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| sometime during college, i began to experiment with sandwices. one summer, i perfected the Makes-Your-Mouth-Water sandwich, which is turkey-ham, jalapeno pepper jack cheese, with lettuce, tomatoes and half an avaocado on fresh toasted baguette.
a simplified version percipitated later, featuring grocery-quality loaf bread, mayonnaise, and sometimes mustard. to me, sandwiches are largely about the combination of textures involved, as well as falvors. so, the order of ingredients is crucial: bread, mustard (if you have it), lettuce, meat, cheese, avocado, tomatoes, mayonnaise, bread. putting the tomatoes next to the mayonnaise is extremely important. the tomato fruit and the mayonniase blend the way other ingredients can't. to emphasize texture, sides of chips or carrot sticks are best. personally, i like carrots because it feels like they clean your hands and teeth as you pick them up and crunch.
the other night, i wanted to finish the things in my 'fridge before leaving town. i was out of meat and cheese, but i had the end of a head of lettuce, a cucumber, and two bread butts. i also had cream cheese and sriracha sauce. SO, in an effort to completely polish off the remaining resources. i created a spicy cream-cheese cucumber sandwich.
in order to get the lettuce to stick, i used a small lump of cream cheese to glue it together before putting the sriracha sauce on, and then the cucumber, with mayonnaise.
satisfying, in flavor and texture. | | |
| i hope the next person i date has a good sense of direction. not like existentially, but that'd be a plus, too. i want them to know cardinal directions. like, if we're in a room, they'll still know which way is west (and not just think that west is left, or north is up).
it'd be nice, if we're trying to meet somewhere, to say, "i'm just a little south of the theater entrance," or, i'll meet you on the northeast corner of wilshire and western," or better yet, "after you enter the restaurant, our table is along the southwest wall."
you gotta have some direction in life!
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| In the movie The Fly, a scientist discovers the secret to teleportation, allowing a person to almost instantly arrive at any other destination — a scenario where transportation is reduced to stepping through a doorway.
As the story goes, the scientist unknowingly gets into his machine with a seemingly insignificant fly. At first, the teleportation proceeds successfully, but in actuality, he splices his DNA with the fly's, resulting in total catastrophe.
The film heralds the dangers that arrive with the potential for ultimate proximity. In a world where everything is proximal to everything else, the elimination of factors like distance and movement completely alter basic conceptions of space, contributing to the removal of self-control, blurred boundaries between species, loss of identity at a genetic level. The Fly suggests that travel behavior, the way we experience movement through space, is fundamental to identity formation, to self-awareness even. | | |
| food festivals--always a winner.
at the annual los angeles tofu fest, you can see all the wondelightflicious food products made from soy bean. they have tofurkey, soy jerky, soyrizo, soygurt, tofu-younameit.
when i first saw tofu take the form of fake meat, i didn't understand why someone would take something so good (tofu) and make it fill the role of something else that's also good (meat). it's like taking a talented basketball player and making them play baseball--why would you do that Michael Jordan?
i could wax philosphic here, about the constant orientalism of western culture, the failure to cope with a foreign thing, the inability to recognize the self as other, the need to create some fused entry-point into a different culture/cuisine, the xenophobic impulse to take something alien and own it and change it.
growing up, tofu was good softly melted down or spiced up, chilled and sweetened with syrup, dried, deep fried, or liqufied. why, in tofu's name, would you make it into meat? that's just silly.
when i saw the tofurkey stand, i started thinking about turkey and all the good things turkey can be--primarily the turducken, which, for the uninitiated, is a turkey with a duck inside with a chicken inside. kinda crazy, right? i always wonder...why'd they stop there? couldn't they get a pidgeon inside of the chicken? and then a finch inside of a pidgeon? and then an egg inside of the finch? that'd be AWESOME. maybe you could put the turduckenpinchegg inside a goose, inside an emu. that would be an emooseturduckenpinchegg.
but i really wanna see a tofu chicken inside a tofu duck inside a tofu turkey--the tofucken! coming soon to grocery stores near you.
see you at indigenous people's day.
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| today at work, my sillyboss gives me an assignment.
"take this word document, with each phone book entry, including company name, address, city, state, zip code, t-shirt size, left or right hand preference, gender, income level and bus route. sort it into an excel document where each entry is in its own column. there're 1500 entries. so, you can either do it by cut and paste or just typing them all in. it should take you a while."
"dude, that's a lot of work," i say.
"yeah, it should keep you busy until closing today. i'm going to a meeting. so, i'll be out of the office until 4p. remember to get some lunch, alright?"
"okay. sure thing."
he leaves for his meeting, and i get to work.
i watch for the second hand on the clock above my cubicle-cage to reach 12. with five seconds left, i hold my breath in anticipation. 5-4-3-2-1
i take the word document, and i...
convertexttotable bycarriagereturns, with10differentcolumns, oneforeachcategory. now there're 10differentcolumns, eachrow correspondsto eachentry. i cut/paste thenewtable, intoanexcel document. then ititleach column. companynameaddresscitystatezicode,t-shirtsizeLorRhandednessgenderincomeandbusroute
i hit save, name the document and look up at the clock. 55seconds.
i look around, and i have an hour to go before lunch starts.
i shift papers and spread some office supplies around my desk to make it look like i've been busy.
then i change into flip flops, go down the elevator and walk out the door. a beautiful los angeles day welcomes me. i walk to the subway station, 5 minutes away and i catch the first train to hollywood.
on the train, i think about how the nature of technological education is such that younger workers are constantly more proficient with software than their older silly bosses. someday, i think, i will also be obsolete, compared to the younger workers who will know how to do my day-long work in less than a minute.
from the hollywood station, i walk 10 min. to the megaplex, and i get one ticket for "the alien hero from pluto comes back!"
this movie is hugely disappointing. the alien hero, being the only hero in the film, saves the day, repeatedly, either using superstrength, the burning hot rays that come out of his eyes, or the incredibly cold wind he can blow out of his lungs. just when you think the alien hero might die...he comes back! just like in the title. wow. what a mystery? where's the tension? the struggle? the doubt? it's all in some other movie.
unsatisfied when the credits roll, i wander into the adjacent theater screening, "the termination of the relationship."
this movie, set in the third largest american city, is much better. the two well-known comedic actors get together in the opening scene, only to spend the rest of the movie arguing about the end of their relationship. the supporting cast is equally excellent, including the nervous protagonist from swingers also the boxer from friends, along with the incredible super sleuth from law and order criminal intent.
fully satiated with my midday escape, i take the train back to work, but before i go back upstairs, i order a char-broiled pork sandwich from the vietnamese restaurant. i flirt with the cashier some, take my time properly chewing every morsel of baguette, and finally, i creep my way back to my office chair. it is now 4 o'clock. i change out of my flip flops, and i start surfing craigslist missed connections.
a couple minutes pass by, and my silly boss returns from his meeting.
"how's the work going?"
i look at him and give him two thumbs down. "i haven't even eaten lunch yet."
he frowns with sympathy, and tells me to take the rest of the day off, to eat and start up again tomorrow.
i clean up my desk and change into my flip flops. i take the elevator downstairs and i go home. | | |
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