Is anyone else. . .

. . . chagrined and absolutely mortified that Kanye West was brought up by an English professor? He is a grown man, of course, whose actions are no one’s fault but his own. Perhaps childhood exposure to incessant grammar-correcting, piles of books and the oppressive culture they represent, not to mention the small-stakes politicking that comes with chairing a department, did a number on young Kanye? Perhaps. I mean, whiskey tango foxtrot. Get well, fella.

Uh, I could have sworn it said “madwoman.”

According to this quiz, if I were on Mad Men, I would be

(source: Elle.com)

. . . Peggy Olson!

Quietly confident, innocent but ambitious, you are most like Sterling Cooper’s eager, hardworking secretary turned copywriter from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (played by Elisabeth Moss). You exude girlish charm with your preppy-chic ensembles and perky ponytails.

Gag. I’ve never seen more than five minutes at a time of Mad Men, but I totally hope Peggy’d cut someone for crossing her, pigtails or no. Seeing both sides of the “OMG It’s so sub-subversively feminist!/Are you kidding? It’s like product placement for patriarchy” debate, I think I understand the show’s appeal. The clothes look magnificently uncomfortable. The decor is an irresistible parlor game of interior-design pedantry for hipsters brought up on Where’s Waldo? to spot the anachronism.

If this quiz is any indication of the show, then I am taken aback that the female principals are not so much individuals as they are types, and such distinct ones at that. On a perhaps-frivolous, perhaps-not (if you believe the authors of Freakonomics) note, what is it with the women’s names? Are our deeds supposed to be as ephemeral as our names are? In ten years of teaching, only a couple thousand or so students have crossed my path, but this meager sample of anecdata suggests that, while  younger boomers and older Gen-Xers east of the Mississippi have been reluctant to indulge their whimsy when naming boys, there’s something hallucinogenic about a pair of X chromosomes that, among other things, suppresses new parents’ ability to spell. It’s like Bob Ross’s compulsion to put some happy trees on that birth certificate.

Regarding the women on Mad Men, I’m hard-pressed to find anyone my age, let alone babies, named Betty, Joan, or Peggy. I do know a “Bette,” but one letter makes a huge difference. If you count middle names—and you shouldn’t, because that’s where parents pay all their debts of gratitude—then I know an astonishing handful of women middle-named after their wicked matron saint, Joan of Arc. If anyone is ever foolish enough to let me name a child, I’m opening up the Old Testament for  some bibliomancy. It wouldn’t be that bad. Really, does anyone have a problem with Eve, Rachel, or Sarah?

Then again, I’m hopeless with the teevee. In fact, the last time I looked up my local listings, I got all excited that we had a channel apparently devoted to “lolcat religious programming.” Visions of epic agons between Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat danced in my head. Then I realized I misread “local.” And they say it is TV that will rot your brain.

The smell of privilege in the morning: a self-loathing post, complete with colon-ized title

I have a confession: occasionally I read mommy blogs. Very occasionally. I stumbled upon them way back when I was paying off Sallie Mae and googling about for tips on how to save money by hoarding toilet paper and tampons, and not because my biological clock is ticking. I have no maternal instinct: just ask my students. On the blogs, I am unmoved by the copious photographs of blond, blue-skinned, pink-eyed children doing things I can’t bring myself to find cute. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate children. Far from it: I just fear them and am tremendously relieved someone else is bringing up Our Future, so that I don’t have to.

Anyway, I found the ancient meme below on one of these mommy blogs. I won’t identify it for reasons that the following paragraphs will make obvious. I endure this blogger’s errant apostrophes, inability to distinguish between “then” and “than,” and comma splices because her life makes me anxious, and I can’t get enough anxiety of my own these days.

Her archive goes back to late 2006, when she was making a New Year’s resolution to pay off $15,000 from her credit cards. After a Hawaiian cruise and a trip to Disneyland, among other vacations, she now estimates that her family’s consumer debt, excluding the mortgage, is nearing $100,000. Now her husband is looking to get his piece of Cash-for-Clunkers action (and the concomitant car note). While she scores a bargain on a skin-conditioning gadget she saw on an infomercial and downloads spyware by completing online surveys that pay her almost five dollars, he doesn’t know how much they owe, and he accuses her of being a tightwad. And her tweenage daughters want highlights. Too weary to cook, she takes the brood to Olive Garden and yields to their demands, LOLing it all off to the approval of her readers. I suppose her blog is a species of recession porn.

