[NOTE: Before getting to the actual post, I wanted to ask you all to help me figure something out. There's a joke in here that I think I stole, but I can't figure out where I would have gotten it. If you know where I got this joke, then please let me know. I don't like to use other people's material - I'm so paranoid that I'll do something like this. I just want to know if I can take credit for it. Also, if you laughed and don't think I stole it, then I didn't, and you're right, and you also have good taste. Otherwise, whvr. I'll offset the offending joke with some bracketed comments.]

I'm in Portland for the 4th of July holiday. I forget what it's for. I'm pretty sure it's to celebrate parades.

[BEGIN POSSIBLY STOLEN, BUT STILL VERY FUNNY JOKE]

I've been invited to about seventy barbecues. I find that very suspicious. I was with some people who were inviting each other to their respective barbecues, and then agreeing to go (do the math). By my estimation, every single person in Portland has been invited to at least five barbecues other than their own. At the same time, every third person is having his own barbecue.

As far as I can tell, nobody in Portland is going to be at home on the 4th because they're all going to somebody else's barbecue. This is problematic, and it has me scratching my head, so I punched all the numbers into my calculator to get the odds and all it said was "NOT FUCKING LIKELY."

I'm anxious to see how this plays out.

[END POSSIBLY STOLEN, BUT STILL VERY FUNNY JOKE]

In other news, I went out for Thai food with Felix last night. Ordinarily, I wouldn't write about it, but that's because there's usually very little about which to write.

We were sharing three dishes at Portland's best Thai restaurant. It got some restaurant of the year award during some year, and that piqued my interest. I had never been there before.

The first thing you learn is that everything is designed to be eaten with your hands. I've had plenty of food like this, but never Thai, and I think there's a good reason.

The first two dishes were great. We shared a game hen with a bowl of neon toilet bowl cleaner (it tasted good, but it burned a little going down) and a flank steak that was drenched in, like, nine different sauces. That also had toilet bowl cleaner on it, but I think it was a different brand.

The final dish was one Felix pushed for. You might think I'm crediting him with the choice, but I'm not.

I'm blaming him.

It was this big ass fish that looked like it had been marinating in melted yellow crayons (probably from Art Therapy class) and had then been set alight before finally being put out by the fire department.

That's not what set me off, though.

It was the smell.

I went to a French restaurant when I was about six where some lamb had gone bad. Because the staff was actually from France, they still cooked and then served it. The smell was atrocious. It overpowered everything from the enjoyment of whatever I got (I don't remember - probably slugs or some other weird French thing) to the conversation. The smell had mass. You could see it approach and then blanket everything like some wispy cheap Star Trek alien. If I had had a phaser, I would have set it to Kill, and that odor would have been dead the second it hit my smell muscles.

Felix's fish was very much like this lamb. It arrived and derailed whatever tasty pleasure I was deriving from having my toilet bowl cleaned. The fish was dead (this point isn't as obvious as you might assume), but even it was making a face.

Like, have you ever accidentally caught a little whiff of your own BO? It's a hot day, you're sweating a lot because you're right smack in the middle of morphine withdrawals, and then the scent of your own armpits rises to meet you. In small quantities, you recognize that it would make for a fine scent. Your friends even insist on smelling you because you natural musk is so pleasant.

But, overdo it, and your instinct kicks in. The smell charges through your face like an effing toro, and you look at the exits for the room you're in. There's no way to communicate this to your primitive human brain, but part of your thinkmeat is under the impression that it's somehow going to get away from that awful smell.

The cruel joke is that you run and you run and you run, but your BO always catches up.

And so it was for this poor fish.

It had already swum through St. Peter's pearly channels, but was being recalled because its own stink had infiltrated Heaven from the earth below (this is an inherent design flaw of Heaven - think about it - everything from fish odor to car exhaust is sitting up there near the this-layer and the that-layer (I don't know the names of the layers - if you think you're a scientist, then say hello to your homework)).

The fish was served with head and tail on, as is the custom in every country outside the US, so you could see its bulging, wide-with-surprise eyeball on the side facing up. It had that ocular look of shock and its mouth seemed to say, "Eat me. Just get it over with and eat me," in the same way those creepy ass people in that Aliens movie always said "Kill me... KILL ME OK NOW THIS MOVIE IS RATED R BECAUSE IT'S EVEN SCARING THE ADULTS" right before little pink alien babies popped out of their chests.

What I mean to say, people, is that this fish had all of nature's "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT EAT THIS
FISH" signs.

Normally I'd like that. I won't lie. I love Korean food, and it's mostly due to the way they rot a lot of their stuff before serving  it. I used to eat kim-chee all the time, and my dad could detect it because, regardless of where he was on the planet, he could smell  "diapers" as soon as I opened the jar. I've avoided diapers, except at parties, for my entire life, so I don't know what they smell like, except at parties, and so eating kim-chee is still A-OK in my world.

But, this fish...

I tried to snap a photo of it with my phone, but it shut down and took the whole cell block with it. There's currently a class action lawsuit being taken out against Felix by TMobile and its customers (if you feel that you or someone you love was negatively affected by this event, then you might be eligible to make assloads of money just by lying and answering "Yes").

When I thought it couldn't get any worse, Felix popped the thing open. He got squirted in the eye by some fish juice or a sperm gland or something, and sat there, chewing while his eye was tearing. He looked kind of like Popeye, but without the hat and with a big disgusting fish.

I had to stop eating when he opened it up. Other people got up to leave the restaurant. Everything went silent, and the staff took an early smoke break.

Twenty minutes later, he had devoured this thing. That awful fish soaked in rotting fish sauce. I was only thinking about what his belches were going to taste like.

He claims to have liked it.

Pretty effed up, yeah.

Also, Felix says "Sorry."

Apply this apology however you see fit. You're not going to have to be very creative to find a use for it here.