2 comments from people at the corner store.

So in my neighborhood I go to this very multicultural corner store owned by Arabs and employing Latinos and Africans, and stocking all those types of goods and more. The last two times I've been in the counterwomen have been especially chatty: 1) When I was in the produce aisle stocking my basket, the shorter (Colombian) woman was like, "Hello, Mr. Healthy!", since I always buy a ton of fruits and vegetables. We started chit-chatting, and I mentioned that I had been to the beach and bought a rice popsicle from a Mexican vendor (fyi - though I didn't tell her - I did the entire transaction in Spanish), and she said her favorite flavor is mango and milk, and to try that next time. 2) On Mon. when I was in the store picking up some dried black beans, another latina counter woman was asking me what I was cooking, and when I said black beans for beans and rice, she started talking about how she cooks them... She soaks her beans for exactly 6 hours, uses salt and pepper and many of the same vegetables as me, and puts in some herb that I don't know the name of... She took me in the aisle to show it to me, but they were out of it.

2 Opinions, Dream of my one British friend.

The other day I ran into my one British friend at the gym... He was taking a rest in the weightroom and looking at a review of Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" in a magazine on the magazine rack. I said hi and told him I had been hoping to see the movie, and he said he had just seen it the previous week, with his brother when he was in town visiting. "And it was junk," he said, and panned its plot holes and recommended not seeing it, since it was just a summer blockbuster with nothing lasting about it, unlike "Alien", which his brother loves as a psychological thriller. "That's a shame," I was like, and reminded him that the director was British. "I know," he was like, "And he was quite good, before he tried too hard to make American summer blockbusters." Also, he said he was reading up on what Obama's healthcare plan did, and he said it didn't do much, or at least not enough to "warrant" his being called a socialist and a communist and whatnot. "When are you people going to get a national health service?", he was like. "I really recommend it." He also said that he had a horrendous dream the previous night, after reading a story about a homeless person in California who was on drugs or wasn't treated for mental illness and ended up biting someone's cheeks off and poking out their eyes before getting shot to death by police. As the dream went, he watched while someone's face was ravaged and eaten up by someone else, including huge gaping holes bit into the cheeks.

Clean Mirror.

The other Sunday I spent like two-and-a-half hours cleaning out a lot of my apartment during the morning, including cleaning my living room in-wall and bathroom in-cabinet mirrors with newspaper and vinegar till they were spotless. Then, I hit the beach for all day. At night when I got home, I noticed just under my chin there was a very very small pimple among my just-beginning beard stubble, probably from the sweat from sunbathing all day, so I took my nails and I went to pop it - And like a piece of whitish gunk the size of half a pinhead flew out six inches and onto my very clean bathroom mirror.

If I ever went to Krunk Karaoke again...

I'd try to sing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" (official video has 263 million views; a very popular comment - "thumbs up if you can rap this").

I bet people would eat that shit up if I could nail it - but I'd really have to nail it.

If I get an internet connection at home soon, I'm going to start practicing along with the YouTube clip.

Ingenious unbelievers.

I came across this in a book I was reading and should have noted down the reference, but I didn't:

Back when the Comstock Laws (banning use of the mails for obscene materials, I think) were passed (back in the 2nd half of the 19th c., I think), some "freethinkers" (a.k.a. unbelievers, the atheists of that time) tried to prevent bibles from being mailed, because of all the obscene incest, warfare, and drunkenness in them.

Horrible dream - but of someone else.

This actually happened -

The sister of my (Irish) (artist) friend lived in London for years, and would bike home through a poorer neighborhood where a bikepath had recently been put in by a canal.  The kids would snow snowballs with stones in them at bikers, and one time she was biking and 3 tall older teenagers stood across the path, asked her if she liked to swim, then pushed her and her bike into the canal when she tried to ride past...

She said the canal was only like chest deep, but you never knew what kind of stuff might be in there, the water was so murky.

This was her dream -

For years afterwards, and still occasionally, she dreams she falls into the canal on her bike, and a bike spoke from hidden rubbish in the canal pokes between her ribs deep up into her chest.

She always wakes up immediately, terrified and not sure if it just actually happened to her.

Jael.

The other week I was reading the book of Judges to keep up my Hebrew, and I was on the story of Jael, who hid a fleeing general in her tent, lulled him to sleep, and then drove a tent peg through his head.

A colleague's wife has that name, so I texted her and told her I was reading the story of her (scary) namesake.

She replied -

Now you know why noone wants to go camping with me!

. . .