DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

In response to a piece I wrote a few months ago about curiously California food choices at a nudie dance jam, a friend from the Midwest clipped out a newspaper ad from the local slaughterhouse, which I’ve posted for the sake of all my treehugging granola-county neighbors who also can’t fathom such a thing.

I’m entertained by the blissful expression on the cow and the blue ribbon on the pig. Yeah, they’re satisfied now, but little do they know they’re about $20 and 25 minutes away from being sliced and bagged.

Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

Last December, we boarded a train in Amsterdam to find that our assigned seats were part of a pair of benches surrounding a table — we were doomed to spending the next three hours staring at the couple across the table from us.

This is an uncomfortable way to travel, staring at strangers. I mean, traveling is all about staring at strangers, but not necessarily the same ones over and over for multiple consecutive hours.

This happened to me once before, the day after St. Patrick’s Day about eight years ago. I had to fly to San Diego on business at 8:00 AM. I’d been, erm, over-served at Ireland’s 32 the evening previous and arrived at the airport feeling pain, at least in the parts where I was feeling anything at all. I became a victim of Southwest Airline’s “festival seating” policy — as the sad last guy to board, I was left with the worst seat on the plane: row 1, middle of three, facing backwards in a seat that wouldn’t recline (it was jammed up against the bulkhead) with my knees touching the person sitting across from me. My only consolation at being so uncomfortably squeezed by my five seatmates was that I probably smelled really bad.

The train ride in Amsterdam was less uncomfortable, but still worth a story, which I’ll return to presently, or in fact now. My wife and I had stopped at a deli on the way to the train station, and purchased two amazingly great-looking vegetarian sandwiches: crackling fresh baguettes, ripe tomatoes, cucumber, sprouts, crisp greens, peppers, splash of dressing, shake of pepper, mmmmm.

Inside the station, we spied an appealing dessert: warm pastries from a concession about 100' from the platform. We selected an apple tart and a chocolate baguette. My wife had some crazy idea that she was going to eat one of these but I made sure I was the one with the bag. I think I let her carry the napkins.

Entering the train with two gourmet sandwiches in my carry-on, wrapped lovingly in white butcher paper by the deli artiste, and a sack of warm pastries, I felt guilty like a smuggler sneaking out of Amsterdam with a sock full of heroin. Yet I was ready to go head-to-head with any suspicious-looking border sentries: no way was anyone going to get between me and my lunch.

Then we saw our seats, facing two other travelers 30 inches across the table. This was a depressing arrangement. I’ve always struggled with what I call “social eating,” and I outright dislike being watched while I eat. Partly it’s the worry that someone will be looking during the moment when I misjudge a bite and dribble food down my shirt, or that I’ll zone out and jab my fork into my teeth, and partly it’s the worry that I might have to share my food. (You’d think I grew up hungry, the way I guard my plate. In actuality we always had plenty to eat; I was just horribly deprived and abused in other ways, e.g. I had to share my Commodore 64. Also I was made to eat cauliflower on three occasions.)

So it was with mixed feelings that I unwrapped my lunch. On the one hand, I had this awesome sandwich that I’d been salivating over for a half-hour. On the other hand, sandwiches are the hardest of all foods to be watched eat. But I would not be deterred: the sensual gravity of my lunch overpowered any hesitation caused by fear of impropriety: my mouth fell into my sandwich at 9.8 m/s^2. We tore into the food, blasting bits of baguette crust across the table, dripping tomato and dressing on ourselves, smearing chocolate and apple tart over fingers and faces (my wife had half of each after all — it took only a stern look to relieve me of the fantasy that I’d bought those two desserts for myself).

Meanwhile, the couple across the table sat there looking forlornly out the window while we smacked and gushed and self-consciously enjoyed what was obviously the best lunch being served anywhere in the entire country that day. After a few minutes, they apparently began to know hunger, no doubt due to the sight and sound and aroma of our feast. The male of the couple rummaged around in his backpack, and pulled out a brown bag. I was immediately relieved, for if they had food too, not only would my social-eating karma be restored, but they’d be distracted from the tomato seeds that had just squirted down my arm.

