(O_O)
It's been a long day,
I've but one thing to say:
I finally got my act together and reinstated the music on this blog. Have you noticed yet? I hope you can hear it ok...
Fromseier Rose
"March of the Meeatoiteen Bull/John MacNeal"
(don't ask what kind of animal is marching, I have no idea.)
I picked this song because it's calm, unobtrusive, and pretty. I was going to do a Chris Thile/Casey Dreissen duet, but it fit clunkily. (if you wish to be shocked (pleasantly?), http://www.caseydriessen.com...)
Don't ask how the test went (perhaps refer to my last comment on my last post). I'm never good at assessing those sorts of things. The essay went badly enough for my taste, the math (three sections) went (maybe) better than it should have (I probably chose all the wrong "easy" options hidden in those multiple choice questions), and English had SIX SECTIONS!!!! (not including the essay) all of them redundant and extremely, tediously, and utterly BORING.
I didn't study for it at all, honestly, and I don't expect much. It was an experience, all right.
While we were "down there," Papa took me out for my birthday date (he's almost exactly one month late). Yessirree, I'm seventeen! Whoop-dedoo. :)
In honor of the occasion, we went to this beautiful Smithsonian state-history museum. It had four-story glass rotunda up the front, and we could see the dome of the capitol building right across the street. The bright sunlight--from the skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows of the atrium--was uplifting and cheering. The exhibits were of the "modern" sort: lots of multimedia stuff--videos to watch, sounds to hear, etc. But there were some incredible original documents from Oklahoma history--the Otoe nation's original letter and peace medal from President Jefferson (written in French), inviting them to the White House for a diplomatic visit; the Judicial Ledger of the City of Guthrie (someone had crossed out the State of Kansas printed on the corner of each page, and written "City of Guthrie" above it--this was before we had statehood.) There were journals, and a tapestry of The Lord's Prayer in Cherokee. The full-size "Winnie Mae" airplane hung between the first and third stories. We visited all the exhibits, had half a sandwich and a bowl of soup together in the cafe halfway through. If you ever want to go to a really good museum, go there. It's got something for everyone (if no more than a decent sandwich). The African-American woman at the cafe check-out was something else! Very thin, pretty "Mama" type of lady, she'd talk to you incessantly, tell you exactly what kind of condiment one should have with a particular sandwich, and treat you as if she'd known you personally for years without making you feel the slightest bit uneasy. Her (perhaps ten-year-old) son was lurking around the exhibits while she worked--she told us that she'd beat him at Sorry! the night before, and asked him to take out the trash for her... we met him again at the tornado exhibit, watching the documentary...
Afterward (when I was a bit more hungry) Papa took me out to this very, very excellent Chinese restaurant, where we feasted on egg-drop soup, egg-rolls and crab rangoon, lemon chicken, Mongolian beef, hot and sour soup, fried and steamed rice. The outside of the place was old and run down--broken windows, old paint, and a battered sign that said "Chinese BBQ & Buffet," dull glass doors with "Pull" signs on the dingy metal handles. A sign on the door said "Closed to the Public Sunday 3-7." I was a bit dubious. Upon entering, this is what I discovered:
The buffet was closed, and the BBQ was nothing more than a few roast ducks and fowl, hung under a rotisserie light in a glass case. Everyone in the place spoke Chinese, including all the customers. High straight-backed chairs of elegantly curved black wood with blue seat covers were set around long banquet tables. Bright, beautiful pictures hung on the walls, and polished shutters covered the windows. Long white tablecloths covered the circular tables, chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A waiter asked us if we would like to be seated, and led us to a side booth. A huge (and very beautiful) copper-green-and-gilded, three-dimensional picture of a city park with a big arched stone bridge and flower vendors, hung right over the table. Dinner (as I related earlier) was the best I've ever had. Chinese food is one of my very favorite things to eat. : )
Afterward we visited the Asian Supermarket, and Papa made sure to take me through the meat section (cow lungs, chicken feet, silverfish...), just to watch me gag. We inspected the sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque (Buddha. blech.) marble statues they had on sale for extremely cheap prices. That place was amazing. (though that word does not adequately describe skinned and cleaned chicken feet--those things look like baby's fingers: gruesome.)
Desert at Braum's, then home. Very tired.
G'bye 'til sometime later.
~Annie
I've but one thing to say:
I finally got my act together and reinstated the music on this blog. Have you noticed yet? I hope you can hear it ok...
Fromseier Rose
"March of the Meeatoiteen Bull/John MacNeal"
(don't ask what kind of animal is marching, I have no idea.)
I picked this song because it's calm, unobtrusive, and pretty. I was going to do a Chris Thile/Casey Dreissen duet, but it fit clunkily. (if you wish to be shocked (pleasantly?), http://www.caseydriessen.com...)
Don't ask how the test went (perhaps refer to my last comment on my last post). I'm never good at assessing those sorts of things. The essay went badly enough for my taste, the math (three sections) went (maybe) better than it should have (I probably chose all the wrong "easy" options hidden in those multiple choice questions), and English had SIX SECTIONS!!!! (not including the essay) all of them redundant and extremely, tediously, and utterly BORING.
I didn't study for it at all, honestly, and I don't expect much. It was an experience, all right.
While we were "down there," Papa took me out for my birthday date (he's almost exactly one month late). Yessirree, I'm seventeen! Whoop-dedoo. :)
In honor of the occasion, we went to this beautiful Smithsonian state-history museum. It had four-story glass rotunda up the front, and we could see the dome of the capitol building right across the street. The bright sunlight--from the skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows of the atrium--was uplifting and cheering. The exhibits were of the "modern" sort: lots of multimedia stuff--videos to watch, sounds to hear, etc. But there were some incredible original documents from Oklahoma history--the Otoe nation's original letter and peace medal from President Jefferson (written in French), inviting them to the White House for a diplomatic visit; the Judicial Ledger of the City of Guthrie (someone had crossed out the State of Kansas printed on the corner of each page, and written "City of Guthrie" above it--this was before we had statehood.) There were journals, and a tapestry of The Lord's Prayer in Cherokee. The full-size "Winnie Mae" airplane hung between the first and third stories. We visited all the exhibits, had half a sandwich and a bowl of soup together in the cafe halfway through. If you ever want to go to a really good museum, go there. It's got something for everyone (if no more than a decent sandwich). The African-American woman at the cafe check-out was something else! Very thin, pretty "Mama" type of lady, she'd talk to you incessantly, tell you exactly what kind of condiment one should have with a particular sandwich, and treat you as if she'd known you personally for years without making you feel the slightest bit uneasy. Her (perhaps ten-year-old) son was lurking around the exhibits while she worked--she told us that she'd beat him at Sorry! the night before, and asked him to take out the trash for her... we met him again at the tornado exhibit, watching the documentary...
Afterward (when I was a bit more hungry) Papa took me out to this very, very excellent Chinese restaurant, where we feasted on egg-drop soup, egg-rolls and crab rangoon, lemon chicken, Mongolian beef, hot and sour soup, fried and steamed rice. The outside of the place was old and run down--broken windows, old paint, and a battered sign that said "Chinese BBQ & Buffet," dull glass doors with "Pull" signs on the dingy metal handles. A sign on the door said "Closed to the Public Sunday 3-7." I was a bit dubious. Upon entering, this is what I discovered:
The buffet was closed, and the BBQ was nothing more than a few roast ducks and fowl, hung under a rotisserie light in a glass case. Everyone in the place spoke Chinese, including all the customers. High straight-backed chairs of elegantly curved black wood with blue seat covers were set around long banquet tables. Bright, beautiful pictures hung on the walls, and polished shutters covered the windows. Long white tablecloths covered the circular tables, chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A waiter asked us if we would like to be seated, and led us to a side booth. A huge (and very beautiful) copper-green-and-gilded, three-dimensional picture of a city park with a big arched stone bridge and flower vendors, hung right over the table. Dinner (as I related earlier) was the best I've ever had. Chinese food is one of my very favorite things to eat. : )
Afterward we visited the Asian Supermarket, and Papa made sure to take me through the meat section (cow lungs, chicken feet, silverfish...), just to watch me gag. We inspected the sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque (Buddha. blech.) marble statues they had on sale for extremely cheap prices. That place was amazing. (though that word does not adequately describe skinned and cleaned chicken feet--those things look like baby's fingers: gruesome.)
