JunkMale

The original line: "Love carves misery as light carves shadow."

junkmale@livejournal.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:40:38 GMT

Cleave

As the light carves your silhouette
into the threadbare carpeting
creating absence from your presence,
and the salt-thickened breath
churning through the hotel curtains
pools around us without a drop,
we feel furthest when we are closest,
for we ache more acutely to be closer.

Without a window, I should not remember
the lipstick smack on the water glass
or how the shadow collapsed beneath the bed.
But I feel closest when I am furthest,
And the things we are bound to remember
bind us together, although the oceans
have changed, and I can not see a sun.

Rule 10: Things Will Get Worse

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:08:47 GMT

I don't know if I've had periods of depression. If you wanted to be highly technical, the "periods" of depression I can remember are 1995 to 1999, 2000 to mid-'03, and '04 to the present. (I have no memories of any kind, good or bad, before 1994. To the best of my recollection, life began at 16.) It might be more accurate to say I have periods of where I delude myself into thinking things might be okay that float in a sea of lucid, rational hopelessness.

Even by that standard, things seem kind of dark lately. It's hard to explain why. If misery were waterboarding, hope would be what they would pour over your nose and mouth. There isn't any hope, just like you're not really drowning, but the visceral reaction to hope is deep in our animal instinct where no reason will reach.

I'm going to disable comments, which I don't normally do, because someone, driven out of nothing more than a misplaced sense of obligation and some kind of disgusted pity, would contradict me or say something positive, and the truth--the truth, the only merciful thing I can do is allow myself the truth--the truth is that things are probably worse than they seem, they're just so bad that what's left of my useless, never-accomplished-anything-important garbage dump of a brain can't piece together the whole picture and is content to be shocked by whatever it can see.

That's all, I can't say anything else. Nothing constructive, anyhow.

Metro

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:47:42 GMT

I saw rose petals falling down the Rosslyn metro escalator yesterday. Here's a poem about it.
Here's the mp3 if you don't like flash.

I am two fools

junkmale@livejournal.com — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:24:32 GMT

ligature chord

like a patient convinced the bars of his cage

are the black keys on a massive pipe organ

I press against everything I touch

not because I want to move them

but because I am trying to play chords

that you might hear in the distance

through twenty-four ribs, like a small hinged lid,

or white spaces in asylum windows

where they tell me I'll soon be much better

but no one who knows the song

believes it to be true

Bwhaha

junkmale@livejournal.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:42:00 GMT

better

how nice it is
to live without
a struggle, you
must be thinking

how the limp embrace
of mediocrity is all
that is advertized
on the label

how much better
things have been
since you settled
down for him

and every load
of laundry is
exactly as soft
as the teddy bear

and how someday
your husband will
surely cure cancer
or write a poem

that convinces the
whole watching world
you haven't made
a terrible mistake

another

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:06:48 GMT

Love Poem

There's a junkie on my train, twitching, crying,
ever-writhing in the throes of dying
hanging like a ceiling fan's chain in the vortex
or the tattered threads of the cortex ravaged
outward with every thump. Outward with every thump
like plexiglass that jumps when she falls into it,
both weaving and unweaving her life all at once.
All at once, I catch the red cracks of her eyes
smearing isolated oceans at the barrier,
as if to say, don't stare--care, or don't care.

But I have never been victimized by love like heroin--
as real, as tangible, as faithful, as reliable,
as likely to be there tomorrow as needle tracks,
as warm as a street vent, as nourishing as a soup kitchen,
as transformative as rape, as certain as coroners--
and frankly--frankly--don't expect me to care,
or not care, or not to stare, because you don't,
you don't deserve to be a victim of heroin,
you haven't half earned the scars between your toes.

junkmale@livejournal.com — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:56:31 GMT

tickets

we live our mistakes like musicals
pancaked up so many bright nights
screaming at an audience laughing at us
recursing tragedies from the coda
hitting every mark in iron boots beating
the boards warped until we fall through

but we really all just wanted to be stars
singing to the audience of the bathroom
laughing at you laughing at me
laughing at the suds dripping from the ceiling
until our mouths filled up with water
and we still had lungs to object

and now, here I am, over my head
and it is so very dark down here
underneath this interrogation light
and my mouth is open and I am screaming
but I can't hear anything and the tap
is dripping over my head somewhere

Guild Drama

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:05:01 GMT

For those of you in MMORPG guilds...

I'm an officer in a guild of 500 people, where I'm ranked #3 in gear and #4 in accomplishments (both general and quest/raid). I took all my alts out of the guild today, and I'm pondering quitting altogether, because while I was on an alt, some guild noob started complaining that he couldn't view the bank tabs. I said it was because some people whine for gear from the tabs, and it wasn't worth putting up with, and he started attacking me, saying how I must be ignorant because that's what a guild bank is for. (By the way, there are lots of things a guild bank is for, and that's not really the important one, which is collecting materials needed to raid-gear members. Nobody needs to request raid gear. If you get invited to the raid and don't have it, someone will give it to you. From. The. Bank.)

So one of my fellow officers, meanwhile, starts sending me (polite) messages suggesting I should let it go and let him win on this one. And I realized that, y'know, any time there's a dispute between me and another player, I get told to swallow it. This is about the fourth time it's happened. So for all of the nice lovely hand-holding song-singing love-ins we do at raid time, I take more shit from guildies than I do from PUGs.

I've been in the guild for over a year now, and they've been instrumental in getting me geared and making me the best-geared (for now) tank in the guild (for now). But I can't shake that other thought. Why am I in a guild where I have to have so many members on /ignore? Especially since, at this point, the guild needs me more than I need the guild. I can jump to a more skilled raid guild. Preferably one that occasionally backs up their friends over random jackholes who joined that day.

Am I missing something? Is this the way all guilds work? My impression of normal guild drama is personality conflicts between specific people; this is something else--a general feeling that the guild wants me (and most of its officers, really) to take abuse from noobs because they want the guild to be big. But y'know, the raids only hold 25 people. We don't need member #501.

And #3 doesn't need them.

junkmale@livejournal.com — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:12:34 GMT

I'm just so upset they're making Julie & Julia into a movie that I can't even express it. Just so, so upset. I'm upset that some degenerate actually thought it was an accomplishment to (sort of) feed herself for a year, and even more so that anyone lauded her for it, and even more than that, that some piece of flesh-colored filth thought this was an accomplishment worth watching.

Dear Universe: please strike everyone involved with this production stone dead immediately.

Randomly

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:14:54 GMT

Food chat corrections.

Baltimore, MD: Hi Kim! I have a butternut squash question--how to I cut/peel it without severing an artery?? [...] Usually I just take my chances, but I have a good record of cutting myself.

Are you somehow disabled? Do you have two fully-functional arms? Do you know that the sharp side of the knife goes against the squash? Is it actually a squash and not a cinder block that you're cutting? I'm not totally clear on what the problem is, here. A squash is not really armored in any way. You should be able to cut one with a knife without knowing any special technique.

Do you go to online chats about housewares and ask for instructions on wiping your ass, too? If you can't figure out how to cut a squash, put down the knife and go play in traffic, you aren't fit to cook.

Kim O'Donnel: Balto, the last thing we want is for you to be rushed off to the ER due to a butternut squash.

Well, I wouldn't exactly say that's the last thing we want...

When you put the squash in the mike, did you poke it all around with a fork? And do you have a large/sharp enough knife to plow through it just once, so that the squash is in two halves?

"Did you cover it in mustard and wrap it in tempeh?"

Attleboro, MA: Re: BN squash. Cut off both ends and then cut in half across. Peel with an OXO peeler.

Really? An OXO peeler, you say?

It's not that everything that OXO makes is crap. It's just that, when OXO makes a bad product, that product fails in such an epic way that the only way to restore the cosmic balance of the universe is to seek out the person who designed it and spray their cat with a garden hose.

