Hey everyone! I’m Camille Crimson, better known for my beautiful erotic site called The Art of Blowjob. When I’m not using my mouth for … other activities … I love to use it to indulge in delicious treats, which is why I’ve become a very good cook.

Although I’m born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and live here now, I spent a
few years living abroad in La Réunion, an island off the coast of Madagascar. It’s a spectacularly beautiful place with breathtaking views, warm beaches, kind people and some very delicious local cuisine.

Back here in Montreal, the seasons are turning and I’ve been craving more hearty and hot food. With this in mind, I’d like to teach you how to make one of my favourite meals from my time in La Réunion called Rougail Saucisses.

First, you’ll want to boil the sausages for about 15 to 20 minutes. Then, drain and slice them into 5 mm thick pieces. Sauté the sausage slices in butter until they are lightly browned, then remove them and set them aside.

Finely chop the onions and put them in the pot, cooking them until they’re very lightly brown. Mince and add the garlic and ginger along with the thyme. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook until it’s nice and brown.

While the onion mix is browning, cut the tomatoes in four and then slice them into 5 mm thick pieces. Add them to the onion mix and let them cook down a bit, then add the water. Simmer for 10 minutes or until the tomatoes are cooked and the sauce has thickened.

Add the sausages and simmer for at least 45 minutes. In the last five minutes, dice and add the jalapeños and the turmeric.

If you want to serve this the traditional way, it’s served on rice and can be accompanied by red kidney beans and tomato rougail.

For the kidney beans, brown one diced onion with butter. Add chopped garlic. Add a whole can of red kidney beans and their liquid and let it simmer until the liquid has thickened.

For the tomato rougail, finely chop one tomato with 3 garlic cloves, some ginger, a jalapeño and half an onion. Add some olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy this tasty trip to my favourite island. Thanks for cooking with me!

Kiss,

Camille

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Photo by Ed Rachles

When last we saw author Mary Roach, she was on the road promoting her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Two years, one TED conference and one guest spot on The Daily Show later, Roach is once again promoting a new book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, which was released five weeks ago and is currently ranked 15th on the New York Times best seller list for nonfiction.

Her previous titles – Bonk, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife – have dealt with two big taboos in our culture, death and sex. What makes Packing for Mars unique (beside it’s noticeable lack of a one-word, one-syllable title) is that she’s focusing on space travel, which itself is revered and mythologized in our culture, but uncovering taboos within that subject. With Packing for Mars, Roach looks at the human aspect of space travel by seeking to answer questions we’ve all wondered, but never dared to ask, like “How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?” and “What happens if they vomit inside their helmet?”

“I think the thing that people are most curious about with astronauts is the human side of it that kind of got glossed over with all of the hero worship,” Roach said.

She got the idea for the book after a conversation with an acquaintance named Rene Martinez, who had worked in a NASA facility and had knowledge of the training and simulations NASA utilizes to mentally and physically prepare astronauts for space travel. After talking with Martinez, Roach knew the topic was right up her alley.

“It’s more human body in unusual circumstances, which is kind of my beat,” she said.

Roach has been working on this book ever since she finished Bonk. It typically takes her two to three years to write one of her books. The writing itself never takes very long, but culling research and coordinating interviews and on-sight visits is always time consuming. For this book, the biggest challenge was finding things she could actually get direct access to.

The biggest surprise to Roach as she began researching the topic was just how many challenges crop up when launching human beings into space.

“I was kind of endlessly amazed by the extent to which not having gravity changes everything,” Roach said. “Nothing works right in space.”

As the title suggests, one big focus on the book is the difficulties in sending astronauts to Mars. While there are a myriad of challenges Roach writes about, one that has cropped up since Packing for Mars went to print is a lack of funding for the initiative. President Barack Obama’s budget for NASA, which is waiting to be finalized, made drastic cuts to the program, which has diminished optimism among those involved. Roach believes that currently there is no long-term plan or vision for the future, which has put the whole project in jeopardy.

While our nation’s current economic woes are certainly the main reason for the cuts to NASA’s funding, it also seems like our collective interest in space travel has dwindled over the years as well. We are a long way removed from Neil Armstrong’s 1969 walk on the moon. These days, people just aren’t as interested in what’s happening over at NASA. That’s what makes the success of Roach’s latest book so fascinating.

“This is a book about space that’s been on the New York Times best seller list,” Roach said. “When’s the last time that happened?”

Roach believes that if NASA could find a way to focus more on the human element of space travel, it may renew interest in their efforts. She joked that they don’t have to focus entirely on astronauts going to the bathroom, which is her beat, but that presenting these space travelers as real people under extreme circumstances could do the space program a world of good.

