Stopped for gas and got indigestion. These two “ladies” did their grocery shopping this morning at the local convenience store. Do my eyes deceive me, or are those holes cut into her jeans, exposing nekkid skin? And are those chains acting as a continuation of the seam? The knee-high black boots, along with the white-trash facelift (ponytail pulled tight), finish off the look of “I’m ready to kick ass.” The other woman is still wearing her pink slippers. Armed with fresh coffee and cigarettes, the girls are going back to the phones for those special conversations that begin with dialing 1-800-Skankybabe.
Dripping Cheese
Made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Sorry, no image of Jesus appeared, but the cheese did ooze. My recipe for making grilled cheese was inspired by a local cafe that makes an awesome sandwich, so I tried duplicating it at home.
This got me thinking about the economics of eating grilled cheese at home compared to eating out; consider this.
A loaf of 9-grain bread costs $3.99, eight slices cheddar $2.99, eight slices Swiss, an eight oz. wheel of Brie $6.50 or less, two tomatoes $0.90, a handful of arugula $0.90, butter to grill sandwich $0.40. The ingredients to make eight gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches cost $18.67 or $2.33 per sandwich.
Driving 5 miles each way to said cafe at the federal government compensation level per mile of $0.48 adds a total of $4.80 in automobile and gas costs to the $0.96 tax, $1.80 for the tip, and $11.98 for our sandwiches (they cost $5.99 each). But when I’m finished having someone else prepare my food, the cost totals $19.56 or $9.78 per sandwich.
In other words, for the price of two cheese sandwiches at the cafe, I can make eight sandwiches at home. Am I turning into a stingy old man, or what?
New Shoes
I bought new shoes today and took a rather uninspired photo of them. So today is the day I try a Photoshop filter on an image in an attempt to make something more of it. This is the plastic wrap filter, and I still find that the photo is not very worthy of posting – but then I have nothing else to post, so it will have to fill the spot of the 321st photo of the year.
Private Property
Roadside in front of some townhomes in Phoenix, Arizona is this sign: No Trespassing – Private Property. This warning is becoming more and more prevalent as if the gates and seven-foot-tall cinder block walls weren’t enough to keep out the undesirables. Does anyone actually know to who these signs apply? I know the residents are welcome, I’m sure law enforcement need not heed the exclamation, and I’d bet that residents’ visitors are allowed, so I guess the exclusion applies to me and my ilk.
Best of Phoenix: Siamese Kitchen
Not an attractive place and not a very busy place on a Monday evening, but this is the New Times Best of Phoenix winner for Thai Restaurant. The Siamese Kitchen does offer some great cooking. I had the Tom Ka Kai, a chicken with coconut milk soup that was served with plenty of chicken and mushrooms. I asked for medium, and like a good Thai restaurant should be, medium is other restaurants’ hot. My main dish was the old standard Panang. I asked for mine with chicken and to make it Thai hot. Now, typically, when a white guy orders hot or Thai hot, I think the waitresses have come to believe we are showing off or do not really understand what we are getting ourselves into – not Siamese Kitchen. Not only were my eyelids sweating profusely, but my shirt was darkened with sweat from my collar down nearly to my belly button before I realized my hair had started dripping. What does it take to make hair sweat? You’ll find Siamese Kitchen on the Northwest corner of Olive and 43rd Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona.
Man-Cheese and The Wiggler
After a long period of forgotten dreams, where for months I have been lucky to wake up with but the smallest of fragments of what I had just been dreaming still floating in my head, I awoke this morning with the better part of a quite peculiar dream intact.
I am on my way to Missouri. The year is sometime in the future. I am a genetic mutation. I know a place in Missouri where I can make a few extra bucks at a bootleg operation. The farm isn’t making alcohol; they are not taking kidneys, but what they do is clandestine. They are making cheese. Not just any cheese, although at most times, this is just a normal farm, and cheese is a part of the repertoire of products they produce, but today, upon my arrival, they will switch gears and secretly change the recipe.
My mutation is that I am one of the one in 500 men who have developed teats near our hips. I produce man-milk. The farm I am visiting makes man-cheese. The product is illegal, but most would agree that this cheese has no competition. Due to our rareness and since this mutation to our species is new and not yet thoroughly researched, there is a concern that ‘this’ version of a genetically modified organism may produce undesirable results from consumption, so man-cheese is illegal. My dream didn’t tell me if it was illegal in France, too.
A strange side effect of being milked is that there is a correlating relationship to how much urine is produced, and so typically, after milking, I have the most extraordinary lengthy urinations one could imagine lasting minutes. It was during this act of disposal that I think someone reported the operation. We were alerted that the police were responding, and it was time to get away fast.
I grabbed a couple of Wigglers, threw one to my traveling companion, told him how to ride it, and we were off. A Wiggler is a genetically designed muscular creature about the size of a Frisbee that is three-pronged or Y-shaped. The top two prongs are handles for the rider to hold on to. These muscle-bound handles are attached through a brawny jumble of thick central muscles to a foot reminiscent of a kangaroo foot, only much smaller. To ride the Wiggler, you grab the two handles close to your chest and get on the ground face down. The foot of the Wiggler will keep your torso and face about six inches off the surface, but this requires that the rider wear hard rubber pads on the knees, hips, and elbows, so as you glide over the street, you don’t get road rash.
To get moving, pull up on the two arms or handles, and you go forward, push both, and you slow to a stop. Pull one, push the other to turn, do the opposite, and turn the other way. As the Wiggler flexes its powerful muscle and its foot begins the action for which it was named, the rider is propelled to a speed of nearly 15 miles per hour. The Wiggler is fast enough to evade anyone on foot and nimble enough to move in tight spaces to avoid vehicles.
As the police approach from behind a hill, we have the opportunity to pull around the corner of a house just as the policeman in chase comes into view; fortunately for us, we are no longer visible, but quietly we hide, hoping we have escaped the long arm of the law.