INKSTAND

I don’t know if it’s because the entire nerve in the tooth was dead already, but root canals, while irritating and annoying, don’t live up to the horrible reputation they have. It may also be that the way they did them back in the day took forever, from what the dentist told me. A needle had to be put into each root, like in the picture, then an x-ray taken, then developed, then resised if it didn’t fit…argh!!!. Everything’s automated now and a lot easier. There wasn’t much pain, so I didn’t get any cool pills. Bummer.
Also, the dentist told me that I might have four roots in the tooth instead of three, and that they might all be the same length both of wich are rare. But alas, two of the roots connected at the bottom, so it wasn’t a true fourth root. Double bummer.

So my roomie Is always buying Dryers Fruit bars which contain a whole serving of fruit (I think). I’ve tried them and like them. Strawberry’s the best, but lime and lemonade are good as well. The other day she brings home a slew of boxes of these things because they were on sale. This time she also got the Fruit and yogurt smoothie bars.
I was relatively excited about this because, as I’ve said before, I love strawberries and while I don’t like bananas much, I love strawberry-banana flavors mixed. If you’ve ever had strawberry banana yogurt or even mixed the fruits together in a blender, this smoothie bar is pretty much what you’d expect. And that is a very good thing. I don’t know how much a box costs, so I don’t know if they are a deal. I’ll probably never get them myself but as long as they appear in my freezer, I’ll eat them.

The biggest problem I have with this product is that I’m not sure where a garlic-sesame rice noodle bowl comes from. China? Japan? Taiwan? The answer…Simply Asia. Let’s just lump ‘em all together, just like McDonalds Asian Salad ad where a CG black woman says “Think asian…” I may not be totally right here, but aren’t PEOPLE asian and THINGS are oriental? To-MAY-to, Toe-MAH-toe, I guess.
The formula for this soup is very similar to the old Cup o’ Noodle that everyone loves, except the seasoning, freeze dried veggies, and some oil all come in different packets. Empty them, add hot water, wait 3 min, etc, etc. The flavor of the soup isn’t bad. I don’t know what authentic rice noodles taste like but after years of ramen I have to say they are a little firm for my taste. The little carrot bits were still crunchy which is fine if they were fresh, but with freeze dried, I just expect more…squishiness.
This soup bowl was okay. I think it was only $1.15, but next time I’ll go with Maruchan.

I’m getting a root canal this week. Last week, the dentist dug out all the dead nerves and bacteria and prescribed me Cephalexin, an antibiotic. Now I can’t tell you how well it’s working, but I thought I had a sinus infection and if that was the case this should have cleared it up, right. It didn’t so something else is wrong with my ears nose and throat.
The biggest problem with this drug is that I have to take one pill every six hours. That means setting my alarm to wake me up before I usually do just to take the pill. That happened today and I went back to sleep without taking it. I also often leave the house without taking any with me, and miss another dosage. It can be a pain. Hopefully I’m still taking it enough to thwart off infection. If it does, this stuff is okay by me.
Note: There are no cool side effects of this medication.

I’ve wanted to hear this song since my friend Betsy, playing off my nickname Filthy called me Filthy Gorgeous, also adding a variation on the name, Filgore. The song has a driving disco beat that is usually good for listening to headphones and walking down the street. The lyrics, mostly about drugs and sex, don’t quite apply to me as I am only filthy in the sense that I am a humongous slob. The vocal styling also started to grate on me about two minutes into the song. Then there was a spoken word part that leaves much to be desired, as most spoken word peices do. After that there is a breakdown that makes the song just too long, then back to the verses. So, to sum it up, I don’t really dig the song.

I know it’s not officially summer yet, but the weather the last few days has just about felt like it. Then I woke up today and it was overcast. It started raining while I was at work and it was beautiful. The air was warm but the cleansing power of the rain was washing all the bullshit off of the street/planet. Maybe I’m being romantic, but it was perfect, the kind of weather I could fall in love in. I’m as single as I’ve ever been right now, but that didn’t get me down. It just made me think of the infinite possibilities there are.

