esta hierba en hojuelas secas, para tener siempre a mano. A mi, me encanta. 
