Koozer's Kitchen: Farro Salad

Salads can be stupid. In addition, we're on the brink of autumn, when craisins and caramelized pears start appearing on our salad plates as if they were vegetables (they're not!). But I decided to keep summer going with a farro salad - the least stupid salad of them all!

FARRO SALAD FOR SMART PEOPLE

These amounts refer to a 15 oz. packet of farro, which feeds a LOT of people, or a few very fat people.

1. Put farro in big soup pot. Add 5 1/2 cups of water. Let sit for 20 minutes or so. I recommend watching a DVR'd episode of X-Play.

2. Bring to boil, then cover and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes or longer. You want the farro to be tender, but still hearty and nutty, like my crotch. When it's done, remove from heat, drain any extra water, and move to a big salad bowl. Let sit, the put in fridge to cool off.

3. While it's cooling in the fridge, add the following to another bowl: one red onion, thinly sliced; four tomatoes, seeded and chopped; one large, phallic-like cucumber, peeled and small diced; two celery stalks, small diced; 20 or so basil leaves, ripped; maybe 1/2 bunch of curly parsley, pulled off the stems and chopped.

4. When the farro is cold, toss in the veggies and herbs and drizzle in olive oil and red wine vinegar. I put a lot in, but if you're a pussy, start with a little and add to taste.

5. Serve to your neighbors while they patiently wait. Meanwhile, have your girlfriend ransack their apartment. Sell their jewelry for more farro.

Koozer's Kitchen: E-Z Pita Chips

I told you how to make pretty decent tahiti-less hummus. But what are you going to serve it with - baby carrots?? LAME. Here's what you do:

E-Z PITA CHIPS

1. Preheat oven to 375. Cut pita bread into triangle wedges, as if you were cutting a pizza. Put pita wedges on a cookie sheet.

2. In a bowl, mix together 1/4 - 1/2 cup of olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon each of dried basil, dried oregano, and black pepper. Add salt and garlic powder to taste (don't use too much garlic powder or people will think you're a jackass).

3. Brush pita pieces on both sides with the oil mixture. Bake until crispy, but not so crispy that people hate you. Serve with hummus or throw em at cars!

Koozer's Kitchen: Zesty Hummus

If you're just reading this for the news items and/or snarky comments, then you have no idea that I'm a WORLD FAMOUS CHEF (in my own mind). The parents are coming by tonight to watch the Mets-Braves doubleheader and visit their grandson, Rusty. So I'll be coming up a bunch of things and will blog my recipes as I do them (unless I get too drunk - I guzzle wine while cooking).

FYI - my stepdad is a veggiehead, so doing a meatless thing tonight. Don't worry folks - I'll eat twice the veal tomorrow.

Okay, so just made some kick-ass hummus and it took a whopping 5 minutes. Here's how:

COOZER'S ZESTY HUMMUS

1. Set up food processer. Open a can of chickpeas, drain liquid out. Add chickpeas to processer.

2. Add two garlic cloves (halved), a little salt, a couple of sprigs of parsley, and maybe 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon each of cumin and hot pepper flakes (I use these crazy-hot flakes I picked up from Sripraphai, the best Thai place in NYC [and probably the best restaurant, period]).

3. Squeeze half a lemon in there, or a whole lemon if you like your hummus lemony. Pour in some olive oil.

4. Process for a minute or so - keep adding olive oil if it's too chunky.

5. Now here's where I added the Coozer touch. I never have tahini or sesame paste on me (though it would be funny if I kept some in my pockets), so I had the idea to add a tablespoon of sour cream. Holy shit. It totally gave my hummus that creaminess I always attributed to tahini or a disgruntled Greek chef's bodily fluids. Tablespoon of sour cream. Try it out.

6. Process some more until creamy. Scoop out in a bowl for dipping, or if you wanna get fancy - spread out on a plate, drizzle olive oil around the perimeter, and on the center, garnish with parsley sprigs, a handful of mixed olives, and a dash of paprika and pepper.

7. Hot damn, you just made a fancy shmancy hummus and it took you 5 minutes! Reward yourself with internet porn and booze.

Scientists turn things INVISIBLE!!

Holy crap. Where were these scientists when I was in high school??

AWESOME:

A research group of the Departments of Applied Physics and Electromagnetism of the University of Granada (Spain), directed by Professors Jorge Andrés Portí, Alfonso Salinas and Juan Antonio Morente, have taken a step forward with regard to one of mankind’s biggest dreams and challenges, often tackled by fiction writers and film makers: invisibility. Scientists of the UGR have managed, by means of a numerical technique known as Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) Modelling method, to hide an object or make it invisible in a certain frequency, inside an electromagnetic simulator. Such studies are the germ to achieve invisibility to radars and even to the human eye.

Animal lover dies from scratch after freeing rat.

From the UK Daily Mail:

Discovering a rat trapped in a wire bird feeder in her back garden animal lover Carol Colburn was swift to act.

The mother-of-three ignored the pleas of her husband to wear gloves and set about freeing the terrified animal.

But she paid for her act of kindness with her life.

The 56-year-old suffered scratches and cuts to her hands in the process of releasing the creature. Unknown to her she had contracted the rare - but deadly - Weil's disease.

Sweet shop's secret ingredient? Psychotropic drugs!

From Reuters:

Police closed down a Berlin sweet shop after discovering the owner was selling chocolates and lollipops laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana.

[...] "In the shop we found 120 pieces of magic mushroom chocolate and countless cannabis lollipops," said police, who confiscated around 70 sachets containing various drugs, about 20 marijuana joints, a range of pills and some jars of drug-laced honey.

300th Post Gala Extravaganza!!

300 posts, huzzah!!

How are you guys enjoying The Coozer Files?

Leave a comment and let us know what you liked and loved about the first 300 posts!

Sharing a bed saps men's brain power.

I always suspected this was the case. Interesting stuff.

Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power - at least if you are a man - Austrian scientists suggest.

When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day. The lack of sleep also increases a man's stress hormone levels.

According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply.

[...] Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, said: "It's not surprising that people are disturbed by sleeping together.

"Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.

"Sleep is the most selfish thing you can do and it's vital for good physical and mental health. Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible."

Girl kills herself over Large Hadron Collider doomsday fears.

Gosh, now where this girl get the idea from that we're all gonna die because of the new particle accelerator?

*whistles, shuffles feet*

Damn media and their fear mongering!

*stares intently at fingernails, avoids eye contact*

Butt Bandit strikes back!

Dude is vandalizing his small Nebraska town by smooshing his bare buttocks (sometimes groin) against every surface in town. From Yahoo! News:

Store owners, church workers and school janitors have had to wash lotion and petroleum jelly off the windows he selects.

[...] Some residents of Valentine, a town of about 2,650 people, find some humor in the strange vandalism and have taken to calling the perpetrator the "Butt Bandit." But they also can't help but cringe when finding his marks.

"We were completely grossed out," said Kalli Kieborz, who works in a downtown building. "One day I walked into the office and an employee said, 'Oh, my God, we've been struck!'"

[...] "This is the weirdest case I've ever seen," said police Chief Ben McBride.

US army training psychologists to torture detainees.

Nevermind that it's illegal, against international codes of conduct, and a mockery of the psychology profession. Jack Bauer does it, so it's okay!

Article here.

Top 10 worst ways to alter your body.

I'm surprised "getting a straightedge tattoo" isn't on here.

Top 10 Crimes Against Nature.

The Goldblum = greatest crazy clown ever?

The Goldblum is getting rave reviews for his portrayal of a clown going insane after the horrors of the Holocaust. The Goldblum + insane clown + Holocaust = OSCAR GOLD.

The man is a genius thespian/Jewish Thor.

Jury: Threat of global warming justifies breaking the law.

This is a weird story. Greenpeace activists cause $60K in damages at a coal-fueled power station, but the jury feels their actions were justified because of the threat of global warming. From The Independent:

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

I'm all for the green agenda, but this is quite a stretch. To be clear, the protesters didn't do anything heroic to save the world. They painted Gordon Brown's name on a chimney.

Coozer Prophesy: Supergerms will kill us all.

Antibiotics have only strengthened germs and their resistance is increasing. We are creating our own intragalactic arch-enemies - super destructive microbes that CAN'T BE STOPPED. Experts agree.

I, for one, welcome our new microscopic overlords.

Senator examining rising text messaging rates.

Glad someone is paying attention. Tagged "Awesome" for the senator, not for collusion.

From the Associated Press:

A key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the nation's top four wireless carriers to justify the "sharply rising rates" they charge people to send and receive text messages.

In letters to top executives at Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl said Tuesday that he is concerned that rising text messaging rates reflect decreasing competition in the wireless business.

Kohl chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. His inquiry comes as European Commission regulators are threatening to impose a cap on roaming fees for text messages sent by Europeans traveling outside of their home nations, in an effort to force prices down by as much as 70 percent.

Kohl said he was concerned that consumers are paying more than 20 cents per message, up from 10 cents in 2005. This increase, he said, "does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages," which are small data files that are inexpensive for carriers to transmit.

Kohl said he is particularly concerned that all four of the companies appear to have adopted identical price increases at nearly the same time. "This conduct is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace," he wrote.

The photos I should've taken.

If I owned a camera and had photography skills, these would be the pics I would've taken. These pics are of Salar de Uyuni, the "salt lake" in Bolivia, and I was in the Salt Flats in Salta, Argentina, but the feeling of being alone on a neverending surreal, alien moonscape was the same.

From their travelogue:

"...We finally reached the salt flats. Imagine being surrounded by endless white salt covered by a few inches of water. Without any reference points the sky meets the salt and creates an odd illusion that objects in the flats are flying. I had never seen anything like it...

My fellow Americans: It's called "SODA". Learn it.

Saw this on Digg. This highly detailed map shows how "soda" is mispronounced across this idiotic country of ours.

To sum up:

If you call your favorite carbonated sugary beverage "pop"... you are a moron.

If you call it "Coke" even if it's Sprite or Grape Soda.... you are a moron AND you live in North Carolina. Sucks to be you.

Top 20 most corrupt members of Congress.

CREW just released their annual report. See how your local elected official is stealing your money!

Article here.

The 20 most corrupt Members of Congress

• Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
• Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
• Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
• Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-NY)
• Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA)
• Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
• Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL)
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA)
• Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)
• Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA)
• Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA)
• Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)
• Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)
• Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY)
• Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)
• Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

Dishonorable mentions

• Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
• Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN)
• Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA)
• Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH)

Coozer-Bits

Boston Globe: Al Franken takes MN primary for Senate.

Breitbart: Peanut butter & pastrami pangs lead to pot arrest.

McClatchy: McCain steals Obama’s flags for cheap political stunt.

AOL: Meanwhile, Obama sends out embarrassing pic of Palin.

Chicago Sun-Times: Follow-up: Giant robot ape found in VT cornfield.

Times Online UK: 80% of French prefer Obama over McCain.

LA Times: Texas judge had affair with prosecutor, probably biasing death row case.

FTC: This might explain why every prepaid calling card I’ve ever used seems to last only 90 seconds instead of 10 minutes.

University of Michigan: New, ultra-rare particle discovered.

EurekAlert: Mayonnaise can only be explained by mathematics.

McClatchy: As people die, Haiti still being ignored.

Newsweek: Beijing lends only one hand for the Paralympics.

Page One Q: FL gay adoption ban ruled unconstitutional.

Consumerist: Bloodbath & Beyond offers up good apology for letting baby roast in parking lot. Props!

Man finds happiness with 25th wife.

I do love a love story. Especially ones featuring sherpas. From BBC:

After 24 failed marriages, a 49-year-old porter in eastern Nepal says that he has finally found happiness in his latest union.

The simple reason is that the landless labourer's latest marriage seems to be working out, unlike the previous ones.

Ramchandra Katuwal, of Khandbari municipality in Sankhuwasava, and his wife recently celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary.

He say that his marriage to Sharada has been a "journey of happiness".

Trend Spotting: Youth suicide in China.

Who can keep up with kids' trends?!! The new one is in China, where all the cool kids are offing themselves. It's now the #1 cause of death for young people, beating out car accidents, overdoses, and sitting through "Epic Movie".

In the rural areas, it might be because of arranged marriages. In the urban areas, it may be the popularity of a comic book titled "The Rabbit Which Wanted To Kill Itself."

Kids today!

We're still alive... for now.

The Large Hadron Collider has been fired up and the strands of existence appear to not have been unraveled thus far. However, they've only fired a proton beam around in a circle. I do that with a laser pointer for my cat every day.

Best ska song ever?

I have to give the Pop Punk Bored credit for finding this amazing ska song/video. I'd link to them, but they hate teh n00bs.

Anyway, enjoy.



"Zap!"

DOJ undermining anti-monopoly laws; Federal Trade Commission lashes back.

I should wait for someone smarter than I to blog about this report from the Department of Justice, because I barely understand it. But according to the Federal Trade Commission, the report significantly weakens and undermines existing anti-monopoly laws, giving mega corporations even more power over us dopey consumers.

The FTC had some strong words, actually:

Commissioners Harbour, Leibowitz, and Rosch believe that the Department’s report, if adopted by the courts, “would be a blueprint for radically weakened enforcement of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” Commissioners Harbour, Leibowitz, and Rosch identified two “overarching concerns” with the DOJ report. First, while the Supreme Court has declared the welfare of consumers the primary goal of antitrust laws, the Department’s report “is chiefly concerned with firms that enjoy monopoly or near-monopoly power, and prescribes a legal regime that places these firms’ interests ahead of those of consumers.”

Read the DOJ report and FTC's response. And let's hope Alternet or someone blogs about it so I know what all this government in-fighting is about.

Doing drunk things and not remembering explained by SCIENCE!

Finally, proof that I'm not lying when I say I don't remember doing the things I do. I AM BLAMELESS!! BLAMELESS!!!! *takes swig of schnapps, punches passerby girl in the face*

From the Telegraph:

Research at the University of Sussex has found that alcohol influences the brain's ability to form memories, making memories before a drink stronger and memories of things that happen while under the influence weaker.

It means that while a drinker may remember the happy events such as socialising with friends at the start of a drinking session, they are less able to recall the negative effects that happen later in the night.

Professor Theodora Duka, from the department of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex, said: "This bias towards positive memories means that people are more likely to drink heavily the next time they go out because they only remember the good memories about the last time.

"It is not exactly clear how alcohol changes the way memories are made, but it could be altering the neurotransmitters that form memories."

Follow Up: End of the world scheduled for 3:15 am EST.

Damn it, I'm gonna be asleep and not have any cool last words. Like "Oh crap!" or "I regret I only have one life to give for an unnecessary overgrown physics project."

From the NY Daily News:

Mark your calendars: the End of the World may come around 3:15 a.m. tomorrow.

That’s when scientists will flip the switch on the world’s most powerful particle accelerator in an attempt to begin answering some of the oldest scientific quandaries.

Some critics have warned that the activation of the 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, can create black holes on Earth for the very first time — pulling us all into oblivion.

Scientists working on the massive project were quick to assuage fears, explaining that any black holes would be tiny and last a fraction of a nano-second.

The secret ingredient is love. (Or animal cruelty.)

ABC News:

Pssst. The secret's out at KFC. Well, sort of. Colonel Harland Sanders' handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices was to be removed Tuesday from safekeeping at KFC's corporate offices for the first time in decades. The temporary relocation is allowing KFC to revamp security around a yellowing sheet of paper that contains one of the country's most famous corporate secrets.

[...] So important is the 68-year-old concoction that coats the chain's Original Recipe chicken that only two company executives at any time have access to it. The company refuses to release their name or title, and it uses multiple suppliers who produce and blend the ingredients but know only a part of the entire contents.

Zombie Watch: American Airlines loses corpse.

I hate American Airlines. I forced myself to fly with them for years just to rack up enough miles so I could get my free trip and never fly with them again. But for all my issues with AA, none compare to this guy's ordeal. From the NY Post:

A Brooklyn man who claims he suffered the nightmare of all lost-luggage stories is demanding millions from American Airlines after it allegedly misplaced his deceased wife's body for four days.

According to the lawsuit, filed last week, the body of 57-year-old Teresa Olaya was so badly decomposed when it finally arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador, that her grieving husband, Miguel, had to forgo a traditional open-casket funeral.

Coozer-Bits

Reuters: Zombies lose silliest book title award.

ABC News: Kim Jong Il mysteriously absent from parade. (Reminds me of another recent article claiming he died a few years ago and has been replaced by a lookalike.)

BBC News: Vitamin B12 may prevent memory loss.

Boston Globe: Iran arrests two celebrated Iranian doctors who were involved in US-funded relationship-building exchange program for trying to "destabilize the Iranian government".

Washington Post: Palin bilked taxpayers for nights spent at home and family travel.

