Category Archives: Health

Great Cuppa

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It struck me that a lot of people might not know how to get into Tea like we have. I think a basic guide is in order to help everyone get going when exploring this wonderful new world that has opened up for us. The cost to get off the ground is very low and a lot of these hints will save you a lot of time and aggravation. I’ll break it down into parts you need, many of them are durable, and ingredients, then procedure to make a spectacular cup of tea (or coffee even) cup-by-cup.

What you will need:

1) Tap water is best if you trust it. Spring water if you don’t. Avoid special waters like SmartWater or squeaky clean like vapor distilled water. If you are loath to buy your water in a jug, then Brita or Pur is your next best bet. You want your water to be freshly drawn, but it’s not essential.

2) Boiling Kettle – It’s romantic to get a teapot and put it on the stove and wait for it to whistle. This doesn’t conserve resources and is expensive in natural gas terms to run. A far better (and safer) alternative is the electric automatic boiling kettle. The model I am fond of is the one I have at work, that’s the basic plain-jane Rival Electric Kettle. I bought it at Walmart for $12. You only need one that can boil water and turn off. If you wanted to get really frou frou about it, a kettle with a thermometer that could keep water at 200 would be ideal.

3) Next you need a Finum Brewing Basket. This item is really durable. It’s got a superfine mesh which you can put your loose tea or coffee in and then insert that into your favorite cup. It has a lid which you can use to top the device to keep heat from leaking out or you can use it to receive the basket after you pull it out of the hot water in the cup. Or both. It washes up with tapwater and needs no other cleaning. Be gentle with fingertips and avoid scratching it with fingernails. If you have tea or coffee compacted in this basket, you can tip it upside down over the trash and tap the bottom with a spoon and everything will come out neat as you please.

4) Cups. If you have a mug or cup you like, use it. Preferably no more than 6 to 8 ounces. A standard coffee mug will work just fine. You know it’s sized right when you put the Finum in it, the little plastic wings rest of the edges of the cup and the bottom barely if ever touches the bottom of the cup. I can really recommend Bodum Bistro Double-Wall Mugs for this, if you have a little to spend on nice cups. Bodum mugs are made of borosilicate glass, they are double-walled and insulate to keep your fingers from burning, they retain heat very well, and they clean up in a snap. They are also totally non-reactive.

5) Timer. You need any basic timer. Your iPhone has one built in, other phones do too. You need a way to reliably countdown from 3 minutes to zero for tea or 4 minutes to zero for coffee. If you can do that, you can also set your timer to 11m30s which is how long just-off-the-boil water takes to get from scalding to drinkable.

6) Looseleaf Tea or Coffee. You can get all your looseleaf tea mail ordered from our shop here in Portage Michigan. The shop’s name is Chocolatea and they have an online store with shipping options. Everything they sell is top-quality and I can personally vouch that if you buy from them, you will enjoy every minute of what you get in the mail. Tea is not like coffee. Tea isn’t a ticking time bomb. It doesn’t get crappy with age and it can keep for a really long time without degrading in quality. One tea, Pu-erh actually ages like wine and gets better with age, however the Pu-erh that Chocolatea sells is ready-to-rock-and-roll, so you don’t have to wait to enjoy it. If Coffee is more your thing I can recommend Dunkin Donuts Regular Roast as an acceptable coffee. Starbucks is okay, but it’s way too expensive for eh coffee. Really great coffee, at least that I’ve found can be ordered online from Death Wish Coffee. I can also personally vouch for this coffee as it is exceptional in character and packs a wallop of caffeine.

7) Gram Scale. There is a great little handy digital pocket scale at Amazon for less than $10. It’s got great resolution and a nice display and it’s small enough to be pocketable. Some people will tell you to measure tea by the teaspoon, that’s useless. Measure tea and coffee by weight! You’ll be much happier.

