Blah blah blah, had something more clever in mind that just me whinging on about being super sleepy and the fucked up dreams I have been having, blah blah, there will be something better soon, and so on, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

It’s been a decent few days. Last night, Felicity, our friend Amos, and I went out for dinner. Joe, sadly, is still battling the head cold (now a chest cold… lets hope that’s its final destination before it departs for good) that has kept him home from work and out of commission for the whole week, so he was not able to join the Friday night dinner as would be his usual habit. Get well and godspeed, Joe.

Normally, Joe, Felicity, Julian, and I go out to Denny’s on a Friday night. A lot of people badmouth Denny, but from what I can tell, it’s a great place, very relaxed and unpretentious and with good food at a decent price. Honestly, I think all the criticisms are nothing but snobbery. Denny’s is informal and unpretentious and cheerful, and the worst part is, it’s a place where a poor person might feel completely comfortable and relaxes, and so there must be a million things wrong with it. The food must be terrible, the service must be terrible, there musts be the ill-mannered offspring of ugly grubby poor people running around and screaming all the time. There just must be. Otherwise the cognitive dissonance to a middle class mind would be just too intense to bear.

And so all those mean things they say about Denny’s must be true, even if they aren’t. Especially if they aren’t. Being able to get good food, service, and atmosphere at a place where poor people would feel comfortable? Impossible. It simply can’t happen. You must be wrong. We know more about Denny’s from never, ever going there (or even thinking about it, for we are normal middle class people!) then you do from going there all the time.

I have seriously had that exact conversation with people. It is amazing how strong cultural assumptions can be and how deep beliefs about seemingly trivial things like restaurant choice can reach into the very roots of cultural identity.

Why, I would not be caught dead in a Denny’s! What if someone I know saw me there! What would they think of me? They might thing I was less successful than they are and that I might even be… I can barely bare to think it let alone type it…. that I might be poor, and hence lower than them socially!

I would rather die.

Anyhow, so Felicity, Amos, and I headed to Denny’s, only to find the place absolutely packed. I have never seen the place that busy. It reminded me somewhat uncomfortably of the cafeteria at lunch time in high school.

One of our favorite waitresses, a bundle of energy and personality in a small package named Cathy, informed us that due to some kind of airline strike, the place was full of people getting a free meal from the airlines via some kind of meal ticket, and she couldn’t tell us whether we would get a table at all. “Might be two hours!” she said.

Poor dear, she was run off her feet. We ate elsewhere.

In fact, we ended up at Agitaro, a pretty decent sushi place. After 9:30, you can get all-you-can-eat for just $14, and the quality is quite decent. Not top shelf like the cuisine at Richmond Sushi, a half dozen blocks away, but excellent for the price.

And it scratched my sushi itch, which needs scratching every couple of months or so. I am not sure why. Perhaps I suffer from a mild wasabi deficiency.

I do really love those wasabi peas. Nom.

Ate too much, of course, and of the wrong things, of course. It’s sad that even when eating a potentially very healthy cuisine, I still end up eating tasty fried things like spring rolls and gyoza.

I am but a slave to my primate food fathering instincts that say “Salt is good and rare, eat the salty things! Fat is concentrated calories and rare, eat the fatty thing! And sweet means dietarily accessible calories, eat the sweet thing!”

I wonder if all sentient species have to o through a period where they must survive the effects of technology making all their cravings easily gratified?

“I swear, Gorbo, this is my sachet of flavored silica. I’m getting so fat!”

Talk at ya later people.