Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Let’s finish the job.

I was promised a recession.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Battle won, war still ongoing.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republicans in disarray!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Humans Make Strange Objects

Humans Make Strange Objects

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For some reason this week I ended up with a bunch of pictures of the strange things that humans make. Here’s one example, the “kumato”. It is a brown tomato whose name sounds like one of those sex acts you have to look up on urbandictionary.com. It’s the Cleveland Steamer of the produce department.

I was at a Salvation Army Thrift store (long story), which is really the thriftiest of thrift stores. That shit is really picked over before it hits the large, brightly lit space filled with the sounds of Christian radio (the Focus on the Family hour was playing while I was there). If you’ve ever wondered what’s left over when all the vinyl of any interest to anyone is taken out of the record rack, it’s stuff like this.

Here’s another chart-topper about a place most of us would rather forget, or perhaps not know about in the first place. Do you think you needed a special Slovakian record player to play a Slovak LP?

Of all the crappy crap in that place, this was perhaps the crappiest, and I had a lot to choose from. A 19th hole mug with a hole. Clever.

If you’ve read this far, your reward for the time you’ll never get back is an open thread.

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemizel

    Is this stupid thing related to Tomacco the tomato / tobacco hybrid that made Homer a millionaire?

  3. 3.

    laugh while you can

    You know, those Kumato tomatoes are actually pretty good. They taste like tomatoes, even out of season. Much better than the mealy, pinkish hothouse tomatoes or even the ‘vine on’ tomatoes. They sacrificed color for flavor, and the QC seems very high. They’re the only non-seasonal tomato I will buy.

  6. 6.

    Chrisd

    I like the kumato. Not as full-flavored and juicy as an off-the-vine summer tomato, but really better than anything else I can get in January. I used three of ’em this week in a turkey mole. Delicious.

  7. 7.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @WereBear (itouch):

    I wonder how many guys got their dick stuck in that cup. This is America and you KNOW it’s already happened.

    If it was recently it’s probably on YouTube.

    @Chrisd:

    So you’re saying Domo Arigato Mr. Kumato?

    :D

  8. 8.

    kerFuFFler

    I’ve tried kumatoes—-the taste was not special enough to make up for the very unappealing color. For fantastic tomato flavor it’s hard to beat the Brandywine heirloom variety. Tasting one of those was eye opening.

    In the Winter I rely on those little grape tomatoes to get by…

  9. 9.

    dr. bloor

    It’s the Cleveland Steamer of the produce department.

    And this post is still less offensive breakfast reading than the Grey Lady or the WaPo

  10. 10.

    dmsilev

    @rlrr: I don’t think so. Callista comes from the Stepford Wifeworks, and Romney is a product of the Tyrell Corporation.

  11. 11.

    Svensker

    @WereBear (itouch):

    That mug reeks of Carol Wright catalog. “The whole room will howl with laughter when your favorite golfer unwraps this!”

    Eggzackly right.

    Also, too, who stole the html commands?

  13. 13.

    mistermix

    @Chrisd: The name is what really got me. You’re right that it’s hard to find a good tomato this time of year, but Wegman’s (our local chain) usually has the “on the vine” hothouse tomatoes that are pretty good (for store bought tomatoes).

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    @rlrr:

    Were Mitt Romney and Callista Gingrich assembled in the same factory?

    No, I think they’re from a mad scientist’s laboratory, possibly one built into a volcano and armed with other devices intended to destroy the world. I think the mad scientist has watched too many Star Trek reruns. He was so worried about his creation being destroyed when presented with logical inconsistencies that he accidentally made one that is incapable of having any consistent beliefs at all.

  18. 18.

    Rosalita

    Nothing like cultural oddities in the morning. Thanks for the smile to start the day.

    I used to have a mug with a frog in the bottom. Really freaked people out when they got their coffee three-quarters done.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    1. For some reason, this post moved me surf to regretsy.com, where I’m having a good laugh now at some of the less-well conceived artworks. Thanks, mistermix!

