Not-Ends

In the tradition of Rob's... except not necessarily self-contained.

I really don't want to be the one to say it and I'll keep trying it just in case my tastebuds change, but I'd rather drink whiskey and eggnog separately than drink the two mixed together.

While by now it seems to be a truism that the actions of Lt. John Pike and UC Davis Chancellor Katehi's role "tarnished the reputation of the school", the event produced more positive exposure for the movement and for UC Davis than any other action possibly could have.

In the context of a relationship, it does not count as cuddling unless there is boob contact

While many disbelieve that human existence is doomed to be an awkward compromise, three excellent illustrations of that truth exist right under our noses-- jealousy, pain at childbirth (itself the result of an awkward anatomical compromise) and the fact that men are not multiorgasmic. This gives me a much clearer understanding of what heaven is supposed to be like.

I hated and despised Plato until someone pointed out the importance of his concept of ideal forms to Christianity (particularly Good vs Evil and Heaven), at which point I quickly began to realize how ubiquitous and fundamental Platonic theory is in modern thought.

The desire for conceptual elegance is among the greatest enemies of truth, but also among the most important tools for truth's discovery and conveyance.

Hippyism's ideology owes way too much to the aggressive moralism of Christianity to ever be truly at peace with Buddhism.

Somebody asked me if I had any black friends and I was like, "I had one until I stole his girlfriend." It was such a sucker question. I'm just happy I had a sucker answer on hand to reply with.

Technically, my old roommate Mereb is also black, but he's a second-gen Eritrean hippy. I feel like what people usually mean by "black" is having an African-American accent, which Mereb definitely does not have. Mereb just has a lisp.

The ancient Greeks admirably demonstrate to us how useful deities and religion are as language conventions even in the absence of belief, but contemporary social taboos among nonbelievers prevent us from making use of the gorgeous Christian-derived language conventions that are so common in nineteenth century writing.

Now, a quote from Moby Dick:
"The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable affliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"

Change is Happening

This is an exciting time to be a citizen of the world right now, but it's also an abjectly terrifying time. If you, like me, have largely slept the slumber of apathy for most of the last decade, now is the time to awaken. Important things are happening across the world and here at home. This is the most formative moment in world and national history since the fall of Communism in 1989 or the protests of 1967. At stake is no less than the new world order. If you've ever wanted to change the world, now is your window of opportunity to do so. Change is happening faster than I ever thought possible.

In the last year, three Arab countries have overthrown their government to set up democracies. The European Union is skirting the precipice of either economic collapse or essentially making the equivalent leap that the United States made from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. Six Tibetan monks have immolated themselves in protest against brutal Chinese rule. In December Hillary Clinton will be the first Secretary of State to visit Burma in over fifty years. USA-Pakistan relations have nearly completely deteriorated. The USA will be stationing military presence in Australia to counter expanding Chinese ambitions. Mexican protesters are calling for an end to the war on drugs. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have been brought to their knees. Activity from Anonymous has exploded. Scores of repressive regimes are making concessions like allowing free elections and rolling back censorship. Scores of countries (including some of the same ones liberalizing) stand on the precipice of civil war. Occupy- and Indignants-inspired protests have spread to 951 cities and 82 countries.

In more local news, Congress has been locked in political gridlock for the last year, apparently completely incapable of changing the budget from a course of economic stagnation and extraordinary debt. Occupy Wall Street is fighting for a complete reevaluation of the structure of American democracy. A bill is going through Congress with evidently enthusiastic bipartisan support that will fundamentally change the relationship between government and internet, allowing the government to block entire websites and making it a felony to stream or view copyrighted material --like listening to a song or watching a clip of a TV show on YouTube. Another bill going though Congress seeks to define America as a warzone and thereby authorize the military to arrest American citizens on American soil and hold them captive indefinitely without trial, making it the natural successor to the PATRIOT Act and step two on the road to authoritarianism.

At stake is freedom, justice and the financial future of the world. Become aware. Raise your voice. Take action. Utilize the enormous mobilizing potential of the Internet. Don't forget to think. Terrible things are about to happen. Amazing things are about to happen. The world stands on the tip of a double-edged sword. Don't forget to think, but by all that is holy, participate!