Roach does believe those in the space travel business are slowly coming around though. The Canadian Space Industry recently filmed a series of videos documenting astronauts in training, which Roach said seemed to have flashy exercises and drills specifically designed to entice an audience. NASA itself was recently featured on the reality show Top Chef – the contestants were challenged to make a gourmet meal that could be eaten by astronauts in space.

“I think NASA is kind of coming around to understanding this is the way to get people’s interest,” Roach said, “distasteful as it may be to them.”

Still, don’t expect NASA to greenlight a Mars reality show anytime soon. Of course, networks wouldn’t necessarily be lining up for one anyway, since the ideal candidates for a Mars mission would be in their 60s, due to the radiation they would encounter on the trip. Sexy septuagenarian filming the Real World in space doesn’t exactly seem like something network execs would be convinced they could sell to their coveted 18 to 35 year old demographic.

While NASA continues to look for ways to promote their space efforts, Roach’s tour to promote Packing for Mars is coming to an end. The tour began on August 2 with appearances on both The Daily Show and NPR’s Talk of the Nation and she continued on the road for about a month. For Roach, her appearance on The Daily Show was both thrilling and a bit terrifying.

“Most things that you do on TV are sort of some Fox affiliate in Pocatello, Idaho and you’re like, ‘No one ever in a thousand years will ever see this,’” she said.

But Roach knew her friends and family would all be watching her on The Daily Show. She spent the weekend leading up to her appearance stressing out over it, but said by the time she got to the studio that Monday she “didn’t have any worrying” left in her. Roach said Jon Stewart also helped put her at ease by chatting with her while she was getting her makeup applied. Her appearance on the show went off without a hitch and Roach loved being on the show. And her time on The Daily Show was over before she knew it.

“There’s that moment where he reaches for the book to show it to the camera,” she said, referring to the moment at the end of the interview where Steward holds up a writer’s book as the show goes to commercial. “You see his hand going over and you’re going: ‘Nooooo!’”

With the tour for Packing for Mars winding down, Roach has already moved on to her next book, which she says is currently in the “random flailing stage.” She isn’t revealing the topic of the book just yet, but promised that it would have humor and science in it, which is where her comfort zone is as a writer. Roach said that perhaps someday, if there was a particularly interesting set of diaries uncovered about an obscure, but fascinating historical figure, she could see herself branching out and writing about it, but she has no desire to pen a straight historical narrative or a biography. And, as for writing her own memoirs, Roach doesn’t think they would be interesting enough to read.

“My life is incredibly boring and my childhood was also incredibly boring,” Roach joked, adding that her memoir would mainly consist of recapping plotlines from 1970s television shows.

Of course, that’s what makes Roach so refreshingly human and down to earth. And, like the astronauts she writes about in Packing for Mars, simply being human is what makes her so fascinating.

Written by Joel Murphy. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is available now. To read our April 2008 interview with Roach, click here. For more information on Mary Roach and her books, visit her official site.

Similar Posts:

• Getting to Know … Mary Roach
• Murphy’s Law – Next floor, Uranus
• Murphy’s Law – The future is now

Photo by David Paul Morris

For Mary Roach, the most memorable day working in public relations for the San Francisco Zoological Society was the day they used an experimental laser scalpel to remove a plantar wart from an elephant’s foot. Roach was fascinated with the technology involved. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearly as interested in public relations.

“I’m a terrible spokesperson,” Roach admitted. She said that when people would call inquiring about a rumor that the cheetah had been sucked dry by fleas, instead of dismissing the story outright, she found herself wondering how many fleas it would take to pull off such a feat.

While a career in public relations wasn’t a good fit for Roach, her curiosity and fascination with strange topics like elephant wart removals and cheetah-sucking flees helped her to take a different career path – as a freelance writer. She wrote columns, essays and feature articles for magazines like Outside, Wired, National Geographic, GQ and the New Yorker, covering topics such as vaginal weight-lifting, alligator-wrestling and amputee bowling leagues.

Roach’s first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, gave insight into the way cadavers are used for research purposes. Roach tackled the morbid topic with wit and charm and the book became a hit. Stiff earned a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, perhaps in part because it was prominently featured on the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under.

After following up on the success of Stiff with another book on death, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Roach has now turned her attention to sex research with her latest book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

The idea behind Bonk was simple.

“There are tons of books about sex, but nobody’s really written about sex research, partly because a lot of sex research isn’t that interesting to read about,” Roach said. “So I ferreted out the greatest hits.

“I tend to cover things going on in labs that you wouldn’t really picture or anticipate. The idea of somebody studying the physiology of sex – this personal, private, intimate thing and yet it’s also physiology and biology.”

Roach researched the material in the book for almost two and a half years, combing through published scientific studies and witnessing several research projects firsthand. A few times, Roach herself volunteered to be a research subject.

