Kimchi, America's Favorite Side Dish

Kimchi is a spicy, fermented cabbage side dish that I became acquainted with during my time in Korea and has remained a part of my diet ever since. There are a quite a few varieties of Kimchi. The types of kimchi were created as a practical matter in the time before effective refrigeration and food storage and is based partly on the availability of seasonal vegetables and the weather. Kimchi is a popular and traditional side dish in Asia but for those outside of that region it can be an acquired taste.


Relax. You don't have to be a "foodie" to enjoy kimchi. It isn't some odd, esoteric concoction that you eat only because it is hip, unique or have to endure once or twice because everyone is talking about it. One of the worst things to happen to kimchi was it being "discovered" by yuppies in America during the late 1980s. The costs of the ingredients skyrocketed, quality suffered and making it from scratch became more of a luxury than a must have condiment in our refrigerator. A few years ago crop failures of the main ingredient caused a crisis that required the Korean Government to take action.

Glass jars are best for storage in refrigerator

Like many foods foreign to the American experience there are a lot of unsubstantiated, unscientific claims attributed to eating kimchi. These are mostly cultural in origin, perpetuated today as selling points and continuing traditions. Plenty of  the restaurants not owned by large chains commonly have signs posted declaring the unrealistic and miraculous health benefits of various dishes.

Disappointingly, this is endemic among much of the advertising for consumer products also. Online you can find even more information claiming all sorts of woo-woo magical powers attributed to all sorts of foods so don't get excited. Cabbage and red pepper are not parts of the formula for the ancient Asian mystic secret of good health, virility and long life. It does not "clean the blood", "revitalize the spirits", "strengthen the kidneys" or anything else beyond the basic nutritional value of the ingredients which are not insubstantial.

As example of the questionable common knowledge attributed to some foods: An ingredient used for more than a century as a flavoring in drinks touted as a natural health miracle with wondrous properties eventually was discovered to be a very  powerful natural carcinogen. The deleterious effects where ignored or unknown for years because of the power of superstition, folk remedies and the criminal carelessness of homeopathy. Only trust peer reviewed science, kids. 

The Wall of Kimchi at a local market. One of them.

There can be a lot of salt found in the recipe for kimchi. If you have special dietary needs make sure you never trust the hip, word-of-mouth promotion or self-serving public relations and hard sell of any food stuffs.

Do some research, read up and be informed. While I can't grant any special health properties to kimchi I've eaten it when congested. From anecdotal experience, the spiciness make me feel better, drains and opens up the sinuses. But so will chomping on a jalapeno,  gnawing on a lozenge or rubbing Mentholatum grease on my chest. Nothing magic there, just the body's normal and natural responses.

If you have wanted to try kimchi or Korean food then as a start I suggest visiting the Korean restaurants in your city. The All-You-Can-Eat BBQ is enjoying increasingly popularity but that may be over-whelming for the uninitiated. You can cook Korean meals yourself but if unfamiliar with the style rather than going through a trial and error stage find out what the authentic dish tastes like first.

As a way of easing into a world of foreign cuisine try the lunch menus during the day at Korean restaurants. They are simpler, priced reasonably and you won't have to deal with the crowds, wait time and hassle of the evening dinner rush and cooking the meal yourself at the table, though that can be a fun experience.

Most places serve a large spread of side dishes with even the smallest lunch menu item so don't be surprised by the amounts you receive. If you don't like wasting food get a to-go tray when done (if the establishment supports that, some don't because of people that take a yard when given an inch).

One of those side dishes will usually contain at least one variety of kimchi. Keep in mind that a lot of these dishes are not created from frozen, processed food that is microwaved and slapped on a plate following some corporate franchise photo-template of what a perfect and homogenized dish will look like. Quality of supplies change daily as expected with fresh items so don't be discouraged if something isn't up to your expectations or doesn't look like you think it should from your experiences in the freezer aisle of the local market. Asian meals have a lot of vegetables in them but eating an authentically prepared dish will very much remind you that meat is made from animals. Expect bone, gristle where you are not used to it.

