The National and the Personal

Apparently, I was wrong.  Chief Justice John Roberts does give the tiniest fuck about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution.  Good for him?  In the meantime, Anthony Kennedy, I'm so fucking sick of you.  I mean, sure, Tony Scalia is a ranting old man, and Clarence Thomas is a joke, but I know those things about the SCOTUS going in.  But I keep holding out some hope for you, Anthony, I guess because of Lawrence v. Texas, even though I knew clear back when you were fretting about how grown-ass women couldn't be trusted to live with the consequences of their own choices in Gonzalez v. Carhart at that you were an asshole.  ("Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision, Casey, 505 U.S., at 852–853, which some women come to regret. In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence ..."  You know what, Anthony, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about us ladies not knowing the potential emotional consequences of abortion.  We're adult citizens of this country, who are entitled to make decisions without your paternalistic trolling -- there's no such thing as taking away someone's rights for their own good.)  Anthony, if you fuck up gay marriage next year, I don't even know.

But you know, living in the world is strange.  I used to be much more political than I am now.  I was the president of the Pitt College Democrats when I was in college, and a committeewoman for the Pennsylvania Young Democrats; I volunteered for many political campaigns, mostly as a grassroots organizer, and I wasn't bad at it.  But at some point I was standing in a hotel room in Harrisburg, drinking cheap beer with a lot of 40 year old men in bad suits who had basically no principles whatsoever, and I realized that to pursue a career in politics was more or less tantamount to voluntarily giving up your soul.  I stopped that shit.

But that's not what I'm thinking about.  What I'm thinking about is the levels of the world.

So today, everyone's very worked up about the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare.  I'm glad they did for several reasons, the first of which being, simply, that the law is constitutional.  So, really, we could just come full-stop there.  But beyond that fact, I also want to see health care reform in America.  I support single-payer, government care; I am, in fact, extremely dubious about the government forcing me to buy anything from a private corporation.  I know and am fine with the fact that the government can take my money; I am not fine with private companies being able to take my money.  I also think that any system in which private health insurance coverage is anything except a niche luxury for the very rich who want "Cadillac Care" is not really any kind of solution for our nation's health care problems.  Like I said: government-provided, single-payer, universal care.  Nothing else will ultimately suffice.

But anyway, everyone on my Twitter feed and a lot of people on my Facebook page, and Americans in general on teh interwebz are all thinking and talking about this big national issue.

At the same time, I found out last night that a friend of mine tried to kill themselves yesterday.  They're in the hospital, and OK for the moment, thankfully.

How does one navigate the world?  Where should our focus lie?  What is the connection between big national problems and those of our day-to-day lives?  I'm not suggesting that my friend's situation implies anything about Obamacare -- they're getting care in a hospital, so they're apparently OK.  I'm just saying that there are so many concentric circles around us, from the very intimate and personal to the international, that today I'm wondering how we decide how to parcel out our concern.  I know that personally, the older I get, the more my concern shrinks.  I cared enough about today's Supreme Court decision to have an opinion about it, but not enough to like, volunteer for a health reform group.  But that's not necessarily the choice everyone makes -- many people stay active in large issues their entire lives.  I don't know why I choose to keep my focus on myself and those immediately around me -- it's probably some laziness.  And probably also an affect of what I've described previously, the need -- in order to protect my mental health -- to have a small life, lived day-to-day.

I wonder, though, if engagement at a society-wide level is important to living a good life, or a satisfactory life.  Am I losing something by restricting my chief care to my family and friends?  Is it a responsibility to care about people I don't know and things I can't directly control, but only marginally influence?  (Though one could say that I can only actually marginally influence even those relationships that I think of myself as having the most power over.)  I don't actually think I have such a responsibility (to whom?), but am I missing out on an important aspect of life in the world by withdrawing from engagement with large concerns in favor of small ones?  Between one person in a hospital bed and 300 million people fighting over how those hospital beds get paid for, where do we draw the circumference of the ultimate extension of our effort, if not our gaze?

I don't know. I'm just asking.

Respect the Beer. Also: Little Disabilities, or, Thanks for the Chairs, Sharp Edge.

I haven't blogged much this past week -- I honestly haven't had a whole lot to say.  The brokeness keeps our adventuring reigned in, and it's hard to make blogging hay out of tidying up and making lunch.  I considered doing some current events blogging, but decided that I didn't want to subject my own blood pressure to it.  I've got lots of opinions about lots of things, but if I start ranting about shit like John Roberts giving, apparently, zero fucks about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution, I think it's just going to make me an angrier, unhappier person in general, and no one wants that, right?

Saturday's breakfast. Ground peanuts and fresh blueberries make PB&J a little more wholesome.

So as I said, it's mostly been banal stuff around here: cooking lots of meals.  Let me think, in the past week I made fresh pesto pasta, creamy swiss chard and pea pasta, green curry, massaman curry, several breakfasts and lunches ... tonight is roast chicken, since it's comparatively cool today, with a mess o' veggies on the side.  Tomorrow is Taco Tuseday at the Spiher Robinson hacienda, which vaguely excites me.

Sunday's breakfast. That's a Parma Sausage banger. And avocados were on sale at Whole Foods!

Two pleasantries popped up, both involving Friend Sarah.  On Wednesday night, I met she and Acquaintance Dayle at Sharp Edge Beer Emporium in Friendship for a few after-work beers.  (After work for Sarah, anyway.)  I've always been a big fan of Sharp Edge's afternoon happy hour -- half-off Belgian drafts from 4:30-6:30, Monday-Friday -- but it turns out that on Wednesday nights they offer half-off Craft drafts, which is good to know.  Sarah and Dayle and I gossiped and talked about ponies; it was nice.

Last night, we again met Sarah and also Friend Davin, this time at Beer Nutz Bottle Shoppe and Grille in Aspinwall, as Ted and I had a Groupon.  I didn't have to cook dinner!  Sunday nights at Beer Nuts they've got $3 local drafts, and I much enjoyed my Penndemonium.  I enjoyed my Turkey Devonshire as well.  I think Sidelines Bar and Grill, my favorite Allegheny River hamlet bar, has better food than Beer Nutz in general, but one place Beer Nutz beats Sidelines is on the French fries -- Beer Nutz has some damn good fries.  I think I had more grease last night for dinner than I've eaten in the two weeks previous, combined.  One effect of eating mostly at home is that we eat a lot more healthily, or at least, a lot more wholesomely.  I mean, is creamy swiss chard and pea pasta low fat/low cal?  Hardly.  But I don't actually consider a cup of half 'n' half and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese to be particularly bad for (lactose-tolerant) humans, spread over three servings.  And there's about six cups of fresh vegetables involved, so nutrition seems pretty well addressed.  The thing is, after a long history of poor eating -- either poor in the sense of nutritionally unbalanced and downright unhealthy by almost any metric, or poor in the sense of fucked-up starvation dieting -- I don't think it's wise, for me, anyway, to worry about calories and carbs.  Rather, I try to eat as much locally produced food as possible, as little processed food as possible (or at least, as minimally processed food as possible), and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.  I try to take it easy on the white sugar and the deep fried and the cheese -- with much more success in the former two ventures than the latter.  Basically, if I made it from scratch and there's a lot of vegetables involved, I call it good eating.

Anyway.

Mmm.  Beer.

The one big event of the last several days was the Sharp Edge Great European Beer Festival.  Ted and I bought tickets to this way back in April, when they were a bargain-priced $40.  Held in the Sharp Edge's parking lot in Friendship, it's a nice set-up, similar to yet different from our earlier beer fest at Penn Brewing.  All of the beer is European rather than local, and much of it is Belgian, so almost everything is of very high quality and high alcohol content.  You get a guide to the beer and a little punch card at the beginning of the night, and each sample is punched out, so in theory you can only have one of each beer offered (though the pourers will sometimes fudge for you at the end of the evening).  There are probably in the neighborhood of 70 beers, so this isn't too much of a hardship.  One thing I liked a lot about Sharp Edge's beer fest was the availability of chairs right in the beer area (as opposed to up on a second level, far away from beer, as at the Penn festival).  My neuropathic leg does not like standing on concrete for three hours straight.  

Mmm.  Beer.

An aside, because I don't know if I've mentioned it here before: I have a bad back and a bad leg.  When I was 17, a herniated disk in my lower back contacted an important nerve locus that controlled a significant portion of the nerves in my left leg.  This was incredibly painful and also somewhat physically debilitating -- I could not stand up straight, and I walked with a limp.  My family physician at the time misdiagnosed my condition for several months, insisting that I was "too young" to have a severe back injury, and explicitly telling my mother that I was faking my complaints to avoid gym class.  We should have sued the living shit out of this woman.  Finally, my mother, who was inclined to trust the doctor, but who didn't believe I was lying either, insisted that something be done to take my complaints seriously -- this was after months of deterioration in my condition, to where I was bent over at the waist and in more or less constant pain.  So my GP reluctantly sent me to get an x-ray.  Later that day, she called my mother, very nervously, and told her that she had made me an emergency appointment at a neurologist, and to go that day.  After a myelogram, a spinal tap, a CT scan, and some other crap, including another painful month wasted on physical therapy while they tried to avoid surgery on my condition, my back was operated on, two of three herniated disks were corrected, and I was sent home to convalesce.

(Aside the second: my surgeon, although an apparently competent operator, was also a horrible dick.  He berated me and my mother for the fact that I was "unbelievably fat", even though, at the time, I was perhaps a size 16 on a broad 6'0" frame -- chubby but certainly not fat, despite what my [non-adult] bullies claimed.  When pressed, he would admit that my weight had nothing to do with my condition, which apparently was simple bad luck -- I was born, apparently, with a weak spine -- but then he'd go back to berating me.  Gee, I wonder why fat people don't go to the doctor for preventative and even urgent care, thus suffering graver and longer lasting injuries and illnesses -- which are then blamed on their fatness.  DO NOT GET ME STARTED.)

Anyway, five years later, when I was 22, one of the corrected disks reherniated.  From all I've heard, this, again, was simple bad luck.  There's about a one in ten chance that a corrected disk will reherniate, and one of mine did.  Unfortunately, whereas the only aftereffect of my first injury was occasional back pain, this herniation resulted in permanent nerve damage in my left leg.  I was given emergency surgery on my spine again, but now have uncorrectable numbness and weakness in my left leg, and a bit of a limp.

This is bothersome but not horrific.  I miss being able to wear high heels -- it's impossible for my weakened left ankle to balance in them now -- and I find that the limp tires me out sometimes: walking unevenly is more difficult than walking "normally".  I also sometimes get a lot of pain and sometimes increased numbness in the bad leg, particularly when I do shit like stand around on concrete for hours -- walking is actually easier on it than standing, for some reason.  And my balance is pretty poor on that leg -- no rocky uphill hikes for me.  (Luckily, as we all know, I'm not an outdoorsy type in the first place.)

My point in bringing this up is that, while I'm grateful to have the bodily integrity that I do, and am privileged to have a mostly healthy body, I also have a little disability, and it makes me aware in a way I never was before I was 22 about accommodations -- and specifically, the lack thereof -- for people with disabilities both little and large.  Sometimes a chair is a real godsend, and unfortunately, nondisabled folk, who, for instance, might be event organizers, sometimes just don't think of things like that, because they don't have to routinely in their own lives.  Sometimes the elevator being out, even for just a one-floor climb, is a real hardship; sometimes uneven ground will make it almost impossible for a person to enjoy an event, or even attend it.  And you can't always look at someone and know their level of physical ability: it's not like every disabled person is in a wheel chair or on an oxygen tank.

Anyway, thanks for the chairs, Sharp Edge.  

On the other hand, food was included in the ticket price at Penn's Microbrewer's Fest, while a piece of pizza cost $4 at Sharp Edge.  So, you know, there are cons as well as pros.

The beer schwag raffle.

Ted and I had a nice time, despite my encounters with the Beer Fest Noob Bitches.  This was a gaggle of girls seemingly in their mid-twenties, whom I at first thought were merely stupid, but then later discovered were obnoxious.  Look, if you don't know, here's how beer fests work: there are many tables behind which are the people with the beer.  You wait in a (usually) small line, get your beer sample, perhaps say a few words or ask a brief question of the brewer or distributor doing the pouring, and then move off -- 'cause, you know, it's a line.  Once you've obtained the thing you've been standing in line for, you move away, so the people behind you can also obtain the thing they've been standing in line for.  That's how lines work.

Except this gaggle of girls would get to the front of the line, get their beer samples, and then just ... camp out.  This, of course, blocks the people in line behind them from getting beer.  This, of course, makes them noob bitches.

After a while under the tent with them, though, I realized that they had strategery.  They weren't just camping in front of every line.  They were camping in front of the lines headed by good-looking (in a conventional sense) male beer pourers.  So they'd get their beer and then stand in front of the good-looking beer guy, giggling and squawking about how they've like, never had beer before, oh my God, this is really good, I like, think I'm getting tipsy.

Look.  Bitches.  Please.  I try not to be in the business of judging strangers, and I realize that being single is tough.  But at a certain point, if you can't respect the beer, and the sanctity of the beer fest, and the primacy of the beer as the focus of the beer fest, then you've gotta get the fuck out, because I don't fuck with girls like you, and I don't advise that others do, either.

The good news is, it was not any of these girls who won an awesome prize at the end of the night; it was me.

Sharp Edge does a raffle at their beer fest -- you put your name on your ticket stub and put it in a drawing for one of several prizes, the winners of which are drawn at the end of the night.  I put my stub in the box for a Baltika beach umbrella.  It had a base that you could fill with water for stability, and a sturdy-looking, large, collapsible umbrella that I could stand under and would shield two folding chairs from the sun.  At the end of the evening the first two people who's stubs were drawn for this umbrella didn't come forward to claim it -- mine was the third stub drawn.  Victory!  I am totes more fully prepared to drink outside now.  I want to go to the beach and bring my umbrella and sit in my folding chair and drink beer in the shade now -- this is a new goal of mine.

It's actually still in my dining room.

So anyway, that was the the past few days.  Today I've got to go to -- shudder -- Oakland, to Hillman Library to pick up a few books, and then it's time to hit the farmers' market.  I'm looking forward to Wednesday, when I'm going to get to attend a happy hour with Friend Lara, who will be here from out of town, and then Friday is payday, which is always a good day.  The downside of the week is that I've gotta read Foucault going on about prisons as unpaid research for the one new class I've been assigned to next semester.  Some of the readings seem like they'll be interesting.  Foucault is never interesting.  Blah.

We hadn't had a kitty picture in a while. Matilda always looks so stunned.

Skyler's tummy is a surprisingly common roadblock in my house.

Pasta Fest: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dear Readers, yesterday I went to Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest happens once a year for four weekdays at Casbah, which is a favorite happy hour site of mine (when I can afford things like happy hour).  Casbah is one of the upscale Big Burrito restaurants, and I was frankly shocked to discover that some people on Yelp are less than amazed by their quality and service, because 1) I consider myself an extremely exacting judge of restaurants, both in terms of food and service, and 2) every experience I've had at Casbah has been delightful.  I mean, as you'll see below, I can always find something to pick on, but I was particularly amazed that some Yelpers were less than satisfied with the service.  I have always, always had the absolute best service at Casbah.  (In fact, all of the Big Burrito restaurants, even the Mad Mexes, have good service in my experience, and it's much to the credit of the company.) Perhaps it helps to be a "regular" (during the school year, I'm usually there for wine over reading or quiz grading once a week), and perhaps it helps to frequent the bar -- Ted and I tend to be bar eaters -- but in any case, I love Casbah.  My mother is planning a birthday dinner for herself there next month, and I think I will finally give the restaurant a proper review then.  Until then, I just wanted to share with you my delight over Pasta Fest.

Pasta Fest is pretty self-explanatory: a special menu of small-serving pasta dishes.  A few of the pastas are on the regular menu, so I'd recommend avoiding those, as you can try them any time.  (If you're curious, the regular menu items offered in smaller portions for Pasta Fest are the Orecchiette, the Short Rib Ravioli, the Red Pepper Casereccia, the Veal Tortelloni, and the Ricotta Cavatelli, if memory serves.  I'm not saying these aren't very good -- especially the Casereccia and the Cavatelli -- but I'm saying that you can try these dishes at non-Pasta Fest times.)   Ted and I made our Pasta Fest visit coincide with happy hour, to save some cash: $6 wines and cocktails at the bar between 5:00 and 7:00.  We ended up going through three courses of pastas.  My glee knew no end.  Allow me to present you with our nommings.

I am a sucker for a good potato dumpling. Not to mention some tender lamb.

Ted's first selection was Potato Gnocchi with braised Elysian Fields lamb shoulder, rapini, cipollini onions, rosemary, and Piave cheese.  I believe this was also his favorite dish of the night.  The lamb was tender and delicious, as were the gnocchi, and everything was well balanced, though I thought that the lima beans -- yes, there were also lima beans, though they weren't mentioned in the menu description -- were a titch undercooked (also I've never been a huge fan of lima beans).  Overall, though, this was excellent.

Fine Dining in America is having a "Put an Egg On It" moment, and I don't mind a bit.

My first selection was Egg Tagliatelle with pancetta, wee little croutons, Appalachian cheese, spinach, fresh oregano, and, of course, a fried egg.  I absolutely loved this dish.  The richness of the egg yolk alongside the saltiness of the pancetta and the tangy, herbal freshness of the oregano leaves was a wonderful combination, and the tiny croutons added a crunch that kept the dish texturally interesting.

Strangely revelatory.

For our second round, Ted picked Sage Linguini with pork ragu, grilled scallions, Burrata cheese, orange sea salt, and extra virgin olive oil.  This dish had strengths and weaknesses.  The scallion bulbs should have been sliced in half before they were grilled.  And the cheese was a mostly solid mass atop the dish -- it should have been broken into smaller pieces that would have been able to melt into the sauce.  However, the pasta itself was quite good, hearty and pleasantly flavored with sage, and the pork ragu provided me with a little revelation: meat sauce doesn't have to involve ground meat.  You see, I hate ground meat -- I despise the texture of it.  When it's compressed into a sausage I can cope with it, as the compression alters the texture sufficiently, but burgers and meat sauces and standard taco fillings are just anathema to me.  This ragu, however, was made of a tangy, tomato-y pulled pork.  The pork was tender and there was none of the grainy awfulness of ground meat!  I can't believe this never occurred to me before -- I am going to make such a ragu myself in the near future, I can assure you.

Skinny noodles: troublesome to cook.

