The Worst Restaurant EVER

I like trying new things

...with food anyway.

 Probably because last Christmas was my first experience with Sushi and I love it. I need to include that fact since what I'm about to tell you would be negative no matter how good the food was if I distrusted unfamiliar foods. I don't. So what I'm going to tell you is doubly disgusting if you do.

And now the story of how I found the worst restaurant I've ever been to in my life.

My cousin told me about this little Sushi place downtown with half off Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most people don't trust half price sushi in a landlocked state 700 miles from the beach, but Sharlene and I were feeling adventurous so we went looking for it.

We found a window along the street with a few flags I didn't recognize and somewhere must've been the words “sushi” or “Asian” or something like that so we parked the car and went in. The withered hostess seemed to be from somewhere else since her answer to, “Do you have sushi?” was to lead us back past the buffet and Mongolian barbeque to a table with some little teal plates wrapped in cellophane..

Lest you picture this wrong let me describe. The entire place from the carpet to the upholstery was a seafoam greenish blue so it felt like climbing into the behind-the-seat area of an old station wagon. And the place was completely empty except for the hostess and a fat man wedged behind a table gulping down noodles. The Mongolian barbeque wasn't on. And, I'm not sure why, but at that moment the raw meat sitting out buffet-style in front of it didn't make me worry. “It's a restaurant.” I thought. “Surely the food is safe.”

It was $8.99 for “allyoucaneebuffet” so like an idiot I said, “Sure.”

The hostess motioned to the back wall smiling and nodding her head. We looked. It was an old stand up freezer filled with dented old chunk encrusted freezer-burned ice cream.

“Oh. Ice cream.” I smiled.

She nodded profusely and went to get our Sprites.

They came free with the buffet. Meanwhile Sharlene and I grabbed plates and started our search for anything sort-of-fresh looking. Our first plates were the most exotic with selections of pork and I think chicken and some fried green bean things. Sharlene took advantage of the sushi table taking three or four little plates. It looked like salmon on mine. As I passed the Mongolian barbeque I chanced a closer look at the meats sitting out in the open.

They didn't look healthy.

Imagine opening a fresh frozen Styrofoam bottomed package of boneless chicken. You unwrap it, turn it upside down, and dump it on your kitchen floor, turn up your heat, and go on vacation. What you see when you get back is what was laying there. It needed buried.

As I got back to the table Sharlene had already pushed aside most of what she had on her plate and was cautiously unwrapping one of her sushis.

She didn't eat it.

I tried some of mine- makes me gag now.

I still remember the smell when I unwrapped it. It was like opening the fridge after a fishing trip and your trout are laying there on a plate with a little bit of trout blood surrounding them, and they're all staring wide-eyed at you like they still can't believe you did this to them.

It was that.

Not like real sushi. Not with tasty spices or whatever it is they roll in there that makes it taste good. This was half an ounce of white rice with my dead goldfish laying on it.

I didn't eat the other piece. The hostess came back out to check on us. Like an idiot, I nodded and smiled, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

I think there's something wrong with me.

Sharlene snuck her unopened sushi back to the buffet while the hostess wasn't looking. I figured as long as it was all-you-can-eat I should get my money's worth. So I searched the buffet again for anything I could safely eat. As I found some shrimp on ice I thought, “Hey! Something refrigerated!” Then I noticed someone hacking out a lung in the kitchen. How appetizing. But maybe whoever it was wasn't working when they made the food yesterday or the day before so I took the shrimp. 

But it smelled like a dumpster.

Sharlene sat across from me with that look.

“What?”

“You shouldn't pay.”

“But we took food... And Sprite!”

“I just don't think you should pay.” She sipped at her sprite.

I looked down at my two unfinished plates. “We could try the ice cream.”

She didn't smile.

“If we hadn't eaten yet, it'd be different, but-”

“We haven't.” She gestured to the unfinished plates.

“So just tell her... I'm not paying?”

I sat uncomfortably for another five minutes fighting my conscience over how to put it tactfully. The hostess finally came out to see if we wanted anything else.

“No. We're done.”

Have you ever realized mid-story that you should have done something differently, but you can't now because you already did what you did?

Well I looked at the lady and then at the food and said, “I'm sorry, but this isn't edible. We thought you served food here... but this is garbage. Have you obtained the proper licensing to serve food publicly? Because this is unacceptable.”

I stood up and took Sharlene by the hand. She beamed back at me with all the love and admiration a woman can beam with. The old lady started apologizing and offering gift certificates for free dinners. We passed them to a starving homeless man sitting just outside on the sidewalk. He grinned toothlessly and lept to his feet to hug me. A reporter for the nightly news was out doing an interview with the mayor but stopped when she saw us helping the poor stranger. The entire camera crew rushed across four lanes of heavy traffic as the music swelled-

I signed the dang receipt vowing never to try miscellaneous “Asian” buffets ever again.

