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Man I ain't too sure what's up with Ray

2009-05-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

Dude just came in here all needin' me to do up some computer help, particularly graphics. I ain't too much for Photoshop but after I calmed him down and got his basic wants clarified I was able to teach myself the program fairly quickly as it is pretty intuitive (you have to mentally navigate with the awareness that this is a very old program with a massive feature set yet also has had teams trying to dumb it down for years -- it's like dancing with a beautiful woman, but a church lady is holding a ruler between you the whole time).

Anyhow this is what he wanted me to make:

It is Not Winter

2009-04-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

There is I guess an apricot tree or something and its branches sort of stick past the window where I sit and type. Today it completely exploded with white little flowers, like every four inches along, looking straight-up like a popcorn tree. A lot of other plants are acting up now too, and it's that time of year where the gray seems to be gone and cool air pushes like star jasmine and lily fragrances all around. In my brain I get kind of a *click* and I turn some sort of corner out of winter. I need to sit down and figure out what the trigger is so I can pull it earlier in the year.

Trees are kind of like dinosaurs: ancient as all hell, just way slow to adapt, and tough. You can tell how primitive a thing is by how many children it makes, like how spiders and sea turtles make like a thousand babies just to get one or six to survive. Apricot trees are the same way. They make a thousand apricots a year and if every single one took root where it fell, they would kill the mother tree and each other. However, apricot trees exist because they "know" a raccoon and a badger will see *most* of the fruit on the ground and go all NOM NOM NOM...no, this is bad reasoning. Does an apricot seed need the fruit surrounding it in order to germinate, or does it count on an animal eating the fruit and dispersing the seed somewhere else, like in a pile of fresh nutritious poop? I need to go to college. This is like real basic horticulture or botany or something. I wish I had any kind of education at all.

Okay I just got back from lookin' at the course listing catalog for the Community College and I remembered why I never went back to school. If I want to learn about why apricot trees do what they do, I have to pay sixty bucks, sit in a classroom for three months behind some guy who really, really likes the San Francisco Giants, and hope all to hell that the teacher covers that topic. Man that is inefficient.

I think the Community College should just be like a hotline where every professor is an operator and your question gets routed to the right one when you call. Each call could be a dollar. Looks like it's time for some school reforms, based on my new idea of cost-effective learning. Look out, world's education system. Everything changes today, with this blog about how I am too boneheaded to just look up apricot trees on Wikipedia.

New Italian Place that Ray made me go

2008-12-14T00:43:00.000-08:00

Dang but they shoehorned this new Martha Stewart-type Italian place into the old Letty's Taqueria space, that old dingy F-minus "what in the hell empty since six years where do they get a dollar" taco shop on the drag on Benson. I never really saw how they stayed in business since if you ordered a chicken burrito you could really tell that the chicken was sittin' around in a cold steel tray for five days developin' grain. I ate there twice and got the read and freaked hard each time on dreams of pump skitters and doin' the fetus pinwheel in sweated-up sheets.

Ray totally loves this new place, mainly based on the Italian dude Vito who runs it and is all friends with every customer pretty hard. I don't know. I get that read on Vito like, "The man who is friends with everyone is friends with no one." Ray eats it up like the bread, actin' all "made" when the dude says, "Is a special lasagna today for you Ray, I bring it to you special." He don't give it to Ray for any kind of deal and the only thing special about it is that the word "special" got said twice. I think he's just sellin' it to Ray 'cause he knows Ray would buy anything he talked about and it's one of those casserole-based dishes that you can scrape outta the pan corner and dump some red sauce on. Ray pays twenty-nine dollars for stuff Vito's dishwasher would put his cigarette butt in.

Here are the following categories of dude accents that can sell things to dumb American guys, graded by power of accent:

1. Italian
2. English
3. Irish
4. Franco-Bedouin (seriously, Youtube this)
5. Dennis Leary (eclipsed Bill Cosby in 1993)

First Rain.

2008-10-04T00:31:00.000-07:00

Alright so the deal with first rain is that I like to bundle all up in this preposterous old North Face "ski rescue"-type thigh-length jacket that I lifted outta Ray's car one time (it has like seventeen zippers and three drawstrings and a thermal-lined waterproof hood that stuffs down into one of the collars) and put on some shorts and my crispiest Chucks and walk the town for a good half day or so. I smell the creek and look at the gutters run (kind of foamy since it's the first) and listen to the drops fall on my lid when I go under the cedars by the high school. I always make a little pass by a storm drain we used to skate; it's all broken up by time and throbbin' ground now and crammed with roots. I run kind of fast and sideways up where the edge of the bank was and jump over the gap where we would ollie. I doubt I could even ollie any more. I doubt anyone would care if I did. I certainly don't think anyone needs me to.

After I did my big long walk today, all miles and miles, I stopped into a calzone place and got a pretty good do-up. Then I hoofed it home and Molly was on the TV and I just read my sites for a good long bit. I hope you had a good first rain too or that you have one soon. I don't realize it but it's probably the center of my year.

Why did I get screamed at

2008-03-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

Man I was down at Lucky Go getting the wrong printer cable for Molly and when I was out in the parking lot with my cheap little plastic bag this forty five year-old gutty dude with real flat wet combed hair got out of his car (a pretty bad old Nissan that a man his age should be beyond) and started over at me. He kept patting down his hair and running his thumbs around the inside of his waistband, you know, and when he got like ten feet from me he had a pretty good lather on, just screaming that I was a son of a bitch. It gave me the feeling that I hadn't noticed him earlier when he drove by and he thought I had flipped him off (I had not just errantly done any flipping off that morning so that seems unlikely). Maybe he reasoned me for another dude who had done him over with some cash or parts. I just started to back away because I didn't have much anger at the time and when he advanced I actually ran fifteen feet. When I saw that he didn't chase after me I started to walk again. It was a pretty basic "weird scene," like might make sense if you were looking at two fairly sophisticated beetles in a terrarium but man was this guy coming off the whiskey or something. Or is it whisky? No wonder people who drink whiskey are always so mad, they're like WHAT THE HELL AM I DRINKING WHISKY OR WHISKEY and that just makes them drink more. This guy was like that, a man who would drink to excess because his beverage had an outmoded spelling distinction, and then yell at people by the cheap electrical parts store. That is the kind of guy who usually notices me in public.

Ray's Pedicure Routine.

2008-02-06T00:21:00.000-08:00

So like Ray was all mincin' around dandy on the white carpet in his living room today while I was watching car races on the satellite, and that kind of ate at me after a while, so I was like "what's up with you making tiny little pleased steps and smiling. You look like Liberace doing the Don't Step On The Baby Ants Dance." Then the dude smiled directly at me and the rest went like this.

- + -

RAY: Dude, I just had the mother of all pedicures. This girl Xa Bi was rubbin’ on my doggies so hard and long, I don't mind tellin' you that I closed my eyes and thought about the act for like half an hour.

ME: Well that's fine I mean I hope you did not get a nasty old tumescence though.

RAY: Like hell I didn't! Why you think I go there?

ME: To have your feet cleaned and your nails trimmed and perhaps some calluses scraped, I don't know.

RAY: Don't get me wrong, they do that. But a big part of their service is the whole fantasy angle. It's like, "Wink, nudge, you are making me hot as the devil, and don't you know it, you sweet little mystical peach."

ME: I think if the chick knew you were thinking that she would jump back like that part in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox plays a guitar note through Doc Brown's massive speaker.

RAY: Hell no, dogg. Those ladies know what it's all about. They're hella cuttin' it up in Vietnamese, all smilin', and sometimes I catch the other ladies in the shop lookin' over at me and smilin' and gigglin'. They know I know the deal, man of the world, all that. Plus, I ALWAYS tip well.

ME: Uh huh and can they actually see your wrong old tumescence.

RAY: Damn straight, man. It's cultural — you got to let it show, so they can know you're in on the deal and gettin' the most of it. I always wear these real light, loose linen pants to my pedicure, and I go commando, so they can watch me pitch the tent. Another sign of respect. It's like how a sommelier won't offer you certain bottles if he knows you ain't a real player.

ME: Do you always get the same girl.

RAY: No, they always give me the youngest one. It's kind of a form of old-school respect, since they know the youngest girl will work the hardest.

ME: Oh uh okay I see. And at the end is the girl like all gracious and chatty when you give her the tip.

RAY: See, that's another thing you don't understand about the Vietnamese. They are real shy and embarrassed when it comes to money changin' hands — it's almost shameful to them. Every time I hand my girl her tip, she blushes and just kind of looks down and away as she takes it. The older ladies always bust out in this big laugh and she runs back to the towel room. Every time, dude. It's their way.

ME: And how do you leave the place.

RAY: Oh, I get up and give everybody a big wave goodbye. They all laugh some more, because homeboy is so blissed. After that I strut out and get a taco or two next door.

ME: Man where did you even learn how to get a pedicure all in the know like that.

RAY: I read so many magazines, dude, it all kind of blends together. I wish I remembered, sorry, or I'd let you borrow it.

- + -

McDonald's vs Starbucks vs Ray vs Me

2008-01-08T00:54:00.000-08:00

Dang it man but Ray just has so much faith in McDonald's it is ridiculous. Today it came out in the news that Mickey D's is gonna try to compete with Starbucks by havin' baristas and fancy coffee drinks and Ray was just all kinds of sure that was gonna put Starbucks outta business. It's lazy to side with the big-ass (well, bigger-ass) ruthless worldwide conglomerate and it shows no bag. Maybe that's how you make it in his investments and finances world but lazy don't fly with me.

RAY: Check it out, dude! McDonald’s is gonna wipe Starbucks off the map by havin’ baristas and fancy coffee drinks!

ME: Man that is baloney the Venn diagram of their customer bases looks like an eight

RAY: Say what you want. McDonald’s plays to win.

ME: Tell me what you like most about Starbucks I mean I know you get coffee there

RAY: The chicks who work there, dude! All tight black pants, smilin’, hell of took a shower lately...

ME: Now tell me what you remember about the McDonald’s worker chicks

RAY: They...they get these weird little purple blotches on their faces, but they don’t seem to come to a head. And...and they got those flappy bellies that the company makes them tuck into their pants. Bellies that could hang into a sink, but not stick out above a sink. Wait, hold on a minute, man—

ME: Plus think about it Ray if they can’t even repeat NUMBER THREE, DIET COKE how they gonna do with a double venti short tall nonfat mocha no foam cappuccino with two ice cubes and a half shot of sugarfree vanilla for Mackenzie who by the way is a skinny woman in Versace sunglasses and not a fat Irish man in an Aran cable sweater holding a Guinness

RAY: Well, they wouldn't offer all those options, first of all. You wouldn't be allowed to customize.

ME: In that case they ain't competin' with Starbucks then since Starbucks' whole model is that Starbucks is the ONLY place you can get your exact drink and your exact drink is a sacred event without which your day is ruined

RAY: That may be, but there are a lotta fringe people who ain't into complicated coffee drinks yet and Starbucks ain't got their business. McDonald's will get these customers.

ME: So my point about the Venn diagram holds up even on your side because McDonald's would not be taking any existing customers from Starbucks and in fact McDonald's will actually serve as a gateway to frou-frou coffee which will then lead frou-frou coffee converts to the greater options and hotter, bathed chicks of Starbucks

RAY: Jesus Christ, dude! How much in advance did you think about all this?! Enough, already!

ME: I don't have to think about things in advance to know what I think

RAY: Alright, alright. Maybe Starbucks will stay in business. You only all on about this 'cause your fiancée works there.

- - -

We cooled it from there, since I knew I was just gettin' steamed and gonna dis on my fellow, and all in all I knew it wasn't more than just cola wars. Let Starbucks and Mickey D's try to out-sell each other in hot brown narcotics and god but am I ashamed I even let myself get worked up for either side. Jesus Christ do I got to go on that week-long trip to the desert men sometimes need.

Doggs I Bought a Boat

2007-11-05T23:32:00.000-08:00

Alright so I wasn't really going for this but I was walking along the bay piers this morning (I woke up at four o'clock again and needed to get away from the house before I freaked out) and I bought a boat. I am not a guy who has a boat but I guess we all got to come to terms with my having a boat now.

It's not a great boat but it's got a closed cabin and a sail (I think it actually has two sails) and some electronics that help you get saved in a storm. There's this main bed area inside the cabin and dammit I am such an idiot but I think I bought the boat because I imagined Molly and me having sex in the bed. Because no one could bug us way out on the sea. I actually thought that. I think I might have actually bought a boat based on the idea that nobody could interrupt my sex activities. Jesus did my family do a number on me. I have to be honest and say that at least one particular uncle never knocked on the bathroom door when I was doing a deuce at Christmas or Thanksgiving, he just opened it straight up. That guy basically ruined my life and my nervous system.

The boat is currently named CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE but I have begun paperwork to get that changed. I'm hopin' to get it named something cool like DOCK DORK or SLIP TWIT. You can dis on that but in the end I have a boat and you don't, which is true.

Picking Out My Dudes

2007-10-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

Man it is a childish thing but when you go to wear the pants with the stripe that shines you got to name your dudes in order. You got to choose your number one, then a couple to trot behind him. Why do we have to order our friends. I guess it's part of the intelligence of the ceremony design, makes us see where we stand at this juncture, who matters. But damn if it didn't do a raw one on me.

First of all, I always knew Ray would be my best man. I also always knew that my brother Michael ("Showbiz") couldn't even be counted on to be alive or paroled, and I never much felt connected with him besides. My mom always made us act like friends but it was a hell of raunch lie.

So I went in to ask Ray to be my best man. He had class and didn't act like he expected it, but when I popped the question he had me shut the office door. He busted out a hug on me and then poured us each a healthy blue label. Said he'd be honored, all that. I don't dunk tank much on extreme moments but it was cool and it was a thing. We took an extra one and he even talked for a bit real wise on how a woman can improve a man. I didn't know where he got any of that but it was polished and even sage in places.

After Ray I got in place groomsmen like Téodor, Lyle, Todd, Emeril, Spongebath, and Cornelius. I know that's kind of a big party but I been warmin' up to it. I mean how often do you get it on like this in life. How often do you even get to make your dudes support you. This structure seems decent enough as it is.

A crazy nut was out on the scene

2007-09-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

Man it ain't like me to dogg up and call the human police on a falterin' human but damn if today didn't make that necessary.

So there I was sittin' on the roof with my new situation, which is a tiny deck the size of a picnic table where I can code and cool it on top of the pool house in the full sun. I can see all around, including the street out front. I been down to the street and it's pretty hard to see where I am up top, so it's safe enough. Branches are obscuring it etc.

So today I'm up there and alright truth be told I'm lookin' at corsets, kind of might be a thing I'm interested in specifically, and out of the corner of my eye I see this blotto dude wandering down the sidewalk. He's human, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds (hard to tell with them), wearin' jean shorts and a hoody and a big red backpack. He's got socks on, but he's carryin' his shoes, and he ain't too sure about where the sidewalk's gonna be next time he makes a move. He even tries to see if the street is better, but it's rush hour and it's not, so he kind of makes his way down the sidewalk halfway on lawns, halfway on the curb. Rough scene, and even though he has birthday party face it's pretty clear he might do up a box truck on the undersides. He might make an acid glance at the trans-axle, if you get my inexpensive business.

