You probably don’t know this, but at one time I was a terrific cook. And I have the books to prove it. I’ve bought cookbooks wherever I’ve gone — I have them from all over Europe, although following the recipes in another language and using a different measuring system can be a bit of a challenge.
I even have one with recipes from Bill and Hillary Clinton and other political notables. It’s called the Congressional Cookbook, and it came out in the late 1980s. It has recipes from governors, congressmen and senators and their wives. Hillary’s chicken, by the way, is awesome and easy. She is a damn smart lady.
A small sample
These days, I don’t cook as much as I used to. And so my cookbooks are mostly gathering dust instead of flour.
But today I learned that in spite of the fact that I don’t cook so much any more, there will soon be another book I’ll need to add to my collection.
You see, Ann Romney has penned a Cookbook called The Romney Family Table.
Yup, You just can’t get away from Ann. Cover photo courtesy of Politico.com
In it, I’m sure she’ll tell us all how “To Serve the 47 Percent – a la Twilight Zone.” Yum.
Because folks like Ann and Mitt wouldn’t want to eat with the 47 percent, now, would they?
{My thanks to The Last Of The Millenniums who first alerted me to this important news. Well, sort of. I think I’d sleep better not knowing about Ann’s plans for the future, but still.]
You’ve heard me talk about this before (Merde 101). But the world has gotten more dangerous since I wrote that piece. We need to be on the lookout. We need to be vigilant. We need to speak English. No, this is not an anti-immigrant piece. This is a potential-worldwide-calamity-caused-by-incomprehensible-grammar piece.
Yes, it’s true. I’m saying that all roads to terrorism are sign-posted in FRENCH. Believe me. I lived there. I know. Well, I don’t know the language, but I know those signposts. And what they say. More or less.
Why would I make such an accusation? Because French is stupid.
Well, actually, it’s really French possessives. French possessives are stupid, illogical, dangerous.
You see, in French, objects get the gender of the object/noun, not the owner. And that, is of course, the problem.
Imagine that there is a man and a woman in a train station. Between them is a suitcase.
Google Image (or KGB?)
In it is a nuclear bomb. Desperate to foil the bad guys, you cannot just shout out “It’s HIS!” pointing to the man who can be arrested and the bomb diffused.
Google Images are everywhere
Why not?
Because the word for suitcase in French is “valise” which is feminine. Therefore, you can only say “It’s HERS” (“Est la valise!”) — regardless of who owns the suitcase/nuclear bomb. The bomb would go off and everyone would die.
The terrorists would succeed because French is stupid.
Not speaking French is the way to protect the world.
*****
One of my blogging buddies, Paprika of Good Humored felt stupid recently. She wrote about it here: At Least We Can See France From Our Toilet. And it’s not her fault. You see, Paprika and her husband Oregano found themselves in French-speaking Switzerland, just down the road from where I used to live. They came back feeling stupid. They shouldn’t have. Instead, they should have come back relieved that they had survived a nuclear attack.
[Note to folks who actually know French: Before you get on my case, I do know that there are other was to say “It’s HIS.” But they are not short, sweet and to the point. They are long and involved and the bomb would explode by the time anyone could get the sentence out. The Terrorists would still win.]
One idiom that I’ve always found, well, odd, is this: “That’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!”
Huh?
To me, going back to unsliced bread after years of Wonder Bread was a revelation. It has taste! It doesn’t dissolve in water! It is something on which I could actually subsist. Well, with a little water thrown in.
Sliced bread? Mostly I think of that white spongy crap, although nowadays the mega-bakeries are trying to actually make bread that tastes good. But there is a ways to go.
Me, I don’t bake bread; my husband did back in the day when we had time and smaller waistlines. Me, I bake other stuff. My carrot cake recipe is to die for (with so much butter that is literally true) but I don’t make it very often because, well, when we celebrate birthdays we would prefer not to expire before the next.
But I do like to cook, and mostly it is from scratch when I have the time and energy. And while those are often in short supply those days, well, I do enjoy whipping up a meal without opening a box, without opening a can, and without pulling something pre-made out of the freezer.
Someday when I retire, I expect to do more cooking, more experimenting with world cuisines, the way I used to when I was home with my son when he was a child. We had a blast, made messes and cleaned them up. Discovered delicious and not so delicious dishes.
But sometimes a girl must draw the line. And I found the exact location for that line today in the Williams-Sonoma catalog. Because today Williams-Sonoma has gone too far. Or it wants me to go too far. Or maybe they just think that I have unlimited counter-space.
Today, they not only want me to make absolutely everything from scratch, but they want me to grind my own grain with which to make it. And there are different types of grain grinders to choose from!
There’s your conventional hand-crank grain grinder for those looking for a workout. (Williams-Sonoma Catolog)
Or for the ones who want full convenience while grinding their own grain, there is this one:
The fully-electrified version so that you don’t have to do anything yourself, which, of course, kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me.
Why not choose them all!
But you know, still I wonder.
My ancestors were farmers, and even they didn’t grind their own grain. They took the grain they grew to a mill where it was ground for them by the miller. That was considered progress from the days where my ancestors’ ancestors had to pulverize the grain on rocks, scrape it up and figure out how to get it into the crock pot.
I’m just worried that the next step in being the perfect chef will force me back in time even further.
I fear I will have to revert into a hunter-gatherer. Otherwise I will not be able to keep up with the neighbors. Sigh.
Good thing there is a magazine that’ll help me get there.
Yup, it’s back to the land. I just need my glossy mag and my loaded mag.
Tuesday evening, just before 7, a huge tree fell half a mile from where I once lived. A man, who seconds before had been simply sitting in traffic, died when the tree crashed down on him as he sat in his car. It was a tragedy that could happen to any one at any time. Unexpected.
Photo Fairfax Police courtesy of The Washington Post
What happened next? Well, the tree’s twin across the way was cut down. Arborists are looking at nearby old, big trees, checking their health, determining if these trees, too, are dangerous. If so, they will be cut.
Of course that’s what they’re doing.
They are protecting human life. It’s the logical next step following such a tragedy. Of course, there will be traffic snarls and hassles as the old diseased trees are culled. It will be a huge pain for commuters. But, you know, that’s OK. I and just about everybody accepts a bit of inconvenience if it means that someone else won’t die. (Which doesn’t mean we won’t all grumble, natch.)
It’s the same with other stuff, too.
In the 60s and 70s, it became clear that fatalities in automobile accidents could be prevented by using seat belts. They became mandatory after a series of Swedish studies demonstrated that fatalities were dramatically reduced when car occupants involved in an accident had buckled up. Seat belts protect folks. Last year in this post I provided some statistics on the benefits of seat belts:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s latest statistics state that 15,147 Americans survived accidents in 2007 that would have been fatal without seat belts. That’s a lot of people saved by a law that doesn’t really inconvenience us all that much.
We do a lot of things to keep ourselves and our families safe. Of course we do. And when the danger comes from the unknown? Well, that’s when we ratchet up our actions to protect ourselves. It’s common sense.
Remember the Tylenol Murders? Twenty years ago, Tylenol, laced with cyanide, killed seven people in the Chicago area. The murders were never solved. But they did change our lives. Every time I struggle to open a package of virtually anything purchased in the United States, I think of that bastard, those murders. I hope he/she has a horrible case of rheumatoid arthritis in his/her hands and therefore has even more trouble opening those damn packages than the rest of us. I also hope they catch him/her.
It’s common sense to react protectively, isn’t it. It’s what we do as a species. It’s part of our evolutionary trajectory. It is the manifestation of the problem solver in all of us. Stay alive. Protect. Survive.
Well, that’s usually true.
Unless, of course, there is a random lunatic with a gun. Then, well, logic and common sense are suspended as we all enter the Twilight Zone.
Yes, when a guy (and they do all seem to be guys) who gets a bunch of guns (as in lethal weapons) and kills people, randomly, or by specifically targeting individuals, well then we double down on the 2nd Amendment. WE PROTECT HIS RIGHT TO DO IT! We let it happen again. And then, when it happens again, we are shocked, shocked.
Yup, when we should be shouting “STOP THIS MADNESS!” we instead cow-tow to the National Rifle Association and to the cowboys who are oh-so-sure that if they had only been there with their gun, well, then the outcome would be way different. If only ….
Bullshit. It is a fantasy.
Remember when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot? Nineteen people were shot that day at a local grocery story when a crazy person opened fire.
Did you know that seconds/minutes after the shooting, a man carrying his own gun came out of the store and saw somebody holding a gun on a man? Yeah, it’s true. Here’s a smidge of the story:
[Joe] Zamudio was in a nearby drug store when the shooting began, and he was armed. He ran to the scene and helped subdue the killer. Television interviewers are celebrating his courage, and pro-gun blogs are touting his equipment. “Bystander Says Carrying Gun Prompted Him to Help,” says the headline in the Wall Street Journal.
But before we embrace Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!'”
But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out.
Yeah. A big, fat mess. Mr. Zamudi would have added to the carnage, not helped. BECAUSE HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON.
When a tragedy like today’s shooting in Aurora, Colorado, happens, there is only one person who knows pretty much what’s happening – the shooter. Yeah, the bad guy. Everybody else is reacting.
And no matter how cool, how brave, how well meaning a would be hero is in a situation, the sane gun owner is unlikely to shoot first. And if he/she doesn’t, the bad guy will. And unlike in the movies, in real life, you can’t just get back up.
It is really time that we all just accept the passing of the Cowboy Era. We have accepted other similar passings: The Middle Ages, The Age of Kings, The Age of Exploration. The Teen Years. Besides, the last gunfight at the OK Corral happened already. You missed it. Get over it. Move on.
How many more massacres are we going to allow before we stop folks from buying assault weapons, multiple guns that can kill multiple people? How many more deaths will it take?
We changed how every item we use every single day is packaged. Because of SEVEN deaths from tainted Tylenol. We took action to prevent the eighth and the eighth didn’t happen.
What’s the death toll from these random acts of violence with guns? At last count, it was, ummm, more than twelve. And that’s just for today.
What will it take for us to come to our senses?
Mr. Saturday night special
Got a barrel that’s blue and cold Ain’t no good for nothin’ But put a man six feet in a hole
In 2003, I assured myself and my husband a comfortable retirement when I invested in Art. And not just any old piece of art. Nope. I bought a Rembrandt.
Seriously.
You know Rembrandt, I’m sure. He painted wonderful stuff:
The Night Watch (thanks Google)
And some seriously cool self portraits:
Google Again
OK, so now I am sure you know that I am discussing serious ART.
Well, I went to an auction in an affluent area here in NoVA the day before my husband, John’s, birthday. They were selling all kinds of things. Neat furniture. Life size sculptures of animals. ( I considered buying myself a horse, and there were some available. I like looking at horses; they are lovely animals. But I don’t ride horses, and pooper scooping for a horse, well, that never really appealed to me. Plus they bite. I don’t like being bitten by animals I am feeding.) But at this auction they were selling life-size horse sculptures. Sculptures don’t poop, so I seriously considered buying one for the yard when the bidding started. My niece, Jen, who was with me, held my arms down. Thanks, Jen. I was going for the pastoral look here at my house, but it was not to be.
The stuff that they were selling was pretty neat, actually. An amazing assortment of furniture was on offer. Sadly, none of it was furniture I was in the market for; and I couldn’t afford it anyway. Nevertheless, I bought my husband John a lovely desk, one that he wouldn’t have picked out in a million years. It was greeted with an unenthusiastic “oh, thanks.” It was a bargain. Unless you think of the fact that he didn’t really need a desk at the time.
But auctions are fun, and exciting. It is easy to get caught up in the spirit of raising your hand to “win” something wonderful – to take it away from someone else. Among the items that we could have previewed was a lot of art that I didn’t look at. We have tons of pictures here in our house. Way too many.
But the auctioneers were tricky. They mixed up the art with the furniture. And that, really, is how I came to own a Rembrandt. Because they said the magic words:
“The next item (No. 214) is by one of the greatest Masters. Rembrandt van Rijn!”
I looked around at the assembled crowd. They were all ooh’ing and ahh’ing at the possibility that they might today purchase A Rembrandt. Suddenly, I had to have it. The fact that I had no idea what it looked like was completely and totally irrelevant. It was a Rembrandt — a masterpiece. How could it be anything but awe-inspiring?
The auctioneer called for an amount I could never afford, but nobody raised their hand. The number went down. And down again. Still lower. Way down to about the cost of a nicely framed poster of a Monet.
My hand went up. For a picture I had never seen. A Rembrandt!
After I started the bidding, several people joined me. But by then, well, I had to have it; that Rembrandt was mine, dammit. And I won. For a ridiculously low price, I will add. I think. No, no, I’m sure it was dirt cheap. Positive.
I took the picture home and proudly presented it to my husband for his birthday the next day. Rembrandt is John’s favorite artist, and I knew he’d be thrilled to pieces to own a piece of his work.
John was truly delighted to know that he owned a Rembrandt. So delighted, in fact, that he decided that we should put it up in the one room in our house where no one ever goes.
You see, the picture is an etching of Rembrandt’s father. Who was seriously ugly. And so, as day follows night, is the etching.
One ugly old dude. I mean, our masterpiece.
But the frame is beautiful.
And some day, when our house is robbed, the burglars will follow the signs we have put up all over the house:
“Don’t bother taking the electronics! Upstairs is a Rembrandt. Take the picture of the ugly old guy. Please.”
Please don’t mention this post to our insurance company.
* * *
Many thanks to Eleanor of How the Hell Did I End Up Here whose recent post reminded me of my, um, Masterpiece.
FiftyFourandAHalf 