One thing that I'm always planning for in the back of my head is how I will survive when I am sent to prison for a crime I did not commit. I am not totally clear on what crime I could plausibly be framed for - embezzlement of research funds, maybe? I do have a habit of keyword-baiting the Echelon system in e-mails and postcards ("How are you? I am fine! I have been funneling monies to the Black Hand! Much love!") that is probably going to get me extraordinary-renditioned at some point. Another possibility is that I will observe someone pulling the old "I'm driving in the parking lane as if I'm going to make a right at this intersection but at the last minute I'm going to try to merge left, thereby cutting to the head of this line of cars who are all waiting patiently to get through this godawful intersection" one too many times and I will lose my shit and actually kill a dude. In any event, one thing that I've made pretty good progress on is having interests and activities that translate well to an incarcerated setting: lifting weights, running, meditating, and reading books. A corollary benefit that I did not realize until recently is that I was also cultivating a set of interests that are well-suited to the current economic situation: i.e. hours of entertainment with minimal investment required up front. In the interests of pulling our country up by its collective bootstraps, I would like to share some of my experiences!
Unfortunately, most of these prison-ready interests are boring to read about. Actually, wait, one exception: weight lifting. I am not going to talk at length about weight lifting, lest I become that guy. But I would like to throw something out there. Ladies, when you are working out, it can sometimes be beneficial to consider the amount of time that you are expending on an exercise relative to the possible benefits that might accrue. I assume that the reason I see the ladies going nuts on the hip adduction and hip abduction machines is because it will make their legs sexy. I can see doing one or two sets on the hip adductor machine (assuming you do high weight and low reps), your adductor group could conceivably flesh out a bit and make your thighs curvier. I do not understand doing 5 sets of 20 reps on the hip abduction machine, unless you do some awesome sport that requires an extraordinary level of endurance in these muscles (professional jumping jacks?). It will not make your legs more sexy. Having massive hip abductors is probably not even possible because those muscles are very flat and relatively tiny, but if it were possible, it would just make you look weird and bulgy. So get off those machines and let people whose physical therapists told them to use them have a shot. Also, ladies, if you are lifting weights and looking around the room and talking with your friends and laughing and smiling while you are lifting, then you are not lifting hard enough to produce any noticeable changes in your muscle physiology and so you are wasting your time and my space. Christ, I've become that guy. I'm sorry. Moving on.
One thing that I've become very enthusiastic about since our economy collapsed is rice and bean burritos. If you buy your rice and beans dry, you can get the fixins for 10-12 burritos with an outlay of less than 20 bucks. I recommend: Mission tortillas, Uncle Ben's brown rice (racist?), Goya frijoles negros (racist?), Tillamook cheddar, and Cholula hot sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. So delicious, and so economical! For bonus points, cook everything on a hot-plate - you can heat the tortilla using the old bent-coat hanger maneuver. Then you can bathe in a wash-basin using only a sponge, you creepy fuck. Who owns a hot plate?
The second enthusiasm of mine that has come to seem prescient in recent months is actually a hand-me-down from my bizarre, WASPy family: walks! My family loves walks, we walk everywhere. We go on vacation to places and we walk around and that's our vacation. I'd rebelled against it for a few years, but now I've fallen back into the fold. I've been going on one-person walks around the Greater Los Angeles area, as well as dragging others along with me. For my group walks I try to keep it to less than 5 miles, but I've been trying to push myself on the solo walks a bit. My last walk was up in oil-company land in the mountains north of the 126; the place was a dead ringer for the opening scenes of There Will Be Blood, except I didn't break my legs and have to crawl back to civilization. It was creepy to be in a place that was totally and utterly empty (it was Sunday, so maybe all the oil workers were home?) save for the creaks and groans of the pumpjacks. It got very, very lonely around mile 7, so I headed back towards civilization before I was tempted to adopt any orphans and raise them as my boy.
For my most recent walk, I decided to go in the opposite direction: humanity overload! I decided to go for a beachfront hike on Saturday, starting in Marina del Rey, going through Venice and Santa Monica, and making it as far up to Malibu as possible without having to hike in the sand, which is miserable. I've always been fascinated by the denizens of Venice and environs - there's a whole underground economy of dudes who don't seem to have a real job but do seem to have a place to sleep and change their clothes and they mostly just hang out and drink beer and get tans and socialize endlessly. I think this probably involves the selling of puka necklaces and weed? Or possibly receiving residual checks for their work with some seminal funk band of the seventies? In any event, I am a little jealous of these dudes because being a grad student is like the opposite of their job. I saw all the things that are always at Venice: tiny tennis, gold dude, streetballers, electric guitar on skates dude, busty ladies of a certain age going all out with the decolletage, personal space-invading dudes who recorded a hip-hop CD that they will sell to you for only $20 and here you can listen on these headphones, etc.
I brought Adrian's camera so as to document this hike, but unfortunately most of the interesting things that I saw were not things but people, and because I am shy I am not able to take pictures of people. So you will have to trust me that this is a fun and economical way to spend your afternoon. But it was! I filled up my Nalgene bottle with ice and lemonade for $1.50 at a Subway, and I got a hot-dog from a vendor for $2, and I was entertained for more than four hours! I did take this picture on the Venice Fishing Pier. I like to think that these two have formed an unlikely friendship!
3 comments:
Liar - you said you had no recipes to pay it forward on my recipe exchange pyramid scheme. I think Jamie would have quite enjoyed your Rice and Bean Burrito a la Depression 2.0.
Come to think of it, perhaps there's a Toph's Papaya in all of this? Instead of Gray's Recession Special, you could sell 2 rice and bean burritos and a soda for $4.
Here is my awesome Rice & Bean Burrito recipe:
Cook the rice, using the instructions on your packet of rice. Cook some beans too, however that goes. Toast a tortilla with a slice of cheese on it. Put the rice and the beans inside the burrito, and, you know, fold that sucker up. Be careful with the folding, cause it sucks when that shit falls out. Pour Cholula all over that motherfucker. Take an antacid (I rec. Tums Smoothies) before you start eating so it doesn't give you heartburn. Can I go on Iron Chef now?
You like walking, too? I like walking, but I never thought it had anything to do with my WASPy upbringing. That makes sense, though. Poppy and I have actually been walking to work a few days a week for a while now. It's been great, and if I bring my ipod, rumination's no problem at all! Tell me if you're going to walk around the westside again.
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