And you thought “Cluck-U” was bad

Boing Boing: There’s a restaurant in Japan called “Chicken Pecker.” As Xeni says, ’nuff said. Except that these sorts of restaurant names seem to be not uncommon.

From DC up at least as far north as Newark, there is a chain of greasy fried chicken shops called “Cluck-U” that’s frighteningly good (their “traditional recipe” uses honey, which doesn’t concur with any tradition this nominal Southerner is aware of, but it’s tasty, yo). And, further afield from the chicken area, Bellevue, WA sports the charmingly named What the Pho’, which sells Vietnamese noodle dishes.

Vale Audioscrobbler, ave Last.fm

As a sometime user of Audioscrobbler who frequently forgets that the service has a web site, I visited Audioscrobbler.com yesterday and got the surprising message that “Audioscrobbler has evolved,” along with a pointer to Last.fm. Now that the site has gotten over the transition, it looks like the merged site represents an update of the old Audioscrobbler look and feel and tighter integration of the Last.fm functionality.

The new site is still a bit slow, alas (not that Audioscrobbler.com was a speed demon). But it’s usable, and you can visit my profile page to see what I’ve been listening to (newly relevant since I installed the plugin here at the office) or even add me as a friend. Hey, I have to know more than two other people who use the service…

Sun, sand, and sprouts

lisa on the boardwalk with boo

I finally got around to posting pictures from our trip three weeks ago to Cape Cod. For the record, while it was nice to be able to have the dogs with us, we have decided that closer beaches are better. Lisa and I tried out Marblehead two weeks ago and liked it, and she took her parents to Crane Island this past weekend and liked it even better. So we’ll see.

The other pictures in the album are of the flowers that we have finally succeeded in growing where the awful hedge used to be around our house. In particular, I took a bunch of photos of our gladioli, in honor of my mother and her birthday on Monday (the gladiolus happens to be her favorite flower, and I sent a bunch to her—alas, not from our beds!).

The photo album is also accessible from the Gallery.