4
April
2005
16:21 Pacific Standard Time
a) Don't have their heads in their asses,
b) Don't have elitist First Class sections,
c) Are actually turning a profit (!)
I don't think it's a coincidence that the only airline that treats passengers humanely
is the only one making money. It makes me sick to my stomach, knowing that the US government
bailed out several airlines when they were bankrupt. Why? Why do corporations
get handouts from the government when they mismanage funds, but ordinary citizens
who are inundated with misleading credit card offers have to pay it all off
(since George "Il Duce" Bush reinstituted debt peonage.
That's to make sure the credit card companies don't lose any money
when they allow people to rack up debt far beyond their means.
12
April
2005
22:38 Pacific Standard Time
an approximate recipe
2 cups black beans / frijoles negros / feijões negros
1/2 onion / cebolla / cebola
3 cloves garlic / ajo / alho
3-8 fresh jalapeño peppers
3-4 slices bacon
Mexican oregano
allspice
black pepper
cilantro
cumin (?)
coriander (?)
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup grapefruit juice
1 1/2 cups water
salt
Cut up the bacon, cook it on low heat. When the bacon looks safe to eat (i.e., not quite crispy, but any parasites should be dead)
throw in the minced onion, garlic, and peppers. Cook until the onion is browned, then throw in the (previously soaked) beans
and stir-fry the mixture for a few minutes. Add all the rest of the ingredients except the salt, then pressure cook at 15 psi for
about 10 minutes, remove from heat, allow to cool. If you don't have a pressure cooker, cook the beans in water for 2 hrs
and drain before adding to the garlic / onions. Add salt to taste. Serve with rice.
I hate raw onions, so I pulverized mine in a food processor. Mincing would work fine for most people.
I keep soaking my beans too long (I forget about them, so soak them for two days instead of one),
so they lose a lot of their color. But supposedly soaking leaches out the stuff that causes gas.
They taste fine, even if they're a bit lighter than black.
I put question marks by cumin and coriander
because I use them all the time, and though I can't remember specifically whether I used them tonight,
it's most probable. Whenever my mom made enchiladas, which had a lot of cumin, I thought the smell was body odor,
at least from a distance. But maybe that's just me. I also think coffee has a vaguely skunk-like smell from a distance.
I use more coriander than any other spice in the cupboard. American "curry" powder is cumin, coriander, and turmeric.
Coriander is used in Mexican, Brazilian, Thai, and Indian foods. The British call cilantro coriander, while in the United States
we only use "coriander" to mean the seed of the plant. Cilantro tastes very much different from coriander; I wonder how
the root of the plant tastes? Some Thai recipes call for coriander / cilantro root, but I've never had any available.
Allspice is not some combo with dehydrated onion and MSG like Mrs. Dash; it's actually a distinct spice.
I didn't know that until recently. It has an interesting flavor that is a lot like cloves / cinnamon / nutmeg / etc.
There has to be some sort of family for those spices--the ones that are often used in desserts.
Anyway, because I am lazy and experimental, I've been using allspice a lot lately. It's a decent substitute for
garam masala, which is just pepper, cloves, and a couple of those other dessert spices.
I wrote jalapeño peppers in the above recipe, but that isn't what I used tonight.
I used firecracker / piquin peppers which are hotter than jalapeños.
Four piquin peppers was about hot enough for me, but if you are wimpy abou spicy food, use at least
two jalapeños. I would probably use eight jalapeños, or use fewer peppers but throw in some of the seeds
to spice it up.
I think the orange and grapefruit juice really add a lot of flavor, especially when using a pressure cooker.
Beans definitely need help when it comes to flavor. I also use those juices with meats, sometimes.
A lot of my cooking is instinct, since every meal is a new experiment.
I never make the same thing twice, because I always have to tweak it--sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity.
You can only use the ingredients you have in the house, if you don't plan far enough ahead.
20
April
2005
13:53 Pacific Standard Time
Case 1: Ibrehem, on Survivor. His inability to dive down in the sea and pick up a bottle
was the sole reason his team lost an immunity challenge.
Case 2: Karamo, on the Real Word Inferno II. He didn't even attempt one contest because
it would involve him wading through some water to get on a platform.
What a fucking pussy!
Case 3: the dozens of black folks I know who don't or can't swim.
So someone, please, let me know what's the deal. Is this a cultural issue?
Most black girls I know go to extreme efforts to protect their hair from getting wet,
but that doesn't explain why black men don't swim. And for the people who haven't noticed
this strange trend, keep an eye out. For any black people reading this, drop me a line,
let me know if you swim, and whether you think I'm a racist bastard for even suggesting
that there is a trend here or if my observations are accurate.
Mmmmm . . . candy.
22
April
2005
11:11 Pacific Standard Time
I read your story about blacks swimming, and I've had many black friends confirm
it. Usually in a joking matter, saying stuff like "Don't forget to
turn the faucet off, shanika, you know we don't swim!", or something
similar. That aside I've seen more than a few black people at the
beach in the surf, and on swim teams, but I don't think that it
abolishes the stereotype. For the most part, blacks don't swim. Why?