Try Anything Once

When my sister and I were growing up we couldn't stand to eat certain foods. Brussel sprouts, onions and tomatoes were a few of my personal enemies. Our parents would good-naturedly lecture us about how as you get older, your taste buds change and you grow to like things you once hated. While they tolerated and accommodated a certain amount of our stonewalling, at least once a year my mom or dad would say, "Just eat one bite. You can't have dessert until you at least try it." Try we would. Then we usually retched, spit it out or just made a horrible face. With parents satisfied, life would go on.

Somewhere along the line I remember my mom intoning with an unmistakable air of pride that we weren't picky eaters compared to most of our friends. We ate seafood, most vegetables and a host of gourmet and ethnic food that our parents had been gradually introducing us to. Among the mythology of my childhood was a story about me as a toddler, picking apart sushi rolls. When my parents were distracted, my two-year-old-self snatched up a ball of wasabi and swallowed it entirely. My dad still loves to describe the look on my face and how, admirably, I didn't even cry.

Dad instilled in me an enthusiasm for spicy food. I originally approached it as a macho thing. I'd sneer at my sister for complaining about spiciness and load my gumbo with as much Tabasco as I could stand. I remember, in a Chinese restaurant, bravely trying one of those Szechuan peppers after seeing my dad toss a couple back. Sometimes Bri and I would dare each other to eat one. To this day I occasionally eat a Szechuan pepper, just for kicks. The sensation is always one of terrible burning, but you never know if your taste buds have changed. A behavioral psychologist would say that in my family the social dividends of brave experimentalism outweighed the danger of an unpleasant taste.

Once our parents divorced, Bri and I's cultivated non-pickiness became tangibly useful. Our bachelor Dad would take us to Costco for a food run. He'd tell us to "get kid food" and we'd come back with boxes of fruit loops, "granola bars" made mostly of corn syrup and puffed rice and veritable tubs of jelly bellies, gummi worms, etc. Dad would buy it unquestioningly. If dinners weren't consistently a family affair of meat and vegetables, we might have ended up inches shorter than we are today. When the "kid food" ran out, as it inevitably did, we resorted to experimenting with Dad's leftovers or tolerating his offered concoctions, even violating the breakfast-must-be-sweet principle universally understood by children across America as sacrosanct.

Thus it was that open-mindedness established itself as not only a source of pride for Bri and I, but as a necessity for survival. Experimentalism became a sort of religion for us, a direct product of our father's influence. Chicken feet, pig's ear, pigeon, escargot, beef tongue, raw oysters (<3!) and all forms of sushi were things we not only ate, but actively sought out to try. By the time I was in high school, our open-minded food tastes were integral to our self-identities and our family culture.

It was about that time that my dad organized a multi-week backpacking trip to Wyoming with his longtime friend Jack Kisslinger. For that trip, we treated him as family. In restaurants, when Bri or I requested a taste of Jack's meal, we had no expectation that he might refuse. We took it for granted that everyone was entitled to a bite of each other person's meal. Agreeable Jack gracefully adapted to this after a few nights of confusion. Bri and I would also angrily squabble amongst ourselves and, in the case of Jack or Dad, diplomatically implore about what dish the other person should order. You see, we wanted to maximize the number of dishes we got to taste of the restaurant's. If two people got the same dish, we would only have three unique entrees to try rather than four. So it was that Bri and I would identify the most intriguing dishes and often fight about who got to order the most-desirable of the remaining dishes after the adults' choices (in the most memorable example, this came between meat loaf and baby back ribs, so you can understand the passion). During those next few weeks, Jack's presence and semi-voluntary inclusion into our family culture elucidated our culture's uniqueness to Bri and I, which increased our family food culture importance in our identities.

My dad loved to regale us with his adventures traveling the world. He almost never turned down bizarre local delicacies, but he did tell of one restaurant in China that he turned down. He and his friend looked into the window and watched as a spider monkey was clamped by its head to a tray, the top of its skull was popped off with a knife and its quivering brains were eaten with spoons as the monkey screamed its head off (pardon the pun) and thrashed in evident agony, trying to escape. My dad told his friend, "let's eat somewhere else". Thus did I learn the limitations of my dad's considerable zeal for adventure.

In his stories of travel adventures, I made the inevitable connection between trying food and trying things more generally. The quote, "try anything once" may have originally been made by him in reference to food, but it was a short leap to apply it to everything. "Try anything once" was the refrain running in my head as I ran out of a pool in Utah to roll in the snow, rode Supreme Scream, jumped off a sea cliff, ate a peanut worm whole, hopped a fence to go night swimming in my school's rec pool and consumed enough cyanide to flush my face and quicken my breathing. The principle cemented by that Szechuan pepper a decade earlier became the rallying cry for a broader life philosophy in my late teens. I still remember the look of betrayal my father gave me as I took a puff of his friend's offered Cuban cigar at age nineteen. Evidently, it hadn't occurred to him that "try anything once" might be taken farther than he had taken it.

