Remember the Pink Panther movies? Peter Sellers? Then there’s Clouseau’s servant Kato who would ambush the his employer from time to time — at the request of the inspector to keep him on his toes. This guy on Craigslist in San Francisco was hiring for his own personal Kato. Awesome. I’m sending him my dossier.

Who wouldn’t like the helpful little mushroom? You can grill the portobello, stir-fry the shiitake, tempura-batter the oyster… and colonize new worlds with the mycelium.

I’m selling a new bumpersticker on Cafepress: I’m pro-fungi and I vote.

We got sidetracked on the way to the farmer’s market yesterday. Beauty day, two cups of black currant tea to sustain us until Silly Yak pastries could be procured, then… BLAMMO!

Bladow!

Imagine taking a pill that even makes bean flour taste good. What if the pill was a fruit? Celiacs (sounds like something from Land of the Lost), diabetics, vegans or even those who choose to have fussy palette might find use of the fruit discussed in this article. Synsepalum dulcificum is the “miracle fruit” that tricks your taste buds into interpreting flavors as sweeter than you naturally know them to be.

Chew the fruit, suck on a lemon and you’ve got lemonade flavor. If I host my own culinary adventure gathering, I’m dressing in a purple velvet coat and top hat… there’s no earthly way of knowing — which way this flavor is going.

So our body is deceiving our brain?  Is our preference for or against flavors as much biological (mechanical?) as cultural and mental?  Fodder for future reading lists, I suppose. If anyone has recommendations on the topic, please forward them to me.

That I could find a Pee Wee Herman and Willie Wonka reference in so few words concerns me slightly. Concerns me that you’re reading this too.

It’s iced-coffee season again and I’m stuck with extra strong coffee dumped over ice from Alterra. Bah. Last year, the New York Times published an article about the cold-brew method and its superiority to any other way to brew coffee that you intend to water down with ice cubes. This is so true.

Toddy is my favorite way to brew cold coffee. You need one pound of coffee beans (ground for drip) and 9 cups of filtered water. Let it sit 8-12 hours. Then pour the concentrated coffee over ice in a glass, filling only about 1/3 full. Then top the rest off with filtered water and stir. Then drink it, maybe with cream and sugar if you like. So what’s that… a 2:1 water to Toddy coffee concentrate ratio.

This type of brewing also produces a lower acidity coffee for people with sensitive stomachs. Not lower caffeine though. So it’ll still rev you up on a hot summer morning.

<headline paraphrased from Waiting for Godot>

A guy with a blog is an introvert? Figure that out. Run a Google search for introvert vs. extrovert and you’ll get lots of posts like this one where people complain about how society excludes them and how people, even friends and significant others, misunderstand them. With that in mind, let me point you in the direction of this article about introverts from The Atlantic. It must have been linked a jillion and one times already. Jillion-two.

It’s me. I’m the introvert. I like books. I like cooking. Hiking. Gardening. Watching cream swirl in my coffee. Decorating my house with treasures that have significance only known to me (and maybe one other person). I like thinking without speaking. But I like talking too. I like people. They aren’t a burden and don’t really wear me out. If they’re the right people. Sometimes the wrong people can be entertaining too.

Conventional wisdom says that introverts are ground into a paste by parties and social situations. That they need time to recharge. I feel perfectly fine after a night of fraternizing with colleagues and friends. Some gatherings make me tired. The boring ones. I think I can find common ground on this with the other three-quarters to half of the population that are extroverts. Boring people and parties come in all flavors. But a room full of people ruminating is a library. No one likes libraries.

Am I abnormal because I don’t have a smooth anecdote for every social interaction? Larry David made a mint off the awkwardness that comes with everyday contact between humans. It’s normal. And it isn’t an offshoot of my introversion. It’s just me.

My brain is apparently designed to take in information during conversations and store it away for future reference, not necessarily to formulate the next topic based on what I’m hearing. But I like conversation with others. I don’t deliberately isolate myself. Human society demands interaction. People thrive and grow based on their social networks. It’s just how our world works. I get that.

There’s an interesting book on this topic that I read (mostly, which means I slightly didn’t) a couple years ago. The Loner’s Manifesto by Anelli Rufus outlines the fallacy in the statement that people who are alone just lack the skills to connect with others. The book goes beyond the point that introverts are biologically different. Rufus doesn’t whine about being oppressed by a society of extroverts. She examines societal views of loners and the impact on people who choose isolation. She cites examples that I can identify with, but I’m not sure her conclusions meet up with my point of view either. She revels in those actions that defy society in unconventional ways. For example, she concludes her book with a story of her father on his deathbed asking to be alone. I may be an introvert, but it feels cold-hearted and unsentimental to highlight this. Sort of paints us as selfish. It lacks the depth of feeling that all introverts crave. Deep emotional examination is the reason why we exist. Or at least why I exist. I’m not a loner. There aren’t things about me you shouldn’t understand. (Poor Pee Wee).

This post was originally a vehicle to link that Atlantic article at the top of this page. I thought this was a topic I wanted others to consider. But I’m left with the feeling that human behavior varies too much from person to person to lump people into behavioral groups based on what part of our brain we use to get our data about the world. So don’t blame the introvert in me and I won’t blame the extrovert in you for your reactions or actions… to whatever happens in this world. The warp and woof of our lives forms a pattern too complicated for such a simple explanation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml

Found these surveys from the BBC when I was researching the inconsistency and frequency of internet posts on the topic of introversion vs. extroversion.  They actually are interesting if you’re up late at night, stuck at work all day or unemployed and already sent out 25 resumes today.

Franz Joseph. I’m considering trimming my beard into a Franz Joseph style. A Garibaldi would be grand, but I don’t have the whiskers for it. So I keep my modern Hollywoodian for now.

While I was browsing for beard styling inspiration, I discovered the Whiskerino site and realized I can’t enter until November of aught nine. Fine. There are lots of men in the badger state who don’t shave all winter. We should have our own contest. An old fashioned Wisc-kerino? See, I even have a name for it already. Planning meeting at Annona Bistro, date TBD.

I hate laundry. From the moment it leaves my body after a day of wear to the time it shows up clean in my dresser, I resent its presence in my house. I wish, when I take them off and toss them towards the hamper, my pants would just disappear in a poof of smoke and fire like magician’s flash paper.  I’d have to talk to a magician to find out how to make them reappear cleaned and pressed in my closet.  Or that cleaner over on Milwaukee Street.

.

In the spirit of This American Life’s recent segment on the topic of This is Just to Say poem spoofs, I present a rewriting of a rewriting of William Carlos Williams’ poem.

Those who I am asking for forgiveness include Exponential and the owner of this Blog.

]]> http://jizosama.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/love-laundry-forgive-me/feed/ jizosama Sorry Bill http://jizosama.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/bleu-plate-special/ http://jizosama.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/bleu-plate-special/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 00:48:21 +0000 jizosama http://jizosama.wordpress.com/?p=46

Monty’s Blue Plate in Madison. Mmmmmmmmmm. Awwwwwwwww. Cute. And gross. That’s Cholula hot sauce inside the ketchup heart. My own addition to the artwork.

Mein Herz Brennt!