At some point in the past five or ten years ago I had a semi-public blog posting (accessible, but not easily traceable to me) about how Red Lobster’s decline was largely because they attracted too many niggers. In the course of this I quoted some online complaints about the place which I found simply hilarious.*
This comes back to me now because Red Lobster is in the midst of biting the dust because they overreached last year with an all-you-can-eat shrimp special. That at least is the excuse you read in the news. NYTimes piece today. More likely it’s a restaurant theme whose time has come and gone.
My sourdough starter was re-fed today and almost doubled in size. On a sour note, my ciabatta is not working out at all. The dough is too wet and soggy. I will give it a little more time to rise before trying to bake it. I don’t think it’s the fault of the biga. I think it was just too wet to begin with and not whipped up enough.
Money palpitations. The duck is now down to $300, as I put $200 into the Citi account to pay the Citi Cash Card due. I’d taken $100 out a few days ago and $200 back in June to archive my busted MacBook Air drive, which I’d fried around June 8. SS comes in a day, but it’s barely going to see me through, even with the Gusto pittance and whatever from CC because I’m at least a thousand per month short of what I need to get by, and two thousand short of what I need for a measure of comfort. I just am not making enough of an effort. Need to draw and write and push out the begging-bowl.
Went to Whole Foods and bought: parchment paper, milk, 4.99 frozen WF365 bbq chicken pizza. Latter was so-so but certainly edible.
A Substack post about Sixties Sitcoms got some favorable feedback from my tiny audience. Less so, my Ambassador’s Dogsbody opening, which I intended to be dense.
Supposedly the pittance from the sale of the Michigan Kennedy spikes hit my USAA account but I didn’t notice that when I looked earlier. Note to double-check earlier.
Still listening to and enjoying the Kubrick book. A couple of nights ago, slightly under the weather, I decided my 2020 Census earphones were lost for good, and I searched for an alternative. Rigged up the Lightning dongle and the noise-cancellation headphones and they worked fine, but it made for some uncomfortable head-resting on the pillow. Sunday midday I got up and gave another look around. There were the white Census earphones, dangling from the foot of the bed.
I wonder if I should whip the Embreeville memoir into shape. Toys in the Attic, etc. The Snake Lady. I wrote all that when I was in a morbid state of mind, about three months into my time at the Hippodrome in 2010.
Postscript October 4, 2024. The Red Lobster thing from 2017 turned up in one of the m****td***y blogs yesterday. I found it by doing an internet search for Red Lobster and Joe Queenan. I’ve pasted a slightly edited version to this blog, as of October 3.
