Continental Breakfast of Champions

I got my car back today. The bill was $30 less than I was told- the shop told me the tires cost less than they first thought. They have come in under estimates on some of my former vehicles too... At times I suspect the garage of honesty-at other times I wonder what they are really up to.

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It has been exactly two years since my last drink!
Funny line my fellow recovering pal 'Lisa' told me yesterday:
"If I wasn't an alcoholic, I'd be drunk every night."
Hahah! Ya gotta laugh...
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Yesterday I was stuck at home with almost nothing to eat and no easy way to get groceries, so I made a salsa with what I did have. It turned out very well and is very cheap:

Two cans black beans- drain and rinse
One can corn- drain
One can diced tomato
A leftover carrot, diced (use whatever veggie bits ya got)
A few cloves of chopped garlic
A small handful of chopped cilantro
A few spoons of chopped jalepenos
Some cumin
Tiny bit oregano, black pepper , hot sauce, whatever you like

Total prep time: Under 10 minutes
Total cost: About four bucks. (Yields about 3- 3 1/2 pounds)
Note on fiber content:Fidel Castro eats a version of this to which he adds 2 parts oatmeal. He refers to it as Tsunami Salsa. You will feel better afterwards!

Cover it and let chill for a couple hours, stir every once in a while...mmmm!
(Store in plastic container)

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Yesterday I had a job interview that went well, but it's only part-time. Details if I get it- I am very wary of jinxing myself!

Today I sold my first package of radio advertising! My commission will bring an extra $100 a month in thru December. I'm starting to think I might be able to do pretty well selling ads part-time. Obviously, I love the station, so it's easy to be enthusiastic during my pitch. In general, I'd rather chew glass than sell products... however, I could get into selling vintage guitars...ahhh, jinxed!

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Pins and needles, grandma up and down the last couple days. I feel a lot better with my car back- I might go up there tomorrow.

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Hope everyone's well. I hope to see you soon. The heat and the vehicle-less days of walking through it have worn me out.

Who Knows?

Oh no.
My worst nightmare realized.
I forgot to reset my alarm after last night's brief power outage- it's exactly 7 AM. I have to be on-air in zero seconds. I call the studio and ask DJ KB to give me 15 minutes, on the way, etc...
(Thanks K)
Then I realized I hadn't put my show together- I was gonna do it in the early morning hours- so I just grab the first box o' crap I see and bolt.

At 7:10 I'm signing on. It's a good thing I live near the studio.

Lou Reed- What's Good?
This album, Magic and Loss, was gift to me from my mom as she was dying of cancer. For years I couldn't listen to it without falling apart but now I fall back on it when I need strength.
This morning I fell back on it when I needed an opening song.

Jefferson Airplane- Other Side of This Life
It always looks better here from over there.
I'm a big fan of the Airplane family and this live LP is one of my faves- those guys could really tear it up on stage- none of that polished Marty Balin Starship crap that came later...

Larry Graham-Hair
I cut the hell out of myself while shaving my head yesterday- had blood running down my face like Sissy Spacek in Carrie-well, it wasn't quite that bad. It was more like a few drops, but it's more dramatic to describe it as 'torrents'.

Tom Verlaine- Down on the Farm
As heard in Television- from his solo LP, Mr. Blur. I found this in a box of closet junk- cool find!

King Crimson- Heartbeat
I need to land sometime...right next to you.
This LP, Beat , and the following one, Three of a Perfect Pair, contain some unusually sweet and accessible love songs by Crimson standards. After they broke up, singer/guitarist Adrian Belew released a couple of solo albums celebrating the wonders of fatherhood and domestic bliss, so I guess the Crimson tracks were a form of foreshadowing.

Tangerine Dream- Little Blond in the House of Attractions
Right now I need a song that's seven minutes long. Maybe longer. The radio in the bathroom is broken...much time is left? Aaaaaaa!
This should be titled : Little Bald in the Outhouse of Spasms

Pentangle- Hunting Song
This group is better than a dozen Xanax. Their recordings have a timeless, hypnotic clarity to them. I haven't had any coffee and I start drifting off...pretty guitars...sweet voice

Stranglers- Golden Brown
Bad choice- I love this ballad, but the faux harpsichord and airy harmonies are puttin' me to sleep. La lala la...