While researching material for the book, Roach discovered the work being done by Dr. Jing Deng, a University College London Medical School senior lecturer in medical physics, who was experimenting with 4-D ultrasound equipment. Dr. Deng sought to capture a real-time image of human intercourse using ultrasound technology, but was unable to find a couple willing to be the first test subjects. So Roach, along with her husband Ed, volunteered.

When asked how she was able to convince her husband to participate in the study with her, Roach said, “He’s crazy supportive. He was not thrilled to do that.”

“It was much harder for him. It was nothing for me. I was just a receptacle. I was taking notes,” she added.

Luckily for Ed, Roach has promised not to forget the sacrifice he made for her work.

“I owe him a favor forever,” she said.

Like Roach’s other books, Bonk is a mixture of historical research and research that Roach witnessed firsthand. One of the more interesting subjects in the book was Dr. Geng-Long Hsu, an expert on erectile dysfunction, who performed surgery to restore blood flow to the penis of a man suffering from erectile dysfunction while Roach observed. All of the researchers featured in Roach’s book were all very receptive to her efforts to observe their work firsthand.

“People were surprisingly supportive in light of the fact that when you do sex research, you’re constantly exposing yourself to criticisms from family values group and people who could interfere with your funding,” Roach said.

Bonk was released on April 7th. The following day she began a book tour that has her visiting 18 different locations in 30 days. This week, she has already been in Boston, New York and Miami. Today she is in Chicago, tomorrow she will be in St. Louis. The goal is to visit as many cities as possible in a given week, since the New York Times bestseller list is updated weekly.

Her typical schedule while on tour involves getting up at 5 a.m. to get to either a mid-day reading or an event at 10 or 11. Her afternoons are spent doing media interviews and at night she is at bookstores giving book talks and signing copies of Bonk. Then, it’s usually back to the hotel. Any drinking or socializing after the event cuts into her sleep time.

Typically around 100 people show up at the bookstores to see Roach in person. Everyone is supportive, but there’s usually a strange vibe in the room because of the subject matter.

“There’s nothing in the book that I can talk about without saying words like ‘clitoris’ or ‘orgasm’,” Roach admitted.

Also, the fans themselves are often reluctant to participate in the event.

“Usually what happens is I open up for questions and they sit there for a while and nobody raises a hand. And then, one or two people will ask a question and then suddenly 25 people have a question,” said Roach.

As awkward as the events can be, none were likely as awkward as her book talk last night at the Books and Books in Miami because Ed’s family was in attendance, including Roach’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

Photo by Joel Murphy

Roach said her husband’s family is very supportive of her work. When Stiff came out, Roach’s mother-in-law purchased the book, but put a brown paper cover over it while reading it (her mother-in-law claimed it was to protect the book, but Roach is skeptical). Ed’s parents have read all of Roach’s books.

“I don’t know whether they actually enjoy them, but they read them,” she said.

Roach’s family and friends have all been supportive of her work. None of her loved ones have said anything critical to her about her books.

“I’m sure a lot of the response goes on behind my back,” Roach said.

Roach is already starting to think about her next project, but admits that after covering death and sex, it’s hard to find a worthy subject to tackle (she encourages readers to send her suggestions). When looking for subject matter, Roach looks for research that has an interesting historical aspect, as well as things that she can see in person. She looks for interesting topics that are quirky and fun, and says that her philosophy for her books is simple.

“I hope that people learn something and have a good time reading it at the same time,” Roach said.

Written by Joel Murphy, April 2008. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is available now. For more information on Mary Roach and the Bonk book tour, visit her official site.

Similar Posts:

• Getting to Know … Mary Roach
• Murphy’s Law – The tragic death of David Carradine
• Hobo Radio 111 – It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
• Outside of the In-Crowd – Fancy a filthy sing-along?
• Positive Cynicism – More questions commercials make me ask

Photo courtesy of Pirates Vs. Ninjas

Last week, we ran a feature story on John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur and Mark “Cap’n Slappy” Summers, creators of International Talk Like A Pirate Day. One of the topics brought up during our interview with The Pirate Guys was one of the Internet’s most heated debates: “Who would win in a fight – pirates or ninjas?”

Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy added some fuel to the fire.

“For some reason, there is this whole pirate-ninja war that frankly I don’t understand,” John said. “I think we are all kind of working the same side of the street. We’re guys with swords that misbehave. I do think that perhaps the reason for all of this animosity is that ninjas are kind of jealous because pirates are so much cooler. Ninjas are supposed to be silent and invisible, so they should shut up and go away.”

“You’ve got to give ninjas a lot of credit for training,” Mark added, “but a pirate has a cannon. And, as far as fashion goes, a pirate wins every time. And really, wouldn’t you rather win the war on fashion?”

This week, in an effort to be fair and balanced, we gave Michael “Aeon” Fiegel, the creator of the Day of the Ninja, a chance to respond to The Pirate Guys comments.

