First-class stamps go up to 46 cents in 2011. For you youngsters, stamps are sticky thingies to show that you paid for messages you wrote on paper, inserted into another piece of paper, and dropped into magic blue box.
I turn 32 (I think) next week and MC Frontalot put it best: (By the way, there’s more of me after the lyrics)
Keep getting older and hairier
on my neck, back and derriere,
but not atop the pate.
Dear DNA, let’s negotiate!
I’ll trade the fading vision, you could have that back,
plus this 30-year-old-man belly’s kinda wack.
My hearing is nearing deafness and I wheeze.
Yo, please save me from the wrist hurt disease!
It’s infeasible that these, a full list of ailments,
should do anything but accrue. I’ll fail ten
times out of ten to age in reverse like Mork.
Is there anything sadder than a dork
for whom the new hotness is not just inaccessible,
it’s grumbled against? You kids, reduce your decibels!
Don’t make me come over there and shake my cane.
(It’s that rapper from the AARP and he’s insane!)
This old man, he rhymed once.
He put up some valiant fronts.
With a wick-wack bitter lack of youthfulness & charm,
this old man kept rhyming on.
Joints creaking while I squeak around the stage,
hella grandmothers telling me I ought to act my age.
Deranged already, I don’t got no brain medicine.
If we were running out of food on a boat, I’d get jettisoned
or eaten. I’m unsweetened.
Don’t tell me that I got the shortest straw; I’m not a cretin,
just a little senile and gassy and slow.
But I bet I’m very salty! And I could still row.
Let’s gobble on that infant. Infants are useless
(also very soft, which is good, ‘cause I’m toothless).
Come on kids, you want to get rescued or what?
Don’t mumble all amongst yourselves. Speak up!
(I lost my earhorn the other day on the bus.)
You would think by the way you whippersnappers make a fuss
that I said something crazy, profound or obscene.
Wait, where’d the ocean go? Where have you taken me?
This old man, he rhymed twice.
He found this would not suffice.
With a wick-wack bitter lack of youthfulness & vim,
this old man was dour and grim.
Now Frontalot’s shopping for the top of the hill.
Should have bought a burial plot soon as I got ill,
but I foolishly thought that I could put it off;
now I’m ghoulishly fraught with a [cough cough cough].
Soft in the head, hard in the disposition:
how’d I earn this intractable attrition
of the vigor that I figured would be mine for life?
Is there no upside? Well, the rhymes are rife!
Every year I’m alive, add to my vocabulary.
Going to do it till I’m staring at the ceiling in the mortuary.
Plus I’m probably wise by now
and could do all the things old people talk about,
like: count pills; argue bills at diners;
get a little tiny funky car and be a Shriner;
go to the haberdasher so I could look dapper;
get stroke and forget I’m too old to be a rapper.
This old man, he rhymed thrice.
He spoke a thin gruel of lies.
With a wick-wack bitter lack of youthfulness & spunk,
this old man’s rhymes was bunk.
This old man, he rhymed lots;
rhymed till he grew liver spots.
With a wick-wack bitter lack of youthfulness & cheer,
why he rhymed remains unclear.
I hurt. I hurt in places that I didn’t even remember I could hurt. If you read the last “This Old Man” post I said I was going to get back into shape. Well, Tuesday I began the process and my body hasn’t stopped screaming since. Sure it’s eased up some and the push ups and sit ups have gotten easier and hurt less. But here I am having trouble getting my hands above my head without pain. The Evil One keeps reminding me that pain is a good thing in this situation but part of me thinks she’s lying. That part is the one that proudly states I have a body by xbox while looking at my stack of shame with pride.
Stack of Shame?
The stack of shame is all the games I haven’t even put in the xbox yet or haven’t really played for more than a few minutes. Why? Borderlands… Fucking Borderlands… Think Diablo with guns and you only scratch the surface of my addiction. Now, I had stopped playing Borderlands and began to give other games a hold in my mind. You see one night I turned the game off the wrong way (i.e. I got drunk and powered off the xbox without properly exiting the game) and lost my Lvl 50 Soldier. With that I lost well over 60 hours of ”work” and I had my mind said “Fuck That!” in terms of rebuilding. But Eric (The Evil One says ”Go to Hell”) got me back in the mood to play again. All other games, my stack of shame, took the back seat and Borderlands became my game of choice again. So… I’ve got about 4 levels to get back to where I was and I’m 50 hours in and I’m still not to the new area yet. Silly things such as life and work have held me back, damn them.
