We used
to see people walking the streets or riding the subway talking to
themselves, but we never see them anymore. Actually, they haven't
disappeared, but we now assume that everyone who talks to himself in
public is using Bluetooth. We're so certain of this that we don't
bother looking for the device clipped to the ear. Actually, a
certain percentage of those folks don't have a phone. They are just
old-fashioned loonies.
*
A
related point: other insane persons now call themselves “performance
artists.” Out of politeness, we don't question this.
*
Remember
Geronimo's Cadillac? The American Indian Movement? The takeover of
Alcatraz? The occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973? Drunken Ira
Hayes?
“Everything
You Know About Indians Is Wrong” is a charming and cynical little
book written in 2009 by Paul Chaat Smith, currently a curator at the
National Museum of the American Indian in D.C., (which he describes
as “a bad idea whose time has come”). Smith was once an activist
himself and is now a lecturer and critic who has lived through every
twist and turn of Indian politics, art and culture over the past
sixty years. Much of the humor here grows out of his contempt for
the cheesy romanticism (the “noble savage” myths and the phony
environmentalism, in particular), that has infected white America's
view of the Indian since actual warfare ceased 120 years ago.
*
Everybody
generalizes.
*
Mnemonic
to remember the seven Central American countries: “Be good, Elliot:
have no colon problems.” (Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.)
*
Mnemonic
for the seven sovereign Stans: “Keep tensions underground---put
away that knife!” (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgystan.)
*
“Recipes
which have the word “BLENDER” in their title are only successful
when an electric blender is used.” ---Joy of Cooking, by
Rombauer and Becker (October 1972 edition).
Joy
of Cooking, though it seems to
have fallen out of fashion, retains its hard-nosed yet poetic charm.
(E.g., How to skin an eel---page 355.) It is at least as amusing to
leaf through as the Larousse Gastronomique,
which can seem a bit snooty and authoritarian at times.
*
On
Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia, I often pass this sign for a local
business:
BAXTER
PEST CONTROL
God
creates....
We
exterminate.
Every
time I see it, I wonder about the people who own the place. Is this
really the idea you want to implant in the heads of potential
customers? Does it really sell pest control services to remind
people that mice, fleas and cucarachas are also God's creatures?
Who, other than someone who hates God, would ever give them a
call?
*
Today
at Target, I saw a woman in the full Muslim abaya and niqab,
jet-black from head to toe, with just a slit for her eyes. As I
passed her, I noticed she had a security badge of some type clipped
to her robe. It was apparently issued by her employer and it
featured a full color photo of her face and hair.
*
Higher
education prices are one of the more opaque areas of the economy in
America, and pretty much the only thing any of us know for sure is
that, much like the world of oriental carpets, nobody pays retail.
There's always a discount available, or in-state rates, or financial
aid, or some private scholarship for which certain students qualify,
or under-market-rate loans, or work-study stipends, or something.
When you see that MIT tuition for a year is $43, 016, we all know
that nobody is paying it.
There's
a reason for this, of course, and it's the same reason nobody pays
retail in the oriental carpet world. They don't want you to see what
is going on behind the curtain. There are agendas. There are
Indians and Mexicans and black students to be taken care of, as well
as other, more obscure, diversity angles. There is “social
justice” at work. And don't forget the war on women.
The
race discrimination (and other types of group-identity
discrimination) that the left is so fond of is under attack in many
places, and some states have outlawed race discrimination in college
admission policies. But the price of college for a particular
student remains a secret and thus can still be used as a means of
advancing the radical left's discriminatory and redistributionist
philosophy. I don't know (nobody does), but I'll bet college pricing
is used for that purpose.
I
would like to see a study on this. I would love to see a study of
tuition at, let's say, the University of Wisconsin. On average, how
much (after all the discounts and freebies and scholarships) do white
males pay? Blacks? Asians? Women? Then I'd like to see the numbers
at Princeton and Auburn and a half dozen other places.
*
I never
lived in New England, I've never spent a lot of time there, and I've
never had a spiritual experience involving maple syrup. Nothing
against the stuff, you understand, but faced with a stack of
pancakes, Mrs. Butterworth will do me just fine. However, I've
learned a thing or two about maple syrup recently.
For one
thing, there are different grades of maple syrup, and people have
strong feelings about them. Recently, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a
waitress in a diner was stabbed by a customer who had been served
dark amber Grade A maple syrup rather than the Grade B he had
requested. A local jury deliberated for three days until denying his
claim of self-defense (based on the syrup switch), but convicted him
only of disorderly conduct rather than the attempted murder charge
the state had demanded.
I made
that up, of course. I doubt anyone ever got stabbed over the wrong
grade of maple syrup, but the world of BIG MAPLE SYRUP is a complex
and dangerous place, with many different classification systems and
many different organizations all vying for supremacy, including the
Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, the Federation of Quebec
Maple Syrup Producers, the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers
Association, the International Maple Syrup Institute, the
Massachusetts Maple Producers Association and the Ohio Maple
Producers Association. (Ohio? Really? They make maple syrup in
Ohio??? OK, and let's put an NHL franchise in Rio de Janiero.)
It's a
lot like boxing in the 1970's when there were numerous boxing
federations, each of which had its separate heavyweight champion, or
maybe it's like when the papacy went all schismy in the 14th
Century and there were competing popes in Rome and Avignon and Kansas
City and Malibu and nobody knew who the real one was or how to get to
heaven.
But the
real problem is that there are different grading systems for
different colors and tastes and qualities of syrup, and there have to
be because different colors taste different. Vermont Fancy, for
example, is very light in color, so light in fact that most syrup
literature strongly implies it is fit only for sissies. Then there's
Grade A medium amber, Grade A dark amber, Grade B (which is even
darker), and Grade C, which is so
dark and so foul that
it is apparently only used for industrial purposes like making candy
or coating the underbelly of a Ford F-150. Don't memorize these
categories, however, because they are all being changed to a
different system (which the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association
ominously describes as “Mandatory in 2015”). To wit: everything
from Vermont Fancy to Grade C will now be categorized as either
“Grade A Golden,” “Grade A Amber,” “Grade A Dark” or
“Grade A Very Dark.” Even the maple syrup world changes with the
times, apparently, and since we all now get a trophy just for showing
up, all maple syrup will soon be Grade A, even the stuff underneath
your pickup truck.
Unless
you are in Canada, naturally. There, probably because a lot of them
speak French, they don't use letters, only numbers, so if you happen
to ask for Grade A in a restaurant in Nova Scotia, they assume you
are an syrup terrorist from Vermont and, after a fair trial, set you
adrift on an ice floe. “But we do not have this Grade A, mon
frere; here we have only the maple syrup numero un, deux or trois.
Prepare to die.”
A month
ago, I didn't know any of this because in the temperate zones outside
of New England and Canada, all we ever see in stores is Grade A
medium amber. Then a friend brought me a gift: a bottle of Grade B.
Good stuff, I thought to myself, slathering it on a pancake. Then I
took out my Grade A medium, poured it on another flapjack for a
little in-home Pepsi challenge, and---wow! That brought it home!
Grade A medium amber is pitiful stuff indeed, but you don't find that
out until you taste the Grade B. It was like I had never had a
pancake before. It was like I had never tasted syrup before. It was
like I had never had breakfast.
Why
does this happen? Why don't they ship the Grade B to the “lower
forty-eight,” or whatever they call the states that are not Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts or New York? Well, there's a
reason for that too, but you're not going to like it. Most of the
Grade B produced gets shipped to California where the last thing they
would do with it is pour it on a waffle, as God intended. Instead,
it is combined with cayenne pepper and used as a “cleanse.” And
what is a “cleanse,” you ask? Well, it's a California thing and
you wouldn't understand. If you must know, ask Dr. Oz.
Copyright2014MichaelKubacki
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