Nuts

Sometimes at my retail job, I'll buy a package of cashews and eat them throughout the day. Couple days ago, I remembered we sold walnuts. I like walnuts. I bought walnuts. And ate them throughout the day. After many mouthfuls, I considered that I had never eaten so many walnuts in one sitting. What if they were poisonous in more than a small quantity, like nutmeg is? Hmmm . . . I checked the bag for poison warnings and found none. But that should be common knowledge, right? If walnuts were killing people, you would have heard. I ate more walnuts.

Turns out walnuts are not poisonous. In fact, there are a surprising amount of health benefits associated with eating walnuts. From what I read, I'd go so far as to say they're one of those miracle foods you're always hearing about. In addition to all of that, they're also laxatives. I discovered this during a google search the third time I found myself sitting on the can that night. It was one of four times I sat there in the space of two hours. I was very happy it hit me only after I got home. But it really screwed up my night.

Food for thought. And other things.

Confession Time

For more years than I can count, and just ending in recent months, I thought Ray Kurzweil and Ray Manzarek were the same guy. Come on now, they're both named Ray, they both have a "z" in their last names, and keyboards were an important part of both their lives. You can see it, can't you? Please comment below if you though the same thing at some point, especially if this post was how you found out they were different guys.

The Musician Comes First

One of the great things about my job at the library is we get to spend one hour a week just participating in webinars or watching videos on all sorts of things. My boss' boss gives us a big list of links each month. He's an old punk rock fan and was happy to choose some music related stuff this month. Today I watched this great keynote speech by Dave Grohl at South by Southwest from 2013. The thrust of it is about making your own stuff and doing it your own way, but it's also a brief autobiography that fans of Grohl, or Nirvana, or the Foo Fighters will love too. It's a long one, but if you have the time, you'll be glad you watched it. It makes you want to run out and make something.

ALTERED IDS Salutes Action Comics #1

The photographically memoried among you will recall that I have a blog on Tumblr called ALTERED IDS (a play on both alter egos and transformed identifications) which curates new takes by artists on well known characters. For Superman's 80th birthday, each day in the month of June I posted a different take on the iconic cover of Action Comics #1. You can see the whole lot of them here:

https://alteredids.tumblr.com/tagged/action_comics_1