Vote now for "Oddest Book Title of the Year"!

You can vote here. I was really torn between the following:

• "The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling"
  It just doesn't seem like there's much more to it than just, well... rolling. Sometimes I mess up and accidentally roll things widthwise, but usually that's easy to correct.
  
• "Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality"
  Just for the unexpected phrase "oral sadism."
  
• "How to Avoid Big Ships"
  Is it difficult? They can't sneak up. Deserves a vote for the fact that an entire book was written on the subject. Maybe the obvious strategy ("sail away") doesn't work? My curiosity is piqued.
  
• "Highlights in the History of Concrete"
  There are highlights?
  
• "Bombproof Your Horse"
  A must-read for all serious horse owners.
  
• "People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It"
  I have no idea what this title refers to. Am I ignorant of an endemic problem with undead-parasite-people? I want to read the book to find out.
  

All of these would be great band names. Even the long ones. (As of the time I voted, the last -- "People Who Don't Know..." -- was in the lead.)

Uniqueness

It seems that there are four Ernest Fonteses in the US and only three live in my family.

I hold two great disappointments from this matter. Not only I am not unique outside of the equivalence class of my family, but I also cannot live up to my lofty aspirations of living off the grid.

Fontesefontes loose in Toronto

Ernie narrowly avoided being eaten by herbivorous long-dead dinosaurs. Darwin's legacy was skewed in the basement exhibit.We have a new favorite musical genre.
Delicious vegetarian buffet. Picturesque arrangement of food.
The lighting worked really well with my five-year-old digital camera here.
We were loose. Loose in Toronto. Now it's over. The next Fontesefontes excursion will be in October, for Canadian Thanksgiving.

Rubik's cube cereal

The environment

Ernie and I both like the environment, and enjoy living in it (not elsewhere!). We are not in favor of boats on which the the front falls off.

Edit: Credit goes to Natalie for showing this to me. ---Ernie

We detest Olympic commentators

It seems that they are employed to be logorrheic, often abhorrently so. At least, we of the axis believe so. (This post is authored by fontesefontes++, i.e., "axis".)

Men's all-around gymnasts are like Chinese pandas: they're extremely rare, and decreasing in number.

... and we establish breeding programs for them!

If there's one thing that's important in Japan, it's honor.

Also, rice. Let's not forget any stereotypes!

A fantastic Olympics quote

TV commentator on the US girl's gymnastics team: "It must be like Waiting for Godot for those girls waiting up there."

... No, no it's not. The only similarity is the title.

The Smallest Integer

A quick summary of The Incredible Hulk:

You wouldn't like me when I'm... hungry. Don't make me hungry... Do you remember when we were at Harvard and we participated in those induced hallucination experiments? It was like that, only a thousand times more intense... I want to get rid of it, not control it... They want to make it a weapon... You don't understand, something very bad is going to happen... If I am off by even the smallest integer, this could go drastically wrong...

Things that can happen if you are off by even the smallest integer:

1. Nothing. By absolute value, zero is the smallest integer. Additive identities have a habit of not doing much... under addition!
2. Immediate death. It just sometimes happens. A doctor said so. Reference.
3. Partial credit.
4. Off-by-one errors. (If you are not convinced that zero is smaller than one.)
5. Wouldn't 'The Smallest Integer' be a great name for a rock band?
6. Bad dialogue (cf. 2, above).
7. One is the loneliest number that you ever knew...
8. The other integers feel slighted. You won't get invited to their parties any more. Good job. Working in unary sucks, doesn't it?

Barbecue cleaning

It's the most wonderful time of the year -- time to clean your barbecue! Did you bring your HAZMAT suit? This guy's expression indicates that he's not too happy to be fighting the illustrated demons, poison, rain clouds, and orbiting grime and filth."We clean Barbeques, that's what we do."

As if the name were not enough to explain. Looking at this postcard, I wonder: "What do they do?"

Food segregation

These watermelons were isolated from the other fruit at the supermarket, possibly because of their raucous behavior.We were relieved to see that a Thai restaurant had this anti-[food-]discriminatory sign in the window:

We serve brown rice.

The brown rice appreciates it! Thank goodness that, in these modern days, brown and white rice can peacefully be eaten in the same restaurant. (Is there a word like "coexist" that means to be eaten together? "Coeaten"?)

Unfortunately, the nearby "Three Peppers" restaurant does not serve brown rice. In fact, there are only six dishes on the menu (fewer if some of the peppers are interchangeable).

The winning place, the losing place

Today was an unscrupulously random "civic holiday" in Canada. In our unexpected downtime (waiting for opening hours), we battled each other even as a nearby wasp battled the windowpane.Drama on the go board.

On the radio

If we could wrap our kids in bubble wrap, we would. Because we love them and want to protect them.

...and want them to smother. ---Lila

...but don't love them too much. ---Ernie

Thus begins the storm!

Visiting home is the only situation where I am exposed to television. On this visit, I haven't actually watched any television, but it has been a frequent conversational topic. M. mentioned the show Jon and Kate Plus 8, whose stars are a family with eight children from only two pregnancies (twins, then sextuplets). Nevermind the fiddly details or our ridiculous conversation. The take-away message was this: it would be improved if, each week or month, they all voted one kid off the show.

Please?

This post begins the fontesefontes co-vacation. Expect more!

Passive-aggressive recipes

My favorite of these 14 passive-aggressive appetizers (hat tip: A.):

Top thick slices of country bread with fresh goat cheese. Sprinkle with herbs and bake until crusty; serve to everyone but Jeff.

I invite you to add your own passive-aggressive recipe in the comments. A quick brainstorm of everyone at the table yields jalapeño fudge brownies as (1) an excellent experiment, and (2) quite passive-aggressive, if inaccurately labeled ("fudge brownies! try one!").