Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Vegetables and Meat

Published
by
Gary
on February 27, 2008
in Observation
. 3 Comments

I finally roped a friend into driving me to Trader Joe’s last weekend, and I came home with a bumper crop of delicious things—namely, vegetables, many of which I’ve been consuming over the the past few days.

The result? Happiness! For some reason, eating vegetables and other non-meat things changes my reaction to what would normally make me sad, angry, or frustrated into a sort of mild bemusement. (Or, the usual reaction occurs but for a shorter time.) In other words, it appears that what I eat in fact has a sort of correlation with who I am.

May I present my dinner from two days ago:

Veggie Dinner

What we’ve got here are raw sugar peas, roasted almonds, Clementine tangerines, and double-cream brie spread on miniature whole wheat bagels topped with pepper and sliced Roma tomatoes. I’ve developed a certain order-of-operations not unlike the byzantine rules nobles followed at Louis XIV’s Versailles:

  1. Take a bite of the bagel.
  2. Bite half a peapod—the crisp sweetness of the peas complements and negates the creamy, salty brie.
  3. Eat an almond. The almond’s rich nuttiness is diametrically opposed yet complementary to the peas.
  4. Repeat until finished, then peel and eat the tangerines.

Eating this sort of dinner is strangely satisfying in a for-once-I’m-not-brutally-abusing-my-body way.

In other news, I’ve discovered the only genuinely good restaurant in New Haven: Gastronomique, at High Street and Crown. It’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall take-out-only French restaurant serving bistro-style food, founded by a CIA-grad (Culinary Institute of America) who cooked for 5-star restaurants in New York and Holland before getting into a motorcycle accident that left in a three month coma and made him rethink the course of his life. It is really, really, REALLY good.

Turkey Sandwich from Gastronomique

The food is typically simple but unbelievably rich and flavorful. Above is the turkey sandwich I had a little while ago: thick, freshly carved slices of turkey with fresh cranberries and mayonnaise on a buttered and grilled roll, absolutely fucking magnifique.

(In the interest of fairness, some people don’t like the place as much. Word around studio is that sometimes it’s awesome, sometimes it’s not, but so far I’ve never had a bad experience. I have to admit it’s not nearly as good as Gregoire, Berkeley’s French take-out joint, but then again New Haven’s not nearly as good as Berkeley!)

Lost Jokes

Published
by
Gary
on February 25, 2008
in Declaration
. 3 Comments

I’m going to Beijing/Hong Kong from March 8th to 22nd, and it turns out that—on the way there—my friends and I are all going to be sitting in the back of the plane.

That’s right: the tail section!

I keep trying to make Lost jokes (”guess we’re going to be on the other side of the island,” “the others are going to get us first”), but no one’s laughing.

McCain merely Republican

Published
by
Gary
on February 8, 2008
in Criticism and News
. 5 Comments

Alright, scratch what I said earlier, McCain’s clearly an idiot—or, if he’s not, he’s willing to act like one to be elected, which is even worse:

I believe that [setting a date on troop withdrawal] would have catastrophic consequences…. I believe that al Qaeda would trumpet to the world that they had defeated the United States of America, and I believe that therefore they would try to follow us home. (Reuters, “McCain challenges Democratic rivals on Iraq war“)

al Qaeda? What is this, 2001? Iraq’s at tremendous risk because we knocked out their government, meaning that we knocked out the [dictatorial] status quo among Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Kurds. The number one thing we should all be worried about is the incredible destabilizing effect an Iraqi Civil War would have on the rest of the Middle East, with Iran ready to take the Shiite side and other powers ready to take side of the Sunni majority, as well as the Kurds agitating for self-government together with their brethren in Turkey. That is the threat, and also the only really valid reason for the U.S. to stay in Iraq: the tremendous and generations-long consequences to the region if Iraq falls apart. Not this “oh no, al Qaeda’s going to git us” crap.

It’s this “us versus them” “secure the borders” 20th Century mentality that’s so disappointing about McCain and infuriating about the Republican party—and exactly why the dumb party as a whole is unfit to lead America. It’s a new world out there, and I don’t mean a new world of fear. No, it’s a world of alternatives—alternatives to America—and any President that tries to push instead of gently and mutually promote is just going to further sink America’s ability to influence second states in comparison to the EU and China.

We have learned the hard way that what others want for themselves trumps what we want for them—always. Neither America nor the world needs more competing ideologies, and moralizing exhortations are only useful if they point toward goals that are actually attainable. This new attitude must be more than an act: to obey this modest, hands-off principle is what would actually make America the exceptional empire it purports to be. It would also be something every other empire in history has failed to do. (NYT Magazine, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony“)

On the bright side, it lets Obama show that his “fundamental understanding” trumps McCain’s.

I think [the Iraq War] has been an enormous strategic blunder on the part of the United States. It has made us less safe. It has cost us dearly in blood and treasure. (Reuters, “McCain challenges Democratic rivals on Iraq war“)

Absofreakinglutely. Imagine a world where the U.S. never unilaterally invaded Iraq, where we didn’t completely blow the historically unprecedented good will we received after 9/11, where we didn’t give every anti-American on the planet completely justified reason to hate us. That’s the kind of world we’ll never live in with a Hawk in the White House.

What the Hillary

Published
by
Gary
on February 6, 2008
in News
. 1 Comment

Clinton wins NY

Wait, you guys are excited about Hillary Clinton? That’s like me getting excited about KFC’s coleslaw. How does this even happen?

From Matt Bai’s Politics Blog at the New York Times Magazine:

Mr. Obama’s aides, meanwhile, were happy to let Mrs. Clinton anoint herself the candidate of Washington experience if it meant their guy could run against the status quo. …in doing so, they ceded ground to Mrs. Clinton they need not have ceded, validating this notion that she had far more experience than Mr. Obama, even though she had been in the Senate only four years longer and had actually served less time in elective office. They enabled her to seamlessly transform her tenure as First Lady into presidential preparedness. (NYT, “The Change vs. Experience Pitfall“)

I think Obama should make that last point more clear. Hillary’s straight-up overstating her “experience,” whatever that’s supposed to mean now.

Meanwhile, I’m glad McCain is the Republican front-runner. I feel like he’d actually do a good job, as an Internationalist and an anti-torture advocate (for a Republican). He’s probably one of the most moderate Republicans around—it’s really ashame that he’s under the yoke of having to appeal to fundys and xenophobic nuts to win delegates.

Today

Published
by
Gary
on February 5, 2008
in Declaration
. 5 Comments

Today is Super Tuesday. If ever there was a single day when hope might fight fear and doubt, when true change might strike for over three hundred million people across 3,800,000 square miles, today is the day.

Today is the day when Barack Obama steps up to twenty-four states, the one man running to catch the battered soul of this broken country. If ever there was a single person whose fate so matched the future of a nation and a world, today is the day.

Today, if we could for once put aside our calculations and our doubts, our baseless attacks and pointless divisions, our apathy and our pessimism, if for once we could be earnestly believe, please, today is the day.

The Flag

And if I may make an admission that makes me sick to my stomach: today, today I failed to vote. For reasons that are my fault, for something more important than anything my life has, I failed to register, I failed to vote. You could say, in a sense, I voted for Hillary Clinton—if only I could vomit that vile feeling away.