20 miles out of town and cold irons bound

fixed up the house w/ my brother -- sealed off afucked up wall and made a closet work again; gotta wait on the painting. put up a house # sign, did a few bits and pieces on the inside of the house. now that i've gotten into the rhythm of it, I think I'll keep going. it is fun. he particularly loved the starfruit tree, they don't have it in AL so it's a particular treat. he leaves tomorrow -- i never did get to cook some indian for him, but i packed him off with a buncha CDs and some spice packets for making indian at home as well as some books I had laying around that I wasn't ever gonna crack open again. we hit up the holocaust memorial and took pictures of the statues.

i wrote a new song, "thrush to go". needs music, maybe later.

it really struck me, truly and well. i can barely stand to think about it. pobrecita ella y pobrecito yo. obladi.

lunatick

well that explains it

dream 13dec08

there's a house, concrete and a bit of grass i am outside between the house and the fence of the next house and there's a bike chase and a car chase through what feels like the old church on westward or maybe the police station in VG and then there's a diff house or diff aspect of same house feels dark dry kind of shack-like with rickety stairs etc and i leave and things happen i don't remember now but walking down sidewalk on westward and suddenly b is there or mentioned and suddenly part pf the group we're in? and she's married or marrying this guy whose name is john buttersbtu (even in the dream i'm like "wtf is up with that name is it an anagram?" and i am fucking racking my brain going "what's wrong with that name dammit") and at some point with very minimal speaking i communicate w/ her that she's not actually on my shit list anymore and we're not buddy-buddy but at least the mood lightens in the dream and we all walk into a restaurant (or it could be Scoops the icecream joint) -- doesn't matter, we don't order or eat or anything, all these places are just scenery mostly -- and she tells me she's been sick and i say yes i heard about the heart she says no no like throwing up and upset stomach sick all day and i say well shit maybe you have morning pregnancy i mean morning sickness (even in the dream i am a clutz and prone to spoonerisms) and cut to i am back at the shack but outside and leading to a different adjoining house whose interior feels japanese in it's sparseness, but american in deisgn if that makes sense and there's like an art show but filled to the brim with weapons and this feels coincidental until midgets (they look like children, but they are so not children) start a takeover coup thing and we're just fucking running and it's me, vij and two other dudes and we're on foot and then acquire an suv and they drop me in my neighborhood and i'm walking the three blocks to my place when i notice i am by b's house (i am standing by mailbox, letters say 'john buttersbtu' and 'elizabeth buttersbtu') and i am kinda weirded out that they live like 2 blocks from me and i think of our kids playing together AND THEN CUT straight back to the shop and she steps out and comes back w/ an ept and shaking her head 'no' and i say 'well it usually takes like 6 weeks to even be able to tell on one of those, but they are like 99.999 accurate' and she is both sad and relieved and i am a blank slate nothing showing and cut back to chase scene and i am sneaking into the shack so the evil pigmy midget kids don't know i'm on to them or clue in to me being armed to the teeth and intent on fucking up their day and i am halfway up the shack house stairs (the whole house is basically room and then stairs-to-next-room, structurally unsound but securitywise easy to defend) and their plot can be unravelled by basically going to the last room and knocking out this transmitter thing and i am halfway through when they catch on and i'm in a room with just a couple of old people and i know the rest of the way is clear i just want to keep the position from being taken and i am by the door keeping them out and the old woman is offering me sweets from a bag and all i have to do is keep the door closed and those dudes are fucked no way in and i wake up

seriously if you know what this dream is about, help a brother out. perhaps influence of the full moon.

Wherein it is confirmed that I am a horrible person

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MTV Movies Blog » J. Michael Straczynski On ‘World War Z’: ‘The Scale Of What We’re Doing Here Is Phenomenal’

MTV Movies Blog » J. Michael Straczynski On ‘World War Z’: ‘The Scale Of What We’re Doing Here Is Phenomenal’

World War Z was actually pretty good in an amateurish way -- the military sections, particularly the American military personel interviews, all came off as fanboy-ish and fawningly cheesy -- and I really hope they don't fuck it up.

vegan vegetable korma

This is the vegan version; the non-vegan version replaces the coconut milk with heavy cream.

You will need:

4 potatoes, diced
4 carrots, diced
6 onions, really fucking diced
4-6 garlic cloves, minced
1 lb bag of frozen peas
1 lb bag of frozen cauliflower
1 red pepper, diced
1 green pepper, diced
3 jalapenos, diced (optional: seeded)
1 tblsp salt
1/4 cup curry powder
1 tblspoon garam marsala
1/4 cup vegetable oil (avoid olive oil if you can help it)
ginger, minced into paste about 1 tblsp.
tomato sauce, 15-oz can
coconut milk, 15-oz can

Put the oil into pan, add medium heat; put onions into oil until tender (soft but not translucent) then add garlic and ginger. add salt, stir and wait 3 minutes for them to blend a bit. Dump in all the other veggies, tomato sauce, curry powder and garam marsala, stir. If it feels like there's too little liquid in there, relax -- the onion will sweat quite a bit out and the tomato sauce will help things get going. When you put in the coconut milk (at the end) you'll get more liquid as well. Put your cauliflower and peas in the microwave and cook 'em up. when they're done, incorporate into the mixture and add coconut milk by 1/4 can until you get an orange-y yellow color. When the potato and carrots are fork-tender, you're done. serve over rice and/or w/ naan. The coconut milk makes it a bit sweeter than you would perhaps expect, so take that into account when deciding how spicy you want it.

I cooked this for 24 (modified to: 10 potator, 6 carrots, 10 onions, 2 cans tomato, 1 whole can coconut, 24 cloves garlic, 1/2 c curry & oil and double the peppers) for a charity luncheon at work; looks like we cleared enough to get 3 or 4 kids' cleft palates fixed for Christmas. Also, I burned my hand.

we've been made, boys, scatter and meet at the regroup point

My favorite submissive violining kinkette sends this to me via IM: Rands In Repose: The Nerd Handbook. The cave thing is a bit heavy on the otaku-OCD nerd angle, but otherwise, totally fucking spot on in every way possible. Whoa.

bacon is a vegetable, right?