Their peelers are a good example of that, especially the horizontal ones. The entire rash of horizontal peelers is kind of annoying to me. If the thing you're peeling requires the kind of long, straight strokes that a horizontal peeler can make, it can be done faster and better with a knife. If it requires small curved peeling, that's what a straight peeler and a thumb excel at. The horizontal peeler is the Jennifer Lopez of the kitchen: useless to anyone that matters, and matters only to people who are useless.

Even the vertical peeler is a swivel peeler, which presents a problem, as it doesn't know how much to take off until I apply pressure telling it how much to take off, which I can't control if the blade is wiggling. These devices would be great if you needed to take the same amount of flesh off of everything to peel it. But you don't. You want to peel very, very lightly if you're taking off zest to candy it; you want to peel taro with a heavy hand to remove the fibrous outside; and everything else, from artichokes to zucchini, has its own structure and subsequent depth requirement. None of them can be accomplished if the cutting blade of the peeler is wiggling around. So basically, swivel peelers killed Jesus. In fact, it would've been better if they just killed Jesus, because I can prove that the broccoli rabe they ruin actually existed at some point.

Meanwhile, all OXO handheld products suffer from the same disease: the giant, goofy rubber handles that make these things adored by arthritis sufferers. While I appreciate the value of that market niche, trying to flute a mushroom while holding a softball-sized blob of rubber is like trying to thread a needle with a Chipotle burrito.

In short, I can tell by your humping an OXO product that you are very old and that makes me sad for your imminent death. Which I hope comes quickly.

Kim O'Donnel: [...] I like the peeling idea.

Yeah... peeling... novel.

Butternut squash: Here is what I do. Cut the "bulb" off from the "neck" of the squash. Cut the stem end off of the neck. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the peel from the "neck." Cut the "neck" into slices and then cube. Cut the blossom end off of the "bulb." Use a vegetable peeler to remove the peel (just like an apple). Cut "bulb" in half and scoope out seeds. Cut the "bulb" halves into cubes.

Oh yeah? Well, I think someone should cut the "head" from the "neck" of your "body" such that you "die" because you are an "unnecessary" quotation mark "abusing" mother "fucker."

Kim O'Donnel: More peeling tips!

I know, it surprised me, too!

Virginia Beach, VA: Hi Kim. Do you have any experience with making a King's Cake? If so, do you have a recipe for one?

Did you have a particular King in mind? Unless you meant a king cake, rather than a king's cake, the former being a a specific New Orleans tradition and the latter being any random cake a King happens to eat. Do you know's when's and how's to make's thing's possessive's? 'cause this isn't one of those times, you shit's head.

Kim O'Donnel: Wow, that one slipped off my radar. Indeed it's Ephiphany today. I've never tested it, but I've got a Mardi Gras King Cake recipe that comes from my copy of "Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine" that would do the trick.

I'd make fun of Kim for helpfully reading a book for these people, but I think they genuinely might not be able to do that themselves.

Hoppin' John ... hold the meat!: Kim, On my way to a meeting, but want to THANK YOU for making me "brave" to try Hoppin' John using the "real" black eye peas ... not canned or frozen! I may now be brave enough to try other beans from the "soaker to the plate!"

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone fit so much stupidity into one fluid motion. It's like watching someone fall down a flight of stairs into a manhole while on roller skates and carrying a box of knives.

First of all--and I have no idea why this is so hard for you fucking morons--it's "black-eyed peas." Not "black eye peas." See, "black-eyed" is one of those fancy things they call an adjective. While "black" is an adjective, "eye" is a noun, and that makes "black eye peas" a list of two unrelated things, one of which happens to be black, while "black-eyed peas" is an actual thing you can eat. You moron.

Second, I'm baffled that you think "real" black-eyed peas are dried. Really? You think they grow from a dried plant in dry ground?

Third, it's generally not considered a mark of bravery that you managed to stare down a legume. Try staring down a book sometime, you semiliterate buffoon.

Fourth, you seem extraordinarily proud of making "Hoppin' John." Congratulations, you've replicated the accomplishment of poor dirt farmers everywhere. Oh no wait, you didn't, because you "held the meat." Instead you replicated the accomplishment of yuppie white people on their way to Bath and Body Works to get a hand soap that matches the color of their guest towels. Good job, shithead.

Big freaking deal. Hoppin' John is repulsive. You are repulsive. I am repulsed by you and your Hoppin' John. I want to make you a black-eyed moron. Or, as you would say, "black eye moron," you adjective-confused fuck.

Kim O'Donnel: So glad you enjoyed and are finding your way with beans. They are probably my favorite thing to eat, period. I can eat beans every day.

Ladies and gentlemen, reason number #52 not to spend time around Kim O'Donnel.

San Francisco, Calif: Bought a 14 oz. tub of lite sour cream by mistake... [a]ny suggestions for using it up? No desserts or other fat/calorie-laden concoctions, please.

So you buy a container (14 ounces is hardly a "tub") of a substance that is probably around 10% fat and then request instructions on how to use it to make something that doesn't have a lot of fat. Oh, hey, here's an idea: use the sour cream to grease the knob on your oven so it turns on easily, then put your head inside. That's a recipe that's sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

"Lite" sour cream is basically sour half-and-half. You can use it wherever you might use regular half-and-half and where the taste of lactic acid won't bother you: soups, sauces, salad dressings and dips are the obvious ones and probably the only ones you're capable of doing, since you had to ask this question, but they're not the only ones.

You can use lite sour cream to make biscuits or muffin-like breads, like banana bread. You can stabilize it with flour, or mix it with butter, and use it to poach eggs. You can use it as a marinade and let the lactic acid break down animal proteins. You can mix it with yogurt for a tandoori base.

The chemical trick you need to remember is this: 30% fat is the magic number when it comes to diary products. If a dairy product is 30% fat or higher, you can boil it (because the fat content will be high enough to prevent it from curdling) or whip it (because the fat content will be high enough to let it trap air). Under 30%--like your lite sour cream--and it will curdle if heated and stay runny if whipped. (You can stir sour cream into a soup or sauce that's just come off the fire, but you can't drop some in and boil away.)

If you want to use it in some application that requires heating or whipping, you need to raise the fat content (the easy way) or add some kind of stabilizing starch or gum (the molecular gastronomy way). Or, you know, learn to read the package before you buy something, you simp.

Kim O'Donnel: I'm kinda stumped. Does this mean homemade onion dip w/caramelized onions is a no-no?

Well, sure, homemade onion dip is low fat. And Lindsay Lohan is a virgin, and I'm the King of Siam.

Butternut : I learned from a wonderful recipe from Runner's World,

Aw Christ.

and subsequently several from Veg Times,

Oh Jesus Baby-raping Christ.

that b'nut skin is entirely edible. I now eat most squash skins after cooking.

You can eat a ream of office paper (or p'per as you would call it, you goddamn pathetic excuse for a sentient being) if you want to, but that doesn't make it a good idea, either. Next time get your tips from a magazine of people who, y'know, like food somehow. Not people who run away from it, or who said, "You know who has a sweet place in the food chain? Cows."

Kim O'Donnel: On a similar note, I love the skin on delicata squash.

Why? Because it's yellow and brown, like mustard?

Alexandria, VA: Kim, just wanted to say thanks

I JUST WANTED TO SAY DIE OF AIDS now we're both happy.

Washington, D.C.: Kim, just a comment about

HOW HORRIBLY SMALL YOUR BRAIN IS okay, we got it, moving on.

Vegetarian entree?: Oy. I am not used to making vegetarian entrees, but I need to for an upcoming dinner party. The reason I am having a difficult time is because there are constraints around it . . . they are: no tofu; not Italian; and no squash/eggplant/those types of vegetables. I personally am not a big fan of beans...

Any other constraints? Nothing green, perhaps? The name can't contain any vowels? Not visible under normal light? Must be able to whistle the national anthem? Any other asinine restrictions you want to put on this, princess? Develop a palate, you savage piece of filth.

Anyhow, the main thing, as far as I can tell, that distinguishes a vegetarian entree from a meat-eater's person's side dish is that they put it on, under, or between the starch. Somehow, that makes it a meal.

A pile of spinach? Side dish. A pile of spinach wrapped in a tortilla? Entree!

