More rice problems.

The other day I got out the coffee can to get some rice out, and a bug scurried across the top.

So, I put all the coffee cans full of rice in my freezer, to freeze the bugs to death.

After that, I sorted through the rice on a plate with the tines of a fork, in order to pick out bugs, and I found small rice-colored larva, too, as many as like 6-8 bugs and larva in like a half cup of dry rice.

Since that was so time-consuming, I went and bought a strainer, and now I sift the rice with the strainer and then pour water down through it, to get out the larva and bugs, which are smaller than the rice grains...

The 1st time I sifted, in fact, as I shook the rice around in the strainer, I saw a small pale larva kind of fall through and float through the air into the sink.

I'm surprising ungrossed out by eating the rice, since I figure bugs are in a lot of the food we eat anyways.

I also feel that it's important to do this and be in solidarity with the world's poor. 

I wonder if the people I met "when I was in Africa" would be so hasty to through out rice there?

Text from a pregnant friend.

A friend of mine from high school went off birth control like half a year ago, since her and her husband want a baby, and she got pregnant a bit ago, she had told me.

The other day, she texted -

This week its on its third set of kidneys, growing a mouth and tongue and will start peeing... inside of me.  isn't that totally fucked up!?!

I love texting.  It's amazing how much you can fit into under 150 characters.

Rice problems.

I eat very repetitively, and I have been making a big batch of black beans for beans and rice about every 7-10 days for the past 5-6 weeks, and I usually have at least 1-2 bowls a day. The other day, I was pulling out the 20lb. bag of Goya rice from under my sink, where I have it tucked since it's still heavy at around 16-17lbs. (I've eaten a good bit of it), when it brushed up against the wood, and there was a tear and rice started spilling into the cabinet and on the floor. I set it in such a way that the spill stopped, and then I just got some out and made some and had some dinner, and decided I would figure out what to do with rebagging the rice after I finished dinner, since I was tired and hungry. After dinner, then, like 30 minutes later, I open the door to under the sink, and I see two very small black bugs skitter down from the tear in the rice. I look more closely, and shake the bag, and there's a black bug crawling here and there out of the rice to the surface, and then going back in... I figure, either they got in there during those 30 minutes (were they already under the sink? - I don't have insect problems that I know of, and keep a very clean apt.) - or they had gotten in through very small holes in the bag, because occasionally a rice grain would force its way out through the heavy plastic and leave a small hole in the bag, I could see, even though I kept the top from which I poured out of tightly bound with a rubber band. I then decided to save the rice, and got out a bunch of spare coffee cans, and ladled the rice in with a mug, and occasionally the bugs would rise, and I'd either kill them if I could get them, or ignore them and dump them into the coffee can. I figure, maybe the lack of oxygen will kill them, and if not, I'll wash the rice off in a strainer anyhow. If any gets into the food, it's nothing more than what's already been happening, or what happens with all food, since the USDA sets a minimum level for that stuff. I did have a hard time eating some rice I made up after that happened, though... When I got the rice out of the coffee can (I'm storing the 8-9 coffee cans under the sink), one little black bug did come to the surface, when I was ladling the grains out.

Deadmau5 on Madonna.

I also love how Deadmau5 called out Madonna for asking an electronic dance music festival crowd "Has anyone here seen Molly?" in a reference to Ecstasy drug slang, comments on Facebook including:

Very classy there madonna. "HUR DUR HAS ANYONE SEEN MOLLY???" such a great message for the young music lovers at ultra...  

quite the f'n philanthropist. but hey, at least yer HIP AND TRENDY! fucking cant smack my head hard enough right now.

Then, in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, Deadmau5 commented further on Madonna's lauding drugs at the concert:

“You want to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘funky grandma’?  Fine.  It’s not my place to say you’re irrelevant...  If you’re going to come into my world, at least do it with a little more dignity.”

Quite the (appropriate) words.   Madonna really seems to be struggling with saying on the edge of things right now.

I really like Deadmau5's style.

I really like the style of the Canadian DJ Deadmau5:

I find the head very iconic (even here, at what seems to be the Vancouver Olympics).

Learning Polish (2 of 2): Clubs.

After a bunch of chit-chat, the fun Polish nanny floated out the idea that we all go clubbing with her at these Polish clubs on the west side of the city.

In terms of dresscode - which I brought up - she said women had to be very dressy, and men had to have dress shoes (no gym shoes) and nice jeans and slacks and a collared shirt.

"Would we be the only non-Polish people there, though?", I was like.  "I don't want it to be too weird."

"No!", she was like, "Other people come too, all the time.  A lot of Mexicans do.  Mexican men *love* Polish women."

"No way!", I was like.

At that, she leaned in and smiled, and was like, "Trust me."

"Trust you?", I was like, "I already trust you and believe everything you say, you could sit here and tell me lies all night."

At that, she laughed, but I think was satisfied, at my expressing trust in her.  I think Slavic peoples are like that, they get who's who.

Learning Polish (1 of 2): Help from a Native Speaker.

Like 2 months ago, I hung out with a friend of my one lawyer friend from Missouri, and her friend, who is a(n early 30s) (Polish) woman who is nanny to her nephews...  That was like the 2nd time we had hung out, and since the friend of my one lawyer friend from Missouri had brought along a Slovak friend of hers who was in town for business, we ended up all talking about how hard Polish was to pronounce, and the fun Polish nanny had us do tongue-twisters, and between that and my realizing how cool so many young Polish people are, that inspired me to start learning phrases in the language.

So, when we were going to all hang out for drinks, I brought my little Polish-English phrasebook I had gotten from the library, and the fun Polish nanny helped teach us phrases like, "You are beautiful," and, "Buy me a beer, beautiful."

I was on a high from that, that was so much fun, and I later texted my one modern Czech literature professor friend to tell her how I was taught how to say in Polish, "Buy me a beer, beautiful", and she texted back -

But you could say that with just your eyes.

. . .