It being 31 December and all, I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to cheat by having a “2006 in retrospective” post. After all, a lot happened in 2006, and I intend to celebrate it later in a crowded party full of people I probably don’t know. I imagine that many of you are doing likewise, so, you know, have fun. But not too much fun, and please do not let people drive while intoxicated, adding to the general havoc already in existence on the roads tonight.

So, er, 2006.

In January my faithful old servant died a terrible death. It has recently been resurrected, but at the time I thought our long partnership was over. The Sony put in a good run with me though thick, thin, and poorly edited papers. It sort of felt like a little part of me dying…especially since I replaced it with a desktop and was therefore not actually able to sit in bed on the computer for days at a time.

In February, we went to Glass Beach and found many exciting objects including a fork embedded in the rock. Glass Beach has changed a lot since I was a kid…it was fairly thoroughly picked over, and that is kind of sad. I mean, yes, it is the place where people used to dump garbage, which is kind of gross. But it’s such pretty, pretty garbage now. So pretty, in fact, that people have carried it away in bits and pieces to places all over the world. Which is a little creepy. One hundred years from now, are people going to be scavenging over Fresh Kills?

In March, I found myself a guest at a most peculiar dinner party. I tell you, in my day, when people invited friends over for dinner, they didn’t up and die on the evening of the grand occasion. Really!

The rollicking events of early April were rapidly eclipsed by the loss of a friend. This event changed things for a lot of us, I think. Many of us relocated to different parts of the country or at least pondered our own lives, and difficult choices were made as well. He will be greatly missed.

May brought one of the most perfect days of my life, and marked the first departure.

In June, Mr Bell got to have a fun field trip to anesthesia land, and then a few days of recovery sprawled out on the furniture. I suspect that his recovery time was hastened by all of the Bistro food he stole from me.

In July, the change of hands at Headlands was made official. Although I moved shortly afterwards, my troops on the ground assure me that all is well there, and I suspect that Headlands has many years of good business and better art ahead. I miss Headlands intensely.

In August I went camping at Bloody Rock where my camera died and I nearly did too. It was a most excellent adventure nonetheless, and I would repeat it in a heartbeat, only with more sleep the night before.

In September the Headlands payphone was under threat…although the number has changed, the tradition of the payphone lives on. And will continue to do so, I ardently hope. I also point to this incident as evidence that small town bloggers do make a difference in the communities they live in.

Of course, in October I moved to San Francisco, right after participating in the SF MOMA Scavenger Hunt. A good time was had by all, despite the fact that our point showing was pretty miserable. I particularly enjoyed art class.

November found me wandering the streets of a new city and aging another year.

In December I saw some old friends, ate delicious cheese, and managed to rile up one of my father’s numerous ex-girlfriends, a feat I had not accomplished in quite a long time.

Was it a good year? Honestly, I’m not really certain. It was an interesting and eventful year, and this brief list only highlights other events for me. I’m not sure that I was a particularly good person for bits of it, and I think that people were needlessly cruel to me for other parts. But somewhere in the middle there was a happy medium, a few summer days at the river when none of this seemed terribly important anymore. There are a number of new people I met in the last year, and I’m glad to have them in my life. There are also a number of people whom I knew before, but established better friendships with, and I think that was a good thing as well.

All we can do, as people, is to strive to improve.

Who knows, after all, what the future may bring.

Happy New Year, gentle readers. I look forward to another year of adventuring together.

[New Year]

I realize that I have only discussed the Job Corps, and my thoughts on it, briefly. I thought that I should perhaps take a moment to outline what the Job Corps is, for readers who don’t know, and what my issues with it are as well.

The first thing that I think is important to understand is that I do not feel that the Job Corps is inherently bad, or that the people in the Job Corps are all crazed juvenile offenders who only speak in Ebonics. The Job Corps has been around since 1964, when a lot of great social programs such as the Peace Corps were founded. It takes 16-24 year old American citizens of any race or religious background. I think that in principle, the Job Corps is a good thing. People who want “marketable skills” should be able to acquire them, and I think that the Job Corps does an admirable job of doing that for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Job Corps provides opportunities to people: students who have dropped out of school, for example, can get an equivalency certificate. Students can also pursue education in a variety of instantly marketable fields, and have a chance to follow their passions. Especially for people who experienced violent home lifes, or had issues with drugs, the Job Corps is a really spectacular thing: a safe place to learn and get on with your life. The Job Corps works with potential employers to place their graduates, and has an extensive followup program to determine how effective the Job Corps is, as a whole.

