Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Secret menu.


Y and I went to my favorite ramen place again at 56 and 6th. We bouldered in Central Park for several hours. I hope Y publishes some photos on his blog, since I'm cameraless these days. We also had the pleasure of learning from the local bouldering sensei Yuki Ikomori. His short black hair has grown into a flowing mane of white. He looks like an ancient warrior. I think he's 60, but he has the grace and power of somebody much younger. He has no problem leaping down like a cat from 6 ft off the ground. He is inspiring to behold. Very soft spoken, he dressed in a black hoodie, looking like Ghost Dog, he politely declined our invitation to ramen and silently disappeared into the crowds of tourists and sunday strollers by Wollman Rink.

This was not on the menu for the gaijin. Y ordered it. It was ramen with mackerel flavor. Y also prefers Kirin over Sapporo. In the first picture he is pouring out the Kirin for both of us. It's the japanese style to order a large bottle and pour it into various glasses. It's a little more communal than everybody getting their own. We ordered chicken liver and leeks and hand-made gyoza as appetizers. A dense cloud of cooking vapor hung directly over our heads. If we were to stand up we would have immediately suffocated. I cannot recommend this place highly enough.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Be a ROCK STAR!

Zero carbs. Zero sugar. 1 gajillion watts of pure pureness! I love the phrase "zero sugar". Zero is so absolute. I mean, it's nothing, zilch, zip, nada... but none of those hackneyed expressions approaches the mathematical certainty of zero.

The cube farm is the perfect breeding ground for humanoids willing to swill such invigorating beverages. Normal people would consider this stuff overkill, but here, amidst the endless dunes of Excel worksheets ... ROCK STAR finds a home and willing imbiber.

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I'm gonna vsum my lookifups!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Just too New Agey.

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I read Mutant Message Down Under. It kinda snookered me with its new agey back to nature mantra. Pilar of course saw right through it immediately. Written in a very facile style, which should have set off alarms. I think my favorite part was where she said that mental telepathy is real and that the reason us civilized modern types can't connect telepathically is because it only works if you're totally honest. Now that's brilliant, because nobody is 100% pure through and through honest. And as soon as you try to be so honest, you're not because then you're not genuine. But I put the cart before the horse. The book is supposedly based on the author's true experience of having lived with an aboriginal tribe in Australia for a period of several months. The author is an ex-Mrs. America from Kansas or something like that, although I think she claims to be a scientist in the book. Online searches quickly revealed the author to basically be a hoax. Oh well. At least the telepathy conceit was amusing. Gotta love the double-bind. In order to redeem myself, I'm now reading Moby Dick, which is surprisingly humorous and entertaining. I was expecting some dry verbose stuff that would shovel heaps of sleepdust into my eyes. I haven't got to the part where he spends like 60 pages on the details of whaling yet so perhaps my enthusiasm is premature. Then again, enthusiasm is always premature.