Here is what Aeon had to say:

In recent years, the Internet has seen the growing popularity of a cultural meme pitting Ninja vs. Pirates. On the one hand you have ninja-related sites like Ask a Ninja, Real Ultimate Power and Ninja Burger, and on the other hand you have a pirate movement led by the Talk Like a Pirate and Flying Spaghetti Monster sites.

On its face the Ninja vs. Pirate conflict appears to be the same sort of thing as Cowboys vs. Indians, Cops vs. Robbers, Dogs vs. Cats, Autobots vs. Decepticons, G.I. Joe vs. Cobra, etc., but in reality the root of the conflict is not so clear cut.

If one were to seek a historical “starting point” for the conflict, one would probably have to go back to 1596, when two ninja clans were embroiled in a sort of civil war. On the side of the Tokugawa Shogunate were the loyalist Iga ninja, headed by the infamous Hattori “Devil” Hanzo. Squared off against them were the thuggish turncoat Fuma ninja, led by Fuma Kotaro. The Iga clan were protectors and bodyguards of the Shogun, but the Fuma turned to piracy, acting much like wakou (Japanese pirates, basically).

Hanzo pursued the Fuma onto their own ground – the sea – in large ships laden with heavy cannon, and nearly wiped out the Fuma fleet. However, in the ensuing battle the Fuma managed to disable the rudders of Hanzo’s fleet, and when the Iga ninja jumped into the water to swim after their foes, they discovered that the water was filled with oil, which was set alight by the surviving Fuma. Hanzo and his men were killed.

At this point it is worth mentioning that the “Pirates have cannon” argument is kind of moot, since as we just learned Hattori Hanzo and his ninja used cannon in 1596, at about the same time that Caribbean Piracy was coming into its own. That can hardly be considered a
Piratic advantage. Of course, if you really want to argue it, Japanese ninja were using gunpowder in the 1300s while European sailors were still arguing about whether the earth was flat. But
who’s counting?

I digress; the point is that after the Iga defeat, the Fuma faded into disrepute and Fuma Kotaro was forgotten, whereas Hattori Hanzo has been remembered. So we know who won the philosophical battle, don’t we? And that’s the point. In like fashion, the Ninja vs. Pirates
battle is really more of a philosophical dispute, rather than an actual one.

Ninja and Pirates are, in their most commonly depicted forms, diametric opposites, much like yin and yang. Consider:

• Ninja wear black. Pirates wear flashy colors.
• Ninja are quiet and sneaky. Pirates are loud and raucous.
• Ninja are introverted and careful. Pirates are extroverted and reckless.

Photo courtesy of Pirates Vs. Ninjas

It is to this end that Ninja and Pirates both deserve separate, distinct days to celebrate their differences. The Pirates of course get Talk Like a Pirate Day, on which everyone can say “Arr Matey” and “Blow me down” and “Swab my poop deck” and act like pirates. Whereas the Ninja get the Day of the Ninja on December 5, when everyone can dress in black, sneak around and so on and so forth. Note that the key difference between the two days is that the Ninja holiday does not encourage talking; this is obviously because Ninja are known for being quiet and polite while they kill you.

Ultimately, the matter of whether Ninja or Pirates are superior is up for debate. There is no doubt that Pirates have traditionally been more popular, and that’s due to a mathematical advantage that can’t be disputed. Extroverts outnumber Introverts by about 3 to 1, and we all know who sides with who. But of course, quantity does not equal quality; in fact the two are often diametrically opposed. Macs vs. PCs. BMW vs Chevy. Firefly (14 episodes) vs. Full House (192 episodes). Etc.

It should also perhaps be pointed out that the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie was very bad, Batman is much cooler than Aquaman and Christian Bale could totally beat Johnny Depp in a fight. Just saying.

But really, Ninja bear Pirates no ill will. We do not see them as a threat and we hope they do not see us either. And as a gesture of goodwill, I would like to extend a hand to our Pirate brethren-in-arms, and encourage them to work with us, side-by-side, so that we might defeat our common enemy – Robots.

Then, once the Robots are defeated, perhaps we should pick a day to
air our grievances, a day that is approximately halfway between Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19) and the Day of the Ninja (December 5), around about the end of October. We can call this new holiday
Ninja vs. Pirate Day.

How does October 31 sound?

-Michael “Aeon” Fiegel
http://www.ninjaburger.com

Introduction written by Joel Murphy, September 2007. For more information on the Day of the Ninja, visit Ninja Burger. To see a pirate take on a ninja, visit Pirates Vs. Ninjas.

Similar Posts:

• December 5, 2008 – The 6th Annual Day of the Ninja
• Hobo Radio 61 – International Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Getting to Know … International Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Murphy’s Law – Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be pirates
• Hobo Radio 199 – Talk Like a Pirate Day 2011