"Deadeye Dick," like "Barnacle Bill," is a nickname for a sailor.  A deadeye is a rounded wooden block, usually bound with rope or iron, and pierced with holes.  The holes receive a multiplicity of lines, usually shrouds or stays, on an old-fashioned sailing ship.  But in the American Middle West of my youth, “Deadeye Dick” was an honorific often accorded to a person who was a virtuoso with firearms.

So it is a sort of lungfish of a nickname.  It was born in the ocean but it adapted to life ashore.

●●●

There are several recipes in this book, which are intended as musical interludes for the salivary glands.  They have been inspired by James Beard’s American Cookery, Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbook, and Bea Sandler’s The African Cookbook.  I have tinkered with the originals, however – so no one should use this novel for a cookbook.

Any serious cook should have the reliable originals in his or her library anyway.

●●●

There is a real hotel in this book, the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Port au Prince, Haiti.  I love it, and so would almost anybody else.  My dear wife Jill Krementz and I have stayed there in the so-called “James Jones Cottage,” which was built as an operating room when the hotel was headquarters for a brigade of United States Marines, who occupied Haiti, in order to protect American financial interests there, from 1915 until 1934.

The exterior of that austere wooden box has subsequently been decorated with fanciful, jigsaw gingerbread, like the rest of the hotel.

The currency of Haiti, by the way, is based on the American collar.  Whatever an American dollar is worth, that is what a Haitian dollar is worth and actual American dollars are in general circulation.  There seems to be no scheme in Haiti, however, for retiring worn-out dollar bills, and replacing them with new ones.  So it is ordinary there to treat with utmost seriousness a dollar which is as insubstantial as a cigarette paper, and which has shrunk to the size of an airmail stamp. 

I found one such bill in my wallet when I got home from Haiti a couple of years ago, and I mailed it back to Al and Sue Seitz, the owners and host and hostess of the Oloffson, asking them to release it into its natural environment.  It could never have survived a day in New York City.

preface, Deadeye Dick, Kurt Vonnegut

DC United wins again giving NE Revs their first loss of the season.  Two nice goals in the first 15 minutes and many, many nice chances after kept the Revs from continuing their unbeaten streak. 

You really should watch the highlights, because there were a ton.

Even DCist is fired up about United and their upcoming matches.

Oh man!  What a game to decide to go to.  Elwood - I'm sorry, but DC United over Chicago Fire was probably the best soccer game I've ever actually attended.  At least that I can remember.  There should be video highlights HERE soon, but maybe not until tomorrow.

DC was on a streak of zero goals in their past three games and they came back in a big way tonight and I was there!! 

After being down 2-0, United came back to tie the game.  Then they fell behind 3-2, came back to tie it again and then they ended up winning 4-3!  Jaime Moreno had a huge game with a goal and two assists and Christian Gomez had two goals.  Eskandarian didn't score, but his dummy run gave Gomez his first goal, and Quaranta, who Jen has soured on lately, had an assist and was the one who was taken down in the box, setting up the PK and DC's first goal.

I'll have pictures soon, and maybe only on the other blog, because it is easier, but what an experience!

I kind of gave up the whole Bobby Canteloupeseed idea.  I planted some seeds, but either not enough water or poor soil quality where I planted them means I have nothing to show for my efforts so far.

My community garden plot, however, is newsworthy.  And I hope to get some pictures up soon.

I went to the garden on Saturday morning for the first time in at least a month.  I was dreading it a bit because I knew it was going to be full of weeds.  Sure enough it was, and I almost just turned around and left, but I had some music - there is nothing like gardening to System of a Down - and so five minutes turned into an hour which turned into two hours and I actually put down 5-8 wheelbarrows full of leaf mulch to cover weeds and distinguish what was something that I had planted and what was an invader.  I lost count of how much mulch I put down because I kept thinking, "this is going to be the last one" and then I kept going back for one more.

I harvested 2 radishes, but nothing else that I've planted is close to being ready.  I also have some carrots, sunflowers, cucumbers, tomatoes, canteloupes, lemons and flax.  The flax gets really tall and thin but has really pretty small blue flowers.  It'll be interesting to see if it goes to seed and what it looks like when it does.

At one point, another gardener came by and complemented me on my garden, which really embarrassed me because I had so many weeds and things were so unorganized.  But I was gracious.  When I started telling her that everything had been started from seeds, and from seeds from actual fruit and veggies and not from seed packs, she was genuinely impressed and said so.  I told her that Jen calls me the mad scientist because of all the containers of dirt I have on the windowsill with seeds planted in it.  I've gotten 5 lemon seeds to sprout as well as numerous tomato seeds and an avocado pit, so my experiments have definitely been worth it.

