Blatty’s The Exorcist, when I was about 11. The old house creaked while I was on the “Tanzt Ihre Tochter gern?” scene with Karl. I had enough German to understand how disturbing the taunt was. Bolted off the bed and into the hallway in three steps before I was even conscious of being scared.

K.W. Colyard@kristianwriting.bsky.social · 6mo ago

So what was everyone's book they read way too young?

Score! Deep in research mode, I’ve found a phantom citation. Everyone quotes it verbatim. I’ve tracked it to a single source; before that, no trace of the supposed book in any library or bookseller catalog. An HL Mencken–style hoax? An absurdity? Maybe. But a little pseudobiblical treasure for me.

Trapped in the Mario Batali man cave, a searing question falls upon your ears: “You ever drunk Baileys from an—“

Morning tea, hot, in all weather. I’m sticking with the beer stein, but could stand to upgrade that sugar pot. What do you all use for a quick-draw, countertop sugar supply, the sort you’d reach for when dosing coffee or tea or when you need a small-ish amount for a recipe?

We braisin’ today. Short ribs, chunk-ass mirepoix (ugh, ok: mirepoix grossière pour braisage et feuilles de céleri), garlic, herbs from the garden, tomato paste, half a bottle of Grenache, and a liter of beef stock. Bring it up hot, then into the oven for a few hours, low and slow.

A “reporter-free newsroom” at PinkNews, you say? Then it isn’t news anymore. Call it PinkSlop, PinkSlime—take your pick. Another newsroom gone dark. With it, the remains of what alternative press once did so well: telling a community what was happening in its own streets.

New variety of figs in the tree. So spicy! My husband calls them “Hey, man. Hey! Don’t eat those.”

“Is that a proper history?” “It is.” “Mm. I dunno. I’m not convinced.” “Look. It’s got popes n shit.” “Oh, yeah, huh? I stand corrected.” Popes n Shit.™ Ask your editor if they’re right for your manuscript.

Matthew Rowley@mbrowley.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Oh, no, it’s proper food history: there’s popes n shit. Medieval manuscripts, enslaved cooks, The Forme of Cury, Francatelli, La Chapelle, Jefferson, Soyer, Beeton. All the right notes. Author is a culinary historian at the University of Siena, Johnson a Smithsonian curator. Niche, but done well.

I don’t actually have the 80HDs, but I did just go into the bedroom for pants, read for 20 minutes on the history of mac and cheese, and emerge with no pants, at a loss to remember why I’d gone in there. So maybe, like, 10HDs. Even fewer, prolly. Anyway: new macaroni and cheese book just dropped.

Just wanted to say that I love that I can scroll my "Slightly Fewer Horrors" list here and when I see a mix of herbs like this I immediately thing, "Stop, that's a Rowley post" before I even see the name.

Afroman, who weaves words for a living, not ceding one millimeter of ground in testimony. Every substantive response is a reverse Uno. In the attorney’s brief silences, you can almost hear earth crumble beneath him.

Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 6mo ago

Picked up a few things for one of the kitchen planters yesterday: Paul Robeson tomato seedlings, Italian and Thai basils, marjoram, a few bouquet dills, two or three cilantro plants, and a variety of spearmint boldly dubbed—and we’ll see about this—“The Best.” Put that one in a pot.

The words of Walton Goggins leap to mind: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”

Stephen Anderson@stephena.fwrdaxis.com · 6mo ago

Lindsey Graham says he spoke to President Trump today and he's furious at NATO allies not wanting to help the U.S. in Iran. "I have never heard him so angry in my life," Graham says.

The recipes I read so you won’t have to.

Husband wanted plants for his new offices. I took him to Terra Bella nursery in San Diego. The succulents along took up more real estate than any of the homes I’d ever rented.

Out here, picking limes before the sun gets to be too much. Forgot those bastard trees have thorns on the new growth.

Porch reading: The Melon (2019) by Amy Goldman. Profiles of 120ish heirloom melons with Victor Schrager’s portrait-like photos. All this garden prep for the spring every morning and I still haven’t settled on what to plant. But I’m circling in on one each of melon and watermelon (so no crossing).

On that note: On recipe sites becacked with pop-ups, autoplay ads, AI art, subscribe overlays, techbro cruft, and growthmaxxing detritus, I copy the recipe I want, paste a cleaned version into a Word doc (with a link, because im prone to documenting sources)… and never return.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 6mo ago

Rawdogging a Yahoo News article means fighting through a forest of pop-ups, pop-unders, autoplay video, interrupters, consent screens, modal dialogs, modeless dialogs - a blizzard of news-obscuring crapware that oozes contempt for the material it befogs. 13/

The guy who wrote that I should soak this compressed block of coconut coir “5-10” minutes is the same sort of lying recipe writer who advises caramelizing onions for the same amount of time. No less than 30 minutes, likely longer. Have a drink while it’s happening.

I grow makrut limes for the leaves—but it’s nice when their knobby little fruits start coming in.

Talking to (Midwestern) mom this morning. At the grocery store last night, guy had a pint of ice cream. “I just had dinner at someone’s house,” he says, “but they didn’t have dessert, so I’m eating this at home.” “No dessert?” my incredulous mother asks. “How do they know when dinner is over?”

Beets left untended in the garden. I’d never let them go so long ignored, so they became a sacrifice to curiosity. All the orange ones: petite, tender, still good. Some of the reds: grown to the size of a pit bull’s head, hard as pine, inedible. Same word, two very different plants.

Shins for the win. Shanks for the memories.

Didn’t spill a drop. Yer man’s got priorities.

Reading this morning’s news. Well. Sure. Ok. Every morning’s news.

Fig progress 10 March 26 Panache, Violette de Bordeaux, Latarula, and Celeste all have new growth, no figs. Peter’s honey, Desert King, Flanders, and Corky’s honey all bearing little figlets. But Kadota is coming on strong with dozens of nearly full sized figs (still hard as apples though).

My brain doesn’t work the way it’s meant to. I struggle to speak. Aphasia. Some of you know this. When English fails me mid-sentence, I am prone to grabbing words and grammar from half a dozen languages. Nonstandard, odd turns of phrase, archaic use. Those “mistakes” I think make for better prose.

Claire E. Aubin@ceaubin.com · 7mo ago

Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny

Sometimes oranges in the garden have manky, scaly bits where they’ve rubbed against a branch or had some other injury. No matter. I trim aggressively and feast anyway. Delicious d12.

Tonic mixers coming in fine. Just need a little gin and we’ll be set. Maybe rum.

Follow up to a comment a few days ago about stationery shopping in Tokyo. I particularly like buying notebooks when I’m in Japan. Japanese makers can be finicky—in the best possible way—about the quality of their products. Here’s a short video showing how Life makes their notebooks.

Only 3 machines left in Japan?! See how the iconic LIFE Noble Notebook is made!

YouTube video by JetPens

youtu.be