high cholesterol and ranch dressing

It seems I have slightly high cholesterol and will have to make some little changes in my life.

Looking back, I think ranch dressing must be a culprit. When I passed my dissertation defense, I went to a bar to have some celebratory beers. As an appetizer I ordered a dish called "cheesy bacon fries." I think the name very accurately reflects what I was served.

Since I had just undergone a challening academic test and succeeded -- finishing grad school -- I decided to indulge myself. I guess if Caligula had had my tastes he would not only have made his horse as senator but also have fed his horse ranch dressing. Anyway, I ordered a side of ranch dressing in which to dip my cheesy bacon fries. I don't regret it; it was damn good.

But all good things must come to an end. Ranch dressing simply cannot play the role it once did in my life. Now, lest you fear otherwise, kind blogreader, I'm not swearing off the creamy, tangy stuff (ew!). I just will have it only on very special occasions, perhaps after I've lowered my levels a bit.

Just to let you all know, I've also substituted mocha mix for half and half in my morning coffee, and I've begun eating oatmeal.

more pics

Here are some other band pictures -- Overdrive -- more mundane and therefore in line with my agenda. My patient and loving wife Sarah took these with her new camera

another picture

Here's another attempt at a picture from another band -- this is Wildside (Motley Crue tribute).

my attempt at images

here are some boring and not very boring pictures

This picture contains me as Ace Frehley in Kiss tribute Desstroyer. The show was last October.

Fart Whistle

Today on the sidewalk in front of my house, I saw the remnants of the packaging for a novelty toy called the "Fart Whistle." It had a cartoonish picture of a person in bright red pants sticking out his or her (can't remember the gender) exaggerated posterior, presumably miming the act of expelling gas.

The background on the packaging was black. I wondered where the fart whistle itself had gone.

Haven't we all wondered that at some point?

envelopes

Today I needed a single manila envelope in which to mail some papers.

I went to Office Max, and the smallest number I could purchase was four. Again, I needed only one.

I bought the four and used one. Of course, I'm likely to have a need for the other three at some point in the future. But it is also likely that by then I will have forgotten where I had placed the three extra envelopes from today's purchase. I will end up buying another one (or four) and find the extra three from today when I don't really need them.

I scraped the top of my left index finger, and it stung last night. I put a band-aid on it.

Best lyrics EVER!!!

Ok everyone, I'm breaking my typical mode temporarily and getting interesting.

I just want to share some fabulous rock lyrics that I discovered listening to satellite radio. The sheer volume of 70s and 80s hard rock allusions makes me want to weep with joy. Now, I liked Soundgarden and Pearl Jam (at least their first album) and a few other grunge bands, but all that stuff about "killing" metal in the early 90s just turned out to be plain wrong. Those 90s bands are essentially history, and the hard rockers are stronger than ever before. Here's to nostalgia and unabashed dumbness, I guess! But wait -- maybe 90s nostalgia will bring THOSE bands back again... Anyway, the great thing about nostalgia is it lets you love genres of music that may have in their day seemed opposed -- time heals all petty aesthetic rifts, at least it does for me. Still, got to appreciate the wonderfully sneering quality of the followign lyrics:

American Hair Band
Yeah, well I've been up and been down, town to town with several bands,
Then tortured for ten long years by critics, agents and the A&R man, and some bandwagon fans.
It's time to stand up, fight back, be proud and once again be free,
So if you want a piece of me, come and get it!
Kurt Cobain is gone but I'm back
Wearing leather pants and a backwards hat
Guitars slung low
Where the down boys go
The night trains back so on with the show
I'm Metal HealthAnd dressed to thrill
I'm an SMF with the looks that kill
I rocked and rolled, n' long hair is back
And I grew up, singing Strutter, And Back, in Black
I'm going back to eighty-nine I went Platinum zero times
You're in the jungle sweet child o'mine
I want another piece of that cherry pie
Chorus #1: (Oooooohhhhhh)They call 'em hairbands
Leather jacket in black
Throw your hands in the air
Yeah we're bringing it back
N' Say (Shout, Shout) At the Devil again
And Say (Shout, Shout) At the Devil my friend
So Say (Shout, Shout) never letting it end and say
(Shout, Shout, Shout, Shout) yeah…(Bad Medicine)
I like Old Van Halen and Hanoi Rocks
Black n' Blue and Britny Fox
Guns n' Roses, Motley Crue
When Def Leppard rocked and Skid Row ruled
Yeah, Ratt went round n' round
Rocking out in Boston, get loud in Chi-town
Vandenberg, Priest, Dok-ken, Kix
Throwing Faster Pussycat in the mix (P-P-P-P-P-Pussycat)
Give me L.A. Guns & The Dangerous Toys
Quiet Riot, Bang Tango & Bullet Boys
Love Johnny Crash grunge bands are trash
I like C.C. DeVille, Mick Mars, and Slash
Chorus: #2Breakdown:Yeah, I saw your grunge band, staring at your shoes on stage, wearing that dirty flannel shirt, when you gonna learn dirtball, you just can't f**k with Twisted Sister. "What are you going to do with your life"?
I'm an American hairband
Watch me rock
You can raise your hands
Or you can suck my c**k
Heavy Metal God
I'm a Pin-up boyI'm the singer from Tuff not Pretty Boy Floyd
Super loud and Super wild
Sebastian Bach is youth gone wild
Diamond Dave and Nikki Sixx
I wanna see Tommy Lee back spinning those sticks
Up all night, gonna sleep all day
I love girls; girls, girls and I love L.A.
I won't waste my breath, but here's a clue
Give Pearl Jam & Eddie a big f**k you
Who cares about Weezer and the Screeming Trees
When we got White Lion
And of course the Sleeze Beez
If you wanna rock n' roll then read my lips
Let's shout it out loud
For a band named KISS
Chorus: (Oooooohhhhhh)They call 'em hairbands
Wearing leather and black
So throw your hands in the air
Now we're bringing it back
N' Say (Shout, Shout) At the Devil again
And Say (Shout, Shout) At the Devil my friend
So Say (Shout, Shout) never letting it end and say (Shout, Shout, Shout, Shout) yeah,
I'm a hairband wanted dead or alive
Singing (Shout, Shout, Shout, Shout)
I wanna rock n' roll in the still of the night
Say (Shout, Shout, Shout, Shout)
Gonna take you down to the Paradise city
And (Shout, Shout, Shout, Shout)Everybody let's sing talk dirty to me

Texas Toast

Yesterday as part of my lunch I ate a piece of Safeway brand Texas Toast with some peanut butter on it.

This Texas Toast was basically a loaf of standard Safeway white bread sliced at wider intervals, resulting in really thick slices of white bread. I guess the size is what makes it "Texas."

The only other time I remember eating Texas Toast was at Sizzler. At that fine restaurant, Texas Toast was basically a large piece of white bread toasted with butter and perhaps some kind of spice on it. It came with the steak.

Toilet Paper, Part II

There in deed will be more -- an infinite number of posts on toilet paper.

Though my obsession with tp supplies may suggest my succumbing to capitalist commodity fetishism or something, I think it can also be seen as subversive (Dude, I'm subversive!). That is, a good capitalist would purchase in bulk, laying in supplies, secure in his/her knowledge of bountiful resources -- so secure in fact that he/she would take for granted unlimited availability of this very useful item. Indeed, it would seem that 24-pack is valued not so much for its usefulness but for the IDEA of abundance and unlimited security it supplies. You never even have to think about not having toilet paper.

Conversely, keeping around only a minimal supply -- as I have done -- forces one to think more about the concrete use of toilet paper, indeed to value its intimate connection to our daily functioning and our bodies. Having only a slim supply reminds you that hygeine is not to be taken for granted, not a "natural" or inevitable or "normal" condition, but one historically enabled by our technologies and means of production.

So in sum, my little toilet paper games demonstrate my deep intuitive commitment to an ideal of economic justice.

Toilet Paper, Part I

I have to confess that I get a kick out of nearly running short of toilet paper.

For some reason, I get an uncomfortable thrill from having just a few rolls (or one, or half of one) in the house, estimating whether they will last out the week, wondering whether or how, if I had only ten dollars to make it to my next paycheck, I would be able to budget in food, coffee, deoderant, toilet paper.

It would be very easy and very practical to buy toilet paper in bulk, whether I went to Costco or just to the supermarket. It’s cheaper that way, and I know I’m going to use it, so why do I gravitate toward the four packs – or, in convenience stores, toward the single roll for eighty-nine cents? I just wouldn’t get the same satisfaction out of a twenty-four pack; it would deprive me of the thrill of last-minute toilet paper purchasing.

There is something so reassuring, so cozy about buying a single roll of toilet paper.