Babimbap and side dishes

If you want kimchi regularly at home there are a lot of good cook books available and even recipes for it online. You can eat it as is out of the jar or use it in cooking. Heck, make up your own ideas. Browse a market that carries a variety and decide what size and type of kimchi you want. Many Asian and American markets sell kimchi but it is a Korean specialty so try Korean markets first. I prefer the cabbage that is pre-cut in the jar because it is more convenient to use and less messy. I also enjoy the large radish kimchi. The type you get is based on what you are going to use it for. FYI, when cooked kimchi often gets spicier, via reduction.

Most modern American grocery stores keep a brand or two of small jars of kimchi in the cold aisle, usually by the tofu. These brands are okay but not what I prefer. I personally find the most typical brand found in a regular grocery store to be pale, watery, lacking in heat and tasting strongly of salt and vinegar. A trip to a Korean or Asian market is your best bet for quality kimchi. Just compare the rich colors of the kimchi made for a knowledgeable and particular customer base and the kind you find in a American chain grocery. You can easily see the difference. Unlike many food products in this instance the color is an indicator of manufacture and quality. I also appreciate kimchi in a glass jar over plastic for storage purposes.

Kimchi prep at home:
You've bought a jar of kimchi, now what do you do? Like most people you are probably just going to put in the refrigerator to keep it cold. Sure, you want to do that, eventually. But first you might want to prepare your kimchi by letting it ferment a while before putting it away. Don't worry, it's easy to do though this will be a process that should take overnight. You can eat the kimchi right away after you buy it but letting the contents ferment a bit will improve even the taste of the grocery store brands. I recommend tasting some for a before and after comparison.

Leaving food out overnight is something you have to decide for yourself if you want to do. My wife is a native Korean and we have both prepped kimchi this way for nearly 25 years without ill effects. Some of the ingredients are stored for months without turning. This is how she learned to prepare it growing up in Korea. She is from a generation that still makes almost everything from scratch. Again, up to you.

1. Before retiring for the day place your kimchi jar in a plastic bag and place it in a sink. If your sink is the type that stains then you will want to ensure any liquids (a brine which will be red in color) go directly into the drain.  
2. Loosen lid. Loosely tie up bag. Kimchi is very aromatic so be prepared for that to permeate the area.
3. Leave in sink overnight.
4. In the morning you may notice bubbles in the jar and swelling of the contents. Some juice will probably have overflowed. This is from the contents fermenting. Tip a bit of the juice out.
5. Tighten lid firmly.
6. Rinse exterior of jar thoroughly and dry off.  
7. Put in refrigerator (I suggest on a paper towel or plate to catch any future drips).

If you sampled the kimchi yesterday when you got home do it again today. You should definitely notice a difference in taste and texture. Kimchi has a very strong presence but keeping the lid tight and exterior of the jar clean should prevent any odors being absorbed by the other contents of the refrigerator.

If you don't want the kimchi to ferment in the manner I described then make sure you drain some of the liquid from the jar before you put it away. Even kept cold right from the store the contents will ferment a bit over time and the fluid may leak out into the refrigerator

The uses for kimchi in cooking is varied. Other than the many Asian recipes it is traditionally used for I put it on almost anything. Burgers, grilled cheese, hot dogs, burritos, pizza (after I remove the pie from the oven, some like it baked into the pizza) and anything I can think of to spice up the meal. There is a place in San Diego that makes a butt-kicking bulgogi with kimchi burrito and some serious kimchi fries.

Read more about Korea's side dish online here: Kimchi at Wikipedia.

Knot Problemo

I need to quit sitting at the same table when I eat here. That knot in the wood repeatedly catches my eye and I keep thinking I dropped some food. Moving to the other side of the booth won't work either. I won't see it but I'll know it is there.

The venison of vegetables

Baby carrots are the venison of the vegetable world. This is because they are not grown into such a convenient shape and size like baby corn is. Rather, a regular carrot is chopped, shaved and whittled down to a fun sized snack. A similar process is used in making veal, which is the tasty result of a calf being ripped from the beating womb of a cow. Such waste.

Annually millions of pounds of carrot shavings are then discarded into the streets creating traffic jams or toasted and made into non-caffeinated coffee substitute. Furthermore, a bag of baby carrots can cost the consumer $7.99 or more while a few bunches of carrots that the buyer would have to wash and cut themselves costs less than $5.