Let me state this again, in case this is not clear: I do not have a problem with the principle of the Job Corps. In fact, I applaud it, along with programs like AmeriCorps, because I think it has the potential to build a better society. It gives people who might not have a chance an opportunity to do something with their lives. This is not a bad thing.

I am also from a disadvantaged background, and I chose to take a different route in life. I decided to pursue a useless college education rather than a technical trade*, and that was my own choice, just as someone else can choose to attend the Job Corps. However, I think it is important to recognize that this was a choice: no one forced me to go to college, and I do not think that people should be forced into going into the Job Corps. I also find it tragic that as a member of the “academic elite,” my life choices and valid criticisms of the Job Corps appear to be largely inaccessible to participants. I am not, as someone recently accused me of being, “a college educated frat boy**.”

There are, in fact, so many things wrong with the above accusation that I do not even know where to begin, although I did once own a painfully ironic hipster shirt that said “fratboy.”

The thing about the Job Corps on Treasure Island is this: I have interacted and talked with some of the students there, and gotten a varying response. Some of them are really enthusiastic, and others are frank with me that going into the Job Corps was not a choice. I mean, technically it was, but it was presented as an option: clean up your act by going into the Job Corps, join the military, or face time. Now, I happen to think that offering rehabilitation rather than jail is a pretty groovy thing. I do not approve of the prison system in this country, and the alarmingly large proportion of African Americans and Latinos who are currently stuck in it. But I have qualms about forced options. Not a fan, I will admit. Now, I think going into the Job Corps is better than going to jail, but…it still makes me nervous, because of events in American history and because of what this country is.

Not being in the Job Corps, I don’t know how job counseling is done and how people are introduced to the program. But it makes me deeply nervous to see a large amount of African American and Latino people in the Job Corps learning how to serve whitey. There. I said it. Puff calls it “the future slave training centre,” which in a way is true, in the sense that if you learn a technical trade, you will sometimes find yourself entering a life of wage slavery. Is this always true? No, of course not. Some trades pay extremely well, and involve a high level of skill for which good pay should be demanded.

Others do not, and I see a lot of Job Corps students learning low level technical trades. And this saddens me. Now, maybe I am just not meeting the people learning complex trades, because they are all too busy studying to be seen in public. But I see a lot of future sous-chefs at mediocre restaurants, and rent-a-cops working the night shift. Being in a state of wage slavery myself, it depresses me to see others entering that condition, especially when the Job Corps students I meet are, for the most part, bright and intelligent individuals who could do more, if they so choose.

The generation of individuals growing up right now is facing a lot of challenges. Most of us are thousands of dollars in debt by the time we graduate from college (if we take that route) and face years of entry-level jobs at low rates of pay. College is not a guarantee for success, and it should not be viewed that way. Graduates of advanced technical schools like auto mechanics probably make a lot more money than me, as well they should, because their pay is a direct reflection of the training that they underwent. And a sous in a mediocre restaurant probably makes more than me too, and I’m not sure what industry that is a reflection upon.

I think perhaps my fundamental problem with the Job Corps is that I have a different value set than the one the Job Corps promotes. I do not believe that the way to happiness is found through money, and if it was I might be more supportive of a program training people to cut my lawn, wash my dishes, and secure my events. The Job Corps maintains a status quo, to me, that there are people who need to be served and then there are the servants who serve them. And I dislike that, because I do not think that anyone needs to be a servant.

Now, some people take pride in their customer service, and work hard to make careers as professional waiters or housecleaners or what have you. And I think that when this is a choice, that is an admirable thing to do, because the fact is that there are restuarants and people too lazy to clean their own houses, so you might as well take advantage of them.

But to foster a culture of servility? No, thank you.

To borrow some line of hippie crap I was fed in elementary school, everyone has the potential to be their own unique and wonderful snowflake, and everyone should be given a chance to explore that. Some people choose to pursue their icy identities in college: this does not make them bad people, and it does not give anyone the right to sneer at them. I don’t need to demonstrate my difficult background street cred here, but suffice it to say that I am tired of hearing the attitude that college educated individuals are all little rich kids born with silver spoons in their mouths and no knowledge of the actual world. Some people choose to explore their potential by doing nothing, and this is also an admirable pursuit with a long history. Others go to technical schools to learn about things that interest them, and to develop a set of useful skills. This is also a good thing, because technical knowledge is valuable. Others are forced into a predetermined role by the society they live in, and this…is wrong.

