Pistachios. Twenty-three bucks worth of them. Ah, that explains why the baked fish at the Super Bowl party was so good. I got to hand it to Corey, the guy is indeed a multi-talented individual who certainly knows how to work hard. Apparently, he hand ground these nuts to make the topping. I didn’t even know you could do that. My culinary talent ends with meat and potatoes. Well, I can bake if I have to, but bread (and toast) always tastes better when somebody else makes it.
So now the world is booing Monsanto because some French farmer inhaled pesticide. Stupidity is a greater evil than neglect. McDonald’s coffee is hot, winter sidewalks are slippery, and after actually reading the warning labels, I’m with Monsanto on this one. Their Material Safety Data Sheet is abundantly clear. The farmer was an idiot and what he did was akin to drinking gasoline.As the new duo gets nearer to opening night, the guitar players are starting to crawl out of the woodwork. Everybody's cousin and niece are suddenly great guitarists. Really, and how did they keep it a secret until all the hard work was done? The fact it will be country music has been telegraphed by events over the past month and I suspect those who said it would not be a success may be eating crow.
I finished another novel by Rollins, who kind of bleeds the old 1930s model of the impossible situation that miraculously gets unravels in the next scene. He does it well, but after a dozen instances, it leaves the aftertaste that a hero so charmed need not become a secret agent in the first place. As before, at least a Bachelor in science is required before you can follow the entire plot. You also have to assume all the truly valuable ancient knowledge is passed down only through puzzles that make secret societies incompatible with the CIA.
I had the craziest of conversations this afternoon, but that’s all the detail I can provide. It just seems to me if someone promises me something, and I make decisions afterward based on the strength of that promise, it is so wrong they withdraw the promise if they suddenly don’t like those decisions. To add strangeness, if they had kept the original promise, those decisions would have been quite to their liking instead of the desperate situation they caused. But that’s only my opinion.
It was coffee at Dekka this afternoon. I was spun into deep emotional turmoil, so getting out of the house was a treat. I was the only patron present, although a few take out people came by. It was a lonely coffee. I felt despair. My consolation is that there is no assurance all this would not have happened anyway. I thought about my Cadillac. What really ached was the realization that my former career was not a wise choice, but a glorified working class job. The good news is at least I didn’t become a contractor.
As well, I’m touchy about any minor ailment. It’s well known how in my entire life prior to 2003, I’d only bought one bottle of medicine. Aspirin. There were still 98 tablets left the day I collapsed. Then of all the dumb things, last Tuesday I accepted a free sample of chocolate flavored walnut brownie at a Valentine’s display. Error. Here I am at 1:30 AM [Friday morning] unable to sit, stand, or lie down. And it wasn’t even real chocolate.
Not one to waste the time, I read two entire books by Lewis Grizzard. I insist any similarity in our styles is coincidence, because I’d been writing for years before I ever heard of the guy. We agree on so many topics, like train travel. Amtrak has nerve saying ridership is down when to get to from Miami to New Orleans, I have to go through Chicago. I further don’t care for the location of their stations--they retain the Civil War attitude of passengers as self-offloading freight. Anyway, train travel is nice.
They say by 2020 it will be possible to take the train from here to Houston without going further north than Georgia. But where are these thousands of new jobs that were promised? So I browsed the relevant web sites. Quick I was to notice the link to Naples mentioned right in this blog so many years ago. But that may be one of the few links where the train actually goes 200 mph because there are no towns to stop at. Mind you, they have glommed onto my idea of only connecting the big cities, so let us see. I will be the first to ride any such train.
The actual technology isn’t new. Didn’t I read the first railroad in the nation was 1830? The claim is the system will rejuvenate both the cities and the economies. True, railroads overall require large labor forces, but it is still labor. Is the whole nation going to jump on trains because they are there? I welcome any alternative to flying short distances, and doubly welcome anything that might put scumbag Greyhound out of business. Okay, I promise if I possibly can, in 2030 I’ll take the high-speed from Miami to Seattle and back starting from wherever I live at that time.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
