I've been battling depression lately. It's been pretty bad. That's where I've been.
Every single time I've gone to post these past weeks my country - well, Trump - has committed another atrocity. I do a lot of trivial shit here at Steve. Nothing kills the inspiration to revel in trivial shit like global atrocities. I mean, I already had climate anxiety and now this constant barrage of....yeah, well.
I made the mistake of trying to divert myself by lurking on Reddit. THIS WAS A BAD IDEA. I'm going to go as far as to say that if you are prone to depression, avoid Reddit like the very plague. Not because of the site content so much as how Reddit operates; which is, like the actual fucking Borg. I have a lot to say about that, but for now I'll just say that it made my depression far worse, very quickly.
I'm on a news fast now, and I'm feeling better for it.
If the world goes to shit, I'll find out when the mushroom cloud rises over the horizon.
I am a genius and if you've ever doubted that stop it this instant. I just figured out how to cure fungus gnats in houseplants without resorting to chemical means or using a vaccuum cleaner. How did I achieve this miracle?
I found some little house spiders - the kind that make the tiny little webs along the baseboards and in corners? - and re-homed them to my plants. Two days later the Biker and I are noticing a distinct lack of gnats flapping around. A week later and I found two little spider middens in my plant tower, full of little gnatty corpses.
Am I worried that the spiders will get fat and huge and start preying on dogs? No. We don't have a dog.
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Where have I been.
I have been to St. Lukes Imaging Center, where I was stuffed into an MRI machine. This made me feel kind of like a sausage. They were terribly concerned with my head for some reason (I went in for spinal problems) and so they out my head into a plastic cage - thingie, which was not as unpleasant as it sounds. I had a mirror contraption so I could see the in and out of the MRI chamber and be reassured that I was not being digested by modern science, and that was nice. I also had a little breeze blowing in there, which I found odd but not at all unpleasant. The scanner-bed slid me back and forth like a pizza at unannounced intervals, which made me yip. At one point I felt as though I was slowly being brought up to the boiling point, and I almost bailed. Apparently the MRI waves heat up the iron in your blood.
No shit. That's what they told me. It did not make me feel better. It made me feel like I'd pissed off Magneto.
Turns out I have spinal stenosis. Whaddya gonna do.
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I wrote some other stuff here about the Epstein Files and me wanting to go live in a fucking barrel, like Diogenes, only without Diogenes hope in finding an honest man. Wow, look at me all referring to Diogenes and shit! But I decided not to put that vibe out there. I will, however, reiterate my closing declaration:
A wonderful thing just happened here at the El Apartmento!
BEHOLD:
I got it halfway out of the package and I was giggling!
The Biker came over to see and his eyes lit up! I told him "I want you to be the first to go through this" because I love him 'n shit. And I handed it over.
Then I hung over him and was a nuisance until he read it.
If you are not a fan of Tony Bourdain, you won't like this. It is pretty Bourdain (tm).
If you are a fan of Bourdain, get this book IMMEDIATELY. It is pretty Bourdain(tm).
I read this book in one sitting and loved it. But honestly, I won't be cooking out of it right away.
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Dear Mme. Arcati:
Elizabeth Davids' A Book of Mediterranean Food has just arrived yesterday and I cannot put it down!
I made her Pate of Chicken Livers this morning, and it is ASTOUNDING. The only thing I did differently was to use a Glad Reuseable
container instead of a small earthenware crock because I am plumb out of small earthenware crocks.
Note that I could not wait to try out these recipes. What a stellar recommenation this was!
Thank you!!!
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Ashley Gavin. Because lesbians make everything better!
NOTE: I pulled the trigger in this one before I could talk myself out of it.
We are not wine drinkers here at the El Apartmento. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But we are wine consumers, in that we use the stuff as a cooking ingredient.
As ingredients, then, we prefer to use a garbage Merlot, and a garbage Chardonnay, the nastiest, cheapest ones on offer, in case I didn't make myself clear.
Not thinking, as seems to happen a lot lately, I put 'garbage white' on the grocery list, presuming that The Biker would get the usual.
I was feeling saucy that afternoon, so I tipped a little into a glass and took a sip. All my jungle instincts kicked in as it hit the back of my tongue. I turned to the sink, spat it out, dumped the glass, grabbed the bottle, ran for the terlet and flushed it all. One long fluid movement from sip to flush, like a ballet.
