Why are you on the computer?

I've been in denial about coming down with a cold for two days now. Sore throat, phlegm, but thankfully no cough. I had planned to spend the weekend in bed in a code-fugue. I've got some pretty fly ideas that deserve to be done, but ...

Well, then the sun came out and so did the Vespa.

I hope everyone else was able to enjoy this gorgeous day in whatever way they saw fit.

- Z

point / counterpoint

May it never be said that we aren't fair and balanced. (-:

- Z

OK, I admit to being a total Achewood junkie, and the Great Outdoor Fight storyline has got me hooked.

I believe that 'fugue' deserves to become the next overused and misunderstood pop-culture mental health issue [see also: paranoi(a|d) (WIKIPEDIA - paranoia) , anal(-retentive)? (WIKIPEDIA - anal-retentive) ] - once (e:dragonlady7) explained (WIKIPEDIA - fugue state) it to me, that is. With that preface:

Today I am ecstatic because we will have hired someone to take over all my nonprogramming duties by the end of the week - and all the candidates were excellent. Back at my old job my boss was always complaining about how he had to spend all his time 'putting out fires,' as he liked to call it, and could never concentrate on programming. I thought he was a tool. But now that I've tried programming and 'fixing peoples' shit,' as I like to call it - well, I still think he's a tool, but at least now I understand. Back then, though, I was just a programmer [Objective-C, thank you very much], and I would get in around ten to nine, grab a cup of coffee, read the news, and fugue until about ten to five. When I snapped out of it there'd be papers all over the office, half a tuna salad sandwich stuck to the ceiling, and another KLOC (WIKIPEDIA - KLOC) in CVS (WIKIPEDIA - Concurrent Versions System) . Man I miss those days.

- Z

When I started this blog lo these many days ago, I decided I wouldn't talk about national politics. People seem to get very excited about national politics these days despite the fact that it's nothing more than a two-ring circus of slimeballs and obstructionists. Local politics is another matter. But, it turns out, I discuss politics the way a pit bull licks your face [and that is not pleasant].

So I think I'm gonna stay out of local politics from now on too, and instead leave you with an excellent recipe for teriyaki salmon I came up with a couple weeks ago when we had nothing to eat but booze and a couple frozen salmon steaks:

In a smallish saucepan, dump in equal parts [1/4 cup]:
sake
sherry
white wine
beer
soy sauce

Add a not-insignificant amount of lapsang souchong tea leaves. I think there was some other stuff in there, too, like sesame oil and Old Bay. Heat it over very low heat until the smoky tea flavor is infused in the sauce. Strain the tea leaves out of the sauce.

Marinate/defrost the salmon steaks in the sauce: put the salmon in a Ziploc bag with the sauce, seal it tightly, and put it in a bowl of warm water. Replace the water when it gets cold. Leave it in a couple hours.

Take the salmon out of the sauce and put the sauce back in the saucepan. Reduce the sauce by half over medium heat. I don't know how important this is, but it makes the kitchen smell wonderful. Strain the salmon bits out of the sauce.

Grill the salmon gently, brushing it often with the teriyaki reduction. When you serve it, say something like, 'Oh, this? Nothing special. Just something I whipped up.'

- Z

So my buddy Chris called me up to go out on a man*date tonight. When I asked him what the occasion was, he said his wife had invited all her feminine relatives over for dinner, and there were just too many women in the room, and he needed a burger and a beer. Going out with Chris is always surreal, because despite the fact that he is a lawyer and an upstanding member of his community, we always end up telling dick and fart jokes.

We drove by the site of the proposed hotel [inlink]paul,4203[/inlink] and we both agree that it is going to look great there. The grubby little stores in the grubby little houses had a certain kind of caché, but I think the hotel will be an excellent fixer-upper for that corner. If I ever had to find a hotel for someone, I couldn't think of a better place to put them than right at the end of the Elmwood strip [because really, I'd end up taking them down there anyway since it's so much cooler than my own neighborhood (MAP TO: 14223)].

Then we started talking about old buildings and new buildings. I guess his father grew up in a building that used to be a funeral home. I thought that would give me the heebie-jeebies. Not that there were still dead people coming in and going out, but that's what the building was for. To my ever-anthropomorphizing mind, it just seems natural that buildings would have memories of what they were used for, and what happened there.

It reminded me of when I used to live in the Lower East Side. I'd hang out in the East Village all the time, and there was this one building on St Mark's Pl (MAP TO: 23 ST MARK'S PL) that I always wondered about. Always spray-painted, never occupied, and always somebody shooting smack on the front steps. Turns out 21-25 St Mark's Pl had a long and sordid history starting as the Polish National Home ["the Dom"], which ended violently when a massacre went down, and eventually the building was purchased by Andy Warhol, who rechristened it the Electric Circus, where the Velvet Underground got their start. That's pretty heavy shit, all of it. The building fell to disuse, though I think some squatters were living there. Then one day, after a prolonged absence involving a move to the suburbs, I came back to my old haunts only to find it had been replaced with luxury lofts, a natural-foods store, and New York City's first Chipotle . New brick facade, well-lit, fully-occupied, no grafitti - as though nothing had ever happened.

But still, some derelict out on the front steps shooting smack.

Gotta love change.

- Z