subway wit

must give emily credit for noticing this. i walked right by it. must be because she is randier than i? or i am dislexicer. disexlic. i am afraid of what that means. which is why i will dream about it. or did. last night. uggh.

diaries of a painfully inexperienced reporter

i've been out on two reporting missions for my intro class—one to a polling place in alphabet city last week for the democratic mayoral primaries, and one today, at a meeting in protest of VA hospital consolidation. i find that it is easiest to get old men to talk to me. they slow down because they see a nice young lady, which is when i swoop in and...ask nearly incoherent questions while scribbling sloppily in my notebook. i think i need a tape recorder so i can go around brewton-style.

at the conference today i met a man without a bladder. he was very nice despite his bladderlessness, which i suppose indicates that a bladder isn't a crucial component of congeniality, tho it must surely help. i did wonder, as i sat in that overly air-conditioned hotel ballroom for two over hours, how in the world all those senior vets managed to stay there without a trip to the bathroom. perhaps they are all lacking in bladders.

vegan mac&cheese is gooey cardboard

i just made one of those boxes of vegan convenience food that is so freakin unexploitative it calls into question its very existence. the box contains nothing you might remotely associate with dairy or dairy alternatives; not only is there no lactose, whey, or egg, but also no soy or nut products, and no candida albicans, whatever that means. the box is made from 100 percent recycled paperboard and was printed using soy-based inks. aside from the soy disparity, i'm pretty sure the box and its contents are one.

the pervasiveness of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly convenience foods puzzles me. the whole point of the original convenience foods was to make replicas of homemade dishes so high in starch, animal fat, and salt that it doesn't matter how preserved and freeze-dried and pouchified they are—you still have the important conveyors of flavor. to then go and replace the animal products with something unfatty and unflavorful becomes an exercise in masochistic deprivation. all for the sake of what? having an imitation of something that is itself an imitation of a home-cooked meal? i'm sure if plato could've foreseen road's end organics' dairy-free mac & 'chreese' (cheddar style), he would've been furious. we're talking shadows of shadows here.

i once picked a fight with a soy-yogurt product representative giving out samples at my health food store. i informed her that nondairy foods should give up the fight, accept their unsuppressably unique flavors, and go and develop foods that work with, rather than against, these foreign textures and tastes. manufacturers of nondairy goods, i call on you to untether yourselves from the hegemonic reign of dairy and to adopt an adventurous new approach of culinary medium specificity! if it does not look like cheese or yogurt, i promise to still try it.

except keep making soymilk and those tofutti cuties, because they are good. rice dream can go fuck themselves.

last day of freedom slash boredom

school starts tomorrow. soon i will find out if my brain still works.

yesterday ed and i went to coney island. i've been in new york for two years and three summers before that, and yet i had never gone to coney island. craaazy place. you can get on the F train downtown and an hour later emerge, alongside throngs of people carrying towels and pails and impatient children, at a giant raucus yankee carnival on the beach. we walked along the boardwalk and then sat on the beach and went swimming (water very cold) and ate a mango on a stick carved both to enhance its bitability and its resemblance to a flower. then we looked at the games and rides and walked up to neptune ave for pizza at the famous totonno's, which has some or other claim to being the oldest pizza in new york. it didn't taste old, but did happen to be a little bland. the crust found great favor with ed, and the cheese was quite fresh. i prefer the spicier, greasier varieties myself.

les achats sur (ou avec?) l'herbe

for my last day in austin dorothy and i took a little nude shopping trip around the city. very popular with the kids these days. what better way to ensure that you come home in some new duds than the threat of getting arrested? i just love the way strapless dresses make pictures far more suggestive.









this is dorothy and travis's cat marilyn, who likes to climb in the 'cuties' clementine box. shown here with human-assisted mohawk.












here we are at the airport, properly attired. sad to leave dorothy and her city's perfect union of egg muffin and soy latte.