It is in Maryland that sales of baby carrots are the most brisk. This immoral act of environmental crime is ameliorated by the fact that for the most part anything sharp enough to cut carrots in the state of Maryland is typically used for preparing meth or stabbing neighbors, or both, usually in the same evening. Baby carrots are most appealing to children and it would be wrong to use blood-stained, meth-permeated knives to cut up carrots and then feed them to kids.

So already prepared carrot pieces manufactured in a smarter region and imported are preferable to warping another generation of Maryland spawn by getting them hooked too early on drugs and the taste of blood. It is better to delay the inevitable until they can be securely housed in a Super-Max prison jail instead of the rotating doors of Juvenile Hall. Somebody has to think of the children.

Health and Safety

Anthropomorphic mascot promotes better health through improved nutrition and sports but not, apparently, physical safety and common sense as J. Slice' shattered skull and exposed brain can attest.

From the National Watermelon Promotion Board's J. Slice saves the Planet from Professor Junkfood (2003). I remember 2003. It was all about our precious snowflakes wearing protective equipment and preventing traumatic injury. How did this get approved?

To find out, click here for the The Senses-Shattering Secret Origin of J. Slice!

Guess who didn't get a tip?

That's right. I held back my green because the restaurant didn't hold theirs. I asked the server not to include any garnish or parsley with our meals. They included it anyways. Look at that horrible waste. It isn't like the parsley was taking up space on the plate that could have been occupied by real food as it was completely buried under my french fries and my wife's salad. Yes, the house salad included a garnish that was found under the lettuce.

Somewhere, a family of gun-toting Marylanders who always have plenty of money for bullets and beer but not soap or meals are staring at their empty food stamps envelope wishing they had something to nibble on. This parsley, added to other sprigs collected from all over the nation could have made a horrible if nutritious yet possibly health-threatening soup. Somewhere, a pasta sauce is denied little bits of green floating in it that might be basil or not. Or gnats, depending on if the kitchen window was open during food preparation.

Save the planet and Hold the Green!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Orange Nut Roll R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

"In his house at R'lyeh the Orange Nut Roll waits dreaming." From H.P. Lovecraft, The Cult of C-Rat.

Where ever armies have marched and where ever crazed survivalist rednecks have squatted there remains behind scenes of devastation and horror. One of those horrors is the Orange Nut Roll.

A variety of nut rolls have long been a part of the soldier's meal while on the march. Historically they were a tasty treat to consume after eating the giant can of beef stew offered in C-Rations. The nut rolls were favored enough that they largely made a successful transition from the larger canned military rations to the lighter and more compact MRE or Meal, Ready-To-Eat of modern field supplies.

Anywhere a group of soldiers have gathered the evidence of their meals is left behind and used by the local population. The MRE was designed to be 100% useful in the field. The boxes, filled with sand or dirt, are packed tightly in a case and can slide into a sleeve. The packaging is water-resistant and filled with sand can be used to make bunkers, furniture and in some places in the world entire living quarters. The plastic pouches are used for storage and shingles on a roof. The cans are used for cooking or beaten down into knives or other useful items.

The exception being the Orange Nut Roll. The ONG is dry and has the consistency of a shoe. The taste resembles not so much an orange, but the wooden crate the oranges may have originally been shipped in. Fire that melts an 81mm mortar leaves the Orange Nut Roll unharmed. Insects, vultures and other opportunistic scavengers ignore and treat a found Orange Nut Roll as they would a piece of slate or length of bark they came across while wandering the forest. In places where the local population eagerly, desperately receives the leftovers of a soldier's meal either in food to feed their families or the useful packaging to build shelters the Orange Nut Roll is thrown away or refused. Entire rebellions have arisen in native populations because all they are given to win their hearts and minds are Orange Nut Roll packages from visiting soldiers. Give an Orange Nut Roll to a starving homeless person in any metropolitan city and they will sneer and possibly assault you.

There are beaches in Subic Bay covered in slowly rusting cans of discarded Orange Nut Rolls. Oddly shaped, orange hued rocks cover the sand and ocean floor in the region as Orange Nut Rolls tumble free from cans that disintegrate against the forces of nature. But the eternal majesty of the sea and wind are unable to breakdown the Orange Nut Roll. Like lava builds new land off the shores of Hawaiian islands so do Orange Nut Rolls serve as the foundation for reefs and future land bridges across the water. So imagine what one of those things, either in the old rounded or newer yet still inedible flat toaster pastry forms will do to the insides of a human.