Chicago Sun-Times: Teen girl stabbed in head with screwdriver during school fight.

Reuters: Moroccan blogger jailed for criticizing king.

EurekAlert: Water bears are the first animals to survive the vacuum and radiation of space.

LA Times: Protesters sitting in trees for 21 months fail.

IHT: Church of Scientology in France charged with fraud.

And the players move into position...

My friend Louie D sent to this me and at first I thought it was a hoax. But no - Russia really is looking to send nuclear battleships into the Caribbean. The fleet includes Peter the Great, "one of the world's largest combat warships", and Admiral Chabanenko, "Moscow's most modern destroyer." Article here.

Russia said on Monday it would send a heavily-armed nuclear-powered cruiser to the Caribbean for a joint naval exercise with Venezuela, its first major maneuvers on the United States' doorstep since the Cold War.

Russian officials denied the mission was in any way linked to a naval standoff with U.S warships in the Black Sea, but it will take place at a time of high tension between Moscow and Washington over the conflict in Georgia.

Russia has criticized the United States for sending a command ship and two other naval vessels to Georgia, on its southern border, to deliver aid and show support for President Mikheil Saakashvili after Moscow sent troops into Georgia.

Bloodbath & Beyond.

From Consumerist:

Bed, Bath & Beyond refused to let some customers use the phone to call 911 after they saw a toddler locked in a hot car in the store's parking lot. The witnesses told the local news that the employees told them, "...You cannot call no one, what goes on in the parking lot is not our concern."

"I said, lady, there is a child out there in a hot car and it's locked and it needs help. And I said, will you let us use your phone and call and she said no, we will not get involved."

The Lexington police arrived, smashed the car window and gave the 3-year-old some water. The mother was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment.

Alternative post title: Bed, Bath & Beyond Decency.

Group offers Jews $50K to move to Alabama.

From Breitbart:

[The] Blumberg Family Relocation Fund is offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World. Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group's leaders say, and the money doesn't have to be repaid.

Hmm. On one hand, $50K could pretty much buy Alabama with some leftover for your daughter's braces. But on the other hand...

Trying to lure Jewish families to a quiet Southern town in a state with a reputation for hard-right politics and racial intolerance might be difficult. About 20 Jewish families have sought information about Dothan, though none has made the move.

Oh, the decision! Oy, my kishkes!!

New type of Pocky discovered in the Amazon.

CandyAddict, the only blog that matters, stumbled upon a very unique Pocky flavor - Brazilian Pudding! Samba over to their review of multicultural coated pretzel snackage!

“Ooh, a new flavor of Pocky,” I said to myself. No, not out loud, in my head – what, do you think I wanted all the other shoppers to think I was crazy? “The box is kind of pretty. Wait, what the… Brazilian Pudding? What in the blue blazes is Brazilian Pudding?” The only things I could name that came from Brazil were Brazil nuts, jaguars and Brazilian waxing (and we are so not going to go there on a family website). None of those things had anything to do with pudding or Japanese chocolate-coated pretzel sticks.

My curiosity had to be satisfied, so I picked up a box. After all, there was a toucan on the front, and I’ve never been steered wrong by a product with a toucan on the box.

Teen beaten unconscious by flying fish.

It's only a matter of time before all fish start pummeling our faces. We must landlock ourselves before it's too late. Inward, citizens!

It's a fishing tale that packs a wallop so strong it broke the jaw of a southeastern Arkansas teen and covered him in fish blood and guts.

Seth Russell, 15, of Crossett, was cruising Lake Chicot on a large inner tube towed by a boat when a Silver Asian carp leaped from the water and smacked him in the face. Seth was knocked unconscious.

"He doesn't remember anything at all," the boy's mother, Linda Russell, said last week. "He was laughing, and the next thing he remembers, he is waking in a hospital."

The teen has had oral surgery to wire several teeth together and still experiences back pain that doctors attribute to whiplash from the high-speed collision, his mother said.

The end is nigh.

The BBC wonders why everyone's all worked up about the dangers of the Large Hadron Collider recreating the Big Bang as well as thousands of black holes, potentially unraveling existence as we know it (or at least creating a black hole where our planet used to be).

"Why the fascination with the end of the world?" they ask.

Well, maybe I'm not as calm and collected as the BBC, but my fascination with the end of the world is derived from the possibility OF THE END OF THE WORLD.

