"Oh, so you're telling me that you can pass a landmark civil rights law but you can't figure out how to send me a link?"

God I love this day.

As long as Cienna is sharing the contents of her desk drawer, I thought I'd snap a photo of mine:

Two things to note: A) unlike Cienna, I tend to do my shaving at home; and B) no, I eat prunes because I actually like them.

Today I opened my desk drawer and was confronted with a terrible caricature of womanhood.

All that's missing from this picture is my biological clock.

UPDATE: My keyboard is now covered in chocolate and errant hair trimmings.

Let's say you're stuck at your eye doctor in Renton, which doubles as a Dairy Queen because you meet all your health needs via discount medical coupons purchased online (also: free ice cream!). And your eye doctor is too busy fixing the soft-serve machine to see you, and near-sighted children are screaming for Dip Cones, and the Internet is preoccupied with the weather. What the fuck do you do?

You read about carrots. Because apparently, they're making a comeback:

Carrots, those little spark plugs in a salad or a stew, have suddenly become an engine driving restaurant menus. Chefs across the country are showcasing handsome, meaty specimens in a rainbow of colors, dressed and garnished without a sliver of meat or fish. Well, maybe a touch of bacon.

“People are feeling more comfortable with having something like carrots in the center of the plate,” said Dan Kluger, the executive chef at ABC Kitchen in New York, where a salad of roasted carrots and avocado has become one of his most popular, and imitated, dishes.

Troy Guard, the chef and owner of TAG in Denver, makes a carrot taco that puts the root vegetable through its paces, with a carrot tortilla and a filling of braised carrots, a salad of raw carrots and cilantro, and guacamole.

“Last year brussels sprouts were really huge,” he said. “Now it’s carrots.”

And then you pray to Jesus Carrot-Humping Christ for your eye-doctor-slash-DQ manager to offer up a couple of forks, so that you may take care of your eye and entertainment problems in two quick twists of the wrist.

I'm no doctor, but I am a pioneer of innovative self medicating. For instance, did you know that when you suffer from a sore throat and headache, a bottle of red wine does the trick just as well as cough drops and Advil?

You have to be okay with drinking at 9:00 a.m. but I am perfectly okay with drinking at 9:00 a.m. Best yet, it turns the common head cold into a party for one.

So: We're sitting in our regularly scheduled editorial meeting where we enjoy high-minded conversations about new art openings and the nuances of pot legislation while patting ourselves on the back and obsessively polishing our hipster glasses, when all of a sudden someone brings up how great pumpkin seeds are.

Because they are. Fucking great. Roasted, salted, curried, garlicked to hell and back. Fucking delicious.

Only some people sitting around me got this look on their faces—that puckered asshole look—and started arguing that pumpkin seeds aren't all that fucking great because "there's not that much protein in them" and "they make your teeth hurt." Yeah, if your teeth are made of gummy bears instead of the hardest bone* in your body, like most people.

And I thought: "Who are these gummy-toothed assholes that surround me? Assholes who moan about pumpkin protein while stuffing Mound Bars end over end in their yawning cakeholes? Where's my face hammer???"

More importantly, are they alone? And so, good people of Slog, I ask you:

*Okay, teeth are not bones—they're stronger than bones. Whatever. Shuttup.

"Had I been twenty years younger and worn the tux, I would have sex blisters."

Ugh. It's waaaaay too early in the morning to be imagining any of my coworkers with sex blisters.

I used Google Translate to convert this into and out of 6 different languages, and then I finally understood it.

• Stranger
• How I learned to make friends and influence people.

A birthday package recently mailed to me by a family member from my beloved home state of Idaho provides some insight. In the package, wrapped up in newspapers from 1993, I found:

· Two decks of used playing cards
· One can of pink lady mace
· Five pounds of homemade beef jerky/pepperoni sticks
· Two tripod camping chairs
· One electric knife sharpener
· One rainbow kite
· One 50-cent coin
· Empty bullet casings
· One blank birthday card, no interior message
· Fireworks!

This is not weird. It is, essentially, a Baby Bunker Starter Kit™ meant to prepare me for the Great Race War my uncles love gabbing about. And while I still haven't picked a side for the Great Race War (there are so many to choose from!), I cherish my knife and kite collections. And macing people. So if you need me this afternoon, I'll be in Cal Anderson, lighting off fireworks while sharpening my knives.

This one goes out to everyone who thinks bashing hipsters and their skinny jeans and their ironic facial hair is edgy or brave or interesting...

‘Whac-A-Hipster’ at Bumbershoot with Toyota’s Prius Family Playground

Seattle – August 29, 2012 – Ever felt the urge to ‘Whac-A-Hipster’? This weekend at Bumbershoot the Toyota Prius Family Playground will offer folks a chance to live out their hipster-whacking fantasies. Whether hoping to escape the heat, looking for an off-the-wall challenge, or searching for a place to re-charge your phones, there’s a little something for everyone at the Prius Family Playground.

Check out the game that’s taking the nation by storm, the Prius v Whac-A-Hipster. Take a spin on the Human-Powered Prize Wheel, a giant hamster wheel that makes you work for a prize, or challenge your friends with the Prius Family Challenge. Too much tweeting, texting and instagramming for your cell phone to handle? Hop in the Prius Plug-In and Charge Up Station where up to five people can charge their phones for five minutes. After working up a sweat, cool down with a complimentary Prius-shaped popsicle and cooling Bumbershoot bandana. And for those festival-goers in the market for a new ride, a few of the latest vehicles in the Toyota Prius Family lineup will be on display as well.

Corporate America feels your hipster-induced pain, Can't-Fit-In-Skinny-Jeans America.

Slog seems lousy with polls this afternoon. What do you think about that, Sloggers?

I'm not in the best position to cast stones, point talons, etc. on the issue of office cleanliness since it's pretty well established that I'm a disgusting freak, but I've been bitching at one of my coworkers to clean his or her keyboard for years now.

I think this damning evidence will prove that there's at least one person in this office is more of a wallow-happy pig than I am:

• The Shtranger
• Someone chews with their mouth open.

If you're not convinced yet, I've included two more pics after the jump. And since I've learned first hand that public shaming is a great motivator, I think it's time for a Slog poll to see if you can guess who needs to clean their goddamn keyboard already.

Continue reading »

Emails like this one, courtesy of Mudede, are what propel me breathlessly out of bed each morning and straight to my inbox:

two dreams i had last night. one involved eli sanders, and the other two cows. sander's dream was not erotic but the second one was. two cows bored with having sex on the open field, started fucking on the rooftops of city homes—im not kidding about this. they even fucked on my roof, and I could do nothing about it.

That was the extent of the email. I'm not leaving anything out. So tell me, dream interpreters of Slog—what does it all mean???