Todd Stadler's blog

Things don't go

I'm not scared of my parents' house anymore, it seems, and that saddens me. It used to be that coming home was a scary event until I was under the covers, well past any reasonable young age. Someone was always trying to sneak into the garage, so I had to lock everything up quickly. Someone was always peeking in the window next to the front door. Someone was always down the hallway as I crossed from my bathroom to my room. All those people with thier murderous intents, my constant companions through high school and beyond, are gone. Have I grown up, or even lost some imagination? I hope not.

I go home tomorrow. And I'm actually a bit sad about that. And not just because I have to work the day after that.

Fun + intervention = funtervention

Tonight was my last night in Richardson. Those of us who still keep in touch from high school hung out at a fairly low-grade pool hall in north Dallas. And yet, with the tame crowd there and a beer selection only an Oregonian from Texas could love (Miller, Bud, and Shiner...um, I'll have Shiner), it was a good time.

We flirted with the bartender - okay, mainly, that was Ajay. We played songs loudly with the bartender's help. We sang those songs loudly without anybody's help. And we even danced a little on the bar (well, Wendy did, and Ajay did until he hit his head).

And Ajay practically demanded we continue the evening at his house after they kicked us out of the bar at 2am. Of course, they only did so grudgingly - the bartender said we could come back any time later for 50% off drinks if it was her shift. These sort of things happen around Ajay.

Back at his house, it was chips and salsa and infomercials. And nothing else would have hit the spot like that combination. Most memorable was Univision, with its ever-present beautiful women in slinky clothes accompanied by a chunky Santa who couldn't assemble a Razor scooter, some woman in a scary reindeer costume, and a very scary, very unexplained cut to what appeared to be someone in a snowman costume.

We also saw a commercial for, and I wish I was making this up, Budget Casket. Yes, budgetcasket.com, even. I kept waiting for it to be a joke. But no. I suppose this is what late-night TV is all about.

Driving home, it occurred to me that all the trees were heavy and glistening with ice. The trees glowed very pretty in the sodium vapor lights, as unpoetic as that sounds.

Home, pensive for the holidays

I'm at home in Richardson, TX this week.

I find myself increasingly aware of two paths in my life, two sides to me. One side gets amazingly short shrift, time and energy-wise, it would seem. That's the side that thinks about my parents, shows them love, and thinks of others. It's the side that gives of myself. The one that thinks of God and tries to please him by doing good. It's the side I put forth when I'm at home, but not the side I feel is the "real me" maybe. I mean, it is, but I spend so much time on the other side...

Which isn't, as you might expect, the evil side, as such. It's the side where I think about myself a lot, what I want. I work on my projects. It's just a selfish side. One that gets angry more than it should. And doesn't think much about others, except what they can give me. It's amazing I get along in life living so much on that side. And that anyone likes me.

This whole trip has made me start to think that I need to rearrange my priorities. I've done this before, deciding to spend less time socializing and more time working on my projects. But it's glaringly obvious that there are even more important things. But they're really tricky things. Things without a good payoff. Like spending time with potentially annoying people, or at least those who are not as interesting or fun. Helping out at church. Doing stuff for other people. I mean, this stuff should be done. But something about being a young single person has put me in the mind to avoid this, and not too many people have questioned that. So where do I find time for it all, then? I don't know. Maybe I don't.

It's been good being home, though. I forgot how important my parents are. I'm really wondering for the first time what it means to be so far from them. I've heard several times at church how happy my mom is to have me home. I never realized it was such a big deal. It seemed like such a duty thing to come home. I kind of forgot what it meant to them.

We have a really nice family - I'm blessed beyond comprehension to have a family so gifted spiritually, financially, with talents and love to spare. And yet, I sometimes think, maybe being the only child with no siblings to put things into perspective, I don't know what family means so much. It's a burden, but it's more than that, of course.

Women. God. Parents. Love. People. Church. Home. Priorities. Wow. Not in that order.