From Crackle: A Jewish Man's First Bacon

running up the hill backwards

let's do bullet points this time:

• i posted on facebook about the skullstick and mama sunflower asked for it and picked it up within two hours. sun was less than happy about this, afterwards -- "thanks for giving a cursed thing to my mom dave"
• i have resurrected a mac (well the drive anyway, the mac itself is fucked but i might make it workable if i can find a mobo for it (unlikely!) and then a new drive.
• today i did not go to the book fair, but on the other hand i did get the joy of fixing a flat (two punctures!) and fixing-ish a kitchen faucet that would not turn off.i now know more about faucets than i used to.
• i have a lack-of-caffeine headache.
• i had a 2 hours on-and-off IM conversation w/ baid about her cervix, her pussy in general (and i'm not talking titilating convo here, i'm talking "perhaps you mistook me for a gyno") and her menstrual accessory preferrence (cups, surprisingly, not plugs or pads.)
• cleaned house. this is actually my favorite thing i have accomplished this week. the disarray was really getting to me. the living room is semi-sane now and the florida is getting there.
• got into an argument w/ a classmate last tues and as of today it is resolved. which is good; i tend to brood and i'm glad i don't need to anymore.

what the fuck

there's a wooden (carved) skull on a stick in my garbage can. i found it there when i went out to throw the garbage away. it creeped me out, but i figured wtf, let the garbagemen deal with it. so i dumped my garbage on it and went on my merry way. so now the garbage is gone and the skullstick is still there.

jawsome!

Jeer posted this awesome link in his emofag diary livejournal Thai Dog Rescue. That's cool.

(I failed to post this on 5/4/08).

memories can't wait.

Erasing selective memories coming closer

One day it'll be a choice. I don't like it. I mean, the flexibility is nice to have -- especially for something traumatic that you just want to get rid of; war, rape etc etc. But part of your job in existence is to be witness and to work through your pain and evolve yourself. And I can see this being used nefariously -- and not just in a paranoid Phillip K. Dick dystopian future kind of way, either.

I had (or have? I dunno. We're still "friends" on facebook) a friend who called me up. Let us call her Agnes. She had broken up with the love of her life because shit happened and anyway, time heals wounds etc etc and several years and a marriage later she gets an email from him out of the blue "i fucked up, you were great, if you're still angry I don't blame you but i just wanted to tell you i know you were great" etc. Long story short, they got back together (and are still,) and as far as I know are deliriously happy together. Which is all well and good -- forgiveness is a nice thing, after all, and happiness is a bitch to find, so you gotta work for it. Except about two months into their newfound love she calls me out of the blue saying "hey how do you permanently delete files from a Mac?". I tell her and hang up and then go "Wait. She doesn't have a Mac." But I know my friend, and on a hunch (I'm usually really good at these) I call back and tell her off for deleting his pictures of his ex from his computer. Quite frankly, I feel a bit used and dirty and I am Seriously Unhappy about this, so perhaps I am less than nice. She gets mad, tells me he's backing up the pictures later (...but she's deleting them now...? just distraction BS...) and anyway I don't know the situation. I tell her that it's hardly fair for her to decide what memories he gets to keep, because they're his memories, after all. She gets mad and repeats that I do not know the circumstances, and I say she's right, mea culpa, if I'm wrong, please forgive me. She says nevermind and it's ok, don't worry about it and since then we haven't spoken. Which leads me to believe that I was right. But enough about that.

So now think of someone demanding this of you, literally of your memories. Or doing it against your will. Note that one of the reasons given for not freeing some of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners is not "they're dangerous terrorists and we can't let them go" but rather "they're totally innocent but they know too much about our information extraction (viz, torture) methods to be let go".

Here, have some sonic yoof "Nevermind (what was it anyway)":


Sleep tight, kids.

Alzheimer's

Terry Pratchett discusses Alzheimer's and care for the elderly.

My grandmother had alzheimer's. It is heartbreak.

I knew him, Horatio.

Writer David Foster Wallace found dead - Los Angeles Times

Infinite Jest, to me, in 1997 or so when I read it, was a life-changing thing. It's this huge monstrocity of a book and I don't remember where I got it. I saw DFW on The Charlie Rose show (skip to the 23 minute mark) and he was just so undeniably himself and trying not to be false (particularly in his discussion on the effect that David Lynch's Blue Velvet had on him) that I went out and bought IJ and immediately started reading it and fell into it.

It was one of the things that helped keep me together during a couple of tough times. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again had me in stitches and his mathematical writing (A History of Infinity) is too smart for me, really, but totally fascinating.

It would be a mockery to say that I'll miss him -- I'm sure I've never been within 500 miles of him, don't even know anyone that knew him -- but his writing changed my writing, my perception of what writing could be and how you could put yourself in it. So the world is sadder and dumber without him in it.

Here's a PDF of his fairly short piece Consider The Lobster.
Here's his commencement speech at Kenyon.
Here's his review of a dictionary (yes, really).
His piece "The Depressed Person", in Harper's.
Here's the best fansite I've found: The Howling Fantods.

a heathen

Cory Doctorow's got a story over at Tor.com which is pretty cool. It includes a sly little reference to The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll (the 0.75$ error leading to a spy-ring thing). That book was the first thing I ever read about hacking, in probably '89 or '90; the first time I heard of telnet or unix. It's dated as hell now -- fuck, it was dated as hell in '90, I bet, but it's got humourous little flourishes that make it entertaining even now:

(from http://vx.netlux.org/lib/mcs00.html)

Dave knew my ignorance of obscure Unix commands. I put up the best front I could: "Well, the e flag means list both the process name and environment, and the a flag lists everyone's process—not just your process. So the hacker wanted to see everything that was running on the system."

"OK, you got half of 'em. So what are the g and f flags for?"

"I dunno." Dave let me flounder until I admitted ignorance.

"You ask for a g listing when you want both interesting and uninteresting processes. All the unimportant jobs, like accounting, will show up. As will any hidden processes."

"And we know he's diddling with the accounting program."

Dave smiled. "So that leaves us with the f flag. And it's not in any Berkeley Unix. It's the AT&T Unix way to list each process's files. Berkeley Unix does this automatically, and doesn't need the f flag. Our friend doesn't know Berkeley Unix. He's from the school of old-fashioned Unix."

The Unix operating system was invented in the early 1970s at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. In the late '70s, Unix zealots from Bell Labs visited the Berkeley campus, and a new, richer version of Unix was developed. Along with hot tubs, leftist politics, and the free speech movement, Berkeley is known for its Unix implementation.

A schism developed between advocates of the small, compact AT&T Unix and the more elaborate Berkeley implementation. Despite conferences, standards, and promises, no consensus has appeared, and the world is left with two competing Unix operating systems.

Of course, our lab used Berkeley Unix, as do all right-thinking folks. East Coast people were said to be biased towards AT&T Unix, but then, they hadn't discovered hot tubs either.