A tomato salad? Side dish. Diced tomato between slices of roasted yams? Entree!

A scoop of spicy okra? Side dish. A scoop of spicy okra over rice? Entree!

If there's a better strategy for this, I don't know. Besides, I'm disinclined to help you because you say no Italian food.

Kim O'Donnel: Yes! [...] Take a look at the veggie pot pie with cheddar crust!

This makes me feel sad in my heart, mostly because I envision someone being thrilled to get a cheddar-crust pot pie and then discovering it's a bunch of fucking peas and carrots in béchamel.

sour cream recipe: You could make a Chicken Paprikash with sour cream. If that doesn't appeal then check out other hungarian dishes - many of them use sour cream. [recipe follows]

The recipe involves boiling the sour cream. The sour cream would curdle. Thanks for playing, and go to fucking hell.

Eastern European sour creams typically hover just above 30% fat. You can boil them. American sour cream is far lower fat, not out of any health concern but because we put much more fat in our butter than Europe does. You cannot boil American sour creams; they will curdle. And American light sour creams will absolutely, positively curdle far below boiling.

Kim O'Donnel: Fab. Now we're talking.

Now we're talking--about serving people curdled cream, genius.

Chantilly, VA: I love this recipe for mushroom stroganoff and I always use light sour cream. [recipe follows]

Okay, this calls for mixing arrowroot (one of the more refined thickeners) into a sour cream mixture with sherry in it and then heating it until it thickens slightly. This might work, but it's not exactly an optimal thing.

Acidity (like in sherry) and heat can both cause sour cream to curdle, and the flavor of the sour cream will not be improved by cooking it even if it doesn't. You might get away with this because the arrowroot might hold the sour cream together, but the thickening power of arrowroot is greatest after the mixture hits a boil. It makes far more sense, and provides a richer texture and greater intensity of flavor, to just add the sour cream off the heat.

But for being the first person in the chat who isn't a total fuck-up, you get a check. No check-plus-plus today, though.

Kim O'Donnel: Excellent -- I knew someone would come through with a 'shroomy stroggie!

... said the 'tardy time-wastie!

Washington, DC: I froze a bunch of peaches (peeled, cubed and tossed with lemon juice) and now I want to eat them! Other than making smoothies, any suggestions on what to do with them?

Use them to obstruct your airway! It's fun! Mostly for me, but still--fun!

Freezing peaches will (as it does for anything else) make the water in them form ice crystals that'll shred the flesh somewhat, with the net result being that your peaches will have a cooked texture rather than a fresh texture. So you definitely have serve them in a way you'd want to find cooked peaches, or puree them entirely. (To avoid cooking them twice, use them frozen in whatever you're heating.)

Peach flan would be my vote.

Kim O'Donnel: I believe a cobbler is in order. With biscuit crust. You game?

You don't think it's semi-important to mention you have to keep the peaches frozen or they'll turn into a pile of goo?

Re: Light Sour Cream: I have not had good luck with it in recipes where it would have to be heated.

No shit.

Kim O'Donnel: Ah, this is a useful tip...

Yes, if ONLY there was an expert around who could've provided it.

I have to skip some of these. They are just too, too stupid and are making me sick.

Arlington, VA: Kim, my wonderful boyfriend granted my wish and gave me a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas!

Wow. Way to give the finger to sexual politics, there. Play your cards right, Blondie, and Dagwood will get you a new vacuum cleaner for your birthday.

We've been on the road since then but now I'm back and wondering what I should make for my maiden mixer voyage. I've wanted one for years and always thought "if I just had a mixer, I could make..."

"... fewer excuses?"

There's virtually nothing you NEED a mixer to make. The only thing I can think of is homemade marshmallows, where the heat from the syrup actually might be too much for a human arm to take, and the speed with which you need to work might be too great for a human arm to replicate. But other than that, a mixer is a convenience.

Kim O'Donnel: Maybe we should start basic. Ever make pizza before?

Frankly, I'd be hesitant to send someone out to use a mixer to make pizza as their first time making pizza. Bread in general, and pizza in particular, depends on a lot of voodoo to go right, because there are variables that change every time: the moisture in the flour, the humidity in the air, how evenly the oven heats, and a dozen other nuances. One learns to recognize them by touch, and a mixer burns through the stages of bread so fast that it's not even an ideal tool for basic breaducation. (HA! I SLAY ME!)

Further affiant sayeth naught, because I need to go soak some cats.

Family

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:28:34 GMT

Dear Family,

I understand that you feel that I am hard on you, that I don't give you enough slack, that I expect you to be right all the time and not screw up. This is because we share some degree of common DNA. I expect more than average out of myself and I expect slightly less than that out of you.

You (collectively) simply cannot be as stupid as you act, most of the time. You cannot possibly be as subhumanly inconsiderate as you are being at this moment. And I am not sorry for pointing this out and making you feel like crap, which you most assuredly are.

All I expect from you is that you behave in accordance with some minimal level of courtesy and decorum, the sort that the family dogs have in abundance. As you notice, I show them affection and they act within these parameters. I show you affection and you metaphorically pee on my leg. You are less than dogs, and less deserving of affection from anyone, let alone from me.

It's entirely possible that I'm not even blaming you enough for the things I should probably be blaming you for, not the least of which are my high standards for personal conduct and my unforgiving nature. I've blocked out any memory of my childhood, which I can only assume is because you were all motherfucking bastards then, too.

In short, fuck you all, you devolved pieces of fucking shit. I would gladly trade you for a handful of magic beans, or just regular beans.

Yours,
Junk.

Will The Fun Ever Start?

junkmale@livejournal.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:24:14 GMT

Squarely

Dovetailed indecisions sit between the two
interlocked and loaded, like a Rubik's cube
teetering between the orange and the blue,
no yellow bricks lining a road to resolution
on the black-and-white vinyl tile floor.
I don't think they're in Kansas anymore.
Suddenly, the kettle goes off, awfully frantic,
chemotherapy-pitch screaming through the tension
metastasizing rampant red over the conversation
about sorting lives into used cardboard boxes,
as if the boxes themselves weren't the answer.
Any corners will cut through the circumstances.
Speed kills, but then again, so does cancer.

junkmale@livejournal.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:12:17 GMT

They Named a Disaster After You

The details must be getting fuzzy.
Was it the third, or tenth?
Thirteenth? When was it?
You must be very addled to forget.
You must be very addled.

You must be very troubled by that drink,
stirring it around to Category Five.
You must be very addled.
You must be very sad to be alive.
When was it? Thirteenth?

How much have you got riding on the spin,
turning around what happened until
you're a Category Five victim,
when you don't even know when it happened?
You must be very sad,
You must be very addled to be alive.

Do you find these questions bewildering?
You must be very confused to be asking,
when, after all, I'm the villain--
You must be very addled,
You must be very Category Five.

You Never Knew, You Never Will

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:26:14 GMT

So sad that it should come to this! We tried to warn you, yes, it's true!

The Politics of Food

junkmale@livejournal.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:26:34 GMT

Every now and again, the mass hysteria we usually reserve for riots after sporting events and dramatic forecasts of the impending death of life on Earth takes a tilt to the left and instead tries to save us from our eating habits. Recent examples include NYC's band on trans fats and Chicago's recently repealed ban on foie gras, but America has a history of questionable food decisions, often based on junk science, or no science at all.

Trans fats are created by taking an unsaturated fat and using an isomer fatty acid to replicate saturated animal fats; typically, hydrogen is used to saturate some molecules until the consistency approximates rendered animal fat (hence the phrase "partially hydrongenated" that you'll find in the labels of so many shelf-stable products). The objections to trans fats go something like this: "they make you fat and give you heart disease, which is bad."

I'll give you that. You know what else makes you fat and gives you heart disease? Rendered animal fat. You know what the cheapest, most likely substitute for trans fats will be in restaurants? Rendered animal fat. And animal fat has a few added problems, not the least of them being a much quicker rate of rancidity, which could lead to death in a whole new and exciting way, depending on just how toxic your particular batch happens to be.