The time I spent on Saturday really has energized me.  I went back to the garden on Sunday to show Jen what I had done and again last night to quickly put two Home Depot purchased cucumber plants in the ground before the rain came and AGAIN today for more mulching.  I want to go do more right now.  My passion is renewed and feel like this garden can actually become something to be proud of this season, as opposed to my mindset just a few days ago which was, "I really dropped the ball this year and I'll do better next year."

For some reason, a Kramer quote just popped into my head.  It may not apply, but I'll put it here anyway, because I love Seinfeld.

"Mother Nature's a mad scientist, Jerry!"

I guess the point of that is that no matter the state of my garden at any point, I can weed and mulch and amend the soil and beautiful and wonderful things can happen and if I only had a picture now would be the perfect place for it.

My mom used to have a cross-stitched piece in the kitchen that said, "I dig gardening".  I am definitely my parent's son.

I read a bunch of poker blogs today, particularly Chicks With Chips.  I got pretty excited about poker blogging, and as it turns out, I have something poker-related to blog about!

Playing play-money poker on partypoker.com this evening, I bet to the flop with 89s (spades).  The flop came 5s 6s 6h and I had the straight flush draw.  I made it on the turn and got a ton of action from one other player.  Turns out that he made a full house either 55566 or 66655 on the river.  I forget which.  What a cool hand.  I've made 4 of a kind before, but never a straight flush.  Probably because you never put yourself into a situation where you can make one. 

Maybe more poker blogging to come.  Maybe I'll make a royal flush tonight.

At the other blog:  http://naas.blogspot.com

from televisionwithoutpity.com:

"...followed by a most beautiful dream: Bo Bice, singing with Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama," which song I've been dreading, and now I don't even know why, because it is fantastic. He's glowing with joy the entire time, and everybody in the house started crying because of the immense joy on his face, and it was one of the best things I've ever seen.

And for some reason, that's when I realized he would lose. Which is rough, because I've been assuming he'd win for a couple of weeks, even though I knew it was dumb to think that, and I came up with a million reasons why he wouldn't, but it turns out there were closer to five million. Randy talks a whole pile of nothing, Paula talks a small mess of crazy, and Simon approves this Final Two. A very tall Brit with a good accent brings out the results, and everyone looks very, very nice, and Bo about starts crying right now. Seacrest takes his sweet-ass time opening the envelope, and the screaming starts, and she cries without tears. But come on, she's clearly crying. I think it's a baby pageant facial situation, where maybe she's just trained not to cry when she's got makeup on. Anyway: Carrie wins."

Not that I really care about American Idol, but my wife told me that people were making Bo v Carrie about blue state v red state.  I love making things about blue state v red state.  So I am sad that Bo lost. 

Also, Phil Anselmo would never win American Idol, so perhaps Bo is the closest it might ever come to that.

System of a Down is playing a show at the 9:30 Club tonight.  Tonight's show is one of only 3, I think, "guerrilla club" shows before they head to Europe for a big tour and then another big US tour this summer.

I found out about the show yesterday from a systemofadown.com e-mail.  Last minute show, last minute announcement and no online ticket sales.  If you want to see the show, you have to go to the Club box office.  Tickets go on sale at 10am EST, or about 1/2 an hour from now.

I woke up at about 5:45am this morning and was at the Club by 6:35am.  As I rounded the corner of U St at 9th St, I could clearly see the box office window and I didn't see a single person waiting there.  For about a second I was naive enough to think that I was gonna be one of the first ones in line.  The reality?  The line had formed down the block, closer to 8th and V St.  There were already a bunch of kids in line; they had been there for a while too.  Lots of sleeping bags and empty beer cans; hacky sack and frisbee and cigarettes.

Now there was a time when I would have definitely stood in that line for the next 3 hours for a chance at a ticket.  I might have even spent the night out there.  This morning, I did not wait around.  I was the last goober in line for about 10 minutes and then I left.  I wondered around the Howard University hospital for a few minutes with a cup of coffee and then went home. 

I'm fairly dissappointed in myself.  No doubt in my mind that this will be the show of a lifetime.  SOAD at the 9:30 Club?  Kidding me?  Maybe I was embarrassed that I showed up at 6:30am thinking I was hot shit.  Maybe I'd really rather play volleyball tonight.  Not sure.  But here I am, at home.

One cool thing that happened is that I met Antonio (he showed me his picture ID).  He stopped me on the street and basically asked me for $8, but he explained that he was trying to get home to Silver Spring and he had already walked all the way from GWU.  He seemed genuinely frustrated and he just wanted to get home.  I gave him only $3 but he gave me a hug anyway.  Of course now I feel bad for not giving him more.  Hopefully he can get the bus. 

