the ice cream man, the pizza lady and a dead Roman

A smidge o’ this, a dash o’ that …

Baby Gaga Gets Gagged

If you were hoping to try Baby Gaga, the ice cream made of human breast milk, your chance is frozen.

Britain’s authorities have confiscated the stuff on concerns that it could transmit viruses including hepatitis.

Excerpted from Discover magazine:

“Isis Mullarky, a Virginia Tech dairy scientist who focuses on diseases and infections, (says) that while pasteurization would certainly take care of the bacterial side of things, that still leaves the viruses. ‘There is an inherent risk in the human consumption of human food—more so than the human consumption of animal food,’ she said.

” ‘Whereas the the viruses that come from cows have the potential make you sick, the ones from humans are much more likely to be risky,’ she added. O’Connor says Baby Gaga is screened for hepatitis and other viruses just as hospital screen blood donors, but there is still some inherent risk in blood donations; no test is 100% accurate.”

So until if and when authorities allow its sales, customers’ll hafta settle for ol’ conventional vanilla.

A Slice of Life

To follow up yesterday’s post about the pizza driver lady who acted in kindness and went the extra mile and thus probably saved the life of an 82-year-old customer who had fallen … online digging last night and a couple phone calls to Memphis today have returned the Domino’s address where she works so I can write her a letter.

The assistant manager who blew off her insistence to go check in on the woman will also be receiving his note of wrist-rapping. However, that’s secondary to the note of deserved recognition, praise and gratitude from me to her.

Call me old-fashioned but I love writing letters. Putting pen to paper is such the act of intimacy. It pleases no end when the words are positive and to an individual deserving.

Ides of March

Who amongst you (excluding Brandon, who I know knows) knows what the Ides of March is? I’m ever surprised by how few people know the significance of the Ides of March. But then, with so many Americans unable to point to Nebraska on a map, I can’t be too surprised.

The Ides of March isn’t only the day that Caesar was killed, it’s also my birthday. This year I inch forward into it with more anticipation than in recent past occasions because it spells the close of an extraordinarily dark chapter and the birth of a new one.

A turn of the page in ways oh so overdue, profound and truly life-changing. This is the year It Happens. The nectar is sweet on my tongue.

And (’cause I’ve been there too) it beats a knife in the back, eh, Julius?

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