The Omnivore's Dilemma

I finished my third book of 2010, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He tells the story of how four very different meals arrive on our dinner tables. He explains the life of a McDonald's value meal and the life of an environmentally friendly* organic meal. He goes on to explain how at least one local farm works, then proceeds to exegete the history of an entirely locally-grown meal. Finally, he creates a meal out of food that he either grew, killed, or foraged for himself.

* And actually, this might not be true. In order to eat organic asparagus in November, the veggies have to be flown express from Argentina. Maybe not the environment-friendly scenario we've been led to believe.

I learned all sorts of interesting things. 97% of the calories in your McDonald's sack come directly from corn, and that might not be a good thing. Argentinians eat far more red meat than we do, but theirs being entirely grass-fed, the population suffers almost no heart disease.* Their only trade-off is that they are forced to eat a tastier beef, one that tastes like beef was intended to taste.

* Don't cry for beef, Argentina?

I learned about the highly secretive underground culture of mushroom collectors, and I can understand it. Pollan attaches himself to a group that pulls in more than 60 pounds of morels, and sells them to restaurateurs at $20/pound. Do the math.

Most interesting though was the ecological web of the small local farm. Poop is collected and used meticulously for the benefit of the farm, the animals, and the end-consumers. The texture of the eggs is different. The color of the yolks is different. In short, eggs, the way they are meant to be, are not the same thing as the eggs we eat today.* Of course, all of this makes me want to own chickens and collect poop. Lindsay is not too keen on this.

* If you are what you eat, then it makes sense. Mass-produced farm animals always eat things other than what they're supposed to eat and it changes them.

It's one of those books that you read and then have your greatest epiphanies afterward. You mean, 60 pounds of mushrooms could get me a used car?

Writing without Fruit

Every now and again, I'll pull up Blogger, sit down to write a sentence much like the one you're reading right now, and then I'll begin to realize that I don't have a clue where I'm going with it. I am intent on writing something - because I want to write - something, but I just don't have anything to say. I suppose it's sort of like wandering onto a grassy field with a football helmet, a baseball bat, and a basketball, then saying: "I want to be good at sports." Sure, you've got a pile of equipment, but you really look like an idiot.

And in this grand metaphor, I suppose it means that I look like the idiot right now. But due to the wonders of the Internet, if I complete this stream-of-consciousness blathering and I don't like it, I won't post it, and you'll never know how stupid I really am.*

* Unless of course I'm stupid enough to hit "Publish Post" anyway. I guess you'll be the judge.

--

As we were watching American Idol last night, I mentioned to Lindsay my disbelief at some of the poorer singers that try out for the show. For my part, I think that at least half of them are aware of their suckitude, but play it off well so that they can win a bar bet and enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.

But I'm sure that there are at least some of these people who actually believe that they can sing. In and of itself, this isn't what throws me. I can fully understand how a poor singer can delude himself into believing he's a decent singer.* I can understand how a mediocre singer might believe himself to be good. But for the life of me, I cannot understand how a poor singer might believe himself to be one of the 24 best undiscovered talents in the entire nation.

* If I couldn't do it, I wouldn't sing. I'm the expert here.

One guy said he couldn't believe he didn't make it, even though he "hit the really loud notes." This is clearly a guy with zero training, because musicians wouldn't convince themselves that volume is what makes a good singer great. If this was the case, my neighbors would have won multiple Grammies.

Of course, almost all of these people claim that their friends always tell them how great they are, which has to lead you to believe that either these people aren't really friends or that compliments lead to delusion far more frequently than illumination.

--

Someone who I didn't know once approached me and told me she enjoyed my blog. Another person told me that if I didn't write for the rest of my life, then I'd be missing my calling. Another told me she'd laughed so hard she cried, and another told me my prose was touching enough to bring her to tears. I suppose it takes a certain degree of talent to cause humorous and serious tears at the same time. I suppose it takes even more to do that with a blog that's standby material involves a ferret wearing a sweater or inappropriate jokes about meeting Scientologists in my underwear.

--

Then I remember, that when I was 24-years-old, someone told me I should try out for American Idol. There might be something there too, but I know that I can't hit the loud notes.

Times When Headphones are Important

Scene: Barnes & Noble cafe. Quiet section, filled with readers and people diligently typing away (or more likely screwing around on Facebook) on their laptops. Yuppie crowd is full of people wearing thick-rimmed glasses, indoor scarves, and fitted t-shirts.

I walked into Barnes & Noble, immersed myself fully into the pretension of my environs, and proceeded to read The House of Morgan, a book about the meteoric rise of the Morgan banks.* It was interesting stuff.

* Nine-year-old Aaron wants to give me the beatdown for getting into stuff like this and calling it interesting. But if we got into a fight, I'd definitely win. At 9, I weighed 60 pounds. Seriously, it wouldn't even be close.

Just then, a confused-looking man walks in, sits at a table, and immediately loads YouTube onto his MacBook. After fielding a few phone calls and completely spoiling the plot of the new Sherlock Holmes movie for me,* he proceeded to begin loading videos for his enjoyment.

*His quote: "I liked the movie, thought Robert Downey was great, but I knew that the ******** was the villain the whole time." Thanks man. Seriously.

He watched videos - at full volume - for about three minutes, much to the chagrin of a group of timid yuppies who needed a hero. It was my time.

I let fly a couple of stifled coughs and gave some dirty looks, but apparently this fellow was oblivious to subverted social cues.

So I did what I had to do. I walked up behind the guy and watched the video over his shoulder, chuckling at appropriate moments. It took him a shockingly long time to realize what I was doing, but then he responded as expected: "What do you think you're doing?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. If you don't want us all to watch your videos, then maybe you shouldn't make all of us listen to them."

Scene: As Aaron returns to his seat, a bald 22-year-old with thick rimmed glasses and scarf, reading Kurt Vonnegut and a book about veganism, places his hands together, bows and issues a mock applause. The day saved, Aaron does what any superhero would do. He sits down and reads about early 20th-Century bank deregulation and its affect on the global commodities market.*

* Just like the Punisher would have done.

Traffic

I just finished my second book of 2010 - Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Aside from the over-punctuated and heavily-worded title, it was an interesting glimpse into the genesis of traffic jams, the danger involved with driving a car, and what we can all do about it.

What makes all of this so perplexing is that cities have employed traffic specialists since the 1800s (to manage all the horses, not even to speak of their poo), and no one can nail down anything close to an accurate answer to explain much of our traffic woes.

Traffic engineers have gone to miraculous lengths to make safer, more forgiving roads only to learn later that these roads encourage drivers to try even riskier high-speed maneuvers. Some more dangerous roads actually operate more safely because drivers concentrate on driving safely. Vanderbilt interviews traffic experts (more than you would have ever thought existed) and even speaks to "one of the leading experts" in queue formation.

But there are answers.

To put it simply, the easiest way to alleviate traffic is for you to get off of the road and get out of my way so I can get to work on time.* Of course, it doesn't work, because what's good for society (or for gridlock) certainly isn't good for the individuals most affected. It's why listening to the traffic report works best when you're the only one listening to it. When the radioman says that an alternate route in Chicago is faster, it's not surprising that 30,000 people sprint to clog up the alternate route.

* From the Onion: 98% of People Favor Public Transportation for Others.

Similar is the concept of night driving. One of Vanderbilt's most ostentatious claims is that in order for night driving to be as safe as day driving, we'd all have to move at 20 mph. Of course, if you move along at that kind of a speed (or lack thereof) on a highway, you are in significantly more danger because not everyone is going to heed that advice.

Smaller, lighter cars are safer - but only if everyone drives one. If you're the only one, then your car is significantly more dangerous, at least to yourself.

This book made me think, and mostly it made me think about this: I wonder what it would take to become an expert in queue formation.

Can't the Washer Just Do It for Me?

If I had any idea how to apply for a patent, I'd do this myself. But I don't, so my great ideas are merely a call for you to invent it, give me one, and make the world a better place.

Washing machines should automatically default to the cold/cold setting after every single load.

Think about it.

No one ever gets too upset about accidentally washing their whites in cold water, but no one's thrilled when they pull a stack of color-bled doll clothes out of a washing machine that's a little bit warmer than it was supposed to be. We've all done it at least once - washed something improperly and turned it into the kind of garment only a rodent would wear.*

* Strictly so I could use this:

Here's what I want to do. I will turn the dial to hot for the whites, and the washing machine will turn it back to cold again when the load is finished.

I would guess that most families, at least in this country, don't go through enough white clothes* to justify doing more than one load of whites anyway. There's very little reason for a washer to remain on the hot setting for consecutive loads.

* I know what you're thinking: Klan members. But you're wrong. Klan members don't wash their clothes. Ever.

So my great idea is a washing machine that defaults to its safest setting. It just makes sense.

And no, this post is does not owe it's birth to anything stupid that I've done.*

* At least not recently.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

Yesterday, I completed (and started, not coincidentally) my first book of 2010, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett. It's the true story about the rise and fall of John Gilkey, a sad and obsessive man who stole an estimated $200,000 in rare books.

Many rare book thieves have found that it is far easier to pilfer and resell a rare book than say, a Tiffany necklace, and therefore make a profit. But Gilkey's motives were not financial. Instead, he appears to have stolen because of his obsession with books, and his ambitions to have the kind of library John D. Rockefeller would have had.

But perhaps most fascinating is the glimpse that Bartlett provides into the occasionally seedy world of rare book collectors, dealers, and mediators. Most of these people will never read the books they collect* and instead merely want them for display or merely to experience the satisfaction of knowing that they are one of only three people who owns the First Edition of the Cat in the Hat.

* The rarest books are frequently the most controversial ones. When book-bannings and book-burnings happen, they create a lower supply; and so these books are the most heavily sought. One man described a book he had just purchased for more than $100,000 as "pure filth" and that he would never allow himself to read such garbage. Imagine your priest purchasing a Farrah Fawcett autographed Playboy simply because he liked rare things, and there you are.

Gilkey himself, is a haunting character. Harmless, but convinced he hadn't done anything wrong (just making things fair, he would explain), Gilkey doesn't believe he's committed any moral transgressions, and seems likely to do it again. He explains that if you want something, but don't have the money to purchase it, than what other possible recourse would you have?

--

I read the book in its entirety will sitting in Barnes & Noble. I selected it when I arrived and reshelved it on my way out. I wonder if that makes me a different kind of book thief, but I don't really feel guilty about it.

I Am Jack's Self-Deprecation

At the prodding of my wife, my mother, my grandmother, my cousins, and strangely enough, the fifth-grade teacher at Dawson's school, I have an announcement to make.

I've returned to the Drawing Board.

Blessing or curse, you decide.

--

I should mention that many times, I've fully intended to return - to come back to the drawing board. It's just that I would sit down to write a post, knock out a dozen empty meaningless words that never drew toward a point, and realize I had nothing to say.*

* In fairness, that never stopped me before.

But, I think I've finally realized why the writer's block existed in the first place. I think it's because it's far more difficult for me to pretend convincingly to be the person I used to pretend to be.

I wrote this blog primarily from the standpoint of an aloof bachelor. Nearly all of my best jokes had their genesis in a degree of self-deprecation that is almost never mirrored in my reality. So if you can fully grasp this - in the online fantasy world that I created for myself, I made myself significantly more lame than I actually thought I was.

I made bank when I threw around labels like: "I am an idiot," and "Reasons I will Always be Single," and "Stories Where I'm Not Wearing Pants," and the list goes on.

So while Lindsay would argue that there are maybe some good reasons that I was single for so long,* the difficulty in managing an overhumble alter-ego is that it's incredibly difficult to be convincingly self-deprecating when your wife is a 10.

* Flatulence, primarily.

Of course, marrying a beautiful woman doesn't preclude me from being an idiot, and it certainly doesn't mean that I wear pants more. I learned that when I watched Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Still Standing, and According to Jim.

It just means there's something redeeming about all of that, right?