Antonio said that he worked with (for?) Melwood, which is an organization for disabled people in DC - job training and support kind of stuff.  He had a disfigured hand - a full palm but only a thumb by way of fingers.  The cool part was that he seemed totally comfortable with it and we were able to exchange a "soul shake" as if his hand was whole.  Very interesting and cool.

Maybe I'll start getting up early and going downtown just for the heck of it more often.

Writing this entry gave me a bit of inner peace, so thanks for reading it.

A week ago Saturday (4-2-05) I ran a 10-miler in Charlottesville, VA.  The weather was cool, which was OK, but it was also rainy, sometimes coming down just this side of torrential.  Not ideal running conditions.  It is one thing to wake up at 6:30am with the prospect of running without stopping for the good part of 2 hours, but when you then look outside to see grey, drizzly yuckiness, it is all the worse.

What is interesting to me about this is how hard I have to try to remember how miserable I actually was while running.  I know that while I was running, I thought to myself, "Never again - no way."  The half-marathon this summer that my wife and I were thinking about doing was immediately scratched off the list at around mile 5, when the rain was at its worst and the muscles were starting to get stiff.  But just says later, when asked how the run was, "I found myself smiling, thinking about the nobleness of running in the rain and how my physical solitude was made all the more dramatic by the extra 2 pounds of water weight I was slugging around.  Amazing the filter that my brain has.

Anyway, my goal was 11 minute miles, which translates to 1hr50min.  My clock time was 1:45:21 and my chip time was 1:44:11 so I consider this run an amazing success.

Bobby Cantaloupeseed...  Johnny Appleseed... get it?

A large portion of this blog will be devoted this summer to tracking my new alter ego, Bobby Cantaloupeseed, who travels the DC region anonymously planting cantaloupe seeds in places where you might not ordinarily find expect: parks, roadsides, vacant lots, etc.  As the grow, we'll track their progress and see if there is any reaction: removal, harvesting, etc.  Yesterday I distributed seeds in 4 places.

1. 3 seeds dropped next to bus stop on Lee Highway across from Cardinal House Condominiums
2. seed planted alongside stairs by Franconia-Springfield metro and F-S Parkway
3. seed dropped behind fence along path between F-S metro and work (along F-S Parkway)
4. seed planted in mulch along sidewalk on Walker Ln (near work)

For those of you who don't know where these places are or don't care about the level of detail I am providing, don't worry.  This is as much for me as it is for anything.  But some of the higher profile places will be documented and maybe you will see some of my work at some point.  For example, Gateway Park in Rosslyn is going to get hit hard this weekend.  Not only is it out of the way (sandwiched in between N-bound and S-bound lanes of Lee Highway but homeless people hang out there, and if this project isn't a practical one in the context of homeless people, I don't know what it is.

I'll also explain more of my motivation for this project in upcoming posts, but I leave with this question for now:  Is this art?

Edwards' legislation would divert money from high schools that allow cheerleaders to perform overly suggestive lunges and inside-hitch pyramids. "It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down," Edwards explained.

Awesome.  I think that last part is a 50 Cent lyric.

Full article.

Check out NAAS for my most recent post with pictures that I was having a hard time posting here.

I'm going to tell you about what I saw on the metro this morning because otherwise I might start bitching about how congress needs to get a hobby, for real.

I was reading, so I didn't see exactly what went down, but at one stop (I think it was Arlington Cemetary) aldy gets on and sees a man sitting there who she is obviously very happy to see.  The lady might have shouted a little (with happiness) and they embraced.  I look over to another guy sitting there and he's watching this all go down, and he had the sweetest smile on his face.  He was genuinely tickled to see how happy these people were to see each other.  It was even sweeter a scene because this guy looked a little like Cheney, so when this man showed that he was capable of emotion, I was relieved that it wasn't Cheney.  So I saw a happy lady, a man who was appreciated and an innocent observed affected by his surroundings.  There are worse ways to start the week.

Like midnight legislation, for example.  And people who should just go to bed already.

Outside the hospice, a shout of joy when news of the House bill’s passage came. Among those cheering was David Bayly, 45, of Toledo, Ohio: “I’m overjoyed to see the vote and see Terri’s life extended by whatever amount God gives her.”

AND

A crowd of about 50 people prayed and sang outside the hospice. One man played “Amazing Grace” on a trumpet, as a pickup truck pulled a trailer bearing 10-foot-high replicas of the stone Ten Commandments tablets and a huge working version of the Liberty Bell.