The door swung open and four smiling men came in sniffing the air hungrily. Apparently they'd been here before because the host remembered what each of them wanted to drink. One of them hoped loudly that they still had that sweet and sour pork he loved so much.

We staggered out. I felt a little green. Tossing and turning that night, I was sure I'd be waking up around 3am with that awful churning stagnant garbage-in-your-stomach feeling of food poisonings gone by. But I didn't. I was fine.

Amazing.

So there you go. That's how I found the worst restaurant I've ever been to in my life... and PAID for it.

It even topped the Dollar Wok In next to my first summer job at a jet ski rental shop.

That's pretty bad because that was in Tillicum. 

But that's a story for another day.

Here's my impression of the sushi there. If you want to make things like this from pictures you find with google images like these: 
Then get photoshop.

The True Story of Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, and Who ate all the Turkey

History is important.

If you don't know it, you'll probably repeat it. 

Kids these days are lazy and don't know their history. At least that's what my doctor told me during one of my last $378 dollar visits while he tried to convince me to show some of his favorite BBC history shows at the TV station I work for.

So for the literally hundreds of people out there that have been waiting, here is the true ungarnished, non embellished story of how we really got the very first Thanksgiving. 

Don't repeat it.

Thousands of years ago in Spain lived a man who liked nothing better than a good long trip to China. But his wife complained it was too long and, “You're so smart anyway why don'tcha find a quicker way or find a different wife to drag along.”

He agreed and in no time he and his three ships, The Nino the Pinto and the Santa Mario, that he borrowed from the Spanish Navy, were out on the open sea, sailing and singing gayly. But as the years wore on the singing grew less and less gay till it stopped completely. The men on board were just about to dump the guy overboard when the shout was heard, “Land ho!”

As the crew elbowed their way forward to their first glimpse of China they were surprised to not see the bustling skyscrapers of Beijing, and they grumbled in disgust as you might imagine. “India!” The man declared! “We've discovered a new route to India!”

As the crew threw up their hands with joy and began shouts of “Yay!” they were suddenly attacked from behind by giant Sea Beasts of a particularly veracious temperament. In seconds the crew, the three ships, everything in fact besides the left overs were completely devoured. The man known as Columbus miraculously survived, and so with his plank of wood as flotation, he began the swim back to his portage in Spain.

The next morning, he washed up on a famous Spanish beach whose name and location is lost to history but preserved in children's nursery rhyme. What we do know however is that the ship owners in Spain, a.k.a. Royalty, were completely unwilling to give Columbus any more boats to go sink on the far away shores of India. They also had some ridiculous notion that he should pay for them. So to appease them he gave them Mexico. When they asked were that was, he pointed to southern India. With dreams of a popular new cuisine and glorious battles against coon-skin capped individuals in churches, they graciously excepted and that's how we got burritos. But how did we come to Thanksgiving?

England,

 Columbus' next choice for boats happened to have just what he was looking for. A man had a notice out that he had a ship full of people who were being kicked out of England for wearing their belts on their hats, and had no place to go but the open ocean since France refused sanctuary. This man, Ted Plymoth was contacted by Columbus shortly after about maybe possibly letting him guide the social outcasts along his new route to India. Ted thought that sounded alright since anyone traveling to a new land from England was automatically allowed to name it after himself, so was the exploration bonanza of the time.

So with glorious thoughts of a new Continent of Plymoth, the pilgrims and Mr. Columbus set out on the Mayflower which was latin for wood that floats or something like that, to find a new home far across the sea.

On the way there they ran out of food so they had to kill mermaids to survive. Finally they sighted land, but it was unlike any land they'd seen in England. 

Just as Christopher Columbus was about to tell the amazed pilgrims that they should watch out and keep their heads low because this was about where his men were attacked before, a giant sea beast rose up out of the water and snatched him by the head,

 and that was the end of the greatest man that ever lived. 

But the pilgrims acted fast. They got out their machine guns and sawed that sea beast into little tiny chunks. That attracted a lot of Seaguls which was a good thing because they helped hide the boat. The Pilgrims looked back out at the land before them unlike any land they'd ever seen before.

Giant long necked lizard things were wandering around on the beach chasing the natives and eating them. The Pilgrims thought it might be a good idea to turn around and go back to England but they couldn't because the tide was going out and they were stuck on a big rock. 

Ted Plymouth decided to name it after himself. So everybody decided rather than stay on the stupid boat and wait for another Plymouth beast to come around and eat them like the one that got Columbus they'd lower the Plymouth boats and go ashore to see what this new land of Plymouth had to offer.