From a single letter, Dave ruled out the entire computing population of the West Coast. Conceivably, a Berkeley hacker might use an old-fashioned command, but Dave discounted this. "We're watching someone who's never used Berkeley Unix." He sucked in his breath and whispered, "A heathen."

a plague for your dowry

xkcd's strip today brings up house of leaves by mark z danielewski. which is a genius book. nightmare-causing, take your breath away reading, for real. some of the writing is not as poetic as say harlan ellison's "speculative fiction" but it's certainly more claustrophobically horrifying. i finished this book at the bar, the day before my last conversation with the woman i thought was the love of my life. still is? i don't know. i stopped thinking about it. she's still the love of my life, but now in the past tense I guess. It's just one of those things where you associate something with what was happening -- e.g. Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" 2nd disc is to me an incredibly erotic piece of music, just because of associations -- and House of Leaves is just a picture of a raw gaping wound. It doesn't hurt, but it reminds me that there was a tender part exposed and hurting.

So but what do you do? How do you just drop it? No one I know who's gone through hellfire and brimstone can adequately explain. And it's such a personal, subjective thing. If there's a universal that I have found in this, it's that people tend to pull back, reserve more of themselves and give less away. And that's so horrible, so very sad. But I see it time and again in my friends, and I see it in myself. The nerve numbed, you learn that you don't know what's normal anymore, so you learn to not trust yourself to keep from getting hurt. 

Sterling and I ate sushi, a while ago, and we talked about it, again. Except this time she was sober because of the pregnancy, so this time she remembered it I think. And it boils down to: I know it's not all my fault. But I feel like it is. I blame myself, even though I know it's not like that. The bitch of it is, I am sure she blames me too. Which is galling, especially considering the condescending attitude she gave me when last we spoke. Really, that's how I keep my anger going.

So yeah, this started as "look! comic link to awesome book!" and is now about me me me me. Well it's my blog so fuck you if you don't like it. Get yr own.

Enjoy this amazing and very entertaining speech by Malcom Gladwell on the lessons of happiness, self-knowlege and hidden desires inherent we can learn from spaghetti sauce:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

Here's some awesome music:

Grotus - Brown

Pogo/Faggotron - Alice

the past didn't go anywhere

Fellow workers, Utah Phillips died.

2 weeks ago last thurs

i finally stopped hating my personal little slice of hurt in the world, thursday 2 weeks ago at 2am.

The perenial favorite

Tropical storm, nee Hurricane Fay (by the time it hits land should be a 'cane. maybe. possibly.) is dropping a lot of rain down. The mrs is remarkably calm, as is the dog -- no thunder and lightning and ergo they're coo'. The cable's out (fuck you directv, fuck you right in the ass) but power's on, so it's strictly a DSL/DVD/videogame/ipod night of entertainment. Waiting for it to stop raining for like 5 minutes so the fucking dog can fucking pee, poor little dude.

There's a few things I still wanted to get, but nothing I direly *needed* so I guess everything's OK. A big box o' tapes in the garage got soaked but I pulled all the priceless and irreplaceable stuff (e.g. jammin' with bert and cap'n, deadline poet, a band apart) out when I put the box there. Need to xfer that soonish.

everything happens to me

Sterling had Michaelangelo today at 11ish am.

Picked up "Monk Alone": 2.5 hours of Thelonious Monk on the piano alone. It's a little bit like going mad in heaven. He does some standards and things you wouldn't expect ("everything happens to me", "just a gigolo") in his inimitable style. I really try to play guitar like he plays piano but god it's like planning to fall down the stairs: you can't do it naturally without fucking up. The odd accents, the pauses and embellishments.

"Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea" and the four (!) versions of "everything happens to me" are just too. fucking. hardcore.

more proof i am a bad person

so eden calls me up. "your favorite person is back in miami." "would you be friends again...it was a long time ago, he's a different person, blahblhablhablhablah"

i don't care anymore. i mean, it would be cool if i could trust people again. it would be nice to be able to make friends without pulling fucking teeth. but nothing's going to undo that, so why bother? to pretend he wasn't a bad person? to act like I'm and he's OK and everything's cool? I might as well call the bee up and say lets play pool or whatever. which again, pa' que? i dunno. Eden's acting like he throws me into a rage, but it's really kind of worse because i feel nothing. He didn't care then, so why fake it now? I dont' get it. Indifference, which man...fuck I tried with that guy man. Afterwards, I mean. I tried the hardest and he just fucking threw it in my fucking face. So karma can take of that, I guess.

also, sun's mad at me now and i don't know why. but i guess i'm enough of an asshole that asking for a specific reason is kind of silly. putting me off for weeks with 'don't want to talk' which i know what it's like but then hangs with tai or mei? girl things, i don't know. and I don't even know if it's me or not. asking just makes it worse without explaining anything.

oh and laurachicken gets brain surgery soonish.

and i find out the sex this weekkkkkkkkkkkkk

finally three days later my leg stopped hurting although last night more stabbing pains. i think about vic, you know. i mean, he was fine that week. put in a full day and we said later and i left him working on some windows shit with W and poof he's gone. i gotta set things up for in case i shuffle off this mortal coil. I think of Dee and her bloodclot in her leg.

the funny part is that there was a storm

so i tell my friend Little Trouble Girl that my right nut's been itching all day off and on.

she says "maybe a storm's comin' "

The thing you sell yourself

My friends, my family, I me mine. they are all stuck in love. :/

it's late. i will go to sleep soon, but i am lucky. and i have reason for sadness and guilt and laughter and happiness. I can't really explain it without giving too much away. And there's some of the sadness.

Wrote some songs, writing some fiction, making some plans and now Summer coming to a close, sun's gone, mills' too in a different way, mei-mei and tai-tai too although we're in town (but you can't force someone to be friends, so...). I am perhaps just unlikeable.

January comes too slow and too soon both at once.

My father's dream, 20jul08

My father called me up last week, to tell me about a dream he'd had. My father and I have never spoken of dreams. There were french doors and they opened and Abuelo was there, with his big grin -- we've all got it really it's the mark of my family name really -- and holding a little boy's hand, he turned to my father and says "mira que se parece a ti cabezon". My father was too shocked to say anything. Yesterday was all hectic and doctors and driving but in the end, everything was OK, and we got to hear the heartbeat again. tuntun-tuntun-tunun

Life is beautiful.

In my next life I will be a stingray

you promised me poems.