Another modest proposal

I had this idea to replace the health care system with a beefed-up legal system. We could abolish Medicare, HMOs, and the whole mess. That would save a lot of money.

And in place of all that, we just let people sue whenever they aren't well. If you have a cold, sue the guy who passed you the germs. Don't know who it was? Sue 'em all, let the court figure it out!

This seems to be a natural extension of what we have, except the lines of accountability would be cleaner. Instead of suing your doctor for some vague notion of malpractice, just sue him because you feel icky.

This way, everyone gets their fare share, without the money-grubbing health industry taking a cut. It just makes sense.

This message paid for by the Oregon Bar Association

A phone conversation with Gerry Toll

Me: Do you want to eat in an hour, then?

Gerry: Yeah, that's fine, I should be hungry by then. Are you hungry now?

Me: Yeah, I'm actually extremely hungry, but I can wait. I'm...well, I'm punishing my body.

Gerry: Okay.

Me: Yeah, it didn't perform as well as I'd hoped it would, so I'm punishing it by waiting to eat.

Gerry: Oh, um...what did it do wrong?

Me: Well, it couldn't lift up a car. You know how they say a mother can lift up a car when her child is pinned under it because she's under a lot of stress and all full of adrenaline? Yeah, that didn't work for me. There was this kid pinned under a car, and I tried to lift it up, but I couldn't. See, I think the thing was - it wasn't my kid.

Gerry: Whose was it?

Me: There was this really hot lady I saw - it was her kid. ... Actually, he wasn't so much pinned under my car as run over by it. Lemme explain - see, I see this really hot woman as I'm riding down the street, right? And I'm thinking to myself - quickly, that's how I think - why not pin her kid under the car and then lift it up in my duress and save him, in the process also earning her everlasting respect and love? Makes sense, right? But see, the problem is, I couldn't actually lift the car up when I acted out the plan.

Gerry: Did you stop to think she could have been married?

Me: Yeah, well, I didn't see a man around her, so I figured she was single, but if I had, I could have run over him, too, and then just "accidentally" not been able to lift the car up, you know...

Gerry: Like what actually happened with the kid.

Me: Sure, but, you know, that's why I'm punishing my body by waiting an hour to eat. I figure that'll be enough to correct for my actions. The Oregon Department of Corrections may have different ideas, but hey, I'm my own man!

Gerry: Right.

Punks teach old man lesson, man bites dog

I just wanted to say thanks to the kids. Those handful of punk kids at the show tonight.

See, I went to see the Blue Meanies tonight, with the Pinehurst Kids opening. I wondered how full the show would be, given that I've never seen the Meanies headline before, and they are two style changes away from ska now, even though they still get pegged with that label by stupid alt.weeklies who hear horns and assume it's ska. Ska isn't exactly the biggest seller anymore.

Things first went south when we showed up at the Pine Street Theater ("changing names with the seasons") fka Thrasher Presents on Pine Street fka The Paradigm fka the Womb fka La Luna. There was nobody there. No sound even. But there was a sign on the door - the show had moved to Meow Meow. Later rumor had it that Everclear (Portland's less-than-secret shame) was filming a video at the Pine Street, pulling rank as it were on our friends the Meanies. It'd better not be true, or I'll never buy an Everclear album again ha ha ha.

Over at Meow Meow, there weren't that many more people than at the Pine Street. Sigh. Why do so few people get how cool this band is? Maybe it stems from the fact that nobody knows how to set levels for a band with horns. The mix was awful! This isn't all that surprising, though, considering the lock that indie rock has on Portland. ("What do you mean you have non-stringed instruments?")

But the punk kids at the show, they didn't care. They strutted about like punk kids do, flailing all over. At first I thought they looked silly. But then I compared them to the other kids there - the indie statues, immobilized in their sweaters and corduroys, seemingly oblivious to the wall of sound. And I realized I'd much rather look stupid than, ahem, cool.

So I bopped around with abandon, neck popping, arms flailing, screaming, kicking. And it was good. I was part of the music, and I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted to thank a handful of stupid kids for reminding me of that.