Loreena McKinnet - Mummer's Dance
If I'm gonna lapse into dreamland on-air, I might as well play McKinnett and hope that I fall into a shamanistic trance state. Those are educational.

Clannad- Love and Affection
Why is this so hard to find? The song asks, but doesn't answer.

Fiona Joyce- The Juggler
One of the few new Celtic CD's received recently. I like Joyce a lot, hard to find in the stores though.

Bob Dylan- Mighty Quinn/ Little Sadie
When in doubt, a double Dylan will do. From Self-Portrait.

Damien Dempsey- Celtic Tiger
Swift would like this song. A lot. If you can find Dempsey stateside, buy it.

Marianne Faithfull - Broken English
I love this LP. My favorite song contains some of the most beautiful profanity ever recorded. Too bad I can't play it.

Hot Tuna- North Wind Rise
Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen from the Airplane Family.

Lucinda Williams- I Lost It
Hahahaha...I love this song! Finally starting to wake up. LW is my new coffee!

Patti Smith - Free Money
Wanna know how to make free money? Hmmm? No one? Aw.

Robert Fripp- Chicago
I love the muted howling of the guitar in the background...it reminds me of sitting on my brother's shady Chicago back porch. It's calm and peaceful, but in the distance something loud is always happening.

Alan Parsons Project- Don't Let It Show
Sometimes I feel like this song. Not sure that's a good thing.

Soft Boys- Positive Vibration
Keep it positive! Manic happy!

Flaming Groovies- Comin' After Me
Ten headhunters with a buzz-saw! Not that I'm paranoid or anything...

Clash- Brand New Cadillac
When I was kid, I listened to the Grateful Dead. When I got older I listened to the Clash.
I still listen to the Clash.

Quicksilver Messenger Service- Gold and Silver
This jazzy dueling guitar instrumental should be a nice intro to the next show, which is called Be-Bop and Beyond- it's hosted by a former New Orleans DJ, Mr. Jazz, and his theme song is by jazz great Horace Silver- done special for Mr. Jazz! Hep!

Damn...why am I so tired? Oh yeah. I know why I'm so tired.

Sweet dreams and have a pleasant valley Sunday!

See America on Twenty Dollars a Week

(Like many headlines, the one above is misleading. It doesn't factor in expenses such as rent, utility bills, insurance premiums etc. ; and by "See America" I mean: "see my office, the inside of the bus , my apartment and various sidewalks")

Sunday night I withdrew twenty bucks from an ATM. This, I told myself, is all the money I can afford to spend this week. I really thought I could pull it off, but I failed. It was close.


My largest unavoidable expenditure was getting to and from work. A round-trip is $2.50, over five days that's $12.50, which only left $7.50 to live on for seven days. Transportation wiped out over half of my budget before my week even began.
It's important to note that I started with the following already in my larder:

-A half-dozen or so cans of food- tuna, beans, tomato sauce etc.

- 2 lbs dry rice

- an onion

- Fresh garlic and fresh cilantro

- Too much oatmeal

- Spices, spices and more spices

- Assorted condiments, some in jars, some in packets.

- A pound of coffee

- Cat food

I purchased a loaf of whole-grain bread- a luxury at $2- a half-gallon of grape juice ($2) and three pounds of bananas ($1) . That left $2.50.

With that, I bought a 20 lb bag of generic cat litter ($2) and a box of store-brand baking soda, ($.50). (I mix the baking soda into the litter-it greatly reduces the smell- and it's much, much cheaper than buying the 'deodorant' brands.)

That left me with zero cash for seven days. What to do?