Procedure:

To make a great cup of Tea (everything but Yerba Mate) – put your empty Finum basket on your scale, set it to grams and tare it to zero. Then sprinkle in enough tea to get to 5 grams. Take the basket off the scale and put in your Bodum cup. Get your water to 200 degrees (or 212, it’s not really that much of a problem for everything but white teas, they’re picky at 160–170 degrees) and pour the water into your Finum basket in the cup almost to the brim. After that, set your timer to 3 minutes (10 for Yerba Mate) and watch it closely. Tea, like Coffee can oversteep/overbrew and you get a nasty cup of turpentine for your troubles. I can’t express it enough, timing is EVERYTHING. More than temperature, more than the water, more than anything else. TIME. If you are brewing Oolong you will notice that the tea is full-leaf and expands like a sponge when you steep it, so what looked like little natty bits ends up being a basket full of full tea leaves. After the cup of tea has steeped for 3 minutes, pull the Finum out, let it drip out for a few moments and put on paper towel or it’s lid. Don’t throw away your steeped tea! Then set your timer to exactly 11 minutes 30 seconds and start it. During this time the tea will go from undrinkably hot to PERFECT. You can at any time add sweeteners if you like. Splenda, Nutrasweet, Sugar, Agave Nectar, Honey, Simple Syrup, or even Golden Syrup are all great sweeteners for tea. I’ve found that Agave gives the end tea an odd flavor overtone, so tread carefully. I like my tea very sweet, so I use two packets of Splenda. You can sweeten anytime you please. After you’ve enjoyed your tea you can put the Finum back in your cup, get your water hot again and re-steep. This is called Gong-Fu, and is a well-respected tradition in China. All teas can at least re-steep three times before they kind of fall on their ass. The only notable exception to this is Oolong. Oolong can resteep ten to twenty times and the further you go, the more subtle flavors end up in your cup. A little hint, after the first steep, which is always at 3 minutes, each subsequent steep you can add a minute, up to 5. So steep 1, 3 minutes. Steep 2, 4 minutes, Steep 3, 5 minutes, Steep 4, 5 minutes. You keep going with that pattern and you won’t go wrong. If you’ve exhausted your Finum’s contents of their goodness save the remains in a cup or bowl. You can throw these remains on Hydrangea, Roses, or Blueberry bushes and the remains will contribute plant-friendly acids to the soil. Never throw used tea or coffee in the trash if you can help it. The remains shouldn’t be landfill, not when they can make acid-loving plants thrive.

As for Coffee, put your empty, clean Finum basket on your scale, tare it to zero and sprinkle in 10 grams of ground coffee. A standard grind will be fine, you’ll get a little camp-coffee or grit at the bottom of your cup as the solids drop out of solution, but it’s not unpleasant. When I drink the cup of coffee to 25% full I like to swirl the remains around which picks up the sediment off the bottom and then I drink the remains. If you like coffee and don’t mind a wee touch of grit, it’s not bad. If you can swing it, a grind set for French Press will be even better and have less grit in the end. I don’t have a grinder and I don’t really want one. I’m fine with standard yokel coffee with standard yokel grind. Get your water to boiling. I would let it sit for about 10–20 seconds off the boil in order to get it down to 205–210 degrees. If you can get to-order 200 degree water, that’s ideal. Pour the water in the Finum in your cup just shy of the brim (most coffee will wetten and then start to bubble and float, bring that wet ground coffee almost up to the brim but do not try to agitate it to help it along, that will ruin your cup of coffee) and set your timer for 4 minutes exactly. You may catch what smells like burning coffee, whatever you do, don’t freak out. It’s not really burning. When the timer goes off, pull the Finum out and rest it on it’s lid. Set your timer for 11 minutes 30 seconds and then add whatever sweetener you like. I prefer, again, two packets of Splenda. You will notice that the final brew has an oil-slick on the surface and the rim of your cup will look filthy. That’s an unavoidable consequence of brewing the coffee directly without the paper filter. The paper filter strips out a LOT of really great tasting compounds. After you have brewed a cup of Coffee, you have to toss the contents, there is no Gong-Fu with Coffee. Once it’s done, it’s plant food. The only thing left after a brewing is tannins, acids, and the chemical nasty that you don’t ever want to drink. Plants love it, you’re all done with it. The really handy thing with preparing coffee this way is you need nothing more than what you already have for tea and the Finum is made of non-reactive stainless steel so you can brew for your entire life and there isn’t any crosstalk between tea or coffee assuming you clean the Finum out well. Another nice part is you only brew the coffee cup-by-cup. This way, you get the convenience of a Keurig machine without the expense and the wasted plastic cup. The only waste from the design I use is the grounds or exhausted leaves and those are plant food, so nothing is really wasted.