Like any single, childless woman who doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about, I left a comment suggesting that she discuss this problem with her husband three years ago, but yesterday—or even now—will do. Plus he needs to help out around the house; surely he can do better than Olive Garden. Her other commenters, who tend to soothe her sorrows by telling her that “Life is hard, honey, so what’s a little Coach bag to cheer you up?” swarmed on my alter alter ego. And she deleted my alter alter ego’s comment. Whatever. Good luck, lady. Meanwhile, I can’t stop looking. I’m fascinated. Thank goodness she blogs even less frequently than I do. So, as I said, I found this meme on her blog.

Celebrate the moments of your life with "coffee." (photo: Amazon.com)

I guess I’ve now arrived at the self-congratulatory part where I tot up how many I’ve “accomplished.” That would be 68. But it is a dreary list, isn’t it? One that screams first-world privilege and middle-American aspirations to kulcha. Visions of those ridiculous tourist trams in Paris that call attention to the camera- and fannypack-bedecked, pastrylike-fleshed Ugly Americans on board flash into memory.

Even if I were cosmopolitan enough to appreciate instant potable coffee-like substances, exactly none of these experiences would figure among the moments of my life that I would celebrate. Those occurred wherever I called home, or in other unglamorous locales, in the company of people I miss. To make myself feel better, I’ve made corrections to the list, which had made “caviar” a proper noun, used “drank” and “swam” as past participles, and referred to something called “karoke.” Pedantry: that’s privilege, too.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band (and boy howdy we sucked)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables (In fact, I’m breakfasting—and lunching and dining—on my own misshapen tomatoes! Alas, I was also talked into splitting a CSA share this year.)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (I’m inordinately fond of trains, at any time of day.)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill (but only because my company didn’t “do” personal days)
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon (a half-marathon, which doesn’t count)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice (though I’ve been to Venice several times to visit a friend who used to live there)
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (Both, many times, but I took a picture of the latter that became a postcard in the Outer Banks.)
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (and forgot most of what I learned within the year)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (If McDonald’s and Taco Bell count, I’ve always tried to buy food at the nearest place for panhandlers who claim hunger and not, say, a need for $20 bus fare.)
44. Visited Africa (So. There are three items pertaining to Paris and just one for a whole continent?)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain (in Paris, no less, to complete the cliché)
    
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie (whose director died suddenly of a heart attack while going for a walk in NYC last week: RIP)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class (Dude, I am a martial arts class.)
59. Visited Russia (Yet I’ve been to the Ukraine and Latvia.)
60. Served at a soup kitchen (If I’m in town, I serve an absurdly early Thanksgiving dinner to “those in need” at the local civic center.)
61. Sold Girl Scout cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason (from a student, no less!)
64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check (Grad school, you impoverishing bastard!)
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (My favorite childhood toys were acquired well into adulthood.)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job (I was also told that “regrettably” I don’t have the temperament for retail. Duh.)
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London (London is like a third home. Do I need to do this?)
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car (always used, always)
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (If fishing counts, then I’ve been a mass murderer and preparer.)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cellphone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day (Just one? Candy asses!)

Ceci n’est pas un post.

(Cricket[s]: get it? [Source: BBC])

Apologies for my silence. My computer has advanced considerably on the slow march to its demise, and, as I contemplate its replacement, I’m sneaking in this one on a borrowed computer. Shhh.

Banned from the blog cocktail:

Bacardi products.

Yesterday I blogged about my hypothetical blog cocktail: a cucumber-and-vodka concoction by Kingsley Amis that I would probably never drink, and a mint- and citrus-enhanced version by Martha Stewart that I’m quite less unlikely to drink. The comments revealed a unanimous preference for gin, a preference I of course share.

I wanted to clarify, however, that while the only gin in my house is a more-or-less full bottle of Rear Admiral Joseph’s from Trader Joe’s, I never drink Bombay Sapphire, despite its charming bottle. (So maybe, for all my pretensions about literary aesthetics, my tastes are really leaden.) I’m also not keen on vodka, so I certainly never got sucked into the Grey Goose hype among people claiming discriminating palates of princess-and-the-pea precision. (Numerous taste tests have revealed that most people cannot pick “their” vodka out of a lineup.)

Both Bombay Sapphire and Grey Goose are owned by Bacardi, which has manufactured for them a heritage that they don’t possess: Bombay Sapphire, for instance, originated in 1987, when Victoria, Empress of India, who figures prominently on the label, had been dead for the better part of a century. The advertising folks at Bacardi are geniuses. I mean, it’s as if they walked straight out of Mad Men, only really from the early 60s. Here’s why:

This is from an ad campaign recently launched in Israel. And there’s much, much more where that came from. Well, actually that’s not true: the promotional site has been pulled down, presumably because of the outcry.

As one might imagine, the campaign is getting lots of coverage. I first read about it on Copyranter, which pictures the other “ugly girlfriends.” There’s also a typically long and pointless thread about it on Jezebel, and Michelle Koenig-Schwartz has done a set of parodies.

