When I was 19, I got the opportunity to tour a maraschino cherry packing plant. I was in my late twenties before I ate another maraschino cherry after that. Part of that was the thought of the women who spend eight hours a day tucking cherry stems into jars so they would not interfere with establishing a seal on the jar. Mostly, though, it was the dye room. Cherries start off, well, cherry-colored, a shade that bears no resemblance to the color of maraschino cherries. In order to turn them bright--dare I say "cherry"--red (or, fruitcake forbid, green...whose idea is that?) the original color has to be bleached out of them so it doesn't interfere with the food dye. So there we stood, above vats of pretty snow-white cherries, and the tour guide warned us not to breathe too deeply or linger too long in the room.
I'm sure that whatever we were not supposed to be breathing in at the cherry plant is long gone by the time the cherry gets to the top of your sundae or the bottom of your Shirley Temple glass, but still, I could not shake the idea that the pretty white cherries down there were wallowing in something I wasn't supposed to breathe. Pretty much ruined cherries for me for a long time. Given that experience, one would think I would know better than to read Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America EatsTwinkie, Deconstructed is not an anti-Twinkie manifesto. The Twinkie is merely a narrative device because it embodies the essence of American snack food and includes most of the more common food additives.
The author's young child confronted him with the question every parent dreads: "Daddy, where does polysorbate 60 come from?" At least parents have some firsthand experience with "Where do babies come from?" if not a child-appropriate answer. But polysorbate 60? Other than being something with more than one sorbate, I've got nothing, and I consider myself savy with regard to ingredient lists. "Evaporated cane juice" doesn't fool me for a minute, and I even know what xanthan gum is and why it is in sour cream.
After reading the first section, I now know what goes into enriched bleached flour, and it's the maraschino cherries all over again. It is going to be a long time before I eat thiamine mononitrate, at least not without choking on the thought of what raw materials are used to synthesize it. Lucky for me, I have already switched to exclusively whole grain flours in my cooking, no enrichment needed.
I heartily recommend the book. When making dietary choices, I often ask myself, "What part of this is food?" With things like the deep fried cheesecake at the county fair, it is readily apparent that there isn't any real food there. Reading Twinkie, Deconstructed reminds us just how much non-food is in the stuff that we would normally recognize as food, like bread. Of course, one of the reasons I bake my own bread is that it's nigh on impossible to find a loaf that doesn't contain corn syrup, the subject of the next chapter up in my reading of Twinkie, Deconstructed. Fortunately, I already know it isn't food. I'm sure I will be in for a shock to find out just how non-food it is.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Five Stages of Unemployment
The economy is in the toilet. If only the job market were that good. Employment is somewhere between the septic tank and the leech field. If you haven't lost your job, chances are someone you know has. If not, you are either lucky or next in line for the pink slip yourself.
Jobs are important to people. If the jobs themselves are not important, the things the income provides--food, shelter, TP--are, and losing them can be every bit as traumatic as any other big loss. The five stages of grief have been exhaustively studied, so expect psychologists (the ones still employed, anyway) to move on to the Five Stages of Unemployment.
Stage 1: Panic
Don't listen to the people telling you not to panic. It is perfectly normal. All part of the process. Panic all weekend long--and it will be a weekend For some reason that is probably analyzed at length in MBA programs, Friday tends to be the day to get fired, right before anyone who could possible hire the newly-unemployed person head out for a weekend packed with not looking at resumes. Stage 1 is marked by a fear of what is going to happen, imagining of worst-case financial scenarios, a general sense that the world is falling apart, and mental tallying of all the purchases you have made recently that, in light of your new economic situation, seem downright stupid.
Stage 2: Obsessive Math
This stage is marked by a frantic tally of just how much income you need to keep the necessities going and how long your current liquid assets will allow you to keep a roof over your head. While this stage does not do much to alleviate the panic of Stage 1, it does hone your spreadsheet skills. Remember to insert "Excel proficiency" in the resume.
Stage 3: Throwing Yourself at the Job Market
Once the initial wave of "Holy Crap" subsides, it is replaced by irrational exuberance. Stage 3 is marked by sending updated resumes to any biped with a pulse. Careful here, or you may find yourself working for the emus. Working with the emus is fine. Working for the emus is just asking for trouble.
Stage 4: Assess the Skills You Did Not Realize You Got On The Current Job And Consider Changing Careers
Pretty self explanatory. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Here, you can expect to remain irrationally exuberant, but with some direction, just as long as you didn't get trapped into a long-term contract with the emus.
Stage 5: Develop A Plan
This is the part where rational thought starts to creep back in to the process in earnest and you start to figure out a strategy for job prospecting, making ends meet until some of the prospecting pans out, and dealing with the realistic worst-case scenarios imagined in Phase I (amazing how many of them seem a bit overblown in retrospect).
In the spirit of bad qualitative sociology, the above is not backed up by any research more rigorous than my own experience and that of friends and family who have become economic roadkill.
Jobs are important to people. If the jobs themselves are not important, the things the income provides--food, shelter, TP--are, and losing them can be every bit as traumatic as any other big loss. The five stages of grief have been exhaustively studied, so expect psychologists (the ones still employed, anyway) to move on to the Five Stages of Unemployment.
Stage 1: Panic
Don't listen to the people telling you not to panic. It is perfectly normal. All part of the process. Panic all weekend long--and it will be a weekend For some reason that is probably analyzed at length in MBA programs, Friday tends to be the day to get fired, right before anyone who could possible hire the newly-unemployed person head out for a weekend packed with not looking at resumes. Stage 1 is marked by a fear of what is going to happen, imagining of worst-case financial scenarios, a general sense that the world is falling apart, and mental tallying of all the purchases you have made recently that, in light of your new economic situation, seem downright stupid.
Stage 2: Obsessive Math
This stage is marked by a frantic tally of just how much income you need to keep the necessities going and how long your current liquid assets will allow you to keep a roof over your head. While this stage does not do much to alleviate the panic of Stage 1, it does hone your spreadsheet skills. Remember to insert "Excel proficiency" in the resume.
Stage 3: Throwing Yourself at the Job Market
Once the initial wave of "Holy Crap" subsides, it is replaced by irrational exuberance. Stage 3 is marked by sending updated resumes to any biped with a pulse. Careful here, or you may find yourself working for the emus. Working with the emus is fine. Working for the emus is just asking for trouble.
Stage 4: Assess the Skills You Did Not Realize You Got On The Current Job And Consider Changing Careers
Pretty self explanatory. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Here, you can expect to remain irrationally exuberant, but with some direction, just as long as you didn't get trapped into a long-term contract with the emus.
Stage 5: Develop A Plan
This is the part where rational thought starts to creep back in to the process in earnest and you start to figure out a strategy for job prospecting, making ends meet until some of the prospecting pans out, and dealing with the realistic worst-case scenarios imagined in Phase I (amazing how many of them seem a bit overblown in retrospect).
In the spirit of bad qualitative sociology, the above is not backed up by any research more rigorous than my own experience and that of friends and family who have become economic roadkill.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Turkey Gets Its Revenge
Here at the Rookery, Thanksgiving is just the two of us. Be that as it may, the perverse price incentives of the supermarkets this time of year mean it costs me less to buy a whole turkey than a small chunk of turkey. I can't bring myself to spend $9 on a two-pound turkey breast roast when I can get a whole turkey for around five smackers, so we have lots of turkey leftovers. This situation is not helped by my logic of "At 29 cents a pound, if I'm going to have leftovers, I might as well have lots of leftovers." So I bought a 20 pound bird for something like $5.50. According to Butterball, that will feed a family of 15.