 Unfortunately for Ted, he fell on his way down to one of the Plymouth boats and drowned so they decided to name the land after his brothers Amer and Ica. As soon as they hit the shore a pack of velociraptors attacked the group dragging off several screaming individuals. 

While this was happening a guy named John Smith aka our hero decided to chase after them and save the screaming people, but he soon lost them in the thick jungle. Over the sound of screaming he heard the beautiful sound of a girl singing about leaves and air blowing around. He soon found her and fell in love and was never seen again.

The remaining pilgrims mustered their courage and started a fort right there on the beach. As they busied themselves shooting anything that moved the natives watched from the forest forming their own opinions. The most popular conclusion was that these strange looking people were white devils from heck that wanted to kill everything and take the land to build K-Marts and Piggly Wigglies.

 But one man named Squanto saw something good in these white devils and perhaps if they could just make friends with them, they could use the new pilgrim weapons to defeat the reptilian beasts and make the land safe again for children and wild flowers.

 Most of the elders called him a long haired hippie till he demonstrated the superior firepower of the pilgrims by rushing a heard of apatosauruses down onto the beach in direct firing range of the new Jamestown Colony mortars.

When the smoke cleared and hunks of meat stopped falling from the sky. The Native American's and the pilgrims decided they should stop the senseless violence between themselves and join with each other temporarily to defeat the dinosaur scum infesting the island of America. 

So they did.

They killed off every last dinosaur on the continent. To celebrate they cooked up all the lizard pieces and had a party where they sat outside at the end of November to eat because neither group wanted to invite the other group over to their houses for the dinner. It was pretty cold so this one really sappy pilgrim decided to go around the table and see what people were thankful for. And So was born the age old holiday of Thanksgiving.

And if you look closely today, you'll notice that on your thanksgiving table is the corpse of a bird flat on its back with its feet in the air, just like all the tyrannosaurs we had to fry back in the day a thousand years ago when we killed the dinosaurs.

We would like to add a disclaimer that this blog nor its subsidiaries endorse or condone any violence or maleficence toward dinosaurs be they herbivorous or otherwise disposed.

We like dinosaurs because they are special. 

bouncing off things on the freeway

Now as you might expect, the action described in the title isn't one most of us prefer to experience on our summer journeys. However, judging by the number of TV shows out there that think they're bringing us something we can't see already on YouTube, its something most of us will watch for fun. 


 I don't know how often you've noticed, but those concrete dividers they put on the freeway to separate the two sides are covered with scuffs. I've always wanted to see a car slide along the thing, but naturally, I've also not wanted to see it  since it could end with a pile-up in which I'd be a main participant. 

Yesterday I was privileged to finally see what I'd been wanting to see ever since I was old enough to breathe. 


And it happened safely.
 BEHIND me!


 I was driving along mindlessly when I happened to glance in my rear view mirror. At that precise moment the mini van behind me drifted up against the concrete to relax for a while. A minivan's construction and seating arrangement is such that the occupants are clearly visible from the front whilst being completely ignorant of outside forces from within. It was like watching a short play on a little mobile stage.


 As the people inside rocked violently around, the driver appeared calm, in fact unaware of anything unusual going on. The loud scraping noise that no doubt accompanied this adventure  also seemed to go unnoticed. His wife apparently felt differently judging by the way she frantically started looking around and opening her mouth a lot. This was more than likely accompanied by some screaming.


 The van swerved away from the wall and into the other lane where to everyone's relief, no one was driving. The wife continued to flail and gesture whilst looking around, opening and closing her mouth. The van swerved back, but a little too hard and that darn scraping noise was back. 


 The minivan eventually settled back to a natural normal course the way a golf ball bounces to a gentle roll. The husband remained calm, almost comatose through the entire ordeal. They might have  pulled off the freeway to inspect the damage, but I'm not sure they even noticed since they continued on driving behind us for several more miles as if nothing had happened. What a surprise to arrive at your destination later that night and realize someone's violently keyed your car... While you were driving. incredible.

Nathan leads an Australian tour through the wreckage of the end of the world!

'Twas Beauty Killed the Beast- or - how to kill monsters

Marsupials are a strange breed. They have fur like mammals and give birth to live young, but prematurely according to our standards. Marsupial's come with their very own baby bags with which to carry the prenatal young until such time as they decide to jump out and start fending for themselves. Of course the majority of their diversness resides on the far side of the world on and around the Continent/Country of Australia. That goes without even being said...

North and South America's fossil records indicate that we had our fair share of Marsupial diversity as well but at some point in history the ecosystem was inundated with mammals and the marsupials failed to compete for food and water and so died out.. All that remains of their furry baggy kind are a few squirrels I didn't know about and neither did your sixth grade science teacher, aaaannnnd- the North American Possum or Opossum depending on how old the book is. Unlike the bunny faced fully fuzzified kind of marsupials you find down under, these natives of forests, sheds, and local dumpsters resembles none other than the R.O.U.S.'s of Princess Bride fame. Rodents of unusual size. In other words: Giant Rats.

