February 07, 2007
taste buds
Lately I've been getting sick at the rate of roughly once every two weeks, so I have been lucky enough to experience several different kinds of cold. This one is special, though. It has selectively shut off some of my taste buds. For example, I can taste that something is beer, but all beers taste exactly alike. I can taste the coffee in my latte, but I can't taste the hazelnut syrup (yes, I am lame and drink hazelnut lattes because I am too weak for plain coffee). I can taste the garlic in garlic cheese, but gruyere tastes like generic sharp cheddar. I can taste the sourness in an orange, but not the sweet part. As someone who loves food and beer and hazelnut lattes, this is serious cause for alarm. I should probably call a doctor and schedule an appointment, but then I would have to talk to someone on the phone, which is also serious cause for alarm. Dear God, what will I do?
Posted by onion slayer at 12:32 PM | Comments (2)
October 16, 2006
my cats are gay!
At some point during the last few months, this blog stopped showing up on searches for Himmler--according to sitemeter--which means there is no traffic anymore. This also means I can post whatever I want and almost no one will see it.
That said, my cats are totally gay:
gross!
There are much less fuzzy, much more homosexual pictures of my cats, but they are not on hand so this will have to do for now.
Actually I hope this site starts showing up as the #1 hit for images of gay cats; that would be pretty cool.
Posted by onion slayer at 04:34 PM | Comments (1)
October 13, 2006
indispensable
Are you,
1. Wealthy?
2. Violently allergic to cats?
3. Nuts about cats and cursing fate for making you allergic to them?
Then this product is for you!
Buy your hyperallergenic kitten today, and also scroll through the unnecessarily long "cat facts" window on the side, where you will learn trivia such as "cats respond best to names that end with '-ee'," which explains why my cats don't know their own names.
There's also this:
"Some notable people who disliked cats: Napoleon Bonaparte, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Hitler." As opposed to the much better people who loved cats: Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Buddha, and Mohammed. Obvious conclusion: If you don't like cats, you are a warmonger.
Postscript: I just cleared a bunch of spam from my comments box. I know this doesn't make me unique, but there were several from someone named "semen," as well as links to something called "cute chubby boobs."
Posted by onion slayer at 05:43 PM | Comments (1)
August 15, 2006
falling in love over a dish of onions
I haven't finished reading the book yet, but I am positive this is the grossest scene from Graham Greene's The End of the Affair:
Maurice and Sarah had just seen a film adaptation of Maurice's book. He had not liked the way the film had treated his book, but he did like one scene. In it, a married woman and her lover are eating in a restaurant. They order steak and onions. The woman hesitates over eating the onions because her husband, understandably, thinks they smell disgusting. The man is offended that she is thinking of her husband's reaction to her onion-eating.Afterwards--we were back at Rules and they had just fetched our steaks--she said, 'There was one scene you did write.'
'About the onions?'
'Yes.' And at that very moment a dish of onions was put on the table. I said to her--it hadn't even crossed my mind that evening to desire her--'And does Henry mind onions?'
'Yes. He can't bear them. Do you like them?'
'Yes.' She helped me to them and then helped herself.
Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love...I said, 'It's a good steak,' and heard like poetry her reply, 'It's the best I've ever eaten.'
Any affair based on onions deserves to be ended.
Posted by onion slayer at 10:56 AM | Comments (1)
February 10, 2006
onion laws
I don't know if this link can be trusted, but I hope it's all true. Except for the Bourbon, Mississippi law requiring onions to be served with drinking water, which is just plain disgusting.
Posted by onion slayer at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
filling space
I just felt the need to post here because my site seemed to have gone all blank.
Do I have anything to say? Not really, but I'll think of a few things.
1. My mom talks with God. Not to God, mind you--with God. Apparently they engage in two-way conversations. This news alarms me.
2. Onions are seriously out to get me. Last week, I asked for a salad without onions and what did I receive? A salad with EXTRA onions. They were so prevalent that they made the whole Marguerite shuttle reek of rank foulness, so I had to throw the whole thing away and eat ice cream for dinner.
3. Also, I got some beef-and-spinach ravioli from the Italian deli. After spending all the time to fix it up with spicy olive oil sauce and romano and even truffle oil, I bit into it and discovered that it was bursting with onion. Then, I had to eat beans out of a can for dinner.
4. Aguirre: The Wrath of God is awesome, particularly with the director's commentary where Werner Herzog talks about driving Klaus Kinski crazy to the point where he was nearly murdering the cast and crew, and also about stealing 400 monkeys and driving with them through South America.
5. The more time that goes by, the more people per day end up on my site because they're looking for pictures of Himmler.