Geez, what an old person thing to say.

Slow news day

It is no longer clear why I felt compelled to write an entry today.

As usual, I got up late. This didn't used to be usual for Sunday mornings, but since I've been without car (thanks to the wonderful drivers in Portland, Oregon!), I've been skipping church. Almost not intentionally, but I do keep forgetting to call the other church I mean to go to and find out when their service is. So I never know when to wake up. Sigh.

Some lunching, some newspaper-reading. You know.

And then suddenly, some napping. I like sleeping, but it's such a waste of time. It's not like I'm doing anything. Except, um, sleeping.

So in a vain attempt to justify today, I spent some time working on this webpage, and wrote this entry. Let's see, tomorrow's Monday. Great. I'm fulfilled.

Feeling down, downtown

Ah, well, it's better than last night. Quasi was to be playing at Berbati's, and in a strange fit of spontaneity and interpersonal gusto, I asked this girl at work if she wanted to go to the concert with me and my friends. If you knew what work was like, you'd know how rare it is for me to find a girl there my age, much less one I'd like to hang out with. Cursed engineering!

Anyhow, she joined us in our travails at the Brazen Bean and later at some sushi place. You'd think that between the martinis, sake, cute girl, and impending aural happiness, things would have been going swimmingly, but they were, in fact, going quite weirdly. Perhaps some people had had too much to drink. Perhaps people communicate differently. Something like that.

By the time we were at the concert and Quasi started playing, I had holed up in my own little world, completely focused on the music. Which was fine. Although Sam's antics at Quasi concerts have become somewhat predictable ("oh, look, he can't remember how another song goes and has become frustrated again"), they are for now still amusing, and the songs themselves are just good. Music is good. That's my theme.

So things tonight were confusing. I wish that wasn't also a theme of mine.

But you can't hug a song

It's times like these that make me think it would be easiest to label myself as manic-depressive (whoops... "bipolar") and be done with it. Because, you know, once you've found a label for your problems, that's it. Problem solved. You can tell your friends and everything. Makes for good talk at parties.

Speaking of parties, I'm supposed to be going to several tonight. We'll see about that. It's been a pretty lousy day today, but for now, I'm excited. I just got out of the shower and shaved, so I feel a lot better. I'm wearing blue jeans, a white undershirt, and my favorite buckle shoes (from my trip to Barcelona, ooh la la), dancing around listening to Man Ray. It's just a moment that works. In fact, I just called up Jshrall to let him know how ridiculously happy I am that he gave me this album. He's a great guy. This album just rocks. I'm not sure why, really, as it could be considered just another post-grunge exercise in guitars. Something about craftsmanship.

But I'm not thinking about that. I'm just enjoying the moment. Things weren't so great today, but music obliterates all that. It's like liquid emotions. And it's always the same, doesn't change, doesn't disappoint. Sometimes, it's a lot better than friends. I don't want to think about what happens when this CD ends, though.

In fact, I'm wondering if the parties can measure up to this moment at all. I don't want to interact with really annoying people. Sigh. People are just trouble. And yet I suppose it's all about them, ultimately. Besides, I'd feel lame just staying home listening to music. I guess this moment is all about potential. If I didn't have anywhere to go, anyone to have showered and shaved for, then it wouldn't be so cool. Oh, foul emotions!

My dinner with Ajay

Ajay was here. With Dave!. And while the last leg of the Todd Tour Two-Thousand wasn't as rock-starred as previous ones, it was good. I suppose some 'splainin's in order.

Ajay I know from high school. I think he met me first, so I'll be Todd #1, aka Portland Todd, aka Odd Todd. At the very same high school, Ajay and I met Todd #2, aka LA Todd, aka...hmm, I don't know what his Todd Handle is. Oh well. Most of my conversations with Todd #2 back then consisted of "Hi, Todd" "Hi, Todd". Great stuff. I keep meaning to write a novel about it. Besides this one. Ajay went to college with Todd #3, aka San Francisco Todd, aka Tpodd. I met Tpodd through a completely orthogonal route, being that he works at the same company as and is now dating Xy, for whom I once had a "thing". All very clear.

