私は酷い下痢です。

Last night at around 10:30 a middle aged couple walked into the restaurant I work at and ordered food--even though we were closed--and required me to dwell in my appetizer station for an extra hour. I figured they were just stopping by for some quick eats because they were drunk, but they ended up ordering three course meals. They were starting to piss me off because virtually everything they ordered came from my station, disallowing me to clean my area.

Had I paid attention to the fact that the executive chef was offering the couple superior service and immaculate dishes, I would have believed the guy who told me that the man at the table was Lars Ulrich of Metallica. He said Metallica were playing a concert in Houston; so I did some research when I got home, and that's when I discovered I made appetizers and dessert for the drummer of some really shitty, famous band.

I finally wound up grocery shopping at Phoenicia, a specialty foods retailer with products from all around Europe and the Mediterranean. I've been a few times before, usually just to buy insignificant things like candy bars and sodas; but this time my hand basket was heaping with goods.

The store offers immense varieties of dried fruits, cooking oils, olives, pastries, yogurts, and chocolates. The chocolates in particular are pretty outlandish--being from countries like Croatia and all. I never knew Croatia had such tasty confections to offer.

One thing that usually seems to disappoint me is the fact that Phoenicia doesn't really offer a Spanish section. They don't even, to my knowledge, carry Nocilla, Spain's answer to Nutella; they do, however, carry every other variant of chocolate hazelnut spread.

Another thing that's pretty unusual to find in a specialty foods retailer is a hookah aisle, and strangely enough, Phoenicia carries an expansive selection of not only hookahs, but tobacco in every flavor of every brand imaginable.

Normally "specialty" and "expensive" go hand in hand, but at Phoenicia the products are sensibly priced. Aside from being inexpensive and diverse, Phoenicia is both Halal and vegetarian friendly. However, if you don't have religious or moral standards, you might enjoy their deli and their limited pork products, strategically separated from everything else.

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Apparently the residents of my apartment building are so loaded that they are willing to leave clusters of full dish sets, glass sets, wastebaskets, vacuum cleaners, and artificial, fully lighted and decorated Christmas trees--all brand spankin' new--in the trash room for pillagers like Shaun and me to rummage through. I swear walking into the trash room is like Christmas; it is thankfully two doors down from my apartment, leaving me the benefit of discretely hoarding the treasures down the hall into my lair.


Anyway, here are some things I have accumulated from the "trash" room in the few months I have lived here:







I'm beginning to think that home goods retailers serve virtually no purpose to me anymore.

During a discussion about presidential assassinations:

Me: I wonder why Bush was never assassinated during his second term.
Shaun: Because everyone toting a rifle was for him.

If that doesn't speak the truth, Barack Obama actually has a chance of living through his presidency.

In all honesty, though, I don't expect anything too drastic to occur as much as I did during Obama's acceptance speech. Even then, I was just a little uneasy; albeit the speech was given in his hometown, which I think helped create comfort and maintain exuberance for everyone.



This song is, as David Cross would agree, one of the best songs ever. The entire official video disallowed embedding, but this more or less gets the point across. It is seriously LOL.

I must say I am more than pleased with the presidential outcome. Even though it was evident that there was a cogent chance of Barack taking John by a landslide, I was still anxious to know the results. I wonder if anyone else noticed the look of defeat on Palin's face. I'm sure that was a classic moment for most people to observe since she's always under a tremendous amount of scrutiny for being a dumb ass. I think Palin was affected by the outcome more so than McCain because she knew her presidency would be an inevitability once McCain croaked two weeks into office had he been elected.

As much as I admire the fact that this country is willing to accept diversity into office, I kind of think this campaign arose out of shock value. Clinton, Palin, Obama, cancer- where does one even begin to decide? You've to start somewhere, I guess, and this was definitely a considerable start. Clearly these decisions are made mostly out of liberty, favor, and even indulgence over politics, but each of those elements have been successful in contributing someone worth a damn into office.

Thank you, Half of America.

*Edit-

And for most of you Republicans who are worried about Barack and his religious views- you can always (hopefully) remember back to high school when you were (hopefully) introduced to the "separation of church and state" doctrine.

And remember, "Hussein" is not a denomination given specifically to terrorists.

Is there actually a reason it's called prune "juice"? I mean, the idea of prune juice is sort of a paradoxical thing to concede because the thought of extracting juice from something that has already been extracted of its juice, hence its name, is downright absurd. I'm not exactly arguing this established appellation because I guess prune juice does essentially - holy fucking shit, I have got to interrupt my prune rant due to the fact that we have ourselves a new president. McCain just gave his concession speech. Maybe I'll continue this later; maybe I won't.

Lately I've been at loss of blog topics, but I'm really bored; so I'll just force myself to think of something.

You know your 578 square foot studio apartment is at a revolting level of disorganization when it actually takes hours to achieve partial decorum. I have been enduring this very problem for the past week or so and have finally decided to hop off my lazy ass and hop into the kitchen where I've begun my clean-a-ton clean-a-thon. I guess cleaning isn't so bad once you've begun; everything just sort of transpires like clockwork. It's really just the initial motivating factor that I find difficult to come by, but who doesn't?

My job is starting to aggravate me a lot more lately, and I'm not really sure why. I mean, I haven't really been the victim of the sous chef's incessant bitching as much as I was prior to October, but who knows what's really going on in that fucking weirdo's cranium. On the bright side, the mouthbreathing dolt whose presence I had to painfully suffer for like four months got demoted and has been replaced by some guy who can hopefully spell "asparagus".

I, until like right now, thought the phrase "Jah will provide" was actually "Jawa will provide". I think "Jawa" is cooler because Star Wars fucking rules. Last night I was at my mom's house, and she had an episode of Wife Swap recorded, so I decided to check it out. There were an absurd white Rastafarian family from Florida and an even more absurd Texan family who lived by spreadsheets. The Texan dad controlled his family into living a pretty much chaste lifestyle as a means of appearing refined, but it wasn't really too convincing; I guess because it's hard to view a bald hick living in the practically rural suburbs of I think what is south Texas as cultivated. The Rastafarian family were just delusional bozos with the idea that "Jah will provide". Their intentions were sensible, but their lifestyle was not.

I guess all I'm trying to say is, queso flameado is a damn stupid appetizer.