There are no frogs in Guacamole!

Why do you keep searching for frogs in guacamole? Why? I can see the search terms used to reach my blog, and you have been searching for this answer for such a very long time!

Hello  person who has been trying to find out if frogs were ever put in guacamole. (Yes, you!)

I noticed that you often end up finding my guacamole recipe, because I use the slur ‘frogs’ to describe the French.

Why do you keep searching for frogs in guacamole? And why do you keep going to my blog, when you know it will not answer your amphibian-related question? I know you’ve been looking for this answer for close to a year, maybe longer.

I will tell you now that I am a librarian and, if you want, I will look up  if frogs were ever historically an ingredient used in the preparing of guacamole for you.

There are all kinds of reference books that would mention that kind of thing.  But I’m pretty sure the green stuff is avocado, not frog flesh.

Awaiting your response.

- [d]an

Make It Solid Gold

You may have heard that I have a gold bicycle.

[Figure 1: The 2008 Bianchi Volpe.]

I recently purchased metallic gold handlebar tape for it.

[Figure 2: F.U.B.A.R. gold handlebar tape.]

If I had a girlfriend, she would probably be golden as well.

[Figure 3: Woman wearing a mirrored jumpsuit.]

I like songs about gold, too.

:: Bibliography ::

• Aviatorsartifacts. F.U.B.A.R. Gold Metallic Bar Tape NIB – eBay (item 380064379604 end time Sep-16-08 12:07:32 PDT). eBay. http://cgi.ebay.com/F-U-B-A-R-Gold-Metallic-Bar-Tape-NIB_W0QQitemZ380064379604QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item380064379604&_trkparms=72%3A1163|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 (17 September 2008).
• Bianchi Midwest. Bianchi Cyclocross. Bianchi U.S.A. http://www.bianchimidwest.com/Cyclocross.html (17 September 2008).

• FFFFOUND!. Quoted from: MySpace.com – View Photo. http://ffffound.com/image/c0b8e2b11d9103c18381cf3f0dc28aef44733654?c=474804 (17 September 2008).

In/Expensive Discount Bin Shoes

The super cheap, kinda ugly discount bin shoes I bought in the ghetto the other day cost, at one point, close to 100 dollars. They’re now on sale online for $86. I came across the price while making sure that the faux snakeskin wasn’t really snakeskin.

Bizarre. I paid well under half the above sales price for these suckers.

:: Bibliography ::

• Zappos.com. Impulse P5033 (Navy Pull Up/Dark Gray Oil Nubuck/Navy Multi Snake Print) – Sport. Zappos.com. http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/32419072/c/141159.html (28 August 2008).

Oy. Search terms.

I really, really enjoy checking out how people find my blog and should start keeping track of the funny, bizarre, and repellent search strings they employ. So far, most people who get to my blog are connecting with my more image and recipe based posts.

Current event posts also seem to have staying power, as well as anything that has some sexual wording in it (no matter how distant). For example, using the word “sexual” has just ensured that this post will be viewed repeatedly. Note at the right how some depraved sexual deviant got to my blog just today by searching for “via veloso rape scenes”. (Poor Via!) I hope my post that discussed the rape scene in Hitchcock’s Marnie didn’t titillate the social deviant! ;-)

It’s also interesting to see how users punctuate their searches, as if adding symbols and operators [all over] the -place +will (return better) “results” ‘for and some and strange and reason’. Hahaha! Information literacy be damned, let’s just make things look tech-ish and Boolean for no discernible reason at all!

In conclusion, I would like to tell the person who plugged “dsytopic pittsburgh” into a search engine that I share your interest, and would like you to watch George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead for this very reason. (There is one particularly excellent, if computer-generated, shot of the Point all dystopia’d out.) Or, if you’d like to see some real dystopia, I’d suggest South Oakland (south of the boulevard) on a Saturday morning. A wasteland, that!

Strange cyclist after dark

I was bicycling home early this morning and was having a very good time. Despite the cold, there wasn’t any wind and the streets were more or less clear of automobiles. This general sense of euphoria – I had just come from a very nice party – changed when I got to Friendship Circle and came across a person I have decided to call “the Hissing Cyclist”.

It was just some hipster guy all bundled up on a junker road bike. He was at the corner of Friendship and South Millvale, sort of meandering there. I didn’t really think much of it until I passed him. At this time, he not only audibly hissed at me, but also turned onto Friendship right behind me. I am used to cyclist solidarity; cordial exchanges are what I have come to expect, especially on brisk nights in (relatively) bike-friendly neighborhoods. So to be hissed at, followed, and hissed at again (after speeding up, to escape) was kinda freakishly disturbing.

I’m still not sure what to make of it. To bed!

Life. Symbolism and abstraction.

A little sleep deprivation is all it takes for me to feel like my life has become the last two reels of a David Lynch film. I’m not sure if I’m just hyper sensitive to psychoanalytic images, but I think something good might be going down.

Recently, when I’ve been walking home on Bigelow, I’ve passed some brush where a flock of robins seems to be wintering. (Are robins a permanent resident throughout their range?) They’ve always been very silent, very still. It was eerie, having seven or eight birds within arm’s reach, their tiny black eyes reflecting no light in the katabatic darkness.

But today, at the corner of Bigelow and Center, a main had broken and water forced its way up to the surface, cracking the asphalt as if it were the crust of a rising loaf of bread. Catharsis, or the prelude to my recurring nightmare about imminent death in a culvert? Now I’m forced to think the former, as the robins were very much alive and active in the halflight made by the city light and low-hanging mists.

I don’t believe in any of this phooey anyway.

No. 1

Because I find blogs only slightly less absurd than an image of – let’s say – a grown man wearing a fleece Pikachu costume, I have decided to kick off my most recent attempt at remaining abreast of web 2.0 technology with a nonsense post. (Image credit unknown; internet.)

Recent accomplishments: Christmas decorations up, annotated bibliography 16.4% done.