Cancer Meat

Oh, come on. Are you really shocked that there’s a link between processed meats and cancer? The warning is that 50 grams of processed meat a day, or a hot dog’s worth, will raise the risk of colorectal cancer. If you literally eat a hot dog per day, what did you think the long-term effect on your health would be? You are eating a food that, despite its all-American branding, is almost literal crap. I mean, we all eat crap sometimes but you have to realize eating a hot dog every day would come back to haunt you in some form.

Didn’t we just do this? I could swear there was a study not that long ago that said the same thing about processed meat. Why is the freakout happening now? I indulge in bad foods like everyone but I was never under the impression that I was eating kale.

I have also read several articles talking people down off the ledge after this health warning and saying they may not have to cut processed meats out of their diet much. Maybe the cancer risk isn’t mathematically as great as feared but if you eat a hot dog or several pieces of bacon every day, it might be a good idea … to cut back a little … anyway? For general health reasons? Just a suggestion.

I will probably come off arrogant and piss people off, which happens whenever we talk about diets, but I don’t eat that much processed meat. God knows (and you can tell the minute you spot my middle-aged spread) that I am not a health nut but my food indulgences lay in other areas. I haven’t eaten a hot dog in many, many years. I was that weird kid in school who brought his own lunch on hot dog day. They’re just … no. No. I cannot.

I will eat lunchmeat if someone offers it, like if our company brings sandwiches for lunch, but it’s like a few times a year. I don’t hate lunchmeat but I very rarely eat it. I can’t remember the last time I ordered it at a deli (mostly because the supermarket deli is the fifth circle of hell with me having to wait behind King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette imperiously insisting on micron-thin bologna). I am that odd person who doesn’t care much for hoagies. I don’t even know what’s on an Italian hoagie. If I want a sandwich, I’ve just found it much easier and tastier to cook a chicken or corned beef myself and carve it up. One person can get multiple meals out of a whole chicken, plus stock. Plus, I really should watch my salt intake and lunchmeat has too much of that.

I eat some sausage but it’s only now and then. I do like my red meat but it’s like once or maybe twice a week, especially in the summer when I’m barbecuing burgers or steak. But I can’t afford steak every day.

And then there’s bacon. I’m a fan in theory and won’t pass it up but I really only eat it a handful of times per year. It’s really only when I go out for breakfast or on Christmas morning or something. It’s more of a treat. I’m just so bored with the whole Military Bacon Industrial Complex anyway. I’ll see people post pictures of bacon on Facebook and I’m supposed to immediately drool and hit the “like” button so hard that my mouse shatters and make some over-the-top comment about how much I worship bacon more than you but I just … meh. Bored now.

Most of my meat needs are chicken and pork. Oh God, I could eat chicken every day. I realize it’s not a kale smoothie but it’s not as bad as some of the other options for carnivores. I also love pork chops. The cancer articles listed pork as part of the red meat risk, but I thought it was white meat? It’s white when cooked.

I am trying to cut down on meat somewhat. It will be like Meatless Monday but I don’t want it to be on the same day every week, because I might want some chicken on a Monday night. I’m realizing that I do like fish (I could eat salmon every day) so I’m eating more, except for vile shellfish. And there was that unfortunate incidence with the mackerel. I’ll never be a vegetarian or vegan but I don’t need meat 24/7.

Anyway, I do have my food indulgences, which are too long and disgusting to go into here, but processed meats are not really part of them.

Hello, sob

I am writing this while curled up in the fetal position in a dark room. I have just listened to the new Adele single “Hello” and … and …

SOB!

… Sorry. Let me collect myself … there. I just have to keep starting the song over because it’s just all so heartbreakingly sad and I can’t hear the lyrics over my own weeping. It’s the saddest thing that ever happened. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Let’s say it’s the saddest thing since “Someone Like You” but since “Someone Like You” was the saddest thing in the history of the world, that makes “Hello” the second saddest.

I need therapy after the first verse. If you combined my tears from every time a family member died, I have never even cried this much. The sadness of this ballad will comfort me through the sadness of winter. I will spend many nights curled up on the couch in the dark, wrapped in a tasteful throw blanket because I’m too sad to turn on the heat, just playing this song on a loop and crying into my hot chocolate. 