I'm going back to do work now.
Posted by onion slayer at 03:32 PM | Comments (2)
January 12, 2006
skeptical
According to this alleged face recognition site, I most closely resemble the following celebrities (in descending order):
Madonna (huh?)
Julianne Moore
Nicole Kidman
Christina Ricci
Shania Twain, blech
Hilary Swank
Shakira
Kim Novak
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Emma Watson
By the way, I accidentally ran it on one person who was in the background of a picture and it said the only celebrity she resembled was Donald Rumsfeld.
Update: Later, I tested the site on an early eighties picture of Madonna, and it failed to recognize her as herself. Could it be that I bear more resemblance to the "new" Madonna than the old one did, or this so-called "scientifically advanced technology" really nothing more than a random celebrity face generator? I think we all know the answer.
Posted by onion slayer at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
how can it be?
I checked it out, and somehow a link to this site ended up on page 1 of the Google Images search for "Himmler." Apparently, at least ten people in the world look for pictures of Himmler every day, because that's about how many Himmler-searches I get every day. This is kind of creeping me out.
By the way, most of these searches are coming out of Germany and Finland.
Posted by onion slayer at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
news day from hell
1. When they said "12 miners survive, 1 dead," what they actually meant was "1 miner survives in severe condition, 12 dead"
2. Ariel Sharon goes and has a massive stroke, leaving Ehud Whatshisname as acting Prime Minister
3. First human bird flu cases confirmed outside of Asia
I mean, not like anyone would read this blog (who wasn't looking for a picture of Himmler) and not already know these things from reading the news, but Jesus.
Posted by onion slayer at 03:57 PM | Comments (1)
January 03, 2006
a fascinating discovery
I just realized that nearly everyone who visits my site finds it through doing a Google image search for "Himmler" or "action figures."
Posted by onion slayer at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
memememeemememememe
It seems I've been "tagged."
Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Stop having social anxiety disorder
2. Take over the world and outlaw onions
3. Eat foie gras
4. Get in a big screaming fight with my parents
5. Make enough money that I can afford summer homes in different countries
6. Speak at least six languages fluently
7. Calculus, because it is embarrassing that I got through high school (and worse, University) without learning any.
Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Whistle
2. Eat onions, mayonnaise, bleu cheese, celery, cilantro, ginger, thousand island, ranch dressing, gin, or gristle
3. Hold more than two digits in my head at the same time
4. Chat easily with other people
5. Speak in public
6. Sing
7. Put my head under water
Seven Things That Attract Me To. . . Blogging
1. The fame
2. The fortune
3. The girls
4. The drugs
5. The rock n' roll lifestyle
6. ...
7. Just boredom, actually
Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. "no onions"
2. "um"
3. "I see"
4. "interesting"
5. "Godfuckingdamnit!"
6. "motherfuckers!"
7. "bastards!"
But I am probably wrong about this. I don't often listen to myself.
Seven Books That I Love
1. Borges, collected fiction
2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
3. Lolita
4. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity
5. a World Atlas
6. The Sound and the Fury
7. When I was in grade school I read The Call of the Wild about eight thousand times, back when I thought it was just a story about dogs
Seven Movies That I Watch Over And Over Again
1. Vertigo, but not really on purpose
2. Kill Bill I and II
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
4. Blade Runner
5. Blue Velvet
6. Fargo
7. South Park
Seven Songs I Play Over And Over Again
1. "Heartbeats," The Knife
2. "King Rides By" and other Cat Power
3. "Do You Love Me?" and other Nick Cave
4. "Angelene," PJ Harvey
5. "Malaguena Salerosa," Chingon
6. "Baby's On Fire," Brian Eno
7. "Wordy Rappinghood," Tom Tom Club
But I'm sick of listening to songs over and over.
Seven People I Want To Join In Too
1. Ella
2. That's it. I don't think I know anyone else with a blog.
Posted by onion slayer at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
the future is now
Actually, if this article speaks the truth, the future started happening sometime in 2004:
It sounds like science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. But in groundbreaking experiments in a Florida laboratory that is exactly what is happening.
That's so much cooler than a Roomba.