So Ajay decided to visit all us Todds. There was some business reason behind it all, but that's not important right now. But there was, as Ajay might put it, a Zenny bonus: Dave! joined in the TT2K as well. And yes, his name is, in fact, written with an exclamation point appended to it. This would make sense if you ever met Dave!, as there is very little about him that is not spoken with exclamations.

Anyhow, a time with Ajay and Dave is a good time. We wore cowboy hats to Club 21. We potentially harassed waitresses (who were potentially harassing back) at the Cadillac Cafe. We sang the national anthem in three-part harmony (that at times verged on microtonal, but hey) to no one in particular except a statue of Abraham Lincoln. And we ran around in desperate search of a nice place to look at the sunset each evening.

In short, we were silly. So silly that the whole visit, in retrospect, plays out like some montage of silly acts that people rarely do, all set to some upbeat 80's rock tune by an artist with a reputation for being silly himself, in a movie about friends who are silly. Yes, that silly.

And it made me think. About why I tend not to be so externally silly when I'm by myself. About why certain people bring out such qualities in me. About friends, and leaders, and followers. All manner of deep introspection, none of which is probably interesting, and it certainly isn't silly. So I'll stop it.

And even though I cannot personally say that I was picked up by two girls at a bar just because I seemed "cute", was taken to their house with some other, duller, male, whereupon they both proceeded to make out with me and each other at different times, and was given money for some coffee and a bus ride back to my friend's house, which I pocketed and decided to walk instead, remembering only that said house was between a giant rotating loaf of bread and a giant rotating milk carton... even though I cannot personally claim to have experienced any of that, I had a good time. And I won't name names.

Twinkie, Twinkie, I'm a star

For some strange reason, I have experienced a rash of Twinkies fame recently. In past days, I have talked to C|Net radio (something only a geek could consider fame), the Learning Channel, and Carsey/Werner productions. The latter apparently were producing some "best of the web" TV show, but I didn't end up signing the contract as days after they contacted me, the show was cancelled after one episode. The people at the agency were sadly optimistic that they would be able to sell it to some other channel, but after seeing the review it got on CNN, I really hope they don't. I can't understand why anybody would watch a TV show about the Internet. If there is anything good about the Internet, it's in your ability to control what you experience. This doesn't exactly filter through the TV. It would be like watching someone read a book about some wacky people. Whee! Besides, if you're really interested in the Internet, you're probably already on it, following some list of links from someone you trust.

The Learning Channel production sounded only moderately better. It was a series called "Best Kept Secrets", and the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project was to appear on the "Best Kept Secrets of the Internet" episode, natch. What a dumb title. It's clearly not a secret, since it's a popular enough site to earn the attention of somebody working on the show. And once you air it on the Learning Channel, I doubt it's really all that much priveleged knowledge. But, hey, they're letting me in on a secret...how fun!

As for the C|Net radio spot, I think I may have to consider not doing any more interviews. I'm just really bad at them, and they're all awful! I always assume that, now that the site is five years old (and getting older every day!), people might want to ask me more interesting questions than "so why did you do this?" or "what's your favorite test?". Sure, those are fine questions, but I can't pretend to be excited about the site anymore. I can't fake a laugh every time I remember joyfully what wacky things I did when I was in college. This interview especially grated on my nerves. She would just ask me to describe the experiments. Um, well, see, I already did that on the webpage, and it's probably a lot funnier than I'm going to be as I sit here in my cubicle at work, trying not to say the word "Twinkie" too loud so as to make my co-workers think I'm giving less than 100% for the team. Besides, in what is apparently only my opinion, what we did isn't very funny at all. Any idiot can - and has, repeatedly - done something stupid with junk food, some before we did our thing. If there's any value in our site, it's in the writing, but no one cares about that. As if to prove she was a bad interviewer, my pal at C|Net actually had the gall to call me back and ask me to say a quote that she had written. I just can't believe that.