First, I made rations, starting with my version of Fidel's Tsunami Salsa:

- 2 cans black beans, drained
- 2 cans corn, drained
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- a few cloves of garlic, chopped
- a 1/2 cup or so of cilantro, chopped
- a 1/4 jar of jalapeno slices and the last bit of a jar of pepper relish
- 1 diced onion
- some cumin

This yields approx. 4 lbs of tasty, healthy salsa that will keep for over a week in the fridge. Total cost is about three bucks, perhaps less.
I ate the last of it for dinner Thursday night, self-served with a side of curried rice, a piece of dry toast and followed with a dessert of oatmeal flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, honey and bananas.

This meal was nearly identical to my lunch and dinner of the previous three days, with the exception of a tuna sandwich for lunch on Tuesday and some grapes I mooched from a pal last night.

I'm not complaining- even in the abundance of cash, this is pretty much what I eat- it's not because I can't cook , it's just that I'm lazy and unless I'm sharing a meal with others I consider eating to be considerably less exciting than cooking. This apathetic approach to diet has caused me to go from 195 lbs to 145 lbs in under two years, as well as lowering my cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure from the 'critical' (Tri-G was 650!) range to the 'exceptional'
( TG now 110) range ; my doctor uses me as a model to hold up to his other patients who have high cholesterol etc...he recommends diet and exercise as alternatives to prescription drugs...in other words, he says a healthy lifestyle is better for you than magical pills.
What a quack, eh?

In any case, my cupboard is Hubbardesque and the catboxes need changing, but I made it for five days, which is pretty good, I think. Four dollars a day, $2.50 of which was busfare= $1.50 a day for food. Healthy food that tastes good @ fifty cents a meal. Easy.

This is how I plan on replenishing my savings, because today is the day I get my car out of the body shop, which means that my money will all be gone at 5 pm this evening.

I'll be too busy to spend money this weekend: tonight I'm guest- hosting our Friday funk show, Zendo Soundsystem; tomorrow I'm hosting our weekly 1980's show and engineering some band that I've never heard of; Sunday I have my morning show and after that I'm going to attempt to visit my grandmother again. I will be watching the woods for deer on this trip. Carefully.

I know my grannie is gonna ask me if I need any money.
I do.
I need twenty-five dollars. I bet that I can live for a week on twenty-five bucks...oh, and hey, could you throw in an extra hundred for gasoline?

Call Me It

I wanna thank Enemy for taggin' me. It's an easy meme- basically it just says: "blog."
But there are some rules:

Rules Are:* each blogger starts with eight - ten random facts/habits about
themselves…* people who are tagged need to write posts in their own blog about
the tag and post these rules…* at the end of your post, you need to choose
people to get tagged and list their names… *

Sounds simple, eh? It's not. How does one "randomly" choose facts/habits about oneself? The Exquisite Corpse method comes to mind- surrealist Max Ernst called it a "mental contagion", which is, to me, a decent and workable definition for "meme"...so. I shall mentally shred my personal trivia and toss the bits into an imaginary hopper. Spin the barrel. Reach inside:

1. I have embraced my baldness. I started losing my hair before I was 21. When my mom was doing chemotherapy, I shaved my head as a gesture of solidarity. I still 'bald' myself on a daily basis, using a disposable razor and the cheapest shaving cream available.

2. My most secret fantasy doesn't involve sex.

3. My not-so-secret fantasies do.

4. In the spring of 2000, I predicted that John McCain would lose to Al Gore in November and that Mr. Gore would literally be my new boss. Instead, Bush stole the election and my Commerce Dept. career vanished faster than Bush's National Guard records.

5. In the absence of literature, I become constipated. My bathroom has it's own library.

6. Coffee is the cornerstone of my nutritional pyramid.

7. I recently obtained my Passport. There are places I want to see and people I want to visit. (See #2 and #3 above)

8. I am quite shy in person but I never experienced stage fright during my long and failed musical 'career'. When I was on-stage, I always knew what I was doing and why I was doing it.
This is not always the case off-stage.

9. I haven't performed in front of a live audience since New Years' Eve, 2001-2

10. I didn't own my first automobile until I was nearly 30 years old.

11. I am not very adept at following rules.

Hmmm...who to tag? Howzabout:

-Angel. She lives in an amusement park and raises dragons.