Anyone should be able to get started for less than $50 depending on your tastes. The kettle is $12 ish, the Finum is about $12, the scale is $10, and the glasses are $25. That comes out to $59. If you have your own cups or mugs, you can slash that down. If you have a kitchen scale you can slash it further. I like the handy little gram scale there because it’s easy to toss in my backpack for when I go to work. The durable parts are just that, they should last a very long time. The Finum, if you take care of it, should last forever. The scale will eat batteries and the kettle might be lost if you are really mean and rough with it. One thing to note about the kettle, and all kettles are that if you decide to go with tap water, you’ll eventually scale up your kettle and either have to clean it somehow, scrape it down somehow, or replace it. If you pass your water thru a Brita or Pur filter (or in the case of my workplace, a reverse-osmosis undersink filter) then you won’t ever have to worry about that.

For your investment, and of course the looseleaf teas from Chocolatea or the coffee from Deathwish, You’ll get to enjoy some of the best tasting hot beverages possible. There are so many blends at Chocolatea it’s dizzying. Plus you’ll be patronizing American businesses. Chocolatea is in Portage, Michigan and Deathwish is out of Saratoga Springs, New York. I find that I love tea made this way, and Coffee? I actually like drinking it this way more than percolated or brewed in an expensive coffeemaker. There is something special about brewing coffee like tea, it seems more direct and honest somehow. I know that there are a lot more flavors and essential oils in the coffee that I brew this way, where coffee that passes through a paper filter loses a lot of it’s subtler features. I could also swear that standard coffee loses some of it’s caffeine. The stuff I make seems to have more punch to it.

If you don’t find what you are looking for on the Chocolatea online store just let me know and I can get it myself and ship it to you personally. Of course that offer really is meant for family, but I could be bought for the right price. If you are reading this and you are in Southwest Michigan, you owe it to yourself to visit Chocolatea in Portage. Everything they do is excellent, they are fair, kind, and pleasant to do business with.

If you decide to follow any of this, I would love it if you would leave a comment letting other people know how you got along with these ideas. Did they work for you? If you try it and you don’t like it, the only thing you might not be able to use is the Finum, everything else can be pressed into service doing other things.

Good luck and enjoy the tea and coffee!

Faith as an Idea

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There are many paths to faith. Many possibilities and recently I’ve been musing on one particular idea of faith that amuses and appeals to me.

That the entire universe has only one soul in it, that soul is God. That through the function of the flow of time that singular soul is holographically projected throughout existence as consciousness in sentient life forms. Humanity for example.

As time flows, the light of life illuminates a structure fixed at the center of the nature of the Universe and shines through it. This structure we call God, and as the light of life shines through it, various expressions of that singular soul are played out throughout the expanse of the Universe. These holographic projections are all of us. That we are God, but more specifically, we are all fundamentally the same. Whenever one does violence to someone else, it is quite literally self-abuse. Not only do you do violence to yourself, but you do violence to God.

I consider this concept to be a riff on the Golden Rule, which is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” and lies at the very center of my ethical and moral existence. The lesson of the Golden Rule is that you should treat everyone equally, and nicely, the way you wish to be treated. In this light, the Golden Rule is recast anew as a way to honor God, by honoring ourselves.

This also eliminates the distance between God and Mankind. There is no distance between us, we are all one. Since there is no distance, there is no fear of punishment, how could God punish itself? This also answers the question of death. When time moves through us and wears out our bodies, the holographic projection which is what we consider our consciousness, the part of us that understands we exist, that does not simply evaporate, it continues on to be re-expressed as time moves forward and the light shines through our facet of God and we are born again.