As I say, when something is a freely undertaken choice and the participant is aware of all of the ramifications of that choice…well and good. But when the whole story is not being told, and when the choice enforces traditional values of class and social status, I would hope that it would be questioned. No one should exist to serve anyone, and I would hope that this has been clearly established by now.

Our choices are our own, and whether we like it or not, they shape the society that we live and work in. I can see how those content with a widening gap between the rich and the poor would not have a problem with the Job Corps on Treasure Island, I really do.

*Bonus points to the reader who can name the technical trade I am fully trained in!

**Additional bonus points to the reader who can name the sole campus organization I was ever actively involved in!

[Treasure Island]
[Job Corps]

Legend has it that in Ancient Greece, the Elders of Athens would periodically get together and write the names of those they disliked onto small bones and rooftiles, tossing them into a pot in the middle of the agora to create a grab bag of hatred. If someone’s name turned up a few times too often, he or she would be banished from the city and society.

Modern day ostracism is not quite as obvious, but is unfortunately still a reality.

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about chronic illness in regards to love and relationships. Particularly, we were talking about chronic illnesses which could potentially be passed on to other people. AIDS, for example, or some forms of Hepatitis. I was surprised by our conversation, because I think of this friend as being a compassionate and caring person, as well as someone who is unafraid of risks.

“Well, thanks to the internet,” this person said, “people like that can date people of their own kind.”

“Oh,” I replied, “kind of like how black people should date other black people?”

“Well, no, you’re twisting my words. I mean to say, being black isn’t, uh, it’s not the same.”

Well…no, it’s not. This is true. But there is an eerie similarity. Being black is not a choice, for example, although most people embrace their African American identity and love who they are. Black is beautiful. Black is also growing to be more socially accepted, thank God, because we should not live in a society where people are judged on the basis of their skin color. And I also don’t see anyone saying in seriousness that African Americans should date within their own community, go to separate schools, or live in black neighborhoods. That’s why there was a Civil Rights Movement, with capitals and all, because being while black is not a crime.

But apparently if you have, say, AIDS, you should only date other people with AIDS. You should not fall in love with someone based on who they are, but rather on their disease status.

I have encountered this attitude before and I have to say that it really upsets me. I know many, er, mixed couples, where one person has a chronic illness and the other one doesn’t. Do these couples take reasonable precautions to prevent transmission? Of course! No one would want to live with the feeling of passing on a potentially fatal illness to someone else. But I don’t think those couples ever considered not existing because of the varying disease status of the individuals involved.

At any rate, it’s not my business, either. Everyone needs to do what makes them happy, not what makes me happy. While I can exercise control over my own life and who I date, what other people do is not my affair. Indeed, it seems dangerous indeed for me to make sweeping generalizations about what other people should do.

With attitudes like that still prevalent, it is not surprising that many people are shy about revealing their disease status. Why tell people that you have a chronic illness when the reaction is hatred, misinformation, and fear? Why share an intimate part of your past when people are going to tell you to go be with your own kind? Why not conceal this part of yourself, to prevent yourself from being hurt?

Personally, I think that this breaks our ability to function as an open society. In an ideal world where unicorns gamboled the streets and there was gold at the end of the rainbow, people could be open about their disease status. I certainly do not think it is something that should be concealed from a potential partner, because it is a part of you. I also think that rational adults should be able to discuss and talk about these issues, rather than reacting by lashing out. In this ideal world, the conversation could go more like this:

“Hey, so, uh, I have AIDS.”

“Really? That totally sucks. I am really sorry to hear that. So I guess we should be extra careful with condoms, right?”

Alas, that is not how it goes.

It makes me really sad to think of people having love denied to them because they are ill. I remember during the AIDS scare when there was a lot of prejudice, our school had a poster in the window that said “People with AIDS needs hugs too. And you won’t get AIDS by hugging me.” It’s a cheesy way to put it, for sure, but I think it is something that needs to be said.

People with chronic illnesses do need love. They do need to know that someone cares about them, and it hurts people with chronic illnesses, a lot, when people shrink away from them in misunderstanding. It is painful to find out that people do not want to touch you, share glasses with you, or be in an environment where you live. Especially when this attitude is out of a lack of education and fear. Most people with a chronic illness would probably prefer to be asked about it, so that they could give out information on how the disease is transmitted and how people can avoid it.

