Snoqualmie

That recipe sounds kinda like milktoast. Milquetoast. Mielkqueketoaste.

Man, my sister and I dropped into Gamestop today to see if one of her friends was working. He wasn't there, but about 500 people were. The line for the register circumscribed the entire store. That's the closest I've every come to Black Friday shopping.

1. Yes! Tofutti and Earth Balance together! And jam! Your breakfast is basically like a "cream tea," which as I understand it is the kind of teatime meal which consists of tea, scones, butter, clotted cream, and jam. (As opposed to sandwiches and cakes and so forth.) As such, and as it is an afternoon meal, I thoroughly approve of eating it in the morning.

2. Nice use of "motile." Isn't that a word from the biological sciences? I'm not surprised you know it, but I don't know how the hell I know it.

3. Buy Nothing Day! I didn't buy anything but beer. Zach, I too tried to stop into a friend's work, at one of the high-end coffee shops in town, to say hi and give an encouraging high-five. The line was out the door, the shop's owner had with incredible assholish lack of foresight cut the shift down so my friend was the only employee working who could make coffee drinks, everyone was ordering complicated bullshit, and no one was tipping because they all wanted to save their change for shopping or parking meters or whatever. He later told me that by the end of his shift they had sold over $1500 worth of coffee drinks, he'd made about 4 dollars in tips, and the shift manager was in actual tears. Conclusion: people are jerks, and shopping days make people into even bigger jerks. Also, I'm glad I don't have any money so it's not really a problem to avoid shopping.

Having just Googled milktoast (milckquetoaischte?) to find out what exactly it is and how one makes it, I'm now more or less convinced that it is the irresistible, undeniable, incredibly delicious higher calling for which my remaining ciabatta bread is destined. Thank you.

Katie, I have to admit that when I assembled my breakfast and asked myself the commie question mentioned above, what occurred in my brain was a vision of you enthusiastically egging me on. I don't know whether it was that you actually had suggested combining T. and EB., or just that I knew instinctively that you would approve, but it was perfectly clear to me that you were a person who would dip first and ask questions later.

Black Friday: I bought, as indicated above, bread, in what I think probably qualifies as its most direct and unadulterated form. And I went to a Thanksgiving-leftovers potluck in which everyone brought the same (now half-eaten) dishes they had brought wherever the day before, and combined them to deliciously and efficiently use up their leftovers instead of having to all do the thing where you, e.g., go out and buy potatoes to make more mashed potatoes so you can use up your gravy but then have gravy-less potatoes left over because you miscalculated. I hate that thing.

I too have noticed that it's relatively easy not to buy a bunch of stupid bullshit when you don't have a Stupid Bullshit Fund. On the other hand, the low temperatures here are hovering right around freezing and I kind of wish I had a Thermals Fund. This year for Christmas I want all the classic annoying unwanted Christmas stuff like long underwear and warm socks and mittens and leg warmers and hats.

Still, there it is, I mean really, and whatnot. Sorry about your coffee friend's miserable day. Did you buy beer for him too?

Also, Katie, do you or do you not require more stickers mailed to you? I am just going to keep asking this until the annoying repetition drives you to answer.

I do need stickers! The ones you sent lo these many weeks ago never arrived. I kind of think the post office confiscated them as part of a government conspiracy to keep people riding around without helmets and then hit them with mail trucks. Can we test this theory by sending more?

Sorry I never emailed back -- last week I was insane and everything that wasn't an immediate emergency got shoved aside.

Re: hitting people with mail trucks, one of the postal cargo bikes that I see downtown has a sticker on it which reads "THIS MACHINE KILLS HIPSTERS". I don't understand it, but it worries me. I will send you stickers. The current batch is orange wheat with green lettering, and it is wonderful.

Have you reattached your head now? Did you survive? Did you manage to spend the long weekend aimlessly screwing around and generally chilling out?

Ta-da! I refer you to Wikipedia's page on Woody Guthrie. You will find your explanation in the first paragraph of the introduction, in the photograph, and scattered throughout the article.

In brief: folk singer Woody Guthrie, who held firm left-wing beliefs and who spoke out against the Nazis during the Great Depression and World War II, had the words "This machine kills fascists" inscribed on his guitar.

The bumpersticker is, apparently, a play on Guthrie's guitar, though somewhat less noble and symbolic and inspirational and somewhat more crass and spiteful.

The only reason I got the Woody Guthrie reference was that his "This machine kills fascists" guitar case is lugged around by one of the personae in I'm Not There, a movie which proves once and for all that Cate Blanchett is the hottest woman in the world, but, and I know that this is really improbable, only when she's pretending to be Bob Dylan. I'll say right now that it manages to demonstrate that more completely than it does that on some deep and meaningful level, in 1958 Bob Dylan was a 10-year-old black kid who was Woody Guthrie.

My head is screwed back on! I rested all through the long weekend and then ended it by blowing all my energy and starting the week all tired out again. But I am looking forward to invigorating stickers in the mail, and possibly to an invigorating run away from a homicidal postal cyclist.