Valentines Day, Dinner and a Movie, Thanks to the Spirit World.

"Hey, good looking, where have you
been all my afterlife?"

Last week was Saint Valentine's Day. A day for grand romantic gestures and overt displays of love and affection, sweet, chocolaty morsels, bouquets of fragrant, flowering beauty. My wife does not want a lot of chocolate, she is worried about the calories and the sugar. So, I got her a Ouija Board game.

A Ouija Board is has the alphabet and numbers 1 through 9, plus the words yes and no, and the
shortcut words of hello and goodbye (for ease of communication) printed on the front. By placing your fingers on the "planchette"  and asking questions you can seek guidance from the spirit world. Nothing says love like the ability to communicate with the dead.

We sat down to find solutions to a few problems we have been struggling with. Mostly they involve what to have for dinner*. It can be a struggle to find the right thing night after night. Week in and week out. An endless parade of meals, pots, pans, dirty dishes, and countless trips to the grocery store. And as soon as you finish washing, drying and putting away the plates from one meal you have to start thinking about the next.

"Dang, that was good. What do you want for dinner* tomorrow night?"

"I don't know. What do you want?"

Every night for almost thirty years. Since we had the Ouija board game anyway, and we didn't really know what to ask this seemed like genius.

Oh my God. Don't ever ask anybody who roamed the earth thousands of years ago about planning a menu. They ate like animals. No wonder everybody died so young. It was better than eating dinner*.

So, we're back to square one. Though we won't be having anything with brain. Tonight we are going to see if the spirits have any advice on evening television, we can never agree on what to watch.

I would like to apologize to President's Day. Life Explained is running a little behind and we should be able to cover the importance of today by Wednesday, Thursday, at the latest.



* Feel free to substitute the word supper here. Some people are very indignant about this. I don't want to step on anybody's toes, so supper, dinner, you can call it evening breakfast, I am fine with them all.

Dinner Time

According to Reuters) - 

The thought of eating beetles, caterpillars and ants may give you the creeps, but the authors of a U.N. report published on Monday said the health benefits of consuming nutritious insects could help fight obesity.

More than 1,900 species of insects are eaten around the world, mainly in Africa and Asia, but people in the West generally turn their noses up at the likes of grasshoppers, termites and other crunchy fare.

The authors of the study by the Forestry Department, part of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said many insects contained the same amount of protein and minerals as meat and more healthy fats doctors recommend in balanced diets.

"In the West we have a cultural bias, and think that because insects come from developing countries, they cannot be good," said scientist Arnold van Huis from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, one of the authors of the report.

Eva Muller of the FAO said restaurants in Europe were starting to offer insect-based dishes, presenting them to diners as exotic delicacies.

Danish restaurant Noma, for example, crowned the world's best for three years running in one poll, is renowned for ingredients including ants and fermented grasshoppers.

As well as helping in the costly battle against obesity, which the World Health Organization estimates has nearly doubled since 1980 and affects around 500 million people, the report said insect farming was likely to be less land-dependent than traditional livestock and produce fewer greenhouse gases.

Van Huis said barriers to enjoying dishes such as bee larvae yoghurt were psychological - in a blind test carried out by his team, nine out of 10 people preferred meatballs made from roughly half meat and half mealworms to those made from meat.

So, there are many good reasons to eat insects, but the best is probably preventative.   Face it, bugs are always sneaking around, jumping out from behind things and scaring the livin' bejesus out of people.  If they see you slapping ol' Uncle Phil on a cracker with a slice of aged swiss and a glass of Pinot Grigio, they are going to be a lot less likely to hang out in your kitchen.  

Of course, etiquette is still very important, eating bugs is no excuse for acting like an animal.

The most important thing is selecting the correct wine.  You will look like an idiot if you try to serve a  Chardonay with a plate of caterpillars.  Any fool can tell you, and most of them will, that you need a nice Cabernet with any insect that has more than 10 legs.   Flying insects should be served with a Merlot, maybe something from Napa.

Of course the invitations need to include the type of insect you are planning on serving, and how it will be prepared.  That is only common courtesy.  

Remember, always serve insects that are in season, and never buy them out of the back of a truck at the gas station, there is nothing worse than serving your guests cheap, black market insects.  You don't know where they've been.

Enjoy, and remember you are saving the planet, as well as yourself.

Hurry, this is a limited time offer.

In an embarrassing effort to make an easy, fast dollar we, here at Life Explained, have decided to auction off dates with several key members of the "executive council."* Things are a little tight since we launched our new Android operating system.

Turns out an "operating system," is not really designed to perform surgery. Wow, that was embarrassing, and expensive. People don't like big, clumsy robots taking out their tonsils, and some sundry, mostly unnecessary tissue, and parts in the very near area. They are particularly upset if they are there to have their teeth cleaned. Wow, do they get mad.

That is not really important, though. What is important is just in time for the holidays we have launched "date a difference maker." Don't know what to get Grandma for Christmas how about a dream date with Dr. Dawg? Or Bob from accounting, or Bob from R and D?

Don't have a date for the company holiday party, don't despair, "rent a successful person" is here. For a limited time we will auction off an evening of dance, drink, delightful conversation, and impressive credentials.

Look, whatever your needs for the coming season of festivity, it will be so much better with some daring, dashing, darling of industry, and innovation doting over you as your envious family watches, seething with bitter resentment. Nothing says holidays with the family like insane jealousy, are we right.

Legal note: beautiful scenery extra, not all dates are actually "dream dates" in fact some may be very dull. Impressive credentials are open to interpretation, just try to get your lawyer to prove that we are not impressed. Go Karts, bungee jumping, white water rafting, hang gliding, parasailing, any kind of sailing, really, anything that requires flying, or driving fast and pinball are not allowed, due to the extreme danger, also no girl movies, what do you think they are, a bunch of sissies?


*Not really an executive council, but several of the "people" who have been here the longest, and seem to have more going on upstairs, at least when it comes to keeping a job for a while. Not that people who haven't been here that long aren't important to our success, they are. But, we had to pick somebody to auction off, and since the people who have been here the longest were at the meeting when we decided to raise money they decided they were the best looking, not that we feel appearance is the best method of finding a date, not that we don't think appearance is important, we do, just not the only factor... never mind, it isn't that important.

Fighting for our freedom to have dinner.