Lame as hell and all Pat-style I ring up the badges and they come whisk him off. I don't know why I did it, that was hell of gripe of me. I guess that since now I live on a nice block I got zero patience with fuck ups and streetards, I'm like "well screw him because this real estate is LEET!"

Ugh I don't like what I did but also I do. I don't go stumblin' blazed in somebody else's neighborhood, and if I did, you can bet with assurance they'd cool my ass off in a prison room. Fair's fair, and the nice game never got me nowhere. So long, blazed dude, and I totally hated seeing your crevice when your shorts fell to lows.

Hitched up to the Cash I.V.

2007-06-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

Holy hell and high water does every person in the community come around with their hand out when your time comes to get hitched. On a regular day you might walk down the street and see six hundred normal people and they will not mean much to you; if you are about to get married, however, each of them will open their trench coat or sweater set as you pass by to reveal engraved save-the-date cards or meat upgrades on the catering menu or a non-terrible rental cummerbund that costs ten smacks more than the terrible ones with zebra stripes that come standard. Good God in his mighty chair why would I want to have a permanent engravement made of an invitation which sure as blazes won't ever be used again. Tradition can eat this fat one that I am about to jam out of my ass hole. You're damn right I made that into two words for emphasis. And yes I said that.

Alright don't get me wrong I am on a cloud since I shored my muster and made the commitment to Molly. But I been compilin' a list of all the damn stuff that needs to get paid for just to make this whole process be "socially official" or whatever and it is come to summer grapes. Check out all these damn costs and then consider that our wedding doesn't even have a job to pay for itself:

1. Engagement ring (yes I got to get a real one), probably like $4k

2. Airplane bottle of Jäger to get me dumb enough to "man up" and buy the right one: $3.65

3. Nice dinner for the evening when we got engaged: $113.74

4. Nice lunch the day after we got engaged: $45.29

5. Nice dinner the day after we got engaged (can't just go back to pork and beans so quick): $79.21

6. Special massage for her since this should be a happy week of her life: $80

7. Pedicure and manicure for same reason: $35

8. Meeting with a wedding planner: $0 (if God help me I consult with a motherf$r who tells me how to buy flowers from a flower store then just put the railroad spikes in my feet and do me in with a kickstand welded to a chain, I swear to God I'll tip you as a dying gesture).

9. A hat: ($23). I normally don't buy myself a hat but I was feeling kind of up on things and got a cool embroidered cap at the booth of this dude who was playing a Chapman Stick at the farmer's market. I now have a hat that says Troy Koller on the front, in Times New Roman. I will make sure that this is my only hat for at least five years.

10. Oh holy Christ and Jesus here we are at number ten and the coffee ain't even come to a boil yet

Damn I mean I kicked away a few bucks for this day since normally the bride's family chomps these fees but seein' as they all died four hundred years ago that ain't too likely. Sad to see it go; hope Showbiz can lay off the tweeters and mega-woofers a while. (He can't.)

Had some poems pilin' up

2007-05-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Alright so like once in a while I'm like whoah there are all these poems crowdin' my desktop why don't I just move them to the Internet and keep them safe. Okay so here is some stuff from recent times.

-----------------------
Raw Deal
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
-----------------------
Crudités tray sitting there
You reach for a bite
The cauliflower head...too perfect
A movement, the florets fall away
Tarantula shoots up your sleeve

Ohhh shiiiiiit

----------------------------
Asparagus piece
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
------------------------------

Asparagus spear is just that
The bushman hurls it through the air
Wait who invited a -GAAAAACK-

[Ohhh shiiiiiit]

-----------------------------------
Corned Beef Sandwich
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
-----------------------------------

Corned beef sandwich?
Think again.
This is one meal
You will not win.

The beef replaced
With pure beef taste
Brushed onto
A meat-like case

Close your jaws
Depress the plunger
Your head explodes
Inside-out hunger

oh shiiiiiiiiiiit!

A thing with the gardeners

2007-05-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

Alright so like it is a thing now—but no one has even said a word—about what is goin' down with the landscaping around the pool shed where Molly and I live on Ray's spread.

Up 'til now, since whenever, Ray's yard crew just trimmed it and fixed the drip system and stuff, all about their business. Last two months, on their regular day, they never even came by. I got to know if Ray is sendin' me some kind of signal here. I mean I am down of course to pay for maintenance on this place but damn does the dude got to speak it out this way. It is causin' me hell of smackers (pretend smacks on the forehead with a hand) every time I think about it and plus this morning I woke up from a dream about a foreign kid with huge lice on his head and I think the huge lice were representing my problem with Ray eating at my brain. Needless to say I almost did my britches at this nightmare and I nearly put soup in the sink besides.

I guess next time I know for sure he is outta the house I am gonna work on the landscaping around the pool shed, and see if he mentions anything. Also I definitely got to do some breathing and stuff and try to not imagine those big fat lice sucking so hard on that screaming kid's head.

I was all hoi polloi and low

2007-03-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

I was so hoi polloi at the restaurant, I hell of plebe'd it up in that place. Okay here is the skinny pants on how well that went down.

Damn but if Molly wanted to go to a makeup and reservations joint and I had a little scratch so I sort of got out the door with being all large. Once we were there though (this new place called Pazzolo where you can get this one wood oven pizza for a hundred dollars, it is for showoffs or guys who pretend to care about eating unfertilized fish eggs) I got kind of sour on it all and was pretty much a bad sport. Molly had some lemon drops and tried to ignore my antickry as I filled up our water glasses in the bathroom (waiter was hell of ignoring us because I am low) and made my green beans spell D-I-C-K when I was done eating my dish (grilled pork chop, the cheapest but still $18 jesus christ). By the end of the meal she was pretty glassy-eyed and didn't even pay attention to me so I paid up square and left half a pack of smokes in with the tip (found these in my old green flight jacket pocket, I ain't worn it in an age) and kind of guided her out of the restaurant. She goes pretty silent when she's mad and bombed up, it is a nice quality where she withdraws into herself and just accepts that I am a terrible man. Anyhow she's all tucked into bed but I am on the sass horn so I might go over and see the fellows, maybe get it on the legs and have some trouble tomorrow.

Man I had just a horrible day

2007-02-23T00:46:00.001-08:00

Man so like at six in the morning I jumped up with a start cause I heard the dang garbage truck all bleepin' and rollin' on by and I was like, "Crap. I did not drag the can to the curb last night on account of the deluge of rain and the fact that I had not put on shoes all day." So almost immediately my biles and tomato gut-sauces shook up a mean reverse-bloody mary and I almost spewed acid and did my britches. Fortunately I took my seven breaths and a swill of nightstand water and that was that, I was able to run out in the rain and see if I could hail the dudes to stop a second and let me drag the can up to where their truck was.

I guess since I live in Ray's neighborhood though they let you slide on the trash angle cause they had run up into the area by the garage where the can lives and dragged that can to the truck themselves. I was basically unaware of what to say or think based on this information so I kind of stood there for a second and slowly realized that despite this small victory I had started my day in a horrible and anxious fashion and had almost done my drawers out of fear at a real small issue.

Since I was so wet I couldn't climb back in bed, which meant I was Up Early. I hate bein' Up Early cause it usually means I worry about Showbiz and Gramma K and my kidneys and all that stuff. Basically I just sat on the couch and watched TV judges say who could and could not have their kids anymore, and then when Molly got up I asked real nice if I could have a cup of baked beans and since she knew I was in a Place she was real understanding about it. (Baked beans are like my version of Prozac, except they can't be relied on.)

Anyhow the rest of the day was not actually much better, with some worries about weird charges on my bank account, and this new bump on my shin, and just getting way too mad at a guy who honked at an innocent car.

got way too nice of a printer

2007-01-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

Man at the regular people electronics super-place this kid was totally pushing me, going on and on about how great and cheap new printers are, and I was like "I only need it to print black and white and maybe sometimes an extremely reasonable amount of 10% grayscale." But then he's prattlin' about ink catridges versus toner costs and "ppm" and resolution and all this stuff and hup but don't you know I now own a state of the art inkjet photo-quality printer with sixteen ink cartridges and a preview panel and a twenty dollar sampler of different photo papers (half-off with purchase). Not to mention the twenty-five dollar USB cable that does not come with the printer (it should, Jesus already). So here I am, a guy who only wanted to print out live text documents, and I can essentially open a While-U-Wait photo lab.

Man why do I always get rushed into a tizzy by salespeople and end up buying stuff I ain't need. Why am I susceptible. It's this dumb thing in my family, we always give even the lowest piece of crap our attention because it would be bad to be rude. Holy mother of clams is worrying about being rude not the right way to step out into the world. The world is rude as shit and if you ain't adoptin' the party line then they are just gonna use every part of you but the squeal.

Next time some sales dude tries to upsell me some crap I am going to break his heart with a cold, watery stare. Meanwhile I got to get Molly to read over all these damn receipts and take this thing back.

Kraftwerk Thänksgiving

2006-11-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

Man it was hard at the place today we did this Kraftwerk Thänksgiving with the boys Téodor and Ray. Ray ain't so much of a Kraftwerk fan but he gets the idea and since he was all beaned up on knock-knock gas he thought it would be fun (of course it would be fun Ray). Anyhow so the theme of a good Kraftwerk Thänksgiving is that it is a regular supper with turkey and carrots and stuff but the mood is very severe and everyone acts like Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk Thänksgivings always end with someone admitting that though they have eaten, they remain unsatisfied. We dogged it up real proper this year and here is some of how we played it.

ME: Welcome to zis Kraftwerk Thänksgiving it is not important that you sit down but you may find it konvenient

MOLLY: Please be seated at my home

ME: Woman does not give orders [shoots her a severe glance]

TÉODOR: I will sit it is ze korrect form for eating, it is ideally designed

RAY: [kind of getting it] Ja, I sit down!

ME: Fine then be seated as I mentioned it is not important to me

MOLLY: I will check on the potatoes

RAY: [slightly incorrect buzzy robot voice] I...WOULD...LIKE...A...MARTINI...

ME: Perhaps you cannot have...a martini?

RAY: Oh, you playin' with me!

ME: [shoots him severe glance]

RAY: Oh, right. [Clears throat, points to heart] This...hurts...me

ME: [turning quickly to Téodor] Fetch him zis "martini." I do not know what it is. It is some dumb drink a man puts in his face. It makes him sick and he goes to his work the next day with a shit in his body.

TÉODOR: [runs off quickly]

MOLLY: [from kitchen] THE POTATOES ARE DONE, THEY ARE COOKED COMPLETELY

ME: You may bring in the food now and put it at the center of the table

RAY: Man, that's really nice how you got it all so she—

ME: [severe glance]

RAY: Oh hee man sorry uh...the woman she pleases the man

ME: Indeed for centuries it is the order why do I think I can change this thing it would be the ultimate arrogance

TÉODOR: Here is the martini

RAY: Dude, you ain't serve a martini in a zip-top sandwich baggie, dogg. Especially not with the olive in another baggie.

TÉODOR: [squints hard, stares straight forward, as though experiencing a sharp pain]

ME: [sharp glance]

RAY: Oh, sorry guys. Thank You For The Martini dogg

ME: He thanks you.

TÉODOR: He tries

MOLLY: [brings in turkey on carving board, sets it before me]

ME: The knifes please

MOLLY: [produces my carving set from the sideboard] The knifes

ME: As you know I say a speech. This is the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a day of eating food that is baked, and food that is lightly cooked in a sauté or a hot pot of liquid. If you can bear it then announce why you are thankful on this day. Remember that your opinions may seem boorish or those of an ass to every person who is here.

RAY: I'm thankful for anyone who can get me a straw

ME: There are straws in the cupboard beneath the toaster they are next to the Captain Crunch

MOLLY: It is a large box they were on a sale price

TÉODOR: They are the kind with the flexible neck you can not miss them

ME: Bring the whole box so we may make sculptures after the meal

RAY: Oh dope

Anyhow the Kraftwerk Thänksgiving went pretty much like that. Ray ended up talking us into going over to his place for some Braveheart and Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Even though we had had a pretty good sized turkey dinner the first thing he did was heat up his fry-o-lator and make a bunch of batches of fries. Dude has technique; we grubbled on those for most of the night and I think they helped me from gettin' too clopsy on the Scotch.

Happy Thänksgiving

Man I am over a dog about car things

2006-09-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

So lately Molly said my Galaxie is hella bad on the emissions front (way more than true) and maybe we should look at gettin' a little Prius or somethin' together. Man tell me that ain't the slippery slope, and plus you know I am a dude of solid cars. I ain't sayin' we ain't got to clean up greenhouse damage and all that, but please can we do it with some cars that do not look like a Reebok. I mean a man cannot drive a Prius, it is like exactly the shape of the mouse that is under your hand, and has about the same horsepower.

I will tell you what. If you can put a Prius hybrid engine system in a '71 Eldorado, and get it so that it can at least attain a maximum speed of 25MPH, then I will drive it. No one wants to see an old Eldo go fast. The car was designed to glide real slow, to crawl past the strip, to be seen. I love the Galaxie but at times we got to admit we ain't at ALL addressin' slow car culture.

Man we got to talk about some noodles now.

2006-09-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

Alright so Cornelius and Téodor and Lyle got back from this hype tri-dude colonoscopy they all had and they were all excited that the news was good. The dudes ordered up much Chinese food, basically every Asian treasure, and called in all the non-colon-aware dudes to come sample the delicious foodstuffs. Man it was so good against all the Italian pasta Molly's been cookin' up lately I hate to say it. An Asian dude can flavor up a noodle ten ways from Sunday in the time it takes an Italian dude to find his pants and wish he had a Lamborghini.

Often in the past I may have said bold claims about my favorite food being such as chili or simple steamed potatoes with butter but today it is definitely Chinese food. I mean it is a stone dis not to love Chinese food above all others, think about how many billions of people been perfectin' it for thousands of years, of course it is good. Italian people only been sportin' noodles since Marco Polo in 1300, hence any simple bowl of dan dan mein is gonna go private-school on capellini pomodoro. By the way Molly is probably going to cook capellini pomodoro tonight, she thinks tomatoes and basil are like the new Guess jeans.

I got to cook up basically some late-night nachos

2006-08-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

Man it is a tough one when you are hungry for nachos and your lady is asleep and earlier in the week she has made a jab about how maybe you eat way-crazy amounts of sodium even though you constantly worry about sodium. It is like, all I have to do is hammer out a little more code for this client, just real basic stuff, and nothing would be better than DING! a hot-minute plate of nachos. Only I know the microwave DING! would wake her up and she would maybe like a minute later wander sleepily out into the room and rub her eyes and in a real tired dreamy voice mumble soft things about sodium while giving me a hug from behind.