Even the more expensive substitutes for trans fats aren't all that safe. For example, Crisco reformulated a few years ago so it could boast "0g Trans Fat Per Serving!" Unfortunately, the FDA allows manufacturers to round down; if there's half a gram or less trans fat per serving, Crisco can put 0g per serving on the label. But prior to reformulation, Crisco only had 1.5g trans fat per serving, which raises the question: if trans fats are so bad that we shouldn't be allowed to put them in restaurant food, then shouldn't we be honest about how much is in each serving?

Evidently not; NYC's ban also exempts fats with less than 0.5g trans fat per serving from their ban. And no one has taken the somewhat obvious step of asking--how much trans fat is in the finished food, and how much of that food are people eating? Are restaurants replacing some of the missing hydrogenated fat with animal fat? If any of this had anything to do with health, wouldn't it be worth someone asking?

Of course, if this had the slightest thing to do with health, we might well ask. But nothing in our history of food legislation suggests health motivates our food bans.

It's Like Taking Formula From a Baby

Consider the case of Filled Milk. Filled milk was skim milk with vegetable fats added. The obvious advantage of filled milk to its purveyors was that it allowed them to remove the cream and use it to make butter, sour cream, or ice cream, which could be sold at a greater profit than the milk alone. But there was an advantage of filled milk to consumers, too; the companies selling filled milk would often "pass the savings on to you." If you were poor, you could buy more filled milk than regular milk, because the producer's profit on the butter made up the difference. And in the early 1920s, demand for butter exceeded production, so filled milk was a win-win-win; it filled butter demand, made more money for milk producers, and gave the poor a healthy alternative to regular milk.

But dairy farmers were offended for a number of reasons. First, filled milk tasted almost exactly like milk, which made the rest of the advantages all the more attractive. Second, widespread commercial homogenization was more than a decade off, and the smaller fat molecules of oils stayed dispersed in milk longer than milkfat, which meant drinkers didn't have to shake the milk before every sip. Third, without a risk of rancidity, the milk lasted a bit longer in the icebox (with electric refrigeration not reaching common use until freon is discovered in the 1930s). And fourth, and perhaps worst, filled milk was much, much cheaper, since the "valuable" part of the milk was the cream.

Dairy producers didn't like the sound of any of this, and took their battle against "adulterated milk" to the politicians with a peculiar spin. They argued that the cheaper, "inferior" filled milk was being "dumped" on poor communities by filled milk producers who sought to sell more high-priced butter to the rich. Being alarmed by the allegation, the Filled Milk Act passed in 1923, which barred the product's sale in interstate commerce. It is still banned in the U.S. to this day; as the law only prohibits products that are designed to "resemble" milk or cream, however, it is possible to find "filled milk" products marketed as substitutes for evaporated milk.

What were the consequences of this ban? Well, it saved the poor from being able to afford milk. Dodged a bullet there, didn't we?

But that's not all. One of the most obvious uses for filled milk was in baby formula. While the current version of the filled milk act exempts doctor-prescribed formulas, at the time, the result was that producers turned to formulas stabilized with sugar. And since the milkfat couldn't be turned into butter, and the demand for butter was higher than production (remember?), scientists turned to new ways to make butter substitutes. One way was to partially hydrogenate oils... leading us to the rise of trans-fats.

Stupidity follows stupidity, but you'll never go bankrupt betting against the ability of the American public to make rational decisions.

I Hope You Red Dye

The peculiar mathemagicians at the FDA--the ones who calculated that >.5g = 0g--have been engaging in fuzzy math on a host of different issues. Consider the proactive "Delaney Clause" of 1960. Rep. James Delaney of New York proposed the measure, which directed the FDA not to approve any chemical food additive "found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals."

That sounds very good indeed. Unfortunately, not all carcinogens are as accommodatingly dramatic as asbestos, and determining what "induces" cancer in food is always going to be a tricky proposition. At the base level, all food intake promotes cell reproduction, and cell reproduction increases the chance of errors in genetic duplication; thus, the act of eating itself promotes cancer. Of course, if your cells did not divide, you would would be dead, which would reduce your chance of contracting cancer to zero, but pose certain other practical problems in your daily existence. Thus, we have to take the language of the Delaney Clause with a grain of salt, and assume that what we are looking for is something that, when added to food, increases the risk of cancer faster than non-carcinogenic food.

Unfortunately, we're not entirely sure what food is carcinogenic to begin with. As we live longer and consume more, we reach higher levels of substances in our bodies than our ancestors. However, since the simple act of living longer increases your cancer risk, the eventual onset of cancer isn't itself an indicator that conspicuous consumption can be correlated to the disease--nor is the absence of cancer an indication of the safety of a particular diet. Only large populations and large exposures teach us anything about carcinogens.

But large exposures are only meaningful if a human being could actually achieve those levels. Which brings us to Red Dye #2, and the FDA's attempt to placate a vocal group of public health advocates.

In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union allegedly determined that Red Dye #2 was carcinogenic in humans. (The Soviet Union also determined that Chernobyl was a safe gamble and that Socialism would improve the condition of the working class, so this, to me, is about is significant as saying that a group of ferrets and a Teddy Ruxpin determined that Red Dye #2 was carcinogenic.) The FDA started to perform tests of their own, but did not achieve the same results. By the time a second study was started, the ninnies that make up the lunatic fringe of pantry nannies was already whipped up into a hysterical froth.

As their tests of normal amounts of Red Dye #2 produced no results, the FDA pursued tests with impossible amounts of Red Dye #2 to look for a distinction. FDA determined was that large amounts of Red Dye #2 acted as a carcinogen in lab rats. Ultimately, they found a "statistically significant" increase in cancer in female rats. The study involved the injection of the dye under the skin daily for 25 months; to reach a similar quantity of dye in a human being, Time magazine reported, you would have to drink 7,500 12-oz. cans of soda a day every day for those 25 months.

If this is not already clear to you, let me spell it out: if you ingest 703.125 gallons of soda--which, assuming 8.34 pounds to the gallon, as with water, is well over two metric tons of soda--every day, you will absolutely not live long enough to die of cancer. Most likely, you will die of water intoxication around the four gallon mark, leaving you dead before you finished the other five hundred and thirty four thousand, two hundred and eighty gallons you would have to drink in 25 months before you were breaking even with the lab rats.

And even if, magically, you did that--would you have cancer? No, you'd have a statistically measurable increased risk. There were five groups of 24 rats in the study. The four test groups had 3, 3, 6 and 4 instances of cancer, respectively. The control group had two. Being as you died on the first day--either from water intoxication, or a burst bladder, or from drowning during a mishap in the soda delivery--you probably wouldn't notice.

But fortunately, if that doesn't convince you, rest assured we have replicated this experiment on a much larger scale, with 30 million human test subjects: Canada, which doesn't ban Red Dye #2, and yet seems not to experience massive numbers of tumors when we dissect them. I can only assume they are drinking fewer than two tons of soda per day.

So why ban? Because people whined about the risks without any actual knowledge whether or not there was any risk. Considering that another popular red food pigment is made from ground insects, you'd think people would have other concerns. But no; feed people ground insects and they're happy--feed them something the soviets were rumored to dislike and you're a public health risk.

Defining "Butter" Apart From Faces

For the 20th century, the story on butter was that it was great for 50 years, and then for the next 50, was the worst thing you could do to your body; and yet, while Europeans consume far more butter, they have far lower rates of death from heart attacks. To even start to reconcile that disparity, you have to start by answering this question: what the hell is butter?

Since the late 19th century, the United States as defined butter as a food product made "exclusively" from milk or cream, with or without salt and coloring agents, that was not less than 80% milkfat by weight. That seems very simple, and it would seem from that definition that butter is a product like, say, corn oil, with well-defined natural characteristics that vary little.

