Cooking

 Cooking new things is fun. You don't really know what things are going to taste like until it's finished. I mean, you can guess, and I'm sure as one gets better as a cook the guessing gets better, but until then it's a mystery. I imagine that's part of the joy of it, the not knowing, I mean.

But at the same time, right now? Right now I'm all about sameness. I like being able to know exactly what something's about, something I can control because the rest of the world surely isn't giving it to me.

-F

A Voting Dilemma

 Being a poll worker feels weird if I’m being honest. Some of that is intended, you’re not exactly a necessary part of the process so much as making it easier for other people requires being as invisible as possible. I can get used to that, though, that’s normal in other jobs. But it’s weird in other ways as well, such as this weird thanks that comes with it. Now, I want to make this clear, it’s not like I don’t understand why people thank other people for doing their civic duty or whatever they say. And certainly this year of all years I can understand thanking people for doing essential jobs. But to me, it still feels kind of hollow.

Like, what am I supposed to respond with? “Thanks for your support” feels weird because I don’t exactly feel morally supported by it. “You’re welcome” almost feels sassy in its presentation. Part of me thinks that this is because of that initial thought, that as a poll worker you want to leave as little an impact as possible on people, but also maybe this is just an “I can’t take compliments well at all” sort of deal, where it’s just another form of positive attention that I find difficult to accept.

The latter would put it into the sphere of “we as a culture need to normalize neutral compliments” but that’s something, like, if I’m not ready to do that for myself, I’m not entirely sure what I can do on a cultural level besides I guess just doing it more? Or at least accepting that people are going to do it.

-F

Part Two

 A firefighter said that someone accidentally setting a pizza box on fire happened all the time. They’d even done it themselves. For those wondering, this is the thing that happened last week, and, like, four firetrucks just showed up. Some of this I attribute to being pretty close to a fire station, but also it’s pretty surreal seeing four. You expect a pretty big fire for something like that. I have this image in my head -- probably because of the media -- of this raging full-scale house-fire where the objective isn’t to fight the fire, it’s more to contain it and get survivors out. Which this wasn’t.

But I also keep thinking about that “happens all the time” comment. The last step, the “forgetting to take the box out when you turn the oven on” bit, that I can understand. I might even do the same. But, like, the idea of having pizza boxes in an oven is so foreign to me. It’s not something I really understand at all.

Everyone was fine, though, fortunately. I mean, the oven was on fire and then doused in water so it’s probably not fine but if we’re anthropomorphizing kitchen appliances maybe we’re deeper in quarantine than we even thought possible. 

-F

Spooktober (Introduction)

 October doesn’t feel as spooky as it used to. Some of that is, you know, how obviously scary just going outside at all can be without precaution, but also, I don’t know how to describe it, actually. It feels like the veil has been lifted. I’ve seen multiple people criticise “spooky season”, trying to push all the scares on just the 31st. And maybe that’s a general societal pushback because of that first point, but I never really noticed anything about it until it happened. I’d seen more “Halloween is on a Saturday this year!” which then turned into “Halloween is on a Saturday this year, so don’t screw up quarantining or there’ll be hell to pay.” which has now become “Dang, and Halloween is on a Saturday…” at best.

The past few years, I made a habit of doing some media discussion on spooky things I liked in October, and while there are certainly still some plans for that, there’s some other stuff in the tank for this month. Here’s to hoping at least a little Halloween spirit returns, and may your pumpkin patches be as sincere as they can possibly be.

-F

Seasons of Change

 It’s fall now. Autumn, whatever you want to call it. There’s always an air of change, I think, with the equinox seasons, not just in palette (though that’s certainly there too) but in the general mood as well. And maybe that’s because the palette informs the mood. I’m certainly not calling that out of the question. I don’t know, that’s not something I’ve thought about. But autumn also seems like it’s normally “the bad change.” It’s a lead-in to winter, which is typically this symbolic psychopomp (unless it’s holiday season but we’ll leave that aside for now).

At the same time, though, fall’s supposed to be this season of plenty, right? Harvest festivals and stocking up a surplus for those upcoming winter months. And the new colors on the trees aren’t treated as the trees dying or even hibernating, but the marker of this specific atmosphere.

It’s a weird dichotomy. I thought it might be a glass-half-full/empty situation where it depends on how you look at it? And you have to choose? But that doesn’t sit right with me either. What might work, though, is a synthesis of these two ideas, like, you need to prepare for hard times, but that doesn’t mean you have to be sad about it. The act of preparedness is promising enough, or something like that.

I don’t know, it’s just something I think about.

-F

Masks and Mask Acessories

 I feel obligated to look at other people’s masks. I wrote before about how there’s this silent judgment that happens when you spot someone not wearing theirs (or worse, wearing one improperly), which is probably why that happens, but, at the same time, I haven’t seen too many unique ones? I have friends who wear some, sure, but the vast majority I’ve seen are just common cloth masks. They might be a nice color, but not much more than that. No designs, no fandom markers, nothing.

Maybe that’s a product of demographics? A lot of the other people I see are at least one generation above me, and expression is (at least stereotypically) a youth thing, so maybe that’s it? There’s also the fact that many have not worn these sorts of masks before, and so this sort of fashion is going to have to build itself from the ground up.

I speak of fashion like I know what I’m talking about, of course, and I don’t really. Maybe everyone else is like me, because while I have a mask with a design on it (a Guy Fawkes mask, for the curious), I never really wear it. I always feel like it draws more attention than I want. I mean, what I want generally is to not draw attention unless I start vocally looking for it, but that feels like another topic for another time.

The last possibility is that there just aren’t that many, and that the internet has only amplified the ones we do see. I could believe that as well -- the internet certainly amplifies so many other low-lying areas, why not what masks exist as well? But in all these cases, I see hope that they’ll become more widespread. I’d love for one more reason to check what’s on everyone’s faces right now.

-F

The Walking Dance

Like many, I’ve started going on walks more frequently to stay active, and I’ve noticed that there’s this little interaction, this little dance that everyone does when two people are approaching each other on the sidewalk. Because you can’t just cross paths, obviously, that would mean getting too close. Instead, here’s what happens:

First thing’s first, you have to spot them. This generally happens when you’re still far away from each other but sometimes there’s some low-hanging foliage obscuring your sightlines so be ready for that. What follows are calculations between both you and the other person that wouldn’t be out of place in a middle-school math textbook. “I’m going at such and such a speed and they’re going at such and such a speed which means we’ll intersect…” That sort of problem.

If you’re really mean, you can turn it into a game of chicken. Who’s going to cross the street or get out of the way first? Not you! But what’s more likely to happen next is this sort of size up where you’ll check to see if the other person is wearing a mask, and if they aren’t, you get to give them a good solid glare that should last for about as long as you feel comfortable giving them the attention. That’s not that long for me, personally, but I’m sure for other people it’s different.

Once that’s out of the way, the next thing to look for is traffic. You should generally be aware of the oncoming sort anyway, but be sure to look behind you as well. Once you’ve gotten the hang of this in a general sense, you can even try to be as simultaneous as you can with the other person as well. See how close you can get!

Now, based on all these factors, you have to wordlessly decide who’s going to go out of their way. The default should be you, obviously. Yes, I know I mentioned chicken 180-ish words ago, but come on. Whoever it is, though, should obviously start drifting closer to the road in preparation to do so, also subtly indicating that they’ve elected to cross. One more check that the roads are clear, and that’s that.

Or is it? There’s a difference between a half-cross and going all the way across the street. I’ll leave that for you all to discover, though. In the meantime, stay safe, stay well, and I’ll talk to you all next week.

-F

Icebreaker Jokes

I’ve talked about icebreakers way, way back when the blog was young, but one specific subset of “say something interesting about yourself” type vagaries is the “tell a joke” section. Just like having one good interesting thing about oneself to just have in your back pocket is a good idea, I’ve found it’s also a good idea to have a joke ready just in case. Of course, it should be short and sweet -- you’re not going to get any friends by rattling off Nate the Snake on command.

One of my personal favorites is one I heard at summer camp, and it’s a freshly squeezed take on an old classic.

Knock knock (Who’s there?)
Banana (Banana who?)
Knock knock (Who’s there?)
Banana (Banana who?)
Knock knock (Who’s there?)
Orange (Orange who?)
Knock knock (Who’s there?)
Banana’s back!

There are some problems with this particular adaptation, though. I mean, I’m not a jokesmith by any means, but the fourth iteration (the one after “Orange”) loses a lot of anticipation value in its unexpectedness. The normal punchline is so ingrained that it’s hard to imagine anything else. Really, the only solution I have to this is to be extra jubilant in your delivery of the final line, which I guess subverts expectations in an irony-poisoned world but definitely isn’t for everyone. The other option, I suppose, would be to cut one of the initial “banana” lines, but that means there’s no buildup at all.

On the other hand, maybe that’s everyone else’s punishment for demanding you tell a joke in the first place.

-F

Fermat's Last Blog Post

I have discovered a truly magnificent topic for a blog post, of which the margins of this webpage are too narrow to contain.

-F

(thought of this dumb joke at way-too-late-o'clock and couldn't help myself)

The Grocery (Part Three)

It seems like the store has gotten used to operating as it has been these last couple weeks. I went in late at night and it almost felt normal. Of course, there are still signs that direct you which way to go down which aisle and all the staff wear masks (the same cannot be said for the customers, unfortunately), but it’s a month later. It’s different now. The feeling is different. I mean, I still wouldn’t go in there unless I had to. As I alluded to in that parenthetical, I only saw three people (not including myself) wearing a mask, and I’m not sure one of those wasn’t just a duplicate. And now that I realize it, the direction markings aren’t conspicuous enough if I can accidentally go the wrong way down one and not realize until halfway through.

Some of this might also be, well, because it was late at night and, therefore, much less crowded than the store’s maximum, which is almost five-hundred. One-way aisles work much better, I am sure, when there isn’t just one person in them ever. The mask thing is less excusable, and it almost makes me want to see if another store nearby does have a mask policy. They already have an employee wiping the handles of the carts, and they already have a security officer, it stands to reason one could inform the other on certain matters of civil protection.

In fact, as I was checking out, I overheard a conversation between someone and this security, talking about this very thing. But I don’t think this is the time where friendly conversation is going to get anything done. We’re seeing that in other arenas of the country already.

-F

In the Middle

I’m at this point where there are so many things I know I should be writing about and yet I can’t find the words for any of them. Some of that is, like, hesitation, waiting until situations resolve themselves (hopefully for the better, and I have tried to do my part to make that happen) before tackling it and some of it is worry that a recap of the events just isn’t my story to tell. That’s why this post is late, by the way, and also why it’s probably unsatisfying as all get out to read.

I do have ideas for what I want to be saying and how, though. It’ll probably end up turning into something longer, in which case you probably won’t see it on this blog for a while, if at all. But I’ll keep you in the loop for it.

-F

Online Spaces

When I started this blog, one of the sub-resolutions I had going along with it was “put myself out there on the internet more”. This wasn’t, like, a “get involved in social media” sort of deal, but I have noticed this tendency of mine to stay on the periphery in social situations and the barrier of a computer screen seemed like a good way to get used to, well, not doing that.

I mean, the inevitable problems are still the same; there’s an already established in-group in online communities, and I’m not sure anonymity has really helped in overcoming that. Usernames, after all, are almost as ubiquitous as actual names in certain circles, and while the option to just create a new account isn’t prohibited (and sometimes, oddly, even encouraged), that does mean pretending to be a new person, and I’m not sure I’m able to do that for long periods of time.

What’s weird, even to me, is that I still don’t intentionally link my name with my online username. That doesn’t mean they aren’t connected, but I tend to avoid drawing that connection if I can help it. So I’m still playing someone, even if that someone is just “me, but online”. And “me, but online” still has all the trouble real me has getting into an “ingroup.”

I don’t have a solution to this or anything, though it is slowly getting better. I guess this blog post becomes a progress update, in that case? In which case, progress is okay. We’ll see what happens.

-F

Books I'll Never Read

I’m sitting near a copy of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as I write this. It’s a book that is not only almost six-hundred pages long, it also has a reputation of being at times incomprehensible to those not taking an entire university-level course on the subject thanks to the author’s questionable prose. It’s not something I plan to read anytime soon, and indeed, when I picked it up, I joked about how it could sit on my shelf of the books I have but have never read.

To be fair, it’s not like I went out and bought a copy of Hegel. The exact circumstances with which this book came into my possession aren’t really something I feel comfortable talking about on this blog, but the closest analog, I suppose, would be something akin to a gift. The important thing is, I didn’t spend any money on it. If I had, I feel like I would have a different attitude towards it; I don’t generally go out and buy books I know I won’t read. If I bought it, I’d be more likely to at least give it an honest effort.

If a book cost me twenty dollars and I don’t read it, then I feel like I’m out twenty dollars. If someone else bought it, then I don’t feel like that person’s twenty dollars matters whether I read the book or not. That probably sounds flippant or ungrateful, but I guess a better way to think about it would be this: if I bought it, I spent twenty dollars so I could read a book. If somebody else bought it, they spent twenty dollars so they could give me a book. In the latter, the transaction is already completed -- I got the book, didn’t I?

This sort of thinking does discount libraries, of course, which (in the before times) I imagine would be a middle ground of sorts. I wouldn’t have spent anything besides the time searching it out, but that’s still my time, right? That’s not nothing.

There are definitely other factors I’m discounting by thinking like this. I’m just trying to make sense of what I’ve already been doing, reasoning out actions I’ve already taken instead of talking about the thought process that led up to a decision and this is where my mind went to first. Maybe I need to read more books about it.

-F

The Grocery (Part Two)

I noticed a few things on my most recent grocery trip. I figured I could write about them.

The biggest one is in the signage. Multiple signs now indicate that aisles are one-way only, though I also noticed that with all the management at the front of the store, there wasn’t much enforcement going on. I think I counted three times I saw someone going the wrong way? The signage is such that it’s hard to miss.

The mask policy is still the same, as in, there hasn’t been one. Most of the shoppers still do, as do all the staff, but I also noticed more people going without than last time. It could be that I wasn’t looking, though.

Lastly, there was a moment while I was bagging everything when someone else came up to the self-checkout station and started scanning, but was stopped and told to wait as I finished. I imagine this was in place before, but on previous trips, instead of being able to find out, a staff member came up and started bagging items after I had already scanned as I was still checking out, so I can’t say for certain.

I guess we’re surviving? So far, at least, yeah, we’re surviving.

-F

Algorithmically Generated Consent

I’ve started listening to the algorithmically generated playlist that Spotify makes for me every week -- I’m actually listening to it as I write this -- and it’s been fun! It’s a lot of music that I’ve never heard before mixed in with some that I had, but only through other sources. It’s never anything I’d really go out of my way to look for on my own and that’s a cool thing.

And yet, it worries me a little, because while I do like most of the songs that have been thrown my way, it either means I’ve let the algorithm collect enough information on me to make some pretty accurate guesses or it means I have no taste and will like so many things. I’m actually a little partial to the second reason; it means unless a song is mastered poorly, I can just let it slide into the background. But the first fear is still right there and a bit more worrisome.

One of my resolutions for this and every year was to be “out there” on the internet a bit more, and that’s meant opening myself up to these sorts of metadata collection schemes. I’m sure Google knows all about me, and not just because Blogspot is a Google-owned property. Mostly I hope to just be ignored to an extent, with billions upon billions of people using the internet, the fact that I am probably just a bit of data amongst all that is actually a little comforting to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice when personalized content gets thrown at me.

Youtube’s algorithm is a bit weird, for example. I don’t have the space nor the ability to go into exact details, but the things it tends towards more “controversial” (especially politics-wise) content being rewarded, especially at a quick output. So on completely unrelated videos, I’ll see something with a headline trying to be eye-catching and a little “Recommended for you” tag under it and all I can do is say “Huh.”

Maybe that’s comforting too, that they still guess wrong. Not all the songs on Spotify’s playlists are ones I like, though I’m sure they notice when I skip over them. I do think the black-box nature of the algorithm is scary, of course, but it also makes it difficult to do more than just gesture at it.

A bit of a disclaimer, though. There are algorithms that do more than just recommend media to people or sell ads based on interests. Credit scores, for example, have started determining more than just if someone can pay back a loan, which I think is harmful and dangerous for the same reasons I find the former ones ineffectually weird at times. They could get things wrong. But also for the same reasons, all I can do, from this blog, at least, is mention it.

-F

The Grocery

The grocery store just down the street from me by and large uses self-checkout stations. Presumably, this is to keep labor hours down, but also, in this period of pandemic, it helps minimize contact between employees and shoppers. If you ring up a large number of items, a manager will still step in and help out, but they’ll ask you to step back as they bag things for you. All this makes sense, and I appreciate it.

One thing that did throw me off, though, when I went earlier last week, was their policy on reusable bags. I’d brought a stack of paper bags with me because I was expecting to use a large amount of plastic otherwise, and got stopped at the door and told I couldn’t use them.

I get the idea. It’s a potential point of contact, a variable that the store can’t control. These things have to be minimized. I had already thought of this; if someone was going to ask to help with my bags, I was going to decline. They didn’t know that, of course, and outwardly, I looked like a young’un with no mask and some headphones on. I probably looked like I absolutely didn’t care.

It did get me thinking, though, as I went through the store, what other precautions were they taking? There was a maximum occupancy notice on the outside, for example (though I don’t know how they were keeping track), and there were stickers on the floor so you could stand a safe distance away from the deli counters, but also, policies I’ve seen other stores implement didn’t seem to be in effect here. Restricting aisles to one-way lines, for example, would help keep customers at a distance from each other. I didn’t see any of that, and there certainly were a lot of times it would have helped.

Or the most basic of cautions: If I had an item in my cart and changed my mind, what happens to the item I stuck back on the shelf? The freezer door handles, were those disinfected?

Obviously, I can’t expect any sort of public business to be absolutely safe, but I also know that this sort of business will do the bare minimum of safety if it thinks it can get away with it. I don’t really watch TV, but I assume they’re the type of business to praise the hard-working nature of their low-level staff in their advertisements without acting in their interest.

I don’t have a fix for this, or I didn’t in the moment, at least. It wasn’t like I was going to start an argument or try and run past with my paper bags. And I certainly don’t begrudge the effort that’s already been put in, nor do I want it to stop any time soon. If anything, I’d want more things like this. The thought of an essential service just keeping up appearances worries me, though, and that’s what I wanted to write about.

-F

Ah Yes Tuesdays Are Made For Blogs

A common observation in this day and age is that with all the chaos consuming the world, one of the most difficult things to remember is what day it is. Twitter accounts like @And_Dads_Car reminding people of specific days (Saturday, for this specific account) have comments under each post praising that, if it weren’t for them, they’d have no idea what day it was. And sure, some of these comments are probably facetious, but not only are there a lot of them, but I’ve seen similar events have happened in real life, too, so it’s not like I can’t believe this phenomenon doesn’t exist.

All that being said, it’s not something I’ve noticed in my own personal life, and for a while, I was struggling to explain why. Really, I think a part of it has to do with these blogs. Not exactly the act of blogging itself, but when I do it.

Here’s a bit of “how the sausage is made” for you, I don’t really write blogs in advance. Sure, I might think of a topic or two, or have a backlog of topics (I already have an idea of what I want to write about next week, for example), but I don’t really have too many notes in advance besides that. I’m a “pantser” one might say. And this isn’t the only writing project I keep assigned to a specific day -- there are multiple. With only one at max per day, it’s been much easier to think about things like, “Ah, today’s the day I write my blog” or whichever project it is. I’ve been keeping up this pattern for long enough that it just works now.

-F

Birthdays

At some point, you don’t really feel older.

I know it’s a bit silly of me to be writing about this sort of stuff at the age I actually am to the audience I actually have, but it’s not like I’m the only one with this observation either. Patton Oswalt did an entire bit about only being allowed twenty birthdays throughout one’s entire life. It’s the same reason, I imagine, that businesses only really break out the special branding for “special” numbers, though I did a whole post about anniversaries way back when that argued against that part of that too.

And I get people look for any excuse to throw a party. I try to keep an open mind regarding the common complaints against “gender reveal” parties for that very reason -- though the lesser-heard complaints involving how they misuse the term gender and enforce a binary are legitimate, this is more against people who decry the pageantry of it all. But especially right now, when it’s hard to throw a party, it’s really hard to be especially interested.

I did get some nice presents, though, so there’s that.

-F

The Frozen Aisle

I’ve started making preprepared meals more because of, well, a lot of reasons that I imagine are obvious, and one thing I’ve noticed is a lot of them include these odd ingredients just for the sake of having them. A thing of fried rice out of a package has, like, corn and peas and all kinds of other things that I don’t find in fried rice anywhere else. I’m not sure what to make of this, honestly. Like, I imagine it would be cheaper if it just, you know, didn’t have these things in it. On a similar note, sure, some things I would expect in fried rice -- egg, for example -- might be a bit too expensive for the mass-production market, and maybe corn looks a little like egg if you squint, but still.

I wonder if that messes with the expectations of people who wouldn’t otherwise cook these sorts of foods. “Oh, I’m making fried rice, gotta go get some peas” is a sentence that’s surely been uttered at least once because of these products. But at the same time, it’s not like I’d want to argue too hard about a food’s authenticity, especially with something so easy to make. So while I could lean back in my chair and say something like, “My grandfather made it better,” that way leads to gatekeeping other aspects, and if I’m going to gatekeep anything, food’s not going to be it.

-F

19

Joke’s on you, I spent most of my time indoors already. That’s about the extent I’m willing to talk about that right now, though. I mean, it’s difficult to talk about anything else, but at the same time, talking about anything else is what keeps spirits up, and if someone wanted to come to this blog for news, well, I guess my only question would be: why?

My time has been spent listening to music, mostly, which is a good way to take one’s mind off things. I just found out about this long-running prog-rock band called The Legendary Pink Dots, so I’ve been going through those. They’re pretty neat, I think. I’ll link a song below.

Between that, working, and keeping social online, I think I’m doing okay. For now, at least. For now.

Stay safe out there.

-F