Thanksgiving leftovers are usually the second-best part of Thanksgiving (best part being the non-leftover stuffing). This year, though, we spent Thanksgiving on starch restriction, and as astute celebrators of Thanksgiving will no doubt know, starch is an integral part of the traditional menu. There are ways to work around mashed potatoes. Mashed cauliflower will never fool another potato, but it is not half bad, especially with plenty of cheese. Cranberry sauce can also be worked around with a crock pot, three pounds of apples and a pound and a half of cranberries (doesn't gel, but it still makes a decent condiment and dessert). The rest of the menu, though, is pretty much off the menu. I refuse to defile stuffing by making a carbless mock stuffing, and even if I could have the sweet potatoes, there is no sweetener-free workaround for the marshmallows. I did try something called "Quick and Easy Crustless Pumpkin Pie," slightly modified to use fruit juice instead of the water and sugar the recipe called for. That is a mistake that will not be repeated. Certain things are just not meant to be de-carbed. I can only hope the recipe turns out better when you follow it exactly.
All of that adds up to lots of leftover turkey, and no leftover anything else. I have spent the last several nights seeing how many ways I could integrate turkey into dinner without having "Turkey Dinner." I have discovered something. No matter what I make turkey into, leftover turkey insists on being one thing and one thing only: soup. Turkey marinara plated up as Italian Turkey Soup. Tonight's attempt at Salsa Turkey--turkey, tomatoes, hot peppers, garlic and onions baked in a casserole dish with no added liquid--came out of the oven as Mexi-Turkey Soup. No matter what I do to it, all I get out is variations on turkey soup, and that is without breaking into the five quarts of turkey broth that I made out of the carcass.
If the gobblers can't fly to freedom, they appear intent on drowning us posthumously.
Thanksgiving leftovers are usually the second-best part of Thanksgiving (best part being the non-leftover stuffing). This year, though, we spent Thanksgiving on starch restriction, and as astute celebrators of Thanksgiving will no doubt know, starch is an integral part of the traditional menu. There are ways to work around mashed potatoes. Mashed cauliflower will never fool another potato, but it is not half bad, especially with plenty of cheese. Cranberry sauce can also be worked around with a crock pot, three pounds of apples and a pound and a half of cranberries (doesn't gel, but it still makes a decent condiment and dessert). The rest of the menu, though, is pretty much off the menu. I refuse to defile stuffing by making a carbless mock stuffing, and even if I could have the sweet potatoes, there is no sweetener-free workaround for the marshmallows. I did try something called "Quick and Easy Crustless Pumpkin Pie," slightly modified to use fruit juice instead of the water and sugar the recipe called for. That is a mistake that will not be repeated. Certain things are just not meant to be de-carbed. I can only hope the recipe turns out better when you follow it exactly.
All of that adds up to lots of leftover turkey, and no leftover anything else. I have spent the last several nights seeing how many ways I could integrate turkey into dinner without having "Turkey Dinner." I have discovered something. No matter what I make turkey into, leftover turkey insists on being one thing and one thing only: soup. Turkey marinara plated up as Italian Turkey Soup. Tonight's attempt at Salsa Turkey--turkey, tomatoes, hot peppers, garlic and onions baked in a casserole dish with no added liquid--came out of the oven as Mexi-Turkey Soup. No matter what I do to it, all I get out is variations on turkey soup, and that is without breaking into the five quarts of turkey broth that I made out of the carcass.
If the gobblers can't fly to freedom, they appear intent on drowning us posthumously.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Penguin Video of the Day
The Great Stuffing Debate
It has recently come to my attention that there is a debate about whether the tasty bread-based substance served alongside the turkey on Thanksgiving is "dressing" or "stuffing." Well, I'm here to settle that. It is quite simple. "Dressing" is what you put on a salad. "Stuffing" is what you put inside poultry. Just take a look at what you are eating. If it is beige, you have stuffing. If it is green, you either have dressing or the makings of a fun-filled afternoon of, as my family used to put it, offering sacrifices to the Porcelain God. End of debate. "Dressing" does not come out of the body cavity of poultry unless you have just slaughtered said poultry and need to extract the giblets, which I am told do not actually grow in the paper pouch.
Proper stuffing, however, does come out of the body cavity of poultry, no matter what those nay-sayers say about bacteria and raw poultry juices. Poultry juices are the secret to the best stuffing. Properly cooked to 165 degrees, in-bird stuffing is just fine to eat and one of the best things about Thanksgiving, right up there with the annual ability to get cranberries that haven't been bogged down in sugar. The one downfall of stuffing a bird is that it takes longer to cook, and the breast meat tends to dry out before the stuffing is thoroughly cooked. Never fear, though. I have a stuffing-based solution to that--amazing how many Thanksgiving problems can be cured by stuffing. Simply work your hand between the turkey breast meat and the breast skin, and give the turkey breast implants by shoving a few handfuls of stuffing between the meat and the skin. This gives the meat a layer of protection, so it cooks a bit slower than it otherwise would. The turkey isn't quite as pretty, but that really doesn't matter. Anyone who is crazy enough to actually carve a turkey at the table soon finds that the aesthetics of it are highly overrated.
The only reason to cook stuffing in a dish outside the bird is that turkey breeders and geneticists have not yet managed to engineer a turkey with the body cavity capacity necessary for an adequate amount of stuffing. The shortfalls of out-of-bird stuffing (wince) can be partially ameliorated by mixing in at least a full stick of melted butter along with the broth when moistening the stuffing, and covering the stuffing dish tightly with foil, pressed down to make contact with the stuffing surface so there is no head space in the stuffing dish.
And to clear up another stuffing misconception, Stove Top is neither stuffing nor dressing. It is the Velveeta of the stuffing world.
In case you need it: Best Stuffing Recipe Ever
Proper stuffing, however, does come out of the body cavity of poultry, no matter what those nay-sayers say about bacteria and raw poultry juices. Poultry juices are the secret to the best stuffing. Properly cooked to 165 degrees, in-bird stuffing is just fine to eat and one of the best things about Thanksgiving, right up there with the annual ability to get cranberries that haven't been bogged down in sugar. The one downfall of stuffing a bird is that it takes longer to cook, and the breast meat tends to dry out before the stuffing is thoroughly cooked. Never fear, though. I have a stuffing-based solution to that--amazing how many Thanksgiving problems can be cured by stuffing. Simply work your hand between the turkey breast meat and the breast skin, and give the turkey breast implants by shoving a few handfuls of stuffing between the meat and the skin. This gives the meat a layer of protection, so it cooks a bit slower than it otherwise would. The turkey isn't quite as pretty, but that really doesn't matter. Anyone who is crazy enough to actually carve a turkey at the table soon finds that the aesthetics of it are highly overrated.
The only reason to cook stuffing in a dish outside the bird is that turkey breeders and geneticists have not yet managed to engineer a turkey with the body cavity capacity necessary for an adequate amount of stuffing. The shortfalls of out-of-bird stuffing (wince) can be partially ameliorated by mixing in at least a full stick of melted butter along with the broth when moistening the stuffing, and covering the stuffing dish tightly with foil, pressed down to make contact with the stuffing surface so there is no head space in the stuffing dish.
And to clear up another stuffing misconception, Stove Top is neither stuffing nor dressing. It is the Velveeta of the stuffing world.
In case you need it: Best Stuffing Recipe Ever
Friday, November 14, 2008
For Your Consideration
I fully expect that not all of my readers will agree, but please consider it anyway. It's only six and a half minutes. If you have time for a Bugs Bunny cartoon, you have time for this.
Really consider the question: what is it to you?
Emp. Peng. and I lived together for two and a half years before we got legally married under the auspices of the State of Nebraska (and immediately adjacent to Traffic Court...I have photos). For all practical purposes during those two years, we lived as husband and wife. The only real clue to the outside world that we were not was that I still had my maiden name, but nowadays, that does not necessarily mean much.