This isn't to say that I had entirely missed the principles that counterbalanced my dad's experimentalism. I know perfectly well why he, unlike most of his family, didn't smoke, why he refused to join his school football team or was glad to avoid the Vietnam draft. The message that there was a difference between bravery and stupidity came through loud and clear. In college I didn't shy away from trying cigarettes, but I made certain that I would never become addicted to them. I won't ever touch heroin or meth, but it's not because my experimental drive doesn't implore me to try them, it's because they entail unacceptable risk.

Somewhere along the line, my "try anything once" philosophy was augmented by a corollary-- the fact that many tastes need to be acquired necessitates trying some things more than once. I think of this as the "Pixies principle" because it took me many times hearing the Pixies before I started to like them, but they ultimately became one of my favorite bands. It could just as easily be called the "Big Star principle", the "beer principle" or the "scary movie month principle". In all cases, demanding that something be immediately gratifying would have denied me great joy. Patience and an open mind eventually paid dividends.

This principle implies its own corollary, though. You can't appreciate many things unless you approach them with the right attitude, so this principle also necessitates an amount of self-policing. Do you genuinely want to like something? Do you possibly dislike something because you want to dislike it for outside reasons? I mean, how could any hipster honestly say that they don't like Nirvana? Every American our age has been sufficiently exposed to Nirvana, those with a taste for indie and alternative rock styles like the sound, and Nirvana is patently awesome. The best explanation for indie hipsters who claim they don't like Nirvana is that they don't like Nirvana because they don't want to like Nirvana. It's a terrible tragedy for somebody to not appreciate Nirvana, so we must fight this mind-over-matter selectivity in ourselves. Thus we have the "Nirvana principle".

Two of my best friends don't like things for transparently mental reasons. The first, a nonpracticing Jew, hates the smell and taste of pork. The second, an ex-Mormon, hates the smell and taste of coffee. These are intelligent, thoughtful people, but I have never met a single person who disliked pork free of religious or near-religious (aka vegetarian) motives. This is a depiction of the mind's potent effect on our perception of smell and flavor, akin to how a person can't stand the smell of a liquor they overindulged in the night before. When, the day after a night of lots of beer and puking, beer smelled like vomit, I said to myself, "don't be a bitch" and I finished the beer I'd opened in spite of my revulsion. By the next day I could enjoy beer again because I had refused to be slave to my own mind.

I've found that the best way to deal with the open-endedness of the Nirvana principle is to assume that deep down everyone's the same. Of course, we're not the same. To what extent is up for debate, but at the very least we know that some people have or lack specific taste receptor genes. Broccoli tastes qualitatively more heinous to some people than to other people. Some men are wired to be exclusively attracted to men instead of to women, etc. I think that's where our fundamental differences end. I think that, unlike taste receptors, our brains are complex enough that we have the capacity in us to enjoy just about anything. If somebody else can enjoy something, so can I. At the very least, common humanity is a worthy assumption.

But where do I draw the line? Am I obligated to like everything or to die trying to like everything? Well, no. It is a legitimate question, though, and one without a perfect answer. The way we should choose what to try to like lies in practicality. Because my musical enculturation was grounded in classic rock and classical music, it is easier for me to acquire a taste for, say, new wave than for reggae. Assuming that I will derive the same joy from new wave as reggae, it is simply practical to choose the easiest one to acquire. I am also more likely to find friends eager to talk about new wave music, which is again a purely practical consideration.

I'm not arguing that obstacles to appreciating things do not exist, but that such obstacles are quantitative rather than qualitative. That is, that the question isn't whether or not it is possible to overcome an obstacle, but rather how much effort and time are required to overcome something. What I disagree with is the defeatism of "this is just how I am" and "I can't change who I am". Tastes may define a person's persona, but they do not define one's personality. Personality is a far more slippery quality.