    2. The Lunar New Year is almost upon us. (Malaysia will celebrate the holiday on Sunday and Monday, which means the work week here doesn’t begin until Wednesday.) May the Year of the Dragon bring happiness and prosperity to one and all.

  20. 20.

    Jerzy Russian

    I thought “Cleveland Steamer” simply meant “turd”. I wondered what the origin of that term was, and unfortunately I looked it up. I got more than I bargained for. Thanks MM!

  21. 21.

    RossInDetroit

    I just noticed the Kumato is from Ontario. For some reason they raise large numbers of tomatoes there. When you drive through you see lots of processing facilities, the largest of which I recall had HEINZ in big letters.

  23. 23.

    Ivan Ivanovich Renko

    Never heard of the Cleveland Steamer, and made the horrible error of googling it– and by Its Noodly Appendages, that’s just wrong.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    @Maude:
    The work week is for working people. Iz medically retired.

    Anyhoo, this is the time of year when employers grumble about Malaysia having way too many public holidays. We just had Christmas and New Year, and then there’ll be Merdeka (independence day) on August 31, Deepavali, Eid al-Fitri (two days) and Eid al-Adha, Sultan’s/Governor’s Birthday in each of 13 states, Federal Territory Day in Kuala Lumpur …
    But you try taking away even one of them holidays, and somebody is going to scream bloody murder.

  29. 29.

    Walker

    Slovakia is quite beautiful. I went hiking in the mountains there with my wife and father-in-law last summer. It is much less commercialized than Poland or the Czech Republic. Indeed, the Polish/Slovakian border at Zakopane is quite striking. The Slovakian side is pretty and bucolic, while the Polish side might as well be Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge (and that is not a good comparison).

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    I used to work for the University of California and they had a certain number of holidays each year so that employees got (IIRC) at least one holiday a month. So there were a couple of times a year when we would be off for the oh-so-traditional “Administrative Holiday” since there was no state or federal holiday that matched up.

  35. 35.

    burnspbesq

    There are few things humans make that are stranger than legislative redistricting plans.

    The Supreme Court has (I think wisely) decided to stay out of the Texas train wreck. They gave some rather inscrutable guidance and punted the process of drawing up interim maps (the maps drawn by the state can’t be used because they haven’t been pre-cleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act) to the US District Court in Austin.

    I think Guv Goodhair is ultimately going to have to postpone the primary.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-713.pdf

  36. 36.

    Winston Smith

    Kumatos are good. It’s an unusual color for a tomato, but not an unnatural one.

    A few years ago, Monsanto developed a breed of corn that was extra-nutritious, and was easy to grow in abundance. In terms of commercial farming, it was probably the greatest corn variety ever produced.

    Farmers didn’t buy it because it was purple and “didn’t look like corn.” What about corn syrup, ethanol, cattle feed and corn-based plastics? They still cared that it was purple.

    People will buy tomatoes modified with fish DNA as long as they’re red.

  37. 37.

    ameziah

    I like the “Remember Slovakia” on top of a photo of the Grand Tetons. Maybe someone got drunk, woke up in Jackson, WY and someone said “Welcome to Slovakia!”

  39. 39.

    Wag

    The Kumato looks like a breed of heirloom tomato that I have grown the past few summers, the Black Krum, which is varigated black/deep red tomato that’s really tasty. I’ll look for the Kumato

  41. 41.

    chopper

    dude, dark tomatos are tasty as hell. try growing a cherokee purple or a black krim, you’ll never go back to a plain red one (with some exceptions).

  42. 42.

    MonkeyBoy

    While the Kumato company is in Ontario, the package I recently saw in a grocery store had the small print “grown in Mexico”.

    It may be that Kumatos are grown in Canada during the summer.

  43. 43.

    draftmama

    Black from Tula, Purple Russian, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple Black Mauri, all taste way better than any red tomatoes except of course Brandywine. Store bought tomatoes are a waste of money.

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