Thus Spake Toilet Lama

Who has two thumbs and knows what evil lurks at the bottom of the bowl?  This guy.  Did you know "Dalai" means "ocean"?  As in the teacher with knowledge as deep as the ocean.  You get the picture vis-a-vis the toilet.

The line of Dalai Lamas is protected by Palden Lhamo,  "The Victorious One who Turns Back Enemies".  She hangs out by a lake, albeit a flaming pool of blood.  Turn-ons include mule rides and drinking blood from the skull of an expired activity partner.  Some lamas get all the luck when it comes to protectoresses.  The line of Toilet Lamas is protected by a similar character, Paladin Lame-0, "The One who Breaks Even at Best".   Similar deal.  Swap out the flaming lake of blood for a flaming river of sewage, slap a Browns helmet on there, and you end up with defensive tackle Shaun "Big Baby" Rogers riding a pony with his shirt off, still imbued with the amazing power to let the Browns go 0-2.

Thus protected, the current Toilet Lama is on a brown adventure in a brown land.  Van Halen never had it so brown.  Never fear, gentle reader.  Every doody will sparkle if you eat diamonds for breakfast.

Tribe

So the Indians and their fans are referred to as the Tribe. They were out in somewhat skimpy numbers yesterday at Progressive Field. (Friggin' corporate named fields. How am I supposed to differentiate between Quicken Loans Field, Invesco Field, Progressive Field, Conhugeco Stadium, and Blovent Infocorpse Arena? They all might as well be stadia for the Everywhereandnowhere Conglomerates.)

Anyway, the Indians ended up with a somewhat unjustified win. It wasn't quite a Cubs-level mess--after all, they won--but it was still a mess. The Indians were up 8-1 against the Twins. In the ninth, it was tied 9-9. Oops. In the 13th inning our loveable racist caricatures pulled out the victory.

Still, peanuts, a beer, and a ballgame. It's hard to object when you're being poked by a trident of all-American bliss.

The stadium is really cool--there are open sightlines even from behind the stands. I saw a biker gang there en masse, as well as a frail looking grandma in head-to-toe Indians wear clutching her score sheet. A couple of times, there was an on-field comical race between a red hot dog and a yellow and white one. White hot dog? I mean, maybe an uncooked veal brat, I guess. Then somebody said it was a competition between ketchup, mustard, and onions. Mustard won. This of course is only right.

Although they charge you $6.75 for a Bud Lite (BOO!), a Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold is 50 cents more. Worth the price upgrade I'd say. You can get a good local beer at the stadium, which is nice.

I was in the bleachers. They even have backs on the bleachers! Luxury even in the cheap seats. And they were cheap: $5 a head, AND it was $1 hot dog night. Plus you could buy day-of-game tickets, which I consider to be a big plus.

Last night was also the first time I've felt chilly in a while. Damn it all, I don't want summer to end.

aRABica vs. araBICa

The best kind of coffee bean is arabica. (The less-good filler one is called robusta.) It is pronounced aRABica. SRSLY, I quote the internet.

In Cleveland, a chainlet of coffee shops is called Arabica. Make that araBEEKa.

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Also, I'm going to an Indians game tonight.

Grocery store hijinks

My first trip to the grocery store in Cleveland involved some googling. I clearly don't know shit about this town, but I needed milk. It seems that there aren't too many options for grocery stores. There's a Whole Foods, which I didn't want to go to, and a Trader Joe's kind of far away. The standard issue grocery stores are Dave's Market and Giant Eagle (or Giant Iggle, to Pittsburghers--no kidding).

So I got directions to the Giant Eagle nearby. Every single customer except me was black.

The next time I went to the store, I tried the Dave's Market, about the same distance from my house as the Giant Eagle. The customers were white.

There is some very weird shit going on in this town.

For the record, my car was probably the beater-iest car in either parking lot.

Food bitching

Not "the food is bitchin.'"

I did get a decent bagel at Bialy's. An ex-New Yorker guy I met informed me that, no, I didn't get "a" bagel. I got the only bagel in Cleveland. The rest are the dreaded bread ring.

Today I paid $6 for a bottle of Sriracha. I was delighted to be able to do so. The store SOLD Sriracha. This is most certainly not a given.

I found some tortillas. Alas. They were mass-market corn tortillas that turned out to have wheat in them. And a whole bunch of other weird shit. Manny, the tortilla conglomerate guy, has gone to the dark side.

There are no local apples that I have seen, despite an article in the Plain Dealer reporting an epic apple harvest this year. Ok, I'm still figuring it out and all, but damn. Sell me an apple from Ohio! I'll buy it!

And speaking of the Plain Dealer. It is really a good paper. Solid international coverage, a lot of local news, and much, much more actual content than, say, the Chicago Tribune. It even has comics! Did you know that "Mary Worth" is still being published? No "Phantom" though. And it has a gigantic classified section every day.

But. But. There is a food section called "Taste." It is full of food abominations.

They include a story about and recipe from a woman who makes a vast amount of tomato sauce in her garage. The article includes a long disclaimer about how this recipe JUST MIGHT give you botulism. According to the government or some other such clowns.

Got a lot of zucchini on your plants this year? (You have a huge back yard. Duh. What do you think your $800 a month is paying for? Just that three bedroom house?) "Coat slices with a paste of garlic, olive oil, and ketchup, then grill and chop. Toss with cooked pasta tossed with a little oil, then dress for a room-temperature salad with feta cheese, kalamata olives, parsley, and a simple vinaigrette." Ketchup. On zucchini. With pasta. Ketchup with olives. Ketchup with feta. Ketchup?

Perhaps the most indicative of the tenor, though, is a recipe I read. I quote.

Homemade Skillet Meal Seasoning Mix

2 cups powdered milk
1/2 cup dehydrated onion
3 tablespoons beef or chicken bouillon granules
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons dried parsley
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper

Add that shit to a pound of ground beef and some egg noodles. Maybe some canned mushrooms! Eat up, Cleveland!

It's my theory that they spell out the measurements because if you gave a rat's ass about your mouth--and therefore knew the abbreviation for tablespoon--you wouldn't be making this.

Then I looked in the Plain Dealer archives. They have an article about how mustard is good on hot dogs.

Help!

Neck beards and a Toilet Lama

There's a new poster to the site: the Toilet Lama. He's taking his name from a Cleveland poet/wild man, D. A. Levy. Like me, the Toilet Lama is figuring out what the hell's going on in the Forest City. I'm looking forward to lots of toiletty insights.

And, for your edification, proof that the Chicago Tribune is a mockery.