Pizza Wars: Walmart

The contender: Walmart's Marketside Pizza

Style: Pizzeria

In your mouth: The crust is like cardboard on the bottom (yes, I removed the cardboard), and gooey on top. Unpleasant. The pepperoni is spicy, but you get the impression this is to cover an "off" taste in the meat.

The next day: The moisture has redistributed itself in the crust. It tastes a lot less distinctive, which in this case is a good thing.

Overall: Strangely flat. Fresh pizza that you'd swear was frozen (and expired).

On your marks!

Saint Petersburg is always having some sort of walk, run, or cycling event to raise money for charity. This one was for police officers.

Pizza Wars: Gianni's NY PIZZA

The contender: Gianni's NY PIZZA

Style: New York

In your mouth: The sauce is slightly acidic. The pepperoni stands out and there's a slightly hot, peppery aftertaste.

The next day: The crust is stale, but I prefer everything else this way. It's sweeter, and more interesting.

Overall: There's nothing distinctive about it. It's good pizza and I can like it, but I can't love it.

Pizza Wars: Valentino's Little Italy

The contender: Valentino's Little Italy

Style: New York

In your mouth: The crust is thin but still chewy. Interesting texture underneath. There's a taste of oregano, and a saltiness that brings out the sweetness of the cheese.

The next day: The crust has held up but the flavor profile has shifted... spicy!

Overall: A light, fun pizza.

The saga of Ann Althouse

Ann Althouse's blog goes down. She goes to the blogger help forum to try and have it restored. The "helper" running the forum starts giving her attitude. Among other things, he posts a link (to his own blog) where he writes about dispensing justice to blogs. And when people start flagging his responses as "unhelpful" he taunts Althouse, asking why she can't even get a hundred people to say his responses aren't helpful:



For whatever reason he starts deleting the comments he's making:



(He seems to have even deleted the post at his own blog.)

But, he's not done yet! Now he taunts Althouse for not having 200 readers willing to say his comments aren't helpful:



Which he also deletes:



His strategy seems to be to say incendiary things, have the person he's supposed to be helping "loose it", then remove his own comments. That way if someone reviews his work it will look like he's dealing with a crazy person.

Eventually a real life Google employee steps in and the craziness ends:



(And I had better not have to update this post with more bad Google behavior!)

UPDATE: Many of the helper's responses have been restored over on the help forum thread. (Glad I took the screen shots to prove there had been deletions!) Also, here's the post the helper had linked to.

Just in case he deletes it:



He's responding to comments over there. So I asked him about the deletions of his own posts on the thread.

Oh, and the old posts on Althouse's blogs still can't be seen. Although the "helper" assures us on his own blog that her site has been "restored":

There's no lingering glitch affecting Althouse's blog - Brett reviewed it, and restored it. That is how we do "What can we do to solve this?".

That's how they do it over at Google!

UPDATE 2: The helper is responding to comments now, but not mine. He wont post my comment, afraid someone might see it.

He claimed he only deleted posts which weren't relevant, so I asked him why he had deleted his own posts. And I asked why he was taunting people asking for help and trying to make them look like idiots.

This morning:

The best year for music

2007! (even I'm surprised)

In other news: I'm not old.

---

Animalia

The Green Swamp

Don't worry, they're on our side: 1932

Germany; the Nazis have joined the Communists in a strike. This is what happens to one person who doesn't participate:

The Nazis were carrying rolled banners with spikes on their ends. They stabbed the young man in the face and left him with one eye probably blinded. Half a dozen policemen stood a few yards away, ignoring the incident.

--From Christopher and His Kind--

When the police are on someone's side, and not the side of law and order, that is when we all need to worry.

Old books in an old building

It's the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair!



It was held in an old dance hall, which explains the lights and the disco ball.



At a book fair, everyone is judging the books by their covers, and everyone wants a book with pretty pictures inside. There's a mercenary feeling in the air. The items being sold are commodities, some behind glass and valued at thousands of dollars. And even if they weren't so valuable, many are so old you hesitate to pick them up. People ask the owners if it's okay. (It always is.)

Some people ask the proprietors obscure questions, to show how smart they are. Other people haggle. Everyone seems to be searching for something. Some people want certain types of books, other people have lists of specific books they are looking for. Most people are just browsing. But the serious people compare prices on their laptops and mobile phones.

Oddly, it's hard to find anything you'd want to read at an antiquarian book fair. Perhaps the best books were read so much they fell apart. Perhaps the best books aren't sold. What I did see was a lot of history, a lot of religion, and a lot of poetry (with a healthy dose of children's and cook books). The two easiest books to find were The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant and Pilgrim's Progress.



Here's what I bought:



It has an inscription which reads:

To Nellie,

A wedding gift from Lewis Campbell

January 1894