1:53 AM >> The world is an illusion...


From his deathbed Huxley penned the following passage in his essay Shakespeare and Religion>. It is brilliance.

"...The world is an illusion, but it is an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of apprehending. Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must continually be on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness. We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much "wisdom" is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We must learn to come to reality without the enchanter's wand and his book of the words. One must find a way of being in this world while not being of it. A way of living in time without being completely swallowed up in time..."

1:20 AM >> English version of a letter written by a guy in France to the States #7

Dan,

Hey, Dan. I thought I'd send you a stupid mail and let you know that I am in France. Yep. Totally. The chicks here are great. There is so much fun stuff. They have a zoo with about 10 primate exhibits. They are spread out over the grounds too, so you are always near one of them. The best one is by the concession stand. You wouldn't believe how different the funnel cakes taste here. They don't even call them funnel cakes, but some French name like ice cream cake hose. It is so strange. All the movies are cool. And the TV shows blow, man.

Seriously.

- Claude

[n.b. In regards to IHOP's funnel cakes I'll say that they are just too perfect. It's always a disappointment when the ad doesn't do justice to the reality of the dish that you are eating. But in the case of IHOP, their specialty items come out looking just a little too perfect. And that is an immediate turn off.

I commend them wildly for doing a funnel cake. But make it look like a funnel cake and not some item that belongs in a museum. There should be visible geasiness and the fruit compote shouldn't shine so beautifullyuly in the light.

9:32 AM >> Ziplete




I prepared my first Omelet-in-a-Bag this morning. It was so so good. I'll never prepare an omelet any other way. Boiled Ziploc omelets are the only way to go. They come out perfect. Less mess. Less clean up. And so ridiculously easy. A kid could do this without supervision and still be safe.

This morning's Ziplete contained red onion, spinach, tomato, and portabella mushrooms. It was seasoned with basil, Emeril's Italian Essence, pepper, salt, and Tabasco. As a side dish I made some Honey Buckwheat pancakes.

omelet
n : beaten eggs or an egg mixture cooked until just set; may be folded around e.g. ham or cheese or jelly

Ziploc Bags
n : a brand of resealable plastic bags and containers originally developed by Dow Chemical Company, and now produced by S. C. Johnson & Son.

[p.s. Now here is the thing of complete irony. The official Wiki definition of omelete calls it a preparation cooked "in a frying pan." Well, well, well this whole Ziploc in a bag thing just throws every prior notion of the old "what is an omelete" question straight into the trash. Because now it's prepared in a bag. And not fried. Boiled. And it is the perfect, most lovingest, and excellent omelete ever. The pedagogy of the art of omeletry now thrust into the 21st century.]

11:48 PM >> Gone digital



Beginning this month and this month only or rather from now on I've gone digital. I now have a digital camera and am posed to get it on digy style from now on out. So stay tuned.

Today I dropped off my last rolls of film at Walgreens. I'm sure there will be more, but it was symbolic for me. From here out I'll be snapping away with my digital camera often and posting photos often. And now instead of storing my photos in picture books they'll be stored on CDs. Wow. Digital.



Thanks, Al Gore.

12:29 PM >> Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley

The following are some great items I inprovised with an avacado, a cucumber, a can of tuna, and some other sundries. The name originates from a State Farm claim rep that my brother claims invent the idea of combining avacado and tuna. I one upped him by adding the cucumber and stretching it from it's orginial form as a more traditional guacamole-style dip into the realm of sandwiches and salads.

Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley le'Originale
1 avacado, 1/3 of a cumcumber , and a splash of mango nectar blended together. Mixed with oven-roasted tomatoes, onions, serano pepper, olive oil, salt and spices. Then married with a can of tuna and some lime juice. Great for dipping as well as many other uses.

Rating: 7.92

Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley le'Sandwich
Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley combined with shredded lettuce and sweet relish and served between slices of bread. (also excellent as a cold tortilla wrap.)

Rating: 7.75

Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley le'Salad
Tuna Cucumber Avacado di Wiley served with freshley chopped iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, sweet relish, and habanero salsa.