It is certainly reasonable to take precautions to avoid getting a chronic illness, and I doubt anyone would fault someone for that. But to say that people with chronic illnesses should only date people who have that illness…is incredibly narrowminded. It shows no respect for mutual attraction and interests. Rather, it seems to make the assumption that two people with the same disease already have a lot in common. Well…maybe. But maybe not. People deal with chronic disease in very different ways, and the fact that I have asthma does not make me instantly accessible to all other people with asthma.

How tragic to think that love should be denied on such petty grounds.

[chronic illness]

So, we’ve been having what I can only describe as a protracted chess game with the maintainance department. When we moved in, there was a whole list of things we asked them to fix. And they actually showed up, within the week, to steal a closet door and dither about in the downstairs hall closet for awhile. Then they vanished, presumably never to be heard from again.

I was, needless to say, devastated. Here I thought we had a connection and all.

So anyway, about twice a week I call the office up to find out where our work order is at, and about once every two weeks, something else breaks, so the work order just gets longer, and longer, and longer. I kind of get used to things like the downstairs sink dripping and missing closet doors and leaking sliding doors, because this is the way of the Island.

See, the thing is, I would fix all of these problems myself, except that I figure for what we’re paying, they can come and fix it. Damnit.

So last week, they actually showed up again and fixed a few things before furtively measuring the closet with the missing door and disappearing once more into the wild.

And today seemed like a good day for me to call the office and bitch, so I did. But I also mentioned, kind of off handedly, that the heat wasn’t working (and hadn’t been for a few days) and it was getting kind of annoying.

Now, this is California. This is a part of California where it gets cold, for sure, but not unreasonably cold. Chilly, yes. Wearing a couple layers, sure. But we are not about to die because our heat isn’t working. We’re just cold and a little bit grumpy about it. So I figured this was the kind of thing that might get fixed in, you know, August.

To my astonishment, thirty minutes later an amazingly attractive Russian man showed up on my doorstep.

“Heater, yes?”

“Uh, yeah…are you here to look at our, uh, heater?”

“Heater, yes?”

“Uh, ok.”

I let the man in, and he proceeded to tear the thermostat off the wall and diddle with the innards for a bit.

“Now, we wait,” he pronounced.

We stood in the living room, waiting, for a few minutes. Every now and then he shifted his weight from side to side, and I stared skeptically at the thermostat.

“We wait for heater, yes?”

He stared expectantly at the wall heater, and suddenly charged for it like a raging rhino. Throwing the living room chair aside, he hurled himself onto the ground next to the heater and nuzzled up to it.

“Ah,” he said. “Oh.”

The heater remained silent.

“You have step stool?”

“Er, yes,” I said, which is how it came to be that there is an amazingly attractive Russian man trapped inside my siding. I’d always wondered what was housed in the little overhang over the back yard, and it turns out that it is the controls or whatnot for the heater. Right now I can see the bottom of a pair of pants and a pair of natty black shoes kicking about, punctuated by grunting and banging noises.

The heater remains resolutely still.

…

Will the attractive Russian prevail? Will our house not actually be freezing cold tonight? Only time will tell. I only hope the poor man doesn’t electrocute himself on that frayed wiring.

[heater]
[Treasure Island]

Violet Blue writes about this disturbing trend better than I can, and I recommend that you read her post along with her links to other bloggers covering the situation.

Basically the easiest way to illustrate what’s going on is to have you, my dear readers, do something for me. I’d like you to open a new tab (you are, of course, using Firefox, right?)

In that new tab, go to Google, and type in “good vibrations.” Survey the first page of search results. Then search for “good vibes.” Check again.

Notice anyone missing from the lineup?

Perhaps this will have been corrected by the time you read this…I sincerely hope so. But as it stands now, when I search for the name of the premiere woman-owned sex positive store in the Bay Area on Google, it does not appear in the first page of search results.

This is due, sex bloggers are claiming, to a change in how Google runs search algorithms. As Violet Blue says, somehow this reworking involved the drop of sex positive retailers, bloggers, and sources of information. A mistake? Possibly…mistakes do happen. But I find it highly suspicious that this change happened right around the holiday time, when people might be shopping for high quality toys from reputable stores…or just looking for information on sexuality.

