Much publicity is given to the sweet tooth, far less to the salt tooth. I possess the latter. No salt-laden snack is safe around me. Thankfully I work in an office relatively free of free profferings of food, salty or otherwise, and there are no vending machines in my immediate area. But sometimes the hankering becomes too great. That's why I just ran downstairs to the food court and charged two dollars worth of french fries to my credit card. Two more frequent flier miles, baby.

This weekend I fly to Washington, D.C. for a wedding. Luckily the most recent dire terrorist warnings were released just prior to my travel. Luckily-er still that I believe said warnings to be PR garbage. Still, I wouldn't mind being someplace else other that D.C. over the Memorial Day weekend.

Perhaps I should expand a bit on yesterday's post. It's not that I consider myself unworthy of having my photo taken. I'm a perfectly fine-looking specimen. It's that the camera robs me of any physical assets. This is not opinion but rather well-documented fact.

Today I ate around most of the components of my salad to get to the two money ingredients: the egg and the avocado. If I had my way, I'd eat a daily concoction consisting only of those two items. Not the most healthful, perhaps, but at least I'd have a really shiny coat.

I so hate being unphotogenic. Dan and I just spent an idyllic weekend in Palm Springs, and yet now, after having viewed a single crappy photo from the weekend (in which the width of my gumline exceeds that of my smile), I have felt the last of the champagne bubbles burst. Ah well.

This isn't my story to tell, but I'll tell it anyway.

My sister recently found out that her ex-girlfriend from college, whom we'll call Travis, is now male-identified and is undergoing hormone treatments to transition from female to male. She is moreover in a master/slave relationship with a woman 10 years her senior (Travis is the slave), and the two of them tour the country putting on S/M demonstrations at leather conventions. Not the girl I met in college, who was a jock Republican All-American just-deciding-she-was-maybe-bisexual New England prep school type.

But that's not the good part. Here's the good part. The way Travis plans to pay for the first of two transitioning surgeries? With the money she earned as.... a contestant on Wheel of Fortune! Aw yeah.

My lone friend at work was let go yesterday and couldn't be happier. Today she came into the office to pick up her final check and was all aglow. I'm quite envious. I love that period of unemployment right after you quit or are fired when you're still being paid for your time.

I no longer worry about Pedro Martinez, but I sure do worry about the Red Sox these days. They are striking out at an alarming rate, they're always playing catch-up early in games, and many of them are playing lackluster defense.

Hmm, and now Curt Schilling is continuing what could become a season-long tradition of spotting the opposing team at least one run in the first inning. I'm a sports fatalist, as many know, but I can't say right now that this team looks built to win.

Okay, I must be boring my paltry readership with all the Sox talk.

Today I'm reminded of just how poorly I would fare during a period of unemployment (or domesticity). My boss-boss is on vacation, my immediate boss is a flighty maroon who barely remembers I exist, and I have no looming work to do. I'm free to do anything, and yet I do nothing. Sure, I cleaned my office a little and deleted some emails, but otherwise I have been staring at my computer screen and eating my lunch in slow motion.

Last night I told Dan that he's not unemployed, he's just in a latency period, but really I think it is I who is latent. He's more of a professional pupa waiting to hatch.

My activities of the moment are quite emblematic of my professional anomie these days: I'm tracking the Red Sox game online and researching career counselors.

Pedro's going tonight. I worry about the fellow. I think (I hope) he's finding his way this season as the thinking man's pitcher; still, I get nervous every time he goes out there. Tonight he's already given up two runs in two innings; then again, I believe he's already struck out five batters(!) Our hitting better come through.

Ack, and now the bases are loaded.

So, a reader out there has asked me to pontificate on the HIV scare in the L.A. porn industry. Frankly, however, I found it hard to read about once I found out that the man who contracted HIV had secretly always wanted to be a firefighter.

Ack, and now Pedro got out of the inning and has SIX strikeouts in two innings. What a bizarre set of stats so far.

While I love mainstream pop fluff as much as the next consumer, I have little tolerance for poorly executed fluff (see: 13 Going on 30; the Friends finale). So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Mean Girls this past weekend. Despite my abhorrance of everything Tina Fey, I thought the movie was pretty amusing.

And God knows I needed a laugh going in. We saw the film at the Mann's Chinese Theater, home to the stars' footprints and all that. Lots of characters dressed up in various costumes -- Spiderman, Zorro, a storm trooper -- wander around, posing for photos and poking fun at the tourists.

On Saturday, there was the most unfortunate Marilyn Monroe flitting about. Not a day under 70, she was sporting heavy pancake makeup, sandy blonde, thinning hair, and a grubby, poorly contructed fascimile of Monroe's Seven-Year Itch dress. Oh, and saggy, unsupported boobs. Once I got it into my head that she was very likely someone's grandmother, I kind of wanted to shoot myself.

Today I took a gamble and wore white pants. Actually, last week I took a gamble and bought white pants. Today I'm wearing them, and it's going swimmingly thus far. I have yet to stain, smudge or smear them, no minor feat in Meaghan World. So, like a little do bee, I plan to take them off as soon as I get home and change into my after-school play clothes.

Nobody writes me, everybody hates me, I'm going out to eat some worms.

A few weeks back I had it in my head that I had a vast and growing readership. Bad ego! I should have known better. But I'm a little embarrassed by all of the "Comments (O)" dappling the screen. Then again, if no one is reading this, and embarrassment is a reaction borne of interaction, I'm safe.

Why bother?

From E! Online:
MEATHEADS: TV stars Ray Romano and Kevin James climbing aboard the feature comedy, Grilled, playing two meat salesmen who stop at nothing to sell their beef. The film starts shooting next month.

There was a New Yorker cartoon that hung on the refrigerator at my elementary-school best friend’s house that caused me a lot of confusion as a youth. A school of little fish was about to be eaten by a few medium-sized fish, who were about to be eaten by one huge fish. They all had thought bubbles over their heads. “There is no justice in the world,” think the little fish. “There is some justice in the world,” think the medium-sized fish. “The world is just,” thinks the big fish.

I didn’t get it. The world is just what? But all the adults loved it, and so I pretended to get it and love it too.

I was thinking about that cartoon this afternoon as I mulled over a related topic, that of karmic justice. There is no karmic justice in the world, I think. There are people out there, ex-friends and old acquaintances and the like, whom I believe should be suffering mightily at the hands of life. And instead these people keep popping up as syndicated columnists and acclaimed authors and profile subjects in national magazines. I don’t seek these names out, but they keep appearing on my radar unannounced, ruining what could otherwise be, say, a perfectly sanguine Monday afternoon.

Okay, back to my eggroll. It’s a pretty damn good eggroll. Perhaps there is some karmic justice in the world.