Mr. Market - 48 Hours

Mr. Market's full growth can't come fast enough. After today's debacle in the Cotton Market I need to spear Mr. Market through his small (growing) cold black heart.

Mr. Market - 24 Hours

Here is the Grow Your Own Voodoo doll after 24 hrs.He/she seems to be a little top heavy in the glass.

The Evidence Continues to Mount

It's a record year for snowfall

BY DAVID JESSE

The Ann Arbor News

It's just as you suspected - this has been the snowiest winter ever in the Ann Arbor area, or at least since 1880 when record-keeping started.

And it's not over yet.

That's because we're not even into April, a month that normally averages almost 2.5 inches of that pesky white stuff.

If this winter continues the way it's been going, we could be in store for more than that.

Consider this month.

Normally in March, we get about 8.3 inches of snow, said Dennis Kahlbaum, a University of Michigan weather observer. So far in March, with more than a week to go, we've seen 16.7 inches of fluffy precipitation.

A good chunk of that came Friday night and early Saturday morning.

The storm - a narrow band across southern Michigan - dropped 7.5 inches of snow in Ann Arbor, Kahlbaum said.

That was enough to send this winter into the record books and shove the 2004-05 winter aside.

In 2004-05, 83.9 inches of snow fell. This year, we're sitting at 85 inches.
That's a lot of shoveling.

"It seems like I've shoveled a lot this year," said Tori Williamson, 49, who was in front of her Ypsilanti home Saturday. "I've always been fine with shoveling, but now I'm thinking about a snowblower for next winter."

David Jesse can be reached at djesse@annarbornews.com or at 734-994-6937.

I'm a Total Copycat

I have been so impressed by the Growing Alligator experiment by the Boy Family Rules that I felt the need to conduct my own growing experiment. There's one place in Chicago where I was confident they would have Chinese made toxic sponge rubber products that would grow 600% when left in water. I was not disappointed. Uncle Fun had a whole rack of such items. Among the growing items I had to choose from were; growing hands, brains, therapists, men, women, pinatas, lizards, geeks, flamingos, and voodoo dolls (complete with pins).

I had to go with the voodoo doll.

This experiment with "Mr. Market" is now under way.


I felt compelled to name him before fully grown to get the maximum hex effect.


Check back on Mr. Market's progress.

Some Advice Before Gathering With the Family for Easter

My New Favorite Food Additive

Walked over to the African market today to pick up the tomatoes we needed for our chili. As I was standing at the checkout with three habaneros and two cans of tomatoes I came across this little item of pure pepper bliss.



The label on the back mentions that this powder is 10 times hotter than fresh habaneros. When a Jamaican food company uses the words Very Hot on the label you know you're in for a mouth searing good time.

The Prince formerly known as Artist has Spoken

I always thought there was something fishy, dare I say Frenchy, about Prince Charles. First there was the nose, which I unfortunately share. Why I was stuck with a French nose and small English feet I'll never know. Then there was the hot wife he had. We don't even need to go there.

Now there's this, which seals the deal in my book. He's French through and through:

Prince: Global effort needed to counter climate change

Sheer madness.

That's how Prince Charles described skeptics who view calls for rapid action to counter climate change as overstated or completely invented.

"Unfathomably however, there still seem to be some climbing skeptics, those who view the case of rapid action to counter climate change is overstated or indeed completely invented," he added.

"If I may speak plainly among friends, this is sheer madness. The scientific facts are as plain as they are alarming. Worryingly in the last few months we have learnt that the North Polar ice cap is melting so fast that some scientists are predicting that in seven years it will completely disappear in summer."

Puhlease. Count me as a mad "climbing skeptic." Better to be able to grow more crops because of warming than fewer because of permafrost. Commodities are already at all time highs. Imagine how much they'll be when we can't till the soil.