Class and Privilege in the Consumption of Liquids

I am not an alcohol drinker. 

I decided long ago that I would rather get my calories from food and my friends supported that decision since they needed someone sober to drive them home from the bars.   I have never felt like my friends or even newly met acquaintances felt any less of me for not imbibing although I did feel pity for my partner, a good German who enjoys wine and drink, because she always had to enjoy alcohol solo.  Her friends and family, including my own sister, have luckily filled in for me.   

However, it makes me unhappy that we non-drinkers are so discriminated against in the bars and establishments.  When we order drinks anywhere, while my friends drink wine from nice glass glasses, I am always given water and soda in a plastic cup.  I don’t like eating from plastic plates, using plastic utensils and I sure don’t like drinking from plastic cups. 

 

 

When I brought this discrimination to the attention of my social group last week at a bar in town, while sipping my soda from a plastic cup, they were disbelieving.  Like I was making it up, although there I sat with the proof at my lips.   One of them asked her husband, another non-alcohol consumer, if this was the case and his reply was “Sure it is!”  He is always upbeat.    I restated my case, and then called the waitress over and asked her if they always served the sodas and water in plastic cups and she said “hmmm, I guess we do.”  I am not sure if there is a sense that people buying sodas and water don’t pay for the place so why waste good glass on bad drinkers, or if it is a policy of such places that people drinking water or soda must be too young to drink a “real man’s drink” and therefore are too young to play with glass.

Anyway, it is a discrimination which I think we need to remove from our entertainment scape.  No one wants to drink wine out of a stupid plastic wine glass so why should I have to drink my beverage for a stupid plastic glass.

 

I always ask for a soda, in a glass glass, with ice.  Maybe we should stop serving kids drinks in plastic cups and adults drinks in glass containers.  Maybe we should stop calling them “Adult Beverages”.  Then maybe kids wouldn’t think it was cooler to drink wine than koolaid.   As for me, I shall drink Kool-Aid, but I shall have it in a glass glass.  Give me glass or give me death.

BroMance

Bro-mance

Bro-Mance is alive and well at Magnolia Cafe in Austin Texas.  I stopped by there yesterday morning for eggs and toast.  I had decided to take the day off and do some stuff and thought that my two mile exercised warranted eggs and toast. 

It was about 6:15 am, but the place began to rapidly fill with men.  Old men, young men, men in shorts and t-shirts, men in suits.  They all sat together and began to ....well confide in one another.  It was a bit disturbing.  The guys in the booth behind me were talking about relationships.  One guys was clearly asking the other's council about his marriage.  Four other guys were just talking about life.  Another two guys in the corner were in hushed tones.  It was just a bit strange.  Apparently, not unlike the the elephant's graveyard, there is a secret place that men take their manhood to die and replace it with all the insecurities that women display in public. 

I left thinking, if I want this type of bro-mance I can get the same at the local hair parlor.

 

No Squirrel for you Chef.

Did you know that it is actually illegal to purchase squirrel meat on the internet IN THE USA?  I mean, can you believe that!!!   First healthcare, now this.  You can purchase squirrel meat if, for instance, you are living in Iraq, but apparently it is illegal here in the U.S.A. .  I mean, what makes squirrel meat any worse to purchase than say ... rabbit, or frog meat.  And what makes it any worse to buy it pre-packaged than to shoot your own and call it a day.  I think it is just bizarre.  How can you make squirrel gravy and cat head biscuits if you are not allowed to purchase the basic ingredients.  So much for that dish occuring in the finest restaurants in New York, and in a city where they are probably overrun with squirrels.

I went to dinner last night with two good friends, Monica and Chris and we decided that the finer restaurants probably have a secret "Squirrel Meat" closet where they sell it "off the menu".  It is right in there beside puffer fish and cuban cigars.

Somewhere in Iraq chefs are rolling in squirrel meat, but here in the U.S. the government has decided to outlaw it.

Just bizarre.

What if you sent an email and someone replied! Ooooo. Very Scarey.

