Under-Stimulated/ The Art of Manliness/Emasculating Waffles

You would think that I would be grateful to have a Saturday off after working them for two weeks in a row, but for this evening I'm in a mood that is beyond depressed and bored. The past five days of dull gloomy grey skies and occasional rain/wet snow have dulled all the edge off any wits I had left in me. The only thing I could think of doing for "shaking it up a bit" was trudging out to get an actual shake (an exotically flavoured one) at Jerry's Food Emporium, and heading back home*. I'm so appalled, saddened, and somewhat disturbed at realizing and admitting that this was the only wild idea I could come up with. It was a double coconut gelato milkshake, and I would like to think that it would be a worthy rival of say the legendary, yet fictitious, five dollar shake at Jack Rabbit Slim's in Pulp Fiction. Maybe it was, but my spirits were too low to register it; I still returned back thinking that my time could have been used more wisely.

After I came home with my big cup full of drinkable instant heart attack, and gave some thought to going to the casino south of town for a thrill, and just about caved to the idea to hitting the Blackjack tables. First, I drilled and tested myself as a refresher with table strategy and card counting with a Blackjack app for almost an hour. I played 98% of my hands correctly with using orthodox basic play strategy (including for doubles, splits, and surrenders), but I only did an abysmal 47% with correct tracking and counting with the high-low system on a six deck shoe, only putting me at a 51.4% win ratio (pushes included) whilst sticking to minimum bets, and I wouldn't call it a lucrative trip there unless that figure could get above 60%**. I don't imagine I'll do any better with the extra noise and distractions over there. Even with boning up on things mnemonically, I figured the house would still have too much of a statistical advantage over me. I'm in too much of a funk to do anything that mentally intensive. Mathematical reasoning beat out my reckless impulsivity, and I instead opted for the safer way of doubling my money: folding it over once and then sticking it back into my pocket. I stayed home just watching comedies on Netflix. That didn't even do much to cheer me up.

As unmanly as I feel for being an adult spontaneously running out in the middle of the evening to get a PG-rated calorie bomb to slurp on, and shoving aside the thought of casino gaming; the one thing that would make me feel even more embarrassed to admit to doing as a man, if I actually wasted admission money to attend it, is going to the actual MAN SHOW 2014 that is happening this weekend at Prairieland. My commentary in my entry about MAN SHOW 2013 pretty much sums my attitude towards all that. It's one thing, as a guy, to just feel down, unimportant, rejected, and powerless at times, but it's a whole other realm of stupidity happening there when you are constantly doing too much going over the top to over-compensate for all that. The Man Show is there to exploit the real dummies for that. They just run short of trying to peddle pecker pills and codpieces to them there. It's that kind of testosterone-driven shit show stupidity that I just don't want to have any part of. I'll be better off with the milkshake, thank you. If I really am so depressed, this aorta-clogging concoction may at least kill me quickly.

It's not like I have to "go back into training" for knowing now to be an average guy, but I was curious to see what was out there on the net in this regard. I found the ART OF MANLINESS website, and started to peruse it. "How to Tie a Tie" . . . great to know, "10 Worst Products Invented for Men" . . . educational and hilarious. This site almost had my respect and almost sold me that this could do wonders for re-instilling my manliness . . . that is until I discovered the waffle recipe on one of the links.

WHAT!!!???

I don't care if they are the savory kind instead of sweet, I don't care if they are being served with some wild rabbit that you trapped and killed yourself with a snare line fashioned out of your own plucked and braided chest hair. In my mind, waffles ≠ manliness. This man site instantly turned into Chatelaine once I spotted that. I am a guy, and (unfortunately) I already know how to make goddamned waffles, thank you very much. I would count this as actually one of the more emasculating talents that I have. I don't ever make them for me, because really I hate the fuckin' things. They are made by a bulky space-consuming appliance for that singular specific use only, and it if doesn't work right, you feel doubly screwed. Finding that recipe there was also a funny juxtaposition to have as a "manly" food along with all the other manly food fare that you supposed to be able to kill, catch, and prepare with just a gun, fishhook, or a knife. Waffles do nothing for me except be preparation intensive (lots of prep time for very little), attention demanding and finicky to work with (like working around drama-queens), bland, and stupid dimply things that you can't spread stuff evenly onto. Eat some toast for Crissakes! The only time ever I make them is for someone else. The people (who by now know how much I hate making them) that I serve them to don't ever give me enough thanks or anything else in return for doing so*** , and thus it's a very unrewarding thing to do, so I feel exploited; and the one of the main rules of manliness, I'd presume, is to never let yourself become exploited. Therefore . . . waffles do nothing for my manliness!

I hope Sunday has a lot more coming to me for something for more engaging stimulation. However,I expect it will be windy and rain (again). Maybe I'll be a bit sharper mentally and actually try out the casino, or at the very least encounter something else crazy to attack and apply reason to.

* - Woohoo, I know . . . so manly <sarcasm>, but it was a better option for me at the time than drinking alcohol, as I had no wish or mood to make my brain operate with anymore impairment than I think it already has.

**-  Nine possible hand playing strategy outcomes, in Blackjack game theory: 1. Hand played correctly/beat the dealer - orthodoxy pays off, 2. Hand played incorrectly/dealer still loses - you're just a lucky bastard, 3. Hand played correctly/dealer still wins - it sucks, but it happens, 4. Hand played incorrectly/dealer wins - you are just playing stupidly, 5. Correct play/tying (push)with the dealer - wasted time, 6. Incorrect play/push with dealer - you were stupid, but the fates have forgiven you, 7. Blackjack/ automatic win - most desirable, 8. Correct play/surrendering- Oops, too bad, 9. Incorrect play/surrendering - stop playing immediately when you turn into this kind of idiot. The real money is made with opportunities for doubling and splitting cards and knowing when to take them. I don't bother pissing around with the insurance bets, or else there would be eleven outcomes. The betting strategy with the card counts taken into consideration is too complicated for me to explain.

***- If you're a woman and really want me to be genuinely happy to make &#^%in'  waffles for you, you better be prepared to clear your calendar for a whole weekend of doing stuff with me that would make Caligula blush!

The Passion of the Yeast/Pseudo-Lent/Vegan Stupidity

It's Easter weekend, and I'm stuck with working throughout all of it. I just arrived home tonight after work; welcomed by the pleasant sound of my latest creation coming alive. I mixed together a batch of beer (real ale)* wort early yesterday, Good Friday, and now the yeast is doing its thing. I hear that lovely sound of respired CO₂ thumping and pulsating from the air lock of my closed primary fermentation system. It has a smooth and relaxing steady rhythm like that of a human heartbeat at rest. It reminds me of, and is putting me in the mood to listen to, the opening track of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Brewing seemed to be the proper thing to do given the occasion. Taking and blending these ordinarily inert ingredients together to make something that starts to foam up and emit heartbeat sounds is the closest thing I can do to perform something that resembles some sort of resurrection.

I'm reminded that the Lent season is ending; not that I really practice any such thing myself. It just brought me to thinking about voluntary dietary restrictions in general and the (mostly superstitious) reasons that people do such things. I was also prompted to think about the subject of meatless eating because I realize that I absent-mindedly forgot to pack up some steaks that someone gifted to me before I came home, and I'm in the middle of kicking myself about it. I began contemplating about my own eating habits, and how unwittingly they have become quite erratic for me as of late. I have no meat left now, and I'm down to my last few containers of frozen homemade soups, homemade pickles and other canned preserves, plus another few options of what I have stored in my pantry. My intentional restriction to eating just this stuff to the point where it's running out is sort of a pseudo-Lent: it's a purposeful reduction and elimination of my stores to make it easier in having less things to muddle through once I progress to the arduous task of taking my spring cleaning into the kitchen, and for the ease of re-organizing and re-stocking with healthier stuff later. I'll be resuming a high protein-slow-carb diet for my training season.

Overall, I try not to be a fussy eater, and I get adventurous enough to try something new out at least once. However, the thing that I know that I could never get into is total vegetarianism; more specifically veganism. I actually do eat less meat than I used to, but the reason is stemmed more out of economy. I really do seem to need some form of animal protein each day, at the very least in the form of eggs or milk. I did go through a fasting spell once where I gave up eating all forms of animal protein (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) along with refined flours and sugar for a week for the sake of following a strict body cleanse regimen I was performing at the time. During that week of this special diet, the only thing that I lost was seven days of energy and sanity. I was very miserable and lethargic throughout that ordeal. Sure, it could be argued that it was the result of going through some sort of detox process, but given the way I felt through it all, and the very unnoticable 'improvement' I sensed afterward, I doubt if it was giving me any benefits. The only time I felt better after it was from eating a chicken dinner when it came time to finish the damn thing.

Being an occasional quasi-vegetarian isn't an entirely repulsive thought to me, or at least I'm not completely opposed to the idea. I do find myself enjoying more varieties of veggies and salads than I ever have, and I know and respect that there would be some significant benefit ecologically for this planet if we halved our intake of meat, or else just excluded animal flesh even for just one meal each day, or exclude it for one entire day of a week. The vegan meme though to me is a whole other issue of mindless extremism. Of all the real life people I've encountered who professed to me to be practicing vegans, very few of them struck me as ideal specimens of health (or sanity for that matter). They sure as hell didn't look like any of the models that PETA exploits for their campaign billboards. They either looked quite sickly, weak, and anemic; or else they fell on the other end of the spectrum of being (surprisingly) grossly obese. These latter people seemed to have over-compensated for the lack of protein by boosting and bulking up their intake of sugar, highly-processed hydrogenated plant oils/trans-fats, and excessive salt for flavouring. They looked like even more abnormally misshapen blobs possibly due to water-retention, probably suffering liver** and pancreatic issues or God knows only what other metabolic problems because of insufficient enzymes, or perhaps they were becoming hormonally screwed up from the onslaught of phytoestrogens from an excess of soybean products.

Some aspects of a strictly all vegetable diet are no better for you than having a high meat protein diet. There are lots of unhealthy fast/snack food around that would comply with a "vegan" diet, e.g. french fries fried in soy/corn oil, potato chips, and palm oil based dessert whip. There are no animal products at all in the beer I'm making, so technically it's vegan fare too. Even though a pint of beer and a plate of chips at the pub may qualify as vegan friendly, no one can say that it's the healthiest thing for you.

It's the personalities of these vegan-folk that bother me the most. I haven't yet met one of these vegans who didn't have a sanctimonious attitude about their chosen lifestyle, and felt some need to preach about it, while belittling others who do eat meat and are content with just being their natural omnivore selves. I have to laugh at the ones who endeavour to be so particular, and take such a hard core stand about having no "disgusting meat" enter their bodies, but have no such restrictions or concerns about smoking***. I saw an all-vegan recipe book in a book store, with the woman author on the front cover who had both her arms permanently covered and sleeved with a bunch of skank-ass tattoos. No "poisonous meat" for her, but it's evident that she never gave any second thought about how many toxic compounds were in that ink that she chose to inject and impregnate her skin with. Someone like that just strikes me as being just another annoyingly ditsy hypocritical shit-head. Just like the fashion dummies and celebrity spokespersons who gain publicity by admitting that they just can't bring themselves to eat those sweet little cows, but apparently have no problem with buying, wearing, and hoarding shoes and purses made from the their cute little hides, or tucking their asses into the seat of a Mercedes or Bentley made with the same leather.

The vegans and vegetarians who are so because of their religious beliefs have equally annoyed me as well; just the ones who claim that they have a "better religion and society" because they are vegetarian, with a "respect for all life". One woman, a new immigrant from India I met, was trying to explain all that very same bullshit to me some while ago. I held my tongue, but I could have been really tough and cruel on her, by bluntly and unrelentingly lambasting and pointing out that their largely Hindu vegetarian society hasn't prompted enough of a "respect for all life" to stop all the gang rapes that have been reported there in the last while, nor does it seem to be doing anything to curb the alarming number of female infanticides that regularly occur there (so poor families won't be forced later to pay some ridiculous customary dowry to get a daughter married), nor does it do anything to fully extinguish the segregating caste system that they still have, where such incidents have occurred where the impoverished Dalits (the so-called "untouchables") are sometimes beaten to death for doing something as minor using the "wrong" well for fetching the life essential of water. If I did get around to saying all that, without even mentioning the grinding poverty there and the lower life expectancy, I would have ended by asking her that if her "society and religion" were so much "better" there, then why in the hell did she bother to move here? Oh goodie for you if you were born and raised in an ancient culture living on a tropical subcontinent with a convenient year round growing season for fruits and vegetables. In a climate where dead flesh would spoil and go rancid in minutes without proper refrigeration, and where there is no clean enough water to process it, vegetarianism was/is a sensible and practical lifestyle there. This person didn't think at all, before she made her ethno-centric judgement, that hers was not a cultural paradigm that jibes well with living in a region where early settlement needed to account for only a four month growing season, extreme winters, and a need to can, dry, freeze and preserve food; which degrades the nutrient content significantly. Having fresh meat, poultry, or fish available was necessary for society to establish itself here. People must be cognisant and appreciative of that before they criticize. I'd like to see her and the other ignorant vegan dummies go up north and try to argue with the Inuit about meatless eating and social betterment with that kind of stupid self-righteous attitude.

The evolution of hominids into Homo Sapiens wouldn't have happened at all if our brain growth wasn't accelerated and fostered out of the necessity of trying to survive through an Ice Age by eating meat from hunting. Otherwise, we would have turned out to be not much different than pot-bellied ruminating gorillas who need to use most of their time foraging and eating to acquire their protein. Even within the perspective of modernity, if everyone was to spontaneously become a vegan here (as the more radical ones wish would happen) in this region of Canada, that means extra taxing and exploiting of the land and water resources in some other temperate/tropical agriculture zones somewhere else to grow more, and use more fuel for importing and shipping of this perishable nutritious living produce that we couldn't up grow here to sustain us for eight months of the year. We weren't made to live strictly on grain, which is the plant based thing we could do for a local homegrown vegetarian option throughout the winter months if we were to actively limit energy and costs for shipping. Furthermore, the grain-based diet itself has undergone lots of negative press in the past decade.

The other ignorant criticism at the global level that bothers me is the blaming of Western nations for not doing enough agriculturally to promote conditions more conducive to freeing the world from eating so much animal protein, and growing more protein rich crops. There is a real failure to note the interdependence. Canada (specifically here in Saskatchewan) is already the largest producer of lentils, a protein rich pulse crop, in the world; it's the Middle East, and other regions of Africa and South Asia where they are most frequently exported to, with India being the largest consumer. Ironically, our lentils are being shipped to places where climatically they are even better suited for growing such crops if their resources were managed better. I heard it speculated that if the entire pulse crop production in Saskatchewan alone were to totally fail in a year, there would be a real possibility of widespread famine and/or violent unrest due to hikes in food prices in those regions populated by those on strictly vegetarian diets. The real points of shame are that these nations and regions are not committing themselves to enough of an effort for a peaceful and stable political climate to enable themselves to establish their own sustainable agriculture systems, infrastructure, and practices to allow them to produce enough of their own food locally. The other great shame is ultimately the higher cost and fuel waste for us to be transporting this stuff half way around the world for them, as fuel prices go up due to terrorism threats from some of these very regions who demand this stuff, and there is added inefficiency due to skirting around and avoiding dangerous shipping lanes, like around the horn of Africa, where piracy is a real threat.