My theory is that it fucks up their hair, for which they buy copious
amounts of treatments and spend obscene amounts at salons and
barbershops. So in their lifetime quest to keep their hair from
getting wet, they never learn how to swim. So even if they later shave
it all off, they still are afraid to go in the water above their chests.
Anyway, to answer your question about swimming: when was the last time
you saw a black family with a swimming pool in their back yard? For
that matter, when was the last time you saw a black family with a back
yard? While the middle and upper classes have long been populated
with numerous black families, most blacks are still living in
undesirable economic conditions; owning a pool would be unthinkable.
Children, therefore, do not learn to swim at an early age. If you've
ever seen an adult try to learn how to swim, it's not pretty.
You could counter that public pools are available. To which I would
make two replies: 1) have you ever seen a city pool? It's horrible,
and it's overcrowded. You might get your feet wet, but you're not
going to do laps, let alone have an organized lesson; 2) during the
post-Brown v. Board period of desegregration, many pools that had been
treated as public were found to have a legal status of private; as a
result, the whites who owned them, rather than comply with
desegregation orders, simply shut them down, and expended money to
open their own private clubs where they could swim in ivory bliss. For
reasons spanning both money and pride, blacks no longer frequented
pools in the public domain.
What about the ocean? Well, I don't know the general lay of the land,
but in New Jersey, to hit many beaches, you have to pay a membership
fee. Who doesn't get to go? People with no money. Who doesn't have
money? See above.
Is this race based? No. It's economic based. My father (white, by
the way), didn't hit a pool until he was in his 20s, and as quick a
learner as he was, never completely took to water. I lapped his ass
on a regular basis. Is this race-coincidental? Absolutely. And
swimming isn't the only phenomenon where you can see this. How many
black hockey players do you know? Why do you think Tiger Woods is
such a big deal? And so on. So, the short answer to your question is
that it all boils down to facility accessibility, and the diminishing
of human adaptability to new things as we age.
I spoke with a friend of mine who's black. She was surprised by your
observation -- not that she disagreed, but that she had observed the
same thing, both in civilian life and in Special Forces. She agreed
with my facilities rationale, but also suggested that blacks have
higher muscle density and therefore negative buoyancy. I don't know
how much I buy into that, but those were her thoughts.
She also offered another story - when her mother was at Indiana
University in the 1930s, when the whites were finished using the pool,
the blacks could use it. After the blacks had finished using the
pool, staffers would drain the pool, clean it, and refill it before
whites got back in.
28
April
2005
14:47 Pacific Standard Time
I was a child murderer.
I don't mean child-murderer, though that's an idea. I mean child murderer, that is, a murderer who
happens to be a child, or a child who happens to be a murderer. You can take your choice. When
Aristotle notes that man is a rational animal one strains forward, cupping his ear, to hear which of
those words is emphasized-
rational animal, rational animal?
Which am I? Child murderer, child murderer?
It took me years to start writing this memoir, but now that I'm started, now that those
ugly words are typed out, I could keep on typing forever. A kind of quiet, blubbering hysteria has
set in. You would be surprised, normal as you are, to learn how many years, how many months, and how
many awful minutes it has taken me just to type that first line, which you read in less than a
second: I was a child murderer.
You think it's easy?
My theory is the negative buoyancy. If you cannot float
very well, it is harder to learn how to swim.
In Brazil, however, most people who live coastally can
swim, independant of race. Since the ocean is readily
available to anyone, Cariocas are taught how to swim early
in life, because their friends and family are always taking
them to the beach.
Ingredients:
couple pounds chicken
5 thick slices of galanga root (looks like ginger, but isn't)
2 cans coconut milk
1 head Napa cabbage
mushrooms (I used oyster mushrooms)
2 cloves garlic
5 kaffir lime leaves
juice from 2-3 limes
1 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. sambal oolek (red chili paste)
soy sauce to taste
cilantro
Instructions:
First, make some chicken stock. I took the chicken scraps and dissolved them
by pressure cooking for about 20 minutes at 15 psi. I added galanga and cilantro stems
at this step, to make the stock taste better. I also used one can of coconut milk,
but if you aren't using a pressure cooker, use water.
Next, cut the rest of the chicken into bite size pieces and brown them.
Throw the chicken pieces and the rest of the ingredients (except the cilantro)
into the pot and cook until the Napa cabbage becomes translucent.
Serve with fresh cilantro and rice.
Notes: Most recipes call for fish sauce instead of soy sauce,
but I have trouble using fish sauce in something I'm going to end up eating.
If you don't make chicken stock, you'll want to use fish sauce to add flavor.
Soy sauce has salt and (naturally occuring) MSG, so it's a decent fish sauce substitute.
Shrimp would also improve the flavor, but that's technically a different soup (tom kha goong)
Galanga tastes nothing like ginger, but if you use ginger as a substitute,
the soup will still taste good. Just not very authentic.
I didn't have any lemongrass on hand, but that's a usual ingredient.
For any linguists out there:
kha = galanga,
gai = chicken,
goong = shrimp / prawns
and I think tom = soup.