So here I am, probably gonna make horrible code because I want nachos so bad. My belly is a grumbly acid place, it is all primed for nachos. I need to eat some nachos or I will get insane and just hold down the "enter" key with one finger until I snap and move to a hotel in the desert where there is a microwave, a silo full of tortilla chips, and a block of cheddar the size of a mobile home. And a nice grater with a little soapy sink where I can wash it off, plus paper towels for dabbing at the grease. Man what if a dude found a place like that. You wouldn't hear from the dude for at least 10.5 years.

Zine volume 2

2006-06-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

Man it is liquid in the pen, we already got 'zine no. 2 in the works, me and Tré-Odor, hell of having such a theme as THE SEX ISSUE. At least this is what we think so far. I got much of a long piece goin' where I review all types of porno and make a case that college departments should look to it for clues about society. Additionally we got some erotic fiction about a stoned dude who is at his apartment, and I am thinkin' Ed E. Haskell will even cook up a list of groundbreaking sex positions. I mean, how useful are those GQ magazine articles about the top new sex positions. I am so dissatisfied by the three main sex positions that often times I hate to roll into bed with my lady, so do I dread her no-imagination sex positions. I hate when she will not respond to my pleas that she lay face-down on the floor with the tops of her thighs on the seat of a rocking chair while I kind of gravity-spoon her from above, my elbows on the floor. I hate regular sex.

Also in THE SEX ISSUE is that raw Curse Of The Sea Bitch nautical fiction I had to leave outta' the last issue, and hopefully I will sneak in some hot nudity, if Tré-Odor will agree to sit on the HP ScanJet 3000 while I figure out the optimum driver settings.

Technology question of the day: will a scanner actually cook crepe batter if you set it to scan at highest quality and resolution. Will the lamp power be enough to cook the delicate batter. What if you scan it six times? Write me. This could be a new kind of restaurant or food cart idea.

New zine

2006-05-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

Oh dogg it is meat on the bone, I am excited to release my new zine I been compiling. Check it in a week or two when MAN WHY YOU EVEN GOT TO DO A THING #1 will hit the stands.

Ingredients in this issue include:
IT PAYS TO HAVE WORD ABILITY (word smarts)
A poem about car crashes, with a true life graphic
Interview with Téodor (4 pages)
Tenmen concert review
Interview with Ray about his ability to freestyle (2 pages)
"7 Ways to Have Hygiene"
Interview conducted with Pat inside of Pat's house (3 pages)
An Idea about Charles Dickens
Interview with Todd (1 page, cut short)
Another interview with Ray, regarding his life (2 pages)
The Curse Of The Sea Bitch (nautical fiction)
Recipes
...plus tons more treats and puzzles and such

This will be about two dozen all-new pages and all zine style, folded-over b/w straight up true, 2-sided, I am mad laying it up right now and wrestling with toner and constantly reinstalling my print driver for this cruddy-vas-deferens-cloggedy HP laser printer I got on loan from Ray. You have never seen any of this content anywhere so get used to picking up this little swelled-up print queue of a magazine, this little terrible zine that tells it how it is at my places and also at a few other dudes' places.

damn forgot about this blog what with things

2006-04-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Oh dang I didn't do this blog in mainly forever. Crazy how a dude can get up to things and not remember that an amount of computer disk the weight of a spider's ovaries is waiting to hear what he had for lunch or how much trouble he is having remembering the name of his school librarian.

Okay so for lunch today I had some steak that Ray had left in the fridge (he had demanded that I eat it since he was gonna be out playin' golf while it was goin' through its Flavor Window), and the name of my school librarian escapes me. She was nice, and short, and it is sad to say but she is probably dead by now. Sad how lives go like that. Never was a president or on a rocket to Mars, but dead all the same, with no boat or street to tell it. Perhaps they renamed a small alcove of the library after her, whatever her name was. I think she wore green pants once. Iris? Irene?

There you go that is a blog plain and simple! I definitely did an extremely believable blog tonight.

Got the lamp!

2006-01-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

Dang so last time I was all on about havin' possibly S.O.-S.A.D. and that I might get one of those happiness lights. I finally had Molly go get me one, like in a moment where she just couldn't get a word out of me and I wouldn't get out of bed at like 3pm, and I said "I THINK I NEED ONE OF THOSE LIGHTS OKAY?!" and she understood. She came back and plugged it in and shone it all down on my noggin and since then I been playin' it real close to the light. It's like stretchin' out in a ray of sun when that thing is on. I have a small tray for sodas and a sandwich plate and I have a nice pillow I set the laptop on. Things are good under the lamp. I wanted to call it Smiley but Molly said that was too easy so we agreed that I would call it Dave. Dave is the name of a friend, you know. Seems like everybody has a friend named Dave. I do.

Gettin' my depress on

2005-12-14T17:32:00.000-08:00

Dang so I been real blue of late. I can't figure out what it is since my finances are in order and I ain't got any major sources of strife regarding housing or a lady. Maybe it is just that seasonal orientation-sadness affective disorder folks talk about. I read that if you have S.O.-S.A.D. there is this special light you can buy at CostCo that mimics summertime and you get somewhat happy if you are near it. I got to get one of those I suppose before the week is out or I am just gonna be a wreck come Christmas.

I could not eat the chips I wanted so bad.

2005-12-06T22:53:00.000-08:00

Man dang it is a real regular situation in my life where I will strongly want a food item that will make a lot of noise while someone cranky or judgmental is sleeping lightly near the item. In the past Gramma K would always bitch at me through her door whenever I would go into the kitchen past nine at night, even if I was silently eating a banana with my eyes wide open and measured breathing through my nostrils. Recently (actually, yesterday) Molly went to bed kind of early because she had had a real crap shift at work (apparently an old dude died in the bathroom and his cigarette fell onto a newspaper and caught the joint on fire, meaning no wages for weeks while they fix everything and the police investigate). I was like "oh yes definitely babe you should hit the sack you deserve the rest" and she sacked out, but fitfully. I could hear her tossing and turning and even once she muttered "dammit."

I was just castin' around for crap to do, couldn't get into coding or whatever because I kept imaginin' the old guy's last moments and also his body burning, then I turned on the TV and Law & Order had this episode about little kids getting run over by a van where the elderly driver had had a stroke and died (I ain't makin' this up). Attempting to mix up the depressing/livable ratio a little I popped a Coke and went rummagin' in the cupboard for the best thing in the world to eat with Coke, which is namely Tom's of Maine salt and vinegar chips. Man I have often walked around, my belly a swirling sea of brown cola and hella sour chips, huge smile on my face.

Damn but I had left the bag of chips by my side of the bed, since for lunch that is exactly what I had eaten, Coke and Tom's. If I went in to grab the bag it would make all its humongous crinkly sounds and Molly would go BEEF, I JUST got to SLEEP! and then she would stay awake with her horrible situation fresh in her head and have to listen to me crunchin' on all kinds of chips, crackin' hissy Cokes, and crinkling the bag until she went insane and the sounds began to resemble the sounds of a building catching fire.

There are other instances, but you get the idea. I got to plan ahead better. Maybe for an hour I'll walk around tomorrow and try to see the world only in terms of people and the food sounds that will annoy them. I might make a blueprint of the property and use visual aids, I am kind of a visual thinker.

Molly's xmas list.

2005-11-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

Man I did the smart thing I straight up asked Molly what she would want for Christmas you know like on a list because I hate to do the guessing game. Last year at this time we were in some bad shakes and I just guessed that she would like some low-top Converse (she did, and I was hugely relieved) but I figure a guy ain't got to go through worrisome times just on account of givin' a present. A Christmas list is a completely normal thing, and dudes everywhere can ask for it. Ask for one from your lady or dude or top-bear or whatever you have, it will save you a lot of problems.

Here is her list:

1. LL Bean "Snuggle Sox" navy size M

2. "The Winding Sheet," new historical detective fiction by H. Maude Cummings (she goes through this stuff like crazy)

3. Massage

4. Pedicure

5. Manicure (I guess you could combine all three but if all three happen on the same day then maybe the lady goes into a fugue state or catatonic trance or wants to meet Seal or something, don't want to risk that)

6. Tazo "Passion" herbal tea bags (I have had these and they taste ok)

7. This one funny "shrug" they sell downtown (a "shrug" is kind of this small useless cutesy coat) that looks like you are wearing an anime panda hide

8. (this is not actually on the list) There is this funny "designed" pink box of wine at the grocery store and she always jokes that it would be fun to have it, but we never get it because we are not at box wine level. However since this is Christmas you can be kind of frivolous and maybe I will put it in the fridge with a shiny bow on it. Since it will be bad I will put Sangria elements next to it, perhaps in a nice plastic container.

Next up is I probably got to make my own Christmas list. I always have a hard time with this and eventually end up just asking if she'll cook me some sirloin and eggs sometime when I'm not expecting it. To me that is a good gift, and not too costly, considering I only want it once.

Man this time I got dragged to the yarn store

2005-11-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

Uh huh so it seems a thing, based on my research, is that younger ladies are all into knitting now. It is like sort of a backlash or something, after all that 80s and 90s stuff where a lady had to prove that she was also a man. Anyhow, Molly is also into knitting but I guess she always was, because she was already good at it when I first noticed her doing it. She was making me a cardigan sweater with my favorite President's head on the two front pockets (FDR, people, I mean come on, the man was President for like fifty-eight years) and she ran out of the color of yarn for his face so she had to go to Spinnin' Yarns yarn store down next to the motorcycle repair shop and that VCR repair place which is always closed. I thought I could get some curly fries on the way (I was mildly appetized at the time) and so I went with her. Well wouldn't you guess it but Spinnin' Yarns is also a Boring Place, much like the bead shop.

There is all this shelving with little balls or braids of yarn, and kind of this soft smell, and a long table where a few people were knitting and maybe showing each other instructions on how to perform a certain knit. I did what I always do which is just dig my nose into the nearest book rack, which in this case was a lot of books and magazines with really beautiful young models on the cover, but they were wearin' just the dowdiest old knitted ponchos and shawls you would not believe. It was like, if you wanted to have a picture of a beautiful girl looking halfway believable, the first thing you would do would be to take off the dowdy shawl and go "oh, sorry, man why did I even think that was believable. Because it was not."

I was checking out the knitting instruction code on how to make a small tomato-lookin' hat for a baby when out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the shop ladies walk by, and she had a pretty bad hobbledy-leg, that kind where the one leg is shorter than the other by several inches. I always feel bad when I see that kind of stuff so I made sure not to notice. I continued to read about the tomato-lookin' hat and even moved on to this one where the baby can have a strawberry-lookin' hat (very similar code) when another lady piped up at my shoulder and said "Why don't you have a seat, dear! You'll be much more comfortable!" and pointed to the advanced knitting table. I said thanks and I will in a bit, and she smiled and walked off. The weird thing was that this lady had humpity-knee, that one where the leg seems to collapse inward at the knee every time it is used to take a step, and the shoe on that leg gets real worn out on the inside of its sole.

Pretty soon Molly had figured out where the yarn she needed for FDR's face was and I came to the counter to pay for the stuff (she is taking all this time on the thing, I should at least help pay you know). Man would you believe it but this third yarn store lady who came up to run the register had sass foot, that condition where every time you lift your foot while walking the foot just shakes around like crazy until you set it down again. (Sass foot people can walk at a normal pace, but it looks completely insane.)

I didn't mention this to Molly but when we were walkin' back home I definitely tried to perceive anything unusual about her gait which might amplify in time. Maybe there is a degenerative chemical in some yarns, like how old hat makers used to get mercury poisoning. I got to get on Google and do some research.

More updates on current TV programs

2005-10-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

I am gonna update you on some more shows that I have not been watching this season, yet which I have watched in previous seasons. Sit back and stay tuned as R. Beef Kazenzakis gives you this week's scoop on...

THE APPRENTICE
(summary narrated by Donald Trump)
Cormax team faced off against the Versatech team to see who could turn the biggest profit on sunglasses and umbrellas on various street corners in Manhattan. Cormax team leader Jackson wisely avoided the Senegalese-dominated Wall Street, and Versatech embarrassed itself when an oblivious team member, Brody, tried to hock a pair of $5 imitation Ray Ban Wayfarers to Karl Lagerfeld, who was getting out of a private car on Lexington Avenue. The agitated Lagerfeld personally came to the Boardroom to fire Brody, who was this week's loser.

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
Larry becomes impatient at a taqueria and remarks to his agent, who is with him, "It's like these people have never made a burrito before!" He does not intend for the cook making his burrito to hear him, but the cook does, and there is a pretty tense moment, and Larry ends up throwing his burrito away in the bathroom, too upset and paranoid to eat it. The next night Larry and his wife are at a reading of Latino poetry, and the main poet is the cook Larry had insulted. Afterwards, at the reception, they discover that the poet had taken a job in the taqueria to make the details of his poetry more real. The poet confronts him about his hateful words, and mentions that everyone at the taqueria knew he had thrown his burrito away in the bathroom, because "never in the history of the taqueria has anyone ever brought their food anywhere near the baño." Larry laughs at this, but it apparently wasn't meant as a joke, because the man just stares at him, then shakes his head and says, "you are a coward." Larry feels bad about this later and talks about it with Julia-Louis Dreyfus.

UNIVISION TELEMUNDO
A thrilled man in a shiny gold suit seems to tell contestants that they have to walk across a narrow Astroturf platform, over a large pool of water, while holding an enormous Great Dane in their arms. When the Great Dane is instead taken outside by models and fed treats in the studio parking lot, I remain confused. What about the Astroturf platform? The show continues on to its musical number, a spicy latina singing dance music to a powerful beat.

There you have it, TV updates from my imagination!

For bonus material this week, a poem from my archives:

- - - - - - - -
CARAMEL TREAT
- - - - - - - -
by R. Beef Kazenzakis

Caramel Treat
Good to eat
Butter and sugar
Tasty and neat

Caramel Treat
Chewy and sweet
Sticks to my teeth
Chewing...
becomes harder
The more I chew...
The tighter my teeth
Are locked together(!)
Frozen, fused together
The caramel was a
Sabotage

- - - - - - - -

I do not watch the Survivor TV show

2005-10-23T00:29:00.000-07:00

I know this ranks me in the bottom 1/3 of all conversational males but I ain't been into watchin' Survivor this season. Molly is into it as always but after 782 seasons of seeing folks get correspondingly skinnier and madder I guess I been tryin' to use the time for something else.

Obviously I can still tell you what weekly Survivor updates would be like though based on havin' watched several seasons in the past. If you also ain't been watchin' Survivor, this is what you probably missed:

THIS WEEK'S...SURVIVOR UPDATE!
WHAT YOU MISSED LAST WEEK:

In an attempt to defend himself against accusations that he napped most of the day, CORY pointed out how QA-MING had failed the team in the Rope Challenge by falling three times.

DEBORAH, winner of the Reward Challenge, enjoyed the Mountain Dew hamburger bar with her mother. She opted not to let CARTER, of rival tribe MBINGUE, see his mother, and this brought tensions to the boiling point.

FRYJVAL went for a refreshing dip in the Cuoonoco and caught several fish, which brought tensions to the boiling point.

