Salad Nights

Last night can only be described as “Misadventures in Dining.”

It all started when I got home from work and we had errands to run.  It seemed every time we completed one, either Julian or I would remember another that we might as well take care of while we were out.  I finally put my foot down when we were less than three miles from home, and I was too tired and sore to survive another errand.  

Understand that both of us have old spinal injuries and suffer from chronic pain.  While going to the post office, the UPS Store, Cooks Warehouse and Target may not seem like much, to me it was enough that Costco was out of the question.

It must have been a bit much for Julian as well, because when we got home and he threw something on the stove for my usually-hungry son, after sitting down for a moment to rest,  he forgot entirely about the stove.

This became evident when our basement Storm went into the kitchen, and then yelled that the plastic had melted.  Julian jumped up from the computer to check on his disaster, and I stayed where I was, cruising Facebook.  I heard noises of cleaning and pot-and-pan clashing, and my son came out of his room and had food handed to him.  Then I heard a “thunk” and sharp, loud expletive.  I jumped up to make sure no one was maimed.

Unfortunately, the “thunk” was Julian slamming his finger in a cabinet.  He asked me to check the garbage disposal to find out why it wouldn’t work, and went to the bathroom.

The water was on and the disposal was off, so I stuck my hand in, pulled out the chunk of carrot that had become wedged between two of the blades, and turned on the disposal to wash the last of the nearly-laminated chick  peas away.  

When I turned around, Julian was back, and so was our basement Storm.  Julian said, “I want to make a very bad suggestion.”

I looked at his hand, which had a very red index finger, and said, “You want to go out to eat.”

“Yes, I want to take us all to Longhorn.  Look at my finger; it’s turning black and starting to swell.”

We all decided that the cook had every right to decide that, and I went to get my son and tell him we were going out.  He said he needed to finish his food, but was more than happy to eat again.

Julian put one of our many miracle Chinese liniments on his finger and, once we were all coated and shod and ready, we got in the car to go to Longhorn Steakhouse at Toco Hills.

Yeah, that worked well.

The basement Storm and I were both craving salads, and Julian was craving....well, pancakes, but he had wanted Longhorn.  We sat down and looked at the menu and realized that, in the six months or so since we had last been there, they had entirely redone the menu and there was nothing that looked good to her, all the salads had either grilled meat or bacon (since Julian and I are both allergic to beef and pork, these seemed like an exceptionally bad idea), except for the one that would have sucked with bleu cheese dressing on it--I was not in the mood for oranges and strawberries anyway--and nothing looked good to Julian.  Robyn, of course, would have been quite happy to devour a 30 ounce Porterhouse For Two, but the vote was three to one against, and so he lost.

As we were getting up to leave, we (unfortunately) asked the manager to let our waiter know that we would not be dining there--we had barely sipped our water and had not even touched the bread.  I say it was unfortunate that we spoke to her because she went into full Used Car Sales mode, trying so hard to get us to stay that she may well have convinced us not to go back for a long, long time.

Next, we tried Lettuce Souprise You.  Julian and I used to eat there years ago, before they went way down hill and then went entirely away.  We had not yet tried them in the fifteen years since they reopened, so we thought we should check them out.  To make a long story short, it is not what it was years ago, and we may or may not try it again when it’s earlier in the day and we have a bit more leisure time.

We were running out of close places that closed later than 9 that served decent salads.  I suggested Houston’s since I had not been there since my divorce fifteen years ago, so we went to the Houston’s at Lenox.

For those of you unfamiliar with Houston’s, it is an upscale restaurant chain owned by an Atlanta man.  While I do not know him personally, both my ex-mother-in-law and one of my former employers knew him, and it had been my former mother-in-law’s favorite restaurant.  Despite all that, we decided to try them.

Of course, I say they were upscale.  We walked in and were assaulted by no fewer than three televisions and a volume of sound that would make a sports bar during The Big Game proud.  Now, I don’t know about anyone reading this, but I was always taught that television is not something that belongs in a dining room, and that yelling over other peoples’ dinner is rude.  Given that, it was a bit of a shock when the waitress scolded my son for having his hat on before he even got to the table, but had not said anything to him when he walked in the door.  They don’t allow hats in the dining room, but they do allow drunken monkeys.

When we told the waiter that we were going elsewhere, he didn’t even bid us good evening or anything else.  He just walked off without a word.

At this point, we came up with two remaining options before we considered giving up and going to IHOP.  One we could be pretty well guaranteed to work, but it’s a bit expensive and we don’t eat there often.  We ended up at Six Feet Under instead.

Now, we’re an interesting lot to share meals together.  Julian and I are allergic to mammals.  That’s beef, pork, lamb, venison, buffalo....I could go on, but I’m already hungry.  Robyn, my son, has to avoid sugar.  Storm absolutely cannot eat anything with any spice to it, and is specifically allergic to oregano.  Conversely, Julian, Robyn and I love spicy food, and Robyn and Storm are both quite happy to eat beef in front of us, and the rest of us have no qualms about eating sweets in front of Robyn.  Sometimes it can be difficult finding a place that fits us all.

Six Feet Under is a seafood place that has a certain Cajun flair.  It didn’t matter; Storm sucked down her Chowder like she’d never seen food before, and only complained towards the end that it was way too spicy for her.  Julian and I ate the fried scallops off the top of it for her and, while I could barely tell there was pepper in them, they were very good.  Personally, I got a giant bowl of fish stew and an awesome salad, Robyn got salmon BLT sliders, and Julian got a seafood platter and....the worst chicken tortilla soup in the known ‘verse.

It started out as an effed up evening, and ended up Six Feet Under and pleasant.  Now if only the seafood party bar would 86 the televisions, it would have been perfect.

Don't Be A Wirehead.

     Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

     Are you alarmed yet?  Are you grabbing for your gun?  Are you worried about your children?  Are you hanging on every news article, every news page, every mention of school shootings, theater shootings, violence in the streets that you can find?

     Are you afraid your guns are going to be taken away?  Do you give money to the NRA?

     Do you think guns are evil?  Do you think every gun has the potential to, or the likelihood of, being used in a murder?  Do you think that every gun owner is a potential murderer?

     Do you think it's important to watch network or cable news?

     Do you work as a news broadcaster?

     If you answered yes to a substantial number of these questions, chances are that you ARE the problem.

     I've been paying attention, especially since Columbine.  I don't watch the news.  Occasionally, I will listen to NPR, which plays only news in the mornings and afternoons when I am commuting.  I have to limit this, because if I don't it causes severe depression that can last for days.  If I were to watch the news, one of two things would happen.  A) It would be much worse, or B) If I were to make a habit of it, I might become inured to the horror of it all.

     The point is, every time there is a major slaughter of this sort, it's blasted on all fronts at high volume, so much so that even someone like me who works to avoid the news can't escape.  It's on the television, the radio, the newspaper, the internet....it's everywhere. Whoever just wreaked havoc is now famous!  Often dead, but famous.

     Consistently, thereafter there are "copycat" crimes.

     The problem is defined in the name: "copycat".  Most of these people (not all, of course.  All generalities are false) want attention.  They know they'll get attention by doing this horrific thing because every other person who's ever done it in a big way (as far as they know) got loads and loads of attention.  Like a toddler, they want the attention, and don't really care whether it's positive attention or negative attention, so long as lots of people are paying attention.

     So, by watching the news, by talking about it with your friends and getting them to watch the news, by blogging about the news and Facebooking about the news, you're just giving the sorts of people who are in the state of mind that they are willing to perform such an atrocious act a reason to do it.

     Let me ask a less antagonistic question now: Do you have a legitimate need to know every detail of these tragedies?  Or, to put it another way, Do you really need to know any of this?

     If you really examine the question, and examine yourself realistically, and your life, I think you will find you do not.  Oh, perhaps if you were related to one of the children or teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, you would need to know.

     Did I need to know?

     No.

     I did not seek out this information.  I work with a number of people who are socked into the 24 hour media frenzy, and feed happily through any outlet they can find, and I knew about it within an hour of it happening because it became the discussion at large.  (One of the disadvantages to working in Cubicle-land.)  When I got in my truck to commute home in the afternoon, my radio had been left on NPR and they were covering it.  When the tears became uncontrollable, I changed the station.

     I did NOT need to know.

     I think the news media has a lot to answer for.  They are no longer purveyors of "news" (news  - /n(y)o͞oz/ - Noun - Newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events) but of ratings.  They will say almost anything if it will get them the attention they desire.  I'm not saying that they make things up.  What I'm saying is that they pick the stories that will get the strongest emotional reactions, because those are the ones everyone watches.  It does not mean that those are important stories.  It means that they are ones that will be watched by people who will also watch American Idol, Survivor, Honey Booboo, Dog, The Walking Dead, Adult Swim, Two Broke Girls, and especially CSI and NCIS, or pretty much anything else someone filmed and sold to a network executive.

     Look, I'm not saying anyone reading this is bad, or evil, or anything.  However, your behaviors, your choices, influence the world.  If you encourage these kinds of outrageous news stories (which you do by watching them, reading them, sharing them, discussing them) then you are also encouraging the results of those stories.  

     Years ago, when we lived in Athens (home of the dratted inbred English bulldogs), we had several friends in different aspects of police work.  One was a detective, and found that watching shows like CSI and Law and Order made it easier for him to catch criminals because they committed the same crimes and made the same stupid mistakes.  Another friend, a "beat cop", laughed about gang shoot-outs because, invariably, one of these guys would get hold of a pistol or some similar weapon and hold it like they were in the movies: arm locked in front of them at just above shoulder height, with the gun held at a 90 degree angle to the vertical.  The results were predictable: squeeze the trigger and fire a line of bullets until the gun smashed them in the face and knocked them out through the joys of recoil.

     It apparently made them quite easy to capture.

     As to the whole discussion of guns, A) The Second Amendment guarantees us the right to defend ourselves with guns, not to hunt with them; B) The Second Amendment also calls for a civilian militia rather than a standing army.  Not so sure how well that would go over these days....C) No one (except for a few particularly loud idiots/power mongers) is actually calling to seize all the guns; and D) I'm all for registering the gun owners; not so sure the value of registering the guns themselves.  I'm willing to debate that, but I'm not going into my reasoning here and now.

     In the end, I suppose the real point of this long, drawn-out and slightly abusive rant is this:

     SHUT UP AND THINK FOR YOURSELF.