Cyborg woman has feelings in fake arm.

This is crazy. She can control objects with HER MIND. WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!! From ABC News:

As a result of an experimental surgery, Mitchell has become the first real "Bionic Woman": part human, part computer.

[...] The "targeted reinnervation" surgery was developed by Dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. It was a radical idea: a robotic arm controlled not by a patient's stump or shoulder, but by a patient's thoughts.

[...] During the six-hour procedure in 2006, doctors took the severed and dormant nerves in Mitchell's shoulder, nerves that are used to control the movement of her arm, and put them under the muscle in her chest.

They wanted the nerves to reawaken and work her chest muscle. The doctors eventually used the electrical nerve signals from that chest muscle to power a new bionic arm.

Now, when Mitchell wants to move her arm, she thinks "move." The signal travels from her brain to the muscle in her chest. According to Kuiken, Mitchell's chest muscle then contracts and "lets tiny bits of electricity out."

There are tiny antennas built into the robotic arm, which pick up these electrical signals. The signals then go to an internal computer that decodes them and tells the artificial arm what to do. It's almost instantaneous.

Follow-up on the sausage bandit.

Fresno Bee has the details, including some really funny ones (the dog ate the weapon!). Reprinted in full because I love this story.

A burglar who broke into a home just east of Fresno rubbed spices over the body of one of two men as they slept in their rooms and then used an 8-inch sausage to whack the other man on the face and head before running out of the house, Fresno County sheriff's deputies said Saturday.

Lt. Ian Burrimond, describing the crime as one of the strangest he's ever heard of, said a suspect was found hiding in a nearby field a few minutes later and taken into custody on suspicion of residential robbery.

Deputies, he said, had no problem linking the suspect to the crime.

"It seems the guy ran out of the house wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks, leaving behind his wallet with his ID," Burrimond said.

Arrested was Antonio Vasquez, 22, of Fresno.

Burrimond said deputies headed to the victims' home in the 300 block of South Thompson Avenue near Kings Canyon Road shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday regarding a burglary in progress.

The victims, both farmworkers, told deputies they were awakened by a stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with a sausage.

Both the spices and the sausage, Burrimond said, reportedly were obtained from the victims' kitchen.

After the man fled, the victims discovered the home had been ransacked and that some money was taken, Burrimond said.

Burrimond said the money was recovered, but that the piece of sausage used in the attack was discarded by the suspect and eaten by a dog.

"That's right, the dog ate the weapon," Burrimond said.

"I tell you, this was one weird case."

Burglar wakes men with spice rub, sausage whacks.

This is the coolest burglar ever. If I were a criminal, this is exactly what I would do. Stay tuned because I'm gonna try to find more info on this case. Short item here.

Authorities say they've arrested a man who broke into the home of two California farmworkers, stole money, rubbed one with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing.

Fresno County sheriff's Lt. Ian Burrimond says 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxers and socks after the Saturday morning attack.

He says deputies arrested Vasquez after finding a wallet containing his ID in the ransacked house.

The farmworkers told deputies the suspect woke them Saturday morning by rubbing spices on one of them and smacking the other with an 8-inch sausage.

Trend Spotting: Cupcake boredom.

This is a dumb article from the NY Times because anyone following NYC trends knows that cupcakes were out three years ago. They were supplanted by burgers, then last year's obsessions with frozen yogurt and barbecue, and now it's ramen. (I have it on good authority that the next NYC foodie trends will be pigs' feet and chocolate made by Brooklyn hipsters.)

Anyway, just to put an end to the debate once and for all, the best cupcake place is Sugar Sweet Sunshine. The other places taste like my red velvetty ass in comparison.

Toasters' drummer, John McCain, featured in the Daily News!

Fluffy article about a guy named John McCain who's voting for Obama. But when I gave it a second look, I realized it's none other than Jonathan McCain of the Toasters!

Well, I found it cool, but I am a big ska dork.

Gary Coleman's latest hit.

This should be amusingly bizarre, but I find Gary Coleman-related shenanigans depressing. From Newsday:

Actor Gary Coleman hit a pedestrian with his truck after arguing with him in a local bowling alley, police said.

