Halloween is the new basement.

Halloween is the new basement.

I'll explain more over the coming days, after I return to my basement homeland in Silver Spring.

But until then, be warned: Peet's Coffee and Tea is already serving pumpkin spiced latte's for your autumnal pleasure...in San Diego where it was damn hot today and the surfed called out to her friends louder than a mamma sea gull calling out to her prematurely fledged offspring that can't figure out how to fly off of our balcony.

these are high in iron

In the dictionary according to me...

when you are in a public place and you want to stall so that the person or people you are with have the chance to see something (or more likely someone) that you find particularly interesting, you point to a nearby object and say...

These are high in iron.

This all began at whole paycheck a couple of weeks ago when italian bf, his two friends who stayed with us for 17 days and I saw a super hot guy in the bulk food section who seemed hot enough and straight enough to be a potential suitor for our female friend emi. In order to stay nearby without being (too) obnoxious, we manufactured a long conversation about various items in the bulk bins. This, of course, wall all happening in italian. and my most proud moment of the stalling-near-the-hot-guy conversation came when I pointed to the pumpkin seeds and said "quests sono alto en ferro" which is my bad italian for "these are high in iron."

as I mentioned, "these are high in iron" can be applied for pretty much anything. For instance, I pointed to a box of tic tacs near the self-checkout at the grocery store tonight and told italian bf "look these are high in iron".

constipation discount

Banana Republic owes me a constipation discount.

I spend my hard earned money there?

And what do I get in return?

Un-necessarily hard caca.

Hold on. I'll explain. Let me just flush wipe the Preparation H suppository residue off my fingers first.

okay, that's better. This keyboard will never chafe my fingers, but otherswise, all is well.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The constipation discount.

I was in the flagship Banana Republic in Santa Monica a few weeks ago with italian bf and two old-school friends of his from pizza land. I offloaded an armful of to-be tried on sale-rack items (grazie italian bf), and located the nearest sales associate . I encountered a pair.

"Hi. Can you tell me where the restroom is?"

Pause.

Creepy-looking-Banana-Republic-sales-associate-who-looks-like-the-guy-who-you-pay- to-fix -your-computer...the guy who will fix your computer, but not before he copies all the porn you have stashed away on your hard drive...that guy calmly says "our bathrooms are no longer available to the public."

there is some back and forth ending with him telling my incredulous self that there is a Starbucks across the street.

Taking a shit in a Starbucks bathroom on 3rd Street Promenade on a hot August Saturday in Santa Monica, California? No thanks. I'd rather revisit an Ohio Interstate 70 outhouse circa 1985.

Besides, isn't part of the deal of buying overpriced sale-rack clothes made in China but woven in pizza land (whatever that means) is that you have access to a relatively clean bathroom? especially when you are travelling and you're experienceing that fleeting moment where your bowels have said, "alright asshole. It's either now or a week from tuesday. It's your choice."

and that's why i want a constipation discount. I missed the window of opportunity.

In fact, I did talk to the manager after I paid. And she offered me a "one time exception" -- access to the bathroom. but I declined. by the time I got the offer, I was already on the week from tuesday plan.

the new guy in my office is an asshole

The new guy in my office is an asshole. He doesn't take his sunglasses off, even at meetings.

and what's with those elf shoes?

He think's he cool. He finishes emails with 'cheers'. I don't think he's ever been to England. So why does he say "cheers" in emails? And if he ever was in London, I'm sure it was for work, and I'm doubly sure he didn't even go into a pub. He probably went somewhere dorky like a science museum.

And sometimes I hear him on the phone trying to talk some other language. He says ciao. who is he talking to? the pizza guy?

And rumor has it he wears two pairs of socks because his feet are sensitive. What a dork.

pool-io-lypic dilusions

a reverse two and half somersalts in the pike position.

it looks easy on TV.

i hope my speedo is tight enough. If it's not, I'll never win gold. And my competitors from the hosting country have bags and bags of shaved body hair to back up their claim that they are in fact 16 years old. It's true that one of the bags of "public pubic hair" that they put on display at the opening ceremony was in fact yak hair.

metal mouth

should I get a metal mouth?

well, a modern metal mouth, which is in fact not metal at all. It's invisible. and it's expensive. and the orthodontists say the 7K would mean that I MIGHT have my teeth longer when I'm old and g(r)ay.

In case you don't read comments:

Blogger Jenn said...

what is wrong with your teeth?

