It is something when you wake sobbing. This morning I had an intensely realistic dream, one where the pavers were wet with pre-dawn dew, lampposts shined with their amber hue in the darkness, and blades of grass shimmered on a dark hillside.

The first part of the dream is this: I was out late. Well, not me exactly. Single me. Before wife and children. Apparently, I was out late on the town (seemingly normal and comfortable for me in the dream, but completely out of character for me in real life), walking from there to here, along a cobbled path between (European?) apartment buildings. There was something of a grassy slope to one side of the path, steps. I passed a woman I knew and chatted. I proceeded on, I think rebuffed but kindly so.

Then, I was in a cafe of sorts at dawn. There were people gathered and delectables in the front counter case. There were also many people I knew, mostly family, living and deceased. My mom was there, along with her parents, and so was my Granddad, with an older black man I couldn’t place. There were others, but I can’t quite grab them back from my unconsciousness. We all sat together happily. There was discussion of a great omlette the chef made, but my mom was discouraged that it took 40 minutes to make (something about that time not including ingredients) and that we wouldn’t have that kind of time.

My Granddad turns to me, his face full but wrinkled, looking much tanner than I think he ever was in life, and says “You’ve been praying a lot about the things you don’t want to happen instead of …”

“…the things I want to happen.” I finish with a dawning realization. As I reeled from that revelation, my mom’s parents show him some kind of weird, raised-pinkie, partly-closed-fingers hand symbol that when you lay two or four hands together it makes a knot or cross. I tried to peer closer to see exactly how it was done–they were showing it to my Granddad (I remember thinking “Oh, they’re Catholic and he isn’t)–but as I wondered why I could only see it from the side, my mind said “Of course you can’t see what it looks like. You’ve only ever seen it from the side in real life, and this is a dream…”

At which point I viewed the cafe from above, and all the occupants in my party faded out leaving empty chairs. And I awoke feeling desperately alone.

Morning all! As usual, I have too many tabs open. Here's some stuff I've been poking around:

• Bi-sexuality in animals:
  

  What is more, homosexuality among some species, including penguins, appears to be far more common in captivity than in the wild. Captivity, scientists say, may bring out gay behaviors in part because of a scarcity of opposite-sex mates. In addition, an enclosed environment boosts an animal’s stress levels, leading to a greater urge to relieve the stress. Some of the same influences may encourage what some researchers call “situational homosexuality” in humans in same-sex settings such as prisons or sports teams.

• Obama voted for the wiretap bill last week. This one hurt me a lot — I haven't seen anything discussing what his defense is but it's certainly questionable since Clinton voted against it and McCain didn't vote.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may fail. This is insane. I haven't followed up over the weekend on this, unsure if things are looking better or worse this morning for them.
• Ok, crap. Money issues, politics and now fires have destroyed 1/3 of the avocado crops in CA? One more thing to my growing list of "shit we are running out of": oil, bees, bats, seafood, bananas, money, rice, corn and now avocados. It's a wonder I'm sleeping at night still.
• Good news though: Engineers at MIT have found a way to improve solar panels — at a 40x increase. Oh hell yes.
• And Aubrey — this is up your way — literary tattoos.
• And finally, an article on passenger trains in America. I ride a train every weekday now, have ridden from Washington DC to Montreal (back in 1994) and have the 'oh, if only the high-speed train between Sac-town and LA existed already' too often.

Hm. That's a depressing set of links. How about an awesome set of E.T. cartoons to help balance it out? Wo doesn't love E.T. and Soundwave sharing a slurpee?

this evening at the grocery store i picked up a doughnut peach. i have to admit, the draw was all aesthetic. i think they are terribly cute.

mine looks like the really flat one in the back basket.

i'd never seen this kind of peach before and went online to find out more. turns out they are, to some people, a big freaking deal. there is even peach propaganda specific to this class of fruit.

what i should be doing now: working on my video segments.

what i am doing now: googling peaches on the interent and ruminating about peculiar produce.

pffffft.

Right off the bat, I'm not criticizing the quality of the product. But, loathe as I may be to anger the ice cream gods (please, please don't cut me off! I need it!), I noticed something in my local freezer case that really chaps my ice-cream-enlarged ass. Behold.

Notice anything… odd, shall we say? Yes. Some of these containers are bigger than the others. It seems my good buddies at Edy's have found a new way to keep prices in control. That is: charge the same (notice the tags) for less ice cream. There are a lot of times when "less" is a good thing. Less pollution, for instance. Less crime. Less cancer.