Another year, and it gets further away and it hurts less, I guess. Eventually I will be able to stop feeling it at all. And if there were even the slightest bit of genuine sorry, we could be friends. Such a bitter pill. Last night at the big B, rockin' it with Tai-tai:

me: So I'm sad.
tai-tai: Why?
me: because it's the 4th of July.
tai-tai: So?
me: It's my anniversary for when my drama-llama bullshit happened.
tai-tai: oh.
me: I mean, I bet you don't even remember when the thing with your sister happened.
tai-tai: no, I don't know the day or even the month. I remember where i was and what I was doing.
me: but that's my point. I can't forget, and even if I did, there's fucking fireworks to remind me.
tai-tai: like a party! YAY!

this one's called "god knows, *****"

what do you want
misbegotten whore
your every word like something fetid
another abortion
scraped from the drooling maw of your cunt-mouth
you never tire
of hurting the ones around you
you set the hooks deep, god knows
god knows
you played the victim so often
you forgot it was a part
the world doesn't owe you,
god knows.

I really must talk to Aik about getting him to drum, if only for just this song.

dream 27jun08

apt. complex, i have been here before, in dreams, it feels like the one where that blonde curly haired chick eden dated for like 2 weeks (the one with the gay best friend) lived, with a shadow that was shaped like null set symbols [␀] and eden is there and we're going somwhere else and there are other people, a group, we're going to a party or just to have fun at the beach or something and then the complex is his folks' place but they don't live there anymore, just ed and he finally got all his stuff from V and the group i'm with stays outside and i walk in and ed always hates that but fuck there's my fucking flanger pedal! and i look for the distortion pedal but cannot find it and i'm cold and cold and wake up uncovered.

Moving along

So I finally got around to scanning some old photos, including this one of good ol' Randall P. Jones. The man certainly enjoyed his beanie propeller hat and could carry it with a certain panache. Need to send copies of related photos to interested parties, but Randy's gone, so I figured what the hell.

words of advice for young people

I just sneezed. I was eating potato salad. If you have never tried to sneeze while chewing potato salad, I recommend that you avoid finding out what this is like. I now have potato salad in my sinuses.

the vultures are gone and will never return

Laural's away message today was a link to CASSETTE FROM MY EX which is now the 2nd or third time I'd heard about the site. And so I finally clicked it. It's like an aural post-secret, kindasorta. I am both terrified and hoping that a mix of mine winds up there, but the odds are kinda low. Obladi.

I've had a copy of Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart's "Take Me To God" for about 5 years. Picked it up used, 5 bucks or so. I listen to it maybe once a year, which on average is kinda high actually. It's like techno world music that your reggae dub DJ friend mixed for you. Here's a song from the album:



Anyway, I saw a used copy again and picked it up for a friend and in the process also picked up a used copy of Jah Wobble's 30 Hz collection and it is indescribably good. How he does that with his fingers is beyond me. Listening to his basslines makes me want to play the bass forever and forget about the guitar. And you gotta give props to a man who quit the music business out of disdain and keeps dropping out of successful bands when they start sucking.

Jah Wobble (and Sinead O'Connor and Boy George) interviewed: http://youtube.com/watch?v=N425-qsKGQ8

the original obscenity

d 5
a ..0
e ....4 5 000

D A 0055xx

Reading pratchett, he does go on about humanism and what humanity means. One of my favorite things he's ever said (or written) is about how all sin boils down to treating people as things. Rape, murder, theft -- they all boil down to "you're not a person, you're just another thing I can use to get what I want".

who's that shouting? by and by...

Another year coming around. I find myself re-evaluating all the shit, good and bad, come my way. I'm doing OK, I guess. There are some causes for sadness, but overall, I can't complain too hard, really. I enjoy my new job, and despite the death of Vic (or maybe because of?) I am learning more and doing different things, which is something I wanted when I left the old joint. Had Indian for lunch earlier with the dudes from Ye Olde Jobbe and they are in misery full-force. Which sucks. That whole environment is like a kid trying too hard; they want to be a business/enterprise instead of educational/medical -- or maybe they think they should be? -- and they're just stressing the wrong things. Be a hardass about what you expect, don't be a hardass about vanity or chain of command or other bullshit pipe dreams about how to show that the proverbial dick is bigger than the other dudes'. On the bright side, in about 5 to 10 years time, it's going to be SUCH a premier environment (reputation-wise, for their care and tech etc...workwise, meh...too soon to say and things are too fast-moving to be able to pin down.) Relationship stuff's worked out, really. Interpersonal drama-llama visits have been avoided. Old friends come back, Eden's back and I will hopefully soonish find myself making some music with Bunny. I find myself thinking of Cass, wondering if she's doing OK. My phone calls and emails to her are infrequent and I think awkward for her. I'm hoping this is why she doesn't reply to emails. I switched back to winamp for playing music (itunes for the ipod still, but winamp is still awesomer) and the queen cover comes up at the oddest fucking moments. Still, she was awesome and that was aside from having the most amazing tits ever. Skeeter's still pissed at me, but since she won't answer or pick up, I just leave "wishing you the best" messages every 6 months or so. Mils is here today and gone tomorrow, back with the ex she always will have a spot for, which is kinda good, really. Sun's comin' from the tx, and i will be going to tx come august and maybe san fran or canada in the winter? I dunno. The old man's gonna have multiple surgeries done at once but is putting it off until my sister gives birth, I guess in case he dies. I try not to think about it. Maybe let the vacousness of television numb it down; dr who greys anatomy dexter futurama cooking shows. Some days it's just so much and some days you just relish in jumping into the fray, you know?

The skyline was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards, everything washed in a thin orange haze.

Driving home from work at 9am (long story, involves a broken TV and a TV repairman), and the sky to the west is grey, dull gun metal grey, from skyline to heaven and...http://www.osei.noaa.gov/Events/Fires/US_Southeast/2008/FSHSsoutheast134_G12.jpg, http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/05/13/florida-fire.html
, http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/531133.html

Well, fucking hell.

It honestly was beautifully done...

Today I was told that I am part of the problem. Thanks, Little Trouble Girl.