Of course, that's not really what chefs, cooks and farmers mean when they say "butter." To put it in culinary terms, butter is an emulsion of water suspended in fat. Chemically, butter could have as little as 65% milkfat or as high as 90% milkfat (anything higher than that and you're treading into butteroil territory, which is interesting, but not something you'd recognize at the table). Moreover, traditionally, butter was made from cream collected over a period of days, by which time some of the cream had started to turn; this gave butter a pronounced flavor that most modern European butter producers have tried to emulate. That's why in Europe, most butter is what you'd call "cultured butter," even though most of those are produced without life cultures in the finished product (as opposed to yogurt, which doesn't work any other way). Meanwhile, in the U.S., virtually all butter is produced with fresh cream; hence, the label "sweet cream butter," used to described salted and unsalted butter alike.

(Note: the cultured/sweet difference is partially about pasteurization, which is a whole 'nother ball of butter, but we have ways of making pasteurized, cultured products; we just choose not to with butter. And I really don't want to get into that whole debate right now, since it's outside the scope of the issue I want to talk about here.)

So, the issue is this: why 80%? You'd think that, given that butter shortages were common in the first half of the 20th century, there'd be a commercial incentive to push for 70%, allowing more butter to be produced. (But read the next section...) The answer is wholly unsatisfying: the people who came up with 80% just picked a number that replicated what dairy producers believed to be good butter at the time. And who was this regulatory agency, setting food policy for all of our stomachs?

In fact, it was the IRS. In 1886 the IRS set out to levy a tax on oleomargarine, which was, in essence, butter cut with oils and water to make a butter-like product at a fraction of the cost. Why is that bad, you ask? Well, at the time, adulterated food was fairly common and unregulated. Since the first merchant in Ancient Greece set out to sell his wine, there was another merchant selling it a few drachmas cheaper because he added water--and one selling it even cheaper than that, because he added dirty water.

The IRS wasn't really looking to define what qualifies as butter; it was looking to define what qualifies as oleomargarine. And in order to do that, it had to define what butter was, and then define what margarine wasn't. And at some point, someone in the IRS decided that 80% is what butter is, and that less than 80% butterfat by weight wasn't butter. That was a good number... because it made it unprofitable to buy butter and cut it with fresh milk.

But Not All That Glistens is Butter

The IRS's tax on oleomargarine was three years prior to the elevation of the Department of Agriculture to a cabinet-level agency, and about a decade before that department's interest expanded from its original narrow focus on the quality of meat available to the public. The options for food regulation were decidedly narrow, and one way to reduce the spread of... well, spreads, was to create an economic disincentive for their production. In 1909, the New York Times ran a letter that articulated the then-current federal tax on margarine was a quarter of a cent per pound. But state taxes existed, as well, and some states also attempted to regulate the coloration of margarine, viewing the yellow color as being a method of tricking consumers into believing that the product was real butter. Some states required the color to be sold separately; one state even required the margarine be pink. (Way to be progressive, New Hampshire.)

Of course, the retelling of this tale has suffered over the years. In the 1960s onward, it's been told like this: the dairy producers wanted to keep butter prices high, and they lobbied Congress, and Congress forced the IRS to tax oleomargarine to stop the competition. It's a tidy story that's easy to tell, and it's been popular because, since in the 1960s, we want to believe that butter is bad, that it makes us fat and kills us, while margarine is good.

In other words, the telling of the story has been as politicized as the tax on margarine was alleged to be.

The truth is somewhat more complicated, as it always is. While the tax on margarine was motivated in part by a diary industry that, as we've seen from the filled milk campaign, didn't like competition from other companies, the price of butter--and the high margins it commanded--had nothing to do with margarine being banned, and everything to do with condensed milk.

Condensed milk, you ask? Why, yes, condensed milk. The same condensed milk that was going into baby formulas because "adulterated milk" was bad.

The dairy industry in the first half of the 20th century was highly localized; local creameries produced milk and butter and sold them to local cities, and the quality and price of butter in one city could vary quite a bit from that which was available in another city. (While the technology to preserve butter in cans existed, the margins on butter were so low that the cost of the can was several times that of the butter.)

But then, an un-funny thing happened: World War I. And to send milk overseas, you rather had to put it in a can. And since the canning process required high temperatures and cooking the milk, it made sense to reduce it and add sugar to preserve it. The technology for canned condensed milk had existed since the Civil War, when it was sent along with soldiers on both sides, but sending men overseas to fight created a new urgency to its production. And it was an urgency that the government was willing to pay for.

Since the government was a ready-made market for condensed milk, it made sense to produce it. But condensed milk also had the advantage of not being a localized product; it could be produced anywhere and sold to the government for shipment. In markets where the price of fresh milk was lower than the government was paying for condensed milk, creameries quickly converted themselves to condensers. But condensers don't make butter.

Butterfat is not used in making condensed milk. There was no shortage of butterfat. That's why 80% butterfat was no problem for creameries to put into butter. In reality, the problem was a shortage of creameries, made essentially extinct in some communities due to the higher prices commanded by condensed milk. Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota were spared this fate--as they had a contract with the government to make canned butter, also for a higher price than could be afforded locally.

When World War I ended, some condensers converted back to creameries. Some focused on marketing sweetened condensed milk for use in other products, like pies and baby formula. Wisconsin, for its part, thought cheese might be a better use of that excess capacity...

That's The Way The Butter Melts

My point isn't that we're all stupid. It's that what we eat, and why we eat it, is far more about politics than nutrition. That has always been true, will probably be true in the future, and is more true than ever at the moment. Whatever you choose to eat or not eat, do it with eyes wide open.

By the way, I still have pictures of the brioche-making. I'm just too lazy to upload them and need to write down the damn recipe. Bleh.

Sex and the City

junkmale@livejournal.com — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:57:49 GMT

I started writing this as a reply to a post by campbellpaige, but since I kind of went off the rails on the question track, I thought, meh, I'll whine about it here...

It's about Sex and the City, and whether or not the movie was good or not, or people should be satisfied with it, and whether or not the characters are strong women because of what happens in the movie. So anyway, this is what I was saying:

I know I'm not the target demo here, but frankly, I think they're whores who should consider themselves lucky to have anyone.

Strong women? How? Fucking a lot of people doesn't make someone strong, it makes him or her a whore. So they're mega-accomplished 5th degree blackbelt whores by the time we start the movie, and then we're supposed to feel sympathy for anything that happens to them, as if their lives should be rewarded for maintaining a constantly vacuous level.

I dunno... I can't think of a male protagonist you could swap with these women since Johnny Wadd, and yet anyone who would venerate the work of John Holmes in the way SanC is so blankly parroted would be--and should be--viewed as a product of brain damage.

The funny thing is, sexploitation films are far more progressive and empowering than anything that's ever happened to any of the characters or actresses or writers or producers of SatC. Sexploitation was about a reclaiming of femininity and, in a sense, sexuality from the confines of contemporary expectations. It did it by putting women in a context where they were in control of their destiny in absurd, unlikely and often naked ways, but they were nevertheless decision-makers and heroines of their own outlandish stories, given the cheesy one-liners that belonged only to their male rescuers a decade ago.

But there's a difference between empowering a rape victim to hunt down and kill her rapists one by one ("I Spit On Your Grave," an absolute exploitation classic), and suggesting that, somehow, when men sleep with a bunch of women they're bad, but when women sleep with a bunch of men, they're empowered.

Nope, sorry, they're all whores. Which makes certain points in the series totally baffling. Why Carrie would feel like more of a whore when someone leaves money on the nightstand is beyond me--she was a whore when she decided to fuck a guy she knew for 24 hours. Frankly, she was never worth as much as was on the table.

Is "empowerment" some kind of code word in modern American feminism designed to mean immunity for consequences of bad decision-making? It seems to be. The Spice Girls sold "girl power" as a concept that required 11-year-old children to wear corsets, and a good segment of the population bought that. So SatC is somehow the perfection of this marketing model, the idea that actually fucking large numbers of people is okay as long as you're for-really-and-truly on the quest for True Love.

Yeah, that's logical. And it's okay to steal as long as you're for-really-and-truly on the quest for True Wealth. And it's okay to sell arms to get money to trade for hostages as long as you're for-really-and-truly on the quest for the American Way. Mmhmm. I hope you'll understand when I crush your skull with my boot, because I'm for-really-and-truly on the quest for True Sanity.

