Burger Week

I haven't been that big of a meat eater, by western standards.  Yes I eat meat, including bison or buffalo on occasion, but I'm not like a steak every month or week guy.  My diet isn't paleo.

I've spent probably thousands on McMenamins Dungeon Burgers over the years.  That's the one with mushrooms and Swiss cheese.  I wonder if their database would show that.  

select count(item), sum(item_price) where customer = [me] and item = "dungeon_burger";

Those would be aggregating columns. That's in pseudo-sql against a database I've never met in person. A mind game.

Originally I'd titled this post "Summer BBQ" because I had this metaphor in mind:  I've stoked the briquettes with all the newspaper needed, and lit the pyre (if I might call it that); lets see if the briquettes catch, which means they'll generate their own heat, long after all the newspaper is consumed.

That metaphor in turn was about my approach to andragogy.  If I keep fawning over the flames, fanning them, I won't know if they would go out without me.  Given I could use such feedback, I'll aim to stand back.  I've worked on the ignition phase plenty, it seems to me.

I'm still being rather abstract, but that's OK.  Lets get back to burgers.  Portland has a whole week celebrating the genre and recommends retailers offer an $8 burger week special, their choice of what to try.  At least that's my understanding of the challenge.  I don't know what syndicate is behind it exactly, only that this is not a new institution.

Almost in anticipation of said burger week, Glenn and I sampled the offerings at the Yes Please Smashburger shack, a certified food cart right across from the Linus Pauling House.  I took quite a few pictures and have left them interspersed.

New Bucky Bio

I just got the book yesterday and have been doing my nonlinear Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics thing, i.e. I've been browsing it.

I've always contended studying Bucky's bio is worthwhile because he was so, shall we say, gregarious.  He got around.  He was a mover-shaker type.

He also lived a long time and was a compulsive self chronicler, by design.  Guinea Pig B wanted to be studied.  Alec is paying him that courtesy.

Alec's bio also proves my point.  Every page is connecting us to a recognizable vista of big name architects, poets, professors and so on.  Military types...

Great story.  It's like a Michelin guide to the 1900s, of course to specific circles, an intelligentsia that still persists in some form.

Given how thick it is, I understand Alec's not trying to be another Amy Edmondson and recap Synergetics. 

He gives readers enough to whet their appetites, and then it's all online.

I didn't participate in creating this book.  I see Trevor mentioned, and CJ. 

That means I still have my stories to tell, as Kenneth Snelson's first webmaster (BFI's too) and so on.

[first posted to TrimTab BookClub GoogleGroup]