Check Out the "Eat Everywhere" App for Free!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to All Cuisines!
Your Personal Eating Assistant!

The "Eat Everywhere" app previously cost $5. Problem: being utterly unlike anything out there, it's tough to explain exactly what customers are buying! So we've made it "Freemium". Anyone can install the app for free (it comes with several cuisines), then make an in-app payment of $4.99 to unlock all 75 cuisines.

We'd appreciate if you'd inform friends and networks that "Eat Everywhere" is now free to check out. Links to both iPhone and Android versions can be found on our home page, EatEverywhere.cc.

Previous customers need to know that we took different approaches with the iPhone and Android apps:

Previous iPhone customers:
You'll see an update in "App Store" on your phone. Once you update, you should automatically be upgraded to premium mode, with access to all cuisines (also new: iOs 11 and iPhone X compatibility). If not, please let us know (via email to the address in the app).

Previous Android customers:
Do nothing! The freemium version is a separate app, but you can stay with your current one. However, please do refer friends to this new, freemium one (at this Google Play page, or linked in EatEverywhere.cc">the app's home page).


Thanks very much to those who already purchased. The app has received exclusively five star reviews. We built it with great love and dedication, the goal being to absolutely delight you.

Bitcoins and Bubbles

If you're even considering getting involved with Bitcoin (and, for that matter, even if you're not), read the classic "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay (read for free here, listen to a free audiobook here, or read free on Kindle here), chronicling centuries of irrational investment crazes. It's an amazing, entertaining read, and will inoculate you against this perennial viral foolishness.

These bubbles appear periodically, usually right around the point where memory's dimmed about the previous one. I hear people are now re-mortgaging their houses to buy Bitcoins. Also that the Russians are exploiting and manipulating the market as a way to evade sanctions - and perhaps in order to cause further chaos in the West. What could go wrong?


Please don't comment or email me about how this bubble is different and you're going to make a jillion dollars. It's not, and you won't.

Killer Breakfast Scramble

I managed a full-out "9" (using my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods from one to ten), and it's a kooky enough recipe that I want to share.

This is a skillet of veggies and egg where the egg is essentially steamed. Topologically, it's an upside-down skillet scramble, sans scrambling, and with no saturated fat...that actually tastes good. Feel free to tart it up all you'd like, but this really works as-is.

You can use any leftover veggies, but I used a combo of shisitos from Trader Joe's (remove stems, slice into thirds, marinate in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then blister in a wok with Chinese cooking wine and scallions), stir-fried chopped kale, and baked sweet potato.

Preheat nonstick skillet on medium. Light coat of olive oil (spread via paper towel).

Remove skin and flatten leftover sweet potato between your hands, place in skillet, allow to partially caramelize.

Flip sweet potato, add shisitos and kale (also some quartered cherry tomatoes).

Add three egg whites, seasoned with salt/pepper, roughly atop the sweet potato. Don't stir. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Aleppo pepper flakes. Immediately add 3 TBS water and cover tightly (I'm still riffing on this move). Once sizzling dies down, reduce heat a little and agitate pan (to spread the oil).

Serve when egg whites are quite firm, with some hummus for dipping (recent discovery: blistered shisito peppers and hummus are a fantastic combination, but it also works superbly with this whole dish).

It's killer. Obviously, less healthy versions can be made with cheese, bacon, etc., but it's killer as-is. The egg works its way in everywhere, really tying the dish together, but without the usual blubbery insipid egg whitey vibe. And there's no scorching since egg doesn't touch the pan much and is super-humidified.

Alternative Universe Doug Jones Victory Speech

Why are politicians so godawful at politics? Here's an alternative universe Doug Jones victory speech:

Thank you! Thank you everybody!

A lot of people across the country are watching right now, and I hope they'll excuse me, because I just want to speak directly to my fellow Alabamians.

I understand that very close to half of you did not offer me the honor of your support. But I want to assure you that I intend to work tirelessly for everyone in this state, and to listen carefully to everyone in this state, and to represent everyone in this state. Alabama goes first in all my considerations. You may not have chosen to hire me, but I'll be working ferociously on your behalf!

I'm also aware that I owe this victory to Republicans who voted as an expression of conscience and morality. I want those voters to know that I feel a grave responsibility to govern with that same commitment to conscience and morality. I am determined to honor your moral commitment with every action I take, large and small. I like to think I've led my life until now in a way I can be proud of. But I'm going to step up my game. I will stop at nothing to make myself worthy of the principle shown today by those who took the brave step of voting across party lines.