August 22, 2008 11:25 AM

Blogger Daniel said...

nothing right now...
its just that my gums are receeding faster than they should (on four on the front) b/c my bite is a little messed up
b/c of lower crowding
and so parts of my gums get too much vibration from my teeth hitting in a weird way
and this triggers faster than normal gum recession...
it's one of those things where they are like...

well...

if you spend the money now, you might be a lot better off later on, but we can't promise you that you won't be okay without fixing your teeth now...

and then chris said...


Blogger C.G. Barrett said...

So the dentist wants to make a gay guy's teeth straight?

Is he part of some radical, right-wing group of Christian conservatives?

Whatever you do, do NOT, under any circumstances, accept his referral to a urologist...

August 23, 2008 5:46 AM
************* chris, that is HILARIOUS.

the glass is half full

when I heard this poem on the radio today, I wished I'd written it. But i'm awful glad I'm around to hear it.

What We Might Be, What We Are

by X. J. Kennedy

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We'd not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you're just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I'm a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we'll stay slightly remote.

"What We Might Be, What We Are" by X.J. Kennedy, from Exploding Gravy © Little, Brown, 2002. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

manual man bra

manual man bra...without a shadow of a doubt.

Nick Drake Remixed

Just as weekends can be a cruel taste of freedom for office monkeys like me, this link provides a cruelly abbreviated taste of a blissful remix of one of my favorite songs.

http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF300536-01-01-13.mp3

here is an unmixed version of the same song:

venice surfer (LA not Italy)

Another one bites the muff

Add John Edwards to the list of famous people who let their mouths do the walking and willies do the talking.

I really don't care.

But...if you are going to waste my time by doing something that is going to clog up the media atmosphere for a good 24 to 48 hours, then we ought to get something out of the deal. Instead of reading a pre-olympics gymnastics story, I devoted my very limited internet news time to you John Edwards. And I want something in return. I want to know how big little john is.

From now on, I think all celebrity sex stories that break should be required to include specific anatomical details. Dimensions dammit. I'd also like to know the volume of a three day shot. Is that too much to ask?

coffee buzz

coffee buzz
oh coffee buzz
where art thou oh coffee buzz?

You wake my brain
You keep me sane
You taste better in the rain

The zipping neurons
Help me ignore the morons
And dig in and get my work on

When its you and me all morning long
It's driving with best friend and kick-ass song

two hours later

Oh f*ck, i'm coming...

down

dull thud in skull does grow
the caffeine buzz is going. dough!

dough! in homer simpson sense
not kitchen of white wife and picket fence

her loins

those red things on the right side of the photo above...they are "her loins"...according to italian bf. of course they are really "heirlooms" as in heirloom tomatoes...but somehow, italian bf started phonetically calling them "her loins" and i haven't had the heart to tell him until now. I think it's super cute when he gets words wrong...and it drives him crazy when I don't correct him...so I promised to correct him on most things...but not until I get a little fun out of the situation.

italian bf refered to them as "her loin tomatoes" to our Japanese friends last night. they didn't say a word and I just sat there and laughed on the inside. and then today at the grocery store, italian bf was like "no more her loins" and I totally agreed. I am SO not interested in her loins. The her loins in san diego this summer have totally sucked, and I'm not talking about the female eye candy at pacific beach. the farmers around here are growing really shitty her loin tomatoes and charging outrageous prices for them. I have been calling them "industrial heirlooms" but from now on they are "industrial her loins."

cheese vegetarians

in addition to becoming both my mom and my dad (in various ways both good and bad), I have also become one of the characatures I made much fun of in college: the famed "cheese vegetarian". This curious transient subspecies of vegetarian exists almost entirely on store bought tortillas filled with microwaved cheese and bagles draped in peanut butter. matt and I got a lot of mileage out of laughing at the absurdity of swearing off meat only to gorge on low quality dairy products.

look at last night's dinner party. this is a cheese vegetarian's wet dream. buffalo mozzerella surrounding a pile of burrata, which is basically fresh mozz on the outside and creamy dairy goo on the inside. it's amazing. and it was half price. why? because we bought it on the day it was set to expire. it wasn't discounted, but when we got to the register, I was like "this is going to expire today. Can I have it for half price?" they called back to a manager who gave us the green light. Four dollars saved. That's almost a gallon of gas.

this was at Bristol Farms, the absurd grocery store that only exists because there are rich old people whose only task in life is to burn their money. We went from bristol farms to Whole Paycheck, which by comparison, feels like a bargain. At Whole Paycheck, we found a hunk o cheese from near the northern italian town of Cuneo that gave birth to the Slow Food Movement. This cheese, too, was set to expire that evening. We got it for half price too. We saved $7.50 on a hunk o' cheese.