JAAQUISHA's frequent attempts to lead the DONANDI tribe into Christian prayer brought Sam and Kyle to the boiling point.

- -

So anyhow if you want to watch TV but you only have access to my URL through your highly damaged Antarctic military Internet workstation (i.e. you can get no URL but mine) then that is basically what you are missing.

Car registration fees due again

2005-10-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Man they hock you up for a couple hundo a year and I got to think they ain't usin' that money properly. If you ever drive by a road work site where some gutto dude with a two-sided STOP/SLOW sign is makin' thirty bucks an hour and he is Lawrence from Office Space, then you know what I mean. That man is takin' home more clams than your basic scientist.

Here is what I think the Department of Motor Vehicles does when they are deciding how to use all our car registration fees.

1. Oh dogg we just got mad checks in the mail! We gonna get off the HOOK!

2. No man we got to use that money on roads and conditions

1. Come on we got to get some beers and some Sam Adams you know?! Fra-lacha!

2. There is a problem with drainage at the Gleason off-ramp

1. So let's park some trucks there from May through July and just party, man!

2. Wait. Really?

1. Who gonna ask, maen?

2. Wow.

1. We can party with my cousin Victor! Mad checks just came in, dooood!

That is what I think happens when I send my money to an office that I never see and they get to use the money in a way I can't see.

So things with me and Molly.

2005-10-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

Well if you want any kind of account the basic fact is that we are hanging around and she usually kicks at my place in the evenings, sometimes staying at her place if she works late and doesn't want to make the long walk from the nearest bus stop to Ray's (since Ray's neighborhood is pretty falutin' they ain't got many bus stops too close by). So that is all fine and good, we get a good balance of time and I can feel free to kick around this place just frettin' or makin' a dish to eat. Truth be told it is more of the former and the last dish I cooked to eat was pretty crass, just some microwaved hot water that I threw frozen peas into and when the peas were hot I ate those with a slotted spoon. I figured the peas had nutrition but I looked them up on Google and peas ain't got zick-dack for my dang endoplasmic reticulum to pass around. My endoplasmic reticulum is like "why did you eat peas." Like it is kind of bored and does not look up from its newspaper.

We are gonna go on a "last picnic" tomorrow, last picnic before it rains kind of thing. It will be good to get a decent sandwich, maybe I will stop havin' the Confusions and feelin' all weak in the morning. Man I got to eat better. It is still noisy, I will go out to Ray's party and get some wings and slaw from the catering. I love on some buffalo wings, all dressed in delectable sauce.

Yeah so what if I went to the dildo store

2005-09-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

Jesus man it does not need to be such a big deal if a regular man goes to the dildo store. Man did I have a damn issue even though a dildo is a basic product and there should be a basic courteous system for buying it. The issue was with the damn earth-dyke ladies who think it is so wicked-cool that they run a dildo store that they cannot take even a moment to sell you a dildo without getting all, "pig-like man, don't you realize that the very joists of the earth come out of a woman's bodungeon" about the whole thing. Jesus I have had it with clerks where the attitude comes first. Sorry to get all Pat.

So anyhow I was looking at all the cases for the longest time with the line "yes please just one real basic manageable dildo" running in my head in case anyone should ever try to help me, but no one ever did. They kept hanging out towards the end of the counter and talking about this recent event which most local lesbians had been at, involving the weekend and a lot of chain-lingerie and the gleeful pissing off of older conservative-type people on the sidewalk. Finally after about five hundred and sixty-seven minutes this lady in a small leather policeman cap and a metal bracelet around her bicep asked me what I needed and I said "a basic dildo without machine functions and maybe just a moderate amount of inches." I guess they aren't used to the plain facts or whatever because there became this big ha-ha-ha of all the ladies gathering around and laughing at what I said. Real humorless I held up four twenty-dollar bills and gave the first lady a pretty cold one right into the eye, which got her attention. After a few seconds of looking at the money she remembered that even jerks got to pay rent and got out a pretty plain little number called "The Colt" and gave me my change. Damn was it good to get out of that goddamned place. Jesus why does it got to be so hard to get anyone an anniversary present in this town. Man am I all steamed up.

Think I might have asthma

2005-09-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

Some dude with just these nasty-ass dreadlocks came by and asked if we had any old bikes that he could fix up but almost immediately I started sneezing nonstop and couldn't talk about bikes. He said "bless you, mon" a few times but after a while of the sneezing he got real annoyed and just kind of said he might try back another time and left. It is possible that he thought I was sneezing as a way of implying that he did not smell so great but folks can't really fake a believable sneeze in the way you can with a cough. Anyhow within thirty seconds my sneezes abated and it was back to normal. Is it asthma when you get the extreme sneezes? Maybe I was just allergic to whatever doo he used while curing his dreads. Seriously, I heard they use dog poo as part of the "rub" that makes their hair turn into that terrible mess. Imagine that, being allergic to rasta people. Put that in your pipe and smoke it (50' or greater from my door).

Got on down to Nicaragua

2005-09-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

Dang so I got on down to Nicaragua and had me some nasty old asado steak and breezy white shirt beach moments. Dirty old trip didn't even cost too much of a dime and all the flights went as planned. I tell you it was nice just to lean back a while at a place a million miles from my mud and let the waiters and hotels do their stuff. It ain't regular that I can let a waiter or staff man serve me without constantly remembering that I am less than him but in this case it was time to stick a buck in the levee and take the old pressure pot off the heat.

The total cost of the trip was $471.89 including all tips and it has all been accounted for and my books are fresh and I am feeling even just a tiny bit juiced. Dogg I got hit in the head with a cold cloud and came back positive.

Might get on down to Nicaragua.

2005-09-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Dang so I been real interested in takin' just a me trip lately, down on south to potentially Nicaragua. There was this pamphlet in the free magazine that comes on Thursdays and it was all about Nicaragua, where apparently you can just have as fine a day as can be cold eating a crispy grilled fish in a pretty affordable resort, tasty Huamototchil sauce on the fish (rich brown sauce with olives), maybe even a personal waiter who waits out of sight but is always mindful of when you need more water or another Modelo. In my vision of me doing this I have on an easygoing white short-sleeve button-up shirt and some huaraches with the sole made outta old tire tread.

Normally I would not take much direction from pamphlets in the free magazine that comes on Thursdays but I guess this one piqued me 'cause I been feelin' a little bit like I ain't exercisin' my right to move freely about the earth much lately.

Anyhow I got a little Spanish goin' on from high school and I figure if you can say the following phrases you can get by without gettin' done up too bad:

¿Cuanto para un cuarto para un señor?
How much for one room for one single man.

¿Donde Ud. piense que esta el luego mejor de los bien cena? No hablo de una restaurante muy caro. Quiero una restaurante con el sabor y ingredientes honéstes.
So, where do you think the best dinner in town is? I'm not talking about an expensive restaurant. I want a restaurant with good value at an honest price. [lightly pound fist twice over heart, purse lips, and nod with sincere eyes]

El conducidor del taxi tenié muchos verrugas. Tenia Ud. <<Handi-Wipes?>>
That cab driver had all kinds of warts. Can you give me some handi-wipes?

Anyhow man I mean this is just a dalliance at this point but I am already imagining all kinds of not being bothered plus a big grilled skirt steak for dinner. Since their economy is basically Sunday mornin's Friday fish I think I could do it up even halfway decent and not get a motel where there are constant drug gang chainsaw murders in the showers in the rooms on either side of mine.

I basically got to not have any tequila

2005-08-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

Dang so on Friday night at Ray's we got pretty crapped up on the stuff and Saturday mornin' I was in all kinds of pain. I had the sweats you know and my gut was just all kinds of feeling like an angry blowfish was wrigglin' around in there which based on how much antics we got up to may well have been the case. I real sourly cooked up this huge egg and cheese scramble 'cause everybody's always tellin' me that greasy food cures a hangover, but the whole time I was makin' it I could just feel myself gettin' sicker. When I finally got it on the plate and sat down at the table with a fork the stuff just welled up in the back of my throat and I ended up Drivin' the Marinara Bus straight into the kitchen trash can. Oh it was so foul, it was foul as a boy dog's ass.

So I kind of grouched around the place all that day not goin' in the sun or having food be at all appealing to me and later on Molly came by with some Jammin' Juice fruit drink blends that she said would help the fog clear. She said all that stuff about eatin' greasy food is just nonsense-bolunkus and is what wasted people say as reasoning to go to Denny's at 6am. The fruit drink actually helped the pain go away so before too many hours had gone by I was able to put my feet in the hot tub and later on we watched some old X-Files about like these Amish people who had a soap cave that led to hell or something.

Had to give knife back

2005-08-14T02:11:00.000-07:00

Dang so I finally had to return that weird hundred dollar knife because I was startin' to have trouble sleepin' and was all imaginin' it moving slowly toward me at night, at one point I even mentally made a little calculation of how long I could afford to sleep based on how far the knife was from me. When you start doing awake-in-the-dark mental math based on a knife crawling towards you to kill you, you basically have a problem on your hands. I put the thing in this nice heavy black workman's lunchbox and took it down to Granite earlier today when Molly was at work, and they gave me kind of a hard time about having them open the lunchbox and eventually called security, so I gave in and opened it and they agreed to lift the knife out while I stood a little bit over by the cookbooks. I got to tell you my nerves were real weird and at heightened sensations.

Anyhow they credited my debit card and on the Reason For Return form I just wrote "My problem, not yours" and took off. I ain't ever expect to be back there, you know.

Granite

2005-08-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Dang so maybe if you don't know this or you do there is this fancy cooking supplies shop down at Hidden Hills Select Shoppes, like where you can pay upwards of $8.50 for a five-ounce canister of sea salt which came from such preferred salt-having areas as the Inner Balkans. It is called "Granite" and we went into there today, Molly and I, because she got the cooking bug after spending some time at this new falutin' place she has been waitressing at. I didn't know what particular product she was after but I guessed it would come in a fancy box and somebody in a fancy slate-gray "Granite"-embroidered apron over a button-up shirt would sell it to us with a smile and damn serious of a commission. (Never buy anything from a live being is what I always say and I suspect this has saved me a dollar in my time.)

So we got into this place and immediately there are five kinds of thermometers for food or pastry or candy-making, a cheese slicer that was made in China (in China they got basically no cheese at all), and the usual assortment of upscale Micronesian salts. I considered it a bad sign that she immediately picked up a basket as though to procure more than one kind of regional salt and perhaps a limited edition maple-handled boutique pasta-forming implement.

While she was wanderin' around raisin' my blood pressure I tried to cool off by lookin' at their more sensible items such as a dutch oven (keeps heat real well, real long-lastin'), and their knives. I was takin' I guess a pretty long gander at this nice German 8" number when Molly snuck up behind me and said "Why don't you get it!"

I said pretty quick that I didn't want to get it because it cost exactly $120.00, but then she started talking like all this magic kitchen talk about different cuts of meat and carrots and there was this line like "the most dangerous knife is a dull one" and my brain thought that since this knife is expensive it is the knife which will never betray me, that is what I am paying for, a lifetime of safety and happy Thanksgivings where the meat is perfect and I walk out of the kitchen to huge applause, both hands held high, bandage-free. I thought back to that two-dollar Safeway knife I been usin' in the pool house at Ray's, that one where if you try to cut a tomato in half it presses down so hard and bad that eventually the tomato just gives up and forms ketchup, and damn if I didn't buy a DOG GAM KNIFE that cost over a hundred dollars.

I got it here next to me at the keyboard now, and it's a heavy old thing. It's got like this kind of "activity" around it, you know, like an automatic transmission car that rolls slowly forward even though you are not pressing on the gas. It wants to cut things. Man how do the Germans do this. I know they sit around and talk about perfection for hours but damn they can shape inanimate steel to want to move forward. It is like having a basic earthworm beside me, only it is a worm that seems like it might be able to learn and hate, and if I look away it might be gone about its duty. Nobody ever said it would be easy owning a hundred dollar knife.

Oh and for her part Molly bought this fancy vanilla extract for using in cookies, it was like five bucks so I just tacked it onto my bill even though I knew nothing about it in advance.

No more money for poems I guess

2005-07-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

Dang man Chris was like "no sorry no more money for poems the deal fell through" so I guess I got to not post my poems here anymore. Too bad, there was just this insane one comin' up that dealt with a long black licorice rope and a child's nightmare. I wonder what happened with him. I guess poems are a rough business, lots of competition from ladies and high school people.

Well let's see now what is interesting...defragged my drives on Monday, got into a new flavor of sunflower seed on Monday night while that was finishing up (Salsa Limon, real spicy, often makes me cough), and pretty late on Monday I read this real interesting article about people who get on heroin. It turns out that phrase "there but for the grace of God go I," could also go a lot like "there but for the grace of not having tried heroin go I." Pretty sticky sweets, that stuff.

Rest of the week is pretty mundane stuff, just tryin' not to spend too much money and then we gonna get cracked on Friday 'cause Ray is havin' this party where the theme is to be stoned and paint his emptied-out swimming pool (it needed repairs after we jumped this beater old Nissan into it last week).

Product return at OfficePerfect

2005-07-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

Man so like I had this pretty rough day, this guy at OfficePerfect thought I was lying about this defective hard drive I needed to return and asked me all kinds of dumb questions about master/slave pin arrangement and partitions and I was like look dude these simple basic questions are kind of like asking me if I put my socks inside my shoes this morning and can you please call a clerk who is less of a runty little asshole from high school man can you? I actually said those exact words and he looked at me kind of in a hard challenge but then when I continued to stare at him and wave the hard drive under my nose real slow I guess he remembered that he was a runty asshole from high school and he left.

Man why are there kids like that.

Anyhow then I got this real big lady who was just so sweet about everything, you know, the kind of person who is like "all the bullshit of this world is nothing to me, can I set things right with you, because I have that power," and I was like damn thank you Female Partition Jesus for sending just like the first nice person in twenty years down my path so I can get a new hard drive without much hassle and also just relate with a person who is kind in the first place. I do not mix much with essentially kind people.

At the short and tasty end of it I traded up slightly for a bigger HD and most importantly I met a person who I think is good. I never meet a person who is even remotely good, in my dealings over hw/food/what have you, so it was memorable. I know the lady from OfficePerfect probably has no recollection of this but it left a pretty big impression on me.

Oh man I can get a Swiss army knife now

2005-07-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

Dang I was down at Hidden Hills Trading Post today looking for a propane canister for this camp stove I am usin' to cook outdoors this summer and dang I saw this counter display of Victorinox Swiss Army Knives. If you were ever a kid and mainly a guy kid you know what I'm talking about. When you are like 8, a Swiss Army Knife is way better, and much more exciting than even pussy. (This is mainly because if I had had access to a pussy at age 8, I would have like yelled into it and run away laughing, and other things which if I did them at my current age would be guaranteed to get my photo up at the post office.) Anyways my dream as a kid was always to get just the biggest one they made, the SwissChamp, which has 33 features including a micro-screwdriver for glasses frames, a fish scaler, magnifying glass...you know what I mean.