Got my mom a digital camera and made her dinner, camera was a smashing success and I am looking forward to many pictures of her dog, plants, buddhist temple and associated friends as well as family i don't know. Dinner was also a smashing success -- for her birthday I also made her dinner, which was my Porkchops Of The Gods except I accidentally threw in a bit too much hot pepper flakes, so she was kinda gun-shy about me cooking again. But, as I mentioned, I apparently have redeemed myself with: Keema

1 lb ground beef
2 bags peas, ~1000grams total
2 onions, diced
4-8 cloves of garlic, minced or sliced
1/4 of a very large tomato (or 1 small tomato) diced
1 jalapeño, seeded, minced
1 large heaping spoonful of curry powder
1 tsp garam marsala
1 tsp red curry powder
1 tsp red pepper
small bunch cilatro, chopped
1 spoonful ground ginger (or ginger paste, whatever)
1 tsp of olive oil
about a cup of water

oil a large pan, drop the onions into medium-low heat, toss in the garlic after a minute or two (ie, let the onions take a bit more heat than the garlic -- garlic burns easier), toss in the tomato and jalapeño and ping everything with salt to sweat it. Once the onions are shiny but not translucent, get 'em off the heat and onto a plate. Dump the meat in, when it's getting towards brown, break it up and toss in the garam marsala, red curry and pepper flakes, then dump in the peas in. Stir in the water and let it simmer until the water evaporates out and add a bit more. Bring the onion mixture back in and toss in the ginger, half the cilantro while holding the other half as garnish. Let simmer, stirring to keep it from sticking, until the water's evaporated again, say about 20-30 minutes total (you're really waiting for the peas to cook and take the flavor of the rest of the juices in the pot).

Serve over rice, cous-cous or as I did, with a side of pan-seared flatbread and tzatziki, a tomato salad (got the rest of the hugegantic tomato and sliced it, salted it and balsamic-vinegared-it. For jollies I threw in mushroom gnocci as a side, but that was less than stellar with the mom. Protip: mixing the keema with the tzaziki made pure happiness happen in your mouth, I recommend it.

asides: portishead's new album was good so I bought it. Listened to Bill Frissel's "Gone, Just Like A Train" and it still is amazing. Modest Mouse in the car = rock out. Eden's a jerk, I must steal his hat again.

dream 9may2008

1st dream, 630am: house flooding.

2nd dream, 1130am: first lucid dream in like, 13 years. First I was going down coral way in an office chair, kicking my way down coral way and each kick pushed me waaaaaay farther than it should have, and then on 12th but not really I hang a left and I realize it's Valentine's Day and I don't give a fuck and am laughing and rolling down the street and then the sidewalk and then young punks in love and they are laughing and mocking me and I realize the chair thing is fucking stupid but wait that means this is a dream so I stop kicking and just will myself forward and then when that works just consciously tumble out of the chair forward and fly, but very slow, like flying through molasses and only a foot off the ground. finally I get traction and can kick it fast and hard and I realize I could be getting laid right here and now in my lucid dream, the phone rings and wakes me. cockblocked!

Set Theory Primer

I just stumbled on a site about Set Theory Primer as it relates to music theory. Which reminds me of my favorite story about music I wrote that no one ever heard.

Bunny called me up, "hey there's a gallery opening, we're doing a music/performance/installation -- the theme of the gallery is Summerian/Babylonian art, they're showing some pieces etc etc"

I dig Sumer, cradle of civilization etc etc and I've read through Snow Crash so I know just a bit more than nothing about their language construction (atonal glosolalia? or some shit. doesn't matter, i'm not writing poetry). So I look up Summerian music. Turns out it uses a 60-tone scale. Because I am S-M-R-T smart, I figure OK, I can make music akin to atonal 12-tone theory pieces, but I have to use 1/2 and 1/4 microtones (ie, bends and half-bends) and viola, 12-tone automagically becomes 60-tone. So I write this long droning piece in an open D tuning and because it would be a bitch to be bending whole chords (although you get some really awesome dissonances, some sonic youth/glenn branca shit going on where the notes beat against each other in the air) I go and get me a slide. So it's like this blues hawaiian indian drone monster thing. It's made of pure, concentrated awesome.

And then the day of the show, come to find out they go on an hour before they said they would and also that the music has been relegated to the alley behind the gallery. Which is OK, since that's where the party people's at anyway. Ran into solo and other people from the wayback.

dream 3may2008

apartment bldg, behind brysons and over one, but not really - it feels like the apts in little havana, - overcast but not rainy, i am walking through the hallway and i am walking to get a tricycle (the huge adult ones like old people use like abuela gypsy used to have before she got frail before she died) so that i can get shit done because there's a timetable and i need to go home and get stuff and then elsewhere and do stuff and do not want to be here because b is here and there she is in front of me back turned and smoking or trying to light a smoke fucking dammit like when you don't want something to happen and there is happens and all of a sudden it's fucking forgiveness dream wherein she is too proud and bitter and pissed and i am indifferent and this is getting her even more upset and i have fucking shit to do lady i need to go and you are making me sad -- not sorrow, not grief, not even upset, just...hey, bummer man, -- and there's tony, indifferent or didn't notice me or whatever but steadfastly Not My Concern and I am leaving and i suddenly have the fucking tricycle except now it's a bike? and it's that hot stillness before a storm and as i bike down the street the rain starts and i wake

The secret is using lots of duct tape

Enjoy this discussion on the nature of reality by Phillip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later.

You know, there's a reason why I traded Johann Hz my trusty old Peavy amp for 60 or 70 PKD books.

you and me, what does that mean? forever, what does that mean?

it means we'll manage, I'll master your language.

Vignettes:
my favorite part of dogs is that they cannot help showing your their emotions -- if a dog is happy or excited, the tail will wag, no problem. A confused dog will be quizzical, a scared dog will be scared, a happy dog will wag his tail. it's so honest, it's fucking gorgeous.

I have a headache, so this entry will be refreshingly content-full and thought-free.

I've been listening to a lot of Tricky recently:

"Karmacoma", Massive Attack featuring Tricky:



Tricky's version of the song:



Christiansands, live:


Let me backtrack, I've been listening to JWZ's mixtapes a lot recently and one of the songs on one of the mixes (13 i think? coulda been 20) was "Bad Dream" from Pre-millenium Tension. So it reminded me of how awesome Tricky's music is and I had to ...acquire... "Ruff Guide" to sort out in the car. But it was missing some stuff I felt it needed (e.g., his covers of "Lovecats", "Dear God" and "Something In The Way"). So I wound up digging out my old CDs anyway and reburning a new comp.

