or how i learned to elevate the mundane

Rethinking what I want to do with this blog. I think if I had some kind of consistent thing to talk about, I might find more time to actually write to it.

Pretty cool video of a gigantic asteroid hitting the Earth.  Watch.  Feel warmed by the utter destruction and inevitability of Nature doing whatever the hell it wants. 

There’s a threat of snow here in Seattle later today and into tomorrow. It’s always amusing what happens on the lead up to the actual snow. There’s always equal amounts of eager anticipation and dread, it seems.

And, of course, it gives the local news stations a chance to deploy all of their reporters throughout the city to report on snowfall and the expected traffic impact.

Also, it allows local grocery stores to run through all of their current stock of bread and supplies as people hunker down and prepare for the End Times.

It’s all worth it, though, if there’s enough snow to sled on.

See you on the other end of Armageddon.

So, upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, which is the first such upgrade since I installed WordPress oh so many moons ago.  I’ve also gone with a new theme.  A white one to contrast the black one that I’d used for so long.

And to commemorate the occasion….  a new blog post!  Hopefully, there will be more blog posts than WordPress updates, although dedicated readers will have heard that song and dance before.

Much has changed and stayed the same since my last blog post.  Hopefully, I will find the time to write them down.  That’s it for now!

I had every intention of entering a post into the “StuffWhitePeopleLike” contest in order to win a copy of the book and to also have a post featured on the site.  But they closed the contest at the beginning of Friday rather than the end of Friday, so I was unable to submit an entry.  I have to be honest and say that I may not have had time to pull it together regardless, but I like to think I could’ve.  I had several ideas ruminating in my head on this one. Some of these included:

1. Montessori preschools
2. Moby
3. Going to Late Night/24hr Restaurants in Ethnic (non-white) Neighborhoods
4. Exotic Hot Sauce
5. Adoption (but not of white kids)

I felt like I had a couple of thoughts on these that might elicit a chuckle or two, but the one that I had finally settled on was this:

Being a “Foodie”

White people are obsessed with food, though most of them don’t have the personal time, energy, or skill to make themselves a great meal on a daily basis.  Keep in mind that white people also hate corporations, so relying on those awful corporate purveyors of fat, calories, and over-sized portions is anathema to the typical advanced white person.  No McDonald’s, TGI Fridays, Applebee’s or KFC for Taite, Amanda, and the kids tonight (NOTE: For some reason, though, In-N-Out burger is exempt from this scorn because… well…. because the burgers have lettuce in them.  Or something.  Who knows?) !  No, none of that kind of food for the advanced white person because they are likely to be “Foodies.”

Foodies like to believe they have an advanced palate and that food is more than just nourishment, it is an experience.  They obsess over the minutiae of food preparation by world-class chefs and marvel over all steps of the food preparation and presentation process so that they can appreciate the holistic experience of consuming extremely expensive food.  However, many foodies are quick to point out that the “Foodie Experience” is not solely about consuming very expensive food. 

Foodies will invariably point to street food in exotic countries as part of the foodie experience, largely because there’s no multi-national corporation backing the local fast/street food.  And the fact that you can eat at a cart and not get sick – without even needing to pass a health inspection! – means that the raw ingredients used MUST be fresh and, therefore, good for you (many of these foodies will overlook the amount of carbs consumed from a noodle street cart in Tokyo, but will peel off the bun as if it were a soiled diaper from a hamburger purchased in America).  Another bonus of the street cart experience is that the foodie also feels like they’re really helping out the poor street vendor when they hand over a few coins to them and utter the few words of thanks they learned from their Fodor’s Guide.  If the white person comes back multiple times to eat at the same cart, they will feel like they’ve somehow bonded with the poor local and that the street vendor will remember them for the rest of his/her life because of the shared experience of eating some noodles or other exotic local delicacy.  It’s truly a win-win situation.

But a foodie cannot eat of street food to the exclusion of other food experiences, so it’s off to the white linen tablecloth establishments eventually.  Foodies can smell a corporation a mile away (again, turning a blind eye to the fact that ALL restaurants are corporations, just not big multi-national conglomerations), so even though a place might have flavorful food, there will always be something slightly off at the place that serves not only Thai but also Korean and Japanese fusion at the same time.  Those are places that are fine, if you’re “just slummin’ it” but those are never places one goes to have a Foodie Experience.

When engaging a white person you suspect may be a foodie, you should casually test the waters by mentioning a local sushi establishment as one of your favorites.  Be sure to know the name of the one with the least amount of seating and the highest per-roll cost.  That is typically a safe bet.  If the white person’s eyes light up and they start going on about the “rice preparation being the key” and so forth, then you know you’ve hit a foodie.  At that point, you should casually mention how you prefer the omikase since you “trust the sushi chef implicitly” and let on your distaste for fancy rolls with non-traditional ingredients.  From there, you can launch into the local donut shop “that has no parking but is so worth it anyway” and then move on to the 5-star restaurants in your local city.  At this point, the white person will have a tremendous amount of respect for your taste and intelligence and will likely invite you out to a “tasting” at some point in the future.