Posted by onion slayer at 04:23 PM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2005
numbers
A non-exhaustive list of man-made disasters in the 20th century, in descending order of death toll:
World War II (1939-1945) - 55 million
Hitler - 15.5 million directly, not counting all European WWII casualties
Japan - maybe 6 million directly, not counting all Pacific WWII casualties
Stalin - 4 million
Rumania - 484,000
Mussolini - 224,250 all told; 250 Italians
Mao's regime (1949-1975) - 40 million
Stalin's regime (1924-1953) - 20 million
World War I (1914-1918) - 15 million
Russian Civil War (1917-1922) - 9 million
Leopold's Congo (1886-1908) - 8 million
Congo (1998-present) - 3.8 million
Nationalist China (1928-1937) - 3.1 million
Korean War (1950-1953) - 2.8 million
Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) - 2.5 million
Postwar purge of Germans from E. Europe (1945-1947) - 2.1 million
Sudan (1983-present) - 1.9 million
Afghanistan (1979-2001) - 1.8 million
Khmer Rouge (1975-1978) - 1.7 million
Vietnam War, American phase (1965-1973) - 1.7 million
Armenian massacres (1915-1923) - 1.5 million
Ethiopia (1962-1992) - 1.4 million
Bangladesh (1971) - 1.25 million
Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) - 1 million
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) - 1 million
Nigeria (1966-1970) - 1 million
Rwandan genocide (1994) - 800,000 deaths of all causes
Tibet/China (1950-present) - 600,000
Franco (1936-1975) - 465,000
-
-
Large-scale deaths before the twentieth century:
Mongols in 13th century - 40 million (?)
Native Americans, killed by Europeans, all told - 20-40 million (?)
An Lushan Revolt and Civil War in China, 750-763 - 36 million
Establishment of Qing Dynasty in China, 1618-1644 - 25 million
Taiping Rebellion, China (1850-1864) - 20 million
Tamerlane, Central Asia (1369-1405) - 17 million
Thirty Years War (1618-1648) - 7 million
American Civil War (1861-1865) - 620,000
-
-
Other killers:
Flu (1918-1919) - 21 million
AIDS (1981-1998) - 11.7 million
(Most of these numbers were taken from this website.)
Posted by onion slayer at 10:06 AM | Comments (4)
November 02, 2005
propaganda
Today I wrote an "opinion essay" for third graders. The topic? Why I Think Onions Are Disgusting. Thusly I will change the world.
Posted by onion slayer at 02:49 PM | Comments (1)
October 18, 2005
some awful good writing
I think I may have to start reading more Sci-Fi:
`Its voice was soft, gentle -- but repugnant. Like the breath of a diseased infant. It was a sound with halitosis.' -- John Shirley, In Darkness Waiting
`He shuddered, awash in adrenaline, his sphincter pulling unpleasantly tight as he recognized his own youthful scrawl on the outside tab. ... and he felt an ache, a curse of time racing across the ridge of his knuckles.' -- Derek Van Arman, Just Killing Time
`... Caymann released a horrible scream into the night air, a painful, deafening and terrifying roar that sounded like a lion whose heart was impaled.' -- Derek Van Arman, ibid
`She knew how to embroider and milk a cow.' -- Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
`A few hours had passed since they had been pulled away from the moon. A few hours and millions of miles. The moon was no longer visible, not even as a star. The whole thing was so crazy, weird and far-out. It was as though they were floating in a giant vacuum.' -- Sara Cavanaugh, A Woman in Space
`Now Danelle's big blue eyes looked thoughtfully inward.' -- Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven
`His eyes could have cut through rock mountains.' -- Sam Merwin Jr, The Time Shifters
`Though she was many years the younger, she seemed by her manner to be the older of the pair -- that is, if age could be measured by suspicion.' -- Duncan McGeary, Snowcastles
`Palmer's screams became fainter as the slugs ate their way into him, a number burrowing up through his torn genitals, using his anus as a means of access in their search for the softer, more succulent parts of his body.' -- Shaun Hutson, Slugs
`It was an Everest of understatement.' -- Robert Charles Wilson, The Harvest
`The wagon lurched forward like an armadillo trying to mate with a very fast duck.' -- James P Silke, Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer, Vol II Lords of Destruction
`Now that important Achilles heel was closed.' -- Geoffrey Jenkins, Firepoint
`His lips formed the words, but it was his heart which spoke them.' -- Bernard King, Starkadder
`Their tongues twisted around each other, strong as pythons. She had never been afraid of snakes.' -- Marge Piercy, Body of Glass
(Compiled by Thog.)
Posted by onion slayer at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)
October 10, 2005
snake bursts after gobbling gator
"The predators died in the clash."
Posted by onion slayer at 05:23 PM | Comments (7793)
October 03, 2005
self-amputation
I realize it's old news, but I find myself thinking about this story alarmingly often. The 1993 tale of the fisherman who hacked off his own leg, closed off his arteries with a fishing kit, crawled the half a mile to his car, and drove off for help, is even madder.