I watched covertly while the man opened the brown bag. Food is salvation, especially in this case. And then he pulled out his hand to reveal… a wrinkled half-bag of Cheetos. My guilt returned with a vengeance.

So, as I licked the remains of my five-star sandwich and heavenly dessert from my fingers, the folks across the table munched wistfully on a few handfuls of chemically-stained, extruded, fried corn-puffs, which I’m sure provided exactly no relief from their longings.

I learned an important lesson from this episode. It is this: whenever I travel, I pack the most awe-inspiring sandwich I possibly can, preferably with fresh bread. Because, you know, why not?

Tags:
posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2005-03-30 16:49:09

Six months ago I joined a group of friends for a social weekend in Cincinnati. We’ve all moved on to new homes since the time we lived in San Francisco — now, we’re spread out across the country. In Cincinnati we vowed to meet twice each year in an attempt to keep in touch, so we don’t grow old and fat and full of regret at having lost contact with each other. (To be clear, the twice-annual party plan only combats the “regret” part of the progression I just described. The “old and fat” part is pretty much inevitable.)

This time we met in San Diego, which was an excellent choice. Although I was there last Fall, I’d forgotten, or maybe not even noticed what a stunning city it is. We stayed in the Pacific Beach area at a dumpy motel about a stone’s throw from the beach. This motel, the Diamond Head Inn, was ideal for our reunion for many reasons:

• the rooms were relatively inexpensive
• the carpets and upholstery were already stained, limiting the amount of damage the management could possibly blame us for
• the balcony was large enough for everyone to sit outside and stare wistfully at the sun setting over the ocean, and yet not high enough in the air to be fatal should anyone tip over the rail in a desperate grab for a dropped shoe, tortilla chip, bottle, etc.
• the housekeeping staff was patient and forgiving
• many taverns and restaurants were within walking distance, providing necessary chemical sustenance to support our visual apparatus, which was overloaded with several varieties of natural beauty (in addition to the beauties that simply can not have been natural)
• our rooms had refrigerators, which were crucial for chilling beer and preserving leftover takeout food (although we found that most leftovers fared well enough on the balcony, the counter, the couch, and select areas of the floor (i.e. anywhere they didn’t get stepped on before being greedily consumed the next day))

Weekends like this can be pricey, if you factor in the travel, lodging, meals, obligatory CD shopping, tattoos, replacement clothing, and subsequent therapy. And yet this is exactly the sort of thing I want to spend my money on. What’s better than catching up with friends, making new times while reminiscing about old times? I hope we do this every six months forever.

If you go to the Diamond Head Inn, make sure to request one of the two rooms with ocean views.

Tags:
posted to channel: Travel
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

The medical firm that provides anesthesiology to Good Sam Hospital in Los Gatos is called Group Anesthesia Services, Inc. Doctors tend to be pretty somber, or even grave, so I’m impressed that they had the audacity to select a name whose initials (for a group of anesthetists, remember) are “GAS.” Perhaps the collective years of handling N₂0 have had some effect. The doctor who picked the name is a funny guy — a real cut-up.

---

Limping along on this theme of medical humor, I’ll point out an unfortunate web-page authoring mistake on the ASPS directory page for Barry Press, MD, a plastic surgeon with a number of important certifications and a bone to pick with the folks at plasticsurgery.org. The site lists the procedures Dr. Press performs: everything from botox to Male Breast Reduction. The last item in the list is “credit card” (screenshot). I’ve never considered this to be a surgical procedure, but it’s definitely true that every surgery has the side-effect of excising several digits of significance from one’s checking account.

Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

I used to think of houseflies as annoying but relatively harmless pests. Living in the country, we’d often have one or two buzzing around inside the house if we’d left a door open for any length of time (2-3 seconds was usually enough).

Then my opinion changed. I needed to research flies, specifically the genocide thereof, and I learned that they are so far from harmless that they’ve lapped past harmless from the benign side and are again halfway up the scale, double-plus vile, infectious, and all around revolting. The memory of this event makes me shudder. Even after four weeks, my mouth involuntarily pulls into a grimace of disgust at the thought.

OK, here we go. Brace yourself. Bite down on a rubber puck if you have one handy.

We had some friends in to warm up the new house. We put a spread of food on the table inside, and because everyone was sitting outside on the deck, we left the sliding glass door open to facilitate anyone’s inclinations to feed. (Friends don’t let friends drink on an empty stomach. Also, friends don’t let friends walk into screen doors with a glass of red wine in one hand and an expensive wool carpet within splash radius.) The open door was an invitation to more than our guests — the neighborhood flies crashed the party.

This became clear when I watched through the window as someone went inside to get food. As he approached the table, what appeared to be a few dozen flies lifted off and swarmed around. This was disturbing, although in retrospect perhaps not as disturbing as the fact that my friend ate the food anyway. I went inside after him to drape plastic wrap over everything still on the table.

At some point later, it occurred to me to close the sliding door. There seemed to be fewer flies than previously near the table, and for a moment I thought the rest had flown back outside. And then I looked up in horror to see all of them, and their extended families, with guests in from neighboring counties, clinging to the ceiling. There were hundreds.

I couldn’t imagine going after hundreds of flies with a flyswatter, and I definitely didn’t want to scar the ceiling with hundreds of little fly-stains. I tried to suck them up with the vacuum, but was unsuccessful; the flies saw me coming and took off long before the suction reached them. Having no solution, we went to bed that night with a couple hundred houseflies on the living room ceiling. That’s not a restful thought, I can tell you.

The next morning, we purchased and installed flypaper strips. These are an inadequate solution, because flypaper works only work passively — if a fly happens to land on it, he’ll stick, but otherwise the strips are ineffective. (But sometimes a fly will manage to brush up against the edge of the strip while in flight, and catch a wing in the goo. This must be a hard way to go, glued by one’s back and hanging in the air with legs dangling. If flies have nightmares, this must rank near the top. Be sure to add in the visual of a hex-tiled image of the gloating homeowner (armed with a vacuum hose) to complete the effect.)

I researched fly-killing techniques online. My stomach turned, reading about where flies congregate (near garbage, sewage, manure, and the eye secretions of cattle) and the number of diseases they serve as vectors for (typhoid, diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, poliomyelitis, anthrax and tuberculosis). I was particularly disturbed by this description of using “spot cards” to measure infestation level: “Spot cards are 3-inch by 5-inch white index cards attached to fly resting surface… A count of 100 or more fecal or vomit spots per card per week indicates a high level of fly activity and a need for control.” My white ceiling was one big “spot card.”

We quickly developed winning techniques for fly management. I returned to the vacuum, but I altered my technique. Rather than trying to slam the nozzle around the fly, I moved very slowly, sneaking up behind each one at a pace below its threshhold of concern. When I got within three inches, the fly would take off — up and backwards, generally — right into the slipstream. It was gratifying to hear the whack when the flies smashed into the side of the tube on their way to the bag. My new vacuum technique was about 80% effective — best on windows (perhaps the bright light outside masks the “overhead” image of the vacuum approaching), decent on the ceiling, but not so good on the floor.

My wife became a terror with a dishtowel. This approach is superior in kitchens, better even than a flyswatter, because a towel is lethal around uneven surfaces (edges and corners). We’re both about 90% effective with the towel.

The U. of Cambridge’s Insect Vision Group website offers some interesting PDFs that explain about compound eyes and fly vision: Seeing the brain through a fly’s eye.

Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16