Wanna Be a Dad?

Stop drinking six months before conception.

Can alcohol affect sperm? Dads-to-be should stop drinking 6 months before conception, study finds

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy has long been linked to congenital defects and developmental problems in newborns. Now a new study has found a link between a baby's congenital heart defects and their prospective parents' drinking before conception

Compared to non-drinkers, fathers who drank during the three months before conception were 44% more likely to have babies born with congenital heart disease.

If the prospective dads were binge drinkers, which was defined as downing five or more drinks per session, there was a 52% higher likelihood their baby would have a congenital heart defect.

(read the rest of the article at above link)

---

Sobering news, no pun intended. Even though I'm no scientist, it makes sense.  Alcohol IS, after all, technically a poison.

OTOH, I suspect a LOT of "conception events" are directly due to alcohol consumption.

Food Porn

Being an avid collector of online recipes (several thousand in PDF) as well as subscribing to dozens and dozens of recipe websites in my reader, I have seen the term "Food Porn" tossed around quite a bit.  It's always puzzled me to an extent;  I know the ones using the term mean something as self-indulgent and addictive as porn, but it never made much sense to me.  After all, I learned as a young man you simply cannot be hungry and horny at the same time.  You can be one or the other, but never, ever both...that's just a fact of life.

(that's also why the fetish of combining food and sex, i.e. fruit or whipped cream semi-disgusts me...it's just not my bag, man. Let me at the sexy woman...or the strawberry cheesecake, but one at a time!)

Then, after seeing this video about Salisbury Steak, it dawned on me why the term "Food Porn" is used on recipe presentations;  it's the music!

Hot or Cold Dinks

I was just reading an article from one of my recipe sites, Spiced.  The recipe was Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream and the author was writing about his favorite ice cream flavor being vanilla, but why wasn't there a vanilla syrup for chocolate ice cream like there is chocolate syrup for vanilla?

Well, I've never used it for ice cream, but there IS such a thing as vanilla syrup and I started to reply and say so...but I didn't want to be one of those insufferable people who feel the need to point things like that out to others.

I mean, I don't want to be one of those people any longer;  I'm working on that, honest.

I've seen vanilla syrup in grocery stores, usually in the coffee aisle, right there with the powdered flavorings and creamers and the liquid form is in the milk section along with the other perishable items that need to be refrigerated.  A quick search online shows that you can make it yourself, or buy it from Walmart or Amazon.  I've never made a simple syrup w/ vanilla, but it sounds easy enough and the closest to an ice cream syrup;  personally, I've never cared for the coffee flavorings - they just don't taste very good and leave an aftertaste.

Back in grade school, I fell in love with a girl who sat right next to me.  I was far too young to be physically attracted to her, but there was *something* about her that drew me to her.  I finally worked up the courage to tell her she really, really smelled good and she told me her mother wouldn't let her wear perfume, so she dabbed a little bit of vanilla extract behind her ears.

That was when I learned a life lesson;  boys are either hungry or horny, one or the other, all the time...just not both at the same time.

Maybe that's what I need to do; create a perfume that smells like baked goods.  Oh wait, they already have.

Anyway...something caught my eye on the Amazon listing:

(click graphic for larger view)

Extreme Contrasts

It caught my eye, an article on the Inquisiter website about Jessica Duggar, one of the children on the reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting.

Here's a little bit from the article: The four eldest girls of the Duggar clan, Jana, 24, Jill, 22, Jessa, 21, and Jinger, 20, say that “it’s easy to put yourself into physical and moral danger and give into those emotions or sensual thoughts that promise pleasant, but only temporary, fulfillment.”

I should admit that I don't watch the show very often. Unlike many other people, however, I don't hate the Duggars because of their religion or the size of their family. I HAVE seen a few episodes, though and am glad I wasn't raised that way or in such a large family. A little more religion certainly wouldn't have hurt me while I was growing up, but our small house was crowded enough with just the five of us.

One of the last episodes I watched was about Josh, the oldest son, and his marriage to a lovely and sweet young woman, Anna. I was a little surprised when I learned that they hadn't kissed before the wedding, but I believe it was on the same show where I was taken aback at Jim Bob, the patriarch of the family, talking about how his wife Michelle HAD kissed someone before she had married him, not disguising his bitterness while talking to the camera. (I find THAT to be more than a little weird, but...it's not MY wife, after all.  Finding a woman as chaste as he wanted - other than the Duggar girls - is very rare these days.  I think I'd be happy just to find out my new bride hadn't spent a year hooking on the Las Vegas strip)

I had to laugh when the cameras followed the new couple on their honeymoon; I forget exactly where they went, but they took a trip to some sort of marine park and were going to spend their wedding night camping out under a clear arch under a huge tank full of fish. They stayed there for a while, then decided it wasn't very comfortable and went back to their hotel room.

I was wondering why the hell they were spending their first night of marriage sleeping on the floor looking at fish...and I think they got to wondering the same thing after a while.  I don't think it would've been nearly as interesting as getting to know each other...in the Biblical sense. Ahem. I'm sure neither of them knew what they were doing later that night, but I bet they had fun figuring it out.

I read the rest of the article, then a slide-out ad appeared at the bottom - talk about a contrast! (I bookmarked it to read later for some pointers, even though I doubt it'd work on the Duggar girls)

Then this was on a panel of links at the very bottom of the page:

Even MORE contrast...and I'd much rather read about the Duggars than Tongue-Girl.

Scare Tactics

I've seen some strange spam, most of it sexual in nature, but this one is just about the strangest I've ever seen. It came from "Expess Pharmacy" and in the subject line was this:

I don't know what could cause that (outside of getting on the bad side of Lorena Bobbitt), but I sure don't want it happening to me. I don't use mine for much, but I'm still fond of it.   I'm attached to it and I want it to remain attached to me.

Brought to you by the letters "T&A"

Katy Perry's Boobs Banned from "Sesame Street"

It seems the only boobs allowed on network television are the ones doing the programming.