Pendell

My door is always open for yinglets to come and talk to me. I get to give you one big squeeze at random, though.

Like this.

this randomly jumped back into my mind today and I don't know why but it's still pretty great

i do love how soft simone's ying looks

this is how I treat my cat because she does not like hugs but she doesn't, like, resist or fight it that much. You can just feel her awkward tense aura and if you hug her too long she just does a pitiful meow asking you to stop now, she's had enough thank you. She always get huggy ❤️

Watching Thought Slime (good channel) on my tablet which sits atop the pile of clean laundry I procrastinate for a week on hanging up (even though it takes like 10 minutes), discs everywhere as I am catching up on ripping all the CDs I have not yet ripped - mostly soundtrack discs included in various boutique blu-ray sets I own from Blue Underground, Grindhouse, and Severin, but also that copy of Physical Graffiti I've had sitting on my table for two weeks.

People are pretty caught up at approximately any given moment about some fucked up thing happening in the US/on behalf of the US government that people forget that we do, in fact, have a bunch of cultural/political things that are cool and good and rare/uniqe. Furthermore, lots of critiques of American culture are made by Europeans who are entirely too high on their own supply. My contrarianism is in full go mode right now so I'm going to chost about how The US Is Cool And Europeans Have No Right To Throw Stones, because I'm tired of Americans being doomers and I'm tired of Europeans being smug.

Burgers

Dude burgers are so fuckin good man. The average exported fast food burger is selling that shit short, a good burger that someone's dad just pulled off the grill is possibly the greatest of the basic hot sandwiches.

Irish Pubs

The food at American Irish Pubs is only somewhat recognizable as Irish. Like Chinese food, it has adapted to its environment. The Fish & Chips sometimes comes with like, house-made American style potato chips. But goddamn it's usually tasty as hell. An unusually high percentage of them have live Irish folk music at least one night a week. Like solidly half of em. It kicks ass

Regional Cuisine

Regional American Cuisine generally kicks ass. Here are some suggestions:

• If you're ever in DC, get yourself a half smoke.
• While you're at it get some Vietnamese and Ethiopian and Nigerian food in DC too.
• Regional pizza styles are almost always worth it.
• Pittsburgh is a burger city. Get yourself a good burger or five.
• Pittsburgh also has great Taiwanese food, take advantage of this while you're there.
• I actually don't like sharp cheeses, but whenever I visit Wisconsin with family I'm told that the cheese isn't just hype and you should eat as much Cheddar as possible.
• The Mid-Atlantic (the part of the east coast between Baltimore and NYC, inclusive) has great diners. Especially New Jersey, for some reason. You have not lived until you've purchased breakfast food at 2am off of an inexplicably long menu at a restaurant that only accepts cash.
• If you are in any part of the Barbeque Zone and you eat meat at all it's a requirement to get some in every city you visit, it's wildly different even within states. (That's Florida, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, The Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kentucky.)
• Louisiana has multiple state-specific culinary traditions, but honestly just get as much crawfish as you can

St. Louis Food

Ok so this one is my home city. I'm biased as fuck. Man I miss St. Louis food so much.

