Tommy's, Tommy's, and Tommy's. When I lived in the IE we used to make a run to the one on Beverly and Rampart for years, usually after getting baked. They didn't have fries for the longest time - you could only get a bag of chips - but get a cheese chili burger and grab a cold glass bottle of soda from the cooler:…

So, basically the Grateful Dead concert of foods.

Their primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and compositions and things with… molecular structures.

Speak for yourself!

Upvoted, reluctantly, for dredging that Willie Ames as Bibleman reference from my repressed memory. I grew up Southern Baptist in the Inland Empire of Southern California, which has a lot of Southern in it. We had a lot of "Caution: in case of rapture, car will be driverless" bumper stickers. Then there was my aunt's…

Hey! Good to hear from you. Well, everybody's rock bottom is different. Mine was pretty low, but not as low as others. There came a time, years ago, when I had to make a choice. I'm usually glad I made this one. Good luck!

I thought of this, a good friend of mine, Chris Leroy, and another guy who ran in our circles but I didn't know very well, Mike Wilkerson. Mike OD'd but made this. He has a Danny Whitten-type voice, and it's got that Inland Empire sound: http://www.thedangers.net/s…

The good news is, young bodies can handle a lot. You'd be surprised. I…had some issues, but life at 54 is very, very good. If you fall off, don't be too hard on yourself, it happened to me earlier this year. It's weird, I quit drinking for eight years, and got laid off last year, I didn't drink at all, because it was…

Has anybody heard from Ricky Coogin? Not a joke, I worry about that guy. This way…is not a good way to go. Eventually he'll just have to get the DT's and see what happens after that.

The first time I heard "Scamway", but not the last, was from my friend about three months later.

Very good phones! I just went to a Macy's in Sunnyvale that still uses ROLMphones. They must be 30 years old.

Yes! I was a contractor there during the IBM years, then got on permanent during the Siemens years. The only place I've ever worked that offered a pension.

This whole Abandoned thing is right up my alley. I'm working in a place right now that is six miles from the GooglePlex. My first employer, ROLM, is now a parking lot for Levi's stadium. They come and go quickly around here, and it's the going that has always been interesting to me.

My wife got a pair of cycling shorts for like $15. Everything else was almost no discount, and this was like three weeks before they shut permanently. That place…won't miss that place.

That's a good point. Every time I go to Best Buy these days, usually to buy my wife's business something like a printer or a shredder, they are friendly and helpful.

You're not just paying for the knife, there are a lot of levels of overhead there: the sales rep who goes door to door, the sales mgr at the office, I'm guessing a district and possibly regional manager, the warehouse for storage. To be fair, most things that last a long time, like furniture, have a lot of markup in…

And you can get them on craigslist for really cheap. Bags, belts and parts are available everywhere, or you can just go on ebay and get the parts. They clean well, and buying one used can really save you money. The downside is, they are ungodly heavy, and my wife makes me keep it outside.

Sell half-baked firsties for fun and profit!

I had a friend who tried to sell me on Amway. He opened up his battered notebook, with the two circles: The small one that shows your income, and the big one that shows what you really want to make. This was done under the camper shell of his Ford Courier, sitting on a shag-covered bench that sat atop the wheel wells.…

Revenge is best served cold. Pastrami revenge is best served with a pickle.