Lactose intolerance is a common inherited condition in which a person's gut loses, after childhood, its ability to digest the milk sugar called lactose. The sugary molecules float around undigested in the intestine, ferment, and create a gassy havoc. The effect is somewhat like eating any other indigestible carbohydrate, such as cardboard or grass.

( Read more... )

• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Anthem by Ayn Rand
• The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
• The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.

- [extra emphasis mine :) ] from The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Btw, my hardcover copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver was a nice score from the bargain bin of a bookstore at PH ₱99 (around US $2.27). :D

There's just something about me and bookstores. I can't not buy books, and I can't not read. It's a security blanket of sorts. Haha. And I have moments when I feel ( Read more... )

We don't know beans about beans. Asparagus, potatoes, turkey drumsticks-you name it, we don't have a clue how the world makes it. I usually think I'm exaggerating the scope of the problem, and then I'll encounter an editor (at a well-known nature magazine) who's nixing the part of my story that refers to pineapples growing from the ground. She ( Read more... )

Absence of the knowledge has rendered us a nation of wary label-readers, oddly uneasy in our obligate relationship with the things we eat. We call our food animals by different names after they're dead, presumably sparing ourselves any vision of the beefs and the porks running around on actual hooves. Our words for unhealthy contamination-"soiled" ( Read more... )

My brother calls inviting me to a benefit for a theater company Friday night-his girlfriend, Liz, knows the director. “It’s a singles event,” Henry says.

“Singles?” I say. I think if individually wrapped American cheese slices.

“There’s some theme,” he says.

“Desperation?” I suggest.

-From The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

Then I think, what if he does call? I'll just mess it up. The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.

-Jane (The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank)

Aunt Rita: “A young woman does a lot for an older man.”

Jane: “It’s not like that. We think alike.”

Aunt Rita: “Oh, my dear, a man thinks with his dick.”

-From The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

At Caffè Vivaldi, Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell.

I sipped my cappuccino. "Give me a minute," I said.

"Proximity without intimacy," he said.

"Listen, Dante." I was going to remind him about Jamie, but instead I said, "I just don't feel that way about you."

He said, "Spare me the juvenalia."
-From The Girls' Guide to ( Read more... )