cloudmonkey

DREAMS
&
IDEAS

Sunday, November 17, 2002

Dining in the Dark

Bummed that Halloween is over for the year? Check out the Michel Guide to Horror Cafes, Pubs, Clubs, and Restaurants of the World. This site provides information on horror-themed bars and restaurants both living and defunct. The establishments range from Goth clubs where your wouldn't want to be seen without the right shade of black lipstick to places you could take your kids for a scary good time.

Here's an entry I found especially intriguing.

LE GOUT DU NOIR
'The Taste of Darkness' is Paris restaurant where you eat your meal in total darkness. On arrival the waiters (some blind!) guide you to a communal table where you eat a set meal. Once the meal has started, no one else is allowed in so that no light enters the room. Owner Michel Reilhac says: "It gives people a chance to really taste their food. When there is nothing to look at, you concentrate much more on the flavors. Many find it easier to push food onto their fork with a chunk of bread than use their knife. Either way, most customers leave with food all over them." Just food?

Discuss

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Monkeys Replace Pitbulls in Paris

Now that France has cracked down on pitbulls and similar attack dogs, youth gangs in the tower blocks of the depressed Paris suburbs have begun importing endangered Barbary apes from Spain. The gangs use these monkeys (they're not really apes) to intimidate their rivals and stage monkey fights.

Discuss (via Mooselessness)

Friday, November 01, 2002

New Look

My blog has a new look. Blogger ate my site templates recently giving me a good excuse to redo the site using some of the new stuff I've learned. So I've cleaned up the design a bit and incorporated cascading style sheets.

Next on the agenda is to incorporate PHP and MySQL to make this site more dynamic and to get away from dependence on Blogger for postings and Quick Topic for discussion. Both sites work well (usually), but I dislike depending on two other sites that may be slow or down. I'd like a little more control and I'd like the posting process to be a little more automated.

Discuss