I am a great fan of horor movies. I don’t know why, they are NEVER scary. Maybe I just like bad movies and horror is a genre that lens itself well to being poorly executed. Hostel is, by far, no exception (does that make sense?). The movie starts as what could easily be a buddy comedy, another automaticaly bad genre, with three college like dudes cruising Europe in the biggest cunt hunt since, umm,…Meatballs 4? The horror movie formula is met by me not caring about any of the characters and, in fact, making want them dead.
The character Josh, who I thought was the main character, only wins my favor because he is relativley cute. However, he plays the ugly American, shouting about how he’s better cuz he’s american when he gets in a fight at a bar. Dilhole.
Now the general male audience would love the,oh, 40 minutes of the red-light district dolls and hostel honeys, all more than willing to display their mamories. However, by the time we get to the spa at the hostel I’m hoping that the gore to come will be enough to get the image of all those tits out of my head. I have nothing against breasts, hell, women are beautiful, but it’s like being bombarded with advertisments for things I just don’t want to buy.
One cool thing about the movie is the gang of street kids, all like eight years old…It reminds me of my friend Bob’s stories of when he was a kid in Turkey in, I think, the 50’s. He got in good with them because he had leverage…tootsie pops.
Another good thing is the music at the clubs. It’s awful foreign rock/pop, but it’s better than american because a) I don’t know what they’re saying and it seems mocking and b) They seem to have a lot more passion in their voices that’s not polished away in the studio. Maybe it’s just me.
Cut forward, the girls fuck the guys over and sell them to killer artist rich guys or something, and Josh ends up in his underwear. This would be cool if he wasn’t tied to a chair and made swiss cheese of with a power drill. So just the lame-ass Paxton is left who ends up escaping through a series of very fortunate coincidences. He saves a Japanese girl he met at the Hostel because of some back story where he didn’t save a little girl a long time ago. This poor girl getting mutilated made me thing of Battle Royale and the Suicide Club, cool movies, but they just made me feel real sorry for her.
In a nutshell Saw 2 was stupid and Hostel was boring.

I never put a lot of stock into lip balms or what have you. They help a little but are never worth the price to me, especially since I keep loosing them. The best they tend to do is add a gooey feeling to the soreness. Upon the advice of many friends I have tried Burts Bees, as well as Dr. Bonners. Both were OK, but neither really helped all that much. The worst was Jones soda. I got the Green Apple flavored lip balm and it tasted just like the soda but did absolutley nothing to relieve my dry lips.
The last time i needed moisture on my dry, cracked lips I hopped over to the corner store and saw Strawberry Chapstick. This was a new idea on me, and I thought at first it might be like the candy-esq Jones soda Balm. I love strawberries, even artificial strawberry flavor which doesn’t really taste like strawberries, and knowing fake strawberry flavor all I could think of was sugar.
I am happy to announce that this Chapstick(R) works just as well as any other Chapstick(R), but, hey, it tastes like fake strawberries. Oh, I think it was $1.89.

As well all know, or have been told, when you steam vegetables they loose all of their nutrients. Keeping that in mind, I guess it doesn’t matter what condition your steamed vegetables are in. However, I tend to steam them anyway because they just lend themselves to dishes better that way. I’ve always liked broccoli and I love cauliflower. They are best raw with ranch, but in this case I was looking for something to mix into my Annies shells and aged white cheddar dinner.
Sometimes I don’t go with the fresh vegetables because you usually have to buy an entire head of cauliflower which for me is not cost effective. I also usually get the store brand of couli-broccoli mix, but today the QFC was sold out of the Kroger brand, which I usually steam on a colander. Lo and behold, they had this Bird’s eye steamfresh mix that you nuke in the microwave on sale for $2.00. What the hell?
I have to say, it’s not much worse ( but still a little worse) than steaming the other frozen vegetables. It is a hell of a lot faster, though. They were all a bit soggier than the other usually are, but they didn’t get in the way of me cooking the pasta, which can be a problem when steaming because we only have one pot in my house.
all in all, it’s always better to use fresh vegetables, duh, but if you go for frozen save some time and use the microwave.

they suck. My head won’t stop pounding but at least im not going to puke.