Extra ketchup sauce, please. Oh, and chopsticks too.

Lorraine and I ate at a Chinese restaurant that was in a strip mall that was next to a store that was called:

Ask me how it went.

Well, we went into the restaurant, despite the signage next door, because of the menu posted in its window.  Here is the free-standing version, to double entice prospective patrons who make it through the front doors:

Special No. 2 is the ketchup sauce.

Here are the very important atmospherics that help create the enveloping experience of eating something you don't commonly cook in your home kitchen:

Oh.  I'm sorry.  These are items likely found in a big Rubbermaid container in my home basement.

Lorraine's heart-stopping meal:

Clockwise, from bottom: Sesame chicken, egg roll, steamed rice, absolutely no idea.

We were trying to beat Lorraine's husband in uncovering really good, unsung Asian restaurants in Aurora, Colorado strip malls.  (It is a somewhat narrowly defined competition, but we are competitive and particularly enjoy the odds of a very narrow playing field and really small group of contestants).

But I think we should re-jigger the contest: really bad restaurants with really bad signage,  really bad food that is even worse than what-could-be-worse-than-ketchup-sauce, really bad decor, and really bad Christmas trees.

Lorraine and I win!

"Proust? No! Oprah? Yes!"

A person who lives in my neighborhood (there are basically two types: female/mother/pushing double stroller/Jessica Simpson type sunglasses/pony tail/attttttitudunal or male/father/baseball cap/tee shirt with slogan/chagrin of watching small offspring muted by the glass bottle of beer in left hand/constantly wondering where the girl he married went/atttttitudunal) was walking in front of me today and the back of her shirt read "Proust? No!  Oprah?  Yes!"

What the hell does that mean?  I cannot even fathom?  But I would not wear it proudly.  I once had a shirt that read "Swarthmore College.  Guilt without sex" and I gave it away cause I didn't really want to wear it.  Even though I had bought it.

It has to do with snark.

The woman's shirt had no snark.  The shirt bore only embarrassment.  And she did not wear it with any kind of irreverent coolness.  I come to this conclusion because she was in stretchy clam diggers, Jessica Simpson type sunglasses and was pushing a double-wide stroller.  I am mean-spirited that way.

My college shirt had no snark.  I wouldn't want to wear it on campus and it doesn't work off campus.  It did work as a really crappy hand-me-down to my beloved straight-laced brother. I am mean-spirited that way too.

Somebody remind me the difference between misogynistic and misanthropic.

Eating their young

I was walking the dog today and thinking about parenting.  These two things are not necessarily unrelated.

I thought: if people can be lousy spouses, and crappy friends and embarrassments as siblings, then of course they can be awful parents.    

Maybe we have greater sensitivity around lousy parents because while we may not ever marry or be in a sustained romantic or platonic relationship, we are first children.  And siblings are in a special category: we expect them to be pains.  

A sign. Not a stop sign. Nonetheless the driver stopped. I had to, too. Then I got rear-ended. It's a sign.

I was driving West on 26th Avenue to pick up my daughter at high school.  And a Mercedes SUV is in front of me, driving very slowly.  It comes to a stop, in the middle of the street.  I am so paranoid at this point re the Bodysnatchers who live in my neighborhood that I think the driver is doing this on purpose.  To show me in an aggressive-aggressive way that I drive too quickly on the streets which double as (1) tennis courts; (2) playgrounds: (3) chalkboards.

I honked.  (I may deserve to be paranoid.  I don't drive to be liked.)  The SUV did not move.  And in my rear view mirror, I see an oncoming pick up truck trying to slow down.  "Please slow down in time" I think.  Boom.  It doesn't.  

Everything is quiet and I am shaking.  I am fine physically but shaken up.  The SUV remains still.  And then the driver door opens and a man of indeterminate age gets out, w a sheath of papers in one hand and focused eyes on the ground.  Three kids get out.  Two small ones wander on to the street, demonstrating the strength of genetic predisposition.

Long story short: a really nice man who had never had an accident rear-ended me.  He was a gentleman, responsible and kind.  A guy who stopped his SUV in the middle of the street and idled his engine and ignored the horn from the car stopped behind him caused an accident then pulled over to the curb, emptied his car of kids and walked into his house.

So the streets of Stapleton serve another purpose: parking lot.

The sign?  I have to move.

Another observation: the mother in Bravo's "Nine by Design" is the new Kate (Gosselin)

Which raises a couple questions:

1.  Would you agree to be on a reality TV program if you knew the producers would edit you to look like a bitch?

2.  Would you agree to be on a reality TV program if you were a bitch?

3.  Would you ever agree to go on Maury Povich, especially if there were no paternity issues involved?

4.  Would you ever agree to go on Dancing with the Stars if you danced as badly as Kate (Gosselin) but could crack a smile?

5.  Do your nightmares consist of singing live on American Idol?  If you're dead, do they consist of dancing live on American Bandstand?

