this ain't livin'

Choking the Art | 25Sep07

I’ve always tried to be an adventurer, culinarily. In the spirit of Jeffrey Steingarten, I will try every food at least three times before finally rejecting it, and I’m usually open to further persuasion. I’m always rather amazed when someone professes to dislike something, or claims to be allergic in the hopes that they won’t be exposed to a particular food. Indeed, more than amazed, I am deeply suspicious and dismayed, as a lack of culinary adventurousness is a lack of character, in my opinion.

I like vegetables. I like fruit. I like a lot of “weird foods,” which I guess worked out well for my father when I was a child because he didn’t have to coax me into eating my vegetables. I would ask for Brussels sprouts as a treat, for Pete’s sake. I loved going to Chinatown and eating weird dumplings, or coming home to strange scents and mysterious substances. And I happen to be steaming some artichokes at the moment, since I adore artichokes and I noticed that they were on sale at Harvest when I was last there.

What is up with not liking vegetables? I mean, I literally cannot understand it. I don’t really fathom just dismissing an entire food like that, unilaterally saying “I don’t like eggplant” and refusing to eat any foods which contain said vegetable. Do people have traumatic experiences with vegetables which cause them to tremble in fear for the rest of their lives? Are people just really bad at cooking vegetables, thereby setting up generations of children who hate them?

It’s not just that vegetables are healthy. There are plenty of foods which are good for me that I don’t like, like kombucha, which causes me to vomit a little just thinking about it. (It’s one of the few exceptions to the “try three times” rule; the one time I tried that, er, fermented beverage, I vomited profusely for a day and even now I tremble when I smell it.)

It’s that vegetables are complex, flavorful, crunchy yet tender. They smell delicious when they cook and you can use them in a myriad of forms. Something an artichoke, which starts out fiercely bitter and spiny, turns out soft, delicate, scrumptious. How can you not be into the whole process of cooking and eating artichokes, of carefully teasing off leaves and then meticulously sucking all of their soft, tender flesh off? Of preparing dipping sauces which bring out all of the awesome flavors in the artichoke. The spines just add a sense of danger, I tell you!

Oh, sure, meat is exciting, and I like it, but nothing and I mean nothing compares to vegetables. They compose all that is perfect about human existence. I love the thought that early humans bred the vegetables we eat from wild plants, that after thousands of years of refinement, we have this amazing plethora of things to eat. I love gardening and watching vegetables grow, and seeing the amazing assortment of foods which can be made with common vegetable ingredients.

If there’s some vegetable you’ve been avoiding, I dare you to try it. Look up some ethnic recipes or something, break outside of the box, but don’t you dare give up on a delicious source of nutrition. Especially in the wintertime, when the numbers of available vegetables shrink dramatically; don’t waste your chances, kids!

Damp Candles | 25Sep07

Cupcakes are a bone of contention in the ongoing battle about junk food in schools.

Can meat be green? I would argue no, actually, simply because of food chain inefficiency; vegetarian diets will always be more “green” than meat no matter how you slice it.

The no match system may have some interesting consequences for us.

A ‘public denigration of Turkishness’ could carry some serious jail time for a British artist.

Even ex-Presidents need pool boys, right?

Tornadoes in the UK? It’s starting to feel like the day after tomorrow around here.

Firefighters in their underpants is really all you need to know about this link to click on it. Straight video here in case the BBC player doesn’t load for you…believe me, you want to see this video.

On Seagulls | 24Sep07

For some reason today, I have seagulls on the brain. Western gulls, specifically, the natty little grey and white ones with the beady eyes and predatory beaks.

I have an uneasy relationship with seagulls. I think that most people who grew up close to the ocean do, since those birds can be surprisingly…vicious. They also run in packs, which makes them much scarier, especially when you are a smallish person. And they have extremely long memories; they still, for example, take a chance to poop on me whenever possible in vengeance for the wasabi incident.