I still have a headache from last night, going to finish watching Sweeney Todd and maybe a nap.

humming

Earth's Hum

awesome sound is awesome.

in which

in which Sterling provides an apt summary:
"I consider it my personal Vietnam. If I had gone in and struck hard and fast and all in one go, none of that shit would have gone down. But because I didn't, because I took it slow, I sabotaged myself. And I think it was because [removed]."
"...So you consider it all your fault?"
"Yes."
"And none of it would have happened and [removed] would still be friends with [removed]."
"That's what I'm saying."
"Wow, that's a lot of guilt."

in which Laura considers the possibility that there may be a better way to handle situations
Laura: so, he is right. we do need more time. though i think he went about it totally wrong. but, i do realize he doesnt have the emotional capability/tact that i hhave :P
(erm, maybe i dont always hav tact)
David: like when you laughed at [laura's ex-boyfriend]'s naked erection?
Laura: yes :(
David: some people might say that was .... less than fully tactful


in which Little Trouble Girl summarizes her complex love life:
"So I'm going to see my husband in the hospital, but I stopped by to have lunch with my boyfriend -- that I'm not having sex with because he's married -- to tell him about how I didn't get laid last night with my coworker/crush because he couldn't get it hard despite a long blowjob and to complain about how my fuckbuddy just left for [unnamed country] which is good because we might be developing feelings for each other. Which would be bad."

in which i make an ass of myself at a party:
"dude i was in college when you were still sucking your momma's dick!"
"you know my mom's dead, right?"

are you an amateur or is it you're unkind?

title courtesy of The Bird and The Bee's "fucking boyfriend", which song was what was playing on the CD that I gave Little Trouble Girl after her romantic misadventure with her puppy-love/co-worker person thing when she was driving to work and ran into (figuratively) said puppy-love/coworker. Like some shit out of a John Hughes movie or something.

speaking to squirt yesterday she drops "you know the reason i never liked you romantically 12 years ago when we met was because when i asked what you looked like you were so negative that it killed it". i cock-blocked myself. I bummed about this on several levels.

got mail from skeeter's man that her kid (#2) had been born, with attendant pictures. They both look glowingly happy, her in particular but that might be a mix between relief and happy and tiredness. The amusing thing is on friday I wanted to call her and in fact got as far as dialing but she's still mad at me (justafiably, i'm a sellout although i take issue with her iron-gripped resentimiento, i'm guilty of the same thing so i can't really complain about that too hard.) and probably would not have answered but I never got to follow up and call again. Too much of that is annoying, especially when someone is pointedly not answering. But WWu mails occasionally, and I hear things on the grapevine de rato en rato so I guess it's ok.

It's hardly news that I am horrible about checking my messages. So yesterday I finally check my voicemail at work -- I haven't checked it since December, easily. There's a familiar number but I can't place it. Victor, telling me to fix the fucking LDAP lookups about two weeks before he died.

improv sheet music for sale

played at the thing at soya and pomawhatever on 1st and 1st NE. it was rockin'. or more ambient. whatever. it was fun; nestor tweaked what i played live and bunny dropped live video. the crafty witch showed up looking good enough to eat, nicole also looking gorgeous and i think i ticked the lovely emily off yet again. got to play the fat tele live tho. swa-eet. i think i'm going to call that augmented chord shape song (xx231x) "i hope you die in a fire in the gaping maw of your cunt". really it's just an excuse to use the phrase gaping maw.

hills like white elephants

So I come in to the restaurant and sit down and say "Hey! Sorry I'm late, your tits look great!"
To which she says: "They should, I'm pregnant."

She had broken up with her boyfriend recently, just...differences, you know? and the short version is that one time a month ago they fucked up, and now my friend is getting an abortion, and is horrified and guilty and I feel sorrow for her. It's the right choice for her, and it's excruciating bordering on the unbearable for her to choose this.

I've had other people in my life who had them -- a high school friend during my Christian phase who was afraid to tell me because she thought I would take it poorly, another was someone I drove ~400 miles to see because of it^1,2 (and she'd gotten another one I wasn't supposed to know about, but we never spoke of it obviously) and then another who drunk on her birthday while talking about a mutual friend having a baby just dropped it in conversation matter-of-factly (in front of her current husband) about how she'd had one when 18. It's heart-wrenching, it really is. Necessary and liberating in a way, and in many cases, it's the only way that makes any sense. But still.

¹ If you're still reading: you know who you are. Are you still reading? I wonder sometimes. I stopped trying to check; I figure if you can't tell me, you just can't.
² Technically, I went to cheer her up because of heartbreak. The Legendary Pink Dots' song "Home" reminds me of this period, and I cannot listen to it more than once or twice a year (which sucks because it's on my favorite LPD album, "The Maria Dimension"), because listening to it instantly brings me back to waking up slowly with the light, dim in the morning and the traffic slowly waking up and my back stiff from the mattress on the floor, the cat freaked out.

don't listen to too much current 93

“The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills - it kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave, impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry.” -Ernest Hemingway

"Murio con flores"

Vic's gone, heart attack at 35 on Sunday night/Monday morning I guess. Met his folks, the wake was really hardcore. "You were his friends to the end", the body didn't look like him at all but made it more real to me, it's stopped feeling like a bad joke all the time, like the most ridiculous thing that he's gone, forever.

2 urgent dispatches

John Dies At The End is
a) going to be made into A FUCKING MOVIE (a1 is THERE'S A BOOK! ON AMAZON! WHICH I HAVE ORDERED ALREADY!)
and
b) there's a sequel!

"This here is Molly. She was a good dog. And when I say 'good dog' I don't mean it the way other people mean it, when they're talking about a dog that never shit on the floor or bit their kids. No, I'm talking about a dog that died saving Amy's life. By my rough count, that's half a dozen times Molly saved one of our lives. How many dogs can say that? Hell, how many people can say that? One time, Dave was in a burning building, and Molly here rescued him by getting behind the wheel of his car and driving into the building. You know that couldn't have been easy for her.

Anyhow, Molly died, in the way that all really good things die, fast and brutal and for no apparent reason. They say that even though it often appears that God just really, really doesn't give a shit about what happens here, that that's just an illusion and that He really does care after all, and that it's all part of his great plan to make it appear that He doesn't give a shit. Though what fucking point that serves I can't possibly imagine. I think God probably just wanted Molly for Himself, and I guess I can't blame Him.

So, here you go, God. Here's your dog back, I guess. We hereby commit Molly to doggy heaven, which is probably nicer than regular heaven, if you think about it. Amen."

ninjedit: while I was bummed out that Molly died in the sequel, I have hopes that Wong will bring her back in some non-evil and horrible way. I discovered JDatE during the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma and I read it on my fucking blackberry, which was the only internet-connected device I had (because I could charge it in the car).

