I was going to write a wonderful grammar post today, but I am still grading papers. If you never hear from me again it is because, faced with the appallingly rampant inability to distinguish nouns from verbs, I will have lost all reason. "Quote! A noun! Bah!" I will bark over and over, chasing my tail around the apartment, as coffee slowly bleeds out of my ears.
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
I do not like to touch food. Anyone who knows me has seen me do something completely fucking insane that exemplifies this point: I have tucked into a cheeseburger with a knife and fork. I have laboriously peeled shrimp with silverware; I have re-organized sandwiches to create the perfectly-level tomato foundation from which no tuna salad can topple. I have never eaten buffalo wings in public–the combination of greasy finger-food with nuclear hot sauce is too much for me to bear without the comforts of eight different forks and thirty-seven napkins.
When, over lunch earlier today, SuomiChris joked that I should never, ever go to India, I laughed it off, saying I much prefer Europe, where when one orders a salad, one can be sure of getting a fork AND KNIFE with which to eat it. Shoving an impossible forkful of hugely chunky lettuce and fist-sized cucumber slices at my mouth is the stuff of nightmares–never mind those long, stringy slices of green peppers. Better to hack them into manageable pieces, I think. Completely sensible. It’s so much the worse when the salad is dripping in some wretched dressing–I have stopped dating guys who couldn’t keep the ranch dressing from coating practically their entire upper bodies. I have a name for it: Pudding Mouth (because this happens in its worst incarnation when eating pudding, that most horrible of all foodstuffs).
It’s true, though: Europe has a much better silverware situation than we do here in the U.S. They have the beautifully curlicued tongs with which to grasp a snail shell. (Point of note: squeezing the tongs loosens the grip. This is crucial in those situations where the snail doesn’t want to exit the shell and one reflexively might tighten one’s grip: Do. Not. Tighten. The snail, still snug in its shell, will shoot across the table. Not that I know this from experience; I am merely a student of cutlery-based physics.) They have adorable tiny forks for fish; brutal wrenches for cracking a lobster shell; the lean, efficient sommelier’s knife; and that most beautiful of all utensils: the lovely sieve-like spoon that manages to suspend a transient sugar lump above a little glass of Pernod.
Am I wrong to romanticize eating utensils like this? Does my food-based neurosis betoken some latent sexual frustration? Surely not. Any sane person knows it’s best to focus on the sweetest things in life: a good, solid forking followed by a long, cozy spoon.
I am thankful that they’ve stopped making sweat pants with tapered, elasticized ankles. Unless you are in prison, you should not be wearing those.
I am thankful that at this–if at no other–moment my Chinese upstairs neighbors have stopped stomping and shouting and slamming things. Oh, the peaceful, quiet repose that is their absence.
I am thankful for chocolate and wine and pies of all kinds. Except mincemeat and pecan, I fucking hate those.
I am thankful for a day off to read this book, which is like comfort food. Lying in bed and reading it is like eating mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese, only way less messy.
I am thankful for lemons, which transform a glass of ice water into something sublime.
I am thankful for kneesocks and scarves and typewriters and coffee.
As you may know, part of my job (as decreed by the Zemblan government) involves finding out stuff about things and imparting that stuff about those things to other people. I deal in cold, hard facts. Substantives! Concrete truths that will not be denied! Here are some of my recent discoveries:
1. If one should find oneself flipping through the cable channels and come across a 1980s classic comedy such as Bull Durham, Pretty in Pink, Say Anything, or Caddyshack, one should drop everything and watch it. No one can say this is a bad idea.
2. One ought never attempt to procure food from the cheesesteak place on campus: it is staffed by two white trash ladies and a giant idiot man-child whose culinary techniques involves the fondling as many french fries as possible and then wiping his hand absently across his scrofulent, clammy brow.
3. The funniest word in the world is bubo. The worst word in the world is nugget.
From the "Inspirational" section at the Fucking Gigantic Bookstore, where not only enlightenment but also History, Language, and Self-Improvement come at very reasonable prices. Good coffee, too.
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