July 2007 Archives

I don't think of myself as a timid eater, but I just tried eating something relatively benign after considering it for at least ten years (ever since Super Burrito came to St. Johns), and that is the torta.

Somehow, a sandwich with beans on it just didn't appeal to me, but you'd think that in those ten years, I would have at least tried one. But somehow I didn't. Then in Tucson, I had a Mexican hotdog, which had beans AND bacon on it. And a couple weeks ago, I was very intrigued by Tony's torta order. This finally led me to try one myself today.

The totra in question was a cubana, which includes (but is not limited to):

• ham
• hotdogs
• chorizo
• avacado
• mayonaise
• onions
• tomato
• a couple whisps of lettuce

Holy cow. Now that's a sandwich. I think I've found my new favorite food to fill me with self-loathing for having eaten it.

I haven't blogged about vectors lately, and I'm happy to say it's because I haven't had any. But a neighbor has a skunk, and another neighbor just emailed me to suggest that we do some fund raising to buy a trap and my immediate thought was: why on earth would you want to trap a skunk yourself? Skunk trapping is very far down on the list of the things I want to DIY, and high on the list of things I'd be happy to pay someone else to do.

I was reminded of the information Fred Allen gave me on why Multnomah County Vector Control doesn't deal with skunks (apparently, they aren't considered vectors, although in my mind, they are vectors of stink). And also his scheme to catch a skunk using many, many blankets.

Anyway, some quick googling brought me to these people. I love their website, especially the part on rats -- "Rat! OMG! I just saw a rat!" that just about sums it up, doesn't it?

What's really awesome, too, is they have more than
one website -- or, anyway, both websites have the same phone number. The first one is kind of cheeky and brief, the second has a lot more content.

Anyway, in case you missed my vector blogging, there is some reading for you.

Betsy and I came up with a new slogan for U-Haul the other day:

"Yeeeeew-Haaaaaaawwwwl!!!"

This would be hollered out of the window of a U-Haul truck by a cowboy in a hat while pulling past a group of horse-drawn wagons.

Or maybe the pioneers would yell at the cowboy as he passed, "hey pardner, where'd you get that fancy wagon?" and he'd hell back as he drove into the sunset: "Yeeeeeew-Haaaaaaaawl!!!"

Do those look like deli olives to you? Someone had left the container on a shelf in Safeway. I don't blame them.

I think it might have something to do with artichokes, but it looks like something from Eraserhead

I just got some very nice compliments.

Maybe I'll try to say something nice to someone today. No promises.

When you first meet someone and are making chit-chat (e.g., getting your hair cut, at a professional party, or a party where you don't know anyone, a bus stop, dog park, etc.), what would you rather be asked (and/or what do you ask)?

1) What do you do?

2) Where are you from?

3) Something else? (and if so ... what?)

I try not to ask "what do you do?" since I feel like it hones in on class issues immediately and is, for that reason, kind of rude. I figure if people love their jobs or identify with them strongly, they'll tell me about them eventually, and if not, why should I care? Probably they have something more interesting to talk about. I gather it's considered a rude question in some other countries, and it has inspired some to develop alternative answers, as well as some ranting.

This could lead to a kind of politeness stand off if I'm talking to someone who is really proud of what they do, or has a high-status position but they don't want to seem like self-promoting jerks, but there's room for finessing. I'll ask someone what they do for money eventually if I feel comfortable with them, and I just find I'm dying to know for some reason. Although I did ask someone the other night and immediately regretted it because the response was semi-self-deprecating comments along the lines of: "nothing ... live off my wife ..."

"Where are you from?" used to be my stand by replacement for "what do you do" when I lived in Ann Arbor. None of us were from there -- we were all there for the same reason, doing the same thing (and there, "what's your field?" or "where did you do undergrad?" were the equivalent of "what do you do?").

But now that I'm back in my home town, I find this question a little bit touchy, too. A lot of the people I meet aren't from here, originally, and this makes me feel both proud and a little bit lonely, and I have a lot of friends from California for whom the question seems like kind of a challenge to justify themselves. And then there's local politics regarding exactly where in Portland you live. Anyway, point is, being local makes the question a lot more complicated and I don't really ask that one anymore, either.