The question of evil remains. Why is there evil in our world? Why do people do bad things? It is a curse of existence that we are so very ignorant. We just do not know, we can’t appreciate the finer aspects of this kind of faith. You can see the early formations of the Golden Rule accumulating in social animals that have yet to achieve sentience, such as our evolutionary fore-bearers, the primates. They demonstrate an understanding of the Golden Rule, so on some level, this faith is instinctual. Since it is not fully understood, there is fear. Fear is, to borrow from Albert Brooks, like a dark fog that settles on the mind. Fear blots out happiness, it clouds our thinking and leads us astray. The foundation of evil is then the natural progression starting at fear and progressing downwards towards anger and hate. There is evil in our world because we are ignorant of the Golden Rule or chose to not abide by it, and therefore we suffer for it.

Personally I find this a very compelling idea. This concept of faith, this possible structure to existence and helps define the murky concept of the flow of time. It combines the things we all experience, the understanding that time flows forward, the sense that a God could exist, and if it does, it’s formed by adding up all the very best in all of us, as well as birth, life, and death. It also defines a morality that has been with humanity longer than any other, that of The Golden Rule. The most interesting thing would be, what would happen if someone lived their life with this understanding and this morality? What would you do? What would your choices be? Would they be different than they are now?

Ammunition online is cheap and available in bulk – Jul. 26, 2012

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Ammunition online is cheap and available in bulk – Jul. 26, 2012.

After skimming this article a thought struck me. Nobody will ever really see the light of day when it comes to competent gun control in the United States because the Second Amendment is always held up like an adamantium shield deflecting nearly all legislation to keep guns out of the wrong peoples hands, the people who would commit crimes.

There is a way around this, however. The Second Amendment states that citizens have the right to bear arms, not the right to purchase ammunition. Some states, like Michigan have very strict controls on liquor sales, barring any liquor sales company from shipping to Michigan. Liquor is controlled by the state. Why don’t we apply the same controls to ammunition vendors? Only federally-vetted ammunition companies are allowed to sell ammunition, allow ammunition to only be purchased at registered gun shops and bar common carriers from being able to ship ammunition!

Yes, you can have your gun, you can have any gun you want. You can fill your house with guns, right up to the rafters – but the ammunition will be controlled. There is precedent – just as liquor is controlled, so can ammunition.

This shouldn’t upset the gun maniacs because they will likely have the equipment required to fill their own ammunition all by themselves, but they won’t be able to swiftly create 6000 rounds, they’ll have to work at it. And while we’re at it, lets put gunpowder under the same strict controls. So, carry a gun willy nilly wherever you go. The ammunition will be taxed to fund this new regulatory body and your precious Second Amendment will not be infringed. You have your arms, just not supplies.

The law states arms, not ammo. You can fondle your gun, you can even use it as a metal stick to strike someone else, but you’ll have to think long and hard when it comes to firing it when a box of 22 rifle rounds cost $150, or more. There is no reason why we can’t tax ammunition right out of existence. All that will be left are the people who press-their-own ammunition. And from my experience at doing this, if you fire that ammunition you best have very good equipment or one of those rounds may explode without releasing it’s bullet.

Solving the gun control problem, easy peasy.

Answering War

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Many things occur to me out of the blue when I least expect them to strike. It’s as if a part of me has been working on a problem, chewing on it, and when it reached a solution it gathers up all its paperwork and knocks on the front of my brain and says “Here, we’ve done all we can do, frontal lobe, here’s this for your consideration.” And I stand there in the middle of something really mundane and I’m stuck. I stop moving and much like when you open your door and find a brightly colored box with a bow on top, you spend all that time forgetting about what you were doing and stand in shock at the box. So it was with me earlier this evening.

Apparently a part of me was working on military strategy. Turns out part of the paperwork also included a method to cause a cease of conflict and effectively short-circuit a war, going from conflict, skipping over death, and moving to resolution. How you ask? I  was myself shocked at the answer and it comes from mother nature herself.