I won't deny I love the whole fame aspect to all of this. It's a great ego-boost, and it usually makes for a nice story at lunchtime. But I have only lost respect for all media through my experiences.

Whine, whine, whine. Let's try to find a moral to all this. Hmm: if you want to learn about the web, go to the web. Sure, works for me.

Turkey Day In Stumptown

I forgot to mention that Thanksgiving was nice. It kind of feels weird not going home for a holiday whose sole purpose seems to be "family time", but it was never a big deal in my home.

Even when I was in college, my parents usually drove down from Dallas and would stay in the Wyndham Warwick. They got a nice break in a hotel, we all got nice food somewhere (sometimes in the hotel restaurant, sometimes at a Japanese restaurant ... never let it be said that the Stadlers are slaves to tradition), and no one had to do dishes or eat leftovers.

Still, this Thanksgiving was a nice one. All the "orphan" kids - and there were many, comprising most of my friends, really - brought a nice dish and we sat eating in every possible chair at Morgan and Aaron's house. There was some choice food there, let me tell you. Dr. Todd brought some authentic (as far as southern poser me could tell) chicken 'n' dumplings, Doug brought his famous green beans 'n' bacon (equal portions of each... mmm), and I brought basil/feta phyllo triangles. What the heck, right, I'll work with phyllo once a year if it's for friends.

The main attraction this year, of course, was the Turducken. It's the second time our group has consumed one, and I must say they're quite popular, at least for the carnivores. I actually wasn't as up on this one for some reason...maybe the sheer amount of meat just didn't call to me. In fact, I was curiously driven to devour Jerry's Tofurkey instead. I'm not a vegetarian, but fake meat just calls to me. If nothing else, the Tofurkey is a masterpiece of really weird marketing. The box advertises the fact that the Tofurkey has four "drumettes" (analagous to drumsticks, I suppose, but tempeh isn't really going to fool anyone), compared to a turkey's lame old two, and that the Tofurkey has two Wishstix(tm) (again, analagous to the wishbone, although these are nothing but pieces of "tofurkey jerky" that you can pull apart and claim, "I won!") to the turkey's one. And let us not even mention the lame "Tofurkey-drawing contest". As if all this wasn't enough to drive me into a soy-crazed fit of gastrointestinal delight, Jerry, inspired by the Turducken, had placed the Tofurkey on a bed of other soy-based meatesque products, including braised tofu and Gimme Lean sausage. His name for this concoction was a combination of the words Turducken and Tofurkey that I won't say here because it's not a polite Thanksgiving word. But even though I still enjoy my bacon, it was tasty, I tell you.

EJ's. R.I.P.

I went to one of the last concerts at local punk club EJ's tonight - the "last blowout", as it was billed. They're closing for reasons that are unclear, but seem to involve evil landlords and rent increases. It's always like that.

And it reminded me of a funeral. Here was something I hadn't paid enough attention to in recent years, but I had to go to pay my respects, not because of what was going on on stage.

What was going on on stage was fairly dull punk rock. There are a few punk bands I love, mostly because they can write a pop song like nobody's business, and they just happen to crank up the distortion. But I'm no longer accepting submissions for favorite punk group. There's just not much more to be said out there, and tonight's show failed to prove otherwise.

But we were there. Maybe just to say we had been there. Maybe because hey, they serve PBR's there as well as anywhere else. Which is nice.

It made me sad, though. I had moved within a five-minute walk of EJ's a few months ago, and yet almost never went there. I guess I don't go to rock clubs for anything but to see a particular band, and they hadn't been booking my favorites or I just wasn't in the mood. I had seen plenty of amazing bands there, though, such as the Dismemberment Plan, and the Danielson Famile.

Ah, well. The music plays on still. Just somewhere else now.

Am I a voyeur or not?

[Editor's note: This is a really old entry in this journal. As such, it was written before I, um, knew what I was doing. So I clearly intended to fill in the links below with HTML that would take you to the actual pictures. But I never did that, for some reason, and now, over a year later, I have no clue where those pictures are. So it goes.]