Future archeologists will undoubtedly use as provenance of ancient battlefields the layers of uneaten Orange Nut Rolls that like ancient honey found in Egyptian tombs, will show no signs of rot or decomposition. Unlike 5000 year old honey though, the Orange Nut Roll is largely inedible as it comes fresh off the production line.

Hold It

"Hold The Green." That's the slogan for a new campaign against wasting food.

Take a look at this tasty seafood platter from a local restaurant. Notice anything missing?

That's right. The garnish isn't there. The reason the parsley is missing is because I requested the server not put any on the plate. Why? Because it is wasted. Hardly anyone eats the sprig of parsley, not even the curly Italian kind. It usually ends up in the trash or in the case of really cheap restaurant managers, re-used for another guest if it can pass a visual test for freshness.

According to the U.S. Parsley Council some 59,000 pounds of parsley is used yearly as garnish and in cooking. As a garnish parsley offers little except to take up platter space that could be filled with precious bacon and to add a hint of color on a plate consisting primarily of brown and gray hues. This is ridiculous and wasteful. Studies have proven that of the parsley-as-garnish that is eaten, 95% is consumed only by misbehaved children in restaurants who jump up and down on the chairs, scream, throw their fun-menu crayons in the iced tea of the people in the next booth. Parents, obliviously allow their children to eat the parsley even though there are health risks associated with extreme consumption of the herb. The remaining 5% who clean their plates are just cheap bastards who squeeze a nickle until it screams for mercy. Outside of the restaurant venue parsley is consumed in bunches by the stupid and those who believe in magic. They tout the homeopathic benefits of parsley but science says a diet high in parsley is pretty darn silly and is useless if not actually detrimental to a person's health.

PARSLEY MAKES IT CLASSY!
It is guesstimated that annually some 50,000 pounds of garnish-related parsley is wasted by being uneaten. That amount of green vegetable matter could feed 7,000 dairy cows for a year or a Maryland family of three for two months as a supplement to their food stamps. If there existed sin then such waste would be indeed sinful.

So be an Earth Warrior and do your part with very little effort at all. When dining out tell your server to "Hold The Green" and if they do not let them know you will be "Holding The Green" yourself, in the form of their tip, which they will not receive. If enough people decline parsley as a garnish then eventually restaurants all over America will stop ordering it and all that wasted food will be diverted to where it really should go, as the main ingredient in limited edition bobble-head statues based on the San Diego Padres or converted to cheap bio-fuel to run our cars. At the very least the parsley market will collapse and Italy will starve and then die before falling into the ocean.

As a side note savvy consumers also fight against the wasteful parsley scourge by frequenting those establishments that serve not the useless Petroselinum plant as a garnish but instead a crisp leaf of lettuce with a single cherry tomato placed onto it. Some people treat this lettuce and tomato combination similar to parsley and it goes uneaten. However the wise diner views this type of garnish not as future trash but as a potential bonus mini-salad. Most restaurants will freely and without question supply a customer with dressing of their choice on the side if they request some. Frugality for the win in this instance because making a tiny Caesar salad out of the spare and space-hogging veggies the customer gets more for their dollar by eating the typically unwanted garnish.

For more information click the Hold the Green search label.

CSI Sneak Peek

In a fashion similar to how other television shows do "cross-overs" from one franchise to another (example: Eureka and Warehouse 13, House and NCIS, etc) to spike ratings, police procedural drama CSI and popular cable cooking show Cake Teamsters have also joined forces in an effort to bring more viewers to the television. The cross-over event will be featured in the new season of CSI in place of the usual teaser that primes the viewer before the opening credits.

As described on the official CSI fan forum:

With Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) in critical condition from the cliffhanger events of last season the CSI squad reaches out to former boss Gil Grissom (William Petersen) to assist during a baffling mystery. To welcome him back to the team nerdy and annoying lab tech David Hodges (Wallace Langham) commissions a very special cake from none other than the chef and star of his own reality-based show "Big" Joey Vandolin of Cake Teamsters. As loyal viewers are aware "Big" Joey is given an "impossible task" each episode to create and deliver a custom-designed cake all while under the pressure of a ticking countdown and the sometimes zany and questionably helpful assistance of his well-meaning family, friends and bakery team.

In a montage of frantic cake baking and the carving of sheets of sugary fondant Carmine gets the CSI-themed cake done and delivered before the clock runs out. Grissom, however, is less than enthused as these exclusive sneak peek screen shots from the CSI website reveals.

CSI is all about the epithelials. Those chefs never wear gloves. Ever consider how much hair and skin is in those cakes they create?

Don't put that in your mouth, you don't know where it's been

Something was lost in translation, maybe? Found in a local San Diego store 5-26-10.

This is why you're fat

Oh, sure...The shovel is supposed to be for use with the bucket for sandbox play after all the snacks have been eaten but who they fooling?

Spotted in a San Diego store April 2010.

Things I've Eaten When Sober

Hot Kimchi

While it doesn't have the mystical healing powers that some attribute to it, kimchi is pretty good when you feel poorly. The spiciness of kimchi rather any magical properties is what clears up the chest and sinuses and the effectiveness of it is increased when it is served boiling hot.

Among the traditional condiments served tomorrow at the Christmas family meal will also be some fresh kimchi.

Everything Kimchi on Lady, That's My Skull!

Wow! That's a lot of kimchi!

Love That Kimchi!

Images of Kimchi
I don't know if Rule #34 applies to kimchi, but I wouldn't be surprised. Click carefully.

It's What's For Dinner

From Time To Run (1975).

Not shown: Nursing bottle filled with cola

A long time ago someone at Disney had the great idea that old American folk tales done in an animated style would make a great movie. The result was the 1946 live action and animated film Song of the South. Unfortunately, Hollywood and America of the 1940s was hardly a positive example of racial sensitivity and the execution of the Uncle Remus tales the film was based upon was, in hindsight, terribly managed. The main and wholly accurate complaints with the film is the depiction of African slaves as being happy, content and grateful for their subjugation. Caricatures that were fashionable and acceptable in popular entertainment of the era are numerous. Because of the way people were depicted and in spite of any artistic merits the film may contain it has not been fully released for the home audience in the intervening decades and only appears in the United States in heavily edited versions.

One of the more popular sequences was The Tar Baby, a tale in which the character of Brer Rabbit escapes from predators using reverse-psychology. For the uninitiated and anyone who grew up outside of the South after 1970 the term "Tar Baby" is a pejorative in relation to African-Americans. As a child in the late 60s watching this film in the drive-in I had no idea that the sticky trap represented anything other than what it appeared to be. In the Disney universe of walking, talking intelligent animals I didn't see anything unusual with Brer Rabbit engaging an inanimate object in conversation and expecting a reply. It is unlikely that the creators and audiences of the 40s thought the same and knew exactly what the sticky trap was supposed to represent, which is only one of the reasons the film was eventually pulled from syndication.

The marketing and exposure for some some sequences continued unabated. Stripped away from negative associations the fun and bouncy song Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah has regularly appeared in music collections and on various video releases since it was originally issued. Yet the mistakes of the past had a way of repeating into more contemporary times in spite of the decisions to suppress the less enlightened and insulting aspects of the film.

In 1958 Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies #8, under the Dell imprint, published a recipe for a "Tar Baby" treat as a one page fun feature. The snack, which kids could make at home or (I shudder to think) school, was a marshmallow creation covered with dark chocolate that resembles the sticky trap that Brer Rabbit ran afoul of in the Song of the South feature. In 1946 sheer ignorance and marketing inertia could explain the promotion of stereotyped caricatures of African-Americans though it would have been a little harder to justify in 1958. It could only have been utter stupidity when the decision was made to include the one-page recipe feature and reprint it in 1975 in Walt Disney's Showcase #28. By the 1970s everyone involved should have known better.

In the interest of parity I changed the recipe to make it more representative of the contemporary South and included it in this post, which you can click on to make double-wide size for easy viewing. For those who prefer the "warts and all" approach to history the original can be viewed here.

Note for people with IQ equal to their shoe size: Original recipe for educational purposes only. Please do not print out and share with your Cousin-Spouses, pals in the unemployment line or distribute at Sunday school gatherings.

Bibimbap is the shizznit

Being married to a Korean woman of traditional ways I eat a lot of Korean cuisine. Since I can't really exercise anymore because of the lower back, the high-veggie ingredients of my Korean-style meals are what I credit for my waistline going from a 46 to a 42. By the time the next San Diego Comic-Con rolls around I should look less like a stereotypical fanboy and instead more like a superhero. I don't mean Herbie, either.

