Re: Ryan started the fire!

Just a few hours ago, my two friends and I were enjoying a regular Saturday morning/ afternoon. I made iced tea in the AM, it is definitely an iced tea kind of day. Temperature: 34 degrees (thank you weather channel). Meh, so it’s pretty cold, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky and when I woke up this morning I was mesmerized by the sun. It made me remember the iced tea maker my mom gave me at the beginning of the year semester and it, since the end of the summer, has been unused and forgotten.

Anyway, the reason for this post, My friends and I were watching some documentary narrated by Merryl Streep and music with Sting. Except we had it on mute and didn’t realize until the credits rolled.

So we moved on to cooking popcorn and I volunteered to make a couple of bags. I looked at the bag to see how long I should put them in the microwave for and suddenly realized how stupid popcorn directions are.

“Listen to the POP the know when to STOP.” ummm… OK?

Directions (my comments in parantheses):

1. Microwave ovens vary (they DOOO?)
Cooking time may need to be adjusted. Popping may take more or less than 1 minute 30 seconds. (Ok, this isn’t gourmet, it’s actually just popcorn.) Place bag in center of oven (Oh, I was going to place the bag on the side of the microwave. Glad they reminded me of that one.) THIS SIDE UP (see picture of hand putting bag in microwave. Again, thank you for demonstrating how to put a bag of popcorn in the microwave). Set time for 1 minute to 1 minute 30 seconds on HIGH (haha, high).

2. (Please look at this picture. “POP! 1 sec… 2 sec… POP! STOP!” Is that REALLY what hapens when I cook popcorn?! You have got to be kidding me!)Stay by microwave and listen (Well this doesn’t seem very safe. Orville Redenbacher’s, you’ve really just diminished your credibility. Radiation — EVERY HEARD OF IT?). Stop microwave when popping slows to 1 to 2 seconds (do I need a stop watch? Is there a supplies list?) between pops. Overcooking will cause scorching and burning (and we DEFINITELY don’t want that… ouch).

3. OPEN BAG CAREFULLY (Check. See photo with arrows and smelly wave lines) Caution – bag and contents are very hot (oh, I thought things coming out of the microwave were going to be cold. This has completely changed my perspective on life.) Open bag by pulling top corners only. Open away from face (Check.). Children should not prepare without adult supervision (shit… my mom is all the way back in Chicago.). Enjoy! (OK!)

Directions offered in Spanish too.

THANKFULLY none of my kernels succumbed to “scorching and burning.”

Moral of the story: good thing Orville Redenbacher supplied with directions to a food that has been around for thousands of years.

“Maize (Zea mays L. ssp. mays, pronounced /ˈmeɪz/), known in many English-speaking countries as corn, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The Aztecs and Mayans cultivated it in numerous varieties throughout central and southern Mexico, to cook or grind in a process called nixtamalization. Later the crop spread through much of the Americas. Between 1250 and 1700, nearly the whole continent had gained access to the crop.” (Wikipedia, yes I trust Wikipedia. So sue me.)

Farewell.

 

Ryan started the fire!

In season 2, episode 4, the office of Dunder Mifflin experiences a minor fire emergency. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that “Ryan started the fire!” Dwight is ecstatic (out of spite) to find out that “smart, business school Ryan” was the culprit. Gotta love his reaction:

So I decided to do a little research about the origins of the original song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” by Billy Joel.

According to Wikipedia (gotta love it), Joel released the song in 1989 on his album Storm Front. The song alludes to the headline events beginning in 1949 (the year Joel was born) until the year it was released. The song has been interpreted as a rebuttal to the criticisms of the Baby Boomer generation (Joel’s generation), or those people born post-WWII. “The fire” refers to the conflict and societal turmoil that was occurring at the time and was being blamed on the Baby Boomers. Joel’s song claims these issues cannot be blamed on a single generation because “it [the fire] was always burning… no we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.”

Joel says about the song: “I had turned forty” It was 1989, and I said, ‘Okay, what’s happened in my life?’ I wrote down the year 1949. Okay, Harry Truman was the president. Popular Singer of the day, Doris Day. China went Communist… South Pacific… Walter Winchell… Joe DiMaggio. Then I went to 1950, Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy, big cars… et cetera, et cetera” (from Bill DeMain’s book In Their Own Words: Songwriters Talk About the Creative Process).

Dwight references this line from the song:

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Some other fun facts about “We Didn’t Start the Fire”:

Unlike most of Joel’s songs, the lyrics were written before the melody.
It was Joel’s 3rd Billboard #1 hit.
Blender magazine ranked “We Didn’t Start the Fire” #41 on its list of the “50 Worst Songs Ever.”

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

***What other political/ activist songs or artists do you like?***

ie Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day

 

Envision the food in your mouth…

A nice Saturday afternoon, I sat at the bar drinking a nice Heinekin draft. Browing the menu, I couldn’t decide what would satisfy my case of the munchies.

“I have to taste it in my mouth before I can decide.”
(that’s what she said)

Now that I’ve walked myself into that one, I’ve started thinking about how I choose the foods I eat. As stupid as this sounds, the deciding process, for me at least, is a difficult one.

This especially happens when I am at the grocery store. I’m standing in the cereal aisle, utterly overwhelemed by the selection of colorful boxes of joy that are neatly arranged before me. How do I make this stomach-changing decision? Sometimes I physically put my hand on the cereal box in order to get the whole effect. I start imagining the taste in my mouth, then compare that taste with others in the aisle. The process is a gruelling one, but I eventually come to the right decision: Golden Grahams. Or Kix.

I do this all the time, not only in the grocery store, but when reading menus, at my parent’s house when I’m home for a week and I haven’t seen a pantry/ refigerator this full in four months, or late night when deciding whether I’m feeling Taco Bell or Wendy’s. I absolutely, CANNOT make an educated decision without first “tasting it in my mouth.”

Is this weird? I don’t know; you tell me.

Oh, and in case you’d like to learn more about my decision making process, I found this lovely little gem on one of my favorite websites ehow.com. If you ever need to know how to do just about anything, Google search what you want to do and find the ehow search result (it is usually near the top of the list). I espcially like to use this site when I’m trying to do something technical on the computer, like how to convert a file into a different format.