Payson police Lt. Bill Wright said Colt Rushton and Coleman got into an argument in the early morning hours Saturday over pictures Rushton had taken of Coleman inside the bowling alley. He said the argument continued outside, and that Coleman hit Rushton and a car as he was backing out of a parking space.

Neither man was issued a citation, and Wright said it wasn't clear whether Coleman hit Rushton on purpose. He said neither man was giving authorities much information.

Toxic drinking water found at hundreds of schools in Australia.

Nearly 300 schools in Australia have unsafe drinking water, some with lead levels at 12 times the safe maximum level. It's also inferred that the schools knew about this and didn't inform parents. Article here.

Why does it hurt when I pee? Fed gov't to spend $38m to find out.

The headline is cheeky. This is a good initiative to study chronic urological disorders.

$38 million though? I'll pee in a cup for a lot less... NIH press release here.

Marijuana fights powerful bacteria.

Too bad it's a gateway drug to MADNESS, or else it would save lives and have countless benefit to humankind. From those junkies at the New York Times:

Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs.

It has been known for decades that Cannabis sativa has antibacterial properties. Experiments in the 1950s tested various marijuana preparations against skin and other infections, but researchers at the time had little understanding of marijuana’s chemical makeup.

The current research, by Giovanni Appendino of the University of the Eastern Piedmont and colleagues and published in The Journal of Natural Products, looked at the antibacterial activity of the five most common cannabinoids. All were found effective against several common multi-resistant bacterial strains, although, perhaps understandably, the researchers suggested that the nonpsychotropic cannabinoids might prove more promising for eventual use.

Follow-Up: Other LI'ers have equally giant zucchinis.

At The Coozer Files, nothing interests us more than ginormous phallic vegetable matter. That is why it pleases us to report that our original report may not be anything special. In fact, many Long Islanders are coming forward with tales of mutant, tubular veggieflesh.

As it turns out, Long Island's wonderful mixture of toxic soil, artificial fertilizer, and cancerous drinking water has created wonderfully mammoth vegetables that no sane person would ever want to eat or stick up their cooter. Article here! Phallic/creepy gallery here!

And you thought American politics were bad...

An Israeli minister is accusing a rival of spending Holocaust funds for election purposes. I'm glad the Holocaust didn't happen in the US, cuz then this shit would be accused and thrown around on a daily basis. Article here, though honestly it just sounds like pissy, juvenile politics as usual.

I'm going to vomit.

My gas is so noxious tonight. It's so utterly foul, my cat threw up.

Here is what I ate today. Please post a comment on what you think is the culprit. It may save my life.

6 cups of coffee.

Fried and broiled tofu with a dipping sauce of Japanese bbq sauce and raw egg. (My cooking)

A soft brie with rosemary crackers.

Rigatoni with eggplant and ricotta. (My wife's cooking)

Two bottles of wine.

Please help.

Devo on the Polysics.

Two of my favorite bands are Devo and the Polysics. The Polysics have styled themselves after Devo, in their own weird Japanese way, and I absolutely love them. But I've always wondered how Devo felt about such close emulation (tho with said weird Japanese-ness). Luckily, Devo recently toured Japan, and here's an awesome Japanese interview with them on this topic (bold mine):

"Actually, Polysics helped us out," Mothersbaugh says of the Tokyo band who copied Devo's visual style so acutely it goes beyond flattery and becomes a bit embarrassing. "We had a case with some of our smaller things in it come off the plane upside down (when Devo arrived in Japan), so one of our key sample triggerers was out. But Polysics had the exact same piece, so they let us program our songs into it. They came to the rescue."

Polysics have never been shy to admit their love for Devo — every Polysics album carries a thank-you to the Ohio band, and when asked for his influences in interviews, frontman Hiroyuki Hayashi has said, "Only Devo." But when both bands appeared just hours apart on the same stage at last month's Summer Sonic festival, both dressed in boiler suits and using similar stage play, it was pretty clear who were the innovators and who were their emulators.

Devo don't seem to care. When asked how it feels to have had such a direct influence on a band more than 10,000 km from home, Jerry Casale, the redhead, says, "Nice. We were always liked by other artists and musicians. We always were embraced by other creative people. We might not have inspired critics," he laughs, "but we inspired other creative people."

As a Coozer aside, can I just say I LOVE the Polysics? My god, gentle reader, pick up some goddamn Polysics!!!