As I am often reminding the people around me, the internet is not a reliable source of information. There are a lot of things wrong with the internet. In theory, though, Google should not be broken. And when Google is failing to deliver logical search results, I see that as a major flaw. Most people searching the internet for Good Vibrations, for example, are looking for Good Vibrations. Adam and Eve comes up bright and clear in the sponsored links…very interesting indeed.

As this story has begun to break, clear changes have been wrought, and Google appears to be working to rectify the problem. A search for “vibrators” now turns up Babeland, as well it should. (You might know the retailer by the former name, Toys in Babeland.)

But I don’t like the sound of this…not one bit. Why is it that sex positive sites mysteriously vanished from the Google index, even with Safe Search off? Do we need a porno Google to meet our needs now? Or is Google, as Snape would say, up to something?

[Google]

In a sea of bread!

Cap’n Boysenberry and I went scavenging for bread earlier…enjoy the crappy resolution, courtesy of my cell phone. We managed to liberate large volumes of tasty bread in a variety of flavors, shapes, and sizes.

We also saw an actual shipwreck:

This is actually one of several boats abandoned around Treasure Island.

We’ve found and investigated most of them, but it still leaves us a little puzzled. Who abandons a boat that drifts ashore, and why? I’m surprised that the authorities haven’t gotten after them for property abandonment.

If we were to salvage one of these boats, would it be beyond the bounds of legality? Are the boats salvageable?

[shipwreck]

After my disparaging comment earlier about pudding snacks, I realize that I may be called out here. Allow me, if you will, to clarify before we begin the content of this post. I do not dislike pudding as a principle: in fact, I am rather fond of pudding. I do, however, dislike packaged pudding products laden with corn syrup and stabilizers which are found lurking in the cold foods aisle. Pudding and mousse are wonderful, truly splendid things, which should not be sullied by being compared with products that have “Jello” in their name.

That said, let us proceed.

Last night was cold and rainy, as it was for many residents of California. It is, apparently, wet again, and although the weather was not severe, it did seem to call for some precautionary measures such as baking cookies. I also decided to try and made some pudding, a dessert food which I remembered fondly from my youth at the Tin Palace. My father used to make this insanely good chocolate pudding with this rich Indonesian cocoa that was so dark it came out black. The pudding was chocolately and dark and delicious, and all of my friends hated it because it wasn’t nearly sweet enough for them. I, on the other hand, loved it.

I know that my father used the Joy of Cooking for his recipe, and despite my disappointment with my own “revised” Joy, I thought it might be possible to find a passable pudding recipe. (Which reminds me: any reader who is particularly fond of me is welcome to send me a copy of the 75th anniversary Joy, which is supposed to be a vast improvement on my revised edition. Readers unsure about how to get it to me can contact me via comments at meloukhia dot net.) At any rate, I found a pudding recipe which resembled the one of my youth, and set out to make Mexican Chocolate Pudding. I have made a few changes, and list the recipe as I made it below:

Grate one round of Mexican chocolate (I prefer Ibarra) into a heavy saucepan and add a pinch of salt and 1/3 cup warm water. Stir into a brisk paste, adding cinnamon, nutmeg, and chili powder to taste. Bring the mixture to a boil on medium heat, stirring constantly, and remove from heat.

Add one ounce of bittersweet chocolate, broken into bits. Stir until the chocolate melts.

Add 1 3/4 cup half and half, stirring carefully to integrate it fully.

Place three tablespoons of cornstarch in a small bowl and mix with 1/4 cup half and half to form a smooth paste. Stir this into the chocolate mixture, and whisk it to make sure that it is well mixed.

Put the pan back onto medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want to use a heat proof spatula and slowly move it around the whole pan, scraping down the sides, bringing stuff up from the bottom, and keeping the pudding in motion.

It will start to thicken. Turn the heat down as low as it can go (take it off the burner if you are unfortunate enough to have an electric stove) and stir briskly for one minute, eliminating lumps. Add one tablespoon of vanilla.

Pour the pudding into receptacles. I used wine glasses, but, you know, whatever.

To avoid the formation of a skin, put a piece of cling wrap over the top, pressing it down against the pudding to form a seal. Put the pudding in the fridge to cool for at least two hours.

Do not mess with the pudding.