Still, I’ve got to wonder: Who drinks Bacardi Breezers? Are they the same people who used to drink Zima? Is this stuff being marketed to women? Really? And why did these women—whom I consider attractive—consent to be pictured thus? Did they consent? If so, whyyyyy?

So many questions. No wonder I need more coffee.

It’s 7 in the morning. Do you know where your Stoli is?

Today is the second anniversary of this blog. Its namesake is perhaps obvious: Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, arguably the ur campus novel. It is also a novel awash in booze. These two details are not a coincidence. They even coincide in a drink, the recipe for which I am sharing with you today.

As Britain’s poet laureate of liquor, Amis was also the author of On Drink, in which directions for the Lucky Jim are set down. I do not approve of his suggestion to use it as “an excellent love-philtre to press on shy young ladies, if there are any of these left.”

The Lucky Jim (serves six)

• 2/3 bottle of vodka
• shot of vermouth
• 2 cucumbers (leaving skin on one, slice thin)
• ice in a pitcher

Chill six glasses. Combine vodka and vermouth in pitcher. Stir. Slice the unsliced cucumber into 2″ chunks and squeeze through a citrus juicer. Strain and pour into the vodka-vermouth mixture. Stir. Pour into chilled glasses. Garnish with thinly sliced cucumber. Serve.

I have never made this drink, but I imagine it would look like this picture, which originally appeared in Martha Stewart Living and accompanied a recipe for lemongrass chicken. Martha adds mint to her cucumber-and-vodka cocktail. I’m not crazy about mint, but I suppose I could add it to the Lucky Jim by crushing some leaves along with the cucumber chunks. Et voilà: blog cocktail!

If your blog had an official cocktail, what would it be?

Baaaaahh!

Funky City, my adopted home town, hates Jesus. It belongs to the Fake America. To compensate for its lost souls, I listen to Handel’s Messiah all the year round. My favorite part of that oratorio is the “We like sheep” chorus. When I first heard it, I was maybe four, but not much shorter than I am now, and I did not realize that the line was properly “All we, like sheep, have gone astray.” At the time, I thought I had found in Handel a kindred spirit who recognized the utterly awesome dumbness that is sheep. As I tell my students, commas matter. And actually, my favorite part of the Messiah is “The people who have walked in darkness,” a bass aria that—thanks to the bug my students shared with me—I was able to sing last week.

But I digress. Like a sheep, I’ve gone astray. Like a sheep, I am secretly royally cheesed off beyond measure about something I may blog about and then delete. I’ll decide after I go shrive my filthy soul. For now, however, I’m running late, so I’ll be like a sheep and do the BBC book meme that I’ve seen everywhere, though I believe I saw it first chez Heu Mihi, whose moniker aptly describes how I’m feeling right now.

So you know the drill: the BBC took an online poll and determined that this list is some sort of canon of best-lurved books, yet most people will have read only six. I consider myself to be pretty ill-read for the line of work I’m in, so I was surprised to discover I’m apparently as well-read as almost eleven ordinary BBC users. So that’s like how Christmas gave the Grinch the strength of ten Grinches, plus one. Yeah, that’s me. All because “We like sheep.”

• Look at the list and put an “x” after those you have read.
• Add a “+” to the ones you LOVE.
• Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X
2. The Lord or the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien [Good Lord, no. No no no.]
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X [Wouldn't a Women's Studies course on messed-up governesses—Lady Audley's Secret, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The Sound of Music, etc., and Jane—be awesome? No.]
4. Harry Potter series – J. K. Rowling X
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X
6. The Bible – not completely
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman [Four years ago, I received a boxed set of the trilogy from a dear friend, but it somehow keeps getting pushed back in the queue. And I still can't be arsed to put an asterisk next to it. I suck.]
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens X
11. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott X
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy X
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller X
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – X [Yes, really. My undergrad university had an insane Early Modern requirement. Ask me about Venus and Adonis. Or King John. Or don't.]
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier X
16. The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks [Never even heard of this one.]
18. Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger – X
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot – X+
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – X
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens X+
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams – X
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck X
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame X
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens X
33. Chronicles of Narnia – C. S. Lewis [v #36]
34. Emma – Jane Austen X
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen X
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis X
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini X
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernières
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A. A. Milne X+
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown [A student from Notwilliams gave me a copy of this. I hated Notwilliams.]
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins X
46. Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood X
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan X
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel X
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons [Never heard of this one, either.]
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth X+
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens X
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley X
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck – X
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov X+
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy X
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding X
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie X+
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville X
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker X+ [So good, because it's so very bad.]
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce X+
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath X
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola X
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X
80. Possession – A. S. Byatt X [Way to distort academic work, Antonia, or whatever people call you. I wonder whether applications to Ph.D. programs in English spiked when this novel was published, won the Booker Prize, or was mortalized on celluloid. No, that was not a typo.]
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell X
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X [Some days I think my job is turning me into Stevens.]
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert X
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry X
87. Charlotte’s Web – E. B. White X
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X [I believe this title refers only to the first 24 of them. The later ones suck.]
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams X
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total read: 65
Total I plan to read: None, alas.

