End of the week...

Stopped at the Dessert Truck at 3rd & St. Marks the other night. Had their “molten chocolate cake,” which turned out to be really hot chocolate pudding. A molten chocolate cake has a cakey outer layer and a pudding inner because it’s not cooked all the way through, but I digress. DT’s misnamed affair was pretty good for $5, but it started to wear me down with its unctuousness. Should have been served with ice cream or cold cream to cut it down.

The other day, I plucked a dozen grape tomatoes from my plant, thinking they would be the last harvest of the year, but there’s a clump of greenies still hanging on.

Strange how some weird substances prove so vital to civilizations. Spermaceti. Guano. Kelp. Kelp? Kelp in this sense is seaweed burned down to ash. From the 1700s the soda and potash extracted from the ash was used to bleach linen, and make saltpeter, glass, and soap. In the 19th century, iodine was taken from the ash for medical purposes. Today, by the way, Irish moss, carrageen, is the seaweed used as a thickener in crappy ice cream, paint, and cosmetics.

I came across the Age of Kelp, completely unknown to me, in Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage. Walking around the island, literally, this sturdy beachcomber tells the story of the limestone island’s rock, and in doing so, tells the story of the surviving Irish place names, and, of course, the people who gave those names.

Speaking of names, are you out of your chair laughing your ass off yet over FlyLie Boy McBush’s “Joe the plumber” routine? Turns out the guy isn’t named Joe, isn’t a licensed plumber, and doesn’t make that much money. Senile Uncle Ronny summed up their strategy best: “facts are stupid things.” But enough with lying assholes in the White House, already!