For both vanity and personal-compatibility reasons I prefer confident women unafraid to speak their minds. For natural reasons I prefer more attractive women, but nature does not specify what kind of beauty I should like. Most of my preferences for women's appearance, other than attractiveness, exist because they correlate with personal compatibility. I'm more likely to get along with a girl who typically wears little-or-no makeup than one who wears a lot. I'm more likely to enjoy the company of a girl who wears sensible, fashionable clothes than one who wears either tacky or markedly conservative garb. These sorts of judgements are ideally where my prejudice ends, however, because I have a vested interest in considering the maximum range of women for romance. I can be picky later. Sometimes the process of determining my taste involves thoughtful self-analysis. I can acquire a taste for a "type" of woman if I want to and I generally want to if I think it will increase my range of options without significantly decreasing the quality of my options in terms of likelihood for personal compatibility.

Once you realize how very much control you have over your own tastes, you can consciously broaden your tastes to suit your needs. The way to find out to what degree you can is to try. Try not just with your physical actions, but with your mind and soul. Have a little faith in me and a little faith in your common humanity. Remember, there is no specific taste receptor for pork.

It is to my abiding shame that I cannot like raw tomato, but I am proud of having shame for a shortcoming of taste. I suspect it's a result of some rogue taste receptor gene of mine, but I cannot be sure, and every year or so still, I try a bite of good, raw tomato. I haven't yet been able to enjoy it, but I lose nothing in trying it.

All of this is to say, don't be picky. Don't be a slave to your mind, because you can like whatever you set your mind to like (except maybe broccoli or tomato). As important as it is to know your own limitations, it is also important to search out and eliminate false limitations. Open yourself up to the world as much as you can stand and do your best to appreciate it in all its glory. You will be rewarded. This, I promise you.

And when you're eating at a restaurant with me and I ask for a bite of your meal, say yes. Please also ask for a taste of mine. We can discuss our food. It will make me happy.

Beer Styles: Amber Ale

Amber Ales are the most center-field beer style in the world of American craft beer. They are the Goldilocks of craft beer-- malty but not heavy, hopped but not abrasively bitter. Their moderate alcohol and flavor make them the most sessionable major style of American ale. The style is extremely flexible, but because Ambers represent one of the most understated styles in the American beer pantheon, they rarely receive attention from the beer elite.

It is my not-so-humble opinion that there is a beer for every occasion and that every style can boast some great beer. While many Ambers (read: almost all brewpub versions) are made simply, thoughtlessly and according to style protocol, the best are subtle and quietly innovative. Reputable Ambers are a thinking man's session beer that pairs well with most brown-colored foods especially those with meaty, spicy, nutty or strong vegetable flavors like hummus or gumbo. Because of their flexibility and understated nature, Ambers stand as one of my three favorite beer styles, along with North German Pilsner and Strong Dark Belgian-Style Ales.

Before I get into the heart of what makes an Amber Ale, I'd like to address Red Ale, which is often treated as synonymous with Amber Ale. Red Ales have more in common with Red IPA's, Double/Imperial Reds and even American Pale Ales because they are all built on the common paradigm of clear, caramelly malt (unmuddied by roasted, biscuity or earthy malt flavors) playing off of fruity yeast esters and a strong hop flavor and bitterness. Red Ales are typically higher in alcohol than Amber Ales and, crazily enough, are copper-red rather than brownish-amber. It is true that there are examples of intermediate beers (as well as mild British-style Red Ales, which are painfully boring), but as style distinctions go, this is not a hard call. Red Ales rarely use herbal or earthy hops and never use roasted or dark crystal malts. It's very simple: Reds thrive on fruitiness and zestiness.

There are some excellent Red Ales available. Lagunitas's Censored runs to the malty end of the style, but still is prominently fruity, boozy and estery in ever-so-delicious ways. More classic examples of good Reds are North Coast's Red Seal Ale and Mad River's Jamaican Red Ale. They both run about 6% ABV, sport a fruity nose and an exquisite balance between hop bitterness and sweet malt backbone. Pyramid's Juggernaut fits perfectly within this style, but Juggernaut is uninteresting swill. Frankly, I consider the striking difference between Red Seal and Juggernaut the clearest testament to the talent and quality brewing required to make good ale.

True Amber Ales, because of their more complex malt profile, can never achieve that razor's edge sensation when it comes to balancing sweetness with hop bitterness. Breweries that have tried to do this have only ever succeeded in spite of rather than because of the attempt to hop an Amber-style malt base up to the brink.