1. Way too many people that looked like they had eaten a big bucket of “Keep Your Shirt On” this year. That goes double for the chick who seemed to have an ass crack that started at her knees and went up to her shoulders.
2. Ladies, chainmail is a privilege not a right.
3. Is getting in for free worth acting like a twat?
4. Seems I have to say this every fucking year I go… Wearing your sisters plaid mini skirt with a white button down will not, will not make you look Scottish.
Food was eaten and there’s nothing like drinking Guinness at 11 in the morning, which got me dirty looks form The Evil One until she realized one of the places carried hot mead. Yeah, that whole not drinking before noon went right out the window. Fun was had.
99% of what I do is motivated by spite… Well, that and porn.
Let’s talk cooking. Because of varying schedules between myself and the Evil One I have done very little cooking the past few weeks. This is a shame because I’ve been eating fast food which has left me feeling like shit. Funny thing is I could have cooked but without someone to cook for I don’t feel like cooking. Strange, no? But last night, after eating Raising Cain’s for the umpteenth time, I decided enough was enough. I dug Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here for the Food” off the bookshelf and began to reread it. Now for those of you that cook or those of you thinking about learning to cook this should be a book you own and a book you read again and again until it’s lodged in your memory. Why? Because this is no ordinary cookbook, it’s not about wild and amazing recipes that use ingredients that you can’t pronounce, can’t afford or can’t find. This is a food science cook book. The chapters aren’t broken down by food types but by cooking method and each method only have a couple of recipes. This style teaches you how to cook rather than teach you how to cook a few dishes. He describes this method as such: He could give you a list of specific directions to his house and if you followed it to the letter you’d get there. But what if something happened like a road was blocked and now you have no idea on how to get there. If he had given you a map to his place you’d see the various possibilities if something happened to the road. And that what this book is about, teaching you the possibilities not just the directions.
I’m not a world traveler by any means. Sure I’ve been out of the country to France and Mexico. Though does Mexico really count anymore? And yes I’ve traveled the country somewhat with jaunts to Oregon, Washington, California, and New Mexico, Ney York, DC and New Orleans and places in between. I’ve done and seen much, but there is much in this world I have yet to see or do and eat. When I was a child I ate as a child turning my nose up at that which I didn’t know, that which wasn’t McShit. Then again, thinking about those missed opportunities now pushes me to throw caution to the wind and eat with an open mind. And in keeping with that open mind I approach other people and cultures. Yesterday I had lunch with my father at a lovely little place called Mambo Seafood. More Central American than Mexican cuisine, simple seafood dishes that come with an odd side. While this place serves great seafood they are best known for their fried rice and deservedly so. A little heavy on the soy for my taste but it goes great with grilled shrimp and lime with a side of fries. A to jump gears that meal made me realize how great a county we live in. Culture clash. I think it’s a wonderful thing that I can go to a “Mexican” place and get fried rice and fries as my sides. That’s what made this country great, back when we said give us your poor and whatever. Imagine this country without the influx of Irish, Italian and German back in the early 1900’s. What would Texas be like without being heavily populated by the Spanish and Germans? Well, we would have never been given the evil that is Tejano but that’s a different topic. Our world is a better place with all these disparate cultures calling America home. We’re supposed to be a melting pot that was the idea. And I think this is where people miss the point. If you come to America and call it home don’t wave another country’s flag and tell me you’re American. Don’t come here and then not even try to learn the language and then get upset because I don’t speak yours. Bring your culture and your ways of life and make them part of the American culture, but at the same time embrace the American culture and way of life. Don’t come here and then bitch because it’s not like where you came from.
That I wrote that cooking post just so I could describe my neighbors as having a sex life that includes a toy that looks like Jodie Foster’s knuckles. What the hell does that say about my state of mind?
