Thurzz furze brain schmurze

Headache still. Shared a bottle of Mondavi Pinot Noir just before bed. Not the best wine. Strong on the tannins. Gave me a headache. I keep forgetting to get me some water, or orange juice.

But it was the best wine ... at Food Source, anyway. This is the nearest and cheapest food warehouse. They sell Boone's Farm in the liquor section too. Tempted to try some, to satisfy a curiosity spawned by TV commercials when I was, what, twelve or so. Not very tempted.

Who writes Yelp comments for grocery stores? People with more of a need to write than the sense it takes not to. Um. Well, anyway, I like how one person writes the store off forever because they encountered an old white woman at the register who was grumpy ... grumpy about the fact her life has descended to working the register at a food warehouse where she has to put up with smarmy twenty-somethings that use expressions such as "ghetto" to describe a place full of screaming kids who are only there because Mom has a ton of food to buy and not nearly enough money to buy it and everyone's in a bad mood.

I don't go there often. Or any grocery store. My cupboards are fairly bare. My larder is bachelor-bare, typically. Cans of lentil soup, tortillas, cheese, beer.

Larder. Not a common word. I almost wrote larboard. There's a word you hear even less. Larboard and starboard were the right and left of ships of old, but larboard gave way to port a little over a century and a half ago, surely because the first mate screamed Hard to larboard! only to see the ship lurch the wrong way once too often.

Larboard = lading board, and starboard = steering board, rather obviously. In very old ships, such as seen on the Bayeux Tapestry, the rudder hangs off the right side, and so of course you'd draw up to the port on your left. There is controversy over this etymology, but I prefer to believe I am right.

Thank you for asking, but my Burning Man preparations have not begun and aren't likely to, not much. Haven't yet made any time. But this weekend we plan to go to Soulfire, and stay in a friend's RV, and take advantage of the sartorial possibilities where Burning Man culture meets a "clothing-optional" resort. My plan is to just take all the clothing bits I have and wear it in random disarray. So this sort of represents a kind of preparation. Maybe.

I wanna make stuff but I still haven't made my new apartment a truly functional living / creating space. This is because a) I'm not there a whole lot and b) this move correspond with a process of going through the stuff I garnered when Dad died, as well as whatever else I've been hauling along, and every single object needs to be evaluated and a) kept for use, b) kept in storage, c) sold, d) given away, or e) discarded. This takes awhile.

And so I find myself wanting to write and design and build and create, but have placed a bunch of tasks in my path to complete first. I'm serial like that, and it raises some philosophical questions about how I really want to live; because the stuff that has to be done will never go away, and if I try to get it all done before I do what I really want, well, you know where that leads.

I am at work right now and the big new CEO is giving a speech downstairs in a few minutes but I'm not going. I have work to do, obviously. But also it will be crowded and I won't hear anything new. Still, I'd better go down beforehand to get me some water or orange juice because when the CEO is in town they tend to lock down the security a little bit. It's not hard to imagine the scenes our professional security staff have played out in their minds that involve disgruntled ex-employees who are back in the building on a temporary ("green badge") basis. Maybe I should shuffle through with a scowl and unkempt hair and a violin case.

Which oddly reminds me I've been watching old Twilight Zone episodes lately on Netflix, and while some of them are pretty cheesy, some of them are brilliant, and of course illustrate how I started out developing such a twisted imagination. I also love recognizing actors who achieved greater success later on -- except my memory's so bad, I can't always remember where else I saw them.