If you grow a very large amount of Cannabis Sativa, dry it out thoroughly and then set it on fire, then blow the resultant smoke out onto the battlefield, saturating every square inch with a thick white fog in about 15 minutes time all combatants will spontaneously stop giving a damn about whatever it is that they were fighting about and put down their weapons and sit down on the ground, some may lay down, others will likely lean back on their elbows. The key here is that every combatant will stop caring about killing and just want to “hang out” and “take in the majesty of this place, maaaaan” some may fall asleep and the rest will be overcome with feelings of euphoria, laziness, and extreme hunger.

Then, once you’ve smoked both sides until they have stopped fighting, you roll in hot dog carts, pizza carts, falafel carts, whatever. They go ding-ding-ing onto the battlefield and since everything is free (it’s war, this is what you pay for…) everyone is calm, feeling just fine thank-you-very-much, and the idea of getting a gun and killing someone else is about as far from anyones mind as humanly possible. You’ve just eaten five pounds of whatever and really all you want to do is take a nap.

Those that might be wearing gas masks will see the beatific joy and happiness on their fellow combatants faces and perhaps they’ll be encouraged to take off their masks. If not, then you still have to contend with an angry army, however if you continuously smoke them eventually any gas mask will saturate and stop working and people have to breathe. Over time, those that hold out with masks will just stop caring and get hungry like all the others.

This method would work perfectly for a peacekeeping force between two belligerent sides, so, for example, Americans versus Iranians – the United Nations peacekeepers cultivate millions of tons of dried cannabis sativa and start working on a smoker-gun and then we drop them into the middle of the battlefield and they just sit back with a beer in their hands, on a folding chair, making sure the machine chuffs out smoke nice and evenly. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, what you are fighting about, or anything. Once exposed to this smoke, nature will take its course. The course is not war, killing, or death – but rather just relaxing, taking in the sights, and wondering where the nearest falafel cart is.

I dare anyone to challenge this idea.

Texas Cattle Die-Off Linked to Grass – USDA checking for mutations in grass that produced cyanide gas

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Texas Cattle Die-Off Linked to Grass – USDA checking for mutations in grass that produced cyanide gas.

So, GM-modified Bermuda grass eventually develops toxic properties? I can’t wait to see how the people who engineered this grass can spin this as a feature instead of a liability. I can’t help but notice the millions of years where cows ate grass without dying of cyanide gas exposure.

It’s almost as if GM modified grains are dangerous. Unthinkable! 🙂

10-year-long video game creates hellish nightmare world – CNN.com

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10-year-long video game creates hellish nightmare world – CNN.com.

As I was reading I couldn’t help but notice that this world is without hope. So this is what happens when nobody is allowed to think beyond the simulation!?! This is AWESOME. Three super-city states trapped in eternal war. It’s like 1984 in a computer.

At some point when nuclear weapons aren’t enough to toss in humanities collective towel, I suppose you’d have to switch to an effective agent for genocide. Perhaps an aerosolized super-durable Marburg virus. One sneeze that ended it all. Hemorragic Fever so pronounced that it makes peoples heads explode from the mismatched blood pressure.

Seems a blessing after reading what the state of the world would be in that simulation. I wonder if this keeps Sid Meier up at night wondering…

Erik Rhodes: "A Romance with Misery"

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Erik Rhodes: “A Romance with Misery”.

When I got home from work today Scott called up from where he was enjoying the cool of the basement that Erik Rhodes had died in his sleep, of a heart attack. He was 30 years old.

Erik Rhodes, or James as his true name would turn out to be, was a adult performer and after reading his tumblr, which I linked to this post above, I noticed what anyone could. This person was very sad and in a way going to pieces. Post after post saturated with tone that was screaming out to anyone who would listen that he needed help. But nobody apparently noticed. I have to admit that I didn’t even notice myself until the blog was pointed out to me. I feel sorry for him and his family, what a loss.

