crude futures

Alton, six days old

Gambling & one blogger's endorsement

hi readers. first of all, congratulations to Brian on his amazing and beautiful news. he is a father now, and i look forward to him "blogging" in a frank & self-reflective manner about Fatherhood issues, concerns...Brian!—are you gonna read this?

anyway. i just wanted to share with you a funny independent AD which relates to our upcoming national election. i won't be voting for john mcCain on 11.4.08—not really because of gambling (mostly because he's a dickhead who has run a mendacious/racist campaign—have i used too many em dashes here?), but i might not even get around to casting a provisional ballot for Barack in NY: i'm keeping my powder dry for bed-stuy stoop celebration on inauguration day!

Bud Carew McMüller (nickname)

This is my new baby, Alton Pendragon. Click his face for some news from his mother.



So far, the boy's nicknames include...

• Bud Carew.
  
• Little Chumpler.
  
• Young Sportsman (my dad's nickname for him).
  
• Champ (Joe Biden's nickname for him).
  
• Chauncey Warblechin.

"Order Holiday Lefse Now" — a blog post about lefse that is not about the pervasive stress I feel (and am sort of ashamed about feeling)

On the afternoon of August 12, 1995, I walked into a house in Toledo, Ohio where everyone was talking about lefse — a sort of potato-based tortilla that's very popular in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Norway but unheralded (and virtually unknown) in northwest Ohio, where I lived for 13 of my first 18 years.

• "Is the lefse ready?," someone said.
  
• "When do we get to eat the lefse?," someone said.
  
• "Lefse? Yummy, yummy!," someone said.
  
• "When do we eat lefse?," someone said.
  
• "Will the lefse be ready soon?," someone said.
  
• "Hey Brian, have you had lefse?," someone asked.

No. I had never eaten lefse. I'd never even heard of the stuff.

• "Nope, I haven't eaten lefse," I said. "But I'd like to try some."
  
• "You've never eaten lefse?," someone said.
  
• "Not yet," I said.
  
• "You've never eaten lefse?," someone said.
  
• "No," I said.
  
• "Do you want it with butter and sugar?," someone asked.
  
• "Sugar yes, but no butter, please," I said.
  
• "No butter?," someone asked.
  
• "No thank you," I said.
  
• "I can't believe you don't want it with butter," someone said.
  
• "I'd prefer not to have butter," I said.
• "What?" someone said.
  
• "I'd rather not have butter," I said. "But sugar, sure."

I ate the sugared, butterless lefse — I ate it warm, which is a good way to eat homemade things that are supposed to be eaten warm — and I enjoyed it. It was delicious in the way that I bet a fresh homemade tortilla stuffed with sugar would be delicious.

After that first lefse encounter, I never ate another bite of lefse and I never heard another peep about lefse or thought another thought about lefse until today, when a friend from Minnesota mentioned lefse in an email.

• "Tickets [to the play] are going faster than Grandma's lefse," the friend's email said.

THE END

Honda Contrary

Honda plans to release its first 100% electric car — the Honda "Contrary" — in 2013. Can you believe this? The Honda "Contrary"? It's like a bad pun.

I can already hear the conversations (the commercials?):

MAN 1: Say, friend, I like your new car. Very sporty. Very slick. I bet it guzzles gasoline, though. Right?

MAN 2: Honda Contrary, my friend. Honda Contrary. This car is 100% electric.

Fragonard, Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Sugar of lead

Sugar of lead is a real thing.

Sugar of lead
Color of night
Quantum of solace
Milk of magnesia
Syrup of ipecac
House of tartan

Some books...

Some books encourage me to feel bad.

Some books get touched by bugs.

Some books get "foree," even though that word does not yet have a public meaning. That word ("foree") is copyright me.

Some books get thrown in the trash.

até o sol raiar

i think the first monday morning this vid (of a film!) came into my life was two weeks ago tmrrw. i need to start storing up motivational acorns like this for the oncoming fall/winter

world's tallest jpeg down-arrow

from the crude futures series "world's tallest jpegs"