One summer my family went on vacation up to the Atlantic provinces in Maine. It was a good vacation, no big complaints. The only little complaint I had was dinner. Every restaurant there had as their side vegetable, peas and carrots. By day 8 of this, I was starting to get a little crazy. Still, that was what was in season, so they had to use it. Now they're using frozen peas and carrots to replace gelpacks that would be frozen to keep live lobsters safe for transport, since gelpacks are now scary and well, gel-ly.

On one hand this makes perfect sense. After all, volatile chemicals which could be used in a terrorist attack on an airplane would be well hidden from detection by being either dropped well below their normal temperatures, or physically encased in ice. However, I'm having no luck getting the ridiculous image of "Terrorist crustacean" out of my head.

While I have trouble believing in evil lobsters, I have no such problem believing in evil geese. They're just angry, foul-tempered animals. Pound for pound probably the second-worst temperament in the roster of birds, after hummingbirds (who are like tiny winged badgers, armed with swords, on methamphetamines). I don't eat foie gras myself, but I can appreciate the utility of stuffing them full of food so they aren't out in the streets attempting to nip at people. Now the city of Chicago (which just banned foie gras) has decided, in order to keep the geese off the grass in the park, to spray the grass with a chemical that will cause the geese to have diarrhea, and lots of it. While this would prevent the geese from getting fattened up, it's simply and utterly stupid, as the geese are going to go somewhere, probably on the grass, possibly on the people. Worse, you're loading them up with chemicals so they're going to go off, yes, it's the equivalent of arming the geese. Perhaps the geese would like some fissionable materials while we're at it. Maybe we can put it in a gelpack for them.