The Signs, They Are A- ...Jumble?

I've been regularly taking my camera out on the road with me in the taxi in hopes of finding interesting things to shoot. As luck would have it, I saw something funny that deserved to be photographed, and then Carmi unleashed his most recent theme over at Written Inc.

Signs of the Times.

Here's my contribution...about a week late. My apologies.


Practice What You Preach, o sign master!

No Small Change

Yes, you're at the right blog. Well, that is, unless you landed here by accident. If you're actually here on purpose, welcome to the new and improved Farrago, now with less mystery and more... well, nothing more, really. I just changed some layout crap with Blogger's Layout Crap Changer. I hope you like it.

But there is more change in the air. Be careful...the quarters hurt most. Half-dollars cause the most damage, but who carries half-dollars any more, let alone flings them into the air?

But I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes. Change. We all change a little bit every day. Our cells regenerate themselves at a rate such that we are each really a completely different person than we were something like eight days before. Some of us endeavor never to change, but underwear has a way of falling apart if abused, and we have to put new ones on anyway. Not me. You. No. I mean, them.

I did it again. What am I getting at? What's this about change?

I've started a new blog. No, it's not a replacement of Farrago, nor will it necessarily be a permanent pastime. SHEESH! Take one look around here and you'll realize Farrago isn't even a permanent pastime of late! But my other blog is a diary of sorts, a documentary effort following my experiences with an extreme fitness regimen called P90X. I shared my weight loss and workout stories of last year here at Farrago, but I wanted a place where I could dedicate coverage to my renewed effort to lose weight (again) and achieve real fitness (once and for all).

And that place is P90Xperiment. There I'll comment about the workouts (I haven't started yet, but I hear they're intense), about how I'm feeling, aches and pains, successes, setbacks and whatever else comes to mind in the process of making myself the very picture of health, fitness, and hottitude. Of course, it will contain my usual pithy wit, replete with my wacky, inane, and — yes — moronic observations about things that don't matter to anyone. Not even me, really. But mostly, I'm sure, I'll complain about stuff like, why did I spend money on this thing, what was I thinking when I posted pictures of my fat, half-naked self on the internet despite the fact that anyone to whom I mentioned this idea said I should post before and after photos, I could really go for a jumbo hot dog right now.... No, I mean, really. I'm pretty hungry, as I spent most of the afternoon assembling a chin-up bar, taking pictures of my fat, half-naked self, and creating the new blog, that I forgot to eat dinner. HEY! I'm losing weight already!

So go read it, already. Comments are moderated to keep out cruel, obnoxious comments from strangers. Cruel, obnoxious comments from friends are ...uh ...welcome.



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Void

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Thematic Photographic #101

It's odd that I had taken the photos contained herein with a particular theme in mind, and then Carmi, over at Written, Inc., chose that same theme a couple months later.

In Thematic Photographic #101, Carmi asks his contributors to pay particular attention to the artificially lit nightscape.

And here I go...

Click on a photo to enlarge. All photos ©2010 Tony Gasbarro.

Working the night shift gives me the opportunity to see things as
relatively few people see them, such as urban or semi-urban locales
as desolate, lonely landscapes. Not to mention the freedom to stand
in the middle of a four-lane highway to take a series of shots with-
out being mowed under by a speeding Cadillac!



Nocturnal Oasis. The night surrounds a little cocoon of light and
makes it appear a lonely outpost.



A mix of both artificial light and early morning twilight as the
distant, impending sunrise illuminates the high sky above.



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Murphy's Kitchen

As both my readers are aware, I am not much of a cook, so much ...ehrm... not, that I occasionally blog about my kitchen exploits here, failures as well as successes.

Due to my wacky schedule, I haven't cooked breakfast at home for quite a while. I had the same bacon sitting in my refrigerator for at least two months and, gastrically daring as I am, even that seemed too dangerous today as I contemplated my options.

After my overnight shift in the taxi, I made a morning stop to stock up on a few grocery items. In a purely impulse shopping moment, my eyes alighted on a package of "breakfast links" in the cooler beside the butcher's counter...little sausages made (I believe) right on the premises at my local mom & pop (chain) store. "Hmmm," I thought. "A nice alternative to bacon," I thought. I also had some eggs that were getting old; the sell-by date on the carton is April 15. So I bought a dozen fresh.

Once home I threw away the old bacon. I opened the old carton of eggs only to reveal that it was an entire dozen. In the interest of not wasting an entire dozen eggs, I'm just daring enough to eat those. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. What does kill me... well....

I got things going on the stove. I even opted to brew up a "pot" of French press coffee, rare for me since I gave up caffeine (again) a few weeks ago. I simmered up four breakfast links over a low-to-medium flame while the water heated up for the coffee and while I prepared the toast and cracked open the eggs (which looked and smelled just fine, by the way) and deposited them in a Pyrex measuring cup/bowl/glass-thing-with-a-handy-handle-and-pour-spout.

As the links heated up, the oils inside them began to bubble, and I noticed that the skin of one of them had expanded balloon-like, and I could actually see the oil pooling inside and boiling! No sooner had I noticed this, and thought to myself, "If that bubble bursts, oil is going to squirt out," the bubble burst and oil squirted out. And of all directions the oil could have squirted out, guess which direction it squirted...

Yes. Right. At. Me. It doused my shirt right at belly level, and now I look like some sort of greasy hillbilly with a greasy hillbilly belly. No offense to any greasy hillbillies among my readers, but I know both of you, and neither of you is a hillbilly. Well, not a greasy one, anyway....

I saw another of the links bubbling up the same way, so I rolled the bubble side to face away from me and watched it burst and douse the other sausages. Suckers!
Toast was done and buttered, I was sipping the first of the first coffee I had made at home in about two months, and the links were all but finished cooking — and squirting. It was now time for the eggs.

In the past I have waxed poetic about my attempts at The Flip, but it has become somewhat of an obsession with me to perfect the eggs-over flip without breaking the yolks, or dropping the whole heap on the floor, or the stove, or the sink...or the ceiling. Since it had been several months since I had cooked anything, I was feeling pretty rusty about the flip, which I haven't even gotten good at, yet, in the first place, even.

I poured the eggs into the pan of bubbling butter, and both the yolks slid toward one side of the pan, huddling together and elongating slightly, appearing almost as apprehensive eyes looking fearfully at me. Hey, I worked all night. I'm tired. I see what I see.

So, with sausagey hillbilly grease-stains on my shirt, I gripped the pan handle tightly, walked the bubbling, fearfully quivering eggs over to the sink, and prepared for the flip. The eggs slid easily back and forth around in the pan, looking at me now in sheer horror. And -FLIP- ...and the whole shebang went only half-way over, perpendicular to the world, and plopped into the pan, edge first, both yolks breaking as they plopped back into the butter.

DAMN.

The only thing worse would be if the damned aged things kill me after I ate them.

I seem to be fine so far.



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