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revelations

No, it's not the End Times or anything. But I had some laundry issues that reached critical mass. One pair of clean underwear left. No clean towels. No clean dish towels. So I go to the laundromat, take up a whole row of washers, and do 8 loads of laundry. But what do I come home to?

This.

A closest that's... well, basically full already.

And I ask myself... what am I doing with all these clothes? The issue is not that there is a set of clothes here. The issue is that there is a whole other set of clothes over there that I just finished washing. And I'm just one dude. And I'm not even fashion-conscious.

Too many, too many.

I counted 17 pairs of jeans, but only 4 or 5 make it into the regular rotation, some too small, some un-presentable to decent folk. And don't get me started on the number of T-shirts. What you see here is only the remainder. I suspect there are Aleph-0 ("al-eff-naught") of them - infinite in number, but countably so. Not because they're interesting, but just because they've accumulated.

I'm feeling a purging coming on.

It's time to thin the herd. Lot of that going on in other places... I'm wondering why I have 2 shelves of fiction paperbacks that are already read... I'm not likely to re-read them any time soon, and the library has so many wonderful other books available, right?

And what do I need with 21 coffee mugs? I'm one person. And I'm annoyed that I don't have enough cupboard space, but it seems that I'm the cause of my own problems.

Slowly, slowly... the realization, she comes.

superglue, dammit.

Had a little "bagel incident" this morning, cutting a bagel the dangerous way, and slicing my finger a little bit. Nothing bad, just a deep papercut kind of thing that won't stop bleeding, but in the worst place - right on a bendy spot. So with a band-aid I go, but over the course of the day, the flexing results in needing 3 band-aid replacements. Annoying.

By the time I get home from the laundry adventure, I'm fed the fuck up. I've heard you can use Super Glue/Krazy Glue as a medical adhesive ("bonds skin immediately" and "non-toxic") for things like this, so I give it a try - hold the cut closed, a drop on the top, and POW! it's all good. No sting, no waiting, no fuss, no muss. Waterproof, secure, perfecto.

I am here to testify, people: it works. When you try it, you will become a believer.

the bumper sticker I want to see...

My kid's art was censored for obscenity
at Springton High School

wishful thinking, downtowning

Another grand debate of downtowns - a meta-issue, if you will. It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of downtowns. Cities. Urban. Busy, doing... there-ness. Over the holidays in Evanston, the new fresh (well, to me) development... buildings rising to 15, 20, 25 stories downtown where once it was rare to be more than 10. You can see the in-vogue intentionality of the downtown planning in place - the mixed use, the "wedding cake" architecture to keep streets and pedestrian areas "at human scale".

But I wonder to myself... do I really see the connections and community that dense urban downtowns promise? Sure, there's activity, and more people - but are those people actually connecting to each other? Cafes strewn with singly-occupied tables. But all that just seems to be like Apple and Dell swooped in and shat out a bunch of laptops with people hunched behind them.

Apartment buildings, condos, etc. etc. tightly clustered together, but do people actually know their neighbors? I'm wondering how much of this is wishful thinking, how much of it actually happens, and how long it will take to really know one way or the other. Some of the streets I walked down seemed pretty sterile, even in the midst of the Christmas Shopping Season. I don't think you can Manufacture Community.

And my cynical brain is wondering how many of the cutesy shops are going to survive the recession, what with the disappearance of the almighty consumers, and the tightening of belts and all. Debating how much we really need artisan handcrafted dog bowls and fair trade organic vegan chew toys.

not the kind of transit I'm in favor of

that bacon thing sorta happened for me

No, not a grand revelation. Not a sudden overwhelming falling in love. Really, it was more of a falling out of love with bacon. Not that I was ever in it, per say.

It's just that I found out through adventures the other day... I thought I'd try my hand at making Candied Bacon, and what I found out is that it's just not as dreamy as one would think. I went for it a couple different ways, but in the end, even the best result (which ended up looking exactly beautiful like it does in the picture) was sticky and greasy at the same time, didn't develop a hard candy shell, and just was not really fulfilling expectations. And after it all, I has a bunch of bacon, and I really had no enthusiasm for it. It was there, salty and snacky, but I had no real connection to it. I ate it because it was there, not because I cared very much for it.

Sure, bacon is funny. And bacon mania has been sweeping the land. But I'm starting to fall into the bacon backlash category. It's just really not that big of a thing for me. I'm not going so far as to say that it's jumped the shark or anything, because there are plenty of fine people that have it as a part of their identity. But for me, I guess I've just... moved on.

It was there before me, it will be there after me, it doesn't need me to survive.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that I'm more curious about Zen-type stuff than Hindu-type stuff. Really, I swear.