• Toasted Ravioli: It's beef ravioli but fried with herby breading. You can get fried ravioli in a lot of states but imo most of them overdo the fried. It's lightly battered, not a wad of bread around what is nominally ravioli. Trust me if you've been getting fried ravioli elsewhere in the US you are getting a different dish that's not as good
• Gooey butter cake/cookies: dude how do I even describe these. They're cookies/cake made out of boxed yellow cake batter with a bunch of cream cheese mixed in. They're bright yellow and gooey even when fully baked. Gooey butter cake is kinda cookie-ish, the cookies are cake-ish, they're all good. I miss them every day.
• Fried rice at Chinese takeout places in St. Louis is almost always like, dark dark brown with dark soy. Good shit.
• The St. Paul Sandwich: a staple of St. Louis Chinese food. Egg Foo Young patty, mayo, pickles, white onions, sometimes shrimp. Served between two slices of white bread. Not my thing but I'm proud of it nonetheless.
• Frozen Custard: You like... can get frozen custard outside of Missouri, but it's just not as good. Not even fucking close. The canonical St. Louis frozen custard is Ted Drewes. Get the lime concrete. Trust me, you will wish lime frozen custard replaced all other ice cream.
• Slingers: Hash browns, 2 eggs, and burger pattty smotherd with cheese and chili. Every diner serves em.
• St. Louis style pizza: The only part of St. Louis food that it's ok to openly mock. The crust is cracker-thin (ok, good start), it uses a sweet tomato sauce (ok, cool, different flavor pallette than most pizza), it's cut in squares from a round pizza, and it uses Provel Cheese. Provel is a St. Louis specific nightmare frankencheese made of Cheddar, Provelone, and Swiss. It was designed for its low melting point and clean bite. It was not designed for taste. It's fucking nasty imo, but about half of St. Louisans swear by it so a delicacy it remains. If you must try it, local chain Imo's is the canonical example.
• Fitz's Soda: Local craft soda company that makes the good shit. Cardinal Cream and Hip-Hop Pop are the best flavors. Do not bother with the Fitz's restaurant, just get a custom crate of soda and go to Nudo House or Three Kings right down the street.
• Restaurant rec: Pi Pizza. Named both for pie, the food, and pi, our area code (314). The best Chicago-style pizza in the country. If you have been to their location in DC, do not be fooled, it's so much better in its home turf. EDIT: NOOOOO ITS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
• Replacement Pizza Rec: Katie's Pizza & Pasta. Dude its good brick oven pizzas with fancey toppings but also really fucking good pasta. Like seriously I know brick oven pizza places with fancy toppings are a dime a dozen in the US these days but Katie's is easily the best.
• Restaurant Recs: Mai Lee and Nudo House. Two restaurants owned by the same people. The former is a really solid Vietnamese place with the best spring rolls and Vietnamese iced coffee I've ever had. The latter is a ramen place where you can get Nduja sausage in your ramen.
• Restaurant Recs: if you want Barbeque, there's Salt & Smoke and Sugarfire. Both great. Sugarfire in particular makes a burger out of brisket meat and it's so, so, so fucking good.
• Restaurant Rec: Chong Wah. My favorite St. Louis Chinese takeout place. I get ham fried rice every time. They've also got a St. Paul that my dad likes.
• Brewere Rec: Schlafly. Yes, the same Schlafly family as Phillys Schlafly. Thankfully last I checked the beer Schlaflys and the puritanical Shchlaflys hated each other (I went to the same high school as them but didn't know them very well, so my access to the family drama is very very limited).

I once mentioned at my last job that $600/week was my desired pay - which I was getting fairly regularly there.

Been with QT about 3 months now and regularly pulling $350/week 😎

I need something better but the problem with that is there's nothing better. I could apply to be a seafood stocker or meat cutter at HEB (since those are the only positions they're hiring for right now), and make a whole $2 more an hour, but for what quality of life improvement? And the drive to HEB and back every day would probably eat up that extra $2 anyways. I could apply at Best Buy. I applied once before and they emailed me about an interview but it got filtered to my spam so by the time I saw it the time window had expired. I'm sure if I applied again and explained in some remarks column that I'd missed their previous emails due to spam filtering, they'd hear me out. I might also make a whole 1-2 dollars more and hour, but at least I'd be working around techology and stuff kinda? Though from what I've seen most Best Buy employees' jobs boil down to selling phones and phone plans which is weird to me, you wouldn't catch me dead signing up for a phone plan at a fucking Best Buy. Anyways my second job ever was at a Metro by T-Mobile phone store (I had a post about it do severals like a year ago or smthn) and I learned that I am not a good salesman because I have empathy and don't like screwing people over for my own benefit or to meet corporate KPIs so I probably wouldn't last too long if that's the department I got put in.

All the entry level IT and help desk jobs require some sort of certification which I don't entirely blame them for but CompTIA costs $400 just to take the test, and if you actually want a course to learn the material first it's $800, or $1,200 if you want the course that doesn't suck (not kidding, that's how their pricing works, they have a shitty course for poors and a good course for people with more money) so like maybe I can save up towards that but it'll be a while.

I wouldn't mind working for shitty pay at a place like Barnes and Noble, Half Price Books, or Movie Trading Company. If I'm in a cool environment handling cool stuff doing cool things I can bear being exploited. I need to check HPB and B&N's careers sites again, but they're rarely hiring. Movie Trading Company is weird, they don't have a hiring website and don't appear to post job listings anywhere, on their site you're just linked to a PDF application you're meant to manually turn in at the store. I guess I could call the ones around me and ask if they're hiring.