Oh god, she’s getting to the chorus again … excuse me …

… Sniff sniff. OK. Better now. Maybe I should pause it, though, for my own sanity. Anyway, Adele sounds like a million birds with broken wings, all crying out in sadness. She is the Space Needle of sad ballads. She is like a quadruple bypass that failed because there was just too much heartbreak. Adele’s voice is the sound of a choir of angels who just found out that God dumped them.

I actually started crying before I even heard the song. The second I read the headline that Adele would be releasing “Hello,” I just started bawling. I don’t know why because I haven’t gone through any breakups in years. You just cry at Adele; it’s just something humans do. You see all these articles like “Why We All Cry Uncontrollably When We Hear Adele” but that can’t explain it. One might as well try to map the human soul.

I wept at the first few notes. And then the video? Forget it. I was a puddle. The flip phone … SOB … oh God the flip phone. So heartbreaking. Who can’t relate? And Adele’s eyeliner in that sepia tone? All the feelings. All of them. I cried so hard when I saw that video, I had to lie down for a few hours. Even the font choice for the single title … meltdown. Total meltdown. Just thinking about it now … whimper.

The best part of this new album is that we get to have our hearts broken all over again. I didn’t think Adele hit the themes of heartbreak hard enough on her last album so I look forward to experiencing much, much more of the same, slapped on with the same trowel.

I am ready to wallow again.

The Walking Dead S6 E3: Thank You

So I guess Glenn is dead? Or maybe not? Nicholas’ body had fallen on top of Glenn so those could have been Nicholas’ entrails that the zombies were ripping out. The large intestine was coming from too high on Glenn and Glenn was upset and screaming but didn’t seem to be quite as upset as if it were him being eviscerated. If he’s covered in blood, he might be able to play possum until the zombies leave because they wouldn’t smell him.

I watched “Thank You” last night but I knew ahead of time that it was Glenn who died (or not). I didn’t seek out spoilers but all the entertainment sites I read had a photo of Glenn with a caption like “Someone dies horribly.” I guess looking back you could see some foreshadowing in the series premiere when Glenn said, “I’m supposed to be delivering pizzas.” Maybe that was a way of bringing him back to the beginning before killing him off.

I won’t be terribly upset if Glenn dies. I suppose I’m immune to characters on this show dying because it’s so frequent. The only people I’ll be really upset to see die would be Carol and Michonne and I guess Morgan. Darryl, too, but I’m not in “If Darryl dies, we riot” mode like I was before. I still like the character but that one episode with him overacting with Beth in that farmhouse they burned down just made me realize what a limited range he has. Not that I want Glenn to die since he is an original cast member. Can’t they kill Tara and the other woman? For me, they add zero to the show and I forget they’re there.

Right before Nicholas shot himself, I was just saying how I was surprised more people don’t kill themselves in that world, since it’s so hopeless. I suppose anybody who would have committed suicide did it long ago and now only the hardcore survivalists are left. Still, for the characters who died in this episode, I was wondering why they didn’t turn the guns on themselves or why the survivors didn’t kill them. They were surrounded by zombies and dead anyway so as morbid as it sounds, at least if they shot themselves in the head, they wouldn’t reanimate.

Those Wolves Morgan let live come back to haunt the cast as they attack Rick in the trailer (at least I think it was them). As brutal as it sounds, Carol had the right idea about just killing them right away. It was harrowing when Rick showed just a hint of panic in the trailer.

The mission in the quarry is probably the costliest disaster in Walking Dead history. Four or five people died this episode and a few died in the season premiere. Plus, a ton of people died in Alexandria while half the cast was away. The Wolves might have attacked anyway but if everyone hadn’t gone to the quarry, more competent people would have been around to defend the residents.

Hindsight is 20/20 and Rick’s instinct (if not the actual plan) to prevent a disaster at the quarry was sound. But you have to wonder if they would have been better off staying in Alexandria. The zombies might have broken free but at least they’d be inside the walls and have more control. So I can’t blame them for doing what they did but this was an interesting look at a plan gone very, very bad.