Yet unlike the giant rats of S. Morgenstern's classic tale, these dog sized creatures have more in common with reptiles than rats. Exchange those heavy incisors for a set of alligator teeth and the fuzzy hair you might expect for the mangy white snaggled hair of a swamp witch and you'll start to get an idea of what the North American Possum looks like.

Now dispensing with any further explanation- the story...

I know a young lady in Tennessee. She lives about 40 miles from Nashville on a small farm. Two nights ago she heard something outside her home. It was her chickens. A week or so ago she built a new coupe for the young hens she'd been raising this year. It so happened that a large ugly Possum had discovered the coupe and had decided to make it his own personal buffet.

This girl isn't very tall and isn't very wide, but what she lacks in stature she makes up for in what a famous southern lady calls being "fragile as coal trucks" or as I like to say "having a face like a dump truck.," but I digress.

Behind the back door of every home this girl's ever lived in sits an old aluminum baseball bat. As far back as she can remember its never been to a game, but two nights ago it played quite a different game. Armed with nothing but this bat, this young lady of which I speak ventured out into the yard gripped by a sensation only a disrupted grizzly bear commands when a tourist feeds her cub Tabasco sauce. There perched on her henly house loomed the dark figure of the biggest swamp gator rat you could ever imagine.

With a mighty heave she let that bat swing as hard as it'd go! A deafening "Ping" rang out across the farmyard followed by the thump of a heavy hairy body armed with four sharp sets of burly claws! Up came a mouth full of razor sharp teeth and a guttural hiss of deranged anger and hate!

There's nothin on this earth so awfully fierce as a possum that's just been distracted from a free meal! But before the beast could get its footing to leap at her she let fly with another hard overhander! This time the PING was accompanied by the crunch a skull makes when it starts to give way. But the Possum doesn't run so much on brain power as it does on raw hatred in the bloodstream and that was now running at a hundred and ten percent!

It snapped its crooked jaws and hissed its fierce black breath at her! But something deeper than a natural protective nature had taken over her otherwise gentile demeanor.. Her heavenly blue eyes now glistened black. Her breath came in heavy gusts like the ones from a bull that's about to charge. A bead of sweat ran down her cheek. Judgment day.

The Rat monster leaped towards her but was pummeled to the ground by an earth shattering shower of hard metallic clanks and crunches the likes of which you've never even nightmared about! The chickens huddled in stunned silence as the killer became the killed.

By the time she'd finished with it, there was more blood on her than on the carcass and the only bone left in tact was the wishbone although the buzzards made quick work of that yesterday. Rather than waste time with a Christian burial which would have been sacrilege anyway since beasts like that don't hail from above, she hauled what was left of it out to the highway where it could stand as a warning to all evil creatures and demons and maybe dissuade some of them from meeting a similar fate.

The bat is safe.

back behind the door

sitting in silence

waiting...

waiting for the time when it can once again strike a blow for justice!

Justice and a marsupial-free continent!

Black Boiled Bottom of a Witch's Black Brew (an excerpt found on file from early 2008)

Mr. Friedman walked quickly to his front office. The man was there waiting again. This was the sixth time this week he’d been late getting back from lunch. It was fun being an executive. He got his own reserved parking space, longer lunches, and more food. He was especially happy to be getting more food. His wife was enjoying more food as well. She’d always been big, but now she was enormous. The man in Friedman’s office was the company auditor.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to come like once a year or something?” He struggled to catch his breathe. It’d been getting harder each day to make the long walk from the elevator to the front office. He tugged at his collar. It seemed tighter today.
The Long thin man in the gray suit turned around. His face was drawn out in a permanently uninterested expression. He folded his hands behind his back and glared at Mr. Friedman. Behind his eyes a seething black hatred rolled and boiled like the black bottom of a witches black brew. He swallowed and the rage subsided leaving a residue of raw disdain. “It would be so if your departmental unit was in order,” he glanced down at Mr. Friedman’s belt where his shirt was coming out from the quick paced walk from the elevator. Friedman noticed and quickly began stuffing the shirt back in, but his belt had shrunk a little from the summer humidity or something so every time he stuffed, the shirt would come back out a little more. Didn’t he have longer shirts than this? The thin grey auditor scowled. “Mr. Friedman, this is not a dressing room.”
“I know” gasped Friedman as he sucked in with all his might, “It’s a place of business.” He huffed as he quickly stuffed the rest of his shirt in around his massive belly. Once safely in, he exhaled sealing the shirt safely behind his belt. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and held out his hand to greet the auditor. The black boiling hate was back.