Two and a half years in, having been booted off our parents' respective health insurance plans, there was no longer a reason not to legalize things, so we arranged for a judge and a vacant courtroom, and had a dozen family members watch as a guy whom we had never met before said a few words none of us remember and signed a form. After dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet, we went back home to the same apartment we had shared before that afternoon, and continued life pretty much as it had been the week before.
Things felt different, though. Even though all that had changed was that we had a piece of paper on file in a courthouse in Nebraska and I traded out my surname for something phonetic but equally frequently misspelled, things felt different. We were married. For some reason, that seemed to slap a coat of respectability on our relationship that had been absent the day before, when we were living in sin.
Almost all of the legal rights of a married couple can be cobbled together with the expensive help of a good lawyer (by contrast, it cost us $40 to get them: $15 for the license including certified copy, and $25 for the judge to sign off on it). Certain ones, like survivor's benefits and being able to file a joint tax return, are hopeless outside of a marriage recognized by the federal government, but one can generally get inheritance, co-parentage of children (at least in most states), medical decision-making and the like through separate legal agreements between the parties.
What a lawyer cannot draw up, though, is anything that confers the status of being introduced to a stranger with "And this is my wife..." Socially, that is a powerful sentence fragment. No one ever asks me to prove it. I could, if I had to, dig out our copy of the marriage license from among the birth certificates and life insurance policies, but ever since I changed my ID, no one has ever asked me to. It is enough for me to say I am Mrs. Harriett.
I have long thought that the solution to the issue of same-sex marriage is to separate religious marriage and civil marriage. Remove "the power vested in me by the state of..." from the clergy. If someone wants a legally-recognized marriage for any of the legal benefits of being married, they fill out the license at the courthouse and get a clerk or judge or lawyer to sign off on it, not unlike a business partnership. If they also want to have a religious ceremony to mark the occasion and sanctify the union in the eyes of whatever religion they choose to follow, they can do that, too. It just would not carry any more legal weight than, say, a bris or a baptism.
This might actually cut divorce rates, too. Brides could throw weddings absent the legal binding of getting married. Another one of my long-held beliefs is that there is a not-inconsequential subset of women who get married so that they can have a wedding. These are the women who have been plotting every detail of Their Special Day since they could pronounce the word "tulle," until by age 16 or so, it is Just Add Groom. Any groom will do. They put a year or more's time, energy, and salary into a blowout bash, and once the dress is packed away, they realize they had been so obsessed, usually from a very young age, with getting married that they never stopped to consider being married. Without dress fittings, catering menus, bridal showers and seating arrangements, they are adrift and end up splitting sooner rather than later. These sorts of marriages are the type that some folks seem just fine with, because it involves one each of a bridezilla and groom.
Really consider the question: what is it to you?
Emp. Peng. and I lived together for two and a half years before we got legally married under the auspices of the State of Nebraska (and immediately adjacent to Traffic Court...I have photos). For all practical purposes during those two years, we lived as husband and wife. The only real clue to the outside world that we were not was that I still had my maiden name, but nowadays, that does not necessarily mean much.
Two and a half years in, having been booted off our parents' respective health insurance plans, there was no longer a reason not to legalize things, so we arranged for a judge and a vacant courtroom, and had a dozen family members watch as a guy whom we had never met before said a few words none of us remember and signed a form. After dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet, we went back home to the same apartment we had shared before that afternoon, and continued life pretty much as it had been the week before.
Things felt different, though. Even though all that had changed was that we had a piece of paper on file in a courthouse in Nebraska and I traded out my surname for something phonetic but equally frequently misspelled, things felt different. We were married. For some reason, that seemed to slap a coat of respectability on our relationship that had been absent the day before, when we were living in sin.
Almost all of the legal rights of a married couple can be cobbled together with the expensive help of a good lawyer (by contrast, it cost us $40 to get them: $15 for the license including certified copy, and $25 for the judge to sign off on it). Certain ones, like survivor's benefits and being able to file a joint tax return, are hopeless outside of a marriage recognized by the federal government, but one can generally get inheritance, co-parentage of children (at least in most states), medical decision-making and the like through separate legal agreements between the parties.
What a lawyer cannot draw up, though, is anything that confers the status of being introduced to a stranger with "And this is my wife..." Socially, that is a powerful sentence fragment. No one ever asks me to prove it. I could, if I had to, dig out our copy of the marriage license from among the birth certificates and life insurance policies, but ever since I changed my ID, no one has ever asked me to. It is enough for me to say I am Mrs. Harriett.
I have long thought that the solution to the issue of same-sex marriage is to separate religious marriage and civil marriage. Remove "the power vested in me by the state of..." from the clergy. If someone wants a legally-recognized marriage for any of the legal benefits of being married, they fill out the license at the courthouse and get a clerk or judge or lawyer to sign off on it, not unlike a business partnership. If they also want to have a religious ceremony to mark the occasion and sanctify the union in the eyes of whatever religion they choose to follow, they can do that, too. It just would not carry any more legal weight than, say, a bris or a baptism.
This might actually cut divorce rates, too. Brides could throw weddings absent the legal binding of getting married. Another one of my long-held beliefs is that there is a not-inconsequential subset of women who get married so that they can have a wedding. These are the women who have been plotting every detail of Their Special Day since they could pronounce the word "tulle," until by age 16 or so, it is Just Add Groom. Any groom will do. They put a year or more's time, energy, and salary into a blowout bash, and once the dress is packed away, they realize they had been so obsessed, usually from a very young age, with getting married that they never stopped to consider being married. Without dress fittings, catering menus, bridal showers and seating arrangements, they are adrift and end up splitting sooner rather than later. These sorts of marriages are the type that some folks seem just fine with, because it involves one each of a bridezilla and groom.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Stupidest. Injury. Ever.
I am sitting here on the couch with my right foot propped up on a stack of pillows. It is not the most comfortable laptop-using position, since it gives one a bi-level lap, but it is what one is supposed to do for a sprained foot. A foot sprain is not, in itself, a notably stupid injury. Spraining one's foot while knitting is. Yes, I said "knitting." Take an activity whose primary equipment is a pair of foot-long pointy steel sticks, done by grannies and pregnant women for generations, and I sprain a foot doing it.
Last night, I passed a lovely evening curled on the couch downstairs watching Emp. Peng. play God of War and knitting away on the second installment of my Doctor Who scarf. As is likely to happen during a four-hour gaming session preceded by two cups of coffee and a cup of tea, I eventually required a bathroom break, so I untucked my legs from under me and stood up. Seems I failed to notice that I had curled up in such a manner that, at some point in the preceding hours, my right foot had fallen asleep--a failure my right foot rectified with the first step I tried to take on it. A memo would have sufficed, but my foot decided to get the message across by refusing to support my weight just as I was trying to navigate around the side of the sofa. A fall, crunch, and searing pain later, I ended up with what we like to call a Grooism, an action so stupid that all remaining brain cells want to commit suicide out of the embarassment of being associated with a cortex that would sprain a foot knitting.
This is not my first sprain, nor my worst, but I at least got the others in a dignified manner: playground tumbles, gym class injuries, taking out a Suzuki Sidekick with a Ford Pinto. But a knitting injury?
Last night, I passed a lovely evening curled on the couch downstairs watching Emp. Peng. play God of War and knitting away on the second installment of my Doctor Who scarf. As is likely to happen during a four-hour gaming session preceded by two cups of coffee and a cup of tea, I eventually required a bathroom break, so I untucked my legs from under me and stood up. Seems I failed to notice that I had curled up in such a manner that, at some point in the preceding hours, my right foot had fallen asleep--a failure my right foot rectified with the first step I tried to take on it. A memo would have sufficed, but my foot decided to get the message across by refusing to support my weight just as I was trying to navigate around the side of the sofa. A fall, crunch, and searing pain later, I ended up with what we like to call a Grooism, an action so stupid that all remaining brain cells want to commit suicide out of the embarassment of being associated with a cortex that would sprain a foot knitting.