Desert at Braum's, then home. Very tired.
G'bye 'til sometime later.
~Annie
posted by Unknown at 7:26 PM
13 Comments:
they'd invent their own language, live together in very close proximity to keep warm, and... eat penguin for dinner. That's my guess, anyway. :)
Fatigue can be very pleasant, as long as you have nothing to do but sleep.
Uber-awesomeness d00ds.
*not entirely sane*
Though, when you think about it, how is eating chicken feet any worse than eating chicken stomachs?
Some people eat chicken gizzards (which is a chicken's stomach) all the time. I wonder how many of them would still eat chicken gizzards if they gutted the chicken, pulled out the stomach (gizzard), slit it open, empitied out the contents, stripped out the stomach lining, and then deicided to cook and eat the remaining stomach muscle.
Speaking about pioneers, anyone who has read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series (or other books that recount that time period) knows pioneers were very efficent with their butchered animals. I can't recall every hearing of pioneers eating chicken feet, but to my memory just about every part of that pig in Little House in The Big Woods was consumed or otherwise used, feet and head included.
wish i could read all this
miss you dreadfully
Sounds like you had fun.
Lovely post. I can ust see it. We go to a Chinese place in OKC occasionally, but I don't think it's the same one.
Shadow: o_O
Rundy: In primitive cultures, often they eat the whole animal out of necessity. Eventually, this "necessity" is replaced by tradition. That is why they still eat rotted shark meat and sheep's heads in Iceland--they don't have to any more, they just want to. X_X
I remember "Little House," but I still don't think the Ingalls family ate the intestines, the head, or the hooves.
FB: We miss you lots, too! :( I'll send you an email, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. I hope you're having a great time. :)
Mari: We did have fun.
Some people still eat gross things not because of tradition but because they think it tastes good. So its a "want to" not of "Let's keep the tradition alive" but "boy that old fashioned food sure tastes yummy"
I know some people who say liverwurst is wonderful . . . sufficent to say, I can't understand that. Other people maintain even today that pickled pigs feet are delicious to eat.
In the case of the Ingalls, I don't think they did anything with the pig's intestines . . . I do remember Laura and Mary playing with a ball made out of the pig's bladder. And I thought the pigs head was used for something edible (head cheese?) but I could be mis-remembering that.
But the whole issue of "grossness" (if we call it that) is interesting to my pondering mind.
What makes something gross? An entire animal is made up of chemical compounds. Why is a foot more gross than a rump? Why is eating an arm less gross than eating the small intestine? You clean a small intestine and eat it, or clean a chicken foot and eat it, and it will be no more likely to make you sick than eating a chicken leg.
What tastes good to us is a physcological interpretation of the chemical reaction on our tongue when we taste something. Some people think a food tastes wonderful while other people think it tastes revolting.
So what defines gross?
The answer, of course, is many things. It seems to me people often think that anything which is "gross" is unhealthful or dangerous . . . which one realizes is not true about many "gross" things, if you start thinking about it.
I Love Chinese food! It has to be the best. Our whole family enjoys the stuff so much that many times we have some chinese homemade rice dish every week. yum.
Happy very late birthday :-)
Very pretty music.
Lydia
Rundy:
Our tongues are designed to detect harmful substances before they enter the body.
This is not to be confused with a sensory-integration disorder, where a person dislikes many substances because they're too strong. Sometimes, a person's brain hasn't learned to accept a variety of tastes, because that particular nervous system doesn't properly process olofactory sensation. What most people call "picky" eating, I call a disorder. Go figure.
Here, there is a fine line to be crossed. Things that should be rejected as health hazards (rotten sharks, for instance), can be "taught" to the brain, and thus, people find pleasure in eating them. Some chemically active foods (like cabbage and brussel sprouts) are confused with harmful substances and rejected--this reaction is not "picky," per se.
"Gross" is not particularly subjective--some people have been desensitized, some people are over-sensitive. But in the end, gross is still gross. :P
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Lydia. You are the very first person that said anything about my music--I was beginning to wonder if anyone actually heard it (or cared). We make Chinese rice every so often too. Good stuff. :)
I've eaten chicken feet before....
