Signifying nothing

I just woke up from three consecutive dreams: 1) An old girlfriend and I are having dinner in my childhood home. Out the kitchen window a hearse passes by. We start up from the table in shock, only to see that an undertaker who looks like Jim from The Office is knocking at the door. 2) I am conducting a cake walk (with a giant white cake as a prize) for what I think are washed up 70's TV stars. It is difficult to tell because every time I try to get a good look at them, I fuck up the record player and they all sit down quickly. The music is a variety of Guy Lombardo, The Smiths, and unrecognizable generic 70s pop rock. There is a little person competing in the cake walk and he swears at me. At one point, I decide that I hate the record I am playing and look for another in the cabinet beneath the record player. I find a broken copy of a Guy Lombardo 78 which I apparently purchased on eBay. Tired of waiting, Farah Fawcett grabs the cake and runs out the door. 3) I am on t...

Can you live off the food that one dollar a day can provide: One Dollar Diet Project ? My frugal Scots heritage makes me want to try such a project. Something tells me I could actually eat rather well, as long as you don't count the cost of energy it takes to prepare food. Fresh produces, of course, is the enemy in such a project, given that fresh fruit and vegetables are out-of-site expensive. A single apple, for example, is well over a dollar now. Eating frozen vegetables seems like cheating, given that you have to expend the energy to keep them frozen. Rather than taking on the challenge of eating on less than a dollar a day, I think I might calculate how much I spend in food, and then attempt to maximize my food dollar. I know for damn sure that I can eat much more cheaply than I would by paying others to prepare food that I can easily make myself. A dollar a day, however, would appear to be egregiously tight and near starvation level, of course. Then again, I presume t...

Wikipedia is on the menu, according to J. LeRoy's Evolving Web: Jimmy Wales Grows Them Good and Organic . As I commented, I want to try the "Steam eggs with wikipedia." Sounds positively texty, like a 150-year-old copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Thanks, BoingBoing , you rule.

Well I'm back from San Francisco in what qualifies as a whirlwind trip. I won't bore you with the detail of my work there, as I will save that for the academic blog, perhaps, so I will excite you with the details of how I seem to have lost all ability to read contextual clues from everyday situations. In other words: I was the absent-minded professor this weekend. This morning I walked into the Olympic Diner across from my hotel and stood at the threshold like I assumed a good patron should and waited to be seated. The waitress, no doubt the grand daughter of the Greek-born cook manning the grill, looked at me quizicaly several times. She came towards me and said something which I didn't quite make out (perhaps my hearing is going) and then walked back towards the counter. I followed her, being a well-trained patron. She turned on me then and motioned wildly to the rest of the diner. I then realized this was a sit-anywhere-you-like establishment. "Should I sit w...

Dinner , originally uploaded by Theorris . 133 mo fros! 133!

Greens , originally uploaded by Theorris . Taken at the SLC Farmer's Market (as was the cantaloupe picture): buy local, beyotch!

Given that it is summer, I thought I would provide you with just snack writing, gentle reader. Snacks are the best summer cuisine. Rather than "snacks" I think we should use the Spanish word tapas . When I think of Spain I think of eternal summer, even though I know it is not aways summer there and they do, indeed have cold weather, pine trees, and snow. One can dream of the land of eternal summer, however. So the point of tapas is not to have a point. You just eat small portions until you are full, drink some wine, and then fall asleep beneath and Andalusian sky. You wake up to bread and cheese and then start the whole thing over again. That's what summer is and that is what writing in the summer is. Too bad it has to end.

How I'm going to gain back that 35 pounds I lost , originally uploaded by Theorris . Did I tell you I lost 35 pounds? I don't want to hit middle age being a fat fuck. (I would have said "portly" but that is too precious and too mild of a word.) I wasn't grossly overweight, but if I would have kept up the trend, I would have been said fat fuck by the time I hit 50. The weight-losing was actually a bet with Herd Cattleson. We either lost the weight or ended up funding an all-expense paid trip to visit in our respective cities. As an added bit of horror, we both agreed to donate $100 to a truly horrible person we both know if we didn't lose at least 20 pounds. My tight-fisted Scots genes won out against my foodly desires and I lost the weight. Herd also lost the weight and it was a draw. I'm going for another 10 pounds so I can sport that speedo at your nearest swimming hole. Just kidding. I am definitely NOT that guy.