The Scarylibrarian

Hot sex on a platter

It's not even 9:00 and I've already received a negative comment on my outfit. A designer label junkie I am not, but I do like to mix it up every once on a while and wear something a little different. Too bad it usually results in "what ARE you wearing?" comments mixed in with strange looks more often than not. C'est la vie. We cannot all be Gap clones, all gappified in our tan khakis and blue shirts. The BF (boyfriend) has a theory that men like to wear khakis because they most resemble animal skins. Rock on with your primitive cave man selves, boys.

I bought a bunch of bananas at Safeway three days ago and they are already brown and spotted. YUK! I can only eat bananas if they are completely spot free and slightly green. For such a phallic shaped fruit, bananas are surprisingly sexless. Ever wonder how bananas grow when they don't have seeds in them? Seedless bananas can't grow by themselves because they are sterile. For the past 10,000 years, they've continued to propagate because of human intervention; growers take the shoots from the base of one banana plant and grow additional plants from that shoot. The result is a bunch of banana plants that, while tasty, are genetically identical. This situation is not so good in the natural world, because the lack of sexual reproduction results in the lack of genetic diversity. Having a bunch of plants that are all genetically identical increases the chances of the entire crop getting wiped out when a plant disease strikes.

(Side note: I just saw The Black Assassin and he made fun of my outfit too. He said, "You're so Disney. You look like once the clock strikes 12:00 you'll leave in your pumpkin." I, like Carrie Bradshaw, am grossly misunderstood and get no love for my fashion risks.)

The kind of banana you are likely to see in stores today is most likely the Cavendish variety. Forty years ago, the Gros Michel was the most popular variety in the world, but the entire crop got wiped out when a fungus emerged that attacks the roots. Growers switched to the Cavendish variety, which was the second string, backup version banana at the time that was resistant to the root fungus. Now the Cavendish is getting attacked by a leaf fungus called black Sigatoka. Besides sounding like a horrible disease of the flesh, black Sigatoka wipes out crop yields by 50 percent. Not to worry banana split lovers. Scientists are looking for genes in wild Asian bananas that can resist disease such as black Sigatoka and Panama disease.

Last night I got another query rejection letter. This time it was from Vogue. I'm still not bummed about it, I'm still stoked that I'm at least getting rejected, which is better than no response at all. The rejection was a form letter; hopefully I'll work my way up the rejection totem by eventually getting rejection letters with hand written editorial notes.

posted by The Scarylibrarian @ 7:59 AM