Render Unto Jobs

At a conference room in Silicon Valley, multiple journalists are gathered to watch Apple officials unveil the company's latest product.

Tim Cook: Next on our agenda, from the company that brought you that amazing stylus for its cutting edge devices, we bring you ... the iSpatula.

A woman in a bikini walks around on stage showing off a sleek white spatula with the Apple logo. The journalists scream in delight.

Journalists (in creepy unison): Oooh! Ahhh!

Cook: With this revolutionary new device, you'll be able to scramble eggs and multitask on your Apple devices at the same time. You can sync iTunes on your iPhone, update your Facebook status on your Macbook Air and download apps on your iPad, all while cooking breakfast.

Journalist 1 (screaming): Unbelievable!

Journalist 2 (bellowing): This will transform the way we live — again!

Cook: For our next innovation, all Apple devices will now come without keyboards of any type. People will now just gesture and grunt and the sensors will pick that up and translate it into words.

Skeptical Journalist: But is that wise? A lot of computer users like to have some type of keyboard. Why are you changing this?

Cook (glares for several seconds before answering menacingly): Why? Because Apple said so.

The other journalists glower at the skeptic in their midst as he sinks in his chair in embarrassment.

Cook: And now for the big announcement you've all been waiting for (drum roll) ... the iPhone 7!

Huge movie screens flash images of the iPhone 7 while porn music plays. All the journalists leap to their feet and scream like teenagers at a Beatles concert in 1964.

Journalist 3: Oh my God! I can't take it!

Journalist 4 (speaking in tongues): Qwertyuiop! Asdfghjkl! Zxcvbnm!

Cook: That's right: a new iPhone. That means all those iPhone 6s are now obsolete. I know a lot of them are still being shipped but Apple has disabled those phones and will offer no refunds. When they arrive, they will no longer work. In fact, no iPhone of any generation will work anymore. By the time this presentation ends, they will all be bricks. People will just have to pony up for the iPhone 7 at a full cost of $799. A version with Swarovski crystals is available for just $1,599. 

Skeptical Journalist: Is that really fair to consumers? People already paid a lot for the iPhones and now you're asking them to pay again. This sounds like a tax.

Cook: "Fair to consumers"? Consumers will do what Apple tells them to do. Render unto Caesar what is due Caesar. Render unto Jobs what is due Jobs.

Skeptical Journalist: But ...

Journalists (screaming in unison): Render unto Jobs!

Security guards hustle the skeptical journalist out of the room. The other journalists pelt him with their iPhone 6s, which are paperweights now anyway.

The Walking Dead S6 E2: JSS

Morgan captures one of the murderous Wolves and pins him to the ground. The man begins to speak. “We’re freeing you,” he explains. “People don’t belong in places like these anymore.” No-nonsense Carol shoots him in the head before he can say anymore. Come on, Carol! I kind of wanted to hear the rest of it. I’m interested in those splinter groups that have responded to the zombies in weird ways, like those who believe they’re angels or still alive or whatever. It would have been nice to question some prisoners to learn their plans.

Actually, this was such a flat-out great episode that all is forgiven. I could never stay mad at Carol anyway. She had the right idea in this episode: kill the enemy with no fuss and no delay before they can kill everybody. That sequence where she shot all those Wolves in quick succession before they could see through her disguise was thrilling. I continue to be impressed by her character. Dressing up like a Wolf was a stroke of tactical genius (it could have backfired for her but the safety it gained the group was worth the risk). Now the Alexandrians know Carol’s knife skills apply to more than slicing onions. What a badass.

That scene with Carol euthanizing her smoking neighbor was pretty rough, even for The Walking Dead. Now she has to deal with her guilt as her comment about not smoking indoors inadvertently got the woman killed (of course there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t have died in the attack anyway). Aaron will also have to deal with guilt as his leaving the photos of the compound seems to be what drew the Wolves to Alexandria.

Several Alexandrians get a chance to be more proactive in defending themselves, like the medical student who lost a patient. I loved Tara’s cold-but-necessary comment “Make sure you get her brain” when the medical student was probably expecting a pep talk. The widow (forget her name) stabbing the Wolf with scissors was cathartic, undoubtedly releasing pent-up rage at her husband.