As the saying goes, "it is a mark of insincerity to look for the Emperor in the low-class tea shops." Just as it is insincere to look for love in sex, and to look for empowerment in whores.

Potato Gnocchi

junkmale@livejournal.com — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:58:17 GMT

Meh, the video is too long and cuts off at the end. It's 10 minutes of hearing me snivel and curse. NSFW unless you have headphones and/or a very liberal workplace, though I think I only drop two or four f-bombs, which is a record for me.

Ms. Magazine is Only $25 a Year, Y'know

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:57:55 GMT

So apparently, it's racist when Hillary points out that the not inconsequential numbers of white folks in this country prefer her, but when Obama calls a reporter "sweetie," it's the media trying to tarnish his name and divert attention from "real issues."

I dunno, the fact that Obama is sexist and dismissive--when he knew he was being watched--seems like a real issue. Lord knows what he does when he thinks nobody's looking. And yet, to read the comments on that story, the CNN readership seems to think it's not a big deal.

So would it be racist if someone else said, "Hold on, boy," to Obama? And how is that different than sweetie? Why is it okay to dismiss someone because of their gender but not because of their race? Perhaps the most disgusting part of this is the apology he offered didn't acknowledge the sexism of the statement. It's not clear he even knows why he apologized.

This isn't even really about the election; I want to know why a member of congress would use that. Habit was his defense. Habit? Is it supposed to be comforting he has a habit of sexism? Am I supposed to feel better about that?

And no, he's far from the first person in congress to be a sexist or a bigot. Obviously, very far. My own rep, Jim Moran, is an anti-Semite I vote against every election, but the idiots in this district just vote by the party and not by the candidate.

Well, I'm not that kind of idiot. If the Democrats give me Obama, it's McCain '08 for me. And I don't even have guns or religion to cling to. Just common sense.

Why is Pasta So Hard for People?

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:51:34 GMT

Honestly?

I wasn't feeling well today and was home from work, so I was thinking about food. I came up with an idea for a meal: paneer gnocchi tossed with pureed and chopped beet greens, served with a limoncello lassi. Ricotta gnocci are possibly the best thing to come out of southern Italy; the main difference between ricotta and paneer is that ricotta sits in its whey to achieve a creamy texture, and paneer doesn't.

So, the tricky technique to make this possible... I will have to actually make whey, add vinegar, and force the paneer to sit in it until it has a texture similar to ricotta. That will take about eight hours, I imagine. At that point it should be a doable thing. The beet greens are my (equally?) cheeky send-up of saag paneer.

Anyway, in the course of forming this plan, I had the occasion to browse some Web sites and view some videos on things that weren't totally related, but were horrifying.

About.com features two videos that are so bad, they put abortion in perspective. Let's start with the Holocaust of potato gnocchi.

First off, gnocchi rhymes with smoky. It does not rhyme with jockey. (If you are Canadian, that may not apply to you--I don't know how if there's an accepted different Canadianization of that.) Americans and Italians pronounce it exactly the same way.

So, let's see. She starts by cooking three potatoes in the oven for 40 minutes, then scooping out the inside and discarding the peels. Hmmmm. Well, unless you feel a massive need to serve potato skins with your gnocchi, there's no reason to cook the potatoes in the oven. If you want cooked potato flesh, your microwave will oblige in less than a quarter of the time.

Problem #2 is that she's got a bowl of scooped-out potato insides. She explains that to make gnyawkee, you need "super-smooth" potatoes, and that to achieve that, she's going to whip them.

HOLYGODNOEPICFAIL. No no no no no. No. No. No. No. No. Not at all.

Potatoes--particularly the russet ones she's using here--are high in starch. When you treat starch violently, the starches break down and form gluten. Gluten makes things glue-y. If you're making bread, this is good; gluten is what makes the bread elastic. That's why you knead it. Violence for bread is good. But gnocchi, as she describes later, are supposed to be "light and fluffy."

Now, what about glue screams "light and fluffy" to you? If you're making mashed potatoes, you can get away with whipping, because you're adding butter or cream before you whip. Mixing your starch with grease helps prevent the rupture of the cells. But you don't do that in making gnocchi. And she didn't.

You have two options in making gnocchi. Option number one, which is the one you pick unless you're some kind of savage, is to get a potato ricer, which makes potatoes smooth with a minimum of violence. The other option is to use potatoes that are already smooth... like dehydrated mashed potatoes from a box.

When you watch the video, you'll see that her gnocchi have the apparent texture of a bunch of flour mixed with Elmer's glue. It makes me cringe to see the little lead-pellets sitting there with the runny sauce strained around them. But we're just getting started listing the offenses in this video.

Next, she mixes a cup and a half of flour and two egg yolks in with three potatoes. A cup and a half? Wow. One of the "secrets"--and by secret, I mean it's something every man, woman and dog in Italy knows--of good gnocchi is to use as little flour as you can to make the potatoes hold together. You also use whole, beaten egg to add structure to the cooked gnocchi. These two forces are in a kind of tug-of-war; flour improves the texture of the dough, but adds nothing you especially want in your finished gnocchi; egg adds structure to finished gnocchi, but makes the dough more finicky. My general rule of thumb is no more than a tablespoon of flour per potato, and no more than one egg per four potatoes.

The amount of flour used makes this hardly even "potato" gnocchi, and adding a bunch of flour once you've turned the potatoes into a gummy, glue-y mess won't improve them. But the eggs are even more baffling. Egg yolks are rich. They are not "light and fluffy." There's nothing here to emulsify. There's no particular reason to add egg yolk, unless you want gnocchi that taste like egg yolk. Which is fine, but I'm generally of the opinion that potato gnocchi should taste like, I dunno, potato.

Next, she rolls the rubber-like mixture she's created, which would be better suited for soles of Chuck Taylors, into a rope and cuts them into pieces with the shape and texture of a tootsie roll. Then she explains the next step is to press them against the tines of a fork to give them texture, as the video shows her mashing the tootsie-roll-thing violently against a fork. Then she says, oh, you can also jab the bottom of the fork into the side of the tube to create little dents.

I guess that's what you do, if your gnocchi is the consistency of dried caulk. But actual gnocchi at this point is light and delicate. And the actual manuver one who wants good gnocchi is performing at this stage is dramatically different than what she's doing--but results in both ridges on one side and a deep pinch on the other. What you do is, you pick up the light, fluffy piece of dough, roll it quickly between your hands to make a ball, and press the ball against the back of the fork in a rolling downward motion. The ball flattens against the fork, then curls on itself as your thumb presses it off, resulting in ridges on the side that faced the fork, and a deep pinch where the gnocchi rolled onto itself.

But like I said, you can only do that if your gnocchi dough isn't rubbery. Suffice it to say, if anyone--hell, if my mother--served me the gnyawkee made in this video, I would feed them a bleach and thumbtacks milkshake. And then, and only then, we would be even.

She fares little better in attempting to make ravioli. Let's see, you've done a lot of reading... maybe I can sum up the problems in this video in one breath.

*deep breath* The pasta is rolled too thick, it's uneven because the machine wasn't bolted properly, the filling is too runny, the ravioli are over-filled, the sealing process she uses doesn't press out excess air, not enough dough was left around the filling, the ravioli didn't stand for long enough, andthentoservethemshe... *gasp* She just put them on a plate and dumped some sauce in the middle. Damn, I almost made it!

Y'know, just to touch on one of these things, when pasta comes out of the water, it's vulnerable. It's ready to stick to something. You want that something to be sauce. If you wait until it's dried in the air, you'll taste plain pasta with sauce resting on it. If you make sure they mingle promptly, you'll have pasta with a sauce in a marriage that makes it tough to determine where sauce ends and pasta begins--that's what you want to eat.

One final note on both of these videos: investigate nutmeg. Nutmeg is your friend. It also goes in both cheese ravioli and gnocchi when you don't flavor them with something else.