Throughout all the sadness I can’t help but spy the Adonis Complex lurking in the background. All men have this darkness lurking somewhere in their psyche. Just like girls have their own self-image and self-worth issues, being razor thin and looking-near-death-is-so-hot, but the Adonis Complex is really a very male thing. It starts out when we compare ourselves against each other. This man has a full head of hair, 3% body fat, muscles galore. We feel envy, then we approach the envy in a very male way. We try to fix what is wrong with us. Some workout endlessly, struggling for a body that may always elude them while others seek shortcuts, usually one drug or another. Anything that’s a stimulant can lead to abuse of a shortcut. Sometimes it’s a naive shortcut like nicotine abuse, sometimes it’s cocaine or heroin. Sometimes it’s anabolic steroids.

The Complex is like a fog on the brain. It colors everything. Comparisons pile up on comparisons and as we start reaching our goal our self-worth and self-image can (not will) go right into the toilet. What you end up with is a beautiful specimen of masculinity that is wretchedly depressed. Once Adonis arrives, his only real destination is to drown in the pool of water that he sees his reflection in. Yes, I’m mixing my mythical metaphors, the tragedy is of Narcissus, not of Adonis, but it’s for Adonis the Complex is named after and it’s Narcissus that holds the tragedy.

Women suffer similar body-image pressures, but the genders are very different. A fish can’t teach a bird to swim and so trying to explain it to a woman is really something I’m not capable of doing. The feelings, the pressure, the drive, and above all else, the mechanical aptitude that males bring to “fix” what is wrong ends up spiraling out of control.

So we get back to this poor soul. Narcissus died of a heart attack in his sleep. They’ll find an overdose of steroids, he wrote about how that was his plan after all, and the rest of us will be left behind, some will have lost an idol, some will have lost a family member. We all will lose someone that could have been rescued if more people knew and reached out.

And then that leads to the almost obvious analysis waiting at the end of all of this. Are the people who do such things, adult entertainment, pornography, all on a path similar to the one James walked? Are these people “terminally pretty”? And then people will start to point their fingers at the porn industry itself for perpetuating mental illness, body dysmorphic disease and self-image crises that lead to self-inflicted abuse that is just a stones throw from suicide.

There is always hope, there is always someone to reach out to. Just get in a car and drive away from your pain. Walk up to a house, anywhere there are decent people and knock on their doors and tell them you need help. Good people are agents of hope. They will help, no matter who they are. That is what good people do.

Gunnar Glasses

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About a year ago I discovered a company that made eyewear expressly for use with computers. Since I spend a majority of my day looking at computers it made a certain amount of sense. The glasses were not terribly expensive and they were polarized, tinted, and many reviews were positive so I went ahead and got a single pair to use. The company’s name is Gunnar, and they make a lot of "precision eyewear’ for gamers. I figured if it was good for gamers doing what they do, then it’d be fine for me.

I’ve been wearing my Gunnar glasses on and off since I bought them and they have served me well. There is a very slight magnification factor which I appreciate, I don’t need glasses right now, but I figure they may help combat eyestrain, and that they do nicely. The yellow tint may be helpful, the polarization definitely helps, but above everything else I have to say that my eyes don’t dry out so fast while I wear these glasses. Often times they’ll get a little too teary and I have to dry them, but it’s far better to have more tears than a deficit.

A few weeks ago, wearing my glasses I discovered that one of the very tiny nuts that hold the frame together had fallen off. I looked all over for a little brass-colored metal nut the size of a quarter of a grain of rice. So I contacted Gunnar customer service and asked them if they sold a repair kit for my glasses. The response I got back was amazing. Not only were they sorry my glasses failed, but they wanted to ship me free of charge a repair kit in the mail. I gave them my address and yesterday they arrived. It was an informal package, pretty much a sticky note with the pieces taped inside, then put in a mailer and sent via the postal service. When I opened up the mailer I could feel the little metal nuts poking through the sticky note paper. I opened everything up and there were 4 sets of plastic washers, metal washers, and the nuts. I sat at my desk with a pair of needlenose pliers and assembled the lost washers and nut on the one frame post that didn’t have any of that and tightened it down firmly like all the other posts.

It’s these little things that I appreciate. Other companies could just have rolled over and said “Buy another pair of glasses” but not this company. Because they are excellent glasses and the company has done right by me I want to recommend Gunnar brand as a good company to deal with and to buy from.