This is not my first sprain, nor my worst, but I at least got the others in a dignified manner: playground tumbles, gym class injuries, taking out a Suzuki Sidekick with a Ford Pinto. But a knitting injury?
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Vote
If you muster the will to do anything today, and I include getting dressed and breathing, go vote. Unless you already have or are not a US citizen. Then, you are excused. The rest of you, get your butts to your polling place, wait in line if you have to, and cast your ballot. Well, vote and get dressed. As far as I know, voting in the nude is only legal in Oregon.
Really, what are you doing today that is more important than selecting the leadership of the country?
Really, what are you doing today that is more important than selecting the leadership of the country?
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Sweet Mercy, That Was Stupid
With five and a half hours until the official kickoff of NaNoWriMo, I decided I should up and join Facebook. What was I thinking? It is now nine minutes into NNWM, and only one character even has a name. Meanwhile, I already have nine friends on Facebook, some of whom I even know from offline.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
NaNoWriMo-ing Again
Starting Saturday, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. So far, I have a vague idea what I am going to write about. It is another sci-fi novel, set in a near-future universe where I place a lot of my stories. Other than that, I have only a vague idea of what the plot is going to be.
Anyone care to join me?
Anyone care to join me?
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Todays Political Thought
I spent three years living in Holland, Ohio, home to this news cycle's Quintessential Everyman. I find it hard to believe there is $280,000 worth of leaky pipes in that township. It is not a big place. In fact, it is small enough that, were I still living there, I probably would have actually gotten door-knocked by Obama. That would have been seriously cool. Or not.
Looking at what sort of skewering Joe The Plumber has taken in the past 18 hours, though, I'm not sure I would want to have been Personally Pandered To By The Actual Candidate. As was so eloquently put on The Daily Show, "They tell you that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. What they don't tell you is that twelve of those minutes are a rectal exam." It is really not relevant to the discussion of tax policy that this one particular guy might be working under a questionable situation regarding his professional licensure, or that he owes back taxes to the state (maybe if it were an IRS lien, there would be an argument). I can just about guarantee he's not the only guy in Lucas County with a tax lien, and that should not disqualify him from taking the opportunity to ask about how tax policy will impact him and his plans for the future. Everyone has a few things about his life that he might prefer not get broadcast over CNN. I have a question in mind for the imaginary time when I would get to bend a candidate's ear for half a minute. However, I'm not sure that knowing what the candidate would do about the people who stand to lose their jobs if some of the health care reforms go through is worth the media proctoscope.
Full citizen participation is the heart of democracy. We can't have full participation if people are afraid that the mere act of asking a candidate a question will let loose all the skeletons from the closet. We can't have a functioning republic if only the squeaky-clean get their voices heard. Senator Amidala may have been wrong. Liberty doesn't die with thunderous applause. It dies with the squeal of schadenfreude.
Looking at what sort of skewering Joe The Plumber has taken in the past 18 hours, though, I'm not sure I would want to have been Personally Pandered To By The Actual Candidate. As was so eloquently put on The Daily Show, "They tell you that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. What they don't tell you is that twelve of those minutes are a rectal exam." It is really not relevant to the discussion of tax policy that this one particular guy might be working under a questionable situation regarding his professional licensure, or that he owes back taxes to the state (maybe if it were an IRS lien, there would be an argument). I can just about guarantee he's not the only guy in Lucas County with a tax lien, and that should not disqualify him from taking the opportunity to ask about how tax policy will impact him and his plans for the future. Everyone has a few things about his life that he might prefer not get broadcast over CNN. I have a question in mind for the imaginary time when I would get to bend a candidate's ear for half a minute. However, I'm not sure that knowing what the candidate would do about the people who stand to lose their jobs if some of the health care reforms go through is worth the media proctoscope.
Full citizen participation is the heart of democracy. We can't have full participation if people are afraid that the mere act of asking a candidate a question will let loose all the skeletons from the closet. We can't have a functioning republic if only the squeaky-clean get their voices heard. Senator Amidala may have been wrong. Liberty doesn't die with thunderous applause. It dies with the squeal of schadenfreude.
Friday, October 10, 2008
AIG's "Executive Retreat": Due to Budget Cuts, The Light at the End of the Tunnel Has Been Shut Off Until Further Notice
Recently, America has been up in a lather over AIG spending $440,000 on what is widely being described as an "Executive retreat" a week after asking for a multimillion dollar bailout related to this financial crisis. The White House even went so far as to send out the head spokesperson to call the move "Despicable." As a PR move, the retreat at a posh resort on the heels of a bailout was not that great of an idea. However, as is often the case with news items, once you dig down below the headlines, reality is a little more complicated.
First off, if one reads descriptions of what actually went down, beyond the enumeration of $23,380 worth of spa treatments, it becomes apparent that this was not a junket for the executives. This was the annual sales convention for the top life insurance agents at the company. Those agents are under the auspices of the AIG American General insurance division, not the financial division that caused the need for the bailout. Company executives were present, because having a sales convention without at least a few executives is sort of pointless. It would be a bit like having the office Christmas party without the boss, but we'll get back to that in a bit.
So, what exactly is a sales convention? It is not the sort of convention you think of with a convention center hall full of vendor booths. A sales convention is a nice vacation that the company throws for its top producing agents, the small percentage of agents who bring in the most new business. The company puts those agents up at a nice hotel and plans a buffet of interesting group activities and treats. Gratis spa treatments and rounds of golf are fairly common on the activity buffet, because the stereotype of the tax bracket that the qualifying agents inhabit is that men relax playing golf and women relax getting pampered at the spa. The convention includes some meetings and banquets where the cream of the crop are recognized--those who brought in $1,000,000 or more of new business, for example--and where management psyches up the agents for another year of getting doors slammed in their faces, being called all sorts of nasty names, and occasionally having weeks or months with no paycheck. It gives the execs and agents a chance to meet face-to-face, probably the only time in a year that the agents will have in-person contact with the people who can best solve a problem with a client. The sucking up factor is not to be discounted here. In effect, the sales convention is the office Christmas party, except only the most profitable workers get invited.
Emp. Peng. is a life and health insurance broker, though he does not work with AIG, and we had some firsthand experience participating in the exact kind of "junket" that is at the heart of this kerfluffle with AIG. Last summer, one of the companies he contracts with sent us on a trip to Las Vegas. Entirely on the company's tab, we spent four nights at the Bellagio. We were wined and dined every one of those nights. Two nights we were treated to an upscale dinner and a show. One night they rented out Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, where we got exclusive access to the animals, the animal keepers, a private dolphin show and a dolphinside buffet dinner with open bar. One night, we had a private banquet punctuated by Rat Pack impersonators. During the day, we had our choice of activities, including not only the spa treatments and golf outings that are getting AIG in trouble now, but also a tour of Hoover Dam and a cooking demonstration luncheon with the resort's head chef in their multimillion-dollar studio kitchen. Except for Hoover Dam, we were taken everywhere by stretch limousine. For all four days, all we had to pay for was breakfast and whatever we did on our free time.