I looked around the tri-sided display case a few times before seeing it: The SwissChamp. Oh man it is like 1.6" wide and just the fattest little thing you ever wanted to hold in your hand. It is like Golden Hand Dimensions, you know, that concept from geometry but applied to ergonomics. The hand evolved to hold this item. All of its tools were artfully fanned out and damn I almost whipped out the debit card right there. "I can probably get more of a deal on eBay though," I thought, "especially on a used one that might be missing the toothpick which I never wanted anyway." Damn it was exciting to think that just lickety-snap I could have bought the holy grail of boy childhood just like that. Simultaneously, it was depressing to think that I no longer had the freedom from worries and cares to properly enjoy such a thing. If I disappeared into the woods for seven hours then my spam emails would stack up like a thousand deep and Molly would be all pissed and like "where did you go why didn't you tell me" and Ray would probably come around needin' help gettin' his mouse plugged into the USB port and there is a chance other things might happen. I can't get to whittlin' a simple pine twig or constructing a bridge for ants or a flutter-mill over a rivulet etc. That time is past, I guess.

So, I will not buy the knife, which is good since for reasons mentioned past I got to be more sensible about money. What is going on with me lately?! I am completely trying to spend money at every turn. I need to examine if I am watching too much TV ads.

July Poems (getting $10 now)

2005-07-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Chris said he got some real strong interest in my June poems so he upped the ante to ten bucks a month for 1k of poems. That was real nice of him, you know. I'm gonna try to sock some of this away as Savings 'cause I been pretty irresponsible lately, bought this six-pack of retro-lookin' sodas at this upscale grocery store simply because Molly said she thought they were cute and I was (in my mind) all "let's be the Man here, treat the lady to a thing." So anyhow I guess this month's poetry money is already spent but ain't no man on earth isn't born owin' all his wages to the bank or the tax man.

Anyhow, here is a poem for now.

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Let's All Taste My Pizza Pie
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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Look, I paid for it,
But I guess take a bite.
When dudes who don't share die
No one gives a shite.

No don't offer me a Camel
I didn't mean to scowl.
Sure yes have another piece
I'll go get you a paper towel.

Oh you had a third!
I guess it is quite tasty.
What is that you say?
You missed your morning pastry?

Look now just eat what you want
And I will take what's left.
I used to think more of you Todd,
Until this pizza theft.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Okay so uh that poem isn't real important or anything but I was trying to get down the techniques he used to eat four slices of my fresh hot pizza from Affagattzo's. When he leaves you learn that he is a master at just playing you for what he wants when originally you should have just kicked him on the side of the body.

Got paid, so here is more poetry.

2005-06-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Chris did pay me the five smackeroos for my May poems so here is my first June installment. I would have done this sooner but Gramma K needed to be in the hospital for The Stuff (it is this term she has for when she thinks she has cancer) and since she is so old they always keep her for a while and run a million tests and no wonder health insurance is so rough on the pocketbook. Anyhow, I had to constantly sit vigil in the waiting room, which is what we do in my family. Uncle George and Aunt Nina, cousin Dave and his wife, Fred, Jszanus from Omaha, everybody except Showbiz. Nobody had heard from him in a while. We mostly sat around and read until the nurses said we had to go home at the end of visiting hours.

Anyhow here are the first June poems. This week we take a look at Asia, more specifically Japan.

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Sushi Place
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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Hello, lady.
Say it to my face!
You want to go
To the sushi place.

It costs a ton of money,
To eat an eel cadaver.
That slimy little sucker
Does not make me slaver.

Oh you know I think I've got it,
You want me to be poor.
You figure if I'm broke,
You can show me to the door.

Men let's all step back and see
What sushi's really for.
Giant raw clam (Mirugai)
Is how a woman says goodbye.

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Japanese Tea Ceremony
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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Observe the ancient tea ceremony
It is a good ceremony
Watching it on Discovery Channel
Because your girlfriend wants to
Is a bad ceremony

Crap, dude. Honestly.

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More of the 1kb of poetry

2005-05-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Just a real quick update today from the pile of poems I got sitting on my desktop. Thank you for emailing that you like these poems and you think I did a good job. It is not often anyone would say such a thing to me.

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Watermelon
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The stripes on a watermelon
look much like a brain.
The dark green impasto
resembles a vein.

So if the melon is truly
a throbbing thing of beauty
will the men of science find
that melons can read one's mind?

Welcome, watermelon,
to my mental library.
Make yourself at home among
the apocalyptic coterie.

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Hot Dogs
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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A hot dog is whipped meat
the skin yields a snap.
The flavor unmistakable
the condiments eternal.

Ketchup, mustard,
ground onions and kraut,
pepperoncini, tomato,
all flavor the snout.

But inside the foodstuff
a hidden ink pen
single-shot .45 Magnum
hidden in the pen.

OH SHIIIIIIIT

Five bucks for poetry

2005-05-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

Chris said he would pay me five dollars a month to publish 1k words of the poems I got sittin' around on my desktop so basically since I have around 30k words of poetry that's $150 the easy way and I can use that money to fix the screen door at Gramma K's from where she wheeled into it in a drunken rage as I was leaving last time. Anyhow here is some of my poetry. I will do this in installments.

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Avocado
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Smell the avocado
Touch it and notice the softness
But what is that nub,
at the top ?
Did you press on it;
I hope you did not.
Because the avocado
-- you guessed it--
...is a grenade.

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Here is the Hard-Boiled Egg
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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Here is the hard-boiled egg.
It is what you wanted.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mexican Restaurant of Death
by R. Beef Kazenzakis
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The taco itself is crispy;
tacos often are.
If you have a Mexican meal,
the taco is often the star.

Perhaps you prefer some beans;
or a long burrito bar.
It doesn't really matter,
if the Mexican restaurant is where you are.

My friend I hate to say it,
because we've come so far,
but hidden in the chalupa
is a ninja throwing star.

OH SHIIIIIIT

Vaporizer !

2005-05-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

Oh hee man but dang Téodor got this vaporizer and I tell you man it is like taking a hit off of one of those electric glass science globes that got a ball in the center and all this electricity radiates out towards the outer glass sphere. You know what I mean; it is like a 3-D bloodshot eyeball where the veins are replaced by slow ghostly lightning.

Me and him cooled it pretty good over at his place, no one was buggin' about the weed and plus the vaporizer creates like zero smells anyway due to the precisely calculated temperature holding point that does not ignite the plant matter. After we got pretty mad on the stuff he played real good old albums, like False Prophets and SLF and all this original old punk which has good bass guitar lines and inventive usage of destroyed guitar signals. Good bass guitar lines and a good singer is really what separates a decent punk outfit (7 Seconds, Operation Ivy) from the ribble rabble. You may not agree that Jello Biafra should sing the national anthem at the Kennedy Center Arts Honors but you will agree that without Paul Simonon The Clash would still be together and covering "Oh Mickey You're So Fine" at the opening of a specialized shoe store for folks who have extreme foot corns.

Okay uh thank you for reading Roast Beef's punk rock thought corner and next week I will say a few words about how it is too bad that nobody has Drunk Injuns albums anymore except for Tommy Guerrero's aunt who has all his old skate-era stuff in her attic.

bad weekend

2005-04-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

Dog so mainly I had a pretty bad weekend, it was a big thing going on at Ray's and Molly had some new spring dresses I could tell she wanted to dud up at the party, plus the weather has been good, and Téodor has been pretty on as far as email goes lately, and I was supposed to go to Ray's party and cool on it. However I did not want to.

First of all Showbiz called and he was pretty Needy (by Needy I mean he was on the meth and talking like Sharon Stone Casino fast) so I let him talk for a while and since I was in a bad mood I let my brother just blabber and when he finally thought his rhetoric had worn me down I said "dang man but that is bad. But I ain't got some green for you, you know, since right now is bad for me too." I could completely tell that he was used to people using that syntax and idea so it went pretty easy, he just said "Yeah" and hung up.

Secondly none of the nails on my right side have grown for over two weeks and I am sure I can trace this to a pretty bad vitamin deficiency or a tumor blocking the vitamins from going down my bloodstream on the right side. I am concerned about this. I might have haemoplasia or also series-10 duralitis. I guess I got to go down to the Lemoni center and get some bloodwork done this week. Dang but that is sour.

TiVo

2005-04-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

So Molly got this spare TiVo box from Tina since Tina had upgraded her box to one that holds more shows. She brought it to the pool house and I set up a little wireless router that connects to a USB receiver device on the unit. A phone call later and we had the TiVo service. It is essentially amazing. Basically it is a proactive VCR with a great GUI and when you wake up the next day it has like sixteen shows you completely want to see. And you can toggle past the ads with like a simple flick of the button. Dogg it up.

I have it recording all kinds of X-Files as well as Arrested Development, and even on a lark I am having it tape this cooking show by Jacques Pepin (old school French cook) where he does nutty stuff like make complicated food real accessible to the average dummy, including braised beef and like fun French pastas which include eggs.

Okay so I am talking about TiVo. You probably already know all this stuff. If you will excuse me I will just go watch the TiVo and not prattle on about how I like to watch TV. If my blog was as sophisticated as TiVo, you would probably be able to apply for a rebate.

I had to go to the mall for a while

2005-04-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

I mean it's crazy but why is it that sometimes when you go to the mall you see a really horrible cross-section of types of problems that can befall the body or mind.

Yesterday I went on down to the Bel Via SouthSide Arcade because Molly got this one gift certificate for some Lady Foot Locker shoes and I was like sure, I will go with you. I like when she has cute shoes on and I definitely have not liked some of the shoes she has chosen in the past.

Anyhow it was a pretty crowded day at the mall and it was one of those Sad Days, you know, when the public assistance groups have all converged on the mall as that day's outing. I saw a lot of bad stuff and it was profoundly depressing. Here is a list of the stuff that I saw while we were trying to buy a fun pair of sporty shoes for my lady.

1) Molly went into this one store to look at swimsuit tops and since it was pretty crowded I decided to stay out of the fray and hang in the atrium in front of the store. A kind of big-butt lady was walking towards me so I looked in her direction kind of carefully, making sure my glance was casting across her as she walked, so as to imply that I had been sweeping my gaze in that direction regardless of her presence. Dang but this lady had a thick purple birthmark across the right half of her face, and it was thick like a scab, the skin did not behave like regular face skin. It kind of gave her a dummy-pinch and the real sad part was that you could tell she was not a dummy, just deformed. Whenever I see a person like that all deformed by skin conditions, in my mind I try to make a situation where a man who really loves her treats her right and sees her true self, like a nice Jason Alexander. Maybe that is the only way I can move on. I know that that woman will probably have a pretty hard time finding a boyfriend who is not fraught with his own issues, though.

2) Retard square dancing.
Well, the square dancers themselves were not retarded, but they were performing in the main open area in front of the entrance to Macy's and all these really retarded people were sitting on the planterbox benches and also on the ground, watching the dancers. The square dancers were obviously this horribly embarrassed group of church kids in embroidered denim shirts who were being led around the basic square dance moves by this old man in a bolo tie and pervert smile, like he was their youth group leader, and he kept staring at the little girl with the microphone to make sure she kept saying the "do-si-do" square dance words. He had a smile the whole time, even though you could tell he was mad at how bad everybody was fucking up. The square dancing the kids did was among the most uncomfortable forced adolescent activity I have ever seen firsthand.

3) A little while later I saw a small group of helpers helping a retarded girl who had peed her pants into the restroom. They were being really nice to her and making sure she did not feel she did anything wrong.

Molly did not end up liking any of the shoes available and then we paid over seven dollars each for sandwiches at the food court before we headed home. Even now the horrible lives of the people at the mall are causing me pretty haunting thoughts. That lady with the birthmark, can she even feel it when she scratches the thick purple skin?

Kimora Lee Simmons

2005-04-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

What the fuck is that all about

Greeks and Catholics

2005-04-07T00:30:00.000-07:00

Dang I guess I should have figured on getting emails from folks who know that Greeks ain't tend to be Roman Catholics and concerned about the Pope. Actually your emails were sent to me from Ray, because he has a public email address due to his old advice column and that was the only way folks could get in touch. Anyhow.

You got to understand that when junk and brains cross the Atlantic a lot gets lost in the mix. Gramma K is old-school Greek, but she was sold into indentured servitude at birth (Pueblo, Colorado) and brought up in a Roman Catholic household, as was Uncle George, her brother. That's why we are Greek but observe the schedule of the papacy. We ain't got much to do with the Orthodoxy.

I think you might agree that religion is one part inheritance and one part emotional problems. I sat around during this Pope stuff and I just thought that it was too bad that an old man had died; I didn't feel like a deep emotion in my bones. An old dude who had a good life died, but still who ever wants to shuffle off, you know. Nobody does. The Pope shuffled off, and at his last moments he probably didn't want to go, but he knew his stuff was shuttin' down, and his death chemicals were releasin', tryin' to alleviate him from pain. The dude faced it and he knew it. The bravest thing we ever do, half-conscious debutantes to the circles of death, is roll down that last aisle. I guess it's more like an escalator, actually, since you ain't in control of the speed.

Anyhow I guess I am glad that is over. Gramma K has done all her ceremonial rites and stuff and we ain't got to act all reverent or quiet around her. It won't be a few weeks before she is making her horrible unsalted soda bread again and also giving us jars of plums packed in air.

Who had the worst weekend, besides the Pope? Me.

2005-04-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

Damn it I spent entirely the whole weekend on vigil at Gramma K's. I know we got all kinds of issues but when stuff is happening with the Pope the Kazenzakises ain't got no choice but to get to the place where the oldest nastiest family member lives and make some kind of heritage-style dishes and wear the black ties. Uncle George and Aunt Nina were there, and Cousin David and his wife, and Fred, and Jszanus from Omaha, and you ain't gonna believe this but even Showbiz blew into town.

If you don't know it, Showbiz is my twin brother. I ain't seen too much of his hide or tail since about two years ago, and then we didn't end exactly on auspicious circumstances (he borrowed a ton of money from me but not enough to make any difference in his debts). Even though my whole family is basically a flock of black sheep he manages to have the darkest hide of all, and is constantly being fooled by either himself or a person with a clean-pressed shirt and a convincing attitude.

He worked the room in his good style, and he looked kind of sunny and clean, which is how he usually spends the first day. He was super good with George and Nina and even held both their hands in a prayer for the Pope, which I know is BS because Showbiz ain't got a religious bone in his body. I knew from instant one that he was scoping them out for cash.

Over the Meal Table we kind of caught up, you know, in that way that brothers can do real quick and dirty while no one's listening. I will write down the dialogue we had as I remember it, so you can get a pretty clear picture of what he and I said.

BEEF: Dang man so where you at these days Showbiz

SHOWBIZ: Man, all's good! I'm in San Punto, got a gig with this local airline! You oughta come down, man!

B: How'd you get up here

S: I flew, man! My carrier, I got free flights wherever I wanna go! You need a ride, try me sometime!

B: Stuff OK with your debts, Rockford Fosgate and all that?

S: Fuckin' A, man! That's ancient news!

B: Seriously, let me know about that stuff. I'll help calculate debt tables and schedules and all of that.

