If I were Wendy...

... and I lived in San Francisco, I would probably live here:
19th and Sanchez... go get you some, honeybunch.

All toilet, all day. And my penis is an earlobe.

It's in landscapes like this where your mind has plenty of time to wander. And wander it does. Things like One Letter Off variations on signage and names, a habit I first heard named by Gary as eulexia. (like dyslexia, but instead of a prefix indicating disfunction, it indicates pleasure) Currently, the chuckles come from Sitarbucks. You know, the place where you can get overpriced mediocre coffee and gratuitously pretentious world music. But inevitably, in the world of long road entertainment, the process of elimination leads to... elimination. Administration of, planning for, and crude references to... poop.

With that, I bring you Phase 2 of the culinary adventures from last week. Long time ago in a midwestern state far, far away, Matthew and Sandra inadvertently showed me how completely easy it is to make seitan (yes, it's pronounced "say-tan", like the devil). So I thought I'd give it a try. Easy enough, but I have to say that if you're going to try it yourself at home, don't fashion the dough into cylindrical shapes, regardless of how much you might want to have round slices to cut up and pan-fry. What you end up with is a cylindrical piece floating in soy sauce/broth, and well, it looks like poo floating in the bowl. Tasty and good for you, but you have to get your head past the visual similarities.
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We move next to the metaphorical toilet, the Toilet of the Mind. It's the metaphorical flip side of that metaphorical tender pelvic region boys on bicycles know well as the perineum, but which Jethro or Bubba would refer to by colloquial nomenclature as "taint". You know, "tain't one, tain't th' other". Something I've been meaning to delve into because it's eminently bloggable, but just haven't gotten to.

It all started when I was chatting with a friend of mine who, among her many fine qualities, happens to be a woman, a scholar, and a post-second-wave feminist. In the midst of our conversation there was some reference to something in popular culture that was possibly phallic, which then led to a discussion of penises.

As a penis owner-operator, and (for the sake of conversation) representative of penis owner-operators everywhere, the question was posed to me "what does your penis MEAN to you?" [emphasis added]. Which easily led me to an introspective self-debate over what "mean" means. (thanks to Bill "that depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Clinton, for making epistemology acceptable in pop culture) We got back to the original question... eventually. Discussion ensued about penises as Instruments Of Oppression, references in art, literature, criticism/analysis thereof, and other meanings assigned in unrelated settings.

The crux of it though is that the best, most honest, most accurate answer I could come up with to describe my own is: "my penis is an earlobe". Seriously. While it's a happy, useful and recreational piece of my anatomy, it doesn't have any crucial day-to-day symbolism or significance. In a removed, academic sense, one can fetishize, iconify, celebrate, or demonize a penis, but on a personal level it doesn't guide me, it doesn't decide things for me, it doesn't define me any more than other parts of anatomy. It's like an earlobe. I use it, it's part of me, I would miss it if it were removed. But I don't think about it actively. Sure, I think sexual thoughts every 7-9 minutes just like every other American Male, but my anatomy plays only a supporting role in those mini-sodes; fantasy mental movies are more likely to have an ensemble cast of anatomy or epic drama of dialogue than be a superstar biopic. Other than it's critical participation in urination and fornication, my penis is an earlobe.
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And lastly, the words of others. I was riding somewhere on an errand and/or adventure with G and her sprogs E and O... adult conversation going on in the front seat, kid conversation going on in the back seat, two separate galaxies. It's where they crossed over that we'll leave off today. The point where the adult conversation ended with "did you hear what I think I just heard?"

You see, the kid conversation was mostly background noise until it got to a puzzling exchange.

O: "I'll be the hamster."
E: "I'll be the toilet."

... someone figure that one out for me and let me know what I must've missed right before that, mmmkay?

a day on the road

Wow, South Dakota is a big state, long to get across, and pretty damn boring. Yes, we're swinging North. If I never see another "Wall Drug" billboard in my life, I'll be ok with that. The "Corn Palace" was immensely disappointing. Sure, it had corn stuck to the outside of the building, but it's no longer made of corn, and basically just houses a basketball court, which also serves as a big assed gift shop. Annoying.

But they do have these nifty little ears of corn molded into the concrete of the bases of the streetlamps. There's that.

Emily is keeping track of states by which ones she finds a geocache in, and SD and MN were on her list. WY too, so we're there. So we made a couple of special-purpose stops along the way to find a geocache or two.

As a California native, she'd never been to a Cracker Barrel "Never? [gasp of a midwesterner]". "Nope." well, ok - here we go. Never got to finish the checkers though since the chicken-fried something-or-other arrived surprisingly quickly.


Took a slightly-nausea-inducing spin on a playground. Tip for kids out there - either close your eyes or look at the horizon - fussing with a camera on a spinning piece of playground equipment can make a body more than a little bit woogey.

dang, before I forget...

So I heard recently that The Shondes are coming to town again... It's a little bit of a deja-vu since they'll be back at TC's Speakeasy Wed September 3rd for She-Bang, but hey, it was an pretty damn awesome good time last time, so I'll definitely be there. I'd definitely recommend checking them out - they have some music and videos on their myspace page. And probably some music on iTunes too. The critics call 'em a cross between Sleater-Kinney and Rasputina. Enh, whatever. I thought they were fun. Check 'em out, they put on a good show with the makin' of the music.

go west, young man.

Blech. Been home for the past weeks and nothing felt blog-worthy, it's not until I leave town that I starts the blathering. Sheesh.

Anyways. Going to California. Adventure-buddy Emily is driving out to take friend's parents belongings out to San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley area. Yes, convoluted origin/reason, but hey... what do I care, right? Free trip out West and all I have to do is some driving. I've always wanted to see SF/Oakland, so off I go. Bringing a bike, going to do some couch-surfing at friends of hers, then be back after a few days.

By the time I get back to some WiFi to post this, we'll probably already have seen the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. [ok, yup, we saw it. Gosh, I thought those heads would've been bigger. The pageantry and tacky touristy-ness of Keystone, SD more than make up for the smallness of the actual Mount Rushmore. The carved rocks are big in our minds, but it's the commerce that actually dwarfs them. Welcome to America.] And the talk in the truck right now is "hmm, when we hit the mountains, we could get a bike out and do some asphalt downhillling in the mountains near Tahoe..." I'm reminded of the California Death Ride where my top speed was 52 mph. I don't know if I'll be able (or willing) to do that on the single-speed with only a front brake, but we've got some time before we need to decide.