It was said during the campaign that I'd be a puppet to my party leadership. That's just not correct. I don't work for anyone but the citizens of this wonderful state. And while you may not agree with me 100%, by the time my term ends, you just watch and see if I don't leave you surprised by how hard I listened to you, and how much I cared about doing right by you, and how hard I worked to represent you.

"Cornered Rat" Report #1

December 11, 2017. The phrase "cornered rat" finds 74,300 google search results.

Good and Evil

"Cold" isn't a thing. It's just a subjective impression of the absence of heat.

Similarly, "Goodness" is just a subjective impression of the absence of malevolence. There's no being a "good person"; even saints are merely opting out of malevolence.


Why do people act malevolently? Simple. It's resistance, born of fear, insecurity, or other internal turmoil. Think of it as aggrieved friction between one's internal and external world; between how one needs it to be and the way it really is; between the burden of the myriad stories one carries around and the utter simplicity and lightness of the actual flow of it all. People are frustrated by the ineffectual toy steering wheel they've spent their lives grasping, and feel compelled to force a result of some sort.


Followup here and here.


All postings labeled "definitions"

Celebration

I've never had a taste for celebration. I've beaten myself up about this over the years, figuring I was a mope, or a cynic, or that this was just another component of depression. After years of working as a musician while strangers celebrated, maybe I'd gotten detached from human high-spiritedness.

Even worse, my inner terrain was full of discontent and aggravation. I could have used some celebration! For years, I felt like I was a guy with a steep emotional downside and no upside.

In recent years I've re-landscaped my inner terrain via some adjustments of perspective. Tl;dr: I no longer perpetually probe around for what's missing or imperfect in a given moment, nor do I pull back the camera to view and judge how I come off from a third party view. I've let go of my hopes and dreams in the good way. And, finally, I've thinned out my agenda to focus on the things that give me real satisfaction. As a result of these small adjustments, the present moment always feels pretty good. Celebratory, even! But I still don't celebrate "occasions." I just don't get it.

I think, for most people, celebration represents a brief respite from their everyday sense of punishment. I find that appalling. I don't view life as punishment...even when it's punishing. It's all just a ride for our bemused entertainment. And if I needed relief from my normal state of mind, I can't imagine I'd find it in birthday cake and sparklers!

And most people see their lives as hanging upon a series of dramatic plot points. Graduation, new job, favorite-team-wins-Superbowl, That Bad Thing That Happened, etc. But I don't fall for that cinematic view. That Story isn't me; I'm just this guy right here living straight through it all, as always. Nothing happens to me; it all happens around me.

So what's to celebrate?

Presumption of Innocence is Bullshit, Man

I saw this much-liked posting on Facebook:

We need to judge more; to act more confidently from our uninformed initial takes. The problem is too much restraint and circumspection. We don't put enough stock in our snap impressions. Never forget: your initial visceral uptake is solid gold. Embrace your piqued outrage and act out from that!

Don't talk to me about facts or rational deliberation. I have something far better: a deep intuitive knowing about things. When I go there, that's when I'm fully alive. It's kinda spiritual, even if its primary use is to gin up the sort of outrage that generates angry mobs. It's a righteous sword to be cherished, not resisted. Unconstrain yourselves!


This is how the right managed to vomit up MAGA, and now this is how the left is responding. Same exact damned thing from the same exact damned impulse. Just swap in a new set of variables.

Got Lots of Change?

Those Coinstar machines take a percentage. But if you choose to take your payout in Amazon credit, there's no charge at all. So just add the credit to your Amazon account, and spend off of it.

A Prediction

I'm going to make a prediction. This is all short term; I say it all goes down within the next four to six weeks:

1. Three dozen or more congressmen from both parties are accused, en masse, of sexual misconduct...with reasonably solid evidence.

2. Both Dems and Reps clean house (though the fate of Roy Moore is unclear).

3. Brief pause

4. Very solid, irrefutable evidence appears of Donald Trump doing something really awful of a sexual nature.

5. Franken and Conyers are seen, in retrospect, as having served as sacrificial pawns in the effort to bring down the king (more Franken than Conyers; the latter is bona fide awful).

6. The administration is rocked, but the GOP remains largely firm in its support (depending on polls of GOP base - not just Trump's hard 30% - and also whether they still need Trump for the tax bill or not).

7. The evidence (#4) is suspected to have originated with Putin (who isn't pro-Trump so much as pro-chaos/pro-dissent).


Anybody want to bet me a beer?