With the activities enumerated like that, it is hard not to consider such an event extravagant. In the bigger picture of the company, though, this is essentially giving a bonus, but only to the two dozen or so of several hundred independent agents who are the most profitable to the company. While I don't know the final cost of the Las Vegas trip (renting out the dolphin habitat is not as costly as it seems: $3,500 flat fee, plus $100 per person for catering), it likely was not any more expensive than giving a pittance of a bonus to everyone, but unlike a universal bonus, the agents have to work harder to bring in enough business to qualify for it. The convention is a carrot that the company dangles out to get agents to bring in more money to the company. Incidentally, this sort of trip is not the reason for high premiums on insurance, any more than annual bonuses paid to supermarket checkers are the reason for the outlandish price of milk. This is keeping the bottom of the corporate food chain happy, and happy corporate plankton is profitable corporate plankton. In fact, by encouraging agents to write more new policies, the conventions help keep premiums down. The bigger the pool of insured people, the lower premiums can be for everyone since risk is spread out further.
Back to the AIG thing. The media reports that the tab for the event was $440,000. That is a lot of money. What they don't report is how many people that covered. The closest I have been able to find is some reports indicating that there were fewer than 10 executives present. Assume a 1:4 executive to agent ratio, which was about what our Las Vegas trip had, and factor in that it is customary that everyone on these trips is allowed to bring a Plus One, and let's call it 80 people. Our Vegas trip had around 50, and was with a smaller company, so 80 people is not an outlandish guess. That's $5,500 per person, not a lot for a high end vacation, especially at a place where the rooms are $600 a night. The $23,380 for spa treatments would get 126 of the spa's least expensive treatments and 65 of the most expensive. So, yes, they went to a posh resort, and that doesn't look all that great in the papers the next morning. On the other hand, a weekend at the Motel 6 and breakfast at Denney's just doesn't make being an insurance agent worth the bother. And it is a lot of bother. That four days in Las Vegas represented more hours I spent with my husband than I had gotten in the previous two months, including sleep time. It is not all that uncommon for him to come home at 10 p.m., exhausted, and have to be out of the house again at 7 o'clock the next morning for another 18 hour day that he will return from famished because he didn't have time for even a snack.
So, what were AIG's alternatives? These conventions are planned a year in advance. One highlight of the final banquet is finding out where next year's convention will be. I can't imagine the execs announce a location without getting a block of rooms booked first, so this St. Regis shindig was probably booked at least a year ago. The bailout became an option less than a month ago. The plane tickets would likely have already been purchased by the time the bailout was offered, and my experience with these conventions is that, however posh the resort is, the company flies you in on the cheap, which means coach, nonrefundable. Had they cancelled the convention, the accounts would still show the company "wasting" several thousand dollars on airfare for tickets not used, and whatever other nonrefundable deposits they had placed a year before the economy started going down in flames.
Even more than that, there is the impact on the workforce. The agents being feted at this wingding were not AIG employees (possibly explaining why media characterizes it as an executive retreat: the execs were the only actual AIG employees there). Most insurance companies work on the commission-only independent contractor system, so the agents are self-employed, not employees. The one and only perk of being an independent contractor with an insurance company is the prospect of going to convention. There is no health insurance--it may surprise you to find out that insurance agents don't get breaks on insurance--no 401(k), no sick days or paid vacation. Even though the conventions are most-expenses-paid, it still means taking time off, and in a commission-only job, if you don't sell (not just "don't work," but "don't sell") you are not getting paid. The agents who went on this "executive retreat" had worked their asses off to get that far, and for the company to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute would create an even worse environment for the agents than there is now. Emp. Peng. would probably have a colorful similie involving sexual frustration here, but he has his own blog if he wants to post those.
The insurance agents are already suffering from conditions beyond their control and not of their doing. Given the media coverage, people are simply not buying AIG insurance products now. The agents can't sell. Fortunately, AIG does not use a captive agent system, so the independent contractors who were selling AIG policies aren't completely screwed. In a captive agent system, the agent is only allowed to represent the products of one company, and if the company goes south, the agents have no prospects for income aside from going to another company and starting at the bottom. AIG used independent brokers who, if they were smart, had a variety of companies at their disposal and could switch to offering policies from other companies. Still, to make convention, an agent almost has to give preference to one company over another in assessing which policy would be most suitable. It is malfeasance for an agent to go with a preferred company to make convention when there is another company in their portfolio that better suits the client's needs, but if all else is equal, there is nothing unethical about an agent steering to a preferred provider. The agents who make convention are the ones who push the company's products the most, and are the best hope for ever making the company profitable again. It is not in the company's long term interest to piss these people off, and that is exactly what would happen if the carrot got snatched away at the last minute, after they had put in all the work. Pissed off insurance agents leave the companies that piss them off. If you like having the same agent for your insurance policies two years running, it is in your best interest to let the companies do what it takes to keep the agents happy and affiliated with them. They really do precious little in this area. That $440,000 was possibly the entire annual "keep the agents from quitting" budget.
Appearances matter, though, and AIG should definitely not be using any of the bailout money to finance the sales convention. Nonetheless, there was a very sound business reason for having this "executive retreat" go on in spite of the troubles with the company. The timing was bad, leaving AIG without any good options for handling the situation, but I think that they may have made a good call in pissing off taxpayers and keeping their agents happy, rather than pissing off taxpayers and the agents. Face it: this "junket" was planned way before the bailout became necessary or possible, so as soon as word leaked out of plans for it, taxpayers and the White House would have found it despicable whether it was allowed to go on or not. At least by allowing the convention to go forward, they have a shot at retaining some of the folks who can save the company in the long run.
First off, if one reads descriptions of what actually went down, beyond the enumeration of $23,380 worth of spa treatments, it becomes apparent that this was not a junket for the executives. This was the annual sales convention for the top life insurance agents at the company. Those agents are under the auspices of the AIG American General insurance division, not the financial division that caused the need for the bailout. Company executives were present, because having a sales convention without at least a few executives is sort of pointless. It would be a bit like having the office Christmas party without the boss, but we'll get back to that in a bit.
So, what exactly is a sales convention? It is not the sort of convention you think of with a convention center hall full of vendor booths. A sales convention is a nice vacation that the company throws for its top producing agents, the small percentage of agents who bring in the most new business. The company puts those agents up at a nice hotel and plans a buffet of interesting group activities and treats. Gratis spa treatments and rounds of golf are fairly common on the activity buffet, because the stereotype of the tax bracket that the qualifying agents inhabit is that men relax playing golf and women relax getting pampered at the spa. The convention includes some meetings and banquets where the cream of the crop are recognized--those who brought in $1,000,000 or more of new business, for example--and where management psyches up the agents for another year of getting doors slammed in their faces, being called all sorts of nasty names, and occasionally having weeks or months with no paycheck. It gives the execs and agents a chance to meet face-to-face, probably the only time in a year that the agents will have in-person contact with the people who can best solve a problem with a client. The sucking up factor is not to be discounted here. In effect, the sales convention is the office Christmas party, except only the most profitable workers get invited.
Emp. Peng. is a life and health insurance broker, though he does not work with AIG, and we had some firsthand experience participating in the exact kind of "junket" that is at the heart of this kerfluffle with AIG. Last summer, one of the companies he contracts with sent us on a trip to Las Vegas. Entirely on the company's tab, we spent four nights at the Bellagio. We were wined and dined every one of those nights. Two nights we were treated to an upscale dinner and a show. One night they rented out Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, where we got exclusive access to the animals, the animal keepers, a private dolphin show and a dolphinside buffet dinner with open bar. One night, we had a private banquet punctuated by Rat Pack impersonators. During the day, we had our choice of activities, including not only the spa treatments and golf outings that are getting AIG in trouble now, but also a tour of Hoover Dam and a cooking demonstration luncheon with the resort's head chef in their multimillion-dollar studio kitchen. Except for Hoover Dam, we were taken everywhere by stretch limousine. For all four days, all we had to pay for was breakfast and whatever we did on our free time.