Most Amber Ales use hops with herbal and earthy flavors that add another dimension to a complex malt profile. These hops typically play a supportive role rather than competing with the malts for the spotlight. Just like Red Ales, Ambers are built on a caramel malt backbone, but good Ambers also have small amounts of darker specialty malts that contribute dark fruit, toffee, nutty, biscuit, chocolate and roasted flavors.

Below are reviews of the most memorable Amber Ales I have tried:


Fat Tire- The flagship of New Belgium, this is one of the most widely available craft beers on the market and most peoples' introduction to Amber Ale. Fat Tire is also one of the best Ambers, but the trouble with Fat Tire is that it is not typical of American Amber Ale. Unlike most American Ambers, who trace their descent from English Amber Ale, Fat Tire is an American take on Belgian Amber Ale. Fat Tire is lighter in body and alcohol, which makes it disturbingly easy to toss back. Rather than making it weak or flavorless, the lightness allows the beer to sit back and let its considerable malt complexity rise to the fore. Toasty, earthy, warm and with a hint of raisin, no other American beer manages to simultaneously be so mesmerizingly malt-driven and light on its feet.

Boont Amber- This is the flagship of Anderson Valley Brewery and at least in Northern California it seems to be the go-to Amber Ale. Boont is a quintessential American Amber, and among the best. It has a richer malt body than Fat Tire. The malt is balanced by modest bitterness. The overall effect refreshes when it's hot and sticks to your ribs when it's cold. Two things separate Boont from the ubiquitous brewpub Amber: a cleaner alignmeent of flavor (essentially, brewing and ingredient quality) and a nutty, almost a buttery flavor in the malt that characterizes Anderson Valley's whole lineup. My friend Myranda gets credit for suggesting it as a breakfast beer at an English pub brunch. I have discovered few better beer pairings than Boont with greasy eggs, potatoes and sausage.

Full Sail Amber- Like Anderson Valley, Full Sail's Amber is characterized significantly by the Brewery's unique trademark style, which in this case means that it's built on a rich, light, ebullient malt base that's set off by a dry, roasted flavor in the malt. The hops set off that roasted flavor, making the overall effect one of balance between hearty-but-light-colored malt and the dark, dry bitterness of the hops and roasted malt. This sits on the heavier end of the Amber spectrum and would be perfect for the Christmas season.


Rogue American Amber- I have an enormous hard-on for Rogue Brewing. Like Boont, theirs is a quintessential Amber Ale that sports its brewery's trademark spin. Rogue American Amber has that air of delicacy associated with their proprietary yeast strain "Pacman". The malts subtly play off one another, the hops and that characteristic yeast nose. This is not their best beer, but it is among the best Amber Ales. Were it priced competitively with Boont and Fat Tire, it would be my Amber of choice.

Stone Levitation- As you might imagine coming from Stone, this is the most bitter Amber Ale I've yet to try. Of course, it's impeccably balanced. It manages to firmly stand as an Amber even with an inverted (hop>malt) paradigm. If you're the kind of beer-drinker who demands the teetering bitter edge, this is the Amber for you. It may even be the only Amber for you, because I know how stubborn you hop heads are.

Ballast Point's Calico Copper Amber Ale- Befitting it's San Diego origins, this is also a relatively bitter Amber. Rather than inverting the paradigm or attempting a "bleeding bitter edge" brew, Calico is simply a combination of strong hopping with a strong and diverse malt base. This sacrifices the natural give-and-take dynamism of Amber Ale for forceful flavor. I have had a few Ambers brewed in such a maximalist style from smaller breweries on the West Coast, but this is the first one to not suck.

Drake's Amber- This is more of a Brown Ale than an Amber because it has a high ABV, substantial hop bitterness, a medium-full creamy body and an abundance of rich malty flavors. Treated as an unusual Amber, it has greatest resemblance to the maximalist school of Amber Ale. This is a solid beer in terms of concept and harmony, but it wasn't especially complex. That's a criticism I could level more broadly at most Brown Ales, even respectable ones.

Red Tail Ale- This Mendocino flag ship is an even lighter Amber than Fat Tire. It is labelled as an "American Ale", but this beer's aesthetic definitely aligns it with the Amber camp and I'm pretty sure "American Ale" is made-up. Like classic Ambers it's laid back and malt-driven. There's some malt complexity, but I don't think the flavors really gel into a compelling greater whole. This is a good session beer that I'm unlikely to ever buy again because it's short of amazing in a world of amazing craft beer. I imagine some people will really like this beer and this brewery, so it's worth trying, but it's not the beer/brewery for me and I'm willing to wager that it's not the beer/brewery for most beer people.

Budweiser American Ale- Again, "American Ale" is code for lightweight Ambers. As you can imagine, coming from Budweiser, this is insipid. It serves as a pointed reminder that (with the solitary exception of Coors' Blue Moon lineup) macros should stay the hell away from craft styles.

I am aware that I have already reviewed some of these beers in previous posts, but these reviews treat them in the context of their style. Plus, my palate has matured. :P

Making the Classics

When I wrote my first comprehensive cocktail post I figured I needn't post how I made those classic cocktails. I mean, they're classics, right? Two years experience being over twenty one and I know differently. I don't go to bars very frequently, but I've ordered two Martinis. First of all I had to specify and confirm that I wanted them made with gin. When I finally got my Martini, not only was vermouth almost nonexistent, but the drink was iced so thoroughly that instead of tasting like uncomplemented gin it tasted mostly like ice water. That's for both instances. One of those was from Sophia's and cost $7. Their Mojito was also off-balance (mostly mint and soda water). At a bar in Dublin (CA) I ordered an Old Fashioned and was similarly displeased.

It seems to me that bartenders accustomed to "pinky up" drinks that are incredibly hard to mess up are now ruining the last respectable cocktails on the house books. Fine cocktails are difficult to balance and I suppose bartenders have incentive to make drinks as quickly as they can, but I don't mean it lightly when I say they were nearly undrinkable. All of those drinks were travesties. I know there are good bars out there that still take cocktails seriously. I've promised myself to investigate one sometime when I have the extra arm and leg required to pay the tab. Until then, I'm going to err on the side of beer. They still haven't figured out how to mess that up.

Those of my readers who've been around the block are welcomed to weigh in here. I could be totally off-base. For those pinky-uppers and non-cocktail-drinkers among you, don't hold bar failures against a good cocktail.

The Martini was the first cocktail Brandon and I got into. It took us awhile to get the proportions right and it took us awhile to figure out how to drink them properly (small sips, guys). Though we did the vermouth by eye, we learned quickly enough what amount made a good Martini. That amount ended up remarkably close to IBA specifications: one shot gin, one quarter-shot dry vermouth. When done right, as you roll the fiery liquid around your mouth, you can bask in the divine balance of sharp juniper with the nutty/fruity/spicy flavors of vermouth.

Since our early days using Seagram's Gin for our Martinis, Brandon and I have moved to "swanky" gins, which really comes down to deciding between Bombay Sapphire and similarly-priced Tanqueray. I'm partial to the latter as it tastes more like gin. I don't think the flowery flourishes of Bombay Sapphire lend themselves to Martinis, though they work better in Gin and Tonics (one of the more foolproof cocktails, fyi).

So, my rules for Martinis are as follows:
-When left unspecified, a Martini is made with gin, not vodka.
-"Martinis", as a category, includes various vermouth-containing cocktails such as the Vodka Martini and the Dirty Martini, which is to say "Martinis" do not include most cocktails served in martini glasses or with the suffix "-tini". Too many times have I heard beer or whiskey snobs refer derisively to "Martinis", alluding to their syrupy ways, and it gives me a sad.
-Vermouth should make a 1:4 ratio with the gin unless specified "dry" or "wet", which I do not recommend and I certainly don't recommend starting off with.
-The gin should be shaken or stirred with ice straight out of the freezer and for a short period of time. The primary ingredient in a Martini should be gin, not melted ice.

Brandon and I also took the foundation for our Manhattans from the IBA via wikipedia. I've found the ratio of vermouth to liquor is a little more forgiving than with Martinis (unlike dry, sweet vermouth is pretty good on its own). We ended up eyeballing about the same amount of vermouth for both Martinis and Manhattans.

My dad serves Manhattans on the rocks without bitters rather than the IBA-recommended straight up. He's also a fan of a variant he picked up from my Wisconsinite maternal grandfather, Grandpa Pee Wee, which uses sweet white vermouth aka Bianco. Between the ice, the lack of bitters and a more liberal application of vermouth, the whole thing comes out much milder than my don't-shake-it-too-long-or-it'll-be-watery Martinis and Manhattans. Personal taste aside, my dad makes an excellent Manhattan, which I guess is a testament to the drink's flexibility.

I'd also like to mention the Sazerac, which is reputed to be the oldest cocktail and the catalyst for the first time I stocked a bar. It's how I got into rye whiskey. While there is no IBA-official recipe, I'm very happy with the Wikipedia recipe. I often simplify the process to resemble how I make Martinis/Manhattans (though the Sazerac is more complex), but I've found that it is absolutely necessary to first add the Absinthe/Herbsaint (or Pastis or any anise-flavored liquor) by coating the glass. I've also found that releasing the lemon peel's oils onto the drink is essential for the overall effect.

Other, also respectable, cocktails that lean harder on water and sugar are more forgiving to make and more approachable for those with weak palates, but there's nothing like classic straight up cocktails with that heady mix of spices, fruits, herbs and aromatics only they have to offer. Nothing else takes the taste of alcohol to such a pure, high glory.

Ghost Chicken

I had the most compelling, detailed dream I've had in a long time this morning.

I was in Japan with Sarah, which was apparently her homeland. She was telling me that the bugs got worse the closer you were to the east or west coasts. I asked, "Are we near a coast?" and just as I asked, we rounded a corner and came into view of the Yellow Sea. We went into a beach cabin right up against the water with the top half of the seaward wall cut out to make a window. I looked at the sea which, just like pictures I'd seen, was as blue as the Mediterranean (in spite of the name). I commented how pretty of a blue it was and Sarah agreed. I noticed that the big swells were coming up to the bottom edge of the window. I talked with Sarah. I'd had amnesia and couldn't remember knowing her that long and I was still learning about her, but I knew that we had had a long romantic history and I could feel it in our magnetism. The ocean swells got bigger and bigger, tipping over the edge of the window and into the room, rising in glorious curves and sometimes cresting a little before rolling over the low wall into the room. The room was starting to fill up with water. I got more and more lost in the wave motion as I became increasingly concerned about our precarious situation.
....
I went into the bathroom that I knew Sarah was taking a shower in to pee. Looking up I saw a girl was in the upper bunk of the shower/bunk-bed Sarah was showering in. I know the girl because I went to primary and secondary school with her. Her actual name in real life, weirdly enough and by the way, is Sarah (Rodgers). She was pretty and brassy with curly red hair, but we'd never had any affinity or much interaction in school. She was talking with my Sarah, who she was evidently close friends with. She'd gotten cooler with time. She'd seen me naked peeing, but her facial reaction indicated that she didn't give a shit and I decided I didn't give a shit either. I saw her partly naked later and similarly didn't care.

I went to another room to visit with some old high school friends, Nick and Dana. Like every nerd in my high school I'd had a crush on Dana (and had actually gone to prom with her), but she and Nick were genuinely close friends. Apparently they'd finally started dating in the last few months (in real life Nick recently married). When I entered the room, Dana was sitting on the bed and Nick was in the bathroom taking a shower. I attempted a stab at awkward conversation, talking about how many people have such specific and unique taste in jeans that it seems like they only own one pair of jeans, like the way cartoon characters always wear the same outfit. This was true of Dana and is also true of Sarah, Howard and a lot of other people I know. Dana was wearing her characteristic jeans in the dream. I was still trying to explain what I meant when Nick came in and gave Dana a provocative kiss. I feebly tried to finish explaining and/or relieve the awkwardness for another few seconds before I gave up and sheepishly left.

I went back to the bathroom where Sarah and her friend were talking. They mentioned a French word used in a Lady Gaga lyric. I asked about it. Sarah explained it was pronounced "Troce" and meant close affection. I asked how it was spelled and Sarah's friend patiently spelled it for me. It was spelled bizarrely (complete with three syllables and an "eaux" that wasn't even at the end of the word) and I knew I'd have to write it down, so I asked to hear the spelling again after I'd gotten pen and paper. The spelling Sarah gave was slightly different and similarly nonsensical. For the next few minutes I'd periodically interrupt their conversation to ask them to clarify how it was spelled and they would patiently spell it for me, each time more confusing than the one before it. Given my weird relationship with French, that of being the only of my close friends with strong French heritage but also being in the minority among them for not speaking it (and not even speaking another language fluently), the experience was naturally alienating and I was kind of jealous of the obviously close relationship Sarah and her friend had.
....
At this Mongolian fried chicken stand (little whole chickens on skewers), I had a brain wave to ask if the stand owner needed a new employee because Matt Wingert, despite his half-finished PhD in Mechanical Engineering, desperately needed a job to pay rent. The stand owner agreed to consider him so I brought Matt over. The guy asked if he'd be okay with killing chickens with his bare hands. Matt said "I'd love to", but the uncertainty in his voice was unmistakable. I told the chicken stand owner that though I'd masked my fear better when interviewing for jobs past, I'd always risen to whatever daunting task I was set to with aplomb and Matt would be the same way. To demonstrate, I offered to kill a chicken myself. I killed a defeathered chicken and stripped off the skin in one pull (like can be done with rabbits). The stand owner was happy with that and it sounded like he was going to hire Matt, but as we were talking the chicken skin stood up on its own and started moving around like it was alive. I was like, "Holy shit it's an actual ghost chicken!" but the owner said, "It's just epidermal nerve activity and muscle memory." The chicken started to move aggressively towards me. I tried to bat it away, but I was so unnerved, I wasn't very effective. The chicken advanced on me menacingly, preparing to attack. Then I woke up.