Stupidly titled meme that no one asked me to participate in in the first place

Some months ago, a food meme inspired by a BBC bucket list with similarly stupid title spread through the internets. It is an illogical list, one that smacks of first-world privilege, one that indiscriminately includes twelve beverages (2, 18, 33, 35, 44, 45, 58, 59, 73, 76, 80, 99), three full meals (37, 56, 84), and an entire cuisine (90), as well as five curry dishes (14, 41, 43, 48, 64). And what’s with all the product placement, with four U.S. brands (50, 56, 77, 91) to a lone Japanese one (83)? I give this questionnaire an F.

Oh, yeah, the exceptionally stupid title: “100 Things You Should Eat Before You Die.” Like, what are you going to eat after you die? I suppose the undead, like zombies and vampires, get to nosh on stuff like brains and blood, but, still, they’re doing so before they die. Duh.

Obviously I’m resurrecting this zombie meme because I’m hungry and cranky as I wait for my dinner of groundnut stew (blackeye peas and sweet potatoes in a spicy swamp of ginger, habañero, storage onions, stewed Italian tomatoes from a box, and untainted peanut butter) with quinoa. A steaming, transatlantic bowl of inauthenticity.

Right, then. The 100 things. God, I’ve eaten a lot. I’ve also not eaten a lot of rather prosaic things. I last ate an animal when I was twelve, but until then my dad, being a child of the Depression, fed us lots of organs from a variety of creatures. Plus, my parents have always lived in or near the country’s largest cities, so my dad had a lot to experiment with. He’d make a good survivalist. I, on the other hand, have unfitted myself for survival and polite company. Such is life.

• In bold are things I have eaten.
• Crossed out are things I have not eaten and do not plan to eat.
• Apart from anything that shits, I’ll eat anything once, such as the unformatted items.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses: oui!
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar: note to self—cigars are food, as long as they’re fat
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O: had I to do college over again, I would have made vegan jello shots out of agar-agar. It goes without saying that I wasn’t nearly as comfortable with my dorkiness as I am now.
39. Gumbo: I make this stuff all the time, minus the customary shrimp.
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 [that's more like $81 now. U! S! A! U! S! A!] or more
46. Poutine
47. Fugu
48. Chicken tikka masala
49. Eel
50. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
51. Sea urchin
52. Prickly pear
53. Umeboshi
54. Abalone
55. Paneer
56. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
57. Spaetzle
58. Dirty gin martini
59. Beer above 8% ABV: I hate beer. Hate.
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake—all of ‘em
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini—um, that’s two things
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum: I make this stuff all the time, with tofu instead of the customary shrimp—not that I’m saying tom yum is the Thai equivalent of gumbo or anything
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky: my favorite is “Men’s Chocolate Pocky,” covered in dark chocolate for when pms is just clobbering the menfolk.
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant: I’ve done this four times, every time I was in the vicinity of such a restaurant and learned that it had a meatless tasting menu. Am I an elitist?
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo: this term describes an entire cuisine, among other things; criollo what? I’ve had tacu-tacu, an Afro-Peruvian rice-and-beans dish.
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

You know you’ve neglected your blog for a freakin long time when

. . . the calendar on your navigation menu points back to not a past month but a past year (then again, it is January)

. . . by the time anyone notices you’ve resumed posting, your great nation will have a new leader for whom you don’t need to apologize incessantly when you’re abroad

. . . um, have you resumed posting?

. . . you hardly know where to begin, so you don’t bother explaining

. . . your blog’s host has upgraded its interface with so many Flash-y bells and whistles that you’re not sure your post is going to post

Well, here goes nothing.

It must be my antipathy to neologisms

. . . but I missed my “blogoversary” yesterday. No matter, since, as I’ve written here before, this blog was actually created on April 1, 2007, a fitting date after which I posted a few entries (indeed, I was quite more prolific than I have been lately—sorry) before I was embarrassed enough about them to delete them. However, I was not too embarrassed to get a button on my “About” page that looks like this:

At no time, however, was I thinking of getting one of those nifty, tasteful, a-DOR-able (cough cough) progress bars for baby or release from prison or whatever else is in the works. Like a book manuscript.