Rating: 7.90

10:07 PM >> Omelets in a bag

The following e-mazing recipe was given to my Mom from a churchy friend of hers. When I first heard of it I was completely amazed and then my parents cooked this thing up for me and was stunned silly. It is amazing. It's an omelet that you cook by boiling in a Ziploc bag.

Essentially you crack your eggs in the bag, shake it up, add whatever ingredients and seasonings you normally put in your omelet, and then you boil it for 13 minutes. It comes out perfect and with very little cleanup. When I say perfect I mean fluffy and all the ingredients are perfectly enclosed in the egg. It's amazing.

It's great for parties because everyone can manufacture there own omelet and you can boil 6-8 of them in a large pot all at the same time. That means that everyone eats together. The friend of my Moms who passed this genius egg thing along is a 'hospitality and event coordinator' for her church. So she totally knows her stuff.

I gotta stop taling about this so you can check it out. Here it is:

Omelets in a bag
Guests for breakfast? Here is an easy fun way to
prepare a tasty treat for breakfast (or anytime.)

Have your guests use a permanent marker to write their name on a quart size self-locking freezer bag.

Crack two large or extra-large eggs into the bag (more than two will not work), shake, mixing them well.

Put out a variety of ingredients such as cheeses, ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, hash browns, salsa, etc...

Have the guests add the prepared ingredients of their choice to the bag and shake. Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up.

Place the bags into rolling-boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. For more, make another pot of boiling water.

Open the bags, and the omelet will roll out easily. Be prepared for everyone to be amazed.

This is very nice to serve with fresh fruit and a coffee cake. It's a great conversation piece and everyone gets involved in the process. It's easy, convenient and delicious.

10:09 AM >> Cube

I got this most excellent quote from a biography called Aldous Huxley an English Intellectual. It's a quote from some book called The Prisons by some guy named Piranesi.

"Today every efficient office, erey up-to-date factory is a panoptical prison in which the worker suffers...from the consiousness of being inside a machine."

Now is that a summation of cube-life or what? I say yes.

In related news, here's a conversation about work and such I had with a friend.

ME >> Hi, KT. Are you at work? Or what.

SHE >> Hi Eddy, I was not at work, I was up early because I never really went to sleep, then I went to the beach with my fambly, now I'm "sick" today!!!

ME >> Sorry, KT. You need to drink some OJ. Well, what kind of sick? Are you just exhausted or do you have a sinus/congestion issue? I don't think OJ helps for being tired. For that you need coffee or a cold energy drink or just lots of sugar.

SHE >> Oh, I'm not really sick at all, just didn't feel like goingah to worky. I just have to maintain my groggy-just-woke-up voice throughout the day in case work calls. I mean geez, I just got the new Harry P book this weekend and I need some time to read it, right?

ME >> Remember in Ferris Buller when he feigned sickness using his keyboard that he got. His sister got a car and he got a stupid keyboard. But he didn't let that stop him. Cameron would have let that stop him or went into some serious depression if he got a keyboard. Not Ferris though.

SHE >> yeah, Cameron, but not Ferris.

9:12 PM >> Noise

Michael Keaton = terrible actor. White Noise = stupid movie.

I got a great new drink now. It's the Rooster Boost. It combines a glass of QuikTrip's Rooster Booster Lite with a shot of Jagermeister dropped in. The tastes go great together. It sustains your energy, give you vitamin C, niacin and all that business, and mostly it has the potential to get you buzzed or at least get you on your way.

Try one today.

11:13 PM >> podcasts

a new world has opened unto me. that is podcasts. i really don't know anything about it other than i can download 30 minute + programs from the internet and then burn them as audio or mp3 files and listen to them. they are all over the place and range in genre from porn to comedy to old timey music. i love it and will be burning my first mp3 disc tonight. this is great. i love this world. i love the internet. i love al gore for his foresight. he is genius. hoorah for podcasts.

a tiny little history on podcasting.