Like this ballet.
I don't blame the Biker a bit. And I never said a word about it.
But today I did this:
OO! OO! Wha'd it taste like wha'd it taste like OO OO
Have I made you uncomfortable? Good. I know I am. Now I have company.*
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OK here's what I've figured out:
A Vape place is a tiny hole-in-the-wall joint, usually with a drive-thru out back, that sells primarily vape juice and vaping thingies. (Not something I do, so yeah.) They might sell a little pop, they might have an expresso machine. They all exhale a weird candy aroma, like those cherry-scented things they used to put in gas station toilets.
A Tobacco store sells conventional nicotene products - as long as they're made by Philip Morris. They also carry marijuana paraphernalia, doper lifestyle accessories (like a lighter shaped like a MAC 5 - ask Savannah, she has one in her purse) and black light posters, incense, and things that Snoop Dog has signed. Also craft beer, garbage beer, garbage wine and malt liquor. Oh and let's not forget the massive cases full of Kratom in various forms.
A liquor store sells liquor, beer, wine, malt liquor, mixers, pop, and a little bit of all the above ^^^. Also ice cream treats.
Unless you're up the road in Weiser, where it's just all one thing and they either call it Such and So's TOBACCO STORE or VAPE PLACE... andliquor, in little teeny letters. Along with a bunch of lottery ticket ads.
It would seem that people here are desperate to run shit through their livers. And also obvious that they feel guilty about it.
There's a hierarchy of sin, too.
Vape stuff is off the radar, but something really sketch is going on in those places, so black out the windows and put bars over the doors.
Tobacco is bad for you, but at least it's not beer or wine, which is bad-ER for you, so here, let's put that in a bag (seen above) so that nobody at all will guess in one million years that you have just bought alcoholic beverages. From the tobacco store.
But hard liquor, now, hey, that's REALLY SUPER EL FUCKING BAD SENOR so let's just put 150 signs advertising lottery tickets all over the place and advertise the tobacco and vape shit, wink wink. Nobody in two million and a half years will ever guess that you stopped in to buy HARD LIQUOR. You just go on now, clutching that long, skinny paper bag that nothing else in the world comes in, BY THE NECK, and we'll all...presumably pretend that this never happened, or something.
My friends, when searching Hathi, IA, WikiSource, Perseus, DPLA et al gets frustrating, here you go - an easy to use, odd, kind of self-indulgent but not at all stupid, free E-BOOK site for all your ancient/medieval/renaissance/etc. eras up to about 1920? reading needs!
...with my apologies to Mr. Peenee for taking so long to provide the link. (Let's test his memory.)
It is a cookbook centered around what arguably could be called the first 'fad' appliance - a chafing dish. Basically you were young, single, poor and living in the big city for the first time in some horrible little crappy room. But we got you fam! Here! Have a chafing dish!! You can cook in that squalid little room in a pretty little pot OVER A FUCKING CANDLE FLAME OMGWTFBBQ *running in circles like a chihuahua* - although a spirit lamp is the official line (what else can I do with this sentence?) and thus your ass will save money all over the place and will accrue all kinds of other benefits, including the ability to cure scabies by laying on hands like a monarch of the realm, which I made up.
Our author writes with such cheerful aplomb it's enough to make you laugh out loud, which I did several times, although I admit that in such matters I am a cheap date. Still, never have I enjoyed reading a cookbook so much! And there's footnotes! And outside links! And commentary by the owner of this site!
OK. I woke up this morning, shuffled around, poured a little Irish in my coffee and BAMMO I won the FGES competition.
Me, first thing in the morning, reacting to the news.
That shit just doesn't go around happening to people! There was shock! There was awe!
I tipped a little more Bushmills into my cup and read the message again. Sure enough, I have won this years' Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Competition!
And honestly, who better?
I haven't shaved yet. Geeze. It's early.
For now, I await further instructions. Thank you, people who decide these things, for this singular (and probably unwashed) honor! I will do my best to uphold the etc. etc. and I look forward to going ass-ass commando in the Green Velveteen, sowing confusion wherever I roam, making hooting noises, chewing on old people, knocking shit over.