This leaves me stuck for an ice-breaker question and lately, my ice-breaker question has been the one I'm posing here in this post.

Responses so far have ranged from: "you think about this stuff too much" to, "I hate it when people ask me that, too!" but I haven't collected a ton of usable alternatives -- here are a couple, anyway, from the web and elsewhere. Suggestions appreciated!

• "What do you stand for?" -- could be sort of a challenge for a lot of people!
• "What are your weekend plans?" -- I kind of like this one, because you could plan for just about anything (trip to Paris, running a marathon, etc.), although it's sister-question, "what did you do this weekend?" can be kind of a downer to answer when all you did was pull weeds and watch TV.
• "Who did you come here with?" -- This one was offered by the woman doing my hair. She uses it at parties to figure out if someone is single. I guess it's fine -- a little social-networkee, for my tastes.
• Here's a collection of options offered by a professional, including "tell me about your kids" -- the problem is, I don't know if I'd actually want to hear any of the answers to these. Not that I don't like other people's kids -- I usually enjoy them -- but hearing parents talk about them? -- it's like dancing about architecture (I'm not really sure what I mean by that).
• "If you could be any animal, what would it be and why?" -- I like this one.
• You could use my Food quiz for the future.
• "If mankind goes extinct, which species do you think will rise up to replace us?" -- I love this one and I made it up. I haven't used it more than once, on an older guy I met in the airport who wouldn't shut up about how the idea that people cause global warming was a myth and we were kind of doomed. His theory: cockroaches. My theory? Ants.

Well, in any case, Happy 4th of July!

We went to go see Sicko this weekend.

Health care is one of those issues that everyone seems to care about, but nothing seems to get done. Sometimes I just can't believe we've let ourselves get as screwed as we are. Personally, I have a job that I have kept over the years in large part because it offers health insurance. It's part time but gives good benefits, although of course the part time status at a low pay rate has meant keeping at least one and sometimes two other jobs in addition to the first. I now have the potential for a new job at a higher rate of pay (with more fun, potential for growth, responsibility -- all those good things) and the best thing argument for my old job is the health insurance (the new one is at a small company that can't offer it). If it turns out I can't get insurance independently because I'm too fat or something, I'll have to make a pretty tough decision.

In another example, my friend Becky emailed me awhile ago from England asking about health insurance -- she was thinking about moving back to Portland after years living overseas, but she's scared of our health care system.

The point is not that I'm particularly screwed -- I'm pretty lucky, overall -- but that even the lucky among us are affected by this issue. In fact, one of the smart things Moore does is focus on people who have insurance, but are still screwed by the system. So why aren't we doing something about it?

It's interesting to me that the disability rights movement seems more effective and active to me than anything approximating a wellness movement. I think of the disability rights movement in part because of something I heard once which was, "we're all one accident away from being disabled"(or something along those lines). Health insurance seems like the same thing -- if we're not actively getting screwed by the system now, most of us are just one accident (or cancer cell, or germ) away from it.

Anyway, the movie was manipulative and pedantic, but is it really manipulative and pedantic if it's true? II laughed, I cried, I fantasized about moving to Canada. It was manipulative and pedantic in a good way. I had an interesting talk about it with a friend last night who says he's turned off by Moore's inflammatory rhetoric, which I understand, but, by the same token, I sort of appreciate getting emotionally riled about something that know is important.

I used to complain about the way Michael Moore sets up some of his targets to look like jerks, but the more he says and does, the more I respect him, and this one has the least to say about individual jerks and the most to say about historic, social forces. I felt like the victims are individualized while the forces that put us there are more-or-less historicized (although it's hard not to see Nixon or Bush being such craven idiots and not want to do some individuals held accountable). I think that's the right way to go about it.

Anyway, I recommend seeing the movie. I learned things, and I left feeling motivated, not depressed. Apparently there are lots of places to see it for free on the internet now. I kind of like voting with my pocket book when it comes to movies, but either way, I recommend it.