I have of late, to my own intense shame, become infatuated with AmIHotOrNot. There's something about sitting on high, casually casting numeric judgment on legions of anonymous people with access to a scanner or digital camera. Or maybe it's the ability to glimpse at often-unglamorous normal folk. Maybe it's just the girls. I don't know, but I'm hooked. I'd like to think that I engage this site in a more high-minded way than most, trying to figure out what average score a person will get before I give my own, and trying to figure out what makes a person "hot" according to the fans of this site. With women, it seems fairly obvious that showing any skin or shapeliness will mean a high ranking, no matter how conventionally attractive you may be. And yet, some girls I find attractive - those with unnaturally-colored hair or piercings or such - don't always do well, no matter how pretty they may be. Maybe it's the Midwest sensibilities I know little about.

Ever the scientist, I set out to see how different photos of me would do. I picked images that I thought looked pretty good, although they probably painted vastly different portraits of who I was and what I really looked like. At first, I was told that I was fairly unattractive, since this photo got a 1.8 out of 10, and this one got a paltry 1.2. Ouch! Maybe bleach-blonde hair doesn't go over so well out there. Maybe I should have shaved. In an effort to appeal to the masses, I submitted this photo and received a more encouraging 4.2. Is it the appearance that I am "a little bit country", or merely the fact that you can't see my face as well in that one? Is it the two watches? More research was needed, so I submitted this guy and did even better - a whopping 4.8! I was genuinely not unattractive now! Did the overalls make me look less threatening, more rural perhaps? Is it the red hair? The barely-visible Spitting Image hand puppet of Ronald Reagan that gave the picture a compassionate, conservative tone? I had to do one more experiment. I posted this image and received a astounding 6.1! The people had spoken, I was attractive than more than half of AmIHotOrNot's pool of flesh, and I decided that before the hoi polloi came to their senses (and realized I was just a fad being pushed on them by my massive marketing machine), I would stop posting any more pictures of myself.

Clearly, this shows how fickle people are. Or maybe just stupid, but you don't need an experiment to prove that. Maybe it just shows how one picture isn't enough to tell you what a person looks like. Maybe it shows what an egotistical dork I am. I'd take a vote on what the true conclusion to this experiment is, but I already know the answer, and besides, science don't work like that.

How to make $$$ calling 1-800 numbers

But I must say that I do love that every company has an address you can write to or a phone number you can call to talk to somebody about, well, anything. They get paid to listen to your rants about food quality, package design, rumors of sinister ingredients, and, of course, the prognosticative abilities of one's victuals. Too few people take advantage of such an opportunity to be heard, and to receive free stuff in the mail.

A simple question to M&M/Mars (related to a to-be-published research project) resulted in a nice package containing stickers, coupons, "the history of chocolate", and more. A more time-intensive tape containing a potential product theme song resulted in a t-shirt for every member of the band and fourteen (!) boxes of Cap'n Crunch, even though the lawyers told us they couldn't accept unsolicited submissions. There's a gold mine here - you haven't heard the last from me on this!

That's un-fortune-ate

I guess my friends and I eat at Asian restaurants enough to have a running commentary about fortune cookies. They're interesting for embodying such deception - they're questionably cookies, they're probably not authentic Asian fare, and they're definitely not fortunes. It's this last point that really sticks in our collective craw. We're far beyond being entertained - misdirected, some would say - by the suggestion of adding "in bed" to the end of our so-called fortune. So I wrote a letter and posted it on Lowfashion. Clearly, as is so often pointed out to me, I have too much free time.

The nightmare that is college

I had that dream again where I'm in college and I've skipped a whole semester's worth of classes and it's finals time. I know next to nothing about the class material, and if I don't pass this class, I'll have to take an extra semester, and my parents will be so disappointed. So I try desperately to begin cramming, but no one will help me because they already know the stuff and would rather play. Even the teacher has decided to not cover the normal material in the last class, choosing to instead have a discussion about the social implications of comic strips.

