Trivial Pursuits

This tagline intentionally left blank.

Saturday the Twelfth of January, Two Thousand and Eight

I had such hopes for this weekend.

Hmph. Suddenly I feel all energetic, and all my friends are either sick, out of town, or not picking up the phone. Hell with it, I'm going out anyway. Maybe I'll make some more reliable friends with better immune systems.

balefully posted by Martin Marks at 9:52 in the evening // one comment by:

Martin

This is the problem with having a kitchen on a slant.

Well, now I have successfully covered my entire kitchen, the interior of my oven, and indeed my sock with raw egg.

aimlessly posted by Martin Marks at 6:39 in the evening // three comments by:

This quiche had better come out good.

Weird! Eddie's Market of Mount Vernon is apparently not associated with Eddie's of Roland Park, a well-known Baltimore institution. I don't know how they get away with that. It's not like I'm the only one confused—even a City Paper writer referred to "other Eddie's locations".

A little bit of digging reveals that there were actually 26 Eddieses at some point, all named after one Eddie Levy, but no longer directly affiliated. (I'm not sure how many have survived—only the Roland Park and Charles Village incarnations have significant web presences, so there could be several little ones like mine.) Now they're all differentiated as "Eddie's of [neighborhood]." (Though, just to keep things interested, there are two Eddieses of Roland Parks, only one of which is actually in Roland Park.) And apparently they all have the right to Mr Levy's name still.

Anyway, my Eddie's is literally around the corner from me, which wins it points over its more distant semihomonymous competitors. It's small, and a bit overpriced, but their produce selection isn't quite as bad as these reviews would indicate; they have a fair selection of locally farmed produce, which may be a newer development. I've definitely seen better, mind you. They also don't have much in the way of cheeses, which was a bit of an annoyance as I'm making a quiche. But it's certainly better than a convenience store, which is my only other option short of driving way the hell up to 24th Street for a dang Safeway or right down to Fells danged Point for a Whole Foods. And don't even get me started on the fact that the nearest Trader Joe's is seven miles away and near nothing of interest. So, in short, hooray for Eddie!

defiantly posted by Martin Marks at 5:43 in the afternoon // comment? by:

An open letter to frame manufacturers who put stickers on the glass:

Dear frame manufacturers who put stickers on the glass:

I hate you.

Sincerely,
Martin Marks

enigmatically posted by Martin Marks at 1:56 in the afternoon // one comment by:

Mike

Friday the Eleventh of January, Two Thousand and Eight

Rude goys out of jail.

I think I accidentally made a potentially offensive joke yesterday. A Jewish coworker was talking about how he's studying to be a rabbi, and mentioned that his father was one, and his father before him, and his father, and his father. I was trying for a flippant little line along the lines of "but his father was a [random profession]."

Unfortunately, the word my brain jumped to was "banker".

Banker! I was going for, like, tinsmith or alligator farmer or shopping cart attendant or something. That wouldn't have been particularly funny, I realize, but at least it wouldn't have been "banker". Bank robber might have worked, but only barely. The really annoying thing is that now I wonder if my mental lexicon has "Jew" and "banker" stored too close to each other. And yet... I blame society.

facetiously posted by Martin Marks at 5:56 in the afternoon // eight comments by:

Thursday the Tenth of January, Two Thousand and Eight

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

I was positive that if I searched my blog I'd find a dozen entries that were all variations on "I just got a haircut, and I'm not sure how I feel about it", because that is how I always feel for the first couple of days after a new haircut, but in fact only one came close. Based on my previous blog entries on the subject, in fact, I am forced to conclude that evidently getting a haircut is less traumatic than needing one.

gruffly posted by Martin Marks at 6:02 in the evening // five comments by:

Tuesday the Eighth of January, Two Thousand and Eight

"It was a crime at the time, but the laws we changed 'em."

All of a sudden, I seem to have become wildly enamored of The New Pornographers.

adventurously posted by Martin Marks at 10:10 in the evening // three comments by:

I'm in training for the Badass Games.

Yesterday I made rubber; today I make bread. I've never done it all by hand before; I don't think I realized exactly what I was committing to when I first put the Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the lukewarm water, but I'm about halfway through now and so far it doesn't appear I've screwed anything up too badly. Unfortunately, I only have one bread pan and two loaves worth of dough... but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Cooking—baking in particular—seems to be my new hobby. It's tastier than writing, the results are less abstract, and it doesn't tire the brain so mercilessly. More to the point, I've never heard of anyone suffering baker's block. Anyway, chicks dig it. (Right?) It's funny, because the only things I actually have in my fridge, more or less, are bread products. Two loaves of preservative-free bread are absolutely the last things I need right now. But it is relaxing.

ambivalently posted by Martin Marks at 8:56 in the evening // nine comments by:

Monday the Seventh of January, Two Thousand and Eight

I excreted a latex-bearing sap!

Today I made rubber! How cool is that?

obliquely posted by Martin Marks at 12:40 in the afternoon // comment? by:

Sunday the Sixth of January, Two Thousand and Eight

NOT A VIKING

Joss Whedon has gone temporarily—but creatively!—insane. (And there's more! Also, more!)

(Via his Lorefulness.)

furtively posted by Martin Marks at 8:39 in the evening // one comment by:

Libby

Because it's completely useless to me.

A present for Mac-user writers out there. (WriteRoom in particular strikes me as potentially a very good thing.) With my own personal favorite word processor for fiction—RoughDraft—now in its third year without an update, I almost find myself wishing I had a Mac.

wantonly posted by Martin Marks at 8:09 in the evening // four comments by:

Hooray for impulse consumption!

God help me, I just ordered HBO. You can probably guess why. If it weren't for the free video on demand feature, I would have been able to resist. Whatever, man, I have a job, right? I can indulge if I want to.

inconsequentially posted by Martin Marks at 5:00 in the afternoon // one comment by: