Disintegration Watch

I think I gave myself chemical burns by putting too much ginger in my curry: A piece about the size of a lime for 3 servings. I let it cool before I tried it, so it can't have actually scalded me, but now my tongue is all tender and raw.

Is that possible? It was certainly too much ginger for my taste. I didn't know that was possible. Yes -- I'm afraid this has become a food blog.

Not Chili's. The Other One

Our correspondents recently reminded us of the existence of Chi-Chi's, a Mexicanesque restaurant chain that went out of business after a hepatitis outbreak struck in a Western Pennsylvania location. I was on the scene in Youngstown, Ohio at the time. I personally witnessed the events third-hand, and the tragic nature of the poisoning was greatly overstated. Better is Death than Life in Monaca, PA.

Although the tainted green onions were not Chi-Chi's fault, there was an immense backlash against that terrible restaurant, and it went under, an occurrence that was unfair yet ultimately just.

Flash forward to the past, when some delightful person set up a blog of Creepy Abandoned Chi-Chi's. It has the laser focus my blog lacks, and those Chi-Chi's are real creepy. I am tickled by this photo, which is especially macabre in retrospect:



Read the whole thing. The author is a lady after my own heart.

Ice Cream

Ice cream flavors I have never seen:

• Caramel
• Plain (just cream and sugar)
• Peanut
• Black tea
• Any herb but mint
  
• Any spice but vanilla
  
• Red bell pepper
• Licorice
  

Ice cream flavors I have seen:

• Green tea

Ice cream flavors I would not like to see

• Açaí
• Chipotle

Wrap!

Middle America only has so many classic foods. After naming the hamburger and the hot dog, most people come up blank. Wendy's may sell chili, but does anyone buy it? If the menus of every chain restaurant in the country are a guide (and shouldn't they be?) then America has a new friend in the wrap.

The wrap is a vague food item. A wrap is not a burrito, not a shawarma, and not a roti, because wraps are post-racial. The scrupulous non-ethnicity of wraps makes them seem instantly traditional, as the draining of cultural signifiers from a dish usually takes centuries. Other than that, there's not much to say. Wikipedia keeps its counsel, describing the typical fillings of a wrap as, "shredded lettuce, some fruit, some vegetable, some meat, and some condiment."

I think wraps arose as an Atkins thing, since tortillas seem less bready than bread. Better yet, tortillas can be made in extra-low carbohydrate versions, which resemble "wrapping" bubble gum around your meal. Moreover, unlike bread, tortillas can be flavored with chipotle, which is a very hip flavor indeed. I doubt whether wraps can currently be flavored with green tea or açaí, but if this becomes possible in the future, they will probably be the only food eaten in America.

One thing is for sure: Although they are sold everywhere, neither I, nor anybody I know, has ever had a wrap.

I Can Eat Fifty Eggs

It turns out that eating contests, at least at the top rung of the sport, all take place within an extremely short time frame. Nathans' Hot Dog Eating Contest, probably the most American event of the year, lasts 12 minutes, during which the contestants are expected to eat more than 50 hot dogs. You probably know that already, but most other eating contests don't last much longer.

I'm sure that's a perfectly good standard, if you like to see people dip buns in water, the better to eat them with, but it is surprising that eating contests never test stamina. How many hot dogs can Joey Chestnut eat in an hour? How many hot dogs could he eat in a day? In short (and vague), how many hot dogs can these people eat in a sitting? Why is nobody interested in the answer to this question?

I'd like to think that a day-long contest could allow contestants to keep some of their dignity, eating hot dogs on the bun (and oysters out of the shell, rather than shucked into mason jars). Nobody wants to know how many hot dogs a man can eat in 12 minutes. It's supposed to be about the food, not the clock. They want to know how many hot dogs a man can eat before he says, "No more!"

Blindfolds

I went to the drugstore yesterday to try to buy a blindfold (I think it's so interesting that drugstores are where you go if you need an miscellaneous item) and it turns out that they are all satin, with feminine colors and fancy embroidery. Who wants to be seen wearing one of those in bed? Not men. I don't know what to do to keep the sunlight out. I am not buying a blindfold from an S & M website.

You can add blindfolds to the stack of inexplicably gendered products. They join:

• Candles
• Yogurt -- especially probiotic yogurt
  
• Curtains
• Flowers
• Cream Cheese
  

It just figures that these are all fairly useful products. As a man, am I not supposed to want them, or am I supposed to feel free-floating guilt every time I consume them? Why *aren't* there any men in the cream cheese commercials? Meanwhile, the products associated with the gender that stands while peeing include rocket ships, dinosaurs and KITT. I can't use those things. I don't want them. You women can have them, no questions asked, if you just let me have my blindfold.

By The Time You Are Thirsty, You're Already Dehydrated

I realized this afternoon that I hadn't had anything to drink for about 36 hours. Aren't people supposed to die after 2 days without water? Aren't they supposed to feel thirsty? At no point did I feel thirsty. Is my brain broken?

On a lighter note, please be aware of this page on the health information of water. Questions addressed include:

• Do we really need vitamins?
• The fluoride debate -- "The risks outweigh the benefits"
• Can beverages replace water? -- In which I am told, "you need to drink 8-12 glasses of water for every one glass of soft drinks that you consume."

