Sometimes, when the lights are just so, and the Mezcal is going down smooth as wild mountain honey, the Sea Monkey King will forget himself and inch close to me on the couch, his thigh pressing against mine, and try to grab my joint with one of his three bulb-tipped sea monkey fingers.  And sometimes, when the lights are just so, and the Mezcal is going down smooth as wild

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

Beet pulp, the dried fiber residue that remains after most of the sugar has been extracted from sliced sugar beets, can take several forms: plain dried, molasses dried (which contains roughly 25 percent molasses) and pelleted—all of which make for excellent feed (dairy farmers use plain dried pulp as a milk-flow stimulant, for instance; and in recent years, large quantities of pelleted pulp has been exported to both Japan and

Walked into my bathroom just now to find the Sea Monkey King kneeling naked on a stool in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, having himself.  At least, I think that’s what he was doing—though I suppose it’s possible he was just strangling a cherry Gummi Bear and really, really enjoying it. Hard to tell with these creatures sometimes, to be honest.  And it’s not like you can ask them,

The beet constitutional (a field-agent favorite among the peacoat-wearing cloak and dagger set):  Take one uncooked sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) and square the broad end by trimming the root and 1/2” of beet from the tuber’s base.  Using a 1 3/4” sloyd wood carving knife, gently scoop small layers* of beet flesh from the center of the newly squared top and set the shavings aside.  Repeat until the hollowed-out center

To resuscitate an overdosing dolphin, inject 0.5 ml Epinephrine just under his left lateral flipper at an angle approximating 40 degrees using a large, equine dosing syringe.  Just like they do in the movies. Should you lack Epinephrine and an equine dosing syringe, however, try splashing the dolphin with really cold water and yelling “sharks” at the top of your lungs.  No promises there, though.

Anybody know how to resuscitate a middle-aged dolphin who’s washed down two bumps of caffeine-cut special K cut with a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade?  Clearly, mouth-to-mouth is not an option—though I do have a can of pickled beets (sliced) and a half-bottle of hydrogen peroxide I’d be willing to crack open in a pinch…

When drinking martinis with the dolphin in the pea coat, the traditional garnish of 2-3 plump olives—pimento-stuffed and skewered on stainless steel olive picks—is perfectly acceptable.  In fact, should you try too hard to adjust your choice of garnish to account for perceived cultural differences, you run the risk of actually offending the dolphin—who, as it happens, considers himself every bit as “American” as Darren Stevens or William Faulkner. Or

Having used a one-time pad to decode a message he insists was spread over several Circuit City ads in Tuesday’s Rocky Mountain News, the dolphin in the peacoat spent the next 16 hours stocking the garage with canned food and reinforcing the walls and ceiling of the living room with rebar and heavy wooden planks. Which, of course, freaked me out a bit—but not near so much as when he

When debriefing a potentially compromised beet, the careful examiner will pay special attention to the condition of the attatched foliage, where any edge burn or crystalline damage to the cellular structure of the leaves could signal a low-grade Magnoliophyta trauma of the kind commonly found in angiosperms having undergone graduated, temperature-intense torture regimens. Should the examiner notice such physical peculiarities in his subject, he is advised to secure the beet