Vintage tractors are not scary. Except for the lack of safety features.

When you are 9 and climbing on your grandpa's old tractor and with a COUGH it starts and starts backing out of the barn (it was already in reverse) it is VERY SCARY.

This is the same roommate who didn't like to *close* the front door of the house, much less lock it. ("It's soooo confining, and my sensibilities must be open!") She also slept in a closet in the basement. I think she really is the flat-out craziest person I've ever known.

That's some impressive crazy, Jilli. Though the dessicated mice in frames near the mummified cat strikes me as funny.

Though the dessicated mice in frames near the mummified cat strikes me as funny.

Oh, they were. I was mostly amused by Bob the Dead Cat and the Mousies. It was everything else about the roommate that was skin-crawly.

Assuming that Bob died unassisted of natural causes, I only find it morbid rather than creepifying.

When you are 9 and climbing on your grandpa's old tractor and with a COUGH it starts and starts backing out of the barn (it was already in reverse) it is VERY SCARY.

OK, I can see that.

Nowadays, tractors cannot be started unless you push the clutch in. But once when I was a kid, we had a tractor where this didn't work. It wouldn't start unless you pressed the little button on the side - the button was supposed to be pressed by the clutch but for some reason that didn't push it enough. So I'd stand besides the tractor with my finger on that button and start it. Of course then I couldn't push the clutch in. And once I was about to try that, and for some reason I double-checked and saw the tractor was still in gear. So, I almost got run over....

This is the same roommate who didn't like to *close* the front door of the house, much less lock it. ("It's soooo confining, and my sensibilities must be open!")

So has she lived in nice, safe areas all her life?

VW needs to include the white-trash tiramisu in the cookbook.

Oh, it's in there, don't you worry.

*Gank*

...and now, so is the other one.

OK, this is... yuck: Playing chicken: No more dark meat

ATLANTA - Daniel Fletcher has found a way to transform dark meat chicken into white, a scientific advance some purists say has gone too far.

"Leave chicken alone," said Mary Raczka, who's in charge of hospitality at Mary Mac's Tea Room, a prominent Southern-style restaurant in midtown Atlanta that serves more than 500 pounds of fried chicken a week — dark and white meat.

But Fletcher, a University of Georgia poultry science professor, said his other white meat isn't designed to compete with the real thing on restaurant menus or grocery shelves. Instead, it's a filler that can be used to add protein and amino acids to something else, such as chicken nuggets.

The recipe involves adding excess water to ground-up dark meat to create a kind of meat soup, then spinning the mixture around in a tub at high speed. The centrifugal force makes the mixture settle into layers of fat, water, and extracted meat, which can be molded into breast-like patties of all-white meat.

The recipe involves adding excess water to ground-up dark meat to create a kind of meat soup, then spinning the mixture around in a tub at high speed. The centrifugal force makes the mixture settle into layers of fat, water, and extracted meat, which can be molded into breast-like patties of all-white meat.

That sounds just remarkably unappetizing. Just use the freaking dark meat. It tastes better anyway.