I particularly enjoy Bibimbap. It is awesome. At most restaurants it comes in a huge bowl with a couple of pounds of condiments (including Kimchi) on the side. Like many of the items on the menu it has a high veggie to meat ratio. Vegetarianism is dull and boring. I couldn't face life if I had to eat carrots for every meal. A few days of that and I'd kill a cow with my bare hands and eat it raw. What would you rather eat, a plate of steamed veggies or a big, hot stone bowl of Bibimbap? You can be totally Vegan and not want to kill yourself out of boredom three times a day just by eating Korean food. It is true.

On Convoy street in San Diego are a few nice Korean restaurants that serve good meals. The favorite of the wife and I is one with the name of her home town in the title. The lunch specials are great and are a popular destination for the people who work in the area. We go there about once a week. The price is small and the portions are large.

One aspect of the place I dislike in principle is the information about the dishes in the framed printouts that line the walls. While the photos and descriptions serve to educate those guests not familiar with Korean cuisine they are also filled with paragraphs touting the health benefits of the food. But none of the descriptions contain much in the way of facts and instead make woo-woo claims similar to those found in books, articles and websites about homeopathy. It should be enough to state the benefits of real food over chemically-saturated and processed junk. Instead nigh-magical properties are attributed to the ingredients that 'clean the blood', 'improve the spirit' and ' such blah blah blah. The mystical, magical and junk-science claims are not necessary, but I am very aware they appeal to a certain type of person.

Not that one culture is particularly apt to take advantage of their own over another, but I am often angered by what I see as an incredibly predatory attitude among members of their own community. Magic cures, quack medical procedures and junk science abounds. Like an evangelical preacher will use religion to make a buck, these grifters exploit the cultural traditions regarding age, respect and ingrained social politeness as pry bars to open the wallets and purses of their marks.

One of the items a market near the Convoy area sells are six inch strips of neoprene cut from wetsuit material. This rubber is nothing short of magic and supposedly cures an amazing list of deadly ailments. By the way, the rubber is cut into trapezoid shapes, ensuring that every other piece leaves a smaller triangle-shaped scrap that is sold for around $300. Nothing is wasted, there. The product purportedly works through ions and magnets and other made up blather. My assertion would be any material that does what it claims doesn't need a large piece to work as the application of even the smallest piece should be equally effective.

That store and nearly every other in the area is full of quack items like that and is one of the reasons I don't let my wife shop alone when she is in the area. Many people of her background have shown themselves susceptible to the high-pressure tactics by salesmen who seek to take advantage of cultural predilections. Some of the salesmen, and I witnessed a lot of this tactic in Maryland, would find a family and prey upon them like a telemarketer with a sucker list. They used cultural and familial pressures to make a sale for some ridiculous device, juice or magic pill. Once a sale is made the word gets out and the vultures descend in a mighty flock.

In Maryland I was often asked by members of my family and the community who had questions about a product to check out the claims. I printed out evidence from the FDA, warnings about scams from the BBB and other sources, pointed out the miracle health pills being pushed on them for $175 a bottle was in fact powdered baby formula. I even once held a presentation for a group revealing that the test for "bad" tap water a salesman was performing in selling $2500 water filters was a scam the government has been warning people about for over 40 years. I often wondered why I bothered to help because in nearly every instance the salesman was able to babble some nonsense and I would be dismissed. On one occasion I'm aware of the product representative asked why anyone would believe a "Westerner" over a fellow countryman.

Just before I left Maryland a member of a small local church asked me to look into the claims of a company pushing miracle Amazonian berry juice. Someone was aggressively contacting the entire congregation. Product aside, it turned out to be an up-sell scam using high-pressure in-house visits to sell a customer a case of very expensive juice on a recurring bank withdrawal or debit card. On the basis of the sales tactic alone I advised against it. Many people signed up anyways and bought nearly $1000 worth of Acacia juice any organic market sells for far cheaper. The funny part was when one of the customers discovered the added protein ingredient in the juice was from shellfish, shrimp casings to be precise. The consumption of shellfish was against one of the tenets of their religion. Massive soul-cleanings then resulted along with the usual problems associated with canceling an account with a company that doesn't have public email address and won't return telephone calls.

