Official blog site here:

http://chuchurocketeer.net

I don’t remember much of the race since I was inebriated for half of it… but I did finish it! I hope the baby seals or Brazilian tapirs or whatever endangered animals are grateful for my dedication!

Actually, all jokes aside, I’m pretty proud that even though I had all the PAX stuff going on, I was able to carve out time to do this.

On second thought, this is my second greatest achievement of 2008. (Rehabilitating Otis is number one. Aww.)

Today’s Not So Secret Ingredient: Crepe Batter

Main Course: Crepes stuffed with sauteed tomatoes, leeks, white corn, and fresh rosemary

Breakdown: Crepe batter was made with 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup of flour, 1 tbs of melted butter, 2 eggs. All of produce used was remnants from my produce delivery box except for the corn…which was from a plastic bag from the freezer. The corn kernels looked like frostbitten elf toes.

Side Course: Boiled green beans with a vegetable medley cream sauce

Breakdown: The beans were getting dark and mushy at the ends from being ignored for a week. I had to chop off the gross ends to preserve the I-think-it’s-still-edible precious middle part. The green bean pieces met their deaths in boiling water. The cream sauce that went on top was from a sad little Stouffer’s Veggie Lasagna TV dinner. Microwaved it, took the pasta out (because TV dinner pastas taste like ace bandages doused in burnt rubber), and used the cream sauce leftover.

Dessert Course: Peaches and Cream Crepes

Breakdown: Sliced a peach and tossed them lightly in balsamic vinegar. I would’ve used lemon juice, but doh!- used it all up this past weekend. While the crepe was cooking, I threw in some white chocolate chips, and topped the whole thing up with the peaches.

JUDGING TABLE

Everything was really fucking good. The green beans were cooked just right so they were soft with a nice bite and still freshly green. The crepe was so-so only because it lacked some sort of meat or protein. I realized corn and rosemary are kind of weird together. It tasted a little like grandma’s overly fragrant bathroom. But only a little. PJ wanted more sugar in the dessert. Then again, he likes his peaches in a near rotting state while I like fruits that make my face pucker.

On a related Japanese note, Kohler, PJ, and I found Kamichama Karin Chu
at Comic Relief the other day.  Ah, the namesake!  As if that wasn’t weird enough, here’s the

Karin is your lovable girl-next-door type–if the girl next door also happens to be a goddess! Karin has a magic ring that gives her the power to do anything she’d like. What she’d like most, though, is to live happily ever after with Kazune, the boy of her dreams. Magic brought Kazune to her, but it also has a way of complicating things. It’s not easy to be a goddess and a girl in love!

]]> http://momopeche.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/peer-pressure-with-internet-trends/feed/ 1 momopeche http://momopeche.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/potato-brain-mush/ http://momopeche.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/potato-brain-mush/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:44:08 +0000 momopeche http://momopeche.wordpress.com/?p=198 Continue reading →]]> In attempt to keep my head from exploding and spewing bacteria mess, I finally got out of bed today and decided that I needed to eat. Cooking was out of the question- I can’t really trust myself with an open flame in this sick state. I could walk a couple of blocks to get a tostada but then that required putting on pants.

Thankfully, my produce box arrived. Once a week, this company delivers organic local produce to my door. I’m pretty much on the sidelines of the Great Organic vs. Non-organic debate. Frankly, I don’t really give a fuck. I mainly use this service because I’m lazy.

I opened this week’s box and there were leeks, swanky lettuce, apples, peaches, fresh figs (what the hell do you do with them?!), tomatoes, and a bag of yukon gold potatoes. I wrapped a potato in some foil and threw it in the oven on low. I then blew my nose, and spent 30 minutes lying on the bed desperately hoping my white blood cells are on the forefront of this bacterial war in my body.

After I retrieved my potato from the oven, I threw in some kosher salt, black pepper, diced garlic from a jar, and some fresh rosemary (from last week’s produce box). Then I roughly mashed the whole thing with the back of the fork. No butter or sour cream. I didn’t want to add another layer of bodily discomfort by indulging in dairy… if ya catch my drift.

It was perversely delicious. So simple and so crude. “Rustic” is really just a diplomatic culinary term for “Poor Food.” And what I ate was definitely along the lines of my collegiate culinary past: packaged pasta with ketchup, rice with soy sauce, mustard sandwiches. But the flavor of this baked potato thing was other-worldly. I came up with the conclusion that it was a fucking great potato to begin with; sweet, golden, fluffy…not those turdballs of starch and water they sell in the supermarket. I’ve found my personal comfort food.

Is that the whole organic difference or am I just that sick that I’m hallucinating?

Kohler says:

Karen is pretty much there for color commentary and off-color commentary.

EVERYBODY WINS.

OH THE SUSPENSE!  HE’LL NEVER GET HIS PHONE BACK!

Hipster dude then faces the dogs, reaches for the phone and YAY, the world is happy again.

Wow, lame.

So it isn’t bad enough that people are electricuting pitbulls and forcing them to fight in their dingy basements.  Verizon felt the need to cash in on the pitbull-Vick controversy.  Lame and low.  I don’t know about you but I’m going to send them a little note about the whole thing:
Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO Verizon
140 West Street
New York, NY 10007

Good thing the iPhone is on sale!  I’m hoping Verizon users ditch their contracts and get themselves a nice shiny iPhone.  I want to see Verizon’s numbers plummet.