And then I wake up, vowing to myself that I will study as hard as I can over the next few days, and I'll never, never, never let myself get this far behind again. But then I look at the wall next to my bed and see that big diploma and slowly realize that I got out of college alive and don't ever have to repeat that scenario again.

Still, it's a powerful enough dream to make me second guess any thoughts I might entertain of graduate school. What's odd about this dream is how much it mirrors some of my college experience. There were some classes I attended a handful of times, occasionally sneaking into the professor's office to pick up the handouts so as to avoid being asked "who are you?", or picking up take-home tests without a clue as to what was being tested, hoping it was in the handouts. I mean, I loved college, but I don't miss any of that!

No longer a plaid, plaid, plaid world

I actually went clothes shopping today. I'm getting fairly tired of the clothes in my closet, which in large part haven't changed since the early-to-mid 90's. Since grunge, for heaven's sake! And, yes, there are too many flannel shirts in my wardrobe.

So I set out to do something about that. Since my favorite jacket (my dad's wool Pendleton from when he was a kid - from Portland, no less) is plaid, I wanted to purchase nothing with a grid on it. Or maybe no patterns at all. There's a lot to be said for solids. I also wanted fewer buttons. I'm sick of buttons.

So I found some pretty cool sweaters and other tops. But I began to worry. These new items, combined with my increasing weariness of blue jeans, kind of made me look like a yuppie. No matter your intentions, you can't wear a sweater and slacks and not look pretty nice - even if your hair is messed up! So I asked Miriam if I looked like a yuppie. Her response: "You look a bit preppy, but darling, you are a yuppie, try to not be though you might." It's true. Young, good job, urban. Sigh.

European dreaming on such a winter's day

Dang, I miss Europe. Who wouldn't miss three weeks of just wandering around in a new place with good food, meeting new people, all for cheap? But I find myself going back to the website I used while I was over there, just to remember things. It turns out that website is run out of Portland. So the home team was supporting me the whole time. Nice.

But I feel like there are now three cities in Europe where I am comfortable, where I know the streets and subways and how things work. Of course, these memories I have seem to conveniently forget that all of this took place in foreign languages, but hey, that's what memories are for - to conveniently forget things.

Texáco Bell

My friends and I have always had an appreciation for both the absurd and unhealthy food. So when the new Texaco station opened up on MLK a while back, it was of great interest to us that their sign out front advertised tacos more prominently than it did their gas prices. Exactly what kind of tacos would a Texaco sell? It was only a matter of time until I ate there.

When I walked in today, I was impressed. The store was huge - a far cry from any notion of a mini-mart - and modern. Indeed, this was the dawn of a new era for inner city gas stations. Arrayed before me were the usual food mart suspects - Hostess products, chips, fuel additives - but it all seemed enticing to me now in this glorious setting. In fact, I wondered if I could live off of this Texaco's offerings, ignoring the reality that such a life would be, well, short-lived. Indeed, all four food groups were to be found, if not in the exacting proportions of the FDA. But I was a man on a mission, and would have to leave such scientific musings for another day.

The system for ordering food at this Texaco - henceforth pronounced Texáco, rhymes with taco - is kind of weird. You order your food at the counter where you buy cigarettes and pay for your gas, not over by the counter where they're making the food. Given that the menu was in Spanish with English subtitles, I ordered "one carnitas taco, one pollo taco, and one asada taco". The guy just kind of looked at me weirdly. "Dude, just say it in English," he said. Whoops. So clearly he wasn't the mastermind behind this whole Texáco idea.

The tacos were actually pretty good. Nothing like the American horror/beauty that is a Taco Bell crunchy taco. No, to my mind these were fairly authentic, or at least like unto other taqueria's tacos, with soft corn tortillas, cilantro, onions, and the meat of my choosing. It was a bit of a letdown in that it was a perfectly normal meal, coming from a perfectly weird place. But then, I can never be truly disappointed to have another place to eat good tacos.