Dammit.  I had to add that part!  I couldn't just leave it a post about a nice thing I saw.  I HAD to go and let some Jesus freaks piss me off.

this excerpted from the Center for American Progress's Progress Report for March 17, 2005

"As one of his last acts in office" Republican President Dwight Eisenhower set aside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, "the only place in the nation where the full spectrum of arctic and sub-arctic ecosystems is protected in an unbroken continuum." The 19 million-acre refuge is a land so pristine that it has been described as "a domain for any restless soul who yearns to discover the startling beauties of creation … where life exists without molestation by man." The name given to the area by the Gwich'in tribe, the indigenous people of the region, "translates to The Sacred Place Where Life Begins." But big oil has been greedily devouring the lands surrounding this virgin wilderness area, turning them into an industrial site riddled with scores of contaminated waste sites and daily pollution spills. And now, after using backdoor tactics disapproved of by the overwhelming majority of Americans, right wingers in the Senate and White House have set the stage for big oil to drill through the very "biological heart of this untamed wilderness," with the hope of drilling in other environmentally sensitive areas.

Goddamit!!!  I'm so fucking sick over this ANWR vote. 

So in about 10 years, we get an extra 6 months of oil.  In the process, we totally ass-fuck the caribou.  Because what has a caribou done for ME lately, is what I want to know.

Let me just pull some points together here.  Some is from savearcticrefuge.org (anti-drilling) and some is from ANWR.org (pro-drilling)

• According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA) in a report released in March, 2004:

  "It is expected that the price of ANWR coastal plain production might reduce world oil prices by as much as 30 to 50 cents per barrel... Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the OPEC could countermand any potential price impact of ANWR coastal plain production by reducing its exports by an equal amount."

• The United States has only 3% of the world's oil reserves, yet consumes 25% of the world's oil production. There is simply no way to drill our way to "energy independence".
• The EIA estimates that almost 60% of energy burned in the United States is wasted. By becoming more fuel efficient, the U.S. could eliminate the need to import oil from unstable regions of the world. A sound, comprehensive energy policy for the U.S. would invest heavily in renewable energy and energy efficiency technology to produce safe, clean energy and good, high-paying jobs.
• Check out this table of data about how long "your state" could run on oil from ANWR.  Let's play the "How Is This Information Deceiving?" game!!!  Yay!  Hint: why don't they just tell us how long the COUNTRY can run on the oil from ANWR?

Remember - drilling in new places like ANWR makes money for all kinds of people.  Strengthening/raising CAFE standards and reducing consumption cost money for all kinds of people.

Think about that when you think about the vote in the Senate today.

I was inspired by the most recent post over at Mimi Smartypants.  She's talking about bad jokes, I'm talking about bad stories.

Here's an example.

One time my wife and I went to a chinese restaurant.  We got fortune cookies when the meal was over but I didn't eat mine right away.  I put it in the pouch in my sweatshirt.  Then I forgot about it.

Later, when we were paying at another store, I leaned against the counter and, CRUNCH: fortune cookies crumbs.

THE END.

Wasn't that a pointless story?  The awesome part of getting together with your friends to tell each other bad stories is that your brain expects a good story, but then BOOM: THE END.  Hilarious.

I really feel like I should write something today - like, if I write something, a part of me will be healed or improved.  Unfortunately, I don't feel that the weekend was exciting enough to warrant a post.  Let's try these two things...

1.  Are there any movies that you remember from your youth that you remember as being awesome, only to go back and see them again many years later and be thoroughly disappointed?  Well, this weekend brought Short Circuit from Netflix.  What a bad fucking movie.  I think I remember it being a very funny movie because after "number 5" gets all of his "input" from TV, he starts talking like a TV commercial, which is semi-funny.  Also, the way that the Asian-Indian sidekick dude confuses English turns of phrase is kinda funny (example: "getting out of the house is a good opportunity to spread your legs")  Neither, though, is enough to make the disgustingly horrible performance of Steve Guttenberg palatable.  That fucking guy SUCKS.  He supposedly plays a reclusive genius who hasn't left his lab in years, but he says all of his lines about how "the PR part of this business isn't for me" with the creepiest grin you've ever seen!  I mean, could he possible forget what a brilliant coup his career is for like, two seconds and TRY to act?

2.  I spent some time at my community garden plot yesterday.  The weather was milder than I thought it would be but I still wasn't really dressed to be doing any serious gardening; I had on my most nicest Old Navy pants.  I was inspired, though, and so I borrowed my plot-neighbors cultivation tool (similar to a Garden Weasel) and pushed it around for 10 minutes or so.  That thing worked awesome!!!  In no time at all I had prepared a 5 foot by 10 foot area that was aerated, level and smooth.  Very nice.  Give me some warmer temps, gardening gloves and better shoes and I'll get the whole garden done some afternoon.  I can't wait to have my shirt off with a thermos of gin and tonics by my side and really working it out there.