Otis at the Berkeley Pound back in December 2007.  We adopted him this March. You can see the scars underneath his chin.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8812015&publicUserId=5462536

Wow. Really? Marie Claire– I understand that the last page may not be the meaty principal vessel for your “editorial vision” but still, you think your Sex-in-the-City wannabe intern can come up with a less annoying and a genuinely wittier caption? When I first saw this, a maelstorm of unadulterated rage grew. Is this how you’re trying to sell a product?– by blatantly offending another demographic? This issue was from May 2008. Halo 3 was released in September 2007. So not only is your boyfriend ignoring your needy ass, he also sucks giant wyvern balls if he’s still trying to beat the game eight months later.

Read more about the lameness here.

A homeless dude from the back was making his way to the front, probably to get off at his stop soon.  He sees the money in this girl’s backpack.  He stands there for about 5 minutes, staring at the bag while slowly reaching his hand towards the money.  The fob girl, lost in the world of music, had her headphones on and is oblivious to what is going on.  Everyone else on the bus sees this.  Glances were exchanged.  Oh my god, this guy is going to steal her money, they thought but all they did was be still, just waiting for this guy to make him move as if it was entertainment.

Finally, since no one was doing anything to prevent this from happening, I tapped at the girl and said, “Maybe you should put your money somewhere else less conspicuous.”  I’m not sure if she understood me, but she looked around and saw the homeless dude right next to her still staring at the pocket full of money.  She thanked me.  Luckily, my stop was next and I got up to make my way towards the door.  The homeless guy yelled at me.  Called me a cunt.  And then he spat at me while I was getting off the bus.

Now, I never got mad at the guy.  I was mostly disappointed at the other civilians on the bus who knew what was going on but didn’t have the balls or decency to say or do anything. Maybe I should have let the girl get her money stolen.  She was dumb enough in the first place to put it in a clear mesh pocket.

And it was then that I realized that this is how I am, and how people are in life.  People generally are cowards and too skittish to exert energy into doing something what is right whereas I do what is right and get somehow punished by it.  I don’t care really.  It just depresses me how unidealistic people have become.

Wyatt
Words: 742

A deep and disturbing rumble grows louder in Wyatt’s throat. That one unsightly vein embossed on his forehead pulses. Then it stops. He looks down on the ground, aims at the drain, and spits out a winner. It is probably the only time it gets this quiet around here. And like most self-proclaimed “smart types,” Wyatt gets all reflective at the wee hours of the night.

He thinks about today, which is barely three hours old. Today marks Chrissy’s seventh birthday, and Pete’s death five years ago. Exactly three months ago, Johnny left. And it was two weeks ago when Bobby graced this place with his presence.

“Jesus freaking Christ,” Wyatt muttered while shaking his head, and proceeded to process just how many have come and gone. How many ended up having happy endings, and how many were reincarnated into the form of a number, or worse, an asterisk. And like most self-proclaimed “smart-types,” he finds an empty corner and lights up a cigarette. He always attempts to blow a smoke ring on every first drag but always fails.

If only his father could look at him now: smoking a filter-free cigarette, smelling like stale gamey piss, and wearing some kind of faux scrubs with a big ol’ salsa stain in the front. “It’s chipotle,” the counter lady sneered. To Wyatt’s provincial palette, it tasted more like someone putting out cigarettes into a tomato.

“You ain’t one of those smart-types. You might wanna be like ‘em, but you never will be, so quit thinking about going to college, boy.”

But it wasn’t college that Wyatt desperately wanted at that point in his life. It was sweet escape. He felt like he couldn’t survive another day in that bum town, in that bum house, with that bum sadist dad. His soul was as wounded as his back, and even though he knew those slashes on his back would eventually become scars, maybe his soul stood a chance. He yearned for something that could rehabilitate him into a new man. Sadly, college wasn’t it.

But this was.

And it had been for the past eleven years.

Past girlfriends have scrunched up their faces when Wyatt tells them that he doesn’t have any other career aspirations. But they just didn’t understand. Though genes were kind to Wyatt’s looks, he wasn’t blessed with an expressive disposition. Wyatt couldn’t bring up the words to explain to them why he was content and had no interest in screwing it up. Some of these girls stuck with him for a while, thinking working at a city pound is noble. But that novelty wears off, and the once admirable animal-loving boyfriend Wyatt becomes that broke loser ex-boyfriend Wyatt who stepped on the ivory Martha Stewart rug with his shit-stained sneakers.

Wyatt always knew that these self-righteous geese never really cared about him anyways so he never told them The Stories. The Stories– an ongoing compilation of events he has come into contact with at the pound, each coupled with a strong emotion of his own. Anger: his first encounter with Boo, a passive bulldog puppy whose ears were roughly chopped off with a pair of dull drugstore scissors by a couple of asshole kids. It took five laundry cycles to finally mute that bloodstain on his work shirt into a faded beige. Bittersweet Joy: when crippled old Sesame finally got adopted but with only about a handful of weeks left in her. Sadness: Large breeds who were hastily dropped off at the pound from people who were late to discover their hearts are too small. Pain: Wyatt’s first big bite injury. That yappy little thing got away with a cubic inch of Wyatt’s thigh. Relief: You know those last-minute touchdowns or split-second three pointers that win the game, go down in history, and make grown men cry? There are those here, too: every successful adoption is a surprise win for the team.

Every one of The Stories is cataloged into Wyatt’s head. One would think a guy with a photographic memory would do well at college. Rather using his brain to store tidbits about Foucault or Vonnegut (two guys Wyatt didn’t give a fuck about), Wyatt was a walking freak calendar. Every day was an anniversary of something or another from The Stories.

And every night, he celebrates it exactly like this.

In the corner. Smoking a cigarette. Attempting to blow a smoke ring on the first drag.