Let the pudding do its own thing. The mixture well set and firm up if you leave well enough alone—do not stir it, jiggle it, or otherwise muck about with it. Especially do not try to sneak a bit, because it will mess up the entire setting process and create a runny mess.

The pudding can hang out for up to two days, on the off chance that you don’t eat it before then.

I greatly enjoyed my pudding—I had one as soon as it had set and another for breakfast. Mmm.

Here’s what I liked about it:

• Texture: the pudding had a firm, creamy texture without any lumps. Yes, it resembled commercial pudding, but the spices and cacao nibs from the Mexican chocolate gave it a hint of crunch and graininess which I really liked. Using the cling film to eliminate the skin turned out to be awesome.
• Flavour: the pudding was more complex than a standard chocolate. The chili added a little bit of heat, while the cinnamon and nutmeg provided spicy background notes. The addition of bittersweet chocolate made it even more rich and chocolately, although it could have been darker for my taste. The decision not to add sugar turned out to be a good one: Mexican chocolate is sweet enough to use plain.
• Fun factor: I had forgotten how enjoyable it was to scoop things out of glasses.

There are a few things I would like to experiment with, including using heavy cream instead of half and half, and maybe trying to make a layered pudding…ideally one with a flan like layer and a Mexican chocolate layer. I imagine that it would also be really good topped with fresh whipped cream and fruit or grated semisweet chocolate.

All in all, a fun food adventure, and one I think I will be making more often.

[Mexican chocolate pudding]
[pudding]

Thanks to a tip off from the Ethicurean, I became aware today that it looks like the Food and Drug Administration is going to approve the sale of meat from cloned animals. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, meat from descendants of cloned animals has already entered the food supply. (This is not quite the same thing as cloned meat entering the food supply, but it does bear some thought.)

The Center for Food Safety registered its opposition to cloned meat in a press release, citing a number of concerns which you should probably go read. The short version is that cloned animals require more antibiotics, carry a higher risk of sponsoring drug resistant bacteria, and have a lower quality of life than normally reproduced animals. As I say, the Center for Food Safety gets way more in depth about the issue in their press release, even throwing some science around because they can do that, over there, at the Center for Food Safety.

The issue as I see it here has everything to do with labeling.

The Food and Drug Administration (with some help from neutral sources like companies that market and produce cloned animals) has determined that there is no difference between meat from cloned animals and conventionally farmed meat. The same goes for dairy products and eggs. This statement has also been made about genetically altered crops, and animals treated with rBGH. Based on scientific evidence, the FDA has determined that these products should be allowed to enter the food supply.

Fine and well. If the science supports it (although I am not sure that it does), there is no rational reason not to allow these products onto the market. This is how a free market works—I am opposed to guns, as a principle, but I don’t see those being banned from the market. Likewise, I dislike packaged foods, corn syrup, Nestle’s Quick, and pudding snacks. But all of these “foods” are readily available on the shelves of pretty much every food market in the world.

The issue here for me is one of choice. I can choose, for example, not to buy Nestle’s Quick because the product is clearly labeled. If I don’t want to put that into my body, I can purchase something else instead. Likewise, I can choose to buy dairy products from cows not treated with rBGH, if companies choose to label their dairy thusly. I can also choose to buy free range meat, or cage free eggs.

But I might already be buying altered crops and consuming them unknowingly, because there are no labeling laws. If cloned meat is allowed to enter the food supply, I might find myself eating that as well because without labeling, there is no freedom of choice. (Although I imagine that some companies may voluntarily adopt “clone-free” labeling, just as other companies tout their products as “GMO-free.”)

The obvious solution might be to patronize farmers’ markets and local sources for my food. And, you know, this is a really good solution, for a lot of reasons. But unfortunately, it is not a choice that everyone can make. People on a limited income, for example, usually cannot afford the higher prices that boutique food requires. And yes, we live in a world where locally based food is a boutique item because the yuppies have made it one. This doesn’t make locally based food a bad thing, but it does make it expensive.

Some people live in areas without farmers’ markets, or do not have reliable access to such a market. I do not think that these people should be penalized for shopping in a grocery store…I just do not. I think that everyone should be able to exercise freedom of choice over what they put into (or take out of) their bodies. For this reason, I am very supportive of clear labeling indicating whether or not my food contains GMOs, or comes from a cloned animal.

Will the FDA support this?