Sadly, against all evidence and common sense most of the time people would shell out the cash. Not because they were stupid but because the grifter was working several fronts at once and had already ingratiated themselves to an elder member of the family. If anyone failed to accept the dubious claims of the salesman, they usually withered under the generational influence of an elder who berated them into purchasing the magical, magnetic, ion-saturated vitamins or device. The alarming fact is that for most people, even when the product or service turns out to be useless, they just go on and accept a different incredible pitch.

I have little reason to doubt that many similar scams are being worked here, also. I have never really witnessed a hard sell like I did in Maryland, but considering the claims some of these products make I'm surprised someone hasn't shut them down for fraud or questionable sales tactics. Salesmen in certain stores communicating with my wife step quickly away when they notice me approaching. I doubt I'm scaring them as I usually appear neutral if not jovial. It must be due to awareness that the husband, especially one of another culture, is a greater influence on the wife than they will be in the short time allotted. Unfortunately the desire or need to purchase products and items that can otherwise only be found in Korea leads us into certain stores like the one that sells the magical healing rubber.

But woo-woo claims aside, Bibimbap is the shizznit.

Hayley can haz cheeseburger?

Found via the new LIFE photo archive hosted by Google.

Big Red's gone troppo, driving and other things

Item! The family and I went out to celebrate my son going to college by eating at one of those silly family theme restaurants the other night. I thought this coaster from the restaurant featuring some kangaroos apparently hopping away in terror from one of their zombie, cannibalistic mates wielding a fork and knife amusing.

The restaurant, as you know, offers authentic Australian cuisine. My meal consisted of: Large white grubs found under a rock, snake, frog and a heady beverage of fermented saliva served in an ostrich egg.

Item! On the drive home it was rush hour and I was paused at the on-ramp to I-805 from I-8. Being used to the area at this time frame I kept glancing up at my rear-view mirror. It paid off. A car was approaching from behind at high speed. Obviously the driver was inattentive and not at all prepared for all the cars on the highway to have gone from 65 to zero in the span of a few hundred feet. The driver slammed on his brakes and with tires squealing, went into a skid aimed right at the back of my car.

After a quick visual check of the car in front of me revealed no signs of containing babies or children (I'm that kind of guy), I calmly turned the wheel and gently rolled off onto the paved shoulder by the on-ramp and forwards a few feet. The car behind me came to a shuddering halt with the front bumper even with my rear passenger door. If I had remained in place on the highway I would have been struck pretty hard by the other vehicle. After a few moments traffic started moving again and I pulled back onto the road, the formerly inattentive driver now alert and keeping a good distance from other cars.

This is the second time I have had to perform a similar maneuver at that particular ramp. The last incident was a few years ago in nearly the same location. Makes me question how many accidents occur regularly in this area.

Item! I'm not one of those people who name their cars. The most of a moniker any vehicle I own gets is New Car or Old Car or something similar. Much of the terseness comes from communicating with the wife via sign language. Just signing using simple gestures saves wear and tear on the fingers, not to mention time. The last two cars we owned were just called Red Car and Blue Car. Those I sold when leaving for California and the car I have now we just call Free Car.

It isn't pretty but it costs nearly nothing to drive. I did however recently notice a little while ago that the car I've been driving for a year has a promotional Too Fast Too Furious 2 cover on the steering-wheel. When people talk of bad sequels they usually mention something from the Matrix Trilogy, Electric Boogaloo 2 or Elektra. But I nominate 2F2F2 as the worst sequel of all time. I can only think the family member didn't care what they used to grip the wheel and that the cover was free or under a dollar but maybe I should rethink my relationship with that one person. Hopefully he wasn't a fan of the film. More proof that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Item! I haven't thanked Bully's pal, John DiBello enough but he helped pull me through a crappy year by his gifts of books and graphic novels. While he never asked for anything in return I know I've been remiss in reviewing them because to do so would require I give careful attention and thought to them. Since my head was mainly focused on getting to the end of the day, this would do a disservice to John and his kindness. As anyone who cares to check my archives is aware, I don't really apply any careful thought to what I post. I'm in a position now that I can give the materials he sent the consideration they deserve.

Thanks again, John and Bully!



Item! Because you can't get enough SCHATZI!