The Weekend

[elfs]

It has been a dull and quiet day here at the Villa. Other than a brief runaround so that Omaha could go to the office supply store for her duties as a Democrat, we sat around the house and did housy thngs. Lots of paperwork, that kind of stuff. I didn't get any writing done, but I did edit three stories for consistency.

One of the things I have been thinking about was an essay called "American's aren't fat because they lack willpower, they're fat because they're broke," which made the point that good food is treated as a luxury item and is correspondingly expensive. My reaction was this: part of the problem was that most of the cost of the food was the energy cost of acquisition and transportation. A box of Kraft doesn't give a hoot how roughly it is treated, but a pear or a hunk of meat requires care, refrigeration, timeliness, and probably a whole lot more room.

Today, I encountered a counter-response: good food is expensive because grocers believe it should be. I came to this conclusion after visiting the big Mexican ethnic grocery in town (which is next to the office supply store) and discovering that the grapefruit there was 50 cents. This is a contrast to the $1.99 at the Safeway a block away. Grapefruit is a tropical and commonplace in the Mexican diet, and even here in Washington the ethnic grocery prices it accordingly. Which doesn't explain why the head of red leaf lettuce was also half the price it is over at the Safeway.

I cooked dinner both nights: Last night was Moroccon Chicken with Lemon and Olives Tangine over cous-cous, with a side of naan, and tonight it was broiled salmon, steamed carrots, and rice pilaf prepared in clam juice (dammit, I'm all out of safron). No wine blogging recently; I haven't been drinking any recently. Sad.

Oh, and I finally got into my phone and put up a couple of ringtones: I hacked together two parts of Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine (I liked the first refrain, but the ending after the second made a better fadeout), A clip from They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha! and the 45-second high-adrenline version of Mission: Impossible that opened the last movie. I did have a clip from Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me but couldn't figure out who it would be appropriate to assign. I really wanted to use clips from Inner Universe (the opening OST from Ghost In The Shell: Standalone Complex) but couldn't really find anything in it that would work; the same was true of Focus's Hocus Pocus (also known as "That Yodeling Rock Song from the 70s") and Burly Brawl by Donn Davis. I haven't pulled Video Killed the Radio Star or Valley Girl into Audacity yet to see if there's anything there I want to use.

Comments

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Psst -- you might want to try out my favorite ringtone. :-)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think I'm gonna go with this one:

I hear you calling me
I wanna wad you up into my life
Let’s lump up to make a single star in the sky...

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

I've noticed something very similar. The produce at Uwajimaya (which is fortunately just down the street from us!) is amazingly fresh and high quality, and still noticeably cheaper than at the more mainstream grocery stores.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think it depends upon your phone's manufacturer and the service provider. Cingular doesn't lock their phones up, although they don't tell anyone that: if you buy their software they make it easy to up and down stuff to and from the phone. The software package Moto4Lin makes it very easy to talk to the phone and upload and download stuff from the Motorola line, which is what I use.

Also, my phone uses a standard USB-to-MiniUSB connector, so it was only $10 at Staples.

You should probably google for your phone brand and see if there's a bluetooth interconnect for getting stuff up and down to the phone.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I suspect the ethnic groceries operate more like many of the permanent produce stands do in the off-season, they go buy it, or some-other-how ship it, themselves from the southern states or other still producing areas of the world. California has a large growing season as well as many greenhouses, and BC is big on greenhouses for their produce. The big stores go through proscribed channels that don't necessarily take advantage of these "local" resources and that can drive costs up. But I think there still is some of the charging more because they can thing going on, because even the big chains who claim to use local farmers charge more on-season than the smaller guys. OK, I really don't know why, but the main correlation I'm making here is that the ethnic groceries are more like our mom-n-pop groceries and produce stands so it seems reasonable that their prices will be more like theirs as well.

I did have a clip from Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me but couldn't figure out who it would be appropriate to assign. I wouldn't have thought that would be so difficult for you to figure out... ;p

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No, dear, to that one I assigned a snip from the zero-budget horror flick Rectuma: "Have you ever heard of the Mexican Butt-Humping Bullfrog?"

[funos.livejournal.com]

I've had a similar experience with grocers. I suspect a lot of the price of food at the usual places comes from presentation and services like in-store butchers and bakeries. The other grocer had neither, nor fresh produce or meat, but everything was half the price. The brands were unfamiliar, but they were also locally (or at least, in-country) made. The store was very spartan, bordering on skeezy, but the shelves were packed.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

unhealthy food isn't just cheap here, it's also some of the easier food to prepare. Setting aside for a moment the super-sized extra value meals at your local burger joint... Have a look at the nutritional content of many of those quick and easy "meal inna box" things. Loaded with fat and salt. now, that's dinner for several people for about four bucks, AND it doesn't require a lot of cooking skill to make.

I'll stand up and admit, i make 'em now and then, and i'm also well stocked with those lipton rice/noodle side dishes, which are an okay dinner for one. I've sadly got a pantry stocked with what might be referred to as "Batchelor kibble". I will go and make Real Food when i can, but the energy and motivation isn't always there, especially when it's just me eating.

On a slightly more disgusting note, many years ago, i had a firsthand experience with what poor diet will do to your blood. My first job right out of college was working for the University of Vermont's biochemistry department, and they researched blood coagulation. As part of one experiment, we got many buckets of frozen plasma which a partner lab had extracted a few proteins from. One of the side effects of multiple freeze-thaws on plasma is that the fat comes out of it. Now, the source of most of this plasma was the leftovers and outdated samples from plasma donation centers, where you can go in every week, sell your plasma, and get paid a few bucks. Who does this most often? Poor people. Who has some of the fattiest diets in our country? same answer. This stuff was *nasty*. We took a picture. (http://yna.solfire.com/showimage.php?ident=SirFox&name=Mvc-001f.jpg) It's probably not safe for the weak of stomach.

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

I had not thought of it before, but Hocus Pocus would make for an excellent ringtone. *goes to edit*

If you feel particularly abusive, there is always 'Sodomy' from the Feebles soundtrack. :)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"You might think it odd of me..." Oh, dear, my theme song. I'd almost forgotten how sweet that might be. I have it hear somewhere, along with The Internet is for Porn from Avenue Q.

Two others I'm playing with: Woke up this morning, by A3, also known as "The theme song to The Sopranos", and Frank Sinatra's A Very Good Year, but only because I'm starting to grok Frank.