My second selection was Capellini with goat confit, garlic, spinach, and Calcagno cheese.  It was a simple dish, and though not quite as interesting as some of the other plates we tried, it was fresh and well-balanced.  Goat, which can be troublesome to cook, was here lean and tender and very well done.  The dish's one flaw was the pasta itself.  The capellini was so thin that it just couldn't hold up to the big pieces of spinach and cheese on the fork, and it was a bit overcooked -- I'm not sure how anyone could fail to overcook fresh capellini; what do you do, just hold it over the steam of the boiling water for a few seconds?  In any event, I spread my little roasted garlic cloves on some of the tasty sourdough that comes with every meal, and was pleased regardless.

Certainly the best looking dish of the night. So cheerful!

My third course was Spinach Torchetti with chanterelle mushrooms, basil, cured egg yolks, and guanciale.  Guanciale, it turns out, is cured pork jowl -- yes, I was eating pig face.  And I'm here to tell you that pig face is delicious.  I liked this dish a great deal.  The pasta was eye-catching, substantial, and al dente; the chanterelle mushrooms were delicious and cooked perfectly, toothsome and warmly caramelized; and the guanciale was salty and chewy and outrageously tasty, though I wish it had been sliced a bit more thinly.

Kind of makes me wonder about the state of my own liver.

Ted chose, for his third course, the Rigatoni with Madeira, foie gras, arugula, and rhubarb.  My relationship with this plate of pasta was complicated.  On one hand, I totally get what was going on, and I think if I had been another human being, I would have liked it a great deal: the ultra-rich fattiness of the foie gras alongside the tartness of the rhubarb and the slight bitterness of the arugula, all balanced with the slight sweetness of the Madeira and the heartiness of the pasta shape ... this might have been the most well-constructed plate of the night.  Except: I hate rhubarb.  Rhubarb is the devil.  So ... where does that leave us?  Well, it leaves us with undercooked rigatoni, but that was a different problem.  I think in the end, it was a good dish -- it's not Casbah's fault I hate rhubarb.

Hilariously, Ted learned what foie gras is as he was eating it.  I honestly didn't know he didn't know when he ordered the dish.  So when he asked me what was so delicious, as he savored the rich little chunks of diseased organ, I explained to him about force-fed geese and ducks and fatty liver.  He renounced foie gras on the spot, mid plate; I finished the liver for him.  I also pointed out his hypocrisy vis a vis animal cruelty and the factory farmed chicken wings he loves so much at Sidelines; he looked chagrined.  I think Ted might be creeping back towards vegetarianism -- or, at least, more ethical eating.  Jonathan Safran Foer, you might be winning a slow victory in the Spiher Robinson house.

So that's your food porn for the day.  Pasta Fest is still going on today and tomorrow, so if you want to treat yourself to some magical carbs, there's still time.  Oh, and if you're curious about the wines, I can only speak to the happy hour menu, but I'd recommend the Casal Garcia Vinho Verde -- it's crisp and effervescent and perfect for hot days like these -- and they also have a delightful sparkling lambrusco on the happy hour wine list at the moment, and it's just fun -- I mean, how often do you get a sparkling lambrusco anywhere?  (And no, it's not that dreadful Riunite crap.)

I realize that there's some irony to me posting this right after I posted a blog about being broke.  I want you to know that I charged the whole meal and I regret absolutely nothing -- Pasta Fest comes but once a year, and you'll pry my noodles from my cold dead hands, bank balances notwithstanding.

Clarifications. Also: Wherein I Rant About Ann Romney Getting $77,000 from the US Government for Her Ballet Horse

It was not a particularly eventful weekend. We'd been supposed to meet Friend Randy for drinks on Friday, but he came down with some food poisoning, so those plans were put on hold -- we spent the evening on the couch.  Saturday, my mother came to visit, and the combination of my mother and my husband is always a fraught one.  They're both lovely people, but they act all weird around each other, and stress each other out, and stress me out, and it's never a very pleasant arrangement.  I don't know that any mixing of in-laws is ever quite normal, so I don't think this is very strange, I just don't think it's a very awesome way to spend a Saturday afternoon, either.  Mom did treat us to breakfast at Piper's Pub, though.

Then Saturday night we went to The Oaks to see The Princess Bride - it was this week's Moonlit Matinee.  The Princess Bride is pretty much one of the best movies ever, and I'd never had the opportunity to see it in a movie theater, with popcorn, so that was awesome.  

Sunday was noteworthy because we splurged on take-out Indian from Taste of India up on Penn. Yesterday my mother came to visit -- just she and I this time -- and we had lunch (at Jimmy Wan's, which has a nice lunch special: a variety of entrees [I favor the General Tso's Shrimp and the Dim Sum Sampler] that come with your choice of rice [brown, white, fried] and appetizer [I like the hot & sour soup, Mom usually goes spring roll] for between $9 and $12) and a beer and went to the farmers' market.

I made the mistake of complaining on Sunday that I was bored.  Several of my friends on Facebook took this as an opportunity to tell me I should get a job, as though jobs aren't boring as hell.  I think they were well-meaning -- either that or misery loves company -- but it made me decide to make some clarifying statements about being broke for months at a time while not working.

To begin with, when I say I'm bored, I don't mean, "I miss work."  While I like my job as an adjunct as much as I think it is possible for me to like a job, that doesn't mean that I love work per se and do it for any reason other than the need of money.  If I had the option, I would never work at a job another day in my life.  No, I do not think that work, in and of itself, is ennobling; no, I do not think I have a responsibility to contribute.  (To what?)  If Ted made more money, I would stay at home, reading, blogging, tidying, cooking, and otherwise amusing myself for the rest of my life, joyful to never again suffer under the yoke of responsibility that is work.

And besides, what possible job would I get over the summer?  Subway sandwich girl?  No.  Just no.  If Ted was unemployed and our home had been foreclosed on and I was living in my car with five cats, I would go work at the Subway.  Otherwise ... just no.  If that's the only job you can get, and you need a job, that's fine.  But I doubt very much anyone would say that they wanted such a job, or would go out looking for one if they didn't absolutely need it.  And anyway, how on Earth would such a job alleviate anyone's boredom?  Have you ever worked a job like that?  I've never worked specifically at Subway, but I've worked as the girl behind the snack counter at a movie theater and the girl who takes you to a table at Eat 'n' Park -- such jobs are boring as shit.  The hours crawl, only slowed by the moronic bullshit trail left behind by The Public and the idiot managers who are inevitably 55 IQ points below their dumbest employee.  And it's not like such a job would pay well enough to alleviate the actual problem, which is ...

I miss going out.  I miss going out to eat.  I miss going out to the bar.  I miss going to movies and such not.  I don't miss work, I miss money.  I realize that I've got a lot of privilege to be able to complain about this -- other people don't have enough food, let alone enough entertainment.  I have a house and two window air conditioners and healthy food and an internet connection -- no one's actually suffering here.  But since this blog is about an unemployed academic over the summer, I might as well make clear that I don't miss work, I miss money and the things it buys.  The sad thing is, compared to people who actually have money, I have only the most plebeian of desires: to go out for Indian food and sushi and cocktails.  It's not like I'm like, "Oh damn, I couldn't afford the entrance fee to the dressage tournament" -- I just miss drinking at Sidelines instead of on my couch.  (Though I'll confess I do miss going for pedicures with Friend Carley.  My toes are all sad looking lately.)

***

Speaking of dressage, and I know this is completely switching gears, but I have to get it off my chest: what the fuck, Ann Romney?  It's probably apparent that I'm no fan of the Republican party or its presidential nominee (which doesn't mean I'm a huge Obama fan either, but that's not the point at the moment).  Of the many, many, many things I dislike about the Romneys, one of them is the fact that they are rich as Croesus.  Not just, "Oh good for you, you worked hard and succeeded and have a nice house and paid for your kids' undergrad degrees and get to go on vacation every year" rich.  Like, Solid Gold Mansion on the Moon with an  Elevator for Each of Their Three Dozen Cars rich.  Which is ridiculous -- no one should be that fuckin' rich.  No one needs to be.  Wealth redistribution foreva, bitchez.

So anyway, apparently a thing people who are incredibly, unnecessarily wealthy do is buy horses that cost as much as the house I live in plus the house my mother lives in plus another house, and teach them to dance daintily to music, and this is called "dressage".  Fuckin' horse ballet.  And apparently, in 2010 Ann Romney got a $77,000 tax break for her ballet horse. Let me repeat that: A SEVENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLAR TAX BREAK FOR HORSE BALLET.  $77,000 is more than the average American household's income -- about $27,000 more.  How the fuck do you get a tax break for horse ballet?  Well, apparently, Ann claims that her dancing horse is a business.  Now, to my mind, teaching a fancy horse to dance around all fancy for fun sounds like a hobby at best, but apparently the government disagrees.  So she got to write off the money she spent on her ballet horse as a business loss.  (Never mind that people that wealthy shouldn't get to write any fucking thing off their taxes, except for charity.) (No, horse ballet is not a charity -- I see what you're thinking, there, Ann.)

Look, there's a lot to be said about income disparity in America, the privilege of the haves and the sufferings of the have-nots.  I don't feel like rehashing all that here.  My point is this: Ann Romney, who is a multi-millionaire, got to deduct a sum of money far greater than the average American household income from her taxes, because her fancy dancing pony is a "business".  Meanwhile, almost a quarter of all American children don't have enough food to eat (and yes, Mitt Romney wants to cut food aid to the poor).

What the everloving fuck, America?

/rant

Image from the awesome www.shakesville.com

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

I had one accomplishment yesterday, and it was this:

Holy. Shit. Dinner.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy.

Yinz, I fucking love biscuits and sausage gravy.  It is the best.  The trouble is, I live in a northern country, and biscuits are hard to come by.  Generally, they come out of fast food drive thru windows or Pillsbury's tubes, full of trans fats and other unsavory elements, the processed chemical shit storm of modern food science compressed into a little roll.  Gross.

The trouble is, I can't bake.  I think this blog and my other social media makes it clear that I like to cook, and I'm even good at it.  But baking?  Nyet.  For years I could bake one thing -- chocolate chip cookies -- and frankly, that did me.  I think I've mentioned my baking fails before here, actually.  

But the biscuits.  I needed biscuits!

I take no credit for the recipe.  You can find it here, on Friend Mark T's blog.  The thing is, even with this recipe, it took me half a dozen batches of biscuits to arrive at really good biscuits.  The first batch was literally inedible.  You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to follow the fucking directions, but you know, there it is -- I really can't bake.  But still, with every batch I made progress, thanks to Mark's help.  I'd send him some biscuit-related text message that ended in ":(" and he'd provide advice and comfort.  

So now I can bake two things.  I think that'll do me.

The last step was the sausage gravy, which turned out to be super simple.  I think the key is quality ingredients.  I got Parma sausage and Snowville Creamery whole milk -- don't skimp on this stuff, cause there's practically nothing in the recipe, and if you get some shitty Bob Evans sausage or whatever, you'll be able to tell.

Here's how you make an absolute shit-ton of sausage gravy.

1 lb of bulk sausage -- I favor Parma, but wherever you get it, make sure it's good quality and fresh.  (Probably you're supposed to use breakfast sausage, but I actually used mild Italian. Shrug.)

3 Tbl of butter

1/2 c of flour

5 cups of whole milk -- again, make sure it's good milk.  I like Snowville (it's local, non-homogonized, and from pasture-fed cows).

Brown the sausage in a skillet until it's cooked through and crumbly.  Set aside.

Over medium-low heat, add the butter and then whisk in the flour.  Let this roux cook until the butter-flour mix has turned a darker shade of gold.  Turn the heat to low, and then slowly pour in the milk, whisking all the time.  Once the roux has dissolved, you can turn the heat back up a little.  Add the sausage back in, stir, and allow to simmer gently, until the milk is thick like gravy.  

Voila, sausage gravy.  A crap load of it: like, enough for six people.  Or less people with lots of leftovers.  Pour it over Mark's biscuits.  (Leftover-wise, the gravy reheated just fine in the microwave the next day.  The biscuits I'd recommend popping into the [toaster] oven to reheat, so they don't get mushy.)

Oh, and if you're curious, the salad was some local cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and red onion, mixed up with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Because, you know, health.  Health with your biscuits and sausage gravy.  Ahem.

I am way too proud of myself over these biscuits.

Where Should You Not Eat? Let Me Tell You!

Sorry the posts have been spotty here this week.  I still feel kind of like shit.  I did have a nice day yesterday, though.  Friend Mark J. and I went out to lunch at Tamarind (and with my awful math skills I realized last night I ripped him off to the tune of $10, but I promise I'll get him back), and then we drank cheap wine on my couch.  Mark is good to talk to about things like I blogged about in my last blog.  He is a reassuring soul.  He also introduced me to Torchwood on Netflix.  Indian food and cheap wine and science fiction TV with good company is a pretty awesome day.

I did, this morning, write a restaurant review of Brasserie 33, which Ted and I visited, Groupon in hand, on Monday night.  It was pretty abysmal!  Please read all about why you shouldn't eat there here:

Brasserie 33: What the Hell?

Now I have to go to the grocery store and then buy Father's Day cards.  Nick is coming over for dinner, and I'm planning on homemade biscuits and sausage gravy, vegetable TBD.  I finally got around to watering the plants.  I think that all's going to be sufficient for today.

More Death. (And a Boyz II Men Concert.)

I did a lot of cool stuff between Thursday night and Sunday morning.  Then my aunt died unexpectedly.

Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life.  But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age.  Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.

I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago.  I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it.  There is no way now to amend for this.

What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me.  It cannot matter to Liz now.  Nothing can matter to her.  Liz is dead.  All the matters of her life are over, and that is that.  Someday nothing will matter to my mother.  And nothing will matter to my husband.  And nothing will matter to me.  And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.

***

I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely.  Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life.  I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying.  Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life.  I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future.  I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.

Of course, this was all horseshit.  I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on.  My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school.  I seemed to know without knowing.  I began to suffer from panic attacks.  I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind.  It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.

I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude.  One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent."  Really.  That was it.  I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where.  I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto.  I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.  I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions.  Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.

I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day.  I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress.  I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry.  So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.

I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want.  Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me.  Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not.  More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.

I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer.  But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out.  Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me.  My doom cloud finally dissipated.

My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment.  Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die.  I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me.  Finding a way to do it took a few years.  I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles).  Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek.  Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends.  Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book.  Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.

I am, basically, happy.  I love my husband and our little family of cats.  I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?

But it is a very small life.

And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they?  Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day.  You will die, and nothing will matter to you again.  And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously?  Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what?  You're dead now.  So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine?  You're dead now.  I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is.  I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.

P.S.  Still haven't heard from God.  After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.

***

As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio.  It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically.  Except this event was for grown ups.  We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.

On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood.  I was so, so happy to not cook dinner.  Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.

Apparently, this is what tailgating looks like.

On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life.  Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game.  I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit.  BUT.  After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT.  HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD.  Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game.  This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking.  Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer.  We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking.  Sweet.

But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game.  It was only the fourth inning.  Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer.  SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT.  Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light.  I literally was so grateful I teared up a little.  I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer.  These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.

SO INTERMINABLE.

The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us.  His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me!  Excuse me!  Coming through!  Make way!"  Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through.  Then go back out again.  Over and over again.  So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him.  "You're an asshole."  "I hope you fall down the stairs."  He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you."  "Why?"  "Because you're obnoxious.  GO SIT DOWN."

Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old.  No, I have no regrets.

But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform.  30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee".  They played all the hits.  It was fantastic.  The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course).  Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out.  It's kind of a weird phenomenon.  It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men.  Their moment is more or less over.  But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road".  I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring.  In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out.  They sang a Journey cover on Saturday.  If nothing else, they know their audience.

But Pittsburgh is The Best.  Ever.

A Trip to the Museum. Plus: Biscuits! And: Don't Feed the Sexist Trolls

Yesterday I got a little thwarted.  Ted had dug up online that there was to be a free science seminar at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as part of the R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Series.  Past topics included things like, "Origin and Evolution of Dinosaurs: An exemplary evolutionary radiation", and, "It's a slug's life: The ecology of terrestrial slugs", which I am very sorry I missed.  Fortunately, though my student ID doesn't get me into the museum for free over the summer, every year Ted and I buy a couple's membership to the Carnegie.  Though it's a little redundant for me for part of the year, it's very cheap, considering -- $98 -- and it gets us year-round admission to the Art, Natural History, and Warhol Museums, and to the Science Center.  Plus it's kind of like a little charitable donation, you know?  

One thing I love about the Carnegie is that the building itself is beautiful.

Unfortunately, when I got there, the lecture had been canceled.  But there are worse things than having two hours to kill in the museum.  I headed to the Natural History Museum, which is a stunning place.  The one lamentable thing is the children.  It must have been like, field trip day for half of the schools in the Pittsburgh area yesterday.  I would absolutely pay extra to be able to attend the museum on a No Kids Day.  They run around, they're loud, and you can tell that the vast majority of them are only barely interested in learning anything.  I really don't like kids.

There used to be a pretend Egyptian tomb, that you had to crawl through a tiny fake rock tunnel to get to, and then you emerged into this display, like you were an archaeologist that had just discovered it.  They have the fake tomb/tunnel part sealed off now, and they moved the display out into the open.  Which sucks.

But luckily, the kids and I enjoy different parts of the museum.  For instance, one of my absolute favorite parts of the NHM is the corridor on the third floor between the Egyptian and the Arctic/Native American Rooms.  One hallway is lined with shells and, somewhat inexplicably, time pieces; the other is lined with taxidermied birds.  Everything's in these very old fashioned wooden cases, and you can tell it was all installed and put together decades ago. It's quiet and there are little hobbit-sized doors that run along the corridor, leading who knows where, and I always enjoy the shells.  Like the late, lamented Stephen Jay Gould (who's own research centered on "shells" -- or rather, land snails), I don't really like the parts of the museum that are flashy, with screens blinking at you and interactive this and that; I like the collections, the mute presentation of specimens and artifacts from which one is free to draw their own conclusions and experiences.  I'm not saying the museum shouldn't affirmatively teach, or separate fact from the uninformed speculation of its visitors.  But I think a museum should be contemplative as much as it is interactive -- I want a quieter experience.

Someday, if I am ever rich, I will go shell collecting on far flung, tropical beaches.

Which is why I usually have to avoid the dinosaurs.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE dinosaurs.  When I was a kid I read every single book about dinosaurs I could get my hands on. I read Bob Bakker's Dinosaur Heresies when I was only eight.  And the new dinosaur exhibit at the museum is beautiful.  I still remember the old hall, which was only half as big, and the dark, old fashioned wood cases holding specimens along the walls, and the dinosaur skeletons that were the real bones(!) mounted in the most scientifically false positions imaginable.  It was grand and all, but mostly wrong.  The new mounts are accurate and beautiful and compelling.

This overlook was child-free.

But of course, the whole space is swarming with kids who all want to punch the touchscreens and run around and scream.  So rather than confront that, I took in the Halls of North American and African Animals, and Botany.  I couldn't find insects, or the great old dioramas about the evolution of sea life.  I suppose part of my museum visits just satisfy my nostalgia.  As a kid, despite the fact that we lived an easy 45-minute drive away from the city, I got brought into the city exactly once a year, to go to the museum.  Because folks where I'm from didn't go to the city.  'Cause ... yeah.  I hate where I'm from.

MINERALS FOREVER.

I also always peruse the gems.  They fit my museum criteria really well: big mute collections to quietly contemplate, with just enough learning thrown in to feel edified (this is how particular crystalline structures form, this is how phosphorescence works, etc.).  Plus the kids don't seem to like it much.  I did encounter a group of Japanese businessmen in the gem hall, each wearing a nearly identical dark suit and carrying a nearly identical leather briefcase, looking around quietly at the cases of minerals.  I'm sure there's a story there, but I don't know what it is.

Why not me?

Anyway, maybe in a few weeks when schools are well and truly out, there will be fewer kids.  Or maybe next time I just need to go to the Art Museum.


Back at home, after lunch I read some Dostoevsky, and then I tackled Biscuits.  You have to understand that as much as I love to cook, I cannot bake for shit.  It's too precise and nitpicky -- I have mastered the baking of a single object, the chocolate chip cookie, and everything else is a disaster.  But I love biscuits, and they're cheap, and you can't ever find them anywhere for sale (except the ones that are choked with transfats and shit), so I set about a few months ago to make Friend Mark T.'s biscuits.  The first time I tried to make these seemingly extremely simple biscuits, it was such a sticky disaster that they were actually inedible.  The second attempt ... eh.  Edible, but not exactly good.  Yesterday's attempt went much better, though I've no idea why things worked this time and not the last two times.  I think they needed another minute or two in the oven, but they were definitely tasty, and so we had chicken 'n' biscuits for dinner, and I was very proud of myself.

I have cooked SO MANY MEALS this month.

Oh, and yesterday's other Thing That Happened was that I made the mistake of feeding a Facebook troll who was all like, "It's not patronizing and infantilizing and sexist for a man to come up in a public place to woman he doesn't know and demand that she smile for him!  He has good intentions."  First: yes, it is.  It is patronizing, infantilizing, and sexist for him to do so: that's why women never do this to men.  Such behavior stems from the belief that women are public property, and it is their obligation to please others, either with their bodies, countenance, or attitude.  That belief manifests itself in douchebaggery like, "Smile, honey, it's not so bad!" (except it is -- this came up because Friend Katie was getting this crap from dudes and her father just passed away), and then goes all the way up on a continuum that ends in rape and violence.  Are the dudes that tell you to smile rapists?  Probably not.  But as soon as you believe a woman you don't know has some sort of obligation to you, to make you more comfortable or to conform to your wishes, as soon as you believe she exists for you, you're on that spectrum.  So get back off of it.  As to intentions: who gives a shit about your intentions?  It's not the offending party who gets to decide what's offensive; that's the right of the offended party.  A woman walks down the street, and a strange man tells his friend, so she can hear, that he'd like to fuck that bitch; this is very common, and very intimidating for a woman.  Am I supposed to think that the fact that the man just meant to "give the woman a compliment" is what's really important?  Bullshit.  It doesn't matter at all. What matters is the sexual harassment of a woman in a public space, and how it makes her feel.  Period.  The end.  Full stop.  You douchebag.


So, anyhoodle.  I know, I know, don't feed the trolls.


Anyway, today I have to go to Giant Eagle, which I hate, but then this evening Ted and I get to go see Friends Sarah and Roger give dance performances at their work, which should be nice.  


Oh, and, full disclosure, I have so far completely failed to undertake any of the self-improvement projects I wanted to start this week.  Why, God, why aren't I one of those kind of people who doesn't despise exercise?

Eating Animals, or: I'm Lazy and Morally Weak, or: Seriously, What's Wrong with Me (Us)?

I didn't blog yesterday.  In fact, I did exactly two things yesterday: watered the plants, and made dinner.  Well, there were other actions taken, of course: the making of tea, texting, microwaving lunch.  But basically nothing.  I did start Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which frankly gave me a little existential crisis, because about half of the first 60 pages is all about the inevitability of death.  I'm hoping a nascent wedding plot picks up soon, there.

What I avoided writing about yesterday was Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I finished on Sunday night.  It's a book that's chiefly about the abuses of factory farming.  Foer is in large part concerned with the ethics of how the vast, vast majority of animals are confined and slaughtered, though he also discusses the truly disgusting practices of modern agribusiness in terms of its consequences on human health (the nullification of antibiotics, the release into the environment of literally billions of metric tons of animal feces, etc.).  Did you know that the USDA is perfectly cool with the poultry industry standard that 11% of the factory farmed "chicken" you buy is actually a slurry of fecal- and disease-infested waste water that the chicken absorbs in the vat cooling process?  ELEVEN PERCENT.  That is motherfucking disgusting. Buy air chilled chicken people -- if you take nothing else from today's blog, buy air chilled chicken.

As horrifying as eating that is, of course, it's nothing like what the animals suffer, which was already known to me.  Most of what Foer reports is familiar to me, because I've spent many years worrying over the ethics of food, particularly in regards to animal welfare.  Foer, though, is not primarily a journalist -- though he spent three years researching this book -- and as a novelist, his descriptions of the processes by which we obtain meat are perhaps particularly ... affective.  I literally got sick to my stomach reading about how cows are often not killed at the start of the assembly line that dismantles them, and so will be conscious and screaming as they are skinned, as their legs are cut off, and as their stomachs are split and their ribs pulled apart.  This is not some rare abuse or exception -- it is normal and usual.  Chickens living out their entire lives in a space the size of a piece of paper -- never turning, never flapping, never standing -- sandwiched into cages into the wire mesh floors of which their feet literally grow, crushed on either side by other chickens with equally little space, while the waste of chickens stacked above rains down upon them.  They are often -- often -- also not killed at the front of the assembly line, and so are frequently scalded alive.  Perhaps worst is the pigs, because pigs are notoriously intelligent. Their suffering is intense and horrifying.

It's possible that you just don't care at all about how animals are treated, but I doubt that.  Most people, I think, would agree that even if you intend to eat an animal -- and after a lot of consideration on the subject, I've decided, for myself, that there's nothing immoral about killing and eating an animal per se -- it is morally objectionable to torture it first.  Think of the way people dote on their pets.  Think of the outcry when a notorious animal abuser is caught and put on the local news.  Granted those abusers exist, and I've known some people who would honestly remain unmoved to see an animal abused to death in front of them -- I grew up in one of America's fucked up small towns, after all.  Crystal meth is a hell of a drug.  But I think in general, we can all agree that even food animals deserve to be treated humanely.  I mean, I swear before God and everyone reading this that if I came into my house to find an intruder threatening one of my kitty cats with real harm, if I had the power to do so, I would kill that son of a bitch and never, never regret it.  So, you know, I know that I, at least, can get pretty intense about animals.

Look, my purpose here is not to exhort you to go vegetarian.  It's more that I keep wondering why I'm NOT a vegetarian.  I was a pescetarian -- I ate fish but not meat -- for four years, and often times that amounted to eating vegetarian, because fish is expensive and a pain in the ass to cook, and frankly, I only really like fish when it's in its sushi form, or if it's shellfish (crabs, shrimp, clams, mussels, etc.).  A fish fillet has never excited me.  My point is that I have known about the abuses of the factory farming industry for many years, and yet I, who would kill a human to protect my pet cats, who harbor the deepest hope that the lowest circles of hell are reserved for the people who abused my rescue cat Floyd, or Friend Katie's rescued dog, just keep eating shit like chicken wings.

Don't get me wrong, I make a half-hearted effort.  I only buy organic eggs, which according to the research I've done, means a marginally better existence for the layer hens.  ("Cage Free" or "All Natural" mean absolutely nothing -- you have to get the actual certified organic eggs, or eggs from a trusted local source.)  I always buy my chicken thighs from Whole Foods, because they are marked with this little sticker that says the thighs have an animal welfare rating of "2".  I gather this means that the chickens had an "enriched" environment, though it's hard to discover what this actually means.  I do know that factory farmed chicken -- which makes up 99.9% of poultry in the US (no, you didn't read that wrong) -- does not qualify even for a rating of 1, so I am comforted by that.  (Here's a piece on the system from the Chicago Tribune, and here is the system as described by the group who created it, a nonprofit called Global Animal Partnership.)

But here's the thing, yinz guys.  I don't just eat Whole Foods chicken thighs.  First, of course, there was the exchange from Monday's blog with the guy behind the counter at Parma.  It sounds like their prosciutto pigs might count for an OK animal welfare rating, but clearly, the sausage pigs wouldn't.  And clearly, if I'm out at Sidelines for chicken wings, they can't sell a dozen of them for $6.75 if the chickens have been treated well.  There's no honest way for me to say that it's morally acceptable to pay for and eat an animal that's been horrendously abused, and yet, boy, do I ever.  In general, I don't consider myself a bad person, but here we are.

You don't need meat to live, I assure you, and in fact, many studies have shown vegetarian diets to be healthier than omnivorous ones.  What Foer doesn't account for sufficiently in his book is the cultural weight of eating.  He takes stabs at describing how starting the new tradition of refraining from meat for ethical reasons could be just as rewarding as the old family traditions surrounding food, but frankly, that's horseshit, and I kind of think he knows it.  A lot of how we interact with friend and family, how we identify ourselves as part of a culture, is wrapped up in food.  I'm not saying that justifies anything, I'm just saying it's harder to give up some foods than he makes it sound, for a variety of reasons that aren't all about taste and satisfying one's oral fixations.  (Though it dismays me how easily my morality is put aside because bacon tastes good.)

Ted -- who is a kind-hearted man, and who is sympathetic to this ethical plight -- and I have thought of how we might array ourselves as ethical eaters.  Invest in a used chest freezer for the basement; purchase meat from regional farms that have good standards of care for their animals (there are a surprising number of such, if you're willing to make a day trip out of buying half a hog or a quarter of beef); refrain from eating meat when out, unless we're at the kind of classy joint where they can tell you where the meat came from (of which there are a good enough number in Pittsburgh, for sure).  It's easy to buy nicer eggs and kindly procured milk -- the cheese, though, the cheese is a problem.  Who the hell knows where fine cheeses come from, honestly?

But we never seem to put this plan into action.  I think one part of the problem is the effort involved: it's not just laziness, it's that living gently in the world is real work, and when you also have, you know, work to go to, plus the work of keeping a home, maintaining relationships, and etc., adding more work on top of that can be daunting.  And while just giving up animal products might be the "easiest" solution, I'm here to tell you that being a vegan sucks.  It sucks.  There is usually a vegetarian option on any given menu -- there is NEVER a vegan option, and making vegan shit at home is boring and laborious, unless all you do is eat processed patties, which are sort of gross since you just know those things are a chemical shit storm, and frankly, eating vegan all the time is deeply unsatisfying, I don't care what anyone has told you, and the two times in my life I've gone vegan (for Lent) I emerged unusually pale and tired and somewhat angry.

Another thing that makes me angry is the prevailing economic, cultural, and government conditions that make it this much work to eat reasonably ethically.  How in the hell much governmental corruption is required for the USDA to allow feces to be classified as a "commercial blemish" so poultry slaughterers are allowed to sell chickens whose intestines have been split open in the butchering process, coating them in disease-ridden shit?  How disconnected from the world and basic compassion are we as a society that almost every animal that is slaughtered in America is tortured first -- which was absolutely not the case as late as the middle of the 20th century, when factory farming began to supplant traditional animal husbandry?  How heinous is the late capitalist economy that no concern for animal, human, or environmental welfare (let me tell you what miles and miles of lagoons of pig shit do to a watershed sometime) is permitted to stand between the owners of production and their rich-ass shareholders and the last possible cent of profit?

I don't know.  I've lost the thread of where this blog is going, I think.  I'm a lazy, morally weak person who keeps eating meat even though I am well aware of the horrifying conditions that most of our meat-providing animals live and die in, as well as how absolutely disgusting it is to put these carcasses into my body -- ELEVEN PERCENT WASTE WATER, people.  Absolutely nothing excuses it; my mind just paves it over, the way it naturally does all death.  I'm not sure how other people handle this question.  Well, I know how Jonathan Safran Foer does -- he's a vegetarian.

My extremely delicious homemade green curry.  Maybe next time I'll leave out the chicken thighs?