Procrastinator's Toolbox

The Anti-Iron Chef

If you're someone whose ego deflates from watching the iron chefs on the Food Network, then Bachelor Cooking should work like Prozac.  Francis records as fast-cooking, fastidious, "candy-pants" Logan teaches and scolds the culinarily-clueless-yet-biore-facial-scrub-knowing, hammer-wielding, stop-watch-wearing Rain.  Unless you too don't have pot holders, it'll make you feel better about yourself AND teach you how to make minimalist steak.  Yum!

If it doesn't make you feel better about yourself, then maybe you should get some pot holders already.

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim

Know thy turkey

If you want to deflect conversation from your recent weight gain or arson felony (yes, we know it was an accident), the bun in your sister's oven that she made with a middle school student of hers (yes, we know that was an accident too), or your brother's sex change (not so much an accident as a deliberate choice), then SMPT suggests you bring along the University of Illinois Extension's list o' Turkey Facts!  You'll be the toast of the evening, not for your pyro-ways, but for your random knowledge, which will include:

• Turkeys can see in color.
• The male turkey is called a tom.
• The female turkey is called a hen.
• 2.74 billion pounds of turkey were processed in the United States in 1994.
• A domesticated male turkey can reach a weight of 30 pounds within 18 weeks after hatching.
• Turkeys are related to pheasants.
• Commercially raised turkeys cannot fly.

Bring this list to Turkey Day, and the only sad member at your table will be the succulent turkey leg you're scarfing down.

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim, who wants to know "Then what's a tomhen?"
                                                                                                          

Hold the Combos

Wonder Pizza is pizza from a vending machine.  The result of 5 laborious years and $6 million in R&D, it does not take pennies or crumpled dollar bills.  Aptly named, you indeed wonder about this pizza.

Thanks to Sander Cohan for this slice of contemplation.

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim

Wallow in Virtual Food

Drown work-related depression and angst by looking at food.  Go to the Food Network website or Menupages.com and salivate, determine what You're In the Mood For, or, if you so dare, plan to cook that which you fancy.  Either way, it kills time and gives you a To Do which, unless you've an eating disorder, you'll be able to say that you actually accomplished at the end of the day.

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim

The No Problem Fruit

Shunyam Nirav loves his durian.  Really really loves his durian.  So much that his email ends with @durianpalace.com.  His webpage is boldly named Durian Palace: A Home of the King of Fruits on the World Wide Web.  He provides the lore of durian, the beauty of durian (with photos of the month, all of durian), draws faces on durian (see left), odes to durian, info on sex and durian, hotly protests the banning of durian (or  "fruit slander") in public spaces and Western descriptions of the fruit that liken it to "rotten onions with limburger cheese and low-tide seaweed," "French custard passed through a sewer pipe," and "sitting on the toilet while eating your favorite ice cream" -- and that's just the beginning.  All for the love of durian.

Thanks to Catherine Pricenator for this bit of the web that makes us ask the larger, bigger questions.

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim, who took one semester of French and has no memory for spelling, and so on reading "durian" thought, "Yeah, I dig it.  It's nothing. No problems, carefree world.  Marvelously groovy" before 1) realizing the spelling's different and the meaning's different and 2) having my superego suggest that maybe I should not flaunt the knowledge I acquired in one semester of French, but then I retorted to myself: given that durian is the King of Fruit, maybe the meaning of du rien and durian are one in the same.  So touché!  or So touchie?  I feel better.  I hurt.  I feel better.  I...

Quail Ragu Your Lunch Has Not

As you shovel plastic forkfuls of leftover tuna surprise from your square of tupperware that still smells of last week's tomato-sauce dish trying to ignore the conjunction of logic that would seemlessly marry the fact that a third was missing when you took it out of the company fridge and that Weird Guy's unavoidable breathy hallway "hhhello" of five minutes ago smelled heavily of a familiar mayonnaisey bready cheesy bready fish, salivate over pdf after pdf of gastronomical deliciousness from Menupages.com's collection of the stuff that makes New York's eateries so delectable and your cubicle lunch, so, well, quite frankly... sad. 

- report by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung who really likes canned tuna but only feels okay about it if it's dolphin-friendly

Donut Buddy

Buy a box of donuts and leave it out for everyone with a post-it that reads "To help you get through the day.  your name here" and go from office monkey to everyone's best friend and feared enemy all in one go -- a role which we all know will allow you to avoid having to do any work for the day. 

Know that under no circumstances will you get the satisfaction of seeing anyone stuff their face or of a verbal "hey, thanks man".  Perhaps you'll receive an ecard of meowing kittens-in-a-basket from the heavily medicated, but a more likely response will be an "I don't do carbs" from those who pointedly lie.  Regardless, those who have stuffed their faces (i.e. everyone) will either help you staple your papers or cower in embarrassed fear that the indelible smudge of chocolate frosting on their shirt will out their donut fetish. 

Just be sure to get a tasty box of donuts.  Much like any challenge to the current power structure attempted with bad pastries, this coup d'etat can easily backfire with your co-workers making you wish you never brought them donuts in to begin with. 

- by SMPT correspondent, Kyoung Kim