Indeed the world is full of wonders, and horrors, and I try to take note when I stumble across one. I've got several rattling and rolling around my head like marbles now, so I reckon it's time to share them out to make room for more.
First, a horror. I thought it was fine when my buddy Jenn got Seahawks logos put on her most recent manicure. That's cute, in a my-house-has-wheels sort of way (sorry, Jenn!). But a trip to the West Hill Fred Meyer revealed that those people have no business being given a free hand with blue and green food coloring in the pursuit of game-day snack sales. Yes, folks, those are bright Seahawks Green-and-Blue deviled eggs. You can pretty much feel the cancer cells forming just looking at those dyes, can't you? A finer waste of a chicken's fertility, I have yet to see.
On a more positive note, I have discovered that I can make hot buttered rum or hot toddy with Hal's new Keurig. Hal had been hankering for a Keurig pod system hot beverage machine for a couple of years now, ever since his previous employer got one at work, so this year Santa and I got him one for Christmas. I wasn't expecting to have much use for it, myself, not being a super big coffee drinker, but it turns out that you can run the machine without a pod in it to get a really quick cup of hot water, which means that with a batch of rum batter, some bourbon, and a cinnamon stick on hand, I can get a hot buttered bourbon as easily as a cup of coffee. And while I've been recovering from this nasty upper respiratory grunge the past couple of weeks, I have found the ability to have a hot toddy at more-or-less any time has been a real boon.
Hot Toddy Recipe
1 T honey
2 lemon wedges
1 jigger cheapass bourbon
4 ounces steaming hot water
1 cinnamon stick
In a glass mug, squeeze in the juice of your lemon wedges, add honey, bourbon, and cinnamon stick, and drop in the spent lemon rinds if you wanna. Add hot water and stir until blended. Enjoy. This is surprisingly tasty for such a simple thing, and the heat, the lemon, the honey, and the booze are all sovereign for making sore throat and cough feel a lot better. If you haven't got lemons, half a small lime works great too, as does half a mandarin orange. I imagine a small quantity of almost any acidic juice would work well.
And a while back I was having breakfast at the local greasy spoon with Hal and watching the silent Northwest News channel because it's the sort of greasy spoon that has an obligatory television set and I happened to be the one sitting facing the tube, and there was a commercial for some sort of special bag for microwaving baked potatoes in, and in the way of television commercial demos for dubious products, there were a bunch of other things this special bag was supposedly good for, including reviving hardened bread -- just slip it in the bag and microwave for a few seconds and it comes out magically restored. Well, while home sick and wanting something to eat I discovered that all the bits of baguette in the house were rock-like, and since I was feeling too crappy to go to the store for more bread, I thought I'd try microwaving the bread briefly just in its own little paper bag sleeve. Yep, this works fine. No need to add water, just zap the bread for 15 seconds or so, and magic, it's back to being soft if somewhat more chewy.
And last, but certainly not least, and perhaps equally chewy, I have long been experiencing various forms of discontent with the way the term "privilege" gets applied these days and Will Shetterly has a marvelous piece that distills a number of those discontents with remarkable clarity. Privilege is not just the absence of oppression, it isn't privilege if the majority of the population has it. Privilege is something that is experienced by a tiny minority, as a direct result of power and wealth. If you want to talk about how people who aren't oppressed don't always notice the way other people are oppressed, find a different word. But by all means go read
Will's piece, and by all means also
his take on recent discussions of author "privilege" versus the privileges of fanfic authors, which was how I tumbled on Will's earlier piece.