-Hawkwind_555. Too cool for words. Just number your paper from 1-10 and mail it to me. I'll treasure it forever.

-Invisible. More than meets the eye.

-JP. Queer, bitter and Nebraskan. Makes Omaha interesting.

- Sling. Whenever I hear Dylan's 'Days of '49', I think of Sling. Sling would've been a cool hitch-hiking buddy, back when hitching was possible...1849, I think.

Improv Cuisine For Single Men

My favorite style of cooking is improvisational. It suits both my budget and my general inability to follow simple instructions such as those found in recipes.

This is almost all the food I had in my kitchen on Sunday. I was hungry as hell, but a long, sleepless night of playing records and tying cables had left me a little too shaky to drive- and the tranquilizers and sedatives I took 24 hours ago were finally starting to kick in, so I was pretty much stuck with:

A) Some prefab curry paste. Never stay home without it.
B) A can of beans.
C) Garlic. Fresh is better, but I was pretty wasted so this was all I had.
D) Hot Pepper Relish. Never run out. Life sucks without this.
E) Rice.
F) Frozen ground turkey, thawed.
G&H) Onion and Carrots.

In the background are two cans of gluten-free cat food. These are optional and not used in this example.

Chop up a few carrots and put some rice on the stove:

To cook rice: Put some rice in a pot. Put twice as much water as rice into the same pot, bring to a boil, set heat to low, cover with a snug lid and cook until fluffy. If it turns brown/black and smells scorched, you have overcooked it. Steam is to be expected, smoke is not.

Put the carrots in a skillet and saute them for a few minutes. While they simmer, dice the onion. Onions cook faster than carrots, so we are adding them later:


Once the carrots are a bit tender and the onions have started to become translucent, it's time to add the turkey and spices. If you are using ground beef, cook the beef first and drain off some of the fat before adding any spices, otherwise just add the bird, a few small spoons of curry, a few more of hot peppers and some garlic.
Mix it all together and let simmer until the turkey is cooked through.



The rice is done now. Take it and dump it into a larger pot. Add the skillet's contents and the (drained) can of beans. Cover and simmer for an hour or so.


What you will have resembles a scattering of rabbit droppings on a bed of poached maggots, but it tastes pretty good, is reasonably healthy -omitting the meat and adding more beans and veggies is an option- and best of all, it's under five bucks to prepare and it will feed one person for two days.

Cooking for guests is an entirely different affair. Perhaps we'll cover that in a later post .

Get Bored, Lose Weight

THRILLSVILLE OFFICE VIEW



I doubt that there's anything on the Intertube that's more interesting than an in-depth examination of my diet. By "interesting", I mean boring, because what I eat is pretty fucking dull.

I used to cook for a living and can make most anything I want but lately I'm too bored to bother- I have filled my cupboard with items that don't require much effort...dry beans, rice, pasta...stuff that keeps.

There's a reason for this. When I got out of hospital after a nearly fatal gastric rupture there wasn't much I could eat- years of drinking and crap diet had driven my HDL/LDL , triglycerides and blood pressure to very unsafe places, I was obese and no-one was willing to bet that my liver would recover ...my doc was reluctant to give me medication, so he suggested that I change my diet and I did.

It worked a miracle. 17 months later I've shed 50 pounds and all my numbers are right where they should be. The trick is not so much what you eat as what you don't eat. Basically, you should avoid processed food- and soda pop in particular- as much as possible and stick with raw, fresh ingredients.

I never cease to wonder at some of the foods I see on the grocery shelves... pre-packaged shrink-wrapped hot dogs that are ready for the microwave?
C'mon. This 56 gram hot dog contains 22 grams of fat- are you gonna eat that?
It's gristle on styrofoam, is what.

We, as consumers, are so helpless and feeble that we are willing to pay someone to put weiners in our buns?

Yes, we are, and in every way imaginable.