I'm making the rounds to people I somewhat know and am asking permission to link to their blog on mine, mainly to keep the "RP ring" connected. So may I? If not, then just say so :)
You seem to reduce the function of the tongue to a removal of hazards from consumption. I agree that it is a function, but to reduce the purpose of the tongue to simply winnowing the healthy from that which is not, is like reducing the use of the eyes to avoiding danger.
A secularist (if I may coin that phrase?) evolutionist would view the function of our senses in a purely "survival" frame-work in which our eyes, ears, and mouths evovled simply as survival mechanisms. I would, in contrast, say that God has given them, and, more broadly, our senses are for percieving what He has done. God looked at creation and saw that it was good, and asthetic perception is a very real function of our senses. God has given us our eyes and mouths not just to percieve danger but also to enjoy what he has provided.
While people may have damaged senses and disorders, I would not say differing asthetic taste (I like this food, you don't) means someone is confused any more than one person liking the color red and another liking the color blue means that one of them is disordered. Much as I would love to call some of my younger siblings "disordered" for their eating habits, in truth I think God has created us with many different preferences in taste (in what we like visually, eating, and so on) so I couldn't in seriousness agree with your assertion that someone who doesn't like cabbage is "confused."
(Not sure if you were being entirely serious though . . .)
That said, I would agree that people deadened, desensitize, or prevert (to use moral imagery) their olofactory senses so that they take pleasure in that which is harmful or dangerous. One could come up with many examples. You mention eating rotten shark . . . but in Japan people eat this raw fish that is so posionious that it makes their lips tingle when they eat it. (Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the fish).
On grossness . . . I should say at this point that for me the discussion of grossness is something of an inside joke. Or maybe an etymological game. The goal is to play with the word, or someone's understanding until you get them to the place where they are forced to agree on technical terms that something is "gross" which they don't actually feel is gross, or vise-versa. So anyone who continues to read these comments ought to know I am continuing the disucssion in good humor and questionable seriousness.
So . . .
You assert that gross is not particularly subjective and that some people have simply been desensitized and others are overly sensitive. Two observations:
First, if gross is not subjective then I am sure you can present and defend the baseline of grossness to which we should all adhere.
Second, in framing the matter as "over sensitive" or "desensitize" you have made this a moral issue where there is a perfect standard (that is non-subjective). But what if grossness falls within the asthetic sphere? If the moral sphere is good vs. evil then might we say that the asthetic spehre is pleasing vs. gross?
Isn't the asthetic subjective? You might find it asthetically pleasing to live on the plains, while I find it asthetically pleasing to live in the forest. It isn't a moral question, or judgement.
Incidentally, some people do try to equate grossness with some form of morality . . . perhaps some poorly form idea that "unclean" things (as defined in the OT) are gross to eat, whereas "clean" things are not gross. Most people have difficulty being consistent with such a theory . . . there are few people today who wouldn't find it gross to eat locusts, and they were a "clean" food that John the Baptist munched on regularly.
I actually haven't heard your music. My Firefox browser says I need to install a plugin. If someone told me it was really really good I might go through the effort to install the plugin and listen to it once, but I generally have my speakers off so my computer isn't constantly beeping and boinging at me while I am working.
Shadow: FWM! (fine with me--I invented it myself)
Rundy: Since this is all in good fun... :o)
1. The "disorder" is not in personal preference, but in strange aversion (or lack thereof) to certain senses. So, this is not red vs. blue, it's the appreciation of all colors vs. hatred of perfectly good colors. That's sensory integration disorder, and a characteristic of picky eaters. They don't like something perfectly good, because they have an unprecedented aversion to its aroma.
Many times, food is negatively associated in the brain. This isn't SI, but merely a perfectly natural, perfectly correct mental processing of a certain food. For instance, the smell of a dish at an Indian restaurant reminds me of a stableyard, so I refuse to eat much of it. Is this "pickiness," per se? Not really. In time, I'd probably grow to like it, but for now, it smacks of Toxic Waste, and I'd prefer not to eat it.
Aesthetic is subjective to a point.
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