Happy new year 2016

Do I walk 35 minutes to watch the fireworks show late tonight? the answer is the winner between the beautiful ephemerality of fireworks, versus the apathy of lethargy.

its so quiet tonight.  this silence is the sound of cultural emasculation by bureaucrats. i remember when i was young: gun smoke so thick you couldn't see more than 50 feet in front of you.  The neighborhoods like a war zone.  illegal aerials flowered the night sky and shook windows.  The morning aftermath of red paper shell casings clogging gutters.

Is concern for some peoples asthma flaring up for one night our of the year worth this emasculation of a great and proud cultural tradition?  Is the thought of firefighters having less work to do one night out of the year comforting?  Is preventing house fire Darwinism a net gain?

Pet peeve #688

Microwaves that default to cook time by minute intervals and force you to hit the extra button that says "time cook" if you want to cook by seconds.

Large tortillas

Took it to the next level with big tortilla. 

Tortilla

What does it mean when I look forward to going home so I can make tortilla?

It has become a hobby rather than food.   nay, not a hobby,  a passion.

Batch three

Batch three in as many days.   It is no longer about the eating of tortilla now, it is about the making of tortilla.  

Can't get over my fear of overly wet dough.  The cracking means its too dry. 

Tortillas round two

Pap pap cook 

Tortillas

Hand made tortillas instructions: mix smoosh  pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap slap. 

Tortilla

Chicken breast

What I did to these chicken breasts should be considered a crime. 

My Partner

When did straight people start referring to their significant other as "partner"?  What happened to "boyfriend" or "girlfriend", or even "wife" and "husband"? In this day and age of sexual identity awareness,  referring to your boyfriend if you're a girl or your girlfriend if you're a boy as "partner" is being passive-aggressively obstinate.  

12:30am

What is wrong with me? Why am I so sleepless and broken

flippant comments

I'm Done

Gronk is done. 

Patriots are done. 

I am done.  

I am no longer a football fan.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

what is the point? bad things happen to good people. you work so hard and the universe happens and everything you build just starts to decompose. Why even get up in the morning? You're going to be disappointed in the end, when everything dies. everything dies. 

            everyone dies.

            love, sex, family, friends, social justice, money, power, legacy. What's the point?  

Thank you football gods for this epiphany, this life lesson a lifetime of poverty, death, heartbreak or suffering couldn't deliver as sharply as that helmet to Gronk's knee did. 

life is futile. 

life is meaningless.  you cannot create meaning from something inherently meaningless.  there is no god.  love is a trap. Desire is pain. attachment is suffering.  The cancer will always return. 

Tuxedo man

i wanted to sob

Thanks Givin

Ahh.. the poor single man's thanksgiving dinner.  Total prep time = 10 minutes.

Old boy

Time to give up when you find yourself face down on the floor

Shopping spree

Here are the hundreds of dollars I spent on clothes and shoes, taken with my new  two hundred dollar smart phone. 

Best Monday ever

ahhh...hostel life.

hostel life =
german girls
overly talkative guys in the dorm
smelly bathrooms
weird guys from different countries speaking broken english trying to make plans to get drunk together
asian people in large groups
people cooking saimin in the kitchen in their pajamas

mag mile light festival

somehow i always end up where i need to be:

a million people crawling their way down michigan avenue for the parade you can't even see if your not in the front row and its so cold my fingertips were turning blue and i find the spot: 

huzzah

Madeira

The sympathy Madeira from jim morrisey

Venezulan bowl grill

Lunch  today was at this place near the flotation tank center.  Meh.

De quay

Dinner tonight is a table for one (as usual) next to four drunk old gentlemen slurring their words, and a "couple" on a date  composed of a guy, and an attractive woman who is engaged, but seemingly not to him. 

Eavesdroping on this chick, I've concluded I don't like her.  If i was cynical, I would say this guy is a friend-zoned friend who is in stoically in love with her, or he is stoically putting up with her stupid face after getting stuck with a platonic dinner date with her.  

Update: Having eavesdropped some more, i think they actually may be engaged to each other.  If this is the case, I believe, in my opinion, either this guy is a quiet stoic guy who doesn't wear the pants in the relationship, or he is making a huge mistake (and he knows it). 

Apparently this pretty good restaurant is owned by Jim Morrisey.  The manager looks just like him.  He treated me to a glass of Madeira at the end of the dinner for some random reason, maybe he took pity on the weird lonely single chinese guy.  Free sympathy Madeira isn't something I have the pride to turn down.

good food.  would recommend. 

Flotation tank

The flotation tank spa was super new agey but in a  pleasant and reassuring way.  The flotation tank experience?  Kind of meh. It was very relaxing, but no hallucinations and no instant enlightenment.  I definitely feel relaxed and loose like after a good massage. 

It was an experience, worth the fifty bucks, and I'd go back to try it again, for the relaxation if nothing else. 

29 feels like 18*

Holy it is cold.  I'm over this city. You suck, Chicago.  

it was so cold. 

stupid windchill. 

*that's what she said

Mag mile v. Waikiki

Magnificent mile is much like Waikiki.  Except colder, snowier and wetter.

and with a Uniqlo store, something hawaii is badly in need of. 

Uniqlo

I'm coming!

Chicago 2015

I'm tired. 

Chicago 2015

Business traveling is the worst form of traveling. I wouldn't even call it traveling,  that is an insult to the concept. 

But I knew this trip wouldn't be too bad when I saw this sign getting off the subway.  one of my few favorite places to shop: 

Just one block from the hotel. 

Grand opening

i give this place six months.  a year tops. 

Sad pad

The most morose and saddest of sad faces is notepad.

Fear and loathing in Waikiki

We were somewhere on the edge of honolulu when the drugs began to take hold. 

Poor dead kitty

Bye lura

Glassy two to four.  Warm Hawaii evening.

Mmm... sweet creamy delicious schaudendraud

Yes! Die, bubbies!

Rat graffiti

i hate myself

beggar alms

i took this picture at the 2012 kalachakra in Bodhgaya, India.  this monk was passing out small denomination rupee coins to these beggars who weren't really allowed inside the walls of the temple complex.   i gave nothing to them, though i was far richer than most people there.

some men just want to watch cute girls drown.

diamond head on fire.  rain.  death star moon.

Apparently, I am not a white knight in shining armor.  I don't care how cute you are, I'm more inclined to watch you get hurt and/or drown then bother to help you. 

Stormy but fun Chinas

global warming labor day weekend

labor day weekend: hurricane to the east, global warming humidity, global warming calm, haze, 3-5 surf, five guys out, glass, dead sailor, guy screaming for Eric, 

justin townes earle and sunset and home.

why can't her boyfriend surf?

Seal lady

Surfing in the bay.  Didn't realize the lady taking pictures and staring at coastline shrubbery was actually looking at a monk seal.  She sat on the rocks for two hours at least starting at this blob barely distinguishable from the rock it was laying on. 

She was so happy and content to just be near this thing.  The physical proximity to this object was enough to bring her joy.  Just starting at it from a distance and taking pictures. Physical proximity to the object.  A few pictures.  So content. 

I don't even know how she knew it was there, in that hidden cove.  How did she find it? How did she find her joy?  

Major life milestones: 80085

Birth, graduation, marriage, first child, retirement, death... driving your car until it says boobs.

I LOOOOOOVE paying taxes!

Power lines sparked and popped and flamed and exploded then darkness.  no light. then blue lights and red lights of emergency response vehicles.  Then yellow lights of electric company vehicle.  then soft white lights of my bedroom lights returning.  Door to door, not even 45 minutes.  Taxes!