Also, Eden is in town and I stole his tiny hat!

Uncle Dave Tells a Story about Cute Goth Chicks and Anime

So, it's let's say the early to mid 90's and I am a young sophomore in high school. There's this cute goth crazy chick, blond, curly-haired, totally crazy but smart as hell and cute as all get out. I come over to her place to hang out and play guitar. Forgot to mention, she played guitar. I'm telling you, cool chick. So fast-forward an hour and her grandparents come home and she's gotta go but she decides to lend me a videotape of Akira, "the best anime ever".

This was a time when
a) anime was not very visible or well distributed, in fact almost all of it was dubs or imported fan-made subs or really crappy domestic releases. (This version of Akira was a dupe of the out of print american dub. It was crappy and ruined the story by how poor the sub was.)
and
b) as a young geekling, eager to impress and dazzled by smart pretty girls who played guitar, I was willing to force myself to have an open mind about strange and difficult-to-understand stuff, like this japanese animation thing. Er, anime.

So I went home with the VHS of Akira later that night I promptly put the tape in and started watching this strange anime thing. Except that the tape was like 1/2 through and it looked like it was in the middle of the movie, something about a nuclear war or something. So, wanting to do the thing properly, I stopped the tape and rewound it.

Here's where I went wrong. The tape had two movies on it, only the second of which was Akira, which if you haven't seen it, really is a work of art and miles ahead of other animation of the period. Informed by Blade Runner, Alien and a distrustful paranoia that would make Phillip K Dick proud, it's a GREAT movie.

But it was the 2nd movie. The FIRST movie on that tape was UROTSKIDOJI: LEGEND OF OVERFIEND, whose plot summary boils down to: "Demons from another dimension want to break into ours but have to have the demon-antichrist-person-thing born in ours so that they can all come through and make earth a hell where they can live. So they send demons with tentacle-dicks to rape nubile young and innocent japanese girls in order to impregnate them and have their demon-baby-lord born."

The short version is that within 15 or 20 minutes of starting the tape from the beginning, I was so horrified that I stopped the tape, swore off anime for years and in fact did not SEE anime for at least 10 years.

Anyway, the real reason I bring all of this bullshit: Akira Live Action Movie confirmed

I made mistakes in my life, all things go, all things go

Today, I talked to a friend, didn't get to finish my soup, got to listen to schlocky rock (or jazz? I don't know, bruce hornsby is very jazz-lite, but then again he's done rock too), went to miami beach despite boat show traffic, avoided getting scammed, walked on the beach and got new shoes wet in the surf, saw a wedding i was not a party to, made excellent falafel (hint: before you roll them into balls/patties, drop chopped cilantro/dill and a wee bit of hot sauce into the dough/mix. also, if you fry at medium-low heat they take longer but dry out less,) and had a heavier-than-i-would-have-liked mediterranean dinner (falafel, tzaziki, stuffed grape leaves, flatbread, kaseri cheese). finish the day off by noticing that i never filled out my valentine's card i bought the mrs so spent 15 minutes on something that will make her smile in the morning.

Listened to a lot of Sufjan Stevens today -- picked up The Avalanche on a whim at a used CD store (yeah, I still buy CDs, I'm all quaint) and was blown away. Bought Illinoise just for Casimir Pulaski Day but am enjoying other songs on there. The Avalanche CD is more enjoyable at the moment though; the three versions of Chicago, the supercomputer song, it's all jawsome!great. I even went and learned me some guiterchords for 'em.

GBBVD, 2008. Porkchops of the gods.

You know, it wasn't too bad. I had a day that was better than most. The whole desire-is-suffering sub-theme of Buddhism rings true. After all the angst of youth and loneliness blew away. Who knew?

SO, ANYWAY, like is says on the title of the post:

* 2 pork chops (steak or chicken works)
* 1/2 large onion (or 1 whole medium onion)
* 2 cloves garlic
* a bit of olive oil
* a fistful of cilantro (must be fresh)
* a palmful of dill (fresh or dry, fresh is better)
* two spoons of sour cream
* hot pepper to taste (dry is fine, fresh is better)
* 1/8 to 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce (nothing fancy; something vaguely spicy-sweet is fine. I used 2 leftover packets of sauce from Tony Roma's. Don't be picky.

oil into pan, fire under pan, chop the onion, put into pan and salt it a bit to sweat, mince the garlic and drop that in, rub the chops (or $MEAT if you prefer) with a bit of salt, pepper and whatever other spice you insist on. Slide them under the onions so they brown a bit. After about 10 minutes in medium heat, flip. After 5 minutes of that, put 1/8 cup of water (a splash, really) and the barbecue sauce in. Chop the cilantro, dill and pepper. Put in half the cilantro, all the dill and all the pepper. Let the meat simmer in the herb-sauce. Once the meat is cooked, take the meat out but leave the rest of the stuff in the pan and drop in the sour cream. Stir until you've got a yellow-orange color in there and then drop the rest of the cilantro. Stir to incorporate and pour over the $MEAT.

Suggested side: Rice w/ raisins and almond slivers, mashed potatoes with garlic and chives, green beans or peas, avocado slices with olive oil and salt.

dream 13feb08

trapaising house to house, 2nd story apt., bathroom flooding, bucket the water out, argue w/ her about the why, see Anonymous (with Guy Fawkes masks!) through kitchen/bathroom window and i place my hand against the window and say sorry i can't go guys but never forget, landlord/lady comes to fix the now drained bathroom and i think they're just going through my shit i dunno and i wake because the storm is scaring my dog.

whoa i have songs?

because of the heartbreak trauma, i thought all i had was heartbreak-trauma-songs, but i don't.

i have other songs, that I hadn't even remembered.

"the horror" -- tribute to randall prentiss jones, who departed this vale of tears. really i suppose i should call it "the horrah, the horrah". I suppose only like 30 people would possibly know why that's funny and I only speak to 1 of those semi-regularly (and email to like 2 or 3 others).¹

"when medussa saw your heart" -- i had to throw away "the day i loved medussa" and canibalized it into "your faithful serpent" and this song. I really can't deal with "your faithful serpent" right now.

"my favorite architect" -- just came out of nowhere, really.

gotta get a mic and put this tambourine to work.



¹ My old english lit teacher in high school. The world is a sadder, less sardonic and dumber place without him in it. Your life is unspeakably shoddier and the worse for not having had him in your life for even the briefest of moments. Gruff and quick, gayer than a treeful of parrots, silver-haired and willing to surprise a classroom of 17-year-olds with "What the fuck is wrong with you people?", he made us read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and tried to impress on us the gothic horror Marlow felt going into the jungle to see Kurtz.