Sticker Shock

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Today on lunch I decided on a whim to visit Sawall’s Health Food Store on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo. This is a specialty store catering to the rich who want food that is alternatively sourced. That they cater to the rich is something I knew when I walked in there, expecting a little elevation in prices. But what I found really surprised me. I was looking at local distributors for the Medjool Dates that I so love and the Turkish Figs that I really enjoy as well. I didn’t really expect any local distributors to carry either so when I saw the Dates in both prepack and free-pick bins I smiled at finding another local distributor. Then I looked at the prices.

Sam’s Club has Bard Valley Medjool Dates on sale for $7.48 for a two-pound plastic bin. That’s $3.74 a pound. Nuts.com has Medjool Dates for sale at $7.49 a pound and Sawall’s sells Bard Valley Medjool Dates for $9.95 a pound! Obviously someone is getting the short end of the stick! Sams Club has probably leveraged a volume discount from the Bard Valley Dates grower, that’s the only bit that makes sense. So when Sams stops carrying my beloved Dates, and I bet they will as it’s listed as a “Seasonal Item” then I’ll be down to Nuts.com or Sawall’s. These prices are not prohibitive, but they are rather surprising and just seeing how the balance tips when you compare these local distributors and online distributors versus Sams Club really is a shock. $4 versus $8 or $10. If I didn’t know any better I’d say that Sams has the same screws on the date farmers that they have on the Pickle manufacturers, selling product for pennies on the dollar, at least when it comes to pickles.

As for the Turkish Figs? Nothing. At least locally. So Nuts.com will always be my vendor of choice at this point to obtain the figs that I really enjoy eating. It’s only prohibitive that I am not only paying $6/pound for the figs but also a UPS shipping charge of a few dollars more, effectively pushing my per-pound price of figs to about $10/pound. It’s not the end of the world, but it does mean I have to be careful and buy just the right amount so I can eat through them fast enough and not have to worry about spoilage, even in the fridge. I don’t really know how long Medjool Dates and Turkish Figs last in the fridge but I really don’t want to try my luck with such expensive treats.

At least in a pinch, if I really have to have them, at least there is Sawall’s, but the price… wow. It’s all a-blinky.

Throw It Back

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I used to fret and worry about my relationship with alcohol. What did it mean? Is the drinking itself bad or is it the reason behind the drinking the really bad part? Maybe it was a combination of both. Next month I’ll turn 37 years old and quickly plowing myself into my 40’s. So what preciousness is to save that I’m holding onto?

Americans have a really funny way of dealing with alcohol. We used to love it, then we hated it, then we prohibited it completely and all the while our relationship and use of the substance has not changed. I notice this a lot when I go to purchase alcohol from shops, especially here in Michigan. People are so, I suppose the emotion they must feel is embarrassment, because the shops all reflexively wrap bottles of alcohol in brown paper wrappers. Like it’s shameful or embarrassing to be seen in polite society with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Jamesons, or Captain Morgan. Wine never really got the sharp end of the stick, and neither really did beer. Both of those spirits are too weak to be of mention. You’ll go to the bathroom a lot before you’ll feel much in the way of an effect from those particular drinks. It’s the harder liquors that surprise me. First off, Michigan rigidly controls the price of spirits right down to what retailers are allowed to sell the spirits for. It doesn’t matter who sells what, they all get their prices out of this dog-eared pale-blue booklet that the state hands them. I sometimes wonder why the state of Michigan thinks it’s the sole arbiter of the price and availability of spirits in their state borders? As if they could control their citizenry with laws. Hah. But there it is, artificial price fixing for no good reason. A 750ml bottle of Jameson’s Whiskey is $25 in Michigan and $17 in Illinois. The only reason I’d buy liquor in Michigan is out of laziness.

And as it turns out, my favorite liquors are Jamesons, what a shocker, and as funny as it seems, the low-brow rums, Bacardi’s Oakheart and Newfoundland’s Screech. I don’t really care for the specialty long-aged rums and apparently I prefer just the english-speaking rums of the world, as the rest aren’t very much to my liking. But really where it’s at is my relationship to a bottle of Jamesons.

