The Whiteness of the Whale
I know I haven't posted in forever, but something has finally sparked the urge. No, not graduation, but white asparagus.
I heard that it is a delicious treat that snooty Europeans enjoy, so I bought some and ate it. Now, it has a milder flavor and is slightly more tender, kind of like water chestnut à la asparagus. But eating it was kind of a mind fuck.
It's not some naturally white thing, the farmers deprive the plant of light by mounding dirt on it so that it doesn't produce chlorophyll. If that's not living death, then I don't know what is. Or to be an English major about it, Ishmael of Moby Dick says in the chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale": "It cannot be well doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here." Indeed, the creepiness of such a living thing to be so colored.
Then I started thinking, well maybe it's like cave fish, where they look creepy, but really it's just a matter of habitat. Then again, no one eats cave fish because you can eat normal fish and not get in trouble with wild life authorities, and also, they're creepy motherfuckers. Anyway, while I was eating it, I noticed the strongest flavor at the tips, where it was getting the most sunlight. I could _taste_ how hard that plant was trying to live a normal asparagus life. I was a consumer of its stunted life.
In conclusion, I spent the extra dollars on a fancy asparagus so I could have a mild existential crisis during dinner.
PS: Doug wants me to write about how wonderful he is. So in conjunction with this random post, I can say he did not partake of the asparagus and further the torture of asparagi everywhere. He also gives me beer and shiny things.
I heard that it is a delicious treat that snooty Europeans enjoy, so I bought some and ate it. Now, it has a milder flavor and is slightly more tender, kind of like water chestnut à la asparagus. But eating it was kind of a mind fuck.
It's not some naturally white thing, the farmers deprive the plant of light by mounding dirt on it so that it doesn't produce chlorophyll. If that's not living death, then I don't know what is. Or to be an English major about it, Ishmael of Moby Dick says in the chapter "The Whiteness of the Whale": "It cannot be well doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here." Indeed, the creepiness of such a living thing to be so colored.
Then I started thinking, well maybe it's like cave fish, where they look creepy, but really it's just a matter of habitat. Then again, no one eats cave fish because you can eat normal fish and not get in trouble with wild life authorities, and also, they're creepy motherfuckers. Anyway, while I was eating it, I noticed the strongest flavor at the tips, where it was getting the most sunlight. I could _taste_ how hard that plant was trying to live a normal asparagus life. I was a consumer of its stunted life.
In conclusion, I spent the extra dollars on a fancy asparagus so I could have a mild existential crisis during dinner.
PS: Doug wants me to write about how wonderful he is. So in conjunction with this random post, I can say he did not partake of the asparagus and further the torture of asparagi everywhere. He also gives me beer and shiny things.