So I like to cook as if the picture of my new knives didn’t make that obvious. But as much as I like to cook I love to grill. Unfortunately I live in an apartment which means no grilling unless I do one of two things. One, be like my downstairs neighbors. Nice couple, for the longest of time I thought it was a man and a woman. I discovered recently that they are in fact two women, but not in the “Cool, two women!” kind of way. It’s the two women that you know at some point while they’re having sex, a toy shaped like Jodie Foster’s knuckles is going to come into play kind of way. But anyways, I could be like them and have a grill on my patio and then worry even more about a possible fire because of a loose ember or what have you. I already have that fear whenever they grill now and I don’t need to add to it. Two, go use one of the two common grills in the courtyard, one is by the pool and the other is by the volleyball court. With the weather being all summery and shit neither one of those is a viable option as both the pool and volleyball court have been packed with people every weekend. They haven’t been grilling but they take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise. I don’t care to use my broiler, while it may be a newer model it’s not a high end model which means temperature fluctuations that will dry and char a fine piece of meat in a heartbeat. Sure, I could tent whatever I’m cooking and make sure it has moisture from oil, butter, bacon, sauce or wine but that becomes a hassle and can change the flavor of whatever you are cooking. And the idea behind cooking most foods for me is to enhance the flavor, not change it with silly sauces and strange infusions. There is a time and place for that and steak isn’t one of them and I plan on cooking steak tonight. So I’m left with two cooking methods, baking or pan. Baking is easier as you take the meat, rub it down with some kosher salt and pepper and maybe top it with some butter and then bake it on low heat until its ready. Pan means either slicing it thin and cooking it in some olive oil or searing it to doneness in cast iron and both mean standing in front of the oven until they are done and doing nothing else. Doing nothing else means that I wouldn’t be free to prepare the tomatoes and cucumbers or make the mashed potatoes. So that means baking unless I want to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a decent stainless steel indoor grill and that makes it a glorified griddle. Then again, that’s not such a bad thing as a griddle is the perfect cook top for burgers and breakfast.
My Trip to Bass Pro Shop
Throngs of balding, middle aged white men milling about, their wives silent with hollow looks in their eyes ignoring the inflated price tags. I have no idea how all these people see each other with all the camo they are wearing. Soft pop country plays on the loudspeaker as animal calls ring out from time to time as these modern day mountain men tell the young ones, children or the young men that still have hair, techniques for hunting or which gear is better.
Did you know that if you have the wrong batteries in your digital motion activated camera when a front comes through the batteries will go dead? Want to learn how to make raccoon calls?
“Can I help you?” asks the young girl with too much base and eye liner; makes one wonder if she knows that those hollow women are her future. Then you’ve got the guys that work here, they get a discount on the gear, and all that matters is hunting. I imagine they have awkward sweaty sex on their lunch breaks in the warehouse surrounded by trappings of their future.
Here’s a question? Why wear clothing that has layers of activated carbon to trap and lock odors and then spray yourself with animal scent. Wouldn’t the activated carbon defeat it?
You know, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a clearance rack for guns.
I’m amazed at how hi tech hunting has become. Digital this, digital that. Range finders, scopes, cameras, calls, you name it. Hell, even the black powder weapons have been given an upgrade. No longer does the discerning black powder hunter have to deal with loose powder or simple metal balls for bullets. This is the future damn it man! Black powder with an edge! New special bullets that are so bullet like regular everyday average joes can’t tell the difference. Or at least that’s what the DVD said. And really, what the hell is a golf section doing in a hunting store? I understand the camping section… But golf?
If the socks and gloves are water proof, how do you wash them?
So… I’ve lived in Alief the entire time I’ve lived in Houston. And there is a place on Westheimer that I have passed countless times. I’ve always been tempted to go in there but never did. That is until yesterday. The evil one and I were on our way to Logan’s Steakhouse for dinner when she said let’s try Fry’s Grill. So I did a u-turn and we gave the place a try. It’s like a cross between Avalon Diner and Cliff’s. The service was great and the food was wonderful. But something happened that made it kinda weird.
Well, I get a bit “gassy” if you will whenever I eat Taco Cabana and I had eaten Taco Cabana after HaVoK on Saturday. I didn’t feel like letting loose at the table because even I’m not that rude so I went to the restroom because I also had to take a piss.
I get into the bathroom and let one rip. Big and loud. And then from one of the stalls I hear…
“Beautiful”
And then just breathing and the occasional rustle of clothing. I had trouble taking a piss it creeped me out so bad. Washed my hands and got out of there as fast as I could. Told the evil one about it and she started giggling so much she pulled her hoodie over her head.
And then he came out of the bathroom… Slightly overweight white guy in a camo gimmie cap with a mini mullet. It creeps me the fuck out thinking that someone that looked like considered me farting “Beautiful”.