I hated these Wolves (I think it was the one woman’s flowy pant that got me) and was glad to see them die. The show continues to make distinctions between the group and the outsiders: the group kills in self-defense but people like the Wolves and last season’s cannibals kill to assert dominance and inflict pain. “We’re freeing you.” I’m sure the Alexandrians will thank the Wolves for that, when they’re not choking on their own blood.

I loved the stylistic touches in the episode, like the economical, almost poetic backstory of the girl in the cold open and the way it cut from the parents trying to start the car to the girl looking out the blood-splashed window. Tying this episode in with the season premier was also clever. For a minute, I was thinking, “Wait a minute, what happened at the quarry?” Then I realized the two episodes happened at the same time and the truck’s horn blast confirmed it. I also loved the bit with the oven timer. All that chaos and death happened in the 15 minutes it took for Carol’s celery soup casserole to bake. What a horrifying, darkly funny, poetic juxtaposition.

In one final touch, I liked how Carol and Morgan crossed paths at the end when it was all over. There is a clear distinction between them now since Carol kills the enemy to get a clear defeat while Morgan left a few Wolves alive and won’t kill in every situation. When the battle was all over, they crossed paths and walked in different directions in silence. There was nothing more for them to say.

I'm Not Ready

When I awoke this morning, the temperature outside was 29º. Frost covered the lawn. Across the street, a neighbor’s leftover “Happy Summer” banner mocked me. All this in mid-October.

A black hole of howling despair opened underneath me.

Once I pulled myself out of the fetal position, I realized how not ready I am for any of this to happen. I am not ready for this. A few weeks ago we had the central air on and now the heat is pumping and a terrifying winter is ahead. I’m not ready, Lord. I need time to prepare. I need time to steel myself for the cruelties of the season.

It will be at least a few weeks before the trauma of last winter’s snow totals have faded like scars from my soul. The snowfall was pretty much average for our area, which made it one of the worst winters in collective memory. I need a respite before the crucible begins again.

Yesterday, there was sleet in the air. Sleet. In October. Let the horror sink in. I saw the little ice crystals mixing with rain on my windshield. Luckily, I kept my wits about me and didn’t crash the car in a panic but my screams echoed loud and long.

You know what’s (OH GOD) next? You know what comes after (OH GOD DON’T SAY IT) sleet? Snow. Snow comes after sleet. If it had been a little colder, it would have (OH DEAR GOD) snowed yesterday.

This is our future. Gaze upon its white hell and despair.

They can stop airing the following commercials anytime now

DraftKings and FanDuel. I like football and I’m sick of these commercials so I can imagine how annoyed sports non-fans are. Maybe their ubiquity is coming to an end since there’s a betting scandal similar to insider trading. It’s hilarious how DraftKings and FanDuel (because no company or product can be two words now; they’re always smashed together as if the space bar is broken) make their daytrader lottery look like easy money. If these companies can afford advertising during every NFL game it’s not because they’re paying out so much in winnings.

Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials. Wait, there’s still a little space left over in my throat after all the hype in the run-up to McConaughey winning an Oscar. Shove him in further … further … you can still see the tips of his toes … there you go. All the way down. Alright, alright, alright.  

Target’s “I Can’t Wait” commercial. I like the Nu Shooz song so I don’t want Target to ruin it by repetition. I already see this ad constantly. This is what happened when Target played the commercial with the cover of “Groove Is in the Heart” several times during each commercial break. Don’t ruin “I Can’t Wait.”

Any commercial featuring “Feeling Good.” I got sick of this a few years ago when Jennifer Hudson sang it every January for weight loss. Now it’s in some car commercial. I don’t like this song and have no interest in Nina Simone so I hope they retire it as a standard.

The Walking Dead S6 E1: First Time Again

Sure, why not. I’m having trouble coming up with ideas lately and a lot of people watch The Walking Dead so I may as well start recapping it.

“First Time Again” was good. The flashbacks kept things moving so we weren’t stuck in Peyton Place for a few episodes before the action with the quarry started. Although the black and white didn’t always look good to me, like there wasn’t enough contrast to tell what was happening, the wide angle shots of the zombie horde looked creepy, like they were a bug infestation. I wonder if the gang shot themselves in the collective foot with Carol playing helpless homemaker since she won’t be able to use her skills to help out in the quarry.

The flashbacks also lent an irony to certain events. In one ham-handed scene, Carter plots to kill Rick and Rick has mercy on him, only to be forced to kill him later before he can zombify. You have to wonder if self-interest drives some of Rick’s decisions, like conveniently killing Carter before he can challenge his leadership, or refusing to bury Pete within Alexandria so he can get closer to the widow. Pete was an abuser, yes, but in the real world, the police still let abusers’ families decide where to bury them. But I guess no one, not even the viewers, may question Rick.

Good for Jessie for rebuffing Rick’s advances. Macking on a woman whose husband just died, especially when you’re the one who killed him, is, shall we say, simply not done. Give her a minute. I’m sure that kid is going to be trouble.

The real challenge to Rick’s authority lies not with Carter but with Morgan. Like Michonne, Morgan has been able to balance realism with compassion. Also like Michonne, Morgan is also watchful and very perceptive, being the only outsider who is starting to figure out Carol’s game. I liked the moment after Rick killed Carter and Morgan told Michonne “I know it has to be this way, but …” But even though people may have to do horrible things to survive, there is room to be appalled at the whole thing and hold onto some humanity. Morgan and Michonne have done that better than Rick.  

I am looking forward to filling in the blank more on Morgan. How did he pull himself back from the brink of insanity after we saw him fortified and paranoid a few seasons ago? Who taught him how to fight like that?

The whole Ricktatorship thing got boring for me awhile ago. Rick himself also bores me. The most radical things they can do with Rick’s character at this point are either have his rule go so far over the top that they are forced to shun him or actually prove him to be wrong on something. Even a great leader isn’t right 100 percent of the time.

Colder and Bluer

The dolphin and the hamburger and inner tube are banished to the shed for the winter. At the deep end, a few leaves, a premonition, rest beyond easy reach of the skimmer.

It is different than it was. The pool water even looks different — colder, bluer, like the spring sky after the sun disappears and all the tenuous warmth goes out of the day and the black hole opens up.

They will cover it up soon and it will truly be over. No more floating and looking at the stars. No more Saturday afternoons cooling off after mowing the lawn. No more squeezing in a few pages before sunset. Now we rediscover how it used to be. Now we Swiffer the floor and open the mail with nothing to distract us.

Will you not weep for us?

Kim Dickens should be embarrassed by her performance in 'Fear the Walking Dead'

Good Lord, she was terrible! She was Ed-Norton-in-The-Incredible-Hulk bad. Kim Dickens was OK in Gone Girl and House of Cards but she was laughably incompetent at expressing basic emotions in Fear the Walking Dead. I was going to write about that as part of my recaps of The Walking Dead that I’m starting this season but I was so annoyed by that “actress” and that spinoff that this subject needs its own post.

I once read a backhanded review of an actress’ performance that said “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” It’s arguable that Dickens’ portrayal of Madison even made it to emotion B. She had a few brief flashes of feeling but mostly kept that same distracted, slightly slackjawed expression on her face through all six episodes. Looking at her face, you couldn’t tell whether she’d just won the lottery or just watched somebody die. The world was starting to burn down and she looked like she was trying to remember if she left the oven on.

Steve and I made a game of trying to figure out what was going on in Madison’s head while she was making the “lights on, nobody home” expression during the chaos of the series:

“Who was that guy in CHiPs? Not Erik Estrada. The other one.”

“Got to clean the gutters this weekend.”

“Do I have enough bouillon cubes to make soup?”

“Who was Harry Truman’s vice president?”

“I like green olives but not black olives.”

“(Kazoo music plays as a monkey rides a unicycle in circles)”

I first noticed the blank expression on Dickens’ face in an early episode when she and her fellow teachers watched the video of the first zombie getting shot by the cops. Everybody else was horrified but she might as well have been watching cat videos. She had the same dimwitted look on her face in the last episode when Travis beat a soldier to a bloody pulp with his bare hands. A normal person would be horrified but Dickens reacted like somebody was just slapping a malfunctioning tube TV too hard. “Stop …” she muttered.