Little 6 oz. plastic cups of microwavable chicken soup? For the price of three of those cups you could make an entire pot of fresh chicken soup. What good is 6 oz. of soup? Feed that plastic crap to the Gerber baby and pass the iron cauldron please...

There are tubes in the snack food aisle that look like they fell off the Roswell UFO- they have markings on the outside but nothing that's recognizable to me until I find the fine print. Read the fine print and the first ingredient listed is "Partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil" followed by "dehydrated potatoes" and a half-dozen sodium compounds. This is a popular product- is it on your shelf?

99% of what's on the shelves is alien to me. It's brightly colored, so there's a good chance it may be poisonous- you have a much higher chance of being poisoned at home than you'd face in a less nutritionally-hostile natural environment such as the Amazonian River Basin or SE Asian jungle. The main difference is the jungle toxins kill you dead on the spot and the supermarket venom gives you arrythmia, hypertension and type 2 diabetes and might take as long as thirty years to prove fatal.

But, but , but...it's so convenient to just pop a frozen Foodbrick into your tabletop reactor and press a button.
True.
But why do we need such convenience? It's a drive-thruable , pre-packaged, downloadable, ultra-portable world of convenience we live in- we should have plenty of time to prepare decent meals.

You can put 10,000 songs on an Ipod but can't manage four plates on a table?

Here's a simple day:

- Breakfast of moth-free oatmeal with honey, bananas, cinnamon and dried cranberries; a glass of 100% juice and a lightly buttered toasted english muffin. You can fix eggs if you want- I used to cook brunch for a living so I'm pretty much sick of eggs, but I'll fix you an omelet if you want. It's OK to indulge every once in a while, just not every day.


- A cup of coffee every 15 minutes until noon, then every 30 minutes until 5pm. Maybe one on the way home...in the future, science will discover that coffee, in large quantities, cures everything, so you might as well have another cup.

For a month after my surgery I was limited to none, then one cup per day- first I had to give up booze, then coffee and (temporarily) sugar- when one quits drinking, one gets a savage sweet tooth- son-of-a bitch, I wanted candy...damn,damn, damn...time passes like a kidney stone when you have the sugar jones.

- Lunch? Who has time for lunch? I'm at work- how am I gonna eat and still find time to blog, read the news and answer my radio , blogger and other personal emails?
First, I have pretty much eschewed the idea of working while I'm on the clock- if I put two hours out of eight into my actual job, I'd probably be so numb that I'd have to call in sick the next day. The only thing duller than my diet is my job.
Besides, I've had 16 cups of coffee. I'm not hungry.

If you insist on lunch, bring a green salad, a fresh fruit, bread, cheese and perhaps some homemade tuna salad. You need a recipe? sheesh...it's tuna salad...try grapes, celery, onions , tarragon, maybe dill or mustard, some peppers- pretty much anything works except the traditional base of industrial grade mayonnaise. A dash of vinegar , a little pepper relish, you'll be OK.

-Dinner is vegetarian most nights; rice , beans and whatever's good in the produce aisle, maybe a stir -fry... if I'm lazy I'll just eat a couple sandwiches -cheese, tomato, hot mustard- a couple bananas and a cup or two of yogurt.
If it's on sale, I'll get turkey breast from the deli, sometimes I get fresh shrimp . I'm not a vegetarian, I'm just cheap.
Red meat tends to make my stomach hurt, so I don't eat very much; it's not a moral issue.

That's about it.
Not very exciting, but it's pretty healthy and it's really frugal, except for the splurges.

If you eat well and cheaply most days, you can afford the occasional giant-ass Ice Cream or chicken-fried steak...what's amazing to me is finding that the less I eat bad food, the less I want it- I can't eat drive-thru without feeling very ill- I used to be able to eat Wendy's at 1 am- now I'm too healthy to eat fast food, my body isn't used to it and it reacts badly. We aren't designed to digest Big Macs, fast-food requires a certain acclimation and once you lose it, you don't want it back.


(Disclaimer: Medical advice found on-line might not be good for you- for novelty use only)