Posted by onion slayer at 02:21 PM | Comments (2)
September 29, 2005
all i want for christmas
Today I stumbled* upon this website, which provides me with an opportunity I have been eagerly awaiting for some time: a chance to purchase a Reinhardt Heydrich action figure!
Here is the "limited edition" Heydrich doll:
I suppose there's a market for almost anything.
* Actually, to be honest: I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and was curious as to what the "characters" looked like, so I conducted a search for Heinrich Himmler--one of the first results for which was a picture of a Himmler action figure, which I was regrettably unable to find in a purchase-able setting.
Posted by onion slayer at 03:56 PM | Comments (1)
four moronic things i believed as a kid
(1) I used to think that we pledged allegiance to the "Witch that Stands" in morning assembly.
(2) I convinced myself for some reason that Mica (as in: the sheeted mineral) was valuable as gold in Mexico. This was probably just to rationalize my pastime of sifting painstakingly through the sand on the playground, extracting the minutest shiny specks, rather than interacting with my disapproving classmates.
(3) Unaware of the multiple meanings of the word "free", I didn't understand the "drug free" campaign. "Why would we want to make drugs free?" I asked myself. Struggling to make sense of it, I ended up concocting the following nonsensical explanation: "If drugs are free, then there won't be any monetary value attached to them. And if they aren't valued, then people won't think they're worth anything. So they won't use them." I also remember thinking that the "drug free" campaign involved legalization.
(4) My parents never told me about human sexuality, but as a kid I read a variety of books on animal behavior. So I understood, in ridiculous detail, how a female wolf was impregnated--however, I was unable to extend this process to the human sphere. I believed, rather, that a woman was impregnated on her wedding night by dancing with the groom; nine months later, a child was spawned out of her anus.
Posted by onion slayer at 12:11 PM | Comments (7)
September 27, 2005
impasse
I hate Neil Diamond.
But I like Johnny Cash's cover of "Solitary Man".
Does that make me a hypocrite?
Posted by onion slayer at 02:55 PM | Comments (7787)
September 26, 2005
too early
This morning I received a phone call at work. It was Anjuli, one of the few friends from high school with whom I'm in some degree of contact.
"How are things with you?" she asked in Italian. "Long time no talk."
"Oh, you know. The same," I responded in English.
"How's work?"
"It's work. I'm writing sentences. I got the full-time position with benefits and more pay though. How are you doing?" English again.
"Well, things have been really busy. I got promoted to cashier, and I've been taking classes at the JC, and I've been busy planning for next year when I'm getting married."
I was taken aback. "Wait, wait...you're getting what?"
"Married." Right--I'd heard it the first time. And I suppose she's been pretty committed to her, erm, fiance for some time. But Jesus. She's younger than I am, and has never dated anyone else.
She was giddy with excitement. "It was so romantic. He took me out on a date to the same place where we went on our third date ever. I thought he was just going to give me a nicer promise ring, but when I saw it was an engagement ring I was so happy, I broke down and cried; he had to ask me twice."
"Well, congratulations." What else could I say?
The first of my friends to be getting married; I guess it had to happen sometime. And just a month ago my cousin Melina, a year my junior, wrote me an email to announce her own engagement.
Not for me--but nevertheless, all this marriage-of-peers business is making me feel uncomfortably older.
Posted by onion slayer at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
worship
(Via Sappho.)
Posted by onion slayer at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
a conversation
Onion Slayer (upon waking up): Yesterday was an unusually hot day, and I was uncomfortable wearing jeans and a shirt with sleeves. So today I will wear a tanktop and a skirt, and I will bring only my lightest sweater. I assume that today will be like yesterday, but I will open the window to check on the temperature.
Weather: Look at me. I reveal clear skies. And feel the air--I promise you it is temperate. Haven't your suspicions of a hot day on the Peninsula been practically verified?
Onion Slayer: I suppose so. I will wear these light summery garments, and run to catch public transportation. (Takes public transportation to Stanford.)
Weather: In order to irritate you, I will wait until you are stuck in the Peninsula with no way of getting a hold of warmer clothing. Then, I will send a group of grey clouds over you (out of nowhere!); the air will grow cold.
Onion Slayer: You fiend! I am cold and my office is quite thoroughly air-conditioned because today was supposed to be a hot day. Would you mind making things a bit warmer?
Weather: Yes, in fact. I much prefer to watch you complain over a dip in the mercury that would be laughably trivial if you weren't dressed for ninety-five-degree weather, you wretched San Diegan.
Onion Slayer: I hate you.
Weather: And I you. Here--take this: the first rain of the season! You didn't see that coming, did you?