Cheers, All
Enjoy!

The Coca-Cola Fiend

Back in the 80's, Coca-Cola tried to change their formula to so-called "New Coke", the fallout of which is why, until the last couple of years, cans of coke were labeled "Coca-Cola Classic". The rather compelling story of "New Coke" can be found on Wikipedia (of all the unlikely places to find a compellingly-written story).

I have said previously on this blog that Coca-Cola is awesome and I am here to say it again. Coca-Cola is fucking awesome. I'd like to elaborate on that starting premise.

Coca-Cola, as declared by a paper airline napkin, is "zesty and refreshing on the first sip and full and rich on the last". It has an impenetrable depth of flavor that, far from being intimidating, tastes easy and approachable even as it dares you to bury yourself in it's complexity. It complements most food and liquor remarkably well (my favorite pairing being with Chinese food). It has mild medicinal effects. In short, Coke is everything I believe a beverage should be.

My fascination with Coca-Cola led me to discover that different countries have been permitted to tweak the original formula for local tastes. Despite Andy Warhol's rather inspiring quote, not all cokes are created equal. The Apple House tasting team had one of its more epic sessions comparing cokes from the US, Mexico ("Mexicoke"), France and Spain. I must be getting spoiled by all of the options available to me as a resident of a major US city, because I think there really should be a store/soda bar somewhere in San Francisco that sells Coca-Colas from every country that coke is bottled in.

I'd also love to be able to taste older formulations of Coca-Cola, particularly the very earliest incarnations that still contained modest quantities of cocaine. In fact, crazy as it may sound, I would like to see that oldest formula reintroduced. At low concentrations, there's no reason that such a soda would be particularly dangerous or addictive. Coca-leaf tea is still consumed all over the Andes without causing problems. It is treated like coffee is treated here-- as a mild stimulant to power people through the working day. Of course, I expect that this retro coke would have considerably more kick than the current formula.

Flavor-wise, coke holds up well against craft sodas, though there is a key difference in approach. Like a good second-day gumbo (gumbo is always better the second day), Coca-Cola's flavors are married such that the individual ingredients cannot be parsed out. This is ideal for easy drinking and culinary harmony, but it plays poorly with gourmets who've been taught to pick out flavor notes, as with wine. Excellent craft sodas like Virgil's Rootbeer and Red Bull's Cola make their concoctions' individual components as clear as possible in the tasting. To sip one of these sodas is to take a tour of the ingredients proudly labeled on the back of the container: nutmeg, cinnamon, anise, clove, cardamom, cassis oil, etc. While purported ingredients for Coca-Cola's famously secret recipes are similarly complex and exotic (neroli oil, anyone?), the difference is one of taste rather than of quality. Coca-Cola produces a more harmonious soda while the best craft soda makers sacrifice harmony for a more explicit complexity. With the notable exception of Coke's choice of sweetener, there are no culinary grounds to fault or marginalize the quality of Coke as a world-class soda. Anyone who has, as I have, made a point to compare every available cola must inevitably recognize the resounding excellence of Coca-Cola.

Oh The Humanity: Regarding Foie Gras

I saw this banner on Facebook:

"Humane Foie Gras?

aldf.org

If you have purchased Foie Gras, believing it was humanely raised, we want to hear from you. Contact the Animal Legal Defense Fund."

I figured it merited a reply.
Dear Animal Legal Defense Fund,
I have bought Foie Gras with the knowledge that the poultry I am eating represents some of the most humanely raised meat available for purchase in the United States. I have seