Best sign yet we’re living in a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world: Frappuccino bottles used as Molotov cocktails against Muslim and Hindu and capitalist targets alike. Plus the hometown paper is even giving guidance on why/how. We are now officially so far down the rabbit hole thanks to wingnut lies printed as truth that no one even freaks out over domestic terrorism. As long as the TSA kabuki artists keep confiscating cupcakes for “gel” frosting, we’re all safe. But now I’m realizing why some employees of the chain were shutting down its pissoirs: It must be to prevent reloading with inflammables. Definitely the few times I’ve ever waited forever at one I’ve been ready to lob something incendiary.
Post Category → wingnuttery
“Mediterranean flare”
Maybe the only good thing to come out of the clown car KKKraziness out in Middle Earth is the national exposure for Pizza Ranch. I only picked up on it after all these decades (and I lived out there) when Gail Collins mentioned it was an Eyetalian kinda place with a Western motif, but now it’s everywhere. And it’s weird. WTF kind of business advises potential patrons to “saddle up the family”? You ride the kids in? The crowning touch was its introduction of a Santorum Salad. Which is the ultimate metaphor for what the no-regulation crowd is selling: Cold chicken with frothy E. coli.
No LaFrieda, please — we’re trendy
Epistemic closure is the undeniable diagnosis for most of wingnuttia, which probably explains why the deluded would look to an “economics” blogger sans calculator for advice on cookbooks. Naturally, she did not mention the manual for the socialist contraption she so proudly hailed after dropping $1,500. But she did “inform” readers that Maida’s books are out of print. Because that’s how capitalism works — no reissues are possible if the market demands. My advice to the closed-minded: Ask a liberal. We think anything goes anywhere, but especially in the kitchen.
Also, too, it’s unfortunate there’s no place where good people like Willie Nelson can go to get their food message out to a wide audience online. He’s totally right on Occupy the Food System, but I ain’t linking to a site that apparently believes we can all eat well when outlets don’t pay. Might as well shill for Smithfield processed crap behind photos of frolicking heritage hogs.
Fence or Brokeback collar?
We get the actual “hometown paper” only on Sundays, so just before heading out to the 7 Train Across the Universe I happened upon one of those bizarre obits it has taken to running for dead people who achieved nothing in life beyond breeding (and not of accomplished spawn). I always read them looking for clues as to what in the name of Zelig merits inclusion alongside the likes of Lennon but always wind up recycling the paper in frustration. On this particular Sunday, though, I was glad I had wasted the time. The DPWAN of the morning was a “proud Irishwoman.” Who, it turns out, was born in Queens. Come on. This is America. You’re American if you popped out of Mom here. (And I say that as the daughter of a Belfast-born Marine.) After reveling in the Louis Armstrong House/Museum in Corona, the disconnect seemed even more obvious. As the exhibits showed, Satchmo moved into a white neighborhood that became black and is now Latino. Four of us walked to lunch on sidewalks where we were the minority. After a great Mexican lunch, we spent a long time in a supermarket gawking at shelves stocked with at least two dozen types of chorizo and a dozen types of bacalao plus endless aisles labeled not by food but by country. As one of our friends who was just back from Mexico noted, what unites us all is consumerism. No store he saw south of the border was that overstocked (or even half-stocked). Assimilation begins when you come for the tomatillos but walk out with the ketchup. I’m sure even Mrs. O’Leary-Byrne-Collins learned to love Tater Tots. And maybe even to douse them with sriracha.
Freedom Fries 4ever
I know the wingnuts are desperate to bring Zombie Reagan back to addled life, so I’m assuming the latest decision on school lunches is bait. Ketchup may have failed as a vegetable. But tomato paste on pizza will now do. Although I almost agree with Big Food: More than a quarter-cup of “paste” would make a slice inedible. Do the bureaucrats mean sauce?
Teeny spuds can’t grow eyes
And I know I’ve been overquoting the robber baron who boasted he could hire half the working class to kill the other half. But it really applies to the lowest rung on the Murdoch media ladder, where the serfs in the 99 percent are throwing rotten heirloom tomatoes at Occupy Wall Street, using every food angle to try to discredit a movement that could only improve their lot in miserable life. First there was the dissing of hippies for eating (donated) high-quality food rather than the typical fare of the poors. Then there was a bogus report of cooks going on strike because they had to feed regular homeless sorts rather than true believers. The newsroom sounds like a sweatshop where they themselves can barely stop to eat. And yet they beaver away, never seeing the real enemy. Clearly the pay and benefits are better at the broadsheet because the coverage is much more empathetic (read: rational). So here’s a thought: Someone set up a PayPal account to send pizzas to all those working for the Australian Pharaoh. Empathy through pepperoni.
No lunch for Texas inmates
And the silliest thing I’ve read in donkey’s years was advice from a psychologist in the hometown paper, warning parents it’s risky to take their Baby Jesuses down to Zuccotti Park. “There are kids who can go to a shelter at Thanksgiving and help serve a meal,” she said, “but there are kids who are traumatized by it.” Sorry, lady. Trauma would be seeing hungry hordes in the streets with pitchforks. Which is what happens when 400 people control all the food.
Dial 999 Starbucks
Given my equal obsessions with fud and pol porn, I spotted a Tweet the other day mentioning galantines and ballotines and my aging eyes mashed it up as guillotines. No wonder the 1% are nervous. But I notice ballotines are almost the definition of the Kkkrazies: chickens boned and stuffed with a farce.
Hold the foie gras
And Jonathan Swift must be very pleased he is not alive these days. Satire is nearly impossible in an age when “eat the rich” is taken as a serious threat. (I mean, come on — there’s no meat on the women, and the men are all gross chin fat.) How would he even deal with what’s happening on farms across America? Thanks to reactionary crackdowns on illegal immigration, tomatoes are rotting in the fields of Alabama, the apple orchards in Washington State are reeking of fermentation and even the tree testicles in California are dropping for lack of avocado harvesters. But now the “authorities” have come up with a solution: Put convicts to work in the fields. So a state can conceivably contract with a private prison to lock up immigrants and then turn right around and bus them to the jobs they were doing before big money corrupted democracy. But now taxpayers will cover the housing and health care. Somewhere Anne Frank is quailing. . .
Truffled
This is shaping up to be the most food-oriented election in history. We have the frothy “chocolate” candidate, the Subway Tweeter, the many apparent consumers/spewers of bat guano. But the mozzarella-topped elephant in the room is most laughable. Call me cynical, but I somehow suspect the vegetable garden at the White House is really going to be replaced by an industrial pizza oven.
$16 muffins
Also, too, I was not surprised that the grim report from Texas on last meals went bouncing around the internets and email so fast. It had equal appeal to the hang-’em-high wingnuts, who think Scrooge was a wimp, and to us bleeding-heart libs, who both spurn the death penalty and empathize with the doomed. I’ve written before that I think the super saddest true food story ever told was of the condemned mental defective who said he wanted to save his dessert for later. And of course it figures it was a wingnut who had to go and spoil the so-called gravy train by ordering more food than any human could eat and then — wonder why? — not even being able to touch it. Their side keeps clinging to the old saying, but greed is not good.
Pyrex made in China
You have to give the Italians credit. They’re no happier with their corrupt government, but they always think food. And so they dumped mussel shells in Rome to protest politicians who are insisting on austerity while “clinging to their privileges like mussels cling to rocks.” Could you imagine the Teabaggers doing anything like that here? First they would have to know a mussel was not anything gay, despite its beard. Then they would have to know where their shellfish come from. Hint: Not Walmart.
Cokie, on the beach
Speaking of which, I could not believe NPR’s report on how food stamp demand is way up in the US of We’re-No.-1 A. I listened to it thinking yet another hack from a Kochsucker think tank was hammering home talking points, only to learn it was a staffer whose salary is underwritten thanks to liberals (step away from the “sources,” reporters). My desperately poor, over-kidded parents were too proud to take “government handouts” and would trade with the Mexican neighbors to get commodity peanut butter and mystery meat, so I can sort of understand the wingnuts who think this is an every-cook-for-herself country. But really. We can afford $75 billion on “homeland security” but $68 billion on something that returns nearly double that to the economy is going to break us? Most disgusting was the “some say” assertion that food stamps discourage recipients from growing their own happy meals. You can’t buy a hot roast chicken with food stamps. But you can damn sure invest in bean plants.
As the sign said, “Pray less, think more”
Just back from Turkey, I can’t begin to describe what luxury it was to be able to tune out the kkkraziness for 10 days. Unfortunately, some huge news from the homeland was inescapable. Apparently the Big O had burgers for his birthday lunch. This should settle it, though. What kind of muslin wants fries with Ramadan?
Barbecue lies
Forget the migraines and the pray-away-the-gay husband. The most insane thing about the crazy-eyed one is her assertion that she loves celery, the vilest vegetable ruining tuna salads everywhere. Of course, she did qualify it by saying she could eat an entire stalk by herself. Apparently she doesn’t understand true love would be a whole bunch.