From Slim, who's meeting with a team of Scientists in Cambridge (MA):

"i am in an intellectual crisis and i don't know what to do. as you know i made a highly emotional bet on gold. because i didn't have access to my charting programs or live quotes at the time, it appears i could not have had worse timing. so i don't know what to do. i'm convinced i'm correct but i could lose all of my money before i am correct. i could get out now but i am nursing conservatively a (sum) loss.

i keep having this fantasy of being able to jump out of my body and have a constructive conversation with myself, in hopes of discovering the truth or, at best, a solution. but i'm probably lucky that this is not possible, as i would likely kick my own ass.

everything will be okay. it's only money after all. i'm just disappointed that i have more to learn. i'm gonna go have a beer."

Poor Slim. I miss him.

Hating The Ginger Man very much.

Rented Waitress tonight and found it silly and amoral, even though most of the baking seemed plausible enough. When I went to the video store, they claimed I had an $80 fine for 3 discs of Lost and some movie called Pocket Change. GK4, only other name on the account, says it wasn’t him and seemed indignant at the suggestion that he would rent Lost. (Clerk was surly and only knocked off $20. Well, I wasn’t looking so great; haven’t slept well since that stuff happened on Saturday.) Since the offender would need to know my number by heart and be highly irresponsible, I’ve narrowed down the suspects. Charlie Stein, j’accuse.


Last night I bought some Goya brand passion fruit puree, don’t know why, so I defrosted a little of that and mixed it with some yogurt for dessert. When it turned out to be incredibly sour, I added a little dark brown sugar and some sliced banana. It was kind of tropical and not awful.

I should add that last week I bought a rock-hard avocado. I’d read somewhere that for some reason putting an avocado in a bag of flour ripens it, so I did, but then I forgot about it and when I retrieved it, I’d waited so long that the avocado would have been overripe anyway, so it’s very hard to know. What I need to do of course is buy two equally hard, stick one in the flour, and see which ripens first, but the thing is I don’t really care; I just want it soft enough to eat. Is the flour even necessary? What about just a plain brown bag, such as is used to ripen stone fruits? Obviously I need to expand the experiment to a third avocado – getting very expensive.