S: Fuckin' A, Roast Beef! The Pope just died! Let's get us some dolmas and steal a bottle of Uncle George's Retsina!

B: Oh damn man let me find something else

S: Hah! Man, Uncle George's Retsina always gives you the ass bilge!

B: [locates a Corona on the fridge door]

Anyhow Showbiz has basically managed to find a job with the only pyramid-scheme small airport courier in the state. I didn't know you could have a pyramid scheme based on small airport transportation but it has something to do with recruiting cub scout troops to come to local small airports and then charging them a fee to watch his company's planes, which do small-scale deliveries, land and take off again. Sometimes if the pilot is sober or not smoking he will talk to the scouts, in a special "Airline Minute." Showbiz's job is to arrange these meetings with the local cub scout troops. He says the greatest part of his job is that most cub scout troops are online these days and he can find them pretty easy.

Anyhow, the Pope died, and the Kazenzakises have been pretty busy this week. Showbiz left this afternoon on a Cessna headed for Yuba City.

Man this is just nuts.

2005-04-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

So as most of you will maybe know if you are reading this, I lived in Gramma K's trailer for a while but then I moved out and now I got digs in Ray's pool house. Still though Gramma K is real old school Greek about stuff and I got all this Easter stuff such as a little lapel pin of an angel that she wanted me to wear when I came over so she could cross me and we could pray on Showbiz for a minute. I wore the angel on my lapel and I felt completely stupid about it because a company made this stupid plastic/metal angel thing and my gramma bought it and now it is like supposed to be this important thing in our life. The bottom line is that Showbiz is a pretty stupid guy but he is my brother and no amount of religion is ever going to make me less responsible for him when he screws up. Gramma's opinion on people who screw up all the time is that we need to buy extra plastic angels for them. One time when we prayed I said I was mad at Showbiz for letting us all down and she slapped me really hard across the left part of my mouth, kind of putting a sting on the left part of my lips, which took a few days to heal.

Sit-down breakfast

2005-03-23T01:17:00.000-08:00

Molly was real nice to me the other day and got me the Muffuletta sandwich from Pullardi's, which is a sandwich that is extremely extravagant. I think it is over twenty dollars and feeds like eleven people, and normally I would have talked her out of it and just had us get the steamed ham sandwich to share, but she was completely in charge and I went with the program. She seemed to like being in charge and it was interesting to see where she took things.

Anyhow since she did this nice thing for me I naturally felt like I had to reciprocate so as not to appear unappreciative. I decided that I would cook a sit-down breakfast for us, using the fancy kitchen at Ray's. I think a sit-down breakfast is a pretty classy event, as in the past breakfast used to be a much bigger deal than it is now (a man presses a whole Krispy-Kreme into his mouth as he falls into his lowest-trim-level Pontiac Grand Am and drives to work at Edward T Jones Investments, where he will have instant coffee in the microwave).

I think a classy breakfast of the old school has poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce in a silver gravy boat with a ladle, sausages, bacon, crumpets, English muffins, home fries, French toast, chopped fruits, and tea with milk. I got up around four AM to get all the stuff ready and transfer it to these nice silver chafing dishes Ray had out in the garage cupboards.

Dang but do you even know how hard it is to poach an egg. I thought it would be easy but the damn eggs would just plop into the water and expand over the whole pan, making like an egg handkerchief. About thirty eggs later I had two that looked reasonable, so I set those aside just as Molly showed up with a pretty bad hangover (she works at The Smoke now and I guess she stayed up doing Jagermeister shots with her workmate Kelly after they closed).

She said she needed to go lie down and went to the living room to nap while I finished the rest of breakfast. Her breath smelled pretty bad, and she hadn't changed clothes, so maybe she didn't even go home. Anyhow, I got the French toast nice and crisp the way I like it, and cooked up a nasty-fine batch of my well-known home fries, and browned the meats all nice. After forty-five minutes Molly was still passed out, though, and she had dumped out this vase to use as a puke bucket, so I started to formulate Plan B. I did not want all the good food to go waste, so I set up a pretty nice tray to bring up to Ray.

I knew that he would not budge from sleep unless I made him a fogcutter of some type, so I set that on the tray and brought it on up. He wasn't in his bed, so I had to look around a bit and found him buried in his walk-in closet in this huge pile of all-Fila track suits. You never can tell what exactly he was thinking the night before when he decided where he felt most comfortable going to sleep.

Long story short, nobody ate any of the food I cooked except me, and it all cost like forty-five dollars, so on that day I had literally thrown away forty-five dollars before breakfast. I sat in the living room with Molly until she was able to get up again, and read old copies of People, which is about the brightest magazine Ray gets.

Holy Jones can you even believe what I did

2005-03-12T03:45:00.000-08:00

Man uh so I guess it ain't no secret that I like to read on the pot ever since Ray went and told the whole world that time he mentioned it in his old advice column (third letter down). Well anyways I was chilling in his room using his G5 to try to isolate some cross-platform CSS issues I was having with this one page I had been coding. It turns out I had to do B.M. so I went into his master bathroom can and got about my business. When I was starting the business I saw that the toilet paper dispenser was empty and I kind of freaked out because it was too late to put on the brakes, you know, but fortunately I looked to my right and saw a little basket with some new rolls in it. While I was sitting there transacting business I took the old cardboard tube off the dispenser and loaded the new roll on. I dropped the spent tube into the basket lining of this pair of swim trunks I had on, for temporary holding so I could throw it away when I finished up (I could not reach the trash can).

Ray had this copy of Penthouse in the magazine rack by the toilet. Tucked inside it was a German magazine called BBW KüchenFückers, which was weird, but whatever, you know. It was all these pictures of chubby ladies grinding on cakes and smiling into the camera. Anyhow I got kind of caught up in the Letters section of Penthouse, reading all the sexual escapade stuff like about a dude who was laid by hot twins after he taught his art class, etc. I estimate maybe twenty minutes passed, during which I did a quick statistical analysis and calculated that the average Penthouse Letters contributor claims that his penis is 9.5" long. I guess the average guy wants a penis that would stick out the other end of a 7-Layer Burrito.

Anyhow when I got done I stood up and drew my shorts up real quick and forgot that the cardboard tube was still in the middle of my drawers. It felt kind of creepy and when I looked at myself in the mirror the tube kind of made this shape like Darth Vader's triangular mouthpiece and so I said "It looks like your father made a mistake, Luke."

Anyhow, I'll leave that little scene to play out in your own head because I have got to hit the hay. I have this hunch that Mt. St. Helens is gonna erupt for real tomorrow morning at 7:26am and I have $5 riding on it with Ray.

A man wanted to sell me a car

2005-02-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

Dang so like I was completely walking along, and all of a sudden this guy wanted to sell me a car. I don't need a car so from the get-go I kind of approached the situation sort of fancifully. I was walking past the main parking lot for the Lemoni medical center, where a lot of cars that are for sale are usually parked along the sidewalk with their phone numbers on an interior placard.

I was just a dude who was walking so it struck me as weird that the guy was as aggressive as he was. His banter at first seemed kind of charming and Sales-y, but as we started to talk about the car more it became clear that he was probably a crazy person. He started to say all this stuff about how like if I had any second thoughts we could talk about the car over a round at Pebble Beach and then he even said some misogynistic stuff about women.

It was pretty strange to see a crazy person talk. He was really pushy and tried to get my home address, and he also wanted to know where I went to school. I figured out that he was trying to build up like a case study on me so that he could murder me, and I had all these ideas about pushing him over, but in the end I just left and walked away while he yelled towards me. You don't want to aggravate a crazy person, you never know when they'll fixate on you and try to come into your bedroom and do just unthinkable stuff.

Dang why did I cook penis food

2005-02-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

Man so usually I just keep all my food out in the little cube fridge in the pool house and go inside to cook it and cool it with whoever's at Ray's. Today I was all excited to make a turkey burger (less sodium than ground chuck) with cheese and bacon and salami and pickle. It's kind of my version of a "meat lover's burger," which sounds like a food item a chain restaurant would offer. When I got inside Lyle and Ray were downing Long Island Iced Teas and talking shit at the breakfast bar, and I set about cooking my treat.

I started by heating up the pan and throwing a strip of turkey bacon in (again, less sodium) and two pieces of turkey salami (way less sodium). After I threw the second piece of salami in I did this huge double-take: I had thrown the salami in on either side of the bacon, since the bacon was laying across the middle of the pan, and it completely looked like cock and balls. Terrified, I quickly scooted the food around with a spoon, and it ended up looking like a smile. Then I realized that if anybody was watching, it would look like the food was creating a progression of ideas where (1) I like the shape of cock and balls, and then (2) I express my happiness about cock and balls by rearranging the meat to look like a smile.

I tried to make it look like a frown but the bacon was kind of hard to move around and I ended up taking one of the pieces of salami out early so that the organization of the meat didn't look like too much of anything, but fortunately when I looked up no one was actually paying any attention to me and so I threw it back in, in the smile configuration.

The burger was pretty good, and as I was eating it I felt myself calming down about the cock and balls thing.

Finally finished my taxes

2005-01-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

Dang it took me nearly forever to finish my taxes this year. I feel like kind of a knob for struggling so long with the Schedule C-21 form (Statement of Minimally Acquired Assets and Declaration of Trans-Assets) since I been doing it for so long based on owning Gramma K's trailer and being co-signed on the EPMRA-4 Pension that she gets from Gerber. I guess the thing that threw me was trying to figure out how much of the Assigned Shelter Credit I could prorate to myself based on having moved out before the year ended. You really don't want to screw up your ASC because it's a real red flag for gettin' audited. There were no real clear guidelines on the IRS-U site or any of the major tax prep websites, so I gave myself the minimum and figure anything else will come as part of my refund, which I already need to spend on repairs to the trailer (rain gutters have grass growing in them and are all rusted).

Anyhow, I finished my taxes so I feel like doing a little celebrating. Maybe I'll borrow an Amstel from Ray and shoot some pool. No, I better go buy one. I ate some of his Fritos last night. I have to stop getting high and acting like everything is mine. That is so low class.

Korean bbq lunch

2005-01-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

It is insane, what they do is have a hot sizzling grill at your table and you go get the raw meats and cook them yourself. I went down to the Coriya Hot Pot City (yeah, the spelling is unusual) with Ray and Pat today to have dudes' lunch and it was some grub. As usual Ray bought us all big Tsing Tao beers and we got kind of nutty before the grill heated up. He dared me to go get hot dogs and buns from the grocery next door and I was like oh no crap dude I can't do that, they will hell of kick us on the tuchus, straight to the gutter. Ray don't stand down from no idea after a few O-Zs though so he went and picked up dogs and all the fixins. When he busted back in he started grillin' it all up and asked the waiter if he wanted to get in on the action. I was freakin' out because lunch was $14 each (you pay up front) and I didn't want to get it on the ear.

Damn but I guess since it wasn't crowded (we eat late) the dude was mad down for a break from wiping off grills. Ray ordered a big Tsing Tao for the guy, from the guy, which took a little while to get across, but then the dude came out with it and started cooking up a dog. Ray gave him his leather Raiders cap and he put it on backwards. He didn't speak too much English but with some more beers it didn't matter, he was mad laughing and daring Ray to eat all kinds of the weird seafood and organ meats from the meat bar. Ray ate something that looked like an empty finger, a round white ball that he said tasted "absolutely awful," and this weird little fish with big orange egg sacs hanging out of the bottom part where the fish pees from. Every time he ate another weird thing the waiter would laugh and pound his open palms on the table, and pretty soon the other waiters and even the dishwasher were out, throwing different meats down on the grill for Ray to eat and betting money on whether he could gag it down. Ray was performing like a champ, just getting the runtiest and most discolored tubes and ligaments down, and the crowd was going wild. Beers were set down in front of us from out of nowhere, and I saw a couple guys in the crowd taking gulps from this jar that had a rattlesnake in it.

At the height of the excitement this ancient Korean dude in huge sunglasses and a three-piece suit kind of drifted up to the front of the action, and he had a ceramic bowl with a lid. It got real quiet when people saw this guy, and all the money stopped changing hands. Ray sucked a big gulp of Tsing Tao down and looked around, confused by the silence. Then he spotted the guy and the bowl, looked coolly at him for about five real tense seconds, and nodded resolutely. The crowd went mad, waving money around like crazy, and the ancient Korean dude smiled with a barely perceptible thinning of the lips. He set the bowl down on the table and put on one thin white cotton glove. The crowd grew silent again.

He took the lid slowly off with his ungloved hand, set it down, and then reached into the bowl with his gloved hand. Out he pulled a tiny little live baby bird, without even any feathers, squirming and squealing like crazy.

All eyes were on Ray, and he didn't change his expression for about a full minute. I'm not really sure he knew what he was supposed to do with the bird, but when he tied his napkin around his forehead like a bandanna the place went nuts. The ancient man walked over, motioned for Ray to open his mouth, and when he did, the man gingerly pushed the squealing bird down his throat with one finger while a waiter set a little glass of the snake liquor down. Ray took it with one shaky hand and drained it. Then the little man leaned over and whispered into his ear, "Now you know what it is, to have death inside you." He patted him on the shoulder and disappeared into the crowd with his bowl as they erupted into deafening applause, hollers and fist-pumping.

Ray didn't say much as we paid and left, and when we got out to his Escalade we realized that he wasn't well. It was like something had cracked inside his brain, and when I tried to check his pupils he fell down onto the curb in a trance. We rushed him to Dr. Andretti's and explained what had happened, and Doc pumped his stomach. Ray's there overnight for observation and I'll go check him out tomorrow. He might need some kind of therapy after a lunch like that, and sleeping pills at night. I know I ain't goin' nowhere near my pillow. I got a hot pot of Joe here and a big old list of code I been meaning to work on.

$

2005-01-05T01:32:00.000-08:00

Dang I got to calm down. Molly had kind of a scratchy throat and so I said I would make her soup dinner if she rested on the couch under a blanket, but she didn't want any of the soups she had so I kind of played The Man and was all Yeah I will go get you some of your favorite flavors of soup. I went over to Round Nation, since they are open late and have a pretty decent selection of fresh bread (she likes crusty cheese toast) and those fancy canned Vonrieght Auf Den Krightenmueller gourmet soups. His soups are freaky-sodiumy but she has naturally low blood pressure so it is not so much of an issue with her. I got her a can of "Spaetzle with Squab Confit" or something since that was about as close as he gets to chicken soup. I also picked up some Pemmican Tender for the walk home, but you ain't got to know about that.

Anyhow the thing that made me nervous was that when I was checking out the clerk lady counted out a twenty for me even though I did not select Cash Back. I think she was just in the routine of giving people a twenty back. I took it, even though I had so many voices in my head telling me not to. I tucked it nonchalantly into my pocket and left with my bag. The whole time when I was walking across the dark parking lot and down along the sidewalk home I felt like cops were gonna bust all up on me and corner me. I was stiff and in hell the whole time. I should have just realized that no one was gonna miss that twenty until they closed a couple hours later. But now I can't go back there because they all will know I'm a crook. Man why did I take that twenty. If I could ever do a single thing to not screw up my life it would be a goddam miracle.

