Gmail Spam

I don't read my spam email from my Gmail account, but Gmail lists them in the spam folder along with the sender and the first line of each email. Here's a sampling of the first lines of some of those spam emails:

...see scorecard it's debunk may broadway it pinnacle and commonweal...it fragment in sextuplet see plywood a scm but perez, hum see balled be testbe...in passageway may panoply but betel or consortium, elmsford see fahrenheit...or prelude some coward be scowl but chastity some tributary...may isn't or effluent try buxtehude some protozoan or ketch try grosbeak in...Hi, X P V C V A L arll A meno A A L bvaz G L liixa R...

Jennifer Kirk, Aliz Schenk, Irving Leal, Jenna Coon, Adan Golden, and The luger must be awfully busy sending out these obviously important and vital messages to me on such a regular basis. I admire their stamina.

Simple Tastes

I am a man of simple tastes. God help me, I love peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Gotta be Jif peanut butter, but the jelly can be just about any grape or strawberry. I even put butter on the bread before the PB&J. I don't know why I'm a man of such pedestrian tastes. Gourmet food is wasted on me. Gimme spaghetti with meatballs, pepperoni pizza, burgers, Taco Bell, Shake 'N Bake, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

I grew up in a pretty isolated smallish town, and until I moved away I didn't realize that the rest of the country didn't have the same foods as my hometown. There was a sub shop on just about every other corner in town - seems like an average of one sub shop for every 10 residents or so. They all use the same ingredients for the most part, so they're all really good. I had no idea how hard it was to get a good sub anywhere else. And pretzels. In the local grocery stores, there are about 50 different varieties of pretzels, most of 'em local or semi-local, and all unique and pretty damn wonderful. Here in the big city out west, we're lucky to get Rold Gold or Snyder's Of Hanover. I may not like sushi, but I know the difference between Extra Dark Splits and Wege's Sourdough, dammit. God, I miss good pretzels.

I used to eat Lebanon bologna a lot, and some of the local butchers used to make their own homemade Lebanon bologna that was just amazing . Nothing like a Lebanon-bologna-and-American-cheese sandwich on white bread. Who knew you couldn't get Lebanon bolonga outside of central Pennsylvania? My dad used to eat this stuff called souse, which is apparently a gelled loaf made with pig's ears, feet and tongues. I think there's a souse made with beef parts, too. He also used to eat scrapple, which is made of hog offal (great word, offal) and cornmeal and other "trimmings." I skipped the souse and scrapple.

Anyway, whenever I go back to the old hometown, I have to load up on Lebanon bologna, subs, and good pretzels. I can still get Jif and jelly here, thank God.

More Grand

One of our neighbors (again with the neighbors) just had plastic surgery. To save money, she went for a package deal in Costa Rica(!) where you get the surgery and a two-week recovery period at a resort-type place. She had the bags sucked out from under her eyes, some fat sucked out from her jawline, the tip of her nose lopped off, and she had a chin put in. She thought that it would be easy and practically painless, and she thought that it wound change her life and she'd be beautiful and find a man. Well it changed her life, all right. Her face is still swollen more than a month later, she's in constant pain and takes a lot of Vicodin, she can't open her mouth all the way and has to clench her teeth while talking, and she has a bacterial infection in her mouth. Her eyes, jawline, and nose actually look okay, but her new chin makes her look like a transvestite. So far she hasn't found a new man. In fact she kinda looks like a new man.

As an addendum to my last post, there's also a Pontiac Grand Am in addition to the aforementioned Pontiac Grand Prix. To me, the Grand Am is even more puzzling than the Grand Prix. I remember the Pontiac Trans Am. Yeah, okay, Trans Am - Trans (across) Am (America) - I get it. But Grand Am? What the hell's a Grand Am?

For those of you contemplating a lucrative career in show business, I just got a long-awaited, long-anticipated royalty check from ASCAP, which tracks and pays you for your works that are broadcast on radio or television or in movies. I wrote and produced and recorded the music for a six-part television series on PBS about 8 years ago that continues to run regularly on various PBS stations all over the country. Over Thanksgiving and Christmas and in February, I happened to catch some of the episodes running on all three of the PBS stations available here in the LA area. My ASCAP check for that time period totaled $7.17. Oh boy. Now I can get that Costa Rican cosmetic surgery I've been wanting.