Robert Manners

Ana, Olio, Florilegium and Miscellany...

1) I just ate ostrich. I don't recommend it. For those just joining us, I work in a small union office with two older female coworkers (JB and BB) and one older female boss (KB). I am the bottom of the totem-pole, support staff, the only male (though, admittedly, just barely), the only one who is not a teacher, the only one who is not married, and the only one whose last name does not begin with "B". JB is one of my best friends, my Surrogate Mom, and a geography professor, whose home in Mill Valley is currently being re-shingled and her kitchen remodeled; BB is a hoot, she's only six years older than me, a poetess and creative-writing teacher, who is expecting her first (and definitely last) baby in September; KB is a nutcase, a nurse and an attorney as well as a nursing instructor and union president, and this week she got her first-ever foster baby, a six-pound nine-day-old boy with a hairy forehead whose mother is in jail.



That's all background to the upcoming recount of the Ostrich Burger Incident. KB (to whom I generally refer in this blog as "The Boss Lady," and to whom my coworkers refer as "Fearless Leader" and "La Jefe"...it takes the fun out of one's supervisors to call them by their actual names) is out of the office today, tending to her tiny foster-baby, so JB and BB and I went to lunch at Quinn's Lighthouse as a special treat. BB was feeling a bit queasy, so she had the shrimp cocktail with the sauce on the side, with an order of rice pilaf; JB had the lunch special, a butter-braised red snapper sandwich on focaccia with capers; and I was feeling kind of adventurous, so I ordered one of their "game burgers," a double-decker hamburger of ground ostrich meat with fried onions and all the usual fixins.



The burger came in due course, one of those impossible towering piles of bread and meat and salad with no condiments on it, which had to be disassembled and reassembled and squashed in such a way that an average adult male's mouth might fit around it. Once this operation was complete, and after I had sliced off a couple of chunks of the burger so JB and BB could taste ostrich, I wrapped my mouth around the burger and started eating. Just as the menu claimed, ostrich does not taste anything like chicken...it was a little like deer, and a little like soy beef-substitute. The meat was dry, largely flavorless, and kind of tough. There was a strangely fishy, gamey, oily flavor somewhere in the sandwich, which I wasn't sure was the ostrich or perhaps the fried onions, if the flavor was inherent to the burger or if it had been cooked too near the fish on the grill.



Afterward, though, there was a distinct gamey aftertaste in my mouth, a flavor that has lingered through two cups of coffee and four Altoids. I'm now slugging a Stewart's grape soda. If this doesn't work, I'll go brush my teeth. Bleah!



I'll give ostrich another shot someday, but not in burger form...I mean, it might be the preparation that was iffy, rather than the meat. And next time we go to Quinn's, I'll probably try the buffalo hamburger. I do love to try new foods...and the price you pay for that is the occasional nastiness when you try something new that isn't quite to your liking. But it's better to have tried and gagged than never to have tried at all.



2) Philo is my Blogwhore favorite! I'm not sure how this game works, but Philo's been a great pal to me, online and off, so I am going to give him some love here.

Okay, that's pretty pathetic. But making things in not my forte...I'm really only good at accessorizing and describing. But still, I love Philo, I love his blog, and I hope he wins!



3) I'm tired of online porn! I finally hit complete saturation point when it comes to internet porn. I am just no longer titillated enough by it to continue searching. I have thousands of images stored on my hard drive, and I never find anything new anymore, so there's no reason left to pornsurf. It's so sad! That was my favorite (and cheapest) hobby! SOB!



4) I am utterly and completely broke! Speaking of sobs...I checked into my online banking service and discovered that my checking account is at $0 and my savings account is at $0. Ooops! In an unusual twist of fate and schedule, my last paycheck had to cover both of my major billing dates, the 3rd (when my cable and car insurance are automatically deducted from my checking account) and the 14th (when my student loan payment is electronically abstracted from that same account). I ran fairly low on funds last month, due to this and that peculiar expense, and then this pay period I went rather overboard on things as well...and both bill-pays happening in the same pay-period, paired with my usual spendthrifty ways, caught me unawares.



Fortunately, tomorrow is payday and I have enough cash in my pocket to eat and put gas in the car if I have to. But O! how I hate not having money in the bank...especially as the bank charges me for not having any money. A comedian (I forget which one) once quipped, "How stupid is that? They're charging me money that they already know I don't have, just because I don't have any money."



So, that's what's going on with me today. Fortunately, my disenchantment with online porn does not affect my fondness for beefcake pictures (for which I continue to search), so there's nothing to stop me from posting this: