The Frivolities That Feed My Soul

ears ago a fellow manager at work, and I, discovered a book called The Gallery of Regrettable Food, which takes old 1950s cookbooks and mocks them. It is the best site for capturing the industrialization of food that happened during this period, and the outpouring of Branded Recipes which led to much culinary horror.

Cher and I wasted a good half hour in the office peeing ourselves over the photos and their descriptions. (None of the staff who wandered in and out during that time thought the book was as funny as we did... which is why Cher and I got along so well.)

The author has much of this Regrettable Food on a web site (along with a lot of other crazy stuff from the 1950s) and I like to visit it annually for a little laugh. Here are a few samples, along with Lileks' commentary.

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FROM: "Meat Meat Meat!"

It's steak a la Ugarte! When decorating your meal, make sure to arrange the onions in the shape of Peter Lorre's face.

Garnish with small, inedible onions. WARNING! The carrots here are not to be eaten. Your manly meat-a-rifficness will diminish if you eat the carrots. Vegetables are for commies.


Moving too slow to be measured by the eye of man, the Great Meat Glacier pushed inexorably south.

There are many meals in the Gallery I've described in terms of inadvertant stomach evacuations, but this is perhaps the most vomitous dish I have ever seen. Just Rupe 'n' Heat!

What were they thinking? Didn't anyone remark how much this looks like a skillet full of spew? I'd suggest that this entire book was made by vegetarians, a sly piece of propaganda, but even the beans look awful.

That concludes the Better Homes Guide to Meat, and I think I speak for us all: Thank God.


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FROM : 10 PM Cookery

To remind them they're men, make sure to embed a batch of wriggling, erect weiners in a sea of beans.

According to the illustration above, it was not unusual in the 50s for a party to include a friend who lacked a body. No one seems to notice, of course; why, it's Ten PM.




If you think it's an artful presentation, just remember, it's ten PM, and you've had a few.

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From: "Jello Confronts the Depression"

As much as I dislike molds, particularly green ones, this example is exquisitely rendered, and one of the few pieces of actual art found anywhere in the Gallery. This is what happens in a Depression: men or women who might otherwise have had good careers in fine arts are reduced to turning out Jell-O illustrations, adding artistic flourishes where they can.


It has an almost Gauginesque quality.

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From: "The Unbearable Sadness of Vegetables"

It wasn’t until much later, when they caught the First Lutheran Church standing over the body of another housewife over in Cass County, that they realized that the spire had been stalking and murdering women for years. This explained why so many women got that creepy feeling that someone was watching them - and when they turned around, they just saw a church. Later, they’d think: wait a minute. There’s no church in our side yard.

a sleepy ghostbuster

Picked up a head cold this week, but it's my weekend so no big deal. I stayed in bed reading comics, then napped, then made some food (chick pea salad, eggplant Parmesan, and zucchini bread), and spent the rest of the evening palooking around on the internet while Fernando simultaneously watched Ghostbusters, Serenity, and Stargate.

The one nice thing about head colds is I don't get headaches at the same time. Maybe my mouth hangs open all night and I don't clench my teeth--who knows.

Anyway... time to roll off to bed. Must...get...off...couch.... Must...resist...checking...new iTunes releases...go...to...bed...fool...!

Nobody hipped me to that, dude

Tonight it was all fun and festivity at work. At midnight was the release of the 4th book in a very popular teen series, so we did things up Harry Potter style. Staff dressed in gowns, and we had reams of teens and post-teens in gowns and masquerade masks. I don't have much swank wear, so I wore a peasant top and ruffly skirt and huge earrings and called it Hippie Chick Goes to the Prom.

It's fun to be part of this kind of event, and even funner because I'm never in charge these days. I'm what Friend Garraty used to call "Johnny on the Spot" -- I just run around and find things that need doing. And because I've been working floor shifts my feet didn't hurt until about hour 8. Yay! I've been in training!

The teen novel genre was mostly crap when I was growing up, so it's nice to see how it's expanded (ever since Meg Cabot figured out that you take Sex and the City, sex it down, and stick it in a short format and -- woo! Sales.) I read the Judy Blumes and such as a pre-teen, and serious historical writers like Scott O'Dell who is no longer in print except for Island of the Blue Dolphins. Sweet Valley High was not my thing. My friends and I had to skip straight to the adult books (Stephen King and fantasy novels for some, Shakespeare and Judith Krantz for myself.)

The only *down* point of this evening was five assholes who raced their motorcycles through the parking lot, right past the store fronts (including ours, where teenagers were strolling in and out). I mean RACED. A couple of them doing their little Fonzie pop a wheelie moves. For FUCK's sake. There's not a lot that can really, and suddenly, piss me off--but drag racing and such is one of them. It's like the HEIGHT of extreme-azoid self-centeredness. I called the cops, but by then they were parked at the nearby bar, so I doubt anything was done about it. Maybe I should have gone PeeWee Herman Vigilante and knocked their bikes over. (And without dancing the Tequila dance after.)

Annnnyway. Time to take my corpse off to bed cause I work again tomorrow.

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

[The following stolen from an email I sent my ma and bro this evening. A good scholar always gives her sources.]


Today I woke up in time to hear the news on the radio. Here's a recap:

- man decapitated
- Montreal man found headfirst, dead, in manhole
- guy kills his teen son's girlfriend
- the hockey dude beating up a goalie story
- and it's the one year anniversary since Cedrica Provencher (Quebec's big missing child case) has been missing

I couldn't believe it. I just stared at my Barbie clock radio in shock. That's it Barbie? That's all you got for me?!! JESUS!

I went into work, dazed, telling everyone: "A man was decapitated by a stranger on a bus...." It's also one of those SUPER super humid days--must be the most humid yet this summer. Where it's not raining, and yet you feel like you've been rained on. If this were a novel, the weather would be an instance of pathetic fallacy.

That evening I had a customer who was picking up books for her kids.
Her six kids.
She has six kids, and is getting a divorce.
She has six kids and is divorcing the husband who cheated on her.
She has six kids and is divorcing the husband who cheated on her with her closest, bestest friend.
And she caught him on his Blackberry.

It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world. So I came home and made banana-strawberry pancakes with vegan cream, and pistachio chocolate milk, and watched a cartoon movie with my husband and my three cats. My equilibrium that returned.

Kittylove Makes the World Go Round

One of the greatest love affairs I've ever witnessed is between my husband and his cat.

Tigernan, or Nombly, or Nomble-boms, was brought into our lives by my old roommate Delyriam. She agreed to *temporarily take care of him* (he was homeless) but we both knew that was a laugh.

I remember first meeting him--I opened the door to Delyriam's bedroom and there was this stripey guy curled up in her laundry basket. Well of course I loved him, cause I love all cats. His name was Tiger--how original--so Delyriam and I renamed him Tigernan, after the Irish pirate. But that was often shortened to Noms, and then Nombly, and now he'll answer to either. Nombly suit him somehow... cause he's all sweet and kind and cuddly.

I was dating Fernando at the time, and when he and Nombly met it was love at first time. As two children with Sketchy Pasts (Fernando was from a foster home, Nombly from the streets) they were soul mates. They're both worriers, and they turn to each other when they need shelter from a threat-filled world.

Whenever Fernando comes home Nombly just wants to be held by him; and when Fernando has a Nombly in his arms, you can see on his face that maybe the world is not such a bad place after all.

[I took this photo 5 minutes ago when I turned my head and saw this major cuddling session going on. The other pics are from the archives.]

The Story of Me: In Bookmarks

When my brother cleaned out the back of a closet before moving, he found a box that must have been my stuff stored in the Parental Basement, which accidentally made its way into his hands.

I threw out everything in it except this:

The date on the back says 1983, when I was 10 years old. Clearly Chewbacca should be added to two lists:

(1) My heroes. I always remember Yoda, but who was my hero long before Yoda? The tall furry one. Chewbacca, or--as I heard in a French translation once--Chico-ba. (Must be his pimp name.) Of course, I now know that Chewie and Yoda are old war buddies.

(2) My vegan influences. My animal-loving tendencies must have even trumped my feminist tendencies because it took me a long time to get over Leia calling Chewie a "walking carpet."

Sadly, I don't have one of these (though I do have a zebra backpack named Chappie.)

and the nets go on

I once said to my bro that the problem with the internets, as a pastime, is that it's open-ended. If you pick up a book to read, you're given an *out* every chapter, and if questions occur to you as you read (Where was Dickens born anyway? What does this word mean exactly? I need to see a map of this area.) you won't usually follow up on them, because you want to get on with the story, and it's too much bother.

Maybe if you have a gazillion cable channels, TV can be similar to the nets--or with the increasing abilities to choose when to view something. But otherwise, TV has built in limits. You don't control the programming.

But the nets just goes onnnn and onnnn and onnnn.

I've been researching for my book, but I'm loathe to turn on my laptop to check out a fact, or read up on someone. Because I know I'll check my email, and my dad will forward me an article that pisses me off, and not only do I need to respond but I have to back myself up with info, so the googling begins, but googling always leads to more googling because side stories catch my eye, etc.

I don't consider it a waste of time--I learn lots--but it's maybe a Misdirection of time. I need one of those child protectors that stops you from going to certain sites.