It's late, so one last link to comment on: some stupidity saying retaining pasta water doesn't do anything. This is a misunderstanding caused by a lack of vocabulary. You retain pasta water for oil or butter sauces. You need to add something to them unless you want to put half a cup of grease on your pasta. Pasta water is already seasoned, hot, and there. It's also slightly viscous, which is why it "thickens"--it's about as thick as the oil, and it's thicker than plain boiled water. There's texture to it. That's why you retain it. It doesn't "thicken sauces" in the abstract; it thickens butter and oil sauces more than using other water does.

All of which leads back to the initial question... why is pasta so hard for people? It really and for truly is not rocket science. A person of average intelligence should, at some point in his or her life, have a plate of good pasta, and be able to ask himself or herself, "are the things that I'm doing recreating the experience of good pasta, or do I need to go back and rethink what I'm doing?"

Are we getting too dumb to feed ourselves?

Meh

junkmale@livejournal.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:07:44 GMT

China Doll

How do you live with lilac cream-thick in the air
and cushioned surfaces obscuring dangerous angles,
tea sets shuttered behind white ceramic handles
and molded trays shaped like where silverware belongs?
And do you feel confined, and do you feel condemned,
And do you taste the green apple on the dish-soap label?
Does the china take the opportunity to caress you back
when you clink the saucer up atop the stack?

Would you recognize yourself fogged in by fumes
and sunken into the diesel world of inopportune corners,
uncomfortable chairs and narrow corridors
blown open by the steel elephant in the room?
And would you be confused, and would you be contrite,
And would you recognize me on the track?
And if you saw the question written on my face,
Would you say something, or just gawk in place?

Life Soundtrack

junkmale@livejournal.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:43:36 GMT

Naturally these are always evolving, but if you want to tell my life story, here's the music you need to license to accomplish it.

"Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," Rufus Wainwright
"Formaldehyde," Sons of Elvis
"Regarding Steven," Blues Traveler
"I Try," Macy Gray
"Hardest Way Possible," Rustic Overtones
"Till My Head Falls Off," They Might Be Giants
"London Calling," The Clash
"Stranger Than Fiction," Bad Religion
"Anywhere But Here," Rise Against
"Hymn 43," Jethro Tull
"Classified (Version Two)," James Booker
"Chop 'Em Down," Matisyahu
"Stand Up," Minor Threat
"Heads are Gonna Roll," Rocket From The Crypt
"Living Well is the Best Revenge," R.E.M.

"Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," Rufus Wainwright

Cigarettes and chocolate milk,
These are just a couple of my cravings;
Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger,
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me...

Why? This song has a very "just waking up" feel to it, with a simple message that aligns with one of my guiding principles throughout life: anything worth doing is worth overdoing. It dips into foreshadowing later on in the song: "And then there's those other things, which for several reasons we won't mention..."
"Formaldehyde," Sons of Elvis

I'm kind of in a messed up situation
Stretched out in a warm pool of my blood
Shot through with a bullet from my own gun
Tryin' to get my body off this slab, I'm tired of fun

Why? Something I listened to a lot in high school, Sons of Elvis was a local Cleveland band that was un-grunge; I was probably the only one of my friends who didn't buy the whole grunge thing. This song is nice and uptempo (you can download it on MySpace, if you're curious), but also downright sinister. The refrain of the song starts out: But don't let it ever be said that I won't come back when I'm dead, get you up in the middle of the night, throw your ass right out of bed...
"Regarding Steven," Blues Traveler

We were both young, you took us in
Taught us to play survival games
He lost so much that you let him win
But I had a home, so it just wasn't the same

Why? Blues Traveler was my favorite band when I lived in Cleveland and I had to include a song of theirs to represent that. Regarding Steven is a letter from John Popper to the devil about a friend he's lost touch with. As John tells the story, Steven was basically into drugs and alcohol and despondent about life, and John was like that, too, until his band started getting successful and he had something to live for. It's a little bit of glossing over of the rougher spots of growing up, for me, I think--easier to deal with it in this one discussion with Satan and move on to the bigger problems ahead.
"I Try," Macy Gray

Games, changes and fears
When will they go from here
When will they stop

Why? It's a rule of soundtracks that you can have one cheesy song on them without sinking them, and this is mine. Pretty self-explanatory in terms of subject matter. This is really the first major transition in the movie of my life, and the song is from that period, too.
"Hardest Way Possible," Rustic Overtones

It's so hard, but God, heal these scars
Take bleeding hearts out of bars that drown away the hours away
Getting to the bottom of it fast
Swimmin' damn near the bottom of the glass

Why? There are very few songs that talk about the misery, the agony of being in love. "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen is one. This is another. It's the hardest way to give, it's the hardest way to take, it's the hardest way to live, for Christ's sake. The mellow jazz/funk groove of the song makes it simultaneously as soft as a pillow and as agonizing as a cancer. It absolutely sums up the hours--years, really--of my life spent in bars and on streets dehumanized because I didn't know what to do with myself without a heart. (Call a Waaaaahmbulance, I know, but hey, it happened, and I can't tell the story without telling that part!)
"Till My Head Falls Off," They Might Be Giants

And when I lean my head against the frosted shower stall
I see a broken figure silhouetted on the wall
And I'm not done and I won't be till my head falls off,
Though it may not be a long way off

Why? There are very, very few songs that really capture what it's like to lose your mind; most of the ones that do it well are doing it from the perspective of the angry moments. But there are a lot of other moments that are just confused and lost. This song really does an amazing job of conveying that sense of not being able to piece together that you're a participant in your own life. And nobody does uptempo despair better than TMBG--I couldn't tell my life story without them on it.
"London Calling," The Clash

A nuclear error, but I have no fear
'cause London is drowning and I... I live by the river

Why? The bar where I did most of my drinking after my Freshman year in college was the Shandon Star, and they had a CD-jukebox the bar owned where they kept more or less the same standards. There were three songs you could play to please everyone in the bar: "Rapture," by Blondie; "Locomotive Breath," by Jethro Tull; and "London Calling." It's actually representative of my returning to something resembling sanity and looking around at what's basically a wasteland of a life. The indifference and anomie of London's flooding swallowing your home and not caring was similar to having nothing left to lose. Also, the last line of the song: I never felt so much a-like..., was often finished in concert by Joe Strummer as: ... like singin' the blues. This song represents the second big turning point in the story, and the end of Act II.
"Stranger Than Fiction," Bad Religion

Cockroach naps, rattling traps
How many devils can you fit upon a match-head?

* * *

In my alley 'round the corner lives a wino with feathered shoulders
And a spirit giving head for crack, he'll never want it back

Why? The song is Greg Graffin's attempt to address the point that great novelists, who should presumably understand the world better than anyone, often grow disillusioned with it. It articulates some of the ugliness and beauty in the world without attempting to resolve the conflict that anyone who understands the world doesn't want to be part of it anymore. I feel that way most of the time.
"Anywhere But Here," Rise Against

Without a dime to my name or a prayer in the world,
I walk out the door
Destination anywhere but here,
Away from you

Why? I saw Bad Religion and Rise Against play a show together at the 9:30 Club, and that was the first place I heard this song. It reminds me of an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet that addresses the point that being relieved that you have no memories of someone in a place immediately suffocates you with his or her memory. You don't "get better," you learn to live with the burden. But that's the point. You learn to live with the burden.
"Hymn 43," Jethro Tull

If Jesus saves, then he'd better save himself
From the gory glory-seekers who use his name in death
Oh, Jesus, save me!

