toast, friends, chocolate and nobel laureats, and nsfw cooking blogs.

One 'this, that, and the other' sort of posts.

While at my graduate program's retreat this past weekend, i toasted one of my classmates with a Scottish toast ('Here's tae us'), then mentioned that i usually hear it in my head as in a Boondock Saints-like accent (specifically the mother (sort of nsfw)). i fully realize that the Boondock Saints leads portray Irish characters (NOT SCOTTISH, i'm very aware those are completely distinct), but regardless, in my head, the toast comes with their mum's accent. Anyhow, i tracked it all back, and it is indeed a Scottish toast attributed to Robbie Burns.

Apparently, the person who places last in the Tour de France is is a somewhat coveted spot referred to as the lantern rouge, so named for the red lantern that French train conductors hang on the caboose to easily reference that none of the train has come unconnected.

This is a rather well-written post from NPR's MonkeySee blog regarding the adults and the term 'best friend', with specific instances drawn from the movie My Best Friend's wedding. i suppose i particularly liked it because i'm super fortunate in having several close friends, and that makes the idea of a best friend sort of sticky sometimes.

Another dispatch from NPR, this one regarding a rather striking correlation between the amount of chocolate a country consumes and their number of Nobel Prize winners. (i'm particularly fond of the part starting"One rainy afternoon, while stuck in a Katmandu hotel, Messerli got to playing around with the data.",   because that's a very science thing to do; you're stuck in a hotel, so... for funsies, let's crank through some sort of data!)

i did not know that Andy Warhol was apparently a rather devoted, practicing Catholic.

More on the not really safe-for-work front, LZ recently made some Habanero Brownies of Doom ("the Doom is pineapple") based on a recipe from this equal parts hilarious and offensive cooking blog. The brownies are reportedly pretty decent-though-surprising, and i'm setting it here for future reference. Another equal parts funny and offensive post is this piece entitled, It's Decorative Gourd Season....