The apartment's how cold?

I took a bottle of coke out of the freezer to thaw and it didn't.

A RaginGaijin First

Multimedia:
Spend a minute and 48 seconds with Johnny Cash before Reading.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9tAI1jeIlgs

I just wanted to say that I thank all you fine folks out there who give this blog a look every now and then. Lately I've been thinking about Mr. Cash's humble optimism and my own life. From growing up in a trailer around North Carolina and now living in a smaller place yet on the other side of the world at the start of a new year. This is as close as I'll get to a tune of my own.

I got a crib of my own and some steady work

Been subbin out steaks for thin sliced pork

And the people round town are nice enough

Got their signs covered up with cartoon stuff

Well, let the bikes roll on and the cameras flash

I`m doing all right for country trash

Pretty girls walkin round bout to break my neck

Learned a few words last time I checked

Ery now and then might see a shrine

Check out big Buddha and drink rice wine

And momma sent a box with a nice food stash

I`m doing all right for country trash

I got a thick loan that smarts real good

and four Pachinko parlors in my neighborhood

The govments got my back if I get too sick

and the time flies by pretty quick

Well, let the bikes roll on and the cameras flash

I`m doing all right for country trash

I only work 30 hours for decent pay

Even got a few hundred saved away

But The city`s all gray and I miss the green

and all the folks back home round the Blue Ridge scene

And it`s a strange place now that I`m here at last

But I`m doing all right for country trash

I`m doing all right for country trash

EVOO

I just broke open a new bottle of olive oil smuggled past customs and tossed out the empty, enigmatically kanji-ed one that, to me, is unreadable. Looking at the romantically rustic label and the familiar "Extra Virgin Olive Oil" brand I wondered if my old bottle was indeed "Extra Virgin" as well. The omelet was still gushy when I began to wonder what exactly made it the "extra". I have seen Spanish, Mediterranean, Greek, green, black, pitted and whole olives but never a simply, virgin; or for that matter, a post-coital olive: well, maybe the pitted ones fall into that header. It would seem that the category is black and white (either virgin or not) but Boboli and Carbonell keep insisting so I've decided that these particular olives must be doing something more active in their communities, like preaching abstinence. I knew people like these olives in high school and they can't be swayed so it's no wonder that trees have to deal with them too.
"Look it's your choice, but if it were me..." a phrase which inherently takes the "you" out of "your choice". "Look you can move to Spain if you want to, but if it were me, I'd think the food and language were dumb and move back home". I feel sorry for the poor virgin olives out there just trying to hang out around the branch but getting crap for not spreading the word.
"But the guys at the top of the tree really aren't that bad, I promise, and if you'd just talk to them for even a..."
"Stop it. I don't want to hear another word about those whores up top. You know what, sometimes I think you're just not virgin enough."
What with the economy dipping worldwide and gas prices slumping in the wake of an uncertain energy future, maybe there's a way yet to save some money. We can bring the "other oil" cost down and generate a little tolerance while we're at it: get more of the little guys on the market. Let 'em get some so we can too.

... you can eat pizza anytime.

Some foods you grow to miss and why wouldn't you. A mexican restaurant that serves bottomless chip baskets, brownies warm and fudgy from the oven or a hamburger with crisp lettuce, thick tomatoes and solid pickle coverage. But the past few weeks I have been getting fidgety for bagel bites. I don't like bagel bites. I ate them rarely as a teenager and even less often in college but lately I can't resist the idea and I think it has something to do with the sum of their parts: crisp bread and bubbly cheese, one after another. The hankering will pass but for now I have come up with a solution that is infinitely better than the real deal and was stumbled on rather than invented. A friend had recently visited Costco (of all things to make it overseas) and had racked up on bagels, shampoo, chocolates and olives in the standard "bulk" packaging. To an outsider I'm sure that such a food cache being hauled back on the train must look like an angry but not uncosmopolitan giant had been robbed. Could I speak Japanese (my enduring hypothetical) I might shake my head at the intrigued passenger.
"Son of a bitch all most bit me in half but would you look at this bag of walnuts! Closed that beanstalk down, man."
After a substantial bagel donation, I got the remedy. I had made salsa for a Christmas party, and had quite a few tomatoes left over. The recipe is simple:

Halfed bagel
Sliced tomatoes
Sliced onion
Thinly sliced cheddar cheese on top

Bake for 10 min in a fish broiler.

It has been delicious.

In The Shadows

WARNING: Contains Strong Sexual Violence (err... not really)

Walking home after a late night teaching web lessons, I say bye to my friends who all live in an apartment complex further on down what may be called "Flower Street". As the group pulled off on their own way I talked with them and came up a little more left of my street than normal, which was lucky because I barely avoided stepping into a round of vomit left undoubtedly by some over-boozed salary man now clutching his spittle covered knees in a crouch somewhere in Juso. I was thinking about how to write that sentence in a blog when I heard gravel rustling in a lot to my left. I gave it some attention but kept walking toward my apartment not 10 yards up. The churning though turned loud and violent and then it straightened out into a gritty smacking pat getting closer moving now out of the lot and toward the road as a screech reared up both garbled and shrill. I yelped and tore ass for the apartment hallway before taking a look back. Under the road lamps, a mangled mass of fur rolled out into the wash of light and one could barely discern that the creature was two. Their run was cut short though and the roiling frenzy began again as the first gutter ferret overtook the other and began savagely humping it. With a small scream, the bunch seperated back into the two small matted creatures that they were and breathing heavy. As if silently signaled, one of 'em took off behind a building in a burst of gravel before the other could trail it and then all was quiet.
Previously I had only seen ferrets in the Beastmaster movies 1 and 2. Those ferrets could grab keys off of a sleeping gaurd or weakly bite at villains giving the blonde hero just enough time to break free and grab his sword for a killing blow. You could talk to them too, if you were the Beastmaster, of course. I imagined that they only had witty things to say or that they were at least polite company. Not like these gutter ferrets. But perhaps they were the same ones. Maybe with the unpopularity of the Beastmaster series and a souring economy those poor out of work ferret actors turned to the mean streets and then turned against each other. I don't know their story but if they ever come at me again I'm gonna kick 'em in the head.