Re microwave conversation: use my microwave extensively, to make meals from scratch; low fat cooking is lot easier in the microwave, plus less dishwashing. (Actual cooking time may or may not be lower depending on quantities cooked. )

Relate question for foodistas: have some corn on cob that for various reasons has sat in refrige a few days. While it has not gone bad or anything, at this point I'm confident it has almost no flavor left. Any tricks for spicing up or flavoring corn on the cob. Note: I have a visitor who can't eat chili or anything that is high in capsaicin. (But he can eat garlic, or black pepper any spices other capasicin containing ones. Also, can get by with very tiny amounts of capsin, so small amounts very mile salsa and such are ok.)

Make a compound butter with lots of garlic, some cumin and black pepper, slather it on the corn, then wrap the corn in foil and grill or broil it.

I just had a really yummy chorizo & green onion polenta with whole corn kernels in it. And a really *really* good piece of seared local tuna to go with it.

The stars out here are amazing - there's a lot of wind tonight and the sky is completely clear. The Milky Way is beautifully visible. If only we weren't between meteor showers right now!

mmmm yum

and if you are trying to avoid the saturated fat - just make a paste with canola oil

go, butter, choose butter!

why am i eschewing capitals tonight? too lazy to hit the shift key.

Jessica, where are you? I long to see the stars again. fucking central Jersey.

for some reason I don't like to start a line on B.org with a capital letter.

my name has no caps because I am lazy. the only letter I routinely capitalize when I am being lazy is 'I' and only because of what it does if it starts a line here.

My images searches take me kinda random places, and one led me to a page with before and after model makeup links.

Interesting in the same way as the "they photoshopped Faith how???" before and after--but less depressing, since at least they're optical tricks, not CGI.

Right now I'm mostly caught up in the resurgence of a childhood memory. Ebony magazine had taught me that I was supposed to be cocoa brown and wear rich purple makeup.

Still a little caramel over here, and I don't think my colouring could pull off this rocking of the purple. Man, that's lovely. And I don't even think she's pretty.

Back to tab-flipping.

Okay, maybe it's a bad thing to say, but I think I'm prettier than most of those girls. And I honestly don't think I'm all that pretty. Their noses are inhumanly tiny. Sophie Dahl with her tiny nose and huge eyes just looks weird.

ita, I bet you could pull off the purple. You're definitely prettier than them.

I only clicked on some, but it's kind of reassuring to see how not-different they really look un-made-up.

ION, holy crap -- I was watching HBO earlier, then was watching something on tape, then went back to HBO, and it's some documentary about Deep Throat, and I was idly wondering if they would actually be showing the porn-porn, and sure enough -- there was a big old blowjob, right there on my TV.