12:32 AM >> WW in W

There is wierd water in Waterloo. It smells different. It's texture is different. Different that is than the water in Georgia. Florida too has the same sort of different-ish water.

People always say things like "hard water" -- but I don't really know what that means. I may be experiencing the effects of hard water though I prefer to just refer to it as different.

And on the subject of water being wierd what if we all were poisoned through our water supply. Poison sucks. It's one of the more romantic deaths but it is so mean. I mean really rude. Poinsoning someone, or a population, for that matter is just not a nice thing to do. And it's a terrible habit to get into the habit of.

As far as deaths go I have three super-catergories. There is the unexpected death, the romantic death, and the undesirable death. As examples I give the following best-est examples: the unexpected - random heart attack, the romantic - self inflicted pionsoning, and the undesirable - being crushed underneath a very heavy object like a large piano or a giant boulder.

I prefer of course not to die but if I had to settle on one of these methods it would be the romantic death. Preferably a poison that first sent you into a drug-induced-like state of mind and then put you to sleep and then after that you never really wake up, you just kind of pass. Away. That's how I'd like it done.

Enough.

6:54 PM >> Frank's Sweet Heat Mini Burrito

Tonight I cooked up:

Beef franks, Seckler's Sweet Heat Mixed Pickles, and sesame seeds pan fried in white wine vinegar and Tabasco Chipotle, seasoned with dill and Creole seasoning. All stuffed into a medium sized tortilla and baked in the oven. I had a banana for dessert.

The hot dogs were free from work from a month or so ago. The Seckler's my mom bought for me on my recent trip to Indian. The seasonings, vinegar, Tabasco, and sesame seeds I just had lying around. The tortillas I purchased a while ago and have a bunch left over. The banana was free because my brother's girlfriend is trying to get rid of them before the bunch goes bad. Technically the oven and stove are part of my contract with my apartment complex.

Now does that mean that the portion of my life that I live out here in my apartment are technically on loan from the apartment complex as well? Does AMLI own me? I really need to look into purchasing a home or condo for myself one of these days. But that's another one of those things that I've set aside for when I've settled down and married. Oh, but for now I'll just pay my monthly rent and put off lightening up on the drinking till I'm more mature and have a mortgage.

9:26 PM >> Another successful rip-off

Once again I ripped T-Bell's Crunchwrap right in my own home. This baby was highly successful. A joy to eat. I frigin' cried. No joke. This thing was so hot I cried. Now it wasn't unbearable or sadistic or anything. I just like things hot and spicy and this was it.

Here's why I think. The main layer (the bottom layer) - I consider the bottom layer to be the most important, the top is just a little added bonus to compliment what's on the main layer - consisted of some leftover fajita chicken meat, rice, and sauteed onions and peppers. Now what made it so hot was that before I left the restaurant I put a pretty healthy serving of drips of this really hot red habanero pepper sauce. Then I mixed it all together and it sat in my fridge for a day and just absorbed the heat.

So following that of course was the crunchy tortilla and then on the top layer was just a little bit more of the rice and some pepperocinis, red pepper, and yellow peppers from a Sweet Heat Mixed Pickles I got from Seckler's.

The tortilla was toasted with pepper, cilantro, a little roasted garlic, and crushed red peppers.

Rating 7.8 out of 9 runny nostrils.

N.B. I am getting over a nice and quick summer cold so this was the perfect natural remedy to drain out my nose.

S.N.B. Just look what's coming up in August. It's the 9th Annual St. Joe Pickle Festival

11:16 PM >>

My eyes are burning.

10:06 PM >>

Tonight I finally realized: You will not necessarily like every CD you ever buy. Sometimes, you will just waste $11.99 (plus shipping, if applicable). But it is OK. Because the CDs you buy that you do like, you will spend so much time listening to them, being inspired by them, creating while you listen to them, using them to struggle through running, just enjoying the amazingness of music through headphones, that it is worth all of the mediocre/crappy CDs you buy.

Also tonight I turned 29, if that matters.