“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Flow From Me
Monthly Archives: May 2022
Mochinut
I’d rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.
John Prine
The other day I wrote about having to drive between two donut stores on the way to work every day. Due to medical conditions I can’t eat donuts… not even one. I’m used to that, but still I can dream. I am especially interested in the one on the south – a new Japanese fusion donut shop called Mochinut. The donuts look like a circular string of donut holes and are made with rice flour. Best of all, they come in tantalizingly oddly different flavors.
We were coming back from Mother’s day festivities in Downtown Dallas and my son expressed an interest in something sweet to eat. I suggested a quick stop at Mochinut – we would be passing by soon.
Even if I can’t eat it, I can see… and dream.
They were very good (I’m told) the shop is bright and simple – the flavors varied. Here is what they offered:
The place had a nice attention to detail. For example, on the dark chocolate Mochinut – there was a little chocolate bear sleeping on a marshmallow pillow. Cool.
Rootbound
“If I had my way we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.”
― William S. Burroughs
Sunday Snippet, Poem, Warm Water by Bill Chance
“You love me. You ignore me. You save my life, then you cook my mother into soap.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Warm Water
Complex salts
and surfactants
change the surface tension
make the water smoother
One end loves water
the other oil
The molecules line up, sticking one end in
the other out.
billions and billions in line
to make one tiny
bubble
one unit
of foam.
I know too much
that there isn’t much difference
a chain here
a conjugated double bond
a COOH group there
between lilac
(bath soap)
and the stench of death
maybe that’s the point
The Root of the South’s Downfall
“The first time I saw my father-in-law’s cotton, I though of the Original Sin, gardening being the root of the South’s downfall.”
― Michael Lee West, She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana
What I learned this week, May 06, 2022
What happens to your body and brain when you stop eating sugar
Cutting sugar out of your diet will likely decrease inflammation, boost your energy levels, and improve your ability to focus.
The Great Resignation is becoming a “great midlife crisis”
Older, more tenured people are increasingly quitting their jobs.
12 Simple Strategies to Lose Weight After 50
You hear all these stories about how it’s harder to lose weight after age 50 than it was earlier in life. While there are some biological factors that can make it harder to take off extra weight in your 50s and beyond, some of what’s keeping the weight on is that your lifestyle has changed.
Why Feeling Lost Is Necessary to Build the Life You Want
Myself. I want to be myself.
Economy contracts as ‘Bidenflation’ glides toward ‘Bidencession’
To be sure, people generally overestimate presidents’ ability to control the economy. But Biden has done some very specific things to cause damage despite multiple warnings.
An aerospace engineer explains how hypersonic missiles work
Hypersonic weapons fly much higher than slower subsonic missiles—but much lower than intercontinental ballistic missiles.
4 smart reasons to keep an old USB drive around
Old dongle, new tricks.
What Does the Beauty Of A Building Mean To Us Now?
“…Originally everything about a Greek or Christian building meant something, and in reference to a higher order of things. This atmosphere of inexhaustible meaningfulness hung about the building like a magic veil. Beauty entered the system only secondarily, impairing the basic feeling of uncanny sublimity, of sanctification by magic or the gods’ nearness. At the most, beauty tempered the dread – but this dread was the prerequisite everywhere. What does the beauty of a building mean to us now? The same as the beautiful face of a mindless woman: something masklike.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Bubble
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
The sound of a bubble coming up through the ice in my Diet Coke sent me into a panic attack. I’m not sure why – I was tired, stressed out and daydreaming – it sounded so odd, unexpected and otherworldly that I was startled, confused and distraught. What was my subconscious lizard brain thinking? Was Cthulhu rising in miniature tentacled horror from an icy bath of artificial colors and sweetener? Was it guilt on spending almost two precious dollars on the unhealthy concoction? Or is it just a sad commentary on my pitiful useless life that a stray sphere of escaping carbon dioxide can throw me into such a tizzy.
Granted, it didn’t last long – I even took a cold, refreshing sip of the evil beverage (everything other than water, coffee, tea and maybe certain kind of rum – Ron Flor de Caña on ice – is an evil beverage) and my panic subsided somewhat. I was left with a vague unease and anonymous fear. What do they say about this? Did I feel as if someone “Walked over my grave” or “by the pricking of my thumbs” or simply a shiver up my spine.
Flavored
“What’s a rainy day
without some delicious
coffee-flavoured loneliness?”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence
I had to drive down to our facility on Love Field at work today and deal with some paperwork. It went quickly and smoothly so on the way back to North Dallas I had time to stop at the Central Market at Greenville and Lover’s Lane.
I passed the vast rows of perfect exotic vegetables, past the long cold row of waiting fish, past the display of bright red beef, past the beer and wine and into the land of bulk food items – long vertical plexiglass chutes with a sliding gate at the bottom. These are filled with everything from nuts to grains. But I headed to the end of the winding displays – there there was coffee.
As a certified and certifiable coffee snob I’m not supposed to drink flavored coffee because the added artificial essence disguises the delicious perfection of the roasted beans. But I can’t help it. I like to have a selection. I like to open my tiny plastic tubs of beans and sniff them – choose the infusion of the day. I like the smell of flavored coffee in the whole bean, in the grinder, and in the cup.
So I picked up a bag, opened the valve on the Banana Nut flavored accumulation and let a little bit over a pound slide out. Off to the the side there are two banks of coffee grinders – one labeled “No Flavored Coffee” and the other “Flavored Coffee Only.” I ignore those – I like to grind my beans right before they go in the boiling water. I’m not sure if it really makes a difference, but I think it does.
I had to stand in line a long time clutching my tiny single bag – the Express Lane labeled “15 items or less” seemed chock full of folks with fourteen items each. But I eventually made it back to work and was able to re-fill my container with Banana Nut goodness.
My coffee ritual – bean selection, measurement, grinding, water heating, loading the aeropress, brewing, filtering, pressing, and finally drinking – that’s the high point of my day.
Non Fungible Tokens
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I had a recurring, frustrating dream all night about NFTs. I was supposed to buy some for my work for some reason… but I didn’t (and don’t) understand exactly what a Non Fungible Token is. The seem to be some sort of Ponzi scheme… I guess – but it was imperative that I was to buy some. I remember surfing the internet in my dream, looking for a certain type of NFT that was related to the company I work for.
What a boring way to spend a whole night of dream-world, surfing the net. I woke up a few times only to fall asleep and go right back into the same dream.
And then it was time to go to work.
Bill Chance 