I go for walks

2004-12-24T02:15:00.000-08:00

I been going on a lot of walks since I took in at Ray's place. I guess it is kind of my thing I do during the evening during the time when me and Molly used to just sit in and watch Jeopardy. I never felt too good about watching TV during the dinnertime hours as I suspected it led to poor metabolism. Now I am free to skulk all around like a ghost and this is pretty much great.

Tonight was a pretty normal one. I usually walk behind the public storage place so that I can see if anything interesting is happening in the hidden trailer park there (the one between the building and the highway wall) and usually I get to see a yelling or two or maybe just an old man who is so drunken that he is out in his robe with no underpants and squaddling on his little crummy porch, a bottle in his hand and the boogie all shriveled and sitting on the wood. Tonight an extremely dumb guy (you could tell by his grammar) was promising to cook chilaquiles for this other dirtbag and they were yelling about it inbetween all the trailers. I don't know why I went there, I guess it reminds me of my place in things. If you don't know, chilaquiles is a crummy Mexican dish of crumbled tortilla chips stirred in with scrambled eggs and salsa. It is crass and shitty. It is no good and not a nice dish.

update for December 10

2004-12-11T03:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry I been so long away. It was kind of a month, you know. I guess the long and short of it is that after Molly and me split up Ray gave me an AIBO to keep me company and I moved outta Gramma K's place. Later on I ran into Molly at Taco Bell and we been havin' pretty good chats since then. I thought it would be pretty acidic if we saw each other, but maybe most of the issues were all in my mind. When we saw each other again it was all easy, same conversations as before we got weird. For even a few seconds here and there I really did like talking to her such as a friend, you know, not even with lady vs. man type tension in the way. I noticed that I felt this. We both had had this same observation about how this new taquería had opened up in a pretty bad location downtown (an area with absolutely no foot traffic, behind a large out-of-business carpet store) and we both kind of had our hearts broken by seeing this ill-advised venture. If we can look at the same thing and feel the same way that is good right? Or maybe you need someone who sees the opposite of what you see so that you don't send each other into downward spirals of depression. Man this is one for the coin-flippers.

orange keys

2004-11-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

I think all I've eaten lately is cheez doodles. My keyboard keys are kind of sticky/grainy with the cheez powder, not really sure how to get it off. Whatever, I can deal.

Molly called and left a message. She wanted to go on a picnic but I really don't see the point. She moved out. Her vector is headed away from mine now. Obviously this is how it's supposed to be, or else we'd be closer as opposed to further apart. If you were watching us from a satellite it would be really clear to you that we're growing apart because there is greater distance between our basic coordinates. Sometimes you just need to step back an order of magnitude and look at the thing with a cold, detached eye. Life looks a lot simpler when viewed from above. We all look like ants going either towards sugar or away from danger. We ain't so complicated.

I mean, what kind of magical being sits around eating cheez doodles and refreshing slashdot all day. We ain't the final word in evolution, people.

small times

2004-11-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

It is small times around here since Molly left. Extremely quiet. This morning I noticed that I hadn't eaten in three days (fainted in the bathroom right after my leg started shaking really bad) so I managed to choke down some stuff. Also I hadn't brought the mail in in a while and when I went to get it I felt the sunlight on me and realized I hadn't been outside in a few either. I would take a walk but my hair is kind of disheveled and I don't want folks to see that. I would call Lyle to see if he can come over and give me a trim but he is usually pretty busy these days. Maybe I'll wait until it grows longer and can be combed into a long-type haircut that looks intentional.

Man what do you even do

2004-10-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well I guess the last time I wrote in here Molly and me were still lookin' for a place to rent together. Some basic things have changed since then, like that she moved in with Tina. She could tell I was kind of uncomfortable about getting a place together so she took matters into her own hands. I guess out of the two of us she is the one who isn't content to sit still. It was kind of sudden, and it complicates me going to visit because Tina never liked me. Molly didn't know that Tina used to be Ray's old lady, it just so happened that they worked together at Applebee's and Tina mentioned that she needed a roommate to replace some girl who got drafted into the Salt-N-Pepa Army or something.

I said that Tina didn't like me. That was the impression I always got when she was with Ray. She was one of those girlfriends who can be the only person in her man's life. All of her man's friends have to get lost if she's around. You know the type, a real crummy dame, as Dashiell Hammett would say. Maybe it's different now that she's not with Ray though, maybe she will just be indifferent to me rather than outright cold.

Another basic thing that has changed is that I had two moles removed and I feel like two bees are constantly stinging me. If Molly was here she'd tell me to take some Tylenol but she's not so maybe I'll look for that later.

Man places to rent are so crappy

2004-10-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

So we have gone looking at a couple rentals lately, not telling Gramma K about it, and damn does the stuff in our price range suck. We looked at this one completely stale apartment from like the 60s and when I flipped the garbage disposal on, it fell out of the sink and all this yellow sludge ran out from inside the cabinet. The landlady, this big sweaty southern person in a white tank top, muttered something about "blacks" and then said that they'd probably be able to fix that. Then the next place had this blind guy living next door, there were all these wind chimes and things to let him know where he was, that would drive me crazy. Another place was directly above a donut shop, with the vent ducting from the frying vat actually running up through the middle of the living room. It was kind of nice with 20s molding and hardwood floors, but I did not like the ducting chimney. Maybe the guy who used to own the donut shop lived there and didn't mind, but that was supremely ghetto.

The ol' lead balloon

2004-10-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Molly did not like the idea of moving into Ray's pool house. She thinks it's weird to have a friend be your landlord. I pointed out that Ray is usually off in his own world and that last night I saw him doing the "bird is the word" dance in full scuba gear at the bottom of his pool. That didn't really change her mind one way or the other but then I made the mistake of telling her about the missile that Ray is leasing and she put her foot down. I guess I wouldn't want to live with a guy who had a missile either, if I was a lady.

So much for free rent...back to the drawing board. Looks like I'm going to have to start doing more freelancing, like teaching suckers at night school how to open Microsoft Excel and then that it is okay to close it again.

Room To Let

2004-09-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

I like that old phrase. Anyhow, I was looking around in the newspaper and onlines just to see how expensive apartments and stuff are, in case it really did make sense for me and Molly to get our own place. Stuff is damn costly around here, I guess 'cause it's the Bay Area and so many folks want to live here for some reason which is not clear to me.

I was flipping through the back pages at the kitchen table and Gramma K wheeled in and yelled at me to make sure I folded the newspaper back up properly and not to do the crossword or "make any pencil marks" on the pages. Then Molly was leaving for work at Applebee's and Gramma told her she "better not get pregnant from those Mexicans." Oh my god what in the hell can you do. Maybe I'll ask Ray if we can move into his pool shed, I don't know if he would be down with that but it seems a pretty nice solution and he probably wouldn't charge us but a nominal rent.

Maybe not an ulcer

2004-09-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

So Chris gave us the whole last week off and I didn't have to stress about being on call for casting or anything. It was pretty nice, me and Molly went on a little "vacation" by fixing up Ray's pool house to be kind of a romantic bungalow. I used some of the money I got from selling this big drum scanner he gave me—we hung like those oriental paper lights from IKEA and got a nice rug and a music player. Ray was down with letting us have exclusive use of the pool and hot tub at nights, and he even cooked us dinner a couple times (provided we would sample his latest brews and give him feedback notes). It was mega-relaxing, just sitting by the pool on those lay-down chairs while Ray brought us mandarin orange cinnamon ales and tamarind-spiced lobster/bacon shish kebab. In the afternoons we'd move to the other side of the pool and flip through the phone book for nice restaurants we hadn't been to yet. Molly really appreciated having time away from Gramma K, who stresses her out a lot. Maybe at some point in the future we'll try to get our own place. Who knows. Not just yet though.

After that week of stone cold relaxation I noticed that my stomach is back to normal, even with all the heavy eating, so I guess it was perfect timing. No more peptic ulcer symptoms or passing out or sweats or anything. Maybe it's me that needs to move away from Gramma K. Damn, I need to think about this.

Peptic ulcer ?

2004-09-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Man it is almost impossible to diagnose your own medical problems on the Internet. I thought I might be getting a peptic ulcer (coughing up lots of mucus plus weird stuff is happening in the bathroom and I don't mean that the toothbrushes are dancing around to songs) so I went on Google and it turns out I could have like 1,000 different afflictions. I need to get a health plan so I can see a doctor and not pay $485 for the visit. It is the modern age, I should not die of like a simple imbalance of stomach chemicals. Why in the dogg we do not have socialized medical care is beyond me. We have emailed a robot to Jupiter but we cannot go to the doctor. What in the chicken is that all about.

well if that wasn't a dirt dogg of a dinner

2004-09-08T01:14:00.000-07:00

Alright well I guess I forgot that Molly is trying to lose a few pounds (she says her new Applebees uniform makes her look like she has a lady-gut) and so she really did not want to eat a dish of fried chicken with wine and butter sauce. She just pushed different pieces of the chicken around but the volume of the food on the plate did not change because I had forgotten to serve a side vegetable or even a potato item. I barely even ate any of my Chicken a la Francese because it was stressing me out how she was picking at her food. After about five minutes I just picked both of our plates up and threw them in the trash, silverware and all, and took off. I'm blogging this from an EasyEverything down in the underground and I think I'm going to sleep in Ray's pool shed tonight.

I am going to make a Good Dinner.

2004-09-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

I got this idea into my head around lunchtime that tonight I am going to make a Good Dinner. Dinner is just a project like any other and if you do your research and follow directions there is no reason it should not turn out well. Tonight for Good Dinner (Good Dinner is capitalized because I want to make it a tradition) we are having Chicken a la Francese, which is thin-pounded chicken breast medallions in a wine butter sauce. I have read the recipe four times and bought all the ingredients, and I have done a mock run through to get the timing down, with all the pans out on the burners and everything. I even pretended to pound the chicken breasts using a meat tenderizer. There is no way I can screw this up.

Man what is wrong at Jack in the Box

2004-08-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

Me and the boys go on down to Jack in the Box once a week to have Dudes' Lunch. Lately I been noticing that all the cars that go through the drive-thru order, pay, pull over and park, and a few minutes later a lady comes out with their food. What kind of a drive-thru is that? They never had this problem in the past. How does Jack in the Box go from knowing how to have a drive-thru to not knowing how to have a drive-thru. Could someone please explain that to me, because I can't wrap my head around it.

I had the $0.99 chicken sandwich and small seasoned curly fries with a water.

IKEA Calling

2004-08-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Man I found an IKEA catalog by Molly's side of the bed. This is in addition to the flowers she bought for the room. She is definitely putting her mark on this place. Also I noticed she took an alcohol wipe and wiped all the brown grease off the area of my laptop where my wrists rest. I guess this is good, but it seems like a Slippery Slope you know. It's funny cause like a week ago I was all puffed up like the Man thinking about the serious commitment but now I am all encroached upon when I see that she wants to buy a shoe organizer. What a place is this life. What a place, my doggs.

Priests

2004-08-22T02:29:00.000-07:00

So my uncle and aunt George and Nina Kostantinos renewed their wedding vows way on up in Hercules today and we went on up to that. The priest was being such a dick. Like, the singers would finish their song and he would just sit reading the bible for over ten seconds before getting up to continue the ceremony. Then after this one song he didn't even read the bible and his eyes were closed and I was like "oh wow maybe this will be one of those ceremonies where the priest dies" but he eventually got up and blabbed.

When Uncle George and Aunt Nina were about to come up the aisle we got these little bubble things to blow, you know, and I did some practice bubbles. The priest came at me from the side and was all DO NOT blow bubbles in the church! To Gramma K he even said "ah, just like a big baby boy!" (I guess the bubbles were for outside)

Man tonight I was realizing that I should have called the priest out. Nobody calls me a big baby boy without getting the shit batted back at him. I don't care if he was a priest. He was pretty fat and just had white puffy hair at the sides of his head. When you are not religious, you really don't mind having a challenge at a priest on his home court. I would not have touched him, but I could have backed him into a corner in front of everybody. I cold knew in my bones that old dogg was just bluster and shiny cloth.

I should have ruined that priest. A priest has nothing on me.

p.a.

2004-08-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Alright I had a pretty bad panic attack on Tuesday so it's definitely not the time to be asking any lady to put my diamond X on her normal Y. Had to lay down on the bed but couldn't sleep, just sweated and thought I was dying for sure, no one left to take care of Gramma K, why do other folks who are bad get to live, the usual routine. It passed after about a day and a half and I was in such a good mood that I made these bookshelves out of cinder blocks and wide wood boards. Molly doesn't like it but it's kind of a nice monument to a time I was really happy. Since then I've evened out and am just puttering around not getting too much done. Hair kind of raggedy, got to go see Lyle I guess.

Manlyhoodstyle

2004-08-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

Damn I did not expect to feel this way but maybe it is getting to that Point. I was down getting some books at Crown Hat today and I spent like a real minute looking at rings in the window at the jeweler. Man I got no business toying with that stuff. It's just a nice thought to play with.

Classy Man dinner

2004-08-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

Dang tonight Molly cooked me up a steak and a baked potato with red wine, and then after dinner brought me a hell of cold martini. It was a total Classy Man dinner. Now she's in the shower and she said to get undressed and get into bed. Man this is so sweet. Oops, the shower just went off. Roast Beef, you are the Man.

Goin' to see Pat in leg rehab

2004-08-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

So Pat's doctor rang me up. It turns out Pat brought his laptop to leg rehab with him but the Ambulance doctors had forgotten to bring his power supply so I dropped that off and brought him some cashews. Also he had me run kind of a secret mission for him, since they don't give him Internet access in leg rehab (I was wonderin' why he'd been offline all week). I slipped him a thick paper bag full of the goods: new issues of Backstage Pass, Shaven Desires, BBW Gold, all that nasty old stuff he likes. He slipped me forty for it and I knew he didn't want to chitchat. I mean, I ain’t gonna say the guy likes to jack off but if he ran a restaurant there would be lotion on the tables. We've always had this weird understanding about how he likes to j/o, even though he would deny it to everybody else on earth 'til the day he died. Even his gravestone would angrily say "I never did!" I ain't exactly sure how it started that it was cool and understood between us that he j/o's, but it seems like it always has been. Maybe he always knew he'd need a friend who'd be cool when a night like tonight finally came around. That would show some pretty good foresight.

Since when am I the Picasso around here

2004-08-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

Dang Ray just had me over to make a papier mâché Phil Collins head. I don't know why he called me, I ain't particularly artistic. Anyhow I spent some time working with some Google Image photos and I think I got the thing basically about correct. It has that bacon-sized widow's peak and everything. I did kind of an '83 Phil, with decent full hair in the back, not that Patrick Stewart thing he's doin' now. Anyhow, Ray said that he liked the head a lot and that I should go away and come back later. I guess he is trying to make sure people do not see him set up for the party. Hopefully this time there will be less of an emphasis on dancing. Okay, got to water the plants.