I don't have all the answers on how to live rightly, but I do know that being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't automatically make you a better person, although those who are would like us to believe it does. A lot of people have forgotten, or don't realize, that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

* - Hydrometer reading: 1.043 for the original gravity. I speculate a 5.2% alcohol by volume end result, barring stalls and accidents.
** - The Dalai Lama even eats meat on occasion, more so to settle and remedy a pre-existing liver condition he has. Being a Buddhist monk, he is a vegetarian at heart, and not tuned into making other beings suffer, but he's also not so foolish about it as to compromise his own health. 
***- Tobacco and "other-than"

Re-Purposing Litter: A New Type of Green Justice

We took a great big giant stride into spring this week. I halted any full-scale spring cleaning for a while because it was pointless to do while all the dust and debris was being tracked into the place, and blown around with all the vicious wind we've been having lately. It's hard to scrounge up energy for it also after runs in such wind. The absence of puddles and road slush finally got me ambitious enough to fix up my bike. I accidentally destroyed two inner tubes getting it done (due to a tire defect), but it's done. I'm so much happier to finally see some green grass peeking and poking up above the dead mulch. I also gleaned a small profit in refunds since the thaw started.

I have a ritual, once spring thaw comes, of being proactive with doing something about some of the litter that's exposed once the snow recedes; as a winter's worth of evidence of morons rambling through the neighbourhood gets revealed on the sidewalks, the streets, the alleys, and the nearby parks. Waste and litter (and those who pitch it) sicken me. I wish there was a solution getting rid of these ghetto-scum idiot culprits with the stupid and lazy mindset that perpetuates all this, but that will have to be a topic for another entry. I could bitch and moan about the problem, or I could turn the lemons into lemonade. I clean up some of it. It's just a passive and casual thing I do when I walk the dog in the morning and evening.  The pitched coffee cups we find are reused for cleaning up after my own dog during the walk, and are disposed of properly, and we collect the bottles and cans we come across for recycling. This habit started back in the days when I tended a garden space on another property I was living on, I would do the same ritual every spring and throughout summer. This spot was in the centre of the "party district" in town, so there was always a substantial enough mass of strewn-about recyclables left behind. Enough such that after I collected and took all this junk to SARCAN, our provincial recycling outlet, I got enough from the refunds to use for purchasing my seed stock, and other gardening supplies; the amount from the refunds always completely covered the costs for doing all of that.

From the commercial side of the alley, I reclaimed the wood from broken and discarded shipping pallets, and built composters and bedding frames from them. It all yielded to me some fresh homegrown organic produce in the fall, and I even had enough of a surplus a couple times that some was donated to the local food bank. I called this activity 'Operation Green Justice'. Even now, if someone were to play a random word association game with me, my automatic response to "plastic bottle" would probably be "tomato seedling". The upside is that it's an effort of being a good steward to the community and the environment, I didn't need to join any special club to give me license to do it, and I learned and applied a useful hobby like gardening. The downside is that I'm probably often looked at, by those who witness me doing this, as some sort of vagrant scrounging around for enough of a refund to fritter away on booze, smokes, or on some other confection for sin and vice.

Using my energy this way to convert trash into nutritious produce won't serve to build me any sort of fortune or empire soon, but it is an effort to transform negatives to positives, and I'd like to think that it will somehow create some sort of better karma later on. My motives are still purely selfish.

I don't really have a garden to tend anymore. Since I've been living here, my effort to do some container plantings on my deck has been all in vain. I never had a substantial yield of anything. I tried to set up some passive hydroponic experiments, but to no avail; there were just too many shortcomings to allow for it. There are also no bees around to pollenate the plants properly. Even with setting things up to have hanging planters and growing things vertically, the space is too limited; and I have no convenient outdoor watering system. I'm pretty much limited to producing a few pots of fresh herbs and that's it. I think it's more worth my while to retire from the gardening, and thus re-purpose the SARCAN money for another noble pursuit. . . probably another couple of fermentation projects. The refunds I collected so far amount to enough for a couple of beer kits: that's 46 litres worth of beer (132 - 330 mL bottles, or 22 six-packs); in which the expenses for it don't really come out of my own pocket.

I guess, like some vagrant, but in a more indirect way, I'll be using my money for confections of vice after all. The difference is that I won't be giving any extra money away for sin taxes. A cleaner park and street to look at as I sip my homebrew from my balcony is ultimately the reward for doing all of this. I'm curious as to what else I could 'seed and grow' with any other surplus of this can money: both for me and the common good.