DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

It takes no spectacular power of reasoning to determine that what I wear is fascinating to approximately none of you. Nevertheless.

I went shopping the other day, to prepare for the occasion of a friend’s wedding. My friend had the good sense not to include me in the wedding party, perhaps because he’s seen what I look like in a tux. So while I was happy to avoid the tux-rental song and dance, I was left with a wardrobe somewhat inadequate for the ceremony and reception.

The men’s department at Macy’s is staffed, I was relieved to discover, with young women who are able to assemble shirts, ties, and trousers into ensembles that appeal, or at least don’t look ridiculous. Or at least don’t look as ridiculous as what I would have come up with. (There’s a line in This Is Spinal Tap that comes to mind: “such a fine line between clever and stupid.” I think this is more true of fashion than of heavy metal — but especially true of heavy metal fashion, now that I think about it.)

Here’s something that shocked me about buying a necktie: “Grateful Dead Neckwear” is apparently a respected brand-name!

Sure, I’m familiar with Jerry Garcia’s ties — those actually made sense; they were based on Garcia’s own original artwork.

In contrast, “Grateful Dead Neckwear” seems to be a cheap attempt to cash in on the band’s name to sell merchandise. The designs are wholly unrelated to the band or its members. The only connection is the following pap, a marketing blurb accompanying the ties: The Grateful Dead Neckwear collection originates from the rich body of music, iconography, and culture that has evolved during the extraordinary thirty year history of the band. In other words, basically anything related to anything from the past 30 years is fair game. Which is to say: the designs on these ties have as much to do with the Grateful Dead as does the shape of my left nipple, which has also evolved during the past 30 years. You might argue that my left nipple did not originate from music, iconography, or culture, but I’d respond that the designs on these ties didn’t either.

In related news, I was finally able to find a belt that didn’t have someone else’s name on it.

I’ve made hundreds of pizzas in the past five years, but out of all of those pies, only two had a sourdough crust. (Until today.)

Once, I found myself with some leftover sourdough starter, which I combined with the pile of flour and dough scraps on the counter, plus a dash of olive oil. I paid no attention, haphazardly mixing it into a medium-wet dough. It made the best thin pizza crust I’d ever had: crisp and chewy, not soggy or limp. Later I laboriously attempted to recreate this crust, and failed utterly, creating a disk of flaccid dough that refused to spring in the oven, resulting in an unpleasant cardboard-esque material.

So although my success rate with sourdough pizza dough was only 50%, I was inspired today to create a new pizza dough using my apple-sourdough starter. In baker’s percentages, I used 90% levain, 4% salt, and enough water to make a medium-wet dough.

I kneaded only enough to mix the ingredients. This approach is novel, and was suggested by Evan Shively in an interview in the SF Chronicle in 1999:
"Crunch and gluten are at cross- purposes," Shively says. The more you knead, the less crunchy and the more breadlike your crust will be.

The results were fantastic. The baked crust was thin and crisp without being too crunchy, chewy without being difficult, and it had a great flavor. As experiments go, it was remarkable. My single regret is that I only made enough dough for one meal. Well… one large meal.

The SF Chronicle Magazine has a cover story on a male-to-female transsexual, an ex-Marine bodybuilder who flew to Thailand for “sexual reassignment” surgery. The article is disturbing, not for moral or religious reasons, but because the author was sitting in the operating room watching the doctor cut the patient’s genitals off. Yikes.

The article is online: No Retreat

Most of the photos are online, too, except for the one that really made me cringe — a scene from the operating room. It’s not graphic, but immensely suggestive, in a bad way. Here ya go.

Patronize these links, man:

• Dr. Sanguan's site
• Samantha's site
• SRS in Thailand

This is a picture of my right eye, approximately 2 hours after application of a .5% tropicamide solution. This drug causes the sphincter muscles of the iris to relax, causing the pupil to dilate to the size of an eggplant, enabling the doctor to peer around the inside of my skull, and also providing a handy place to store my car keys.

Subsequent research indicates that tropicamide passes, in small quantities, into breast milk. It’s a good thing I’m not lactating!

A thriller set in South Florida, The Seventh Sense is a classic page-turner. The story tells of reluctant psychics working together to solve a murder mystery. MacGregor posits the idea that near-death experiences put the survivors in touch with higher planes of existence (sixth and seventh senses); this theme helps hold the story together.

I enjoyed this book even more than MacGregor’s other “supernatural thriller,” Vanished, because the ending of this book is a lot more satisfying.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)