I made a three-pound wheel of swiss cheese over the weekend. Actually, I started making it – the cheese won’t be ready to eat for about four months. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s so very tasty. You too can learn how the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. I highly recommend ordering their 30 minute mozzarella kit. $19.95 gets you everything you need to make 30 pounds of fresh mozzarella except the milk.

Cafe Press: So here’s where I can put my big ugly mug on a big ugly mug for fun and profit. The link will take you to my “wares”, and at the bottom of my “store front” you can click to Cafe Press’ home page. There may be a use for this, somewhere.

Two tech stories from the BBC: A cybernetics expert is planning to hand over control of his body to a computer in the latest of his high profile experiments and Scientists in the United Kingdom are developing a prototype robot slug-destroyer, which draws its power from the decomposing bodies of its victims.

Nothing gets the old ticker pumping like reaching under submerged rocks and into holes in the river bank hoping to feel something – like a big fish – snap shut on your hand. I used to know people who would do this in the irrigation ditches of New Mexico and Texas, and saw pictures of the huge fish they pulled out. There is a small ranch between Socorro and Truth & Consequences, New Mexico, that has a catfish head atop each fencepost around the ranch house. Catfish heads that were, on average, the same size as mine.

Blogger’s been down all day, so I’m just getting started. It’s the first time it’s gone down, and they resolved the problem suitably quickly. I’ll say it again: I love what the Blogger folks have done.

This just in, via All Things Considered on NPR: Rapper Sir Mix-a-lot and the former members of Presidents of the United States of America have joined together to form Subset, and are now playing in clubs around Seattle. The bits on the radio sounded pretty swell. You can find a few blurbs about this here and here.

It’s been a while since the Brunching Shuttlecocks have made me laugh out loud, but they did great today with Lou Bega: A Career Retrospective (3:39 of fame). It’s the complete timeline of his career, from “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Mambo #5” (at 0:05, Lou Bega burst onto the music scene with little fanfare…) all the way past the final “A little bit of Monica in my life a little bit of Erica by my side, etc.” (at 2:43, left to a life of local fairs, mall openings and class reunions, Lou Bega was a sad man…). Huzzah, Brunching Shuttlecocks, huzzah!

Troma studios has a new film coming out, and Salon is there to cover it. The film’s called Terror Firmer , and has been described as Day For Night meets Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer through the eyes of Frank Capra. The article does a good job of covering the Troma mindset. A good friend of mine (hi Kim!) recently introduced me to Tromeo and Juliet , which was the first Troma film I’d seen since early college. Though it was no Toxic Avenger, I still enjoyed it.

Sleeping with the fishes: a CNN story about the “liveaboard” community – those people who live on their boats. I’ve often thought this would be a nice thing to do. Besides a houseboat, I’d need a plot of land for a garden. If I found one waterside, I wouldn’t need to pay a marina for a slip. And with broadband satellite connections becoming available, I could “telecommute” from just about anywhere.

The BBC has two stories up about Nick Park: Aardman Animations - the creators of hit clay characters Wallace and Gromit - has signed up to a five-film deal with Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and With three Oscars, four Baftas, a CBE and a Steven Spielberg deal under his belt, there’s no doubting Nick Park is a man of talent. Of the five upcoming films,no mention is made of a Wallace and Gromit full-length movie, but Chicken Run sounds wonderful nonetheless.