For a few months in Eugene, Oregon in my mid-twenties, just before getting married, I lived in a rooming house. I lived with all my possessions and a futon (that replaced an air mattress) in a very small room. I knew only one other person who lived in the house, and I knew him not at all well. I had a very small, antiquated clock radio that my father had used. He would lie on his bed, inert, listening to repetitive AM radio news. This is one of my strongest images of him, and I quickly claimed the radio after he died. I took to lying inert and listening to the local NPR affiliate in Eugene. One strong memory I have is of lying awake one typically overcast morning and listening to a female vocalist covering the Kinks’ “Better Things,” a terribly sad song with an ostensibly optimistic thesis. I remember I had listened to the Kinks’ version many times my freshman year of college when I was young and hardly in need of the reassurance offered by the song’s speaker to (I think) a woman seemingly past her “prime.” Somehow I think the old radio and the toilet paper are connected, but I’m not sure how just yet.

The bathrooms in this house had no toilet paper in them. Residents were expected to keep their own, bringing a private or personal roll into the bathroom when they used it. One of the large house’s three bathrooms was my favorite. It was simply a closet with a toilet; I guess it was a half bath.. To bring my roll into this bathroom made me feel very secure.

I suppose it is a bit of a cliché of contemporary cultural criticism to find deep significance in the small and mundane. A whole culture’s deepest values or most crucial ideologies are to be found in its car advertisements, its napkin folding practices, its attitudes toward dental care. I begin to wonder as I write this whether the affective attachments I have to the purchasing and use of toilet paper have something to do with consumer capitalism or a kind of Barthesian mythology. Perhaps the roll of toilet paper signifies comfort, childhood (the associations above with my father’s clock radio?), protection from the messy materiality of bodily existence (the shit gets wrapped up in folds of angelic white softness to be flushed down the pristine toilet) – think of all those images of teddy bears and cherubic babies that decorate toilet paper plastic wrap. Hey – the roll/role of toilet paper? Hmmmmm…

More to come

a good sit and a 79 cent burrito

Sometimes, I really enjoy a good sit. On a bench, in a chair, whatever. Enough said.

I've given up the quest for the delicious 79 cent burrito.

In a previous period of my life, for several years I would on occasion find myself drifting toward the frozen burrito sections of various convenience stores. These establishments offered many brands of cheap microwavable burritos. Now, I had even at that point eaten my share of poor pasty frozen burritos. Though at times they provided necessary calories, they never satisfied me in any deep sort of way. Yet I always held out hope that someday I would purchase a burrito for less than a dollar that would taste nearly as divine as a five dollar taqueria super or especial with the works. I tried and tried, but of course I never did.

But where did I get the idea that I could put one over on the man this way? It's like believing in a get-rich quick scheme or thinking that this time I'll hang one microphone up in THAT spot and run another out of the board and just maybe I'll get an album quality recording of my band.

We all have our 79 cent burrito delusions, don't we? I don't -- anymore. I've learned to buy the big burrito from the taqueria. It's still a great deal.

One time ten years ago when I had a beard, I noticed it had some white spots. I thought I was starting to show signs of age. Turns out I just was staining it with toothpaste. Now there really are white whiskers creeping out of my face, but I don't really care. This is too interesting so I'll stop.

feedback

Thanks to the many who wrote responding to my posts.

At the risk of being too interesting, let me explain some of my practices.

I am a poor speller (though an exceptional grammarian and "syntactician," if I may coin a new term). My usual practice in formal writing is to edit, etc., but I fear that would be too interesting an activity for me to take up. Therefore, spelling here will be less than exact, though I might argue that such variations from standard writing practices may be viewed as a subtle form of subversion -- a sly reminder to you all that standards of grammar, spelling, usage, etc. are the product of what many see as the disciplinary tyrrany of enlightenment rationalism over the explosive free play of the letter. Perhaps that's a Derridean/Barthesian version of, "who carez if'n I kaint spelll!?".

Also, I'm trying to be uninteresting because in reality I'm a deeply fascinating person. My links will be interesting, revealing the fascinating elements that mix to compose my true character, a paradoxical blend of charisma and depth, of crassness and sensitivity, of erudition and willful ignorance, or something.

To more important and less interesting matters, I'm planning to eat today. My jacket's comfortable but missing a sleeve button. I should clean my glasses more often.

addendum

I forgot to mention that Sarah, my wife, had lunch/brunch with me.

Also, I didn't spell restaurant right in my last post. Many apologies. Things are shaky here at the home office. We working under extremely difficult -- perhaps primitive -- conditions.

I still don't know how to spell "OM-LET," and I'm too lazy to go look it up.

lunch

For lunch today, I ate a breakfast. It was an omlette (which I'm not sure if I'm spelling correctly, and I'm an English teacher). It had sausage and cheese and peppers in it.

They called it a Mexican omlette. It was fairly good. The restaraunt was comfortable and clean.

I would like to eat again. I'm going to get a burrito.

Hello

Here I will tell all of the boring details of my life, in which none can find interest.