My kind of guy.

When it's all just humming along, you fly to California, watch World Cup beside a live chicken standing in a shopping cart, browse fine comestibles in the Ferry Building, walk the perimeter of a decommissioned Navy Base, hold a very nice baby, brutalize a drum set, eat more curry than even exists, inhale eucalyptus, see Pavement al fresco, wince at the A-Team, sing the standards, and walk the hills that are piled on top of other hills.

My local grocer and I spoke briefly, yet broadly, about müsli. We stood in the aisle, admiring the bags of Seitenbacher in front of us, each one distended from its load of nuts, dried fruit, and grains. Müsli #22 had raspberries and almonds. Müsli #23 had cherries and almonds. I prefer Müsli #3, which is purported to be "the modern muesli mix for active people which like nordic walking, biking, skating, etc."). I am not a nordic walker, but I apparently admire the diets of people who are. 

"The Germans know how to make things ," said the grocer. He explained that in addition to müsli, they made great tanks. In fact, he had just seen a documentary on World War II that listed the top tanks of that tank-endowed era. German tanks were at the top. "And they don't put a lot of junk in their cereal," he said. I suppose I was aware that the Germans had some good tanks in the early 1940s, and I also knew that they currently make some good cereals. But I hadn't connected these things into a pattern of proficiency. We stared at the bags of müsli some more. "It's good stuff," said the grocer. It is, I thought. It certainly is. The talk of tanks made me a bit scared. 
skating etc.

The Elephant and Butter spun its leg-limbs around quite a bit the other day, riding Rocinante to the next town o'er. The reasoning went something like this: if I'm going to fritter away money on cultural objects, I at least need to exert myself to do so. The ride was pleasant, the sun penetrating the canopy of the rail trail and creating light speckles all up in the joint. About halfway to my destination I stopped at Sofia's, a modest little Polish café adjacent to the trail, where I ordered a vivifying snack of three asparagus-cheese pierogi on a paper plate. I'm very glad I did. Fried up with flecks of onion and a nice sheen of oil, the pierogi were made from a good, gummy dough that yielded easily to the merest force of my fork. The asparagus, picked in town, sat in a hot mastic of salty cheese. Fueled by these pierogi, I sped up the hill to town, where I had the outrageous fortune of finding deals on Thelonious Monk and Peter Tosh. Then on the way back, more spinning of the leg-limbs.

from the Library Science Note-Taking Series...

I.

The Not-Unwelcome Product.

II.

More Product,

More Responsibly. 

III. 

Early Schematic 

For The Pencil of Nature. 

IV. 

Leaky

Coffee Cup

Spurs New Pinky

Shading Technique.

V.

More, Newer 

Pencils of Nature.

IV.

Presentation Plot.

The Elephant and Butter got involved in a psychedelic hot dog experience in Denver a few days ago. Gentle reader, you are not mistaken -- the logo for the food cart depicted above does indeed feature two dogs criss-crossed through a skull wearing sunglasses. We can gather from this iconography that the proprietor fashions himself as some sort of completely awesome meat pirate. I was with two wise poets from down south -- one responsible for running a sock factory, the other a frozen foods operation -- and they had cleverly tracked down the hot dog cart using Yelp. I went with the elk jalapeño cheddar dog, mostly because the dude operating the grill represented it as a non plus ultra experience. After a few moments he handed me one wrapped in foil.  Molten cheddar bubbled out of ruptures in the casing, under which one could glimpse green flecks of the peppers. The elk itself tasted excellent but, well, hot dogish. The point of the esoteric dog may not be that it tastes much different than one created from traditional American meats, but that you get to go around telling people you ate an esoteric animal. So there you go.

The night prior, I ate a tempeh bacon, arugula, granny smith, and brie sammie on a baguette at City, O' City. The eating of it was more excellent than this telling can approximate. So there you go.

Was down at the skate park today with some seltzer (plain), a granola bar (honeyed something) and poetry (Inger Christensen). People inhabit time differently at the skate park. There's a lot of rolling back and forth. Lots of pauses. Feats get repeated over and over again, but can be abandoned entirely at any given moment. Plenty of insouciance. No haste. Minimal communication. Things happen until they don't. This time, I saw a couple in their thirties with a newborn. The father (above) would ride his freestyle bike in the bowl for a while, do some tricks, then jump out and hold his baby so the mother could ride her skateboard in the bowl. One time she skated around, popped out, breastfed her baby, then put her helmet and pads back on and plunged right back into skating. Me, I read my poetry in a very daring fashion -- no pads, no helmet. Freestyle. I nearly snapped a tendon. Of the mind.