Goodnight

I really hate blogging these days. There's virtually no fun in it at all anymore, so I'm mothballing Volume 22 for the time being. I have no idea if I'll post anything new anytime soon.

Meanwhile, I have a Flickr account where I post fairly regularly, if you care about such things.

I don't think he's cured

While poking through the sad contents of my Yahoo inbox, I noticed an email with the subject line, "Please help me." Naturally I was curious about who needed my help this time; no doubt it involved getting a large sum of money out of a bank in Burkina Faso or some damn place. My curiosity was peaked further when I saw the name of the person sending the email: "Jennifer Aniston goes bra-less." It's an usual name, but they suddenly had my undivided attention. Much to my surprise, the email wasn't the typical email scam I'd grown so tired of. Nope. They're getting creative now.

I was a schizophrenic patients from China because of the need to take long-term anti - schizophrenia drug, the family has been difficult to bear drugs fees, Without medication, I would crazy .I hope that the people who see the e-mail in the United States to help me, sent money to my paypal account. My PayPal account is jinfaniu@hotmail.com

I'm sorry, Mr. Jennifer Aniston goes bra-less, all of my spare cash is earmarked to keep me sane. Without it I would crazy.

Cacahuate Japones

A few days ago I wrote about some Japanese peanuts I'd gotten at a grocery store. They were quite good and I wanted more. So this morning while in the parking lot of Dollar Tree, I noticed that in the next shopping center over there was a Mexican store. It was actually called something like "Mexican General Store". So, after I was done ogling the cleavage of the 19 year old in the inappropriate-for-work top ringing up my sad purchases at Dollar Tree, I went over to the Mexican store.

The food selection wasn't anything radically different than what I'd seen in the little Mexican sections of local grocery stores, but the ambiance was totally foreign. The store was also empty of people except a woman and two small children, a boy and girl. The boy, I noticed, was holding rather long stick.

As I walked through the food aisles, I kept noticing random things on the floor: bottles of water, bags of tortillas, etc. I guessed the brat with the stick was going around batting things off the shelves while his sister followed closely behind.

In addition to food, they had shoes (Reeboks and cowboy boots), soccer jerseys, big western-style belt buckles, Virgin Mary candles, loads of CDs by people I'd never heard of, and a wall full of DVDs and videotapes.

I had trouble finding the peanuts. Even though I studied Spanish in school, I can't speak it or read it. I wondered if I would even be able to ask if they had them, but the only word I could remember was "Japones". Thankfully I didn't have to do that because I eventually found what I was looking for. They had several varieties of Japanese peanuts, but I couldn't quite get to them. The brat with the stick and his sister were sort of in the way. I said, "Excuse me," and squeezed by. The grinning brat seemed to want to hit me with the stick. The woman, who I guess was his mother, quickly came up and took the stick away. So, stick-whacking averted, I selected three kinds of peanuts and paid. (And at twice the price of Piggly Wiggly.) I don't think gringos come in here that often because the woman behind the counter seemed vaguely unnerved. So unnerved in fact that she went and short-changed me by 76 cents, but I didn't bother to try and correct her. She wanted me out of the store and I just wanted peanuts. I began to wonder if anyone, even Mexicans, ever came into the store.

The peanuts? Well, the variety with the geisha girl on them aren't very good. And as far as ethnic stereotypes go, a geisha is better than a cartoon coolie-hat-wearing peanut-man, I suppose. The type in the bag on the left are pretty good, but nothing special. The chili ones are quite good. So, as far my future purchases of Japanese peanuts go, it's offensive coolie-hat dude and the chili ones.

Psychic Dada Spam

We've all seen the spam with the random gibberish tagged on the end of the message as a way of foiling spam filters. I used to take pleasure in this gibberish, but soon grew tired of it. A few days ago I found myself reading some of this material again and was vaguely entranced by the opening sentence: "America is perhaps, at this moment, the prison country of the whole grease town world..." Can't you just hear someone standing on a street corner screaming this? No? Maybe it's just me.

WTF, Mexico?

I found myself at Piggly Wiggly this morning, killing time while waiting for the neighboring dollar store to open up. Since I love ramen, I drifted over to the ramen section to see what varieties they offered. The ramen was right there with the genuine Mexican stuff local grocery stores are selling more and more of because of the growing Hispanic population. I selected a few packs of ramen and then began poking around in the Mexican food.

I'd seen so-called Japanese peanuts on sale before, but I never really looked at them, but the illustration on these caught my eye. A peanut with a Fu-Manchu mustache wearing a coolie hat? I shudder to think what would be on the package if they were called African peanuts.

Oh, I should probably add that Japanese peanuts are really good.