3/1/2026

Smoked Salmon Croissant Sandwich

I tried to get Keshav to put leftover smoked salmon on his breakfast bagel on Saturday, but he wanted to use ham instead, and told me, "Use the salmon for a work breakfast!" So I did. Since he had just had a bagel, I thought I would try to find a recipe that combined both the leftover salmon and a croissant I had in the freezer. I was not hard to find one. 

The croissant sandwich I made has cream cheese, of course, and fresh dill, which I fortunately had for a baked fish dinner I had previously made. It all came together in the yummy delight you see above. How do I know it was yummy? Because I ended up eating over half of it since Keshav was still full from the enchiladas and beans we had for dinner the night before.

While I don't mind finishing what he cannot eat, I do wonder sometimes if I am shooting myself in my own foot with the amount of food I feed him. 

I am proud of myself for using up leftovers with the ingredients for this breakfast sandwich. I don't like throwing food out if it is at all possible to find a use for it. I have been learning to dice up herb stems for tossing in salads--honestly is there anything that can't be tossed in a salad? 

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I read in the news that Shia LeBeouf, the talented film actor who appears to have trouble keeping his anger and alcohol use in check, was recently arrested in New Orleans following a fight he was either involved in or started. He had been partying at Mardi Gras, and drinking, of course. Why is it that celebrations mixed with alcohol so often result in violent behavior from the (straight) men who are attending? Are they all secretly filled with hate and rage? (Hint: probably)

In an interview after his release from jail, LeBeouf told interviewer Andrew Callaghan why he was fighting:

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “Big gay people are scary to me.”

“What do you mean?” Callaghan asked.

“When I’m, like, standing by myself and three gay dudes are next to me, touching my leg, I get scared,” he said. “I’m sorry. If that’s homophobic, then I’m that.”

“Does it happen a lot?” Callaghan asked.

“No, it just happened one time,” LaBeouf said. (emphasis mine)

Later in the interview, when exploring his attitude towards homosexuality, he declares that he knows what the Bible says about it, which is, in his words, "Nah". 

And there you have it. Another male actor suffering from what appears to be unresolved issues placing the blame for his reactive and volatile behavior on "predatory" gay men climbing over each other to touch his mother-fucking leg. Once.

What a crock of shit.

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I love Shia LeBeouf as an actor. Though I never watched the Transformer movies, I have enjoyed his choices since then, especially in smaller heart-felt films like The Peanut Butter Falcon. He is talented, and at least onscreen displays a vulnerability that is endearing--you can see the internal conflicts he is working to resolve. 

Too bad he is not working this hard in real life--or maybe he is--his recent behavior does not foster confidence. His recent "conversion" to Catholicism also suggests otherwise. Rather than examining his inner turmoil with someone who can guide him through it to a healing experience, it seems that he has instead taken the lazy Russell Brand/JD Vance route of running to religion, which in my mind is the equivalent of taking a couple of aspirin to help with a bullet in your head. As author Christopher Beha beautifully describes it, religion is "a ready-made and inherited response to existential problems that we must work our for ourselves".

What do I know--maybe LeBeouf is doing the work, and hoping the church will be an anchor on which to find balance and community, but his recent statements show little indication for this. Rather, his "conversion" seems to have conveniently given him some justification for his behavior, which reportedly also included several uses of the word "faggot" during the incident. 

What is this justification? It's in the Bible, man, I imagine him saying, because in it homosexuality, is,  in his actual words, "Nah". But is it? In my understanding the Bible not only never says nah to being gay, there's not even any references to homosexuality, despite the common mis-association with the "man shall not lie with man as with women" trope (which had nothing at all to do with sex between men). 

Has Shia even read the Bible? 

In the interview he does appear to take some accountability for his behavior, saying that it's on him and violence is not good or something like that, but his comment about the men touching his leg (how does he know they were gay?) and his declaration that the Bible is against being gay seems to me like his way of saying, "You can understand why I did it, right?" It's the ol' gay panic justification, which in some 30 states is still a usable defense in court (including Louisiana, conveniently). 

While many are calling LeBeouf a coward, I am not one of them. I instead defer to his assessment of himself when he claims he has a problem. He has said that he suffers from "Napoleon Complex" (he is 5'9"). And I hate to be the one to tell you, but religion does little to address the true sources of any suffering in society. 

Here is how I imagine it will go. Catholicism will tell Shia to pray, go to church and confession, read the Bible, and tithe 10%, but it is unlikely that it will even once ask him, "What happened to you?"

Shia is not the coward--he says he is not okay with how he is behaving, but I fear he is not okay enough yet. The Catholic Church is the coward, because it has always said that you just need to seek forgiveness, not insight (and they are happily there to provide it, oh, and don't forget to tithe). Catholicism offers an "easy" way out of suffering that does not ask one to move through it. It is self-preservation masquerading as virtue that is really just a business plan.

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I hope on one hand that LeBeouf finds his way to a process that guides him through his suffering towards compassion, insight, and healing. Otherwise I fear that we will lose yet another great talent to an unresolved and unaddressed past. But on the other hand he can go fuck himself for resorting to words that further legitimize homophobia and the reactions that arise out of it. It is so tiring to hear yet another story of a man taking his shirt off to get aggressive with other men, as if to say...what exactly? In my world that kind of behavior is sometimes called foreplay. 

In his own words he says, “I don’t think I have a drinking problem, I think I have a different problem. And I’m going to address it.”

Thespian, heal thyself.