If you're feeling sinister go and see a minister

ayahuasca cerimonies on the rise.

Eden lends me Terence McKenna's "Food of the Gods", wherein I first hear of Ayahuasca. I'd run into refences in the Don Juan stuff by Castaneda, but dismiss everything by Castaneda as bullshit. Later, there's PJ O'Rourke's story about doing ayahuasca while up a tree in the jungles of Peru, and after that I run into Burroughs' stuff and the Download song. During my wasted youth, I decided that I would not do psychedelics -- speaking to Mils last night after the photoshoot I tell her how sure I was that I'd just lose my fucking mind -- literally wrap it up in a little brown paper bag and leave it somewhere and just NOT KNOW where -- and yeah.

Finally got Cubase LE working and all the pedals I craigslisted work dandy indeed. Need to pick up a mic so I can record some vocals. So far there's:
untouchable darkness
my favorite architect
that i would find you
curio shop
spanish castles made of sand

that last one is a problem. for one, i didn't write the lyrics and I don't want to contact her for permission, so I'm probably gonig to have to rewrite lyrics. and I gotta throw the title away.

the same thing i would want today i will want again tomorrow

I just heard, in quick succession:
Dylan trying to teach The Band "Po' Lazarus" (it occured to me that po' lazarus might be where part of the Stagolee mtyh gets it's power),
the harry smith field recording of prisoners singing "po lazarus",
dylan's "goin' to acapulco"
dylan's "boots of spanish leather" (random cover from youtube: here...I have no idea who that is. actually, ignore that, here's pix of dylan while the original plays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTCFhS7IIgM)

I'm not - by any means - a huge dylan fanatic, but it occurs that the scorsese quote re: akira kurosawa about one being able to debate which works are Great and which are merely very very very good, would also apply to dylan's songs.

I'm joining the RPM Challenge with Navel4Eve, here's hoping it doesn't suck. More info next month, wish me luck.

Yesterday, Vero called me up asking how I made my curry sauce ("uh, curry powder and sour cream. a little mayo if you want it tastier but that makes it fattier and greasier.") and it reminded me that I have posted the recipe for my (world-famous) grilled cheese sammich before, but never here, so here it is:

get you:
3 cheeses -- 2 slices of something white (say a meunster or swiss), 2 slices something yellow (cheddar or american) and about 3 spoonful's worth of feta (bleu works too).
bread -- sliced, i recommend rye.
1 tomato slice, 1/2" thick (can be replaced by onion)
butter
1 clove garlic
2 spoon's worth of olive oil
optional: bacon, olives, mushrooms.

butter a slice of bread, drop half a spoonful of butter in a pan with 1 spoonful of olive oil, coat the bottom of the pan and then put the bread in it. medium-low heat -- you're gonna be here a while. put the meunster on the bread. get your tomato slice and poke out the slimy shit in it (seeds pulp etc) so that you have a tomato-spoke. lay on the muenster cheese and fill the empty tomato spokes with the feta. put the slices of cheddar on top of that. lay the other slice of bread on top and butter it. to ensure the cooking side doesn't stick, shake the pan and the weight of the sandwich should shift it. while you wait for it to brown, take your garlic and slice it thin like you've been watchin' goodfellas too much. flip yr sammich and press some of the garlic slices into the bread. while the raw side cooks, wait. sing a song or something. when it's done, flip (so the garlic on top caramelizes a bit) and press the garlic slices that are left into the bread. drizzle half a teaspoon of olive oil on top and flip again, drizzle the oil that remains and serve. wait at least a minute before cutting it or you're gonna get cheese soup. Which is hard to eat inside a sandwich.

you can replace (or augment) the feta with olives (or olive tapenade,) mushrooms and/or bacon.

If you made it right, it's about an inch and a half thick, and a fucking hearty brick to keep your gut happy.

you want the tomato slice to be thick -- about 1/2" or so -- so that the tomato itself doesn't get hot. the cheese next to the bread will melt the feta, but if the tomato's thick, it won't cook very much and you will therefore have an island of cool, refreshing vegetable in a sea of molten deliciousness.

dreams and cheese

If you see below, you'll see the last two days I have had bizarre and unusual dreams. (Bizarre: STD? wtfbbqaolnet. unusual: a sadness dream). and so the last two days I have had cheese about an hour before sleep; brie and some french thing on the 17th and feta on the 18th.

So it turns out that different cheeses give you different dreams.

85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.

I think I'm going to try the brie and manchego tonight.



Speaking of food, I have fixed my tzatziki recipe for non-suckyness.

To wit, you will need:
1 container of greek yogurt*
1 container of sour cream
1 cucumber, large, seeded and chopped (or grated) however you like it. peeling optional.
4 cloves of garlic, minced (or chopped)
6 leaves of mint, rolled into a tube and chopped into tiny shreds
a sprig of dill, chopped into nothingness as well
1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice
pepper to taste

*regular plain yogurt strained in a cloth will work if you can't get the greek stuff. strain for at least an hour, you want the consistency of the sour cream, so a fair amount of liquid needs to leave the yogurt.


mix all the non-cream stuff, mix the yogurt and cream, then mix the two mixes together. store and chill while you toast some flatbread (or pita) in the oven (or on the grill).


works well with falafel (quick and dirty: 1 can garbanzos, an onion and spices you like -- grind together in a blender with a slice of white bread (or flour if you've got) until it's a paste. add a bit of olive oil if you need to moisten it a bit. form into balls with two spoons and then fry. et viola.)

dream 18jan2008

walking in a hallway dark not scary but dim and then with b, into a cafeteria-looking room and we have been looking for something but not finding it, and she is in trouble for killing a man and we're not friends but not enemies either and things are tense and awkward and i want it to be unfuckedup and friends because she needs help and i could do something and i hate feeling like this, compromised into being unable to be friends, but can't forgive without some sign of friendship, or caring, and there's just words and platitudes and i do not want to be here but am forced to (the way that you don't know why you have to do something in a dream but you just know it) so i do it and the tension is worse but i'm not angry just sad, overwhelmingly sad, and it's dim like we're where even sadness is something to see and the look on her face is best described as vexed or "i know something needs to be done but i don't know what" and i wake.

dream 17jan2008

party, loud, obnoxious, siba is there and i am flirting, things get romantic and i wind up at the Dr's who is telling me I have an STD while he holds a syringe.