More immediately relevant to my situation, one of the signs of moderate dehydration is "few or no tears when crying." So in retrospect, it should have been obvious, but perhaps it's just as well that I didn't notice. After all, I'm a beverage man from way back, and I just dig myself in deeper with every glass of Coca-Cola I consume.

Tammys & Mandys

Like a Rotarian, I like to give back to the community, but in the form of websites. I'm going to direct you to this one, but I'm not going to add my two cents, because I don't feel like trampling on the extremely careful taxonomy this woman has set up. I'd just get it wrong.

What I do want to know though, is where she gets all the photos.

Florida, Florida, Florida

As the news channels all stop what they're doing to salute Tim Russert's hearse, there are two lessons we can learn. First, if you want to be mourned, genuinely mourned on TV, be a TV host. Second, it is possible to be a very important man, and still have people remember you chiefly for your white board.

What I'd like to reflect on, though, is that his heart was enlarged. I know a little about pathology, and I know that enlarged organs are unhealthy. Enlarged livers are a sign of cirrhosis, splenomegaly could hardly be anything but a disease, and I don't even want to know what happens when your brain gets large.

I don't want to feel that way though. Large organs should be a sign of robustness, like large muscles or large bones, whereas feebleness is for the small. In a better world, Tim Russert's enlarged heart could more efficiently spread love throughout the body politic.

Instructive *or* Avant-Garde

Conventional tools for learning a second language are very nice, but a little played-out. Be honest: If you were going to learn a second language with Rosetta Stone, wouldn't you have done it already? Perhaps what is needed is a new angle on the problem.

A normal novel, preferably simple. It starts off in English, but rapidly begins replacing words with French, in such a way that the meaning is obvious. E.g: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of périodes..."

As the novel progresses, more and more foreign words are swapped in, and in greater variety. Nouns, then verbs and adjectives, then pronouns and idioms. The basic sentence structure would, where appropriate, melt into French (for instance, adjectives would start following their nouns midway through the book) and all the verbs would be conjugated correctly. It would make for some odd hybrids, but everything would clear up by the end, as the narrative ran in perfect French.

Has this been done? How could I possibly know?

It's Better Than Vodka & Postum

As you may have noticed, American beer isn't very good. Not the lah-di-dah micro-brewed beer, which isn't very good either, but the mass-produced, thin mild lagers that are practically metonyms for the lower class. Budweiser, Schlitz, Miller: It's a bottomless well.

I want to head off the people who say that American-style beer can't be good, because it's too popular. Those people know not what they say. German-style beer is popular with Germans, and English-style beer is popular among the English, and those are reasonably well-regarded. Coca-Cola has always been a crowd-pleaser, and heaven knows I can't get enough of it. Indeed, fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong. If so many Americans like American beer, you'd think it would be likable.

But it turns out that Budweiser is pretty gross. Interestingly, it's bad in a different way from Coors or Schlitz, but they all fall tragically short of the Platonic Ideal of cheap American beer. They're all sour or cloying or just a little bit rotten. It's not like they're missing anything -- if anything they have too much of the wrong flavors. Watery is what you're supposed to be going for, but it's never quite right. And when you come to think of it, that's a tragedy, because it's such a nice idea. Like alcoholic barley water, or starchy Gatorade, it would be the perfect thing to drink when it's really hot out. Old World beer is nice, but you can tell that it never really gets above 80 in Northern Europe. "Hydration" was not in Johnson's Dictionary.

I'm not sure anyone likes American beer. Miller Lite says it has a "Great Taste" but does anyone believe it? Even its Wikipedia page is defensive, with the "characteristics" section given over to explanations of why this beer is less good than all others. Forget racism -- our beer is clearly our national shame, and if Barack Obama is serious about healing America's psychic rift, well, I know where he can start.

Since nobody much likes American beer, I feel silly asking, but are there any good American lagers out there? I'd be willing to settle for an expensive micro-brewed one, but I feel like the true patriotic experience wouldn't be complete if I paid more than 60 cents per can. Then all I need is the wife-beater and a union job, and I'll be all set.

I Am The Earth Mother And You're All Flops

Idea for a drinking game: Four people watch "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", each of them taking the role of a different character. Whenever your character drinks, you drink. Bonus points for self-pitying wit, but really, I think just surviving would be a challenge.

Obots for Obammunism

Now that Hillary Clinton's blog has become inhospitable for Hillary Clinton supporters, they've begun an exodus to internet shantytowns like http://www.hcsfjm.com/, where they will organize to support Air Pirate John McCain. It's kind of a poorly spelled effort, but any website that comes with a page of Obama jokes, not to mention Obama slurs, is all right in my book.

With Clinton supporters so forlorn and helpless, I'm willing to make an offer. You use my blog as a forum to organize for Hillary Clinton, and I promise to use "Obot" as a term of abuse.

"Hillary, And Other Poems"

Found on this Hillary Clinton fansite, on the day of the last primary:

H - Hope for our country and its people.
I - Involvement for a better America.
L - Love for one another.
L - Longing for the America we can be.
A - Ability to overcome adversity.
R - Resolve and resiliency, like no one before her.
Y - Yearning to see her as President, 2009.

Here's what I'd like to see. I'm imagining President Obama leading America irretrievably into war and poverty. Thirty years later, searching the ruins of the Curves for Women for scrap metal, you'll find this acrostic scrawled on a yellowed sheet of paper, tucked behind the drywall. You'll read it, and think of what *could* have been.