Onion Slayer: Tomorrow I will wear all my warmest clothes.
Weather: Go ahead.
Onion Slayer: You have bested me once again, meteorological scum. But one day, I swear to you--there will be a reckoning.
Posted by onion slayer at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
heil, schicklgruber
From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer:
Johann Georg Hiedler, Adolf's grandfather, was a wandering miller...Five years before the marriage, on June 7, 1837, Maria Anna Schicklgruber had an illegimtimate son whom she named Alois and who became Adolf Hitler's father. At any rate Johann eventually married the woman, but contrary to the usual custom in such cases he did not trouble himself with legitimizing the son after the marriage. The child grew up as Alois Shicklgruber....There are many weird twists of fate in the strange life of Adolf Hitler, but none more odd than this one which took place thirteen years before his birth. Had the eighty-four-year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize the paternity of his thirty-nine year old son nearly thirty years after the death of his mother, Adolf Hitler would have been born Adolf Schicklgruber. There may not be much or anything in a name, but I have heard Germans speculate whether Hitler could have become the master of Germany had he been known to the world as Schicklgruber. It has a slightly comic sound as it rolls off the tongue of a South German. Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous "Heils"? "Heil Schicklgruber!"? Not only was "Heil Hitler!" used as a Wagnerian, pagan-like chant by the multitude in the mystic pageantry of the massive Nazi rallies, but it became the obligatory form of greeting between Germans during the Third Reich, even on the telephone, where it replaced the conventional "Hello." "Heil Schicklgruber!"? It is a little difficult to imagine.
Posted by onion slayer at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
paranoia blogging
In early 2001 FEMA issued a list of the three likeliest and deadliest disasters that could befall the U.S.
In order:
1) A terrorist attack on New York (check)
2) A massive hurricane hitting downtown New Orleans (check)
3) A severe earthquake in San Francisco ( ... )
In short, as San Francisco residents we are doomed.
Were I a more proactive individual, I would take advantage of this height of risk awareness to devise some foolproof Road Warrior-style survival plan. Being myself, however, it is far more natural for me to dwell on the nature and scope of our latent ruin.
For example: How certain my death if I am on the Bart or the Caltrain when the Big One strikes? Is the Mission District particularly susceptible to liquefaction? Is it a good thing to live in a new building--because it was theoretically subject to sounder regulation--or does newness merely indicate that the building has yet to be quake-tested? Or worse, that it is built on some patch of yielding soil that in 1906 was responsible for the collapse of twenty city blocks, thus necessitating their being re-built into the relatively new neighborhood we see today?
And online I look at maps.
Here is a plain map of San Francisco:
I have compared it to the following map, which details the intensity of shaking in the 1906 earthquake (7.9):
And I have also looked at the "interactive liquefaction susceptibility" map on this site.
The prognosis? It doesn't look good. According to the "shake map" my location is squarely in an area that withstood "violent" shaking during the 1906 earthquake. While I suppose this isn't necessarily a harbinger of a repetition of the same, I would wager that the topography hasn't changed too much since then--and moreover I'm inclined to believe that the epicenter is of peripheral importance when examining the hazard in the Mission District versus, for example, that of the Haight. I look forward, then, to the "violent" shaking.
The "liquefaction susceptibility" map is a little more ambiguous as to our chances of being sucked into the liquid soil. Comparing it to the plain San Francisco street map it seems that my location is very close to an unlikely frontier zone at which Very High, Moderate, and Very Low meet. I could easily fall into any of those three zones. My cursory attempts to find detailed geological maps of underlying soil have yielded no fruit.
I did, however, find this interactive earthquake site on National Geographic. It includes a feature that allows you to start an earthquake of a given magnitude and see what it does to a building resting on a given soil type. I also watched a before-and-after video medley on the 1906 earthquake.
And here are some pictures taken on Howard St. after the quake:
In this instance, paranoia is probably justified. But it's my guess that it will pass, and the Big One will come only after a complacency has settled in. By then, though, we may all be living on Mars, and then we won't care about earthquakes in San Francisco.
Posted by onion slayer at 04:18 PM | Comments (2)
September 12, 2005
inaugural
Having once committed the sin of bloggery I return to the medium wiser, de-fanged, and with little idea of what to do with it.
One idea: to defer fully to my one true love--food--and join the ranks of the million-and-one other SF area food bloggers. This may prove difficult, however, as without a digital camera I'm essentially useless. And my current coffers are far too scant to afford one just yet.
I admit that I haven't any other ideas. In the meantime, (?)
Posted by onion slayer at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)