Mexicali Rose is fresh, delicious Mexican chain, and the chips and salsa and the beans are oh-so tasty. I just found you can get the beans online. We are making veggie burritos with these beans twice this week, and usually make it once a week. Seriously, we buy these by the caseload: Mexicali Rose Fat Free Refried Pinto Beans Instant 7 oz
Best Part First:
Watch SandKings on Hulu.
The Outer Limits TV episode changes some of the original book plot (below). But it features a grandfather-father-son team of Lloyd Bridges, Beau Bridges – Dr. Simon Kress, and Dylan Bridges. Slightly less dark, but no less dramatic and gripping.
Simon Kress, a wealthy playboy on the planet Baldur, loves to collect dangerous, exotic animals. When most of his pets die after being left alone during a long business trip, he ventures into the city to find replacements. He is unsatisfied by the offerings in the stores he has patronized in the past, but eventually he comes across a mysterious new establishment called Wo & Shade.
Inside, he meets the coowner, Jala Wo. She shows him a terrarium filled with four colonies of creatures called sandkings. Each colony consists of a large female called the maw, and numerous insect-like mobiles. The maw is immobile, but controls the mobiles through telepathy. The mobiles hunt, forage, and build, and bring food back to the maw, which digests it and passes it on to the mobiles. Each colony has constructed a castle out of sand around the maw, and fight coordinated wars and battles with one another. Wo also shows Kress how she has beamed a hologram of herself into the tank, and how the the sandkings have decorated their castles with her likeness. Kress is mildly intrigued, but disappointed at the small size of the creatures. Wo assures him that they will grow to fill whatever environment they are kept in. Kress then agrees to purchase them. Wo assures him that they are easy to care for, and will eat anything.
Kress observes the installation of his sandkings and watches his four colonies (whose creatures are white, black, red, and orange) begin to build their castles. There is little intrigue or fighting, however, and so a bored Kress begins to starve them. After that, they consistently war over the food he does provide. He also beams a hologram of his face, and they begin to decorate their castles appropriately.
After a time, Kress invites his friends, including Jala Wo, to view a war fought by his new pets. The guests are suitably impressed, but Jala Wo worries that he is not feeding the sandkings adequately. She assures him that if they are kept comfortable, they will engage in intrigue and wars that are endlessly more entertaining than if they are made to squabble over food. Kress dismisses her complaints and resolves not to invite her any more. Cath m’Lane, one of Kress’ old girlfriends is also disgusted by the spectacle, and leaves in a huff.
Kress throws a series of parties and takes bets on the outcome of the sandking battles. At one, a guest brings a dangerous alien creature and suggests pitting it against the sandkings. The sandkings quickly dispatch it. This begins a series of matches: the sandkings emerge victorious in all of them.
Eventually, Kress learns that Cath has reported the sandkings to the animal control authorities. He then films himself feeding a puppy to the sandkings and sends it to her. As he goes to bed, he notices that his face on the castles has become twisted and sinister. Outraged, he pokes a sword into the white maw. He can feel that he has injured it, but it isn’t dead. He then goes to bed.
Cath arrives the next day with a sledgehammer, and tries to smash the sandkings’ terrarium. Trying frantically to stop her, Kress kills her. In dying, she finally breaks the plastic, releasing the sandkings. Kress flees the house in a panic. By the time he returns, the sandkings have taken over: the black and red have built castles in the garden, while the whites have taken over the basement and eaten Cath. (He is unable to find the oranges.) Freed from their container, the sandkings are growing. Kress tries to exterminate them himself, and hires blackmarket assassins to assist him, but he is only able to destroy the blacks and the reds, and the whites trap him in the house. Panicking, he invites his friends over for a party, and locks them in the basement, where the sandkings devour them.
The next morning, the mobile sandkings are comatose. Kress finally works up the courage to contact Jala Wo. She explains that as the sandkings grows larger, the maw becomes more intelligent, and eventually reaches sentience. At that point, the mobiles evolve into their next stage of evolution, which include opposable thumbs and the ability to manipulate technology: her partner, Shade, is an evolved sandking himself. Because of Kress’ mistreatment, however, the white maw has become dangerously unstable. Wo tells Kress to flee, and assures him that she will take care of the sandkings.
Kress runs into the wilderness around his estate in a blind panic, trying to follow Wo’s directions for a pickup. After traveling all day, he finally comes across a house, with children playing outside. Thinking he has found salvation, he calls out to them. As he comes closer, however, he realizes that he has reached the castle of the evolved orange sandkings. As they surround him, he screams: all of them have his face.
Martin says that the story was inspired by a fellow student at Northwestern University who had a piranha tank and would sometimes throw a goldfish into it in between horror film screenings. He had intended it to be part of a series, with Wo and Shade operating shops on many different planets, but that did not pan out.
1 Fancy Bamboo Flatware Organizer: $29
Our high school English teacher was beside herself. We had just diagnosed her with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but she felt skeptical. A friend from a different English hour stopped by to get assignments because he was leaving. As he walked into the classroom, the teacher unleashed her nerves on him, “Do I really have OCD!? I told my students how much my impish daughter upset me by turning the silverware organizer upside-down and mixing up all the forks, knives and spoons loose in the drawer.
Noticing my wink, my friend carefully replied that he wasn’t sure that was OCD, but it was indeed odd. She asked if his family separated their forks, knives and spoons from each other. He answered no, and suggested that she probably did have OCD, after all.
We lied when we said our families didn’t organize their flatware, but for years I’ve been bothered by flatware organizers. Perhaps even plagued. It wasn’t until today that I was driven to learn the truth about what bothered me.
So I set up an experiment in the kitchen.
In undergrad, I studied Industrial Engineering, so I put my knowledge of time studies to use. I randomized the silverware pick order, and alternated between organizer and free drawer configurations, because I anticipated the learning that you see in the graphs as each successive trial took less time.
Do you notice any patterns?
On average, using a flatware organizer costs 18 seconds every cycle. For my flatmates and I, we cycle our dishwasher 4 times per week. 1 hour every year is spent sorting knives, forks and spoons into compartments in a plastic or wooden drawer organizer. Geeks, spread the word. Silverware organizers are only for decoration. Flatware organization sucks precious life away from people.
uberGeeknotes: Average difference in total cycle time for free vs organized was 18 seconds. t-test statistic = .026, but just behold the graphical difference!
