Cuervo Black + Diet cola + Spinach!

This morning I made an Egg cheese and spinach burrito for breakfast.

Yeah thats how I roll. I guess that most the spinach crap is over. Is it? Any how what pissed me off about the spinach thing is that called for a general ban on spinach. Never mind that there are E. coli everywhere. Yes folks everywhere. How do you think it ended up on the spinach? If you read the reports they basically say "Well. It could of come from anywhere." The irony that pisses me off about it is that for spinach the FDA or USDA can say... "Yeah fuck spinach for while until we figure who took a shit on our spinach." All this because a hundred or so cases of food poisoning.

Meanwhile when it comes to the meat industry... nothing stops the slaughter house. Nevermind there aren't conclusive tests for BSE (mad cow), and while brain and cortical matter doen't go into the human food chain, it goes into pig and chicken feed. And that prions the contagen of Transmissible Spongiform Encephlopathy (TSE) which are almost industructible (even by incineration) somhow magically dissappear in pigs and chickens (yeah right). That pigs could have TSE's only they never live long enough to see symptoms. That in the study that "conclusively" showed that BSE infected meat causes variant-CJD in mice, also showed it caused signature sporadic-CJD in other mice (not so sporadic is it?). Which coincidentally has increased in this country over the last decade although hospitals aren't required to report it to the CDC. Several hundred people a year are told. "you have sporadic CJD and about six months to live." They probably ask if they have mad cow disease and I'm sure the doctors say tell them no that's vCJD and you have sCJD.
And... Alzheimer cases have increased twenty percent. And the pathology of both CJD and Alzheimer's disease are the very similar. Both are protein related diseases, both cause spongiform holes in the brain. The symptoms are the same. Actually 1% of all Alzhiemer deaths are later (post-mortem) found to be CJD.

So I, the vegetarian who doesn't lecture people or fake stomach pains after eating meat, will use this moment to say...

I'll take my chances with the spinach, and you can risk one of "the worst ways to die." Hate to be so cheerful but you fuck with spinach and I bring on the harsh realities. Enough said.

Cheers!

p.s. I am finishing the last of my homemade Umeshu. Which I made from Japanese green plums (Ume), vodka, and sugar, and a tiny amount of H20. It tastes like delicious brain damage. You can by a brand called Choya but it's like 18$ a liter. And my stuff is stronger and more tart. Washes the taste of spinach right out ya mouth.

Coconut Rum on the rocks with lime

So today was an three eye-brow day, which as some of you would probably guess are pretty rare.

I have on my left side of my face a white eyebrow and eyelashes. This often gets many double takes and funny looks. But today three different people stopped to tell me "You have one white eye-brow." The first was in the elevator this morning. I was listening to "Yoshime battles the pink robots" by The Flaming Lips. I have found that they (the F-Lips) low-key easy-listening quasi-psychedlic music is perfect coasting (ride/walk/peruse/shop/etc) music. Anyways I got on the elevator to the third floor and turned down the music, just to let the person know that, I'm not drowing out any chance of a conversation. And I do this many because I think its wierd to walk around ignoring eveyone like they're invisible just because we're strangers. If you've seen the movie "Waking Life" it's like the seen where the girl doesn't want to be an "ant". So we step into the elevator and I turn my music down and she turns to me and says the thing about the eye-brow. I inevitablely accept the compliments I receive and explain its cause and we part. No biggie this happens around once a week.

Later at lunch... "Wow you have a white eyebrow" from the lady behind the organic lunch cube at school. We talk for a minute, and she show us the hole in her left eyelid she was born with and can see though with her eyes shut. Cooool. Everyone is always surprised that my eyebrow changed about six years ago. It didn't happen over night. I actually noticed that parts of my face were getting sunburnt first and the hair changed color over a period of a few months. Oh lucky me! Actually I hate to break the news to people it's part of a skin condition called Vitiligo. Which is idiopathic (a word I couldn't remember at lunch) that is, the medical field is unsure of its cause. They think it's mostly genetic. "Hey! Like michael Jackson? Right?" Yes it's a real disease. I just show it off very well, because if I was a browner shade of human being, most people wouldn't dare ask about what happened to my face. Case in point, if normal people skin is under a blacklight it looks dark green to black (depnding on you skin color). My face is very mottled in UV light. This is sometimes picked up by certain video cameras, and I have spots of slightly bluewhite spots of skin in daylight.

Later that afternoon... one of my professors while walking by stops and says..."One of your eyebrows is white. It's very cat like; you remind me of a cat" And we talk about it shortly. Yeah its just something. No I wasn't born with it... Yeah I like cats. And so on.

I don't mind at all talking about the eyebrow. In fact I'm glad it lets me stand out against the droves of sameness out there. Today was just unusual in talking about it that much. It's also slightly strange to recieve so many compliements for a condition that can be very socially and psychologically damaging to many people.
Oh Lucky me.
Cheers!

Coconut rum on the rocks with a twist of lime and of dash of squished bug.

After the long dark night that was my Graduate Evalution (three 10-15 pg papers) over and done with my oral defense today, I bring you (the few and slightly curious) further into my world of squished animals. The picture is me inside the atomic structure of gold at a Science museum.

This morning there was a cockroach on the inside door of one of my kitchen cabinets. I looked at it. Moved slowly to the trash can where there was a Pampered Chef spatula, whose new function is to bring swift death to roaches that in the last six months have invaded our apartment. I smoothly tilted and reached down grabbing the spatula, and with one fluid movement…THWACK! It occurred to me how much easier it is to kill the roaches during the day. They must be sleeping or resting, because they are much faster and more aware of me at night. I don’t always sleep well because sometimes it’s hot, others times it’s noisy outside, and the windows are open (because it’s hot). This morning I awoke with a headache, which annoys, but I wondered after scraping the squashed remains of the roach into the trash, what it would be like, just sleeping peacefully or, tossing and turning for most the night, and after a few minutes of actual restful deep sleep.

Thwack. You are no more.

Most people assume those who die in their sleep just float off forever. I was told my great-grandfather (and namesake) who had stomach cancer died this way. I personally want to wake up and know this is it. I want to be in that moment fully aware of the impending thwack.

Cheers!