Probably not, because when given a choice, consumers show a preference for food that has not been tampered with. Mandatory labeling would destroy companies like ViaGen and Monsanto. As a result, I imagine that they would heavily lobby in the event of a serious consideration of labeling laws.

Even if you believe the science, you might take exception to the quality of life for cloned animals. Cloned animals may be valuable, and therefore likely to be better treated. But they are also subject to extreme health problems, which only get worse as an animal is cloned repeatedly. Cloned animals often suffer brain damage, joint problems, malformations, and circulatory problems, among other issues. These do not a life of happiness make. They also make the animals more expensive to raise and care for. Sort of makes you wonder why cloning is so popular, doesn’t it?

In fact, cloning is used to perpetuate desirable traits, like cattle which produce a large amount of meat or milk. By cloning, farmers can ensure an exact copy of the favored animal, and discard other versions. This has serious potential repercussions for species diversity, aside from being creepy. Indeed, it sounds very corporate and terrifying. I’m not sure I want my meat being handled that way…I don’t know about you.

This, my friends, is what consumer freedom has come to: in a case where it will not damage the reputation or profits of a company, it might be permitted. Otherwise…good luck.

[cloned meat]
[consumer freedom]

This entry is being written on my old Sony, which was recently restored to a usable state by a friend far more computer savvy than I am. I actually willed it to him, but he replaced it with a different computer and wondered if I wanted it back.

I did, actually, I realized. I sort of missed the mobility that a laptop had to offer, so I said “sure, why not.”

It actually made its way back to the Bay Area some time ago with another friend, but it took awhile for the two of us to reunite. Busy, I didn’t have much of a chance to muck about with it today until I booted it up to discover that he had installed Ubuntu on it.

Well heck, I thought, what’s a little Linux between friends?.

So far, I’m liking it a lot. Granted, I’ve only played in the Ubuntu environment for all of a day, really, but I am enjoying it immensely. Graphically, it’s very stripped down and elegant, a trait I really appreciate. Physically, it’s fast, even on this older machine, which is great. When the Sony was running Windows the system was always hopelessly bogged down—now it’s pretty quick for a laptop that I bought in 2000.

It’s also a very user friendly distribution. Given that I know absolutely nothing about it, I was surprised by how quickly I learned to navigate. (Of course, the person who installed it knew what they were doing, which is probably a big help—I’m sure the easy functionality is due to him as much as it is to Ubuntu.)

Of course, I also feel like I’m earning major geek style points, just by using it. I mean, not that this would be the primary reason…but I think I will leave the Sony running Ubuntu, and if I really like it I might see about switching the desktop over as well. There’s really no good reason not to, you know?

As it is, it’s like a neat Christmas present, a retooled old friend.

[Ubuntu]

In a development which I realize may be shocking to some people, not everyone on Earth celebrates Christmas.

Today my father and I went to Clement Street to wander around and get some lunch, in a break with dim sum Sunday tradition. We found ourselves at Lucky Dim Sum, an establishment I’m not sure I would recommend with confidence.

Not being terribly hungry, we just ordered har gow, shumai dumplings, and leek dumplings with water chestnuts. The har gow and shumai came from steaming vats, so we kind of expected them to be, you know, hot. Which, alas, they were not. In addition to being lukewarm, they were a little lackluster in flavor: luckily a liberal dousing of sri racha will repair a lot of bad blood in regards to dim dum. I enjoyed the leek dumplings immensely and my father might have too if I hadn’t eaten them all.

After that, we headed to the Richmond New May Wah Market for an assortment of frozen dumplings to be enjoyed later, along with a variety of other things. I hadn’t been in the New May Wah for awhile, so it was kind of fun to wander around looking at fungus dumplings, frozen squid, and a dizzying array of fermented former fruit. They also had Grade B Guavas on sale. Not knowing what a Grade B Guava is, I refrained.

Of course…they also had durian, and I almost got one just for the sake of science but then I remembered I had to take the bus back and I don’t think durian is allowed on the bus, even at Christmas time.

My father and I parted ways so that I could hop the 38 and he could return North.

At the intersection of Geary and Stockton, I heard a man playing the alto sax and was stricken with an intense sense of loneliness and longing for home, taking the 38 alone through a mostly abandoned financial district with my bag of frozen dumplings. I was inside the joint of the bus, because I like the sensation when it turns, but the twisting feeling I suddenly felt was completely unrelated to the progress of the bus.

What grace have I?