Why? This song and the two that follow it all touch on religion slightly, expressing different aspects of my understanding of the universe. Jethro Tull's indictment of organized religious zealotry is an important aspect of my worldview.
"Classified (Version Two)," James Booker

I found my Jesus preachin' around my projects
He was just hangin' out with all the rest of us rejects
Some called him crazy, some called him dumb
But they didn't know where the man was comin' from

Why? I'm not hostle to the idea of Jesus. As Mr. Brett of Bad Religion has noted, if he existed, Jesus was the most progressive liberal that has ever lived. (Not that I'm a liberal, but I try to be progressive.) And I like to think that, if there is a God, he's doing his best. I see no evidence to support that whatsoever, but it's pleasant to think. James Booker, for his part, is an amazing figure. He wrote "Classified" while imprisoned in Louisiana's notorious Angola state prison, an institution that no doubt advanced his eccentricity into near-insanity. It's not clear how literal he's being when he talks about seeing Jesus in his projects.
"Chop 'Em Down," Matisyahu

From the forest itself comes the handle for the axe
Split this wilderness, listen up, y'all this ain't were it's at
Clear a path so that you can find your way back
Chop 'em down, chop 'em down, chop 'em down, chop chop 'em down

Why? It's religious in that the song tells the story of Exodus and reiterates a Jewish proverb: from the forest itself comes the handle for the axe. Meaning: the problem contains the solution. For Matisyahu, he described this as the realization that he could be orthodox and sing reggae, it wasn't a conflict. For me, it's kind of where I got today. The answers have all been in front of me, and I found them when I didn't have anything better to do than study the questions I had.
"Stand Up," Minor Threat

Something's fucked up, something's not right,
I came to have a good time, you came to fight
But if I do fight, nothing to fear
Because I know my friends are here

Why? This is the present state I'm in, I think. I'm totally capable of kicking your ass alone. I just don't have to. And go on, bring your friends--I'mma kill them, too. I'm not looking for trouble, but I'll give you more than a pop-o-matic bubble. Dig it.
"Heads are Gonna Roll," Rocket From The Crypt

Because I can't stand you
You're making me sick
Gonna wrap that silver platter
Around your neck

Why? Because it's on like Donkey Kong, bitches.
"Living Well is the Best Revenge," R.E.M.

All your sad and lost apostles
Hum my name and flare their nostrils
Choking on the bones you toss to them
I'm not one to sit and spin
'cause living well's the best revenge,
Baby, I am calling you on that

* * *

Don't turn your talking points on me
History will set me free
The future's ours and you don't even rate a footnote, now!

Why? This is more than just an obvious, uptempo, "everyt'ing gonna be alright" way to end. It's definitely the song I'm feeling at the moment. All those people who are talking shit about me? (And you know who you are?) You're pathetic and I just have to laugh at you. As I mentioned to someone last night, if you took everything you've ever done in your lives, collectively, you couldn't match what I accomplish in a week.

I defend freedom, mother fuckers. Like Minor Threat said--"What the fuck have YOU done?"

Who We Are

junkmale@livejournal.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:43:07 GMT

English was not my grandfather's first, second, or best language. Like a lot of immigrants, he sometimes struggled with a lack of common vocabulary with which to communicate ideas to his grandchildren. Some of these were simple Europeanisms; lights are things you open and close, not turn on and off. Some were phonetic obstacles; if you drop something, you keep it up. And some were concepts that lack any English shorthand idea, like the feeling of being tired when you wake up (what you would medically refer to as narcohypnia).

It is something I take for granted, not only because I am the first functionally monolingual person in my family for some generations, but because I am, to the extent a person can be in an electronic age, a person of words and ideas. My ability to navigate language to convey concepts is my only salvation to my relatives. What I lack in breadth, I make up for in depth.

Because of this, I feel some obligation to express something to you in a way you might understand, rather than throw up my hands and say I can't. So this is what I will try to do.

Unlike me, my Nonno was an industrial-age person, a man of things; he was a machinist. His workshop was in the basement of his Parma (Ohio) home, on the far side of the board games and little conversation area that he had renovated in his retirement. At first, I rarely had occasion to enter it, but as I got older, and could be reassured that misuse of the equipment could result in my having to "keep it up [my] fingers," Nonno slowly brought me into the use of his machinery.

I hope I don't reveal too much to tell you that Nonno's life as a retired machinist was dramatically in contrast to the excitement of his adulthood. As an Eritrean (at the time, an Ethiopian) of Sicilian descent, he and his brothers were more or less kidnapped and conscripted by the Saudi army, which needed skilled pressure welders to make machinery of war. Such tasks were not enthusiastically pursued in parching desert heat, so the resource of welders was one almost exclusive to westernized cultures. Nonno and his two brothers went hard to work sabotaging everything they were made to weld, using tempers designed to fail after a period of weeks. Such an action took the risk of being tortured to death, but it was not a time for cowards.

This was the man who bought me ice cream, sang me songs that were only more beautiful when I learned what the words meant.

Working with him in that basement workshop, I gained a new appreciation for machinery itself. When he helped me to design and build a small electric toy car for a class project, he got ahead of me in the work, and designed a custom belt-drive system, with ball bearing and machined bronze parts. Feeling quite pathetic, I showed him the store-bought plastic gears I had intended to use in its place.

He looked at the gears, and his workbench, putting a hand to his mouth, the back checkered with black and white hair. "We use this, I think," he said, tapping the gears. "Because this--" he moved the hand to address his belt drive--"this is too... much, it's more complicate than maybe you make. Simple."

"Elegant--it's too elegant," I suggested.

"Bravo," he nodded, and we build the car with the gears.

It was elegant, clean and refined. No more than it needed, but no less than the highest quality. It is something I have come to witness in other contexts, involving other people. If you are a cook, you can read someone's recipe and understand their inner workings to an embarrassing degree. If you a programmer, you can read someone's code and know them better than their spouse.

So it was with my grandfather's work that I came to understand the things he could not say because I did not know the words in his languages, and he did not know the words in mine. Nonno could be capable of immense passion; he designed elaborate systems for gardening and cooking, when those systems did the work faster and better than could be accomplished commercially or by hand. But it was his elegance in his work that expressed the refinement and nuance we could not communicate in words.

When I was about 10, he made me a hammer. It was designed for my hands, which were smaller, then, but it is carefully balanced to the center and far sturdier than you could imagine it would be. When my father picked me up that day, he tried it and expressed admiration to a degree that made my grandfather uncomfortable enough that he took he hammer back to his workshop and engraved my name in the head, lest it be lost in my father's sea of rarely-used, poorly-kept tools.

I have used that hammer as long as I have been old enough to hold it. I think--I like to think--he knew that I understood his soul, that I appreciated who he was, and that I loved him for it. I knew him by what words we shared, but I knew him even more by his elegance. And it is for him that I remember the lesson that love means not only doing the right thing, but doing things right.

I can not tell you what he meant to me, but I can tell you that is what I carry with me everywhere I go, and in everything I do. And that is why I am trying to tell you. I am trying to do the right thing, and do it right, the way Nonno lived.

Luciano

junkmale@livejournal.com — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:34:31 GMT

My grandfather is either dead or dying (presently). Nobody is really clear on what exactly is going on. He's "non-responsive." Whatever that means.

I don't know that there's more that I can tell you, because I don't think any of you knows me enough to understand what I'd say about this. (Anyone who knows me that well doesn't talk to me anymore. I guess I have that effect on people.)

You Aren't Going to Hang Out

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:28:23 GMT

You don't have to like the person you vote for.

If the biggest reason you aren't voting for Hillary is that you don't like her, then you need to re-evaluate your selection process. You likely wouldn't want to work with a lot of your friends, because they're not good employees. The same is true of candidates.

I think Obama is way more personable than Hillary. It doesn't matter. I'm not picking a drinking buddy. There is nothing in Obama's record or rhetoric that indicates to me he has any experience relevant to the presidency, other than gumming other people's speeches and misrepresenting them as his own.

So all the people who hate Hillary need to suck it the hell up and vote for the person who will do the best job of steadying the economy, restoring international confidence, and address the health care crisis.

You will not be happy with your vote if it goes to someone who is incapable of doing that. There is no one in this race less capable than Obama. It's not even that it's a vote against my interest--it's a vote against your own self-interest unless you're a currency speculator betting against the dollar.

It really isn't that hard. Look at the records, look at the people, and pick the one more likely on the basis of their resume to do the best job at the position you're filling. You aren't invited to hang out with either of them anyway.

If you stay up nights dreaming about how much you like your candidate, you have already failed.

Sinister Rouge, Comin' Back For More

junkmale@livejournal.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:18:44 GMT

(...to even the score)

http://abusehearts.com

Rated M for strong language and awesome threats of violence.