With the activities enumerated like that, it is hard not to consider such an event extravagant. In the bigger picture of the company, though, this is essentially giving a bonus, but only to the two dozen or so of several hundred independent agents who are the most profitable to the company. While I don't know the final cost of the Las Vegas trip (renting out the dolphin habitat is not as costly as it seems: $3,500 flat fee, plus $100 per person for catering), it likely was not any more expensive than giving a pittance of a bonus to everyone, but unlike a universal bonus, the agents have to work harder to bring in enough business to qualify for it. The convention is a carrot that the company dangles out to get agents to bring in more money to the company. Incidentally, this sort of trip is not the reason for high premiums on insurance, any more than annual bonuses paid to supermarket checkers are the reason for the outlandish price of milk. This is keeping the bottom of the corporate food chain happy, and happy corporate plankton is profitable corporate plankton. In fact, by encouraging agents to write more new policies, the conventions help keep premiums down. The bigger the pool of insured people, the lower premiums can be for everyone since risk is spread out further.
Back to the AIG thing. The media reports that the tab for the event was $440,000. That is a lot of money. What they don't report is how many people that covered. The closest I have been able to find is some reports indicating that there were fewer than 10 executives present. Assume a 1:4 executive to agent ratio, which was about what our Las Vegas trip had, and factor in that it is customary that everyone on these trips is allowed to bring a Plus One, and let's call it 80 people. Our Vegas trip had around 50, and was with a smaller company, so 80 people is not an outlandish guess. That's $5,500 per person, not a lot for a high end vacation, especially at a place where the rooms are $600 a night. The $23,380 for spa treatments would get 126 of the spa's least expensive treatments and 65 of the most expensive. So, yes, they went to a posh resort, and that doesn't look all that great in the papers the next morning. On the other hand, a weekend at the Motel 6 and breakfast at Denney's just doesn't make being an insurance agent worth the bother. And it is a lot of bother. That four days in Las Vegas represented more hours I spent with my husband than I had gotten in the previous two months, including sleep time. It is not all that uncommon for him to come home at 10 p.m., exhausted, and have to be out of the house again at 7 o'clock the next morning for another 18 hour day that he will return from famished because he didn't have time for even a snack.
So, what were AIG's alternatives? These conventions are planned a year in advance. One highlight of the final banquet is finding out where next year's convention will be. I can't imagine the execs announce a location without getting a block of rooms booked first, so this St. Regis shindig was probably booked at least a year ago. The bailout became an option less than a month ago. The plane tickets would likely have already been purchased by the time the bailout was offered, and my experience with these conventions is that, however posh the resort is, the company flies you in on the cheap, which means coach, nonrefundable. Had they cancelled the convention, the accounts would still show the company "wasting" several thousand dollars on airfare for tickets not used, and whatever other nonrefundable deposits they had placed a year before the economy started going down in flames.
Even more than that, there is the impact on the workforce. The agents being feted at this wingding were not AIG employees (possibly explaining why media characterizes it as an executive retreat: the execs were the only actual AIG employees there). Most insurance companies work on the commission-only independent contractor system, so the agents are self-employed, not employees. The one and only perk of being an independent contractor with an insurance company is the prospect of going to convention. There is no health insurance--it may surprise you to find out that insurance agents don't get breaks on insurance--no 401(k), no sick days or paid vacation. Even though the conventions are most-expenses-paid, it still means taking time off, and in a commission-only job, if you don't sell (not just "don't work," but "don't sell") you are not getting paid. The agents who went on this "executive retreat" had worked their asses off to get that far, and for the company to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute would create an even worse environment for the agents than there is now. Emp. Peng. would probably have a colorful similie involving sexual frustration here, but he has his own blog if he wants to post those.
The insurance agents are already suffering from conditions beyond their control and not of their doing. Given the media coverage, people are simply not buying AIG insurance products now. The agents can't sell. Fortunately, AIG does not use a captive agent system, so the independent contractors who were selling AIG policies aren't completely screwed. In a captive agent system, the agent is only allowed to represent the products of one company, and if the company goes south, the agents have no prospects for income aside from going to another company and starting at the bottom. AIG used independent brokers who, if they were smart, had a variety of companies at their disposal and could switch to offering policies from other companies. Still, to make convention, an agent almost has to give preference to one company over another in assessing which policy would be most suitable. It is malfeasance for an agent to go with a preferred company to make convention when there is another company in their portfolio that better suits the client's needs, but if all else is equal, there is nothing unethical about an agent steering to a preferred provider. The agents who make convention are the ones who push the company's products the most, and are the best hope for ever making the company profitable again. It is not in the company's long term interest to piss these people off, and that is exactly what would happen if the carrot got snatched away at the last minute, after they had put in all the work. Pissed off insurance agents leave the companies that piss them off. If you like having the same agent for your insurance policies two years running, it is in your best interest to let the companies do what it takes to keep the agents happy and affiliated with them. They really do precious little in this area. That $440,000 was possibly the entire annual "keep the agents from quitting" budget.
Appearances matter, though, and AIG should definitely not be using any of the bailout money to finance the sales convention. Nonetheless, there was a very sound business reason for having this "executive retreat" go on in spite of the troubles with the company. The timing was bad, leaving AIG without any good options for handling the situation, but I think that they may have made a good call in pissing off taxpayers and keeping their agents happy, rather than pissing off taxpayers and the agents. Face it: this "junket" was planned way before the bailout became necessary or possible, so as soon as word leaked out of plans for it, taxpayers and the White House would have found it despicable whether it was allowed to go on or not. At least by allowing the convention to go forward, they have a shot at retaining some of the folks who can save the company in the long run.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
About this Financial Crisis...
I'm sure it is a complex mess of causes and solutions. I just have one question: if the banks are getting bailouts and the CEOs are getting golden parachutes, can I at least get a seat cushion that acts as a flotation device?
Sunday, October 05, 2008
John McCain Ads Using the Same Video Clips as Energy Shot Ads
Here's an ad for John McCain that ran (at least on Tuesday) in Ohio. Pay attention to the video clip in the lower left hand box right at the beginning:
And here is an ad for Five Hour Energy Drink. Pay attention from the 18 second mark to the 22 second mark
That is unmistakably the same lady in an apron and blue shirt. Not faulting them for using stock footage. I don't imagine most campaigns purpose-shoot all of the clips for their ads. Still, after the incident where the sleeping child in Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. phone call ad turned out to be an Obama supporter and much older now, one would think the campaigns would double check where else the stock footage is being used.
And here is an ad for Five Hour Energy Drink. Pay attention from the 18 second mark to the 22 second mark
That is unmistakably the same lady in an apron and blue shirt. Not faulting them for using stock footage. I don't imagine most campaigns purpose-shoot all of the clips for their ads. Still, after the incident where the sleeping child in Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. phone call ad turned out to be an Obama supporter and much older now, one would think the campaigns would double check where else the stock footage is being used.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Say What?
Emp. Peng. and I spent the day at Mid-Ohio Con, a lovely comic book convention in Columbus. Whatever the impression given by news coverage of a comic book convention, most congoers are not, in fact, in costume. However, some are, and Emp. Peng. and I found ourselves waiting in line for Alan Dean Foster in front of a mixed-gender pair of stormtroopers. Having some time to kill, we got to chatting with them. After we established that the way female stormtroopers go to the bathroom is to think about it before they leave home, the male component of the pair confessed to not knowing who Alan Dean Foster is. The stormtrooper was more of a movie guy, and despite writing the story for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alan Dean Foster is decidedly a written-word guy. The next sentence out of the stormtrooper's mouth would have caused me to spit mango smoothie all over stormtrooper armor if I had been insane enough to pay $5.50 for pureed fruit at the stand 10 feet to our right:
I so do not fit in here.
Had he been anywhere else on the planet at that moment, he might have been right. There are a lot of places where a guy dressed as a stormtrooper will not fit in. As a matter of fact, a comic con is about the only place where a person can dress as a stormtrooper and fit in.
I so do not fit in here.
Had he been anywhere else on the planet at that moment, he might have been right. There are a lot of places where a guy dressed as a stormtrooper will not fit in. As a matter of fact, a comic con is about the only place where a person can dress as a stormtrooper and fit in.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Ponderable
Here's a quick read from The Onion. I'll wait here while you go read it.
Are you back? Good. As with everything in The Onion (see prior post on the Alpha Yam that refused to be candied), that was satire. Still, as with most good satire, it brings up an interesting point. Why do we trust 17-year-olds with a two-ton chunk of steel (or whatever it is they make cars out of now), but not their own bodies?
I was not having sex at the age of 17. However, I was driving a car then, a red Volvo sedan. In one memorable instance, on my way to pick up a dozen eggs, I drove that car into the back end of a Ford Taurus with "Happiness is Being a Grandparent" license plate frames. Fortunately, no one was hurt and I didn't even get a ticket. Apparently, the responding officer considered my hysterical sobbing, situated in the Venn Diagram intersection of the sets "Just rear-ended a grandma" and "I just crashed the car...I am sooooooo dead," evidence that my lesson was well learned.
Even more fortunate, my parents were of the opinion that accidents happen, and it was more of a matter of when I would hit something, not if I would. Plus, I think they were just happy that this time, they did not get the news by way of an EMT who, fed up with the receptionist at my father's workplace parroting the company policy against personal phone calls, finally snapped at her, "This is the paramedics. His children have been in an accident. Get him on the phone." We were both fine, but needed some parental guidance regarding what to do about the Pinto we had just totaled. (Note to self: in retrospect, it seems I should avoid Fords).
Among my cohort in high school, car accidents were not unheard of. Neither was teen pregnancy. The accident rate was probably about the same for both. Now, while rear-ending a Taurus is not in the same league of life-altering events as getting pregnant, being involved in a fatal accident is, and I knew a couple of people near my age who were involved in those (only one as the fatality). Yet the grownups do not, for the most part, flip a gasket and insist that teenagers should not be taught to drive responsibly, simply because there is a chance that they could hurt or kill themselves or others. Driving is an essential skill for independent living as an adult unless you live in Manhattan, and best to have them learn and make mistakes while parents can help pick up the pieces when, as will inevitably happen with anything with a learning curve, accidents happen.
Sex is no less essential than driving in adult life. Why then, do we trust teenagers with the car, but not the driver?
Are you back? Good. As with everything in The Onion (see prior post on the Alpha Yam that refused to be candied), that was satire. Still, as with most good satire, it brings up an interesting point. Why do we trust 17-year-olds with a two-ton chunk of steel (or whatever it is they make cars out of now), but not their own bodies?
I was not having sex at the age of 17. However, I was driving a car then, a red Volvo sedan. In one memorable instance, on my way to pick up a dozen eggs, I drove that car into the back end of a Ford Taurus with "Happiness is Being a Grandparent" license plate frames. Fortunately, no one was hurt and I didn't even get a ticket. Apparently, the responding officer considered my hysterical sobbing, situated in the Venn Diagram intersection of the sets "Just rear-ended a grandma" and "I just crashed the car...I am sooooooo dead," evidence that my lesson was well learned.
Even more fortunate, my parents were of the opinion that accidents happen, and it was more of a matter of when I would hit something, not if I would. Plus, I think they were just happy that this time, they did not get the news by way of an EMT who, fed up with the receptionist at my father's workplace parroting the company policy against personal phone calls, finally snapped at her, "This is the paramedics. His children have been in an accident. Get him on the phone." We were both fine, but needed some parental guidance regarding what to do about the Pinto we had just totaled. (Note to self: in retrospect, it seems I should avoid Fords).
Among my cohort in high school, car accidents were not unheard of. Neither was teen pregnancy. The accident rate was probably about the same for both. Now, while rear-ending a Taurus is not in the same league of life-altering events as getting pregnant, being involved in a fatal accident is, and I knew a couple of people near my age who were involved in those (only one as the fatality). Yet the grownups do not, for the most part, flip a gasket and insist that teenagers should not be taught to drive responsibly, simply because there is a chance that they could hurt or kill themselves or others. Driving is an essential skill for independent living as an adult unless you live in Manhattan, and best to have them learn and make mistakes while parents can help pick up the pieces when, as will inevitably happen with anything with a learning curve, accidents happen.
Sex is no less essential than driving in adult life. Why then, do we trust teenagers with the car, but not the driver?
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Dunkin Donuts Owes Me Some Trans Fats
Normally, I eat healthy foods. My default diet is mostly lacto-ovo-vegetarian since I like cheese way more than I like meat. Forget about having half of your grains be whole grains; I don't even buy non-whole grains or flours. I will often get my five servings of fruits and vegetables in before 2 p.m. Even when I don't eat healthy foods, I at least eat foods, not the processed corn-syrup laden stuff that some people try to pass off as food (word to the Velveeta fans: if the box has to tell you it is food, it isn't).
This is not to say I am a nutrition Nazi. When I am a guest somewhere, I will eat whatever is put in front of me, even if it violates my No Tentacles rule of food. More to the point, I understand that there are occasions where eating isn't about the nutrition. Sometimes, a person just needs something yummy.
Which brings me to the box of Dunkin Donuts Munchkins I bought today. Those are doughnut holes for the five of you who don't live within shouting distance of a Dunkin Donuts, or are boycotting them until they reinstate all of the letters in "Doughnut." My parents used to buy PengSis and me Munchkins on occasion when I was five or so, and the availability of the chocolate ones in the university cafeteria probably played no small part in how the Freshman 15 became the Sophomore 25. I hadn't had a Munchkin in probably close to 10 years, but today, after my 15th and final trip to the home store to pick up something I needed to fix the house up for our mortgage refinance appraisal--final only because I had three hours before the appraisal--I stopped by a Dunkin Donuts to get myself a little I Survived The Appraisal treat for afterward.
So, near as I can tell, the appraisal went well, and after all I put myself through trying to make sure everything was perfect so the appraisal value will come in high enough so that this eleventh attempt at refinancing will go through. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I am not; in the past year and a half, we have tried no fewer than 10 times to refinance our mortgage, but more on that in another post. At this moment, the next possible hitch is that the house doesn't appraise out high enough. We need it to appraise for about $5,000 more than we bought it for 3 years ago, when the bubble was still inflating. After the stress of this, I decided that I deserved to retreat into some of the comfort food of my youth. Since warm cinnamon pull-apart bread and Dad's coffee cake were not viable options, I went for the doughnut holes.
As mentioned, it has been most, if not all, of a decade since I have set tooth on a Munchkin. Last time I had one, people still thought trans fats were a miracle texture-producing ingredient. Now, the box that the Munchkins come in proudly proclaims "O Grams Trans Fats."
I want the trans fats back. Here is the ingredient list for chocolate glazed Munchkins, my eternal favorite:
They were yummier when they had the trans fats. Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose is also an ingredient in stucco. Agar is used as a growth medium in petri dishes. Propylene Glycol is in shampoo and deodorant. Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate is part of what puts the Tartar Control in tartar control toothpaste. A little bit of trans fat isn't the worst thing in a Munchkin.
This is not to say I am a nutrition Nazi. When I am a guest somewhere, I will eat whatever is put in front of me, even if it violates my No Tentacles rule of food. More to the point, I understand that there are occasions where eating isn't about the nutrition. Sometimes, a person just needs something yummy.
