issue 41

summer, surrealism, salami

It’s finally my favorite season. I love the sweltering heat that makes me feel like my skin is being sous-vided off of my bones. What can I say? I’m a sick fuck! The heat isn’t the only thing I love about the summer. It’s also prime time for rummaging around in the fridge and pantry and cobbling together a stoned Creation™. I made one of my better Creations a few minutes ago, but summer is just getting started, and I’m bound to have a swing and a miss by the beginning of August. I’m not one for sharing my L’s, but I will probably detail that failed venture here when it happens.

Here’s a cold bean salad:

Its color palette is admittedly dull, but I don’t make food for pictures. I make food for eating. Further, the nuances of this salad are hitting me like a monster truck, looks be damned. We’ve got Christmas Lima beans, orange cardamom salami, provolone, olives, artichokes, white onion, capers, etc. The gang’s all here. If I had eggs, I would’ve made a soft-boiled one to top it off with. The dressing is like….basil olive oil, olive oil regular-style, and a bunch of seasonings. I don’t know, man. I also used hot paprika from the shop where I get my sausages and I think that’s really bringing some things together. I will also say that this salad is missing heirloom or sundried tomatoes, which I usually have, but am out of. I think sundried tomatoes are unfairly maligned as “80s” or “bullshit,” and I fight against this every day. Have you ever added sundried tomatoes to your pasta sauce? Shut the fuck up! Don’t talk to me!!

When I was a kid, I loved salami so much I would steal handfuls of it from the fridge when my parents weren’t looking. I’m told that they got into an argument about it because they each accused the other of eating all the salami. I would go to my room, push a tape into the VCR with my oily fingers, and then roll up slice after slice and rub the oil on my lips like lip gloss. I don’t do that last part anymore, but I see where I was coming from.

Anyway, the discourse around sundried tomatoes, like many things, is the result of people parroting outdated talking points without taking the time to think for themselves. This is the same reason anilingus is still a controversial topic.

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Before sitting down to write, I was searching the World Wide Web. You know, just clicking around, etc. I meant to look for Ghia, the non-alcoholic beverage company, to see what they were up to. Instead of typing drinkghia.com though, I typed ghia.com. And this is what popped up:

Just amazing. I love stumbling across something that’s been abandoned. Not depressing shit, like an old diary that wound up at Goodwill. But beautiful things, like a forgotten webpage.

I’ve been combing through some archives again. During this session, I landed on Berkeley Barb and downloaded an issue of a surrealist magazine from the 70s. I love not knowing where I’m going to end up.

I used to have a hard time going on aimless walks. I sort of still do, but I’ve created loose rules in my mind that trick me into being free. My former mindset was one of purpose. I needed a reason to walk in a specific direction, and I was a fool. Now, I mentally map out where I’m going, and tell myself that I’m sticking to the route. Of course, I deviate. I have hacked the mainframe of my mind. The last time I did this was a few days ago, before the heatwave hit Ohio. I’m glad I did, because I got to see that the little gnome village in my neighborhood is out in full force.

I didn’t want to get too close to take detailed pictures, because I try to give them their privacy. As you can see in the first one, there’s a guy laying face down by the bridge. I didn’t want to be next.

I also walked past a bunch of teens in a weed pen smoke circle, and it was almost like seeing a group of people huddled in front of a TV screensaver fireplace. God cannot be present in either of those scenarios. We must return to tradition.

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Oh wait, back to the topic of surrealism for a second. I watched a surrealist movie last night that I was the perfect amount of high for, which is sort of difficult to achieve. I won’t say too much about it, in case you want to watch, so here’s a trailer:

They do a dance that looks like that one pic of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

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I was going through some books to put in the little library a few streets over, and this flyer fell out. It reminds me of three things: that people used to print flyers, that I actually went to afters, and that I haven’t read that book in a long time. There’s no date on this, but it has to be from around 2011. I can’t believe it’s traveled with me for over a decade! Not much has.

It is so crazy to live a life.