I waited until the end of the series to see if there was a point to Dickens’ acting choices. Maybe she was trying to play somebody really dumb or maybe there was a twist that while her son was hooked on heroin, she was zonked out on elephant tranquilizers and Botox. Maybe she was trying to be subtle, even though, come on, you’re on a zombie spinoff show and nobody’s looking for subtlety. But no: I think she was just phoning it in and doing a terrible job. Compare Madison with somebody like Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones. That character maintains a stoic face to survive but there is so much going on beneath the surface and Sophie Turner does a great job portraying it. We were just watching Joffrey’s wedding and when Joffrey threw down the goblet to taunt Tyrion, Sansa quietly picked it up, expressing dignity and kindness in such an economical way: That’s how you do subtle. There is more than meets the eye to Sansa but there’s less than meets the eye to Madison. But anyway.

Fear the Walking Dead was a missed opportunity. Since I’ve started watching The Walking Dead, I wanted more information on how the epidemic started, how society collapsed and how people tried and failed to save it. The spinoff glossed over so much of it: One episode things were relatively normal and the next episode they were in internment camps. I didn’t need a definitive answer to why people became zombies but I’d at least like some theories. Nobody on the show had any curiosity as to why all that was happening. In real life people would be throwing out ideas and at least having a little discussion. I guess there was no time for that but plenty of time for a scene of teenagers destroying someone’s living room for funsies.

Daniel Salazar pissed me off. Once he started torturing a soldier (who didn’t really have anything to do with Salazar’s wife’s disappearance), I was done with him. No sympathy, no matter what happened in El Salvador. Then he leaves the gate open for the zombies to overwhelm the soldiers as a diversion so he could find his wife (who was dead anyway)? What? Why would you do that? Why? Because El Salvador? Am I supposed to be on the side of a character whose malignant neglect destroyed a workable zombie sanctuary, killing God knows how many people, just so he could find one person? What about the people in the community who were looking for their own families? Were their hundreds of lives secondary to his needs? He’s a stupid person and morally bankrupt and I wish the soldier had shot him instead of Ophelia. Then after all that, his wife dies and he takes notes from the Kim Dickens School of Acting and looks like he’s at the DMV.

Then at the end the heroin addict says he always felt like he’d lived in a hell all his life and now society is catching up with him. No, you idiot. Heroin addiction and the zombie apocalypse are not comparable. There’s no methadone for zombies. He’s a self-involved asshole but we’re supposed to use this line as some kind of theme for the show? I’m out.

Anyway, Kim Dickens was just not good in this show and should be embarrassed. I will be less likely to watch anything with her from now on. I can’t levy too many insults at her performance.

Waste of Food

I was so annoyed at myself one day last week. I had left some chicken to thaw on the counter for that night’s dinner and forgot to put it in the fridge before I left for work to continue thawing. When I got home, it was too warm to eat and I didn’t want to risk salmonella. So into the trash it went.

It was the principle more than the inconvenience that got to me: I can’t stand wasting food. I am very thorough with leftovers. If there’s any way I can salvage some food for a future meal, I will freeze it for later. The freezer is one of man’s greatest inventions and ours is full of dinners for the week. My solution to everything I’m not going to eat right away is to freeze it. I don’t always feel like defrosting something and at times I would prefer something fresher but not every random Wednesday night needs to be a gourmet meal. Sometimes you just need something quick after a long workday.

Despite last week’s mixup, my food waste is pretty close to zero. This comes from a combination of being cheap, gluttonous and believing that wasting food is just terrible when people go hungry. I could stand to eat less but what I cook, I eat. I will never scrape uneaten food off my plate into the trash. I’ll cook a whole chicken and end up with several dinners and lunches plus stock so it’s convenient for when you don’t have a lot of time. Generally the only food I throw away is what has expired and even then, unless it’s milk, I’ll walk on the edge of expiration dates, since you can usually eat something unless it smells.

I would have won the Great Depression. I would have been one of those people saving scraps for soup and turning stale bread into croutons.