One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of feeding seagulls paper cups filled with condiments at the Sea Pal, which used to make the most amazing fish and chips. The birds would swallow the paper cups whole in one gulp, snapping them up like flies. My father and always thought that this was rather entertaining. We used to eat outside, watching the seals in the harbor and noting that the seagulls were constantly up to no good. I remember at one point my father and I were nibbling on our fish and chips when a huge group of tourists ordered a bunch of food and then wandered off, leaving their grandmother at the table. The ever-helpful staff delivered all the food while the family was still rambling around, taking in the oh-so-delightful sights of the harbor, and the seagulls took about twenty seconds to descend.

Grandma didn’t stand a chance. Those birds were all over that table, and the huge pile of food had been decimated in mere minutes. When the family kind of made it back to the table, my father and I were quietly chuckling while the shell shocked grandmother tried to explain what had happened. The table was littered in bird poop, while shreds of wrappers, condiment cups, and napkins adorned grandmother, the benches, and the neighboring tables.

I don’t know why this memory endures so strongly in my head. I think it’s because it combines my loathing for tourists with my fondness for the Sea Pal. I asked my father about this event a few days ago, and I was pleased to see that he remembered it, as well. And, I’m happy to note, our expressions of glee at describing the complete destruction of a table full of food are more or less identical.

Perhaps we both lived past lives as seagulls?

Rotating Pylons | 24Sep07

Small farmers are struggling in California, thanks to costly federal regulation and less financial assistance. Given that I recently read an article about how people in urban areas were claiming farming subsidies, maybe small farmers need fancy accountants too.

William Safire muses on “tattoo regret” in his language column in the New York Times. Think before you ink, indeed.

Apparently the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t care about the health of its students. Despite numerous studies indicating that car exhaust is unsafe, the district plans to build schools extremely close to highways and freeways.

Yet another peace summit is proposed for the Middle East, but many Middle Eastern nations are skeptical.

A video contest for junk food free schools. Neato!

Hey, another climate summit! Those are really effective, especially when nations like the United States refuse to commit to any kind of action on global warming!

Equinox | 23Sep07

Do you ever think that you could have been an entirely different person?

I was lying awake in bed last night, thinking that maybe I should have gone to medical school, to become a cardiac surgeon or a neurologist or perhaps an emergency physician. I suppose that I still could, but I feel like that’s a door that’s closed to me now, that every day more doors close and my options become fewer and narrower. Maybe I was meant to be a cabinet maker, or a postman, or someone else, and I’ll never know. Perhaps in some alternate world, I am a cardiac surgeon, doing my residency, or I’m apprenticed to a cabinet maker, or I’m taking the bar exam. Maybe I’m actually doing something worthwhile in that other place.

It’s hard to think of a single defining moment when the choice of who I would become was made, but rather than a series of choices ended up creating me. Not necessarily my choices, either. Maybe if I’d gone to school somewhere else, I would have had a passion for physics and become a scientist. Or if my father had pushed me to play music, I would have become a concert harpist. Perhaps if I had been born with different neural pathways, read different books, taken different classes.

For some reason, today I feel like a nobody. I don’t feel like my presence on Earth has had a positive impact on anyone’s life; like I haven’t made any great changes in my society or contributed, in any way, to human existence. Perhaps it’s the equinox causing an existential crisis, as I know that they days will get shorter and colder and darker like they do every year while I remain the same person. Perhaps I think that with five billion people on Earth, a few of them are bound to be losers. I mean, it’s just statistical fact.

Maybe, I think, maybe I should get a second bachelor’s degree in biology, and maybe I should attend medical school and become a doctor. “Why aren’t you a doctor,” my Chinese mother says, and I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel like I am crippled with debt which overshadows all my choices now, like I can’t go back to school because I can’t afford it, I can’t pursue any dreams at all because I have trapped myself. I don’t know why I’m not anything.

I have to say, if this is what being grownup is, I want a fresh deal of cards. I don’t think I want to stand pat anymore.

Shifty Pearls | 23Sep07

Justice Stevens finds himself acting as the liberal advocate on the Supreme Court.

Amsterdam shuts down approximately one third of its famous brothels.

An Australian man retraces the steps of Genghis Khan. It sounds like an incredible journey.

Is the IRS overstepping its boundaries?

Marcel Marceau is dead at 84.

