120797

Shouldn't have to feel guilty about having a weekend off, and
doing nothing.  It was rainy off & on, and I just wanted to veg
for a while.  I wanted to send out some more stories, but needed
to revise my story tracking program instead (it needs to be able
to handle batch submissions, for poems).  Then there's the issue
of getting my poems input so I can track them, too.  Of course,
there are almost 1000 of them.  Yipe.  I'd like to find a copy
of every one of them ... so many have been mailed off to dead 
magazines over the years.

So, I did enter some market details from Writers Market '98.
Added a few features to the program.  Wrote a few poems on
Thurs, a few on Sat. Whoop.

Life is somewhere between a lame York Peppermint Patty commercial
and a bottle of aspirin.  "I use it, that's how I know."

Carmen & I went to a dinner at the Hotel Del Coronado on Friday;
it was a holiday party by our client Macsourcery.  I'm surprised
they invited us, but once we got past all the traffic (& a parade)
it was a decent evening.  There were some neat shops downstairs,
including one which was all decorations made out of foreign paper
money, framed stock certificates, cigar labels, etc.  Neat stuff,
not too inflated prices.

I cooked a Beef/Tomato stirfry & Cucumber Salad Sat night; 
a Beef/Broccoli stew tonight, and a Beef/Onion thing for
tomorrow's lunch.  Yes, we had an excess of beef.  It's 
interesting how different you can make similar meals.  Stirfry
dry, Stirfry in water/milk/broth, soup, stew, casserole,
sandwich, meatloaf ... ridiculous.

Cooking is just a big chemistry experiment.  To thicken the
stew, I made up a mix of bread crumbs and crushed potato chips
(yes, we had a bag of smashed chips we couldn't dip.).  I also
made a decent dip from sour cream with just enough green onion,
radish, cucumber, parsley.  I'd never noticed that parsley had
a flavor before.  I always thought of it as a garnish with no
real reason for being pulled out of the ground.  It's not as
strong as fennel (anise), but fennel is sold in such large
chunks we can never use it up.  Of course, when we're out
hiking, and pass some fennel, we look for some seeds to chomp.

BUT, some ingredients need some fewer names.  My favorite is
green onion aka chives aka scallion aka whatever-else.  Doesn't
need to be this confused.

There, I bet you never thought I'd write a journal entry about
cooking.  I started this thing the day before my birthday, 1982.
15 years without mentioning cooking, that I know of.  Too darn
long.

I will make an effort to do one journal entry a week from now
on.  Not too much to ask for!  Damn already.  It seems incredible
that entire years have passed without an entry.  Not that my life
is thrilling, it's just that I love looking back at some of the
entries; they have a weirdly consistent style over the years, and
the mixed tangents crack me up at times.

Some weird guy followed me out of CompUSA a few nights back, telling
me what a nice beard I was growing.  "I wouldn't know," I said,
trying to ditch the guy, "I never look at it."

There are probably phones in hell.  Everyone wants to make a call,
but there are no good jobs, and the long-distance rate runs in the
millions.  The jobs are all things like Mudsucker, Flamekeeper,
Burnt Flesh Collector, Executive Freak-Stabber, etc.  The CEO's
are all true demons, who jump from company to company filling their
minions heads will nonsensical dreams.  The fact is, there is no
hope at all; but if the workers knew this, they would stop showing
up for work.  (Some problems are universal.)

Somewhere there is a world, perhaps named Arraghk.  All its creatures
are slime.  Slithering mucus with no hope of improving themselves.
Yet slime naturally settles into layers, and the things in one
layer argue over who is superior with the things on the layer
below.  An eternity of moronic burbling.  So when the comet hits
and blasts the sewage of their world into oblivion, the sound of
molten silence is a massive improvement.

Why should any grungy taxi cab be allowed to have a banner on
the back saying "Executive Limo"?

Why are limos?  Is it a good or bad sign of the times that they
are gradually being replaced by Humvees?