My Auntie Em died.  It was not like she didn't have some health issues, but it was still a shock.  She had overcome an onset of lung cancer nearly five years ago, but apparently it returned with a vengence (lung cancer has no sense of humor) and took her out quite quick.  She was a feisty, liberal, religious, (yep you heard those two right) and giving person.  Sue and I will miss her greatly as will everyone else, which was apparent at her funeral.  Aunt Emmelene was my dad's older sister, 79 plus actually, and as older sister's are want to do, she often told my dad the whatfor, but as my dad is want to do, he weathered these boughts of "improvement advice" and loved his sister. It is hard to lose your sister.

I got home and was working through a bunch of stuff and have about five emails from Aunt Emmelene, some read and one not yet read.  I was on the running trail in the 5 am darkness this morning and thought what if you replied to one of those emails and got a note back!!!  Oh my god, how scarey is that!  Well let me tell you, in the darkness on the running trail it is VERY scarey.  I scared myself.   What if the internet really is a portal to the afterlife and we can just go ahead and email our dead relatives as if they were still around.  I mean for some of us that is just about the extent of our relationship with our relatives -- email.

I'm sure someone has done a movie to that affect and probably written a book. You know there is actually a website called Email to the Afterlife!?!?.   Just to be on the safe side, I am not going to send a note back to Aunt Emmelene.  She deserves some time off anyway.

Hot in Texas

It is way hot in Texas.  Not the kind of "dry heat" you supposedly get out west, but Texas Hot.  That kind of "suck in your breath" heat that you get when you walk outside and it hits you in the face. Bartley says it is "Pool" hot.  Hot enough to bake a pig if you don't soak him in water.

This type of blatant display of nude bathing would never be allowed in an HOA.  Good thing we live in the Homestead. 

A First

I usually don’t have any luck going back and revisiting songs that I have started and never finished.  If a song doesn’t pretty much “finish itself” then it was probably not meant to be.  I can no longer say that though.  I started a song years ago, probably 13 years ago, about the Gila Wilderness in southwest New Mexico after night camping at the Gila Cliff Dwellings.

http://library.byways.org/view_details.html?MEDIA_OBJECT_ID=58728

Well, I have always liked the song, liked the tune, liked the first verse but just never able to bring it to some completion.  This weekend I went back and revisited it.  The revisit was prompted by the fires that are currently burning in the Wilderness.   The Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire has been burning for weeks.  It is a big one.   I think the thought of this pristine landscape in flames spurred me to finish the song.  The words are below.  Go visit the wilderness ---- somewhere.   Maybe not here, but somewhere. Come out and see me and the band and hear this song in person.

ODE TO THE GILA WILDERNESS  

(copyright @ Lesli J. Wood; June 10, 2012)

 Gila morning, clear blue sky

Sun to catch an eagle’s eye

Sailing by.

 Children’s laughter, on canyon walls

Washes down like waterfalls

Spirit calls.

 CHORUS

Gila sunrise over stones of gray

Gila moonrise take me back to yesterday.

 Wind through willows, snow on bough

Diamonds sparkle on the ground

Winter’s sound.

 Desert flower, cactus bloom

Rain filled canyons beneath the moon.

Nature’s loom.

CHORUS

Gila sunrise over stones of gray

Gila moonrise take me back, to yesterday.

 Flowered meadows, sun on gray

Watches over all the day

Fade away.

Scenic view up the Middle Fork of the Gila River.

NPS Photo by Bruce Bloy

http://www.nps.gov/gicl/planyourvisit/gila-wilderness.htm

Girl Cooties - Don't Let Them Keep You From Engaging Your Audience

There are some men who, when they speak to a mixed sex crowd, never make eye contact with the women in the audience.  For instance, I was one of ten people on a committee which had a meeting last week and there was this guy giving a presentation to us and never once in the enire hour did he ever make eye contact with me.  I think this is not unusual, this failure to be comfortable with conversing with women on the same level as the men.  I don't mean to be a profiler here, but I truly think that this is more common in men from some cultures than others.  I think they are raised to not be comfortable talking with women.  No worries.  I know what it feels like to be afraid of something, to think you are going to catch cooties. Things like that use to frustrate me.  Now they are a source of distraction from a boring talk.   No worries.