Republican candidates have made it clear that they don’t want Bush stumping for them on the campaign trail. That’s some pretty extreme party alienation there, kids.

Cooking up a Storm | 22Sep07

I think I may have a serious problem.

The fall weather always makes me want to cook. I tend to bake a fair amount in the fall, because it smells good and warms the house up. When you’re too cheap to break down and run the heater, your house gets rather cold, and everything starts to feel bland and colorless. There’s something about dour weather and the threat of rain which brings out the sudden desire to bust out the Joy of Cooking and experiment with something. I love the act of creating food, the rich smells which slowly fill the house while the cats sniff around to investigate.

I’m not a fan of this weather because it’s being a giant tease. Oh, it’s overcast right now, and there’s that faint hint of a south wind, but it’s not actually raining. It’s just thinking about it. I wonder if I am seized with the need to cook because I think it will magically bring on bad weather, so that the fates can perfectly time a power outage for a delicate souffle or a roast.

However, I’m afraid that things may be getting out of control.

In the last few days, I have made:

Two pots of split pea soup

One pan of vegan pot pie

One quiche

One pumpkin pie

Three batches of cookies

One vegan chocolate-coconut cake

Now, to be fair, the vegan pot pie and one of the split pea soups was for dinner last night (which was awesome, by the way; I have really missed our Friday dinners and it was wonderful to spend a night with friends and good food). But…I think I need to find an outlet for all this food production, or I may actually explode. And I’m running out of people to feed. I realize that the food bank doesn’t take cooked food, which I understand and sympathize with. I wonder if maybe one of the local churches does a dinner for the poor which I could contribute to. It’s troubling to think of producing so much food when people in other parts of the world are going hungry.

Anyone want to come over for dinner?

(Also, a vacuum update; the replacement filter arrived today, well actually late last night, but my father didn’t drop it off until today. And…it’s the right part! Astonishing.)

Cold Kittens | 22Sep07

Re-register for the Do Not Call listing if you haven’t done so already, because registrations expire after five years. You can add your number to the registry of their website. Avoid telemarketers! (Hey, can we have a do not spam registry, too?)

Democrats are pussies, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. If you’re thinking of supporting them in the upcoming election…don’t.

Speaking of the war, Bush wants even more money for it next year. Needless to say, the Democrats will approve it, because if they don’t, they “won’t be supporting the troops.”

The Republicans are proposing to change the “winner take all” system for electoral votes in California. This would, of course, ensure them at least 20 electoral votes from California, probably without even having to visit. Needless to say, I oppose this plan unless it’s implemented on a national level. (By the way; don’t support the Republicans either.)

The Society for Creative Anachronism is featured in the Washington Post; this is a neat little photo set.

Plastic bags are under assault in Britain. Awesome! It started with shopkeepers voluntarily ditching plastic bags, which is even better.

The Vacuum Imbroglio | 21Sep07

I have a vacuum cleaner. It’s pretty sweet. It’s a “Hoover Widepath Ultracharge Mechatron 9000 with Extra Sass.”

Anyway, my vacuum and I have a pretty good relationship. I purchased it back in 2003 from our local Sears. It’s a bagless, which I’m all about, and it’s a pretty easy keeper. Sure, the stupid cleaner attachments for the wand keep falling off the back because they’re not really secured, but it does suck. In a good way, of course. Especially when all the filters are shiny and clean, my vacuum is nothing short of formidable. Formidable, I tell you. Cats have been known to be sucked across the carpet with its force.

About every three to six months, I break my vacuum down and service it. I take the whole thing apart, remove random clogs of cat hair, wash the filters, and so forth. Every six months I replace the belt, and every year or so I try to replace the paper filter in the dirt cup. All of these parts are readily obtainable through the Hoover site, so it’s not a big deal, and it keeps my vacuum superfantastic.

So I was peacefully vacuuming on Wednesday, and my belt broke. Just…broke. It was very upsetting. Being a savvy girl, I headed to the Hoover website to order a replacement. But…my model number isn’t listed on their website anymore, and the part number I have returned no results.

So I had to call Hoover.