What is my relationship to alcohol? I drink liberally and I become intoxicated and I enjoy myself. I do not make a mess of myself by drinking beyond my personal limit, nor do I operate any machinery while under the influence. That last bit is a lie, of course, as machinery includes my iPhone and my computer, so a few bouts of drunk twittering won’t send me to jail. I’ve never operated a motor vehicle, and almost always I’m the designated driver because, well, lets face it, I have control and money issues. So back to drinking. It’s a joy. It brings warmth and happiness into my life. Not that my life was bereft of warmth and happiness before, but while intoxicated it makes many things feel better. Many things are easier to cope with. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I share my feelings, some would say, too readily. There was a humorous picture of a boy stating what I often times find myself thinking, especially sober, and that is “We’re all thinking it, I just said it.” So we get down to the reasons why I drink.

I like to drink because it feels good. I like to drink because it tastes good. Wine is principally what I’m getting at, as there is a universe of delicious flavors in wine and more people should go exploring to see what they like. Beer? When I was a kid and very sensitive to bitters, beer was awful. As I age however, beer has become like water. It’s a drink with food, it makes you belch, and makes you have to see a man about a horse quite often. In many ways, beer and wine are somewhat okay ways to replace water, especially if you question the quality of water. I personally have never felt that the water where I live is good for me. Now, before people get really worked up, the gentle reader should be aware that I was raised on the worlds best water. The city supply of Syracuse, New York. That water is drawn from Skaneateles Lake and is some of the best tasting water on the planet. I am sorry that more people don’t understand just how wonderful it is to walk up to the tap in your house, turn it on and be able to drink what comes out without even a single iota of worry, and enjoying the taste, which is the way water should taste. It should not taste like a chlorinated fish bowl. So the water is a big reason for the more simpler spirits. But that doesn’t touch on the stronger ones. Here again I like the taste, or perhaps, in the case of Jamesons, I’m genetically predisposed to enjoy the taste, I do sometimes wonder about that. I also enjoy the feeling it gives me, and then, and what everyone really wants to know, is the social aspects to my alcoholism.

I drink because Hell is other people. This is very general and expansive and it’s not really meant to hurt others feelings, but lets face it, unless I’m in love with you or we are exceptionally close, Sartre’s statement about Hell being other people eventually finds it’s mark. I can endure a lot of things from people, especially when I have no other choice. I can be whatever I need to be to endure the situation. That’s the blessing that comes with a monumentally strong sense of self-monitoring. In work meetings I can be calm and reserved and measured, that sort of thing. Generally however I can’t stand humanity. In all the ways we are unique and special and loving, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the baser things that bother me, the odd behaviors, the many varied ways we abuse each other and in many ways, so effortlessly and lets face it, callously. It can range from being a real prat to being incidentally and nebulously a horrible human being. So what comes of all these unpleasant feelings? Being exposed to people who chew too loudly, snort, wheeze, moan, whine, or in one way or another do whatever they can to be as awful to others as they can, where is there to go? Where can anyone go if they are trapped in that situation? I am forever thankful for alcohol. “Please pass the wine” is a far more pleasant thing to say than dragging out (or dragging up) the varied unpleasantnesses that surround some social situations. I find that it’s almost always more preferable to prepend potentially unpleasant social interactions with a precautionary buffer of alcohol in my system. If I am nursing a beer or a glass of wine, of throwing back shots of Jamesons, I can eventually reach a place where the things that upset me no longer really bother me, and in a way, alcohol makes everything better. So yes, I drink, at least as a partial reason, to cope with the people in my life. I am not going to point fingers at who makes me drink, that would just be courting disaster, but in a general sense, Hell is other people.

So to get back to the beginning, is it a problem? Should I be concerned? The answer is, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to fret over what drinking means to me, I’m just going to enjoy my life and all the things in it and if I spend my time in a beer bottle or a bottle of Jamesons, then that’s where I want to be. For pleasure, for joy, for happiness, and to escape Hell, at least for a short while. Anything can be endured as long as there is a break to it, a stop, a discontinuity to horribleness. In many ways, alcohol is a blessing to endurance.