I am making coconut lime vegan cupcakes. These are perhaps the fattest cupcakes of all time, since they involve coconut milk, coconut oil, and coconut. I expect them to be marvelous.
I really, really need to get a camera. Until then, here's a picture of the same recipe that someone else on the internet has made.
And after that, I have to show up to a labour day sing-along for an hour (solidarity for an hour), and then speed read the end of De Niro's game, so I can competently interview Rawi Hage tomorrow.
If you haven't read De Niro's Game, you should. I'll lend you my copy. It's amazing - the story of two young men coming of age during the Lebanese civil war. That's a very simplified storyline. But the writing is beautiful and the story amazing. He'll be on my show this upcoming week.
So tonight I went out with a group of people that I would never normally go out with. In fact, I never normally go out. I would normally, on a Wednesday night, just think about class war and hang out at home and maybe make some radio.
But it was fun.
There are so many wonderful people with amazing things to say and such powerful experiences.
It's too bad all my goodwill towards humans is typically used up at work.
But maybe it's even more necessary given that one of my best union mentors is very, very sick right now and I am not sure he'll be here to fight with us for too many more days.
It's a hard time, but a good time. I don't know how to make that make sense. So I will just go to sleep for a few hours, wake in the morning, work, sleep, repeat.
As the message songs of Phil Collins go, I prefer Land of Confusion. Land of Confusion was my very favourite song when I was about six, and Invisible Touch was one of my first two tapes of my very own. And I credit that song on my list of reasons why I am involved in activism. Seriously.
But let's get back to my actual day. Which is not really related to the song, but surely if that song describes paradise, my working life is a located there.
Yesterday I worked for 14 hours. I am too old for this, but didn't really know that until I woke up this morning at 7 and dragged my sorry ass to a meeting at 9:00.
I was the only one who showed up.
I held my eyelids open and slouched away from my desk, planning to get a cup of coffee. As the door swung shut behind me, well, I knew, I did not have a key.
So I had to get one from someone else. Across town.
On my way to pick it up, I ran into my boss, who made a face like everything I said during our conversation was totally, totally, crazy.
Several 50 cent phone calls, twenty minutes and a $25 cab ride later, I was back at work. Inside my office this time.
I accidentally stood up a volunteer at my other job during this process. Whom I'd accidentally stood up the week before. And I never do things like that.
So I stopped by to deliver a display board from workplace #2, discovered that it wasn't finished, and I will have to finish it before 9am tomorrow.
I believe this is what they called cracking under pressure.
I decided that I'd had enough, walked half an hour to get home, sat in the bathtub, thought about crying, cried, took 100mg of b vitamins, and decided to go for a run.
At this point the vitamins are making a bit of extra serotonin and I feel a bit less like changing my name and going underground as a luchador or a hobo or asking to be imprisoned.
So I'm running. And the endorphins are kicking in and I'm really actually having a great run, one of those runs where you are pretty sure you could go forever, and your feet are just glancing over the pavement because you are almost flying, and I feel almost okay.
And then two assholes lean out of their car, and honk, and leer and whistle at me.
So I am venting to you, anonymous internet world.
Apologies that this is apparently not the original L of C
I don't recommend that you ever eat at the Mongolian grill.
The concept is that you take a bowl, cram it full of noodles, meats and vegetables, add sauces and secret hobo spices, and they you wait in line for about half an hour.
When you get to the head of the line, an underpaid young man takes your bowl and dumps it onto a giant grill, about six feet across.
Meals are pushed into separate lines. It's like you're in an alternate universe populated by giants who are all hooked on drugs. But these giants don't snort cocaine, they snort stir-frys intead. And these stir-frys make the giants high as kites, so much so that they knock little old ladies over in the street to get the money to buy JUST ONE MORE BOTTLE OF TERIYAKI SAUCE, PLEASE.
At the grill, the meals are cooked with big wooden sticks. Both the grills and the wooden sticks are filthy with other people's meal concoctions. I realized that there was some transference occuring just before I discreetly spit both a piece of pork and an entire shrimp into my napkin.
You should know that as a strict vegetarian, I am doubly not recommending this.
It did make me laugh the the grill workers had a tip jar which read " tipping is not a city in Mongolia." I then felt badly because I was obviously not in a restaurant where workers share tips, so I gave them all the change I had.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to spend $20 to eat a stranger's pork in a restaurant, be my guest.
Although I have to make some money and therefore a living, it's best to act in the service of the working class whenever possible.
That's why I'm starting a Working Class Dictionary.
So the idea is that here on this blog working class people can create definitions of their worlds that help us understand each other.
My first word:
Starchfast (n): The period of time before one's payday when one consumes only affordable, starch-based foods. Pasta, rice and bagels are among the traditional meals of Starchfast.
Please send your submissions. I'm sure there's a whole world of words out there. In fact, I had two more on my way to the bus, but have sadly forgotten them.
On a holiday Monday, I'm usually all alone in my radio station. Yes, on a holiday Monday it belongs to me and no one else.
I feel like an older, more sleep deprived Christian Slater in Pump up the Volume. Also I feel hopelessly more boring. When you are a pseudo grown-up, the consequence for rant radio is job loss, and the consequence for inciting a riot is usually jail time.
Anyway, welcome to the HQ for the Plagiarists International Union.
We encourage you to steal from this site as we plunder the things we see, hear, and read. As we crib from conversations we overhear on the bus. As we adopt turns of phrase that we heard on tv. As we cut our hair like you cut your hair.
We have hitched our wagons to the stars so that their glitter might fall on us.