Disturbia in Suburbia

Here is a movie poster mathematical equation for my neighborhood:

                                                             +

                                                               +

                                                               =

Veganism and Hedonism

I had a late lunch at "Raw", a raw food counter in the Chicago French Market yesterday.  http://www.frenchmarketchicago.com/vendor/raw   I have a tuna salad sandwich that had no tuna in it, accompanied by minutely diced beets that we in something saline, and a dried  assembly that looked like granola but tasted like something served at a bar to increase alcohol sales.
The meal was delicious.  The flavors were full, clean and fun in their distinction from - say - real tuna in your tuna salad.  The bazillion grains in the bread made for a heartiness that is typically missing in bread.  I love beets, but have never thought to eat them raw and un-pickled.  And the whole meal afterwards did not sit well with me; it simply did not sit.  I felt sublime.  More sublime than when I eat sashimi.
I always thought I felt the most spiritual - indeed, very near to what I figure would be the state of things felt by one who has spent years of dedication to Buddhism and this I achieved by eating! - whenever I ate sashimi.  Nay, rice!  Just the raw fish please.
And then I picked up the PETA "Go Vegetarian, Go Vegan!" brochure.  http://www.peta.org/vsk/  It was sitting, one of many copies, alongside the sample agave at the "Raw" counter.  I had eaten my faux tuna salad lunch and felt sublime and thought perhaps I would travel the raw food path indefinitely, if not 5 days out of 7.  I put the brochure and went on a 4 1/2 hour walk into various Chicago neighborhoods, met a bunch of friends for cocktails (Miller Lite draft, vodka on the rocks with blue cheese stuff olives) and then dinner (1/2 beef brisket sandwich on a processed and no doubt bleached flour roll and a couple of french fries likely and most beautifully deep-fried in hoof renderings).
This morning, I picked up the PETA publication and started to read.  It's not enough to present me with photographs of appealing meals matched with easy to accomplish recipes.  No.  I must wade - I cannot avoid for each page is replete with these tales and I think I know why vegans are so skinny because there is no joy in being consciously aware, excruciatingly aware, of the pain avoided by eating a vegetable or grain - through harrowing descriptions of the care, feeding, treatment and butchering - though, note, fishing is similiarly horrible - of our common menu.
I have trouble processing - I chose this word - whether there is an inherent conflict between the fact that humans eat animals and the facts surrounding being readied to be eaten.  I guess it's kind of funny that sashimi is not cooked and I like it so much, but the fact of the matter is that the fish died so I could eat it.  And I really like sashimi.  Thus, I present "hedonism" in its glorious definitions and I note that hedonism has to do with one's self; the viewpoint is turned inward.  As it should be.  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/p/hedonism  What brings pleasure is intrinsically good.  Plus, Dilbert nails it:

My garden is lame or why the two level deck in my back yard is so damn big.

 Okay, admittedly, this is Brussels.  

And this, confessedly, is my back yard.

Films that unsettle. Or a film that unsettled. And the bumper sticker version: ""WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN DON'T MAKE HISTORY"

I have a huge DVD and instant queue on Netflix. I pile up a bunch of films and then decide which to watch, depending upon my mood. I am talking here of the streaming queue; I seem to be constitutionally incapable of immediately watching the hard DVD that arrives in my mail. I am a very mood-driven viewer.

I am on a 'foreign' film kick. Anything not made in English within the continental United States and Alaska, and truly excluding parts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, California, and Idaho.

I chose to watch "Murderous Maids" because it was in French, set in the first part of the 19th Century and sounded mildly pornographic. More precisely, kudos to the the folks who translated the title from the original French of "Les blessures assassines". Which according to the Google translator, would more read "Injuries Killer", with Google ignoring fact that the last word is plural. And feminine. But in English, we do not have gender connotations to our nouns. Except for "wife", "girlfriend" and "fiercely underpaid employee". And according to the Yahoo Translate function, the title in English would read "the wounds assissinate."

I actually like these translations, as they capture the essence of the compelling story. Two maids, sisters and neglected daughters, mercilessly and frenzily kill the mother and daughter for whom they work. Gosh! As I write "mother and daughter" - translation "mere et fille" - I understand further the choice of victims.

The puzzlement of the crime - two female domestics crushingly killing their patrons - is of great interest to the many writers, authors and film makers.  The motivation for the crimes is often interpreted as one involving class struggle.  There are definitely overtones of gender, sexuality, class, emotional hardships, religion, and mental illness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_and_Lea_Papin

It truly has stayed with me since I have seen this film.  I am going to look at other film and book treatments.

I'm also going to ask my kids to help a little more around the house.  I am also going to add "house cleaner" to my list of gender specific words.

This is a test to see if can really update my blog viay phone. Cause ireally need or more tentacle.

I Febreezed my dog. Nuff said.

It doesn't take a shrink to recognize that as a sign of utter sloth. And my dog weighs like seven pounds, and I bathed him last Sunday. I can wash him in one side of a double sink and he's very patient when being washed, but I preferred to get up from my sitting position only to go to the laundry room to get the big bottle of Febreeze (Costco purchase; big mistake. 2 bottles, each about six gallons in size and I'd have to own cotton mills all over cheap labor parts of the world to put a dent into even one of them. Contact me if you'd like the other bottle) and spray the back of my reclining and very lovely dog.

I should make clear that he is an omega dog, the opposite of the alpha dog for those of you who did not take Greek, have parents who moonlit as grammarians, or who matriculated at a college that did not have frats or sororities. I should also include those who are attracted to, date and/or marry bad boys. I have parents who are grammarians, who bemoan the absence of Greek and Latin from 'today's' primary and secondary education curricula; attended a school with two lame frats and one raucous ("you need 'D U' to spell "Dumb.") animal house, and have consistently been attracted to bad boys, date them but never marry them. But I am getting away from the dog. The canine one.

I think this marks the bottom or at least a really close to the bottom rung. So it's all up from here. But that means I have to get up from my sloth slither slop on the sofa. And I only do that to get the Febreeze.