Oh man huevos rancheros dinner

2004-08-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

Dang I just cooked up the tastiest huevos rancheros dinner for us. I got some home fries real crispy, dumped in some drained black beans with jack and cheddar (shredded, not the whole bars), tossed it and let it melt all real good, and served it over a cooked-up egg on a tortilla. Oh damn it was good, it was so rich and crispy and cheesy. It was so good. Oh man, I am so happy. It was so good. It was good.

What in the dang

2004-08-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

Man I was outside watering the new jasmine shrubs and my shorts stone fell down again. Molly was bending over weeding the dahlia bed and didn't see, but when I dropped the hose to pick them up, the hose landed in the craw and made this huge water stain, so I had to spray the whole shorts to hide it. She looked at me kind of weird as I was standing there spraying my shorts with the hose, but I just smiled and whistled like I was cooling myself off.

I'm gettin' worried about all this shorts falling down stuff. Maybe I'm losing weight real fast because of a health problem, like I'm getting Crohn's disease or pancreatic cancer. Steve Jobs just got cured of pancreatic cancer, maybe I got it like on the exact day he got cured.

Just doin' some gardening, making some food, no big deal of a day

2004-08-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Things were kind of tense between Molly and me yesterday because she was mad at me for not dancing at Ray's. I tried to explain that for me dancing is like being shot at by guns but I guess some things a person just can't understand. She kept pulling my arm real hard to get me out on the dance floor but I was all Newton's Third on that, and ditched into the crowd. She finally got Téodor to dance with her, which was a huge relief, but they were only out there for a few seconds before Pat showed up with this cane and pushed everybody off the dance floor and started trying to make this really chubby lady dance with him. She wasn't having any of it and kept slapping him on the face and the sides of the head so finally he pushed her away and she was just glaring at him, her nostrils totally puffing open and closed. Then he squatted down and started slapping his thighs and knees in time with the music. Folks could make no kind of sense of this, and just when we were starting to get really uncomfortable, he sprung up and did this kind of crazy backflip and broke both of his legs. I looked at Molly and was like "see, dancin's no good" but she just scowled at me and went to call an ambulance.

The party picked up pretty good after they hauled Pat away, and Téodor and Molly seemed to like dancing together so I played some blackjack (Ray's new butler dealt for about an hour) and lost twenty bucks. That's okay because I ate at least that much worth of fresh oysters on the half shell, damn those were good.

Anyhow today we're just planting some stuff around the yard and enjoying not being mad at each other. I think we're gonna make a Boboli for dinner and I'm gonna put salami on my half.

Rice argument

2004-07-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

Molly and I were arguing about how much water to put into brown rice today and I was starting to get kind of annoyed because I have a really certain ratio that I have always used and it always turns out nice and tender. Anyhow I had my hands on my hips while she was trying to make her case and all of a sudden my shorts fell down. I had them tied and everything, but they just fell right to the ground. It was like somebody pantsed me from behind, but no one was there. Maybe the elastic snapped, I had that happen once in this pair of shorts that I coded in for most of last summer. Anyhow, since my shorts fell down she kind of won the argument by default and I let her cook the brown rice the way she wanted.

Oh insane

2004-07-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

Man I was at the post office this afternoon because I had to mail some rebates in for Gramma K (which is always kind of an annoying task because they could just go in the mailbox like everything else, but she doesn't trust the postman and makes me take them in. Plus it was pretty hot today and I was kind of sweating and the tag in my shirt hell of scraped up and down on my side as I walked). Anyhow so I was all annoyed and I was thinking to myself "what could happen right now to make this day even slightly better" and like exactly three moments later a lady's pants fell down.

Just like that, just right there in the post office, a butt that just had underwear on, about three people ahead of me. It was a normal type of lady, she had real estate hair and kind of dressy clothes on. No one knew what to do for a second but then this one "good man" type of guy sort of turned and faced everyone with his arms crossed so that we would feel bad about looking at her. She real quick squatted down and pulled them back up and was like beet red about the situation. All nervously smiling she mumbled about needing to get something out of her car, but she obviously just ditched out.

Man, how do you deal with your pants falling down and folks seeing your drawers at the post office.

Oh man such good ribs

2004-07-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Molly knows that I really like to cook some ribs and so she got me this cookbook from this guy named Michael somebody (she's always buying books, and like constantly reading, a lot like me, except I usually borrow the books from Téodor's house cause they got a good library). Anyhow sorry the point was that this Michael guy has a legendary rib recipe and that's why she got me the book. The recipe is for beef short ribs, but instead of bbq'ing them you braise them, which is insane.*

Anyhow all day Sunday we prepared this kind of complicated recipe with all these gourmet ingredients, and we even made polenta, which is like cheesy italian porridge that Molly likes to eat (I now like it too). Gramma K was at church so Molly was in a pretty good mood to hang out in the kitchen all afternoon.

The ribs turned out delicious. The meat was so melty and fallin' off the bone, with this rich dark sauce that just cooked my dog. I said that Molly had really made a good choice in deciding which cookbook to get and she gave me another one of those big old love-hugs and kissed me on the cheek. I think she even had kind of wet eyes.

Then Gramma K got back from church and she was kind of gassed (they usually have wine) and for a minute she was even nice to Molly. She goes "What a nice smell. Molly did you cook something good." Molly could see how things were and just said a simple "Thank You Gramma K" that wasn't likely to excite much interaction. Anyhow, I'm glad she had a positive experience with Gramma K and also I am glad about those ribs. Sunday was pretty good.

Also on Sunday I peeled this one cuticle so far back that it bled really bad and I had to put a cold compress on it and wrap it in a Band-Aid. It's kind of swollen now so every time I tap a key with that finger it throbs a little.

* Braising is when you simmer tough foods for a long time in liquid, which makes them softer.

Oh nice

2004-07-23T02:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight at farmer's market there was this new rotisserie chicken place and I picked up a bird for me and Molly to have for dinner. I also got some of this cheddar garlic bread loaf type thing to have with the chicken. I figured that would make a pretty good meal. Man, it was weird, a lot of the women at the farmer's market were pretty sexy and looked good in their clothes today. Maybe it was just too hot and I was delirious but damn, what is it about a farmer's market that makes a strange woman look so good.

Anyhow Molly made fun of me because I thought that chicken and bread would be a full dinner and she real quick cooked up a string bean casserole using canned string beans, egg, canned mushroom soup and canned onion shreds as a topping. It really tied the meal together. I feel weird that I cannot even see how to make a basic meal work and yet she does it instinctually in under three seconds. I'm like clapping two pieces of coal against my forehead and she takes them away and lights them and boils some soup. What's up Roast Beef you wet wick.

Got a haircut today

2004-07-21T02:44:00.000-07:00

Lyle is kind of busy lately but he had time to give me a haircut today around three. I wear it pretty tight, you know, because I got real unruly curly stuff, and he does a good job keeping the pate in check. I guess not many folks would know this but before he was all working in food service he was a hairdresser with a cosmetology license and such. I don't mean hairdresser like a guy who has the latest kind of pants on, he was just good at what he did. He still is, and I guess he could get a chair in some salon, but that ain't where he's at right now. He takes care of the dudes in the neighborhood for some scratch here and there and that's it.

Funny that when he was finishing me up Molly walked in and he sized her up pretty good and pretty soon he had her down in the chair. He did some quick cuts and right away her hair fell in kind of nicer proportion to her face. She looked really pretty, actually, like some old movie star from the twenties. So anyhow they scheduled an appointment for day after tomorrow and even talked about maybe coloring her hair. I didn't know that Lyle could do color too.

OK, I'm gonna grab some Saltines then make for the sheets.

Saturday turned out OK

2004-07-18T02:57:00.000-07:00

So this morning Molly woke me up with a really tasty cup of coffee and right away I started to feel pretty good (I had been dreading waking up, I don't know how you can dread waking up when you're not even thinking, but what can I say). We hung out and had some hot rolls and kind of got ready for a day. Then about an hour later the caffeine jitters hit me like they always do and I was tense and a wreck and tryin' to leave for some place you can't get to. Anyhow a little while later that feeling abated and I was kind of serene, you know, all benevolent, so I did a bunch of chores around the house. I fixed the front ramp that always squeaks when Gramma K's wheelchair goes over it, and I also watered a bunch of the plants. It looked like Molly had been watering the plants as well, so I thanked her for that. She got all beamy and gave me this big old hug, like way too big of a hug just for a simple Thank You, but what can I do. Then she decided that we should go on this nice dinner picnic and so we got some paid-for deli sandwiches at a place and also this sun tea she had been making and also some kettle chips. Later we got home and Braveheart was on (try not watching that movie sometime). Now she's all asleep but I'm kind of stoked still so I'm gonna work on coding this idea I've been having that maps computer keyboard keys to actual piano keys. Should be kind of fun.

Friday not much better

2004-07-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

As if I wasn't having a bad enough week, now Gramma K has given more of her money to goddam phone scammers. This time it was the Canadian State Lottery? Anyhow, they got her whole month's social security so I guess I got to cover her bills again. I don't think I'm gonna tell Molly, she doesn't like Gramma enough as it is without having more reasons to think low of her.

DAMMIT

2004-07-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

DAMMIT it costs sixty five bucks to have the blades on the reel mower refinished WHY did I leave it in the yard all winter it is RUSTY now god DAMMIT I am a useless son of a BITCH

almost feelin' good today

2004-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

I was out in the back yard clippin' my fingernails and I had just got this one real nice and even and all of a sudden I realized, "you know what, I almost feel pretty good today." It was like kind of a relief, I could just walk around and look at stuff and things would be fine. Then I noticed that the little shaft of the clippers was getting kind of rusty and was probably going to break soon. Anyhow, that's all that happened today. Oh and I made BLS sandwiches for me and Molly. I guess she doesn't like salami 'cause she gave me hers.

Man do I feel dumb

2004-07-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

So last night I had kind of an anxiety attack and left the house, don't really know for where. I guess this must have looked pretty weird to Molly, me just leaving without saying anything and not going home until the middle of the night. That's the weird part about having somebody else around all the time, you got to be responsible to them you and you got to do things like explain why you're holding your head and running out of the house.

S*itty afternoon.

2004-07-11T23:01:00.000-07:00

If you are sitting next to someone, you can look at their head and realize that one day their head will either be resting on a pillow in a grave or cremated. No-joke, if you can stop and realize that it will put your brake on. I don't know. I was sitting next to Téodor today while we took in some Behind The Music about Janis Joplin and I got this wave of depression and looked at him that way. He didn't notice 'cause he was eating a root beer float, but damn. Even such people as Michael Douglas and Flea are one day gonna not have the choice to wake up again. Damn. Man, this is f. up. I got to get away from this computer. Life is too delicate to sit and type when such as my nucleotides could this very day be on the path to total failure, etc.

kind of dull afternoon

2004-07-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

Back to School was on so we just watched that and had some Wow chips. I had kind of a head on from last night so I nursed a Keystone and tried not to feel too guilty and bad. I'm gonna take some antioxidants later and flush the system.

32 Pastas

2004-07-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

I got the gemelli with bolognese sauce and Molly got the raviolis with pesto. I always finish all my pasta at 32 Pastas even though the portions are dang huge. Molly couldn't finish and said I could have her leftovers for lunch today since she was goin' down to the mall to pick up some stationery (I can't stand the stationery industry I think it is 3x bogus for suckers) and wanted the clam chowder in the sourdough bowl at Boudin's or however you spell that.

Oh dang Téodor just called and invited me over for risotto (cook risotto a little more often why don't you Téodor). He forgot to invite Molly so I am kind of uncomfortable about just showing up with her. Dang I hate when manners stick a dude in the lurch. I can't tell her he forgot to invite her 'cause then she'll feel like he doesn't like her.

I know, I will call and say "is it alright if Molly brings some wine" and that will put the ball in his court. That is kind of a deceptive way to play it but the dude did this to me.

playing with video drivers

2004-07-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I got kind of deep into Molly's new machine just tricking it out in as good of a way as I remembered how to do. I got the old bug again to play around with the chipset and the drivers and all of that and pretty soon I had figured out a way to crank the resolution up to 3584 x 2688, which was incredible. It is such an efficient size. She did not like it though because she is more interested to use the machine to game and write her diary and stuff like that, she is not usually having like 36 ssh windows open and all of that, plus the reference RFCs and such. Man when she was out today getting a coffee I 3584'd it and just sailed through a couple things I'd been wanting to try.

Oh well anyhow she came back all chippy on her coffee and since gramma k was asleep she didn't have to deal with her so she was in a pretty good mood. I wish gramma k didn't rub her the wrong way but what are you going to do. Since Molly doesn't like her cooking we are going down to 32 Pastas tonight (they have 32 shapes of pasta and you can choose from among five sauces that you would want on the pasta). It's a pretty good place, you definitely get your money's worth.

man do I feel stupid

2004-07-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

So pretty late tonight I was down at The Foo Lounge, this place down along things which is usually a pretty hip club to go see new bands and generally be on the edge of it. I knew some of the dudes in one of the bands so I acted all large and opened a tab for us all and pretty soon I was all just The Man and always getting rounds and also always one for me. Needless to say before too long I was demolition-doped on vodka and red bulls. Anyhow after the show there was this dumb panhandler/artist hanging around outside where we were cooling off and he had all these cheap handmade leather belts and things, like punk looking, like a bandolier belt with Whip-Its instead of bullets, stuff like that. Anyhow I am such a sucker I started looking at the stuff and soon I felt bad that I would not be buying any of it so I was like "Hey I have some friends who have a ton of empty Whip-Its maybe I could hook you up" (of course referring to Todd etc) and he gave me his phone number which I programmed into my cell as "JR EMPTIES" because the dude's name was JR. Then I bummed a cigarette off him and he was all a dick about it (I guess because he is a poor bad artisan) which was doubly bad of me because I was too spunned to smoke more than about one puff of it and I stamped it out. I walked a little ways away from him after that and decided not to care about him.

Oh and also I tried to buy a shirt from one of the bands for Molly (it said "Sexxuality" on the front) but they only had Men's stuff so I got one for me. I don't remember the walk home but I think I got some kebab at Scottish Pete's because my mouth has kind of a hot Sriracha taste in it and I feel kind of guilty/bad.

I saw a weird thing

2004-07-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

Man I was kicking it on the curb just now putting out a butt after lunch and in the entire dry street and empty gutters there was this one ball of hair like the size of a baseball. Like a dust bunny, you know, all with thick dust altocumulus and tiny fragments of paper and stuff in it (think of an electron could). I guess it fell out of a car? Anyhow I just sat lookin' at it for a while thinking about all the heads the hair probably came off of, and then thinking about my own hair and how it's pretty sad that when a hair falls off you it just goes out of your life, it's got your code and everything all locked up in it and it was a part of you that you didn't say goodbye to. So I came up in here and turned on that Beck song "Lost Cause" on WinAmp because that's kind of how I'm feeling. I don't know why this little stuff makes me depressed, I mean if Ray saw that ball of hair he'd probably go get his putter or have a drink and call some friends. I guess it's cause I grew up in Circumstances and he didn't.