Less ice cream is not one of those times.

Now, I figured I was already a pretty easy going guy, letting it slide that a "half gallon" of ice cream was somehow only 1.75 quarts. I got a degree in engineering and did some pretty far out math with differentials and such, but at no time did I ever find out how you make 2 directly equal 1.75. But did I lose my cool? Did I say "Yo! Where my other .25 quarts at, bitches?" Noooo. I didn't. But passing off one and a half quarts as a half gallon? It's time to throw down, motherfuckers. What's next? Shave off another quarter quart next summer? Shit, soon I'll be paying $4.39 for a novelty cup! I'll be telling my kids stories about them good ol' days when, yes, children, a half gallon really was 2 quarts.

This shit is simply … un-American! Everybody wants to know where bin Laden's hiding? I say check out Edy's HQ! I'm. So. Pissed. Right. Now.

If only there were some soothing, creamy confection to cool me off right now … ARGGGHHH!! YOU BROKE MY HEART!

We had a miracle fruit party the weekend after my birthday, about 6 weeks ago. It would have been a week earlier, but Curtis, the miracle fruit man, failed to mail my order. Oops.

But the fruit arrived and away we went. I ordered 30 pieces of fruit from him, the minimum allowed. The total, with shipping came to about 80 bucks. We rounded up some friends, asked everyone to bring some food and 10 bucks and we were off for about 3 of fun.

It was amazing the spread we ended up with, I'm sorry we didn't take a photo of the food. All sorts of sweets, sour candies, fruits and some alcohol. You can see a little of it below, on Kurt's plate.

There were plenty of surprises with how things tasted, as evidenced by Carter:

In terms of good/bad choices, good was:

1. limes
2. lemons
3. sour candy

And bad was:

1. tequila
2. beer
3. oranges

Not the list we expected — tequila was like drinking dishwater. The beer wasn't much better. The orange had all flavor sucked from it. But: the good bits were amazing — we all ate so many slices of lemons and limes that my taste buds were burned and I had a stomach ache.

Here is Rachael having some tequlia:

Overall, we went through about 10 or 12 berries, froze the rest in ice to use at a later date and called the whole experiment a roaring success. I highly recommend trying this — it's something you never consider — how your sense of taste is tied to what you see going into your mouth (which is the same issue with the bacon vodka). I've been very into messing with this logic recently a bit and have really enjoyed realizing there must be a separation between what you know you are eating and what your brain registers as taste.

For 80 bucks, with some friends to offset the cost, I can't recommend the experience enough.

What a weekend. That didn't include me writing out stories. Thankfully, I created a new one, one that I'm not sure should be on the Internet. It's time might come though.

In the meantime, here are the current tabs open in Firefox:

• a great nyt article on the pixar/disney merger and future plans for them. interesting, cool and depressing all at once. it's easy for me to forget about pixar as a business and to love the brand. but plans for sequels, toys and licensing all help dispel that notion.
• the he-man bible. which, as the name might suggest, the actual bible, but rather the tv show bible. sorry to burst a bubble there.
• bananas look to have a very real possibility of going extinct very soon. this is depressing. first oil, then water, then food. is nothing going to be left in 10 years? 2012 starts looking more likely every day.
• a bacon chart thanks to cal. (though not as informative as the one john and i made years ago. which i can't believe we didn't photograph.)
• and finally, a new roots manuva video. i didn't realize he has a new album dropping at the end of the summer. count me excited.

Jeez. I'm embarrassed for turning into a link blog. But here we are, my friends. And I will try to write something personal and substantial this weekend.

• the nyt article on why Lost is like a game more than a traditional show. after last night's amazing finale, Lost is on my brain.
• the most amazing document on torture from the cia ever looks like this:
  
• the hamdog is "a hot dog wrapped in ground beef then deep-fried, topped with chili, cheese, grilled onions, and served in a hoagie roll."
• nice to see my old professor, michael naimark, get linked by waxy and kottke for his displacements piece(s). 3 years late.
• want your dreams and childhood destroyed? the cure played the sasquatch festival over last weekend. the cure played. and i swear the picture below is him, thanks to pitchfork (where they have a second one as well):
  
• several people emailed me the link about miracle fruit that was in the nyt a few days ago. i finally posted pictures and will write up how our party from a month ago went. in the meantime, here's the article.
• bill cosby is selling sweaters on ebay. 'nuff said