Which brings me to the box of Dunkin Donuts Munchkins I bought today. Those are doughnut holes for the five of you who don't live within shouting distance of a Dunkin Donuts, or are boycotting them until they reinstate all of the letters in "Doughnut." My parents used to buy PengSis and me Munchkins on occasion when I was five or so, and the availability of the chocolate ones in the university cafeteria probably played no small part in how the Freshman 15 became the Sophomore 25. I hadn't had a Munchkin in probably close to 10 years, but today, after my 15th and final trip to the home store to pick up something I needed to fix the house up for our mortgage refinance appraisal--final only because I had three hours before the appraisal--I stopped by a Dunkin Donuts to get myself a little I Survived The Appraisal treat for afterward.
So, near as I can tell, the appraisal went well, and after all I put myself through trying to make sure everything was perfect so the appraisal value will come in high enough so that this eleventh attempt at refinancing will go through. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I am not; in the past year and a half, we have tried no fewer than 10 times to refinance our mortgage, but more on that in another post. At this moment, the next possible hitch is that the house doesn't appraise out high enough. We need it to appraise for about $5,000 more than we bought it for 3 years ago, when the bubble was still inflating. After the stress of this, I decided that I deserved to retreat into some of the comfort food of my youth. Since warm cinnamon pull-apart bread and Dad's coffee cake were not viable options, I went for the doughnut holes.
As mentioned, it has been most, if not all, of a decade since I have set tooth on a Munchkin. Last time I had one, people still thought trans fats were a miracle texture-producing ingredient. Now, the box that the Munchkins come in proudly proclaims "O Grams Trans Fats."
I want the trans fats back. Here is the ingredient list for chocolate glazed Munchkins, my eternal favorite:
Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Water, Palm Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil and Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil with TBHQ and Citric Acid Added to Help Protect Flavor, Cocoa (Processed With Alkali), Contains 2% Or Less Of The Following: Maltodextrin, Whey, Wheat Starch, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Salt, Baking Soda, Soy Lecithin, Nonfat Milk, Xanthan Gum, Modified Food Starch, Polyglycerol Esters Of Fats & Fatty Acids, Propylene Glycol, Artificial Flavor, Mono- & Diglycerides, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Egg Albumen, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Soy Flour, Monocalcium Phosphate, Sodium Caseinate, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), L-Cysteine Hydrochloride, Agar, Citric Acid, Cellulose Gum.Notice something? Except for the cocoa, and the baking soda, egg albumen and nonfat milk in the "Contains 2% or less of" section, there is not a dang thing on that list that is, strictly speaking, good for you. If you were wondering, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose and Agar are both vegetarian substitutes for gelatin, and both Sodium Aluminum Phosphate and Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate are leaving agents. Propylene Glycol is used in foods as a solvent for flavorings or colorings. TBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, is a preservative. While everything in the ingredient list is edible, I would not go so far as to say that this is indicative of it being, in aggregate, food. But that's OK. I don't buy chocolate glazed Munchkins for their fiber content (incidentally, .5 gram per doughnut hole). I buy them because I want to eat something yummy.
They were yummier when they had the trans fats. Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose is also an ingredient in stucco. Agar is used as a growth medium in petri dishes. Propylene Glycol is in shampoo and deodorant. Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate is part of what puts the Tartar Control in tartar control toothpaste. A little bit of trans fat isn't the worst thing in a Munchkin.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
December Inflation
Time again for the annual--I think it is annual, anyway, though I can't seem to find the others in the archives--rant about December encroaching on the rest of the year. I am almost tempted to give Wal-Mart a pat on the back for waiting until October to bring out the Santas, but when I stopped by today, the Christmas displays clearly had more than one day's work already completed. Still, I have come to expect that from retail outlets. It is only a matter of time before more stores follow Hallmark's lead and segue straight from Fourth of July merchandise into Christmas tree ornaments.
I know I think this every year, and I probably blog it every other year, but the December Inflation is getting worse. It is bleeding out of retail sales. Today's mail consisted of a bank statement, some coupons, business stuff for Elie, and the December issues of Analog and Asimov's.
It gets worse. I could deal with getting my magazines two months ahead of time, but that is not all they have done. When I went to put the magazines on my To Read stack, I discovered that both magazines are now half an inch taller and a quarter of an inch wider than they used to be. This disturbs me to an extent that suggests that professional help would not be amiss.
I know I think this every year, and I probably blog it every other year, but the December Inflation is getting worse. It is bleeding out of retail sales. Today's mail consisted of a bank statement, some coupons, business stuff for Elie, and the December issues of Analog and Asimov's.
It gets worse. I could deal with getting my magazines two months ahead of time, but that is not all they have done. When I went to put the magazines on my To Read stack, I discovered that both magazines are now half an inch taller and a quarter of an inch wider than they used to be. This disturbs me to an extent that suggests that professional help would not be amiss.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Spam, Spam, Cherry, Apples, and Spam
The past few weeks have been apple season here at the Rookery, with my two mature apple trees bearing their little heinies off. One of the cruel effects of apple processing is that for every gallon of apple juice I get, I end up with about 2 1/2 gallons of fiber-rich apple pulp, and that adds up fast. I have frozen it, baked it into bread and waffles, spread it on toast, and am considering patching a crack in the concrete slab out back with it. Mostly, though, I am dehydrating it. The great thing about apple pulp is that it is strong enough to make regular apple leather, and mild enough to use as a carrier pulp for making fruit leathers out of things that are normally too delicate or too expensive to make into fruit leather on their own. So far, I have mixed berry, strawberry, apple spice, mango and black raspberry all in an apple base, and they are absolutely delectible.
Then, there is the cherry. I don't know what went amiss with the bowl of cherry-apple puree, but something did. Gallons upon gallons of the other puree mixes dehydrated right up to and end product indistinguishable from commercial fruit leather, except by the absence of non-fruit crap ingredients. The cherry, on the other hand, has dehydrated into an end product nearly indistinguishable from a massaging gel shoe insole. Seriously, the texture is exactly the same. Only the flavor is different (I assume, considering I have not gnawed on my shoe insoles lately to test). The cherry is tasty enough, but the texture is hard to get past. Worse yet, I still have a loaf pan full of the raw cherry-apple mix. What dehydrates into something with the consistency of a Doctor Scholl's product starts off with a consistency of fruity Spam, and I am still working on a use for what is left.
Then, there is the cherry. I don't know what went amiss with the bowl of cherry-apple puree, but something did. Gallons upon gallons of the other puree mixes dehydrated right up to and end product indistinguishable from commercial fruit leather, except by the absence of non-fruit crap ingredients. The cherry, on the other hand, has dehydrated into an end product nearly indistinguishable from a massaging gel shoe insole. Seriously, the texture is exactly the same. Only the flavor is different (I assume, considering I have not gnawed on my shoe insoles lately to test). The cherry is tasty enough, but the texture is hard to get past. Worse yet, I still have a loaf pan full of the raw cherry-apple mix. What dehydrates into something with the consistency of a Doctor Scholl's product starts off with a consistency of fruity Spam, and I am still working on a use for what is left.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Another Note About Hooters
As I discovered on my recent trip to Colonial Williamsburg, Hooters has the best steamed shrimp ever.
The Hooters is not actually in the Colonial part of Williamsburg. The only restaurants there are a few taverns, and of those, I must recommend the King's Arms Tavern, specifically the Game Pye, a combination of duck, rabbit and venison in a flaky crust. If you are going to Williamsburg with small children, I recommend not pointing out that it is the Disney Combo Platter, a gravy-soaked mix of Donald, Thumper and Bambi.
The Hooters is not actually in the Colonial part of Williamsburg. The only restaurants there are a few taverns, and of those, I must recommend the King's Arms Tavern, specifically the Game Pye, a combination of duck, rabbit and venison in a flaky crust. If you are going to Williamsburg with small children, I recommend not pointing out that it is the Disney Combo Platter, a gravy-soaked mix of Donald, Thumper and Bambi.
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