And then Hoover told me to call some subsidiary in San Leandro. So I called them, but they left me on hold for a really long time, so I hung up on them and called another Hoover subsidiary in San Francisco. The person who answered the phone didn’t sound too bright, but I figured we’d get our scene together.

I told him my vacuum model number, and I said that I needed a belt and a fresh filter. I also said that I needed to order these parts, as I live in Fort Bragg, not San Francisco.

“Uhhhh…” he said.

After rummaging around for awhile on their computer system, he said that they did, indeed, have the belt that I wanted. Oddly enough, the part number I gave them actually worked, although it didn’t work on the Hoover website. Fascinating.

Onto the filter. Now, for some reason, although my owner’s manual lists the part numbers for the belt, two filters, replacement headlamp, replacement light lens, replacement dirt cup, replacement primary filter, replacement brusher array, replacement wand function, and replacement handle…it doesn’t list the part number for the filter I needed to replace.

“It’s the paper filter,” I said. “The one that looks like an accordion. In the dirt cup.”

“Uhhhh…” he said. “The HEPA?”

“No,” I said, “the secondary filter. In the dirt cup.”

“Ok, ok, we have that,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “So, can I, uh, order those?”

“Yeah, we have them.”

“Er…can you ship them to me?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah.”

After about twenty minutes of having my address repeated back to me, he assured me that the parts would be shipped.

“So, er, do you want a credit card number?”

“No, no, it’s cool man,” he said. “We’ll bill you.”

“Oh, ok. Well. Thanks.”

About twenty minutes later, he called back.

“Yeah, uh, my manager says I need, uhm, a street address? And, like, your credit card number?”

“Sure,” I say.

Amazingly, the parts arrived yesterday. I was fully expecting them to ship via the slowest possible method, so I was shocked when my father called and said there was “some box from Hoover” at his house. (I don’t get packages at the hobbit house. Don’t ask me why. It’s complicated.)

So, he brought the box over and offered helpful fatherly advice while I rapidly stripped the vacuum cleaner down to install the belt and new filter.

“Er, you’ll want to unscrew that, there,” he said, as I positioned the screwdriver over the bottom of the vacuum.

“Hey,” he said, when I took the bottom off, “there’s no belt! That’s your problem!”

“Yes, yes,” I muttered, fitting the new belt on.

Yet, when I turned to the box with the filter in it…it was very obviously the wrong size. It was also, very obviously, the wrong filter. It was a filter for a “Hoover Windtunnel Ultraplus Bootlicker 6000 with Extra Nazi Filtration.” Very much not the part I had ordered.

Sigh.

So I called them back again, and got a totally different man who was very nice and helpful and actually looked up my model number and said “ah, yes” when I mentioned the thing about paper accordions. He claimed to be shipping out the new filter “that very instant,” and said I could put the wrong one back in the mail “at my leisure.”

We shall see, my friends, we shall see. I suspect that my vacuum’s clever plot isn’t over yet.

Fervid Pawpaws | 21Sep07

Chuck Norris is put to the test in the latest “Will It Blend?” video. And it’s awesome. Go watch. Now.

I mean it.

Come back when you’re done.

Student fees at UC are being jacked up…with some campuses costing more than others. So much for affordable public education for Californians!

Foot fetishists in Boston are “living in fear,” thanks to a culture which finds vanilla sex tastes totally acceptable while marginalizing people with…different….sexual practices.

Russia suggests that its claim on part of the Arctic is valid because it’s attached to Russia’s continental shelf. Ah, the old “continental shelf” ruse.

A BBC reporter writes about daily life in Gaza.

Writers’ workrooms are the topic of a neat article in the Guardian. (I see they forgot to call me, alas.)

People do gross things in attempt to get thin. Like dissolve their fat inside their bodies with products which are not approved by the FDA. Kids, love your bodies. Seriously. You’re all fabulous just the way you are.

Alicia Silverstone stars in the latest PETA porn. Meow. Hey, I wonder why the ad says she’s a vegetarian, not a vegan? Is it because they think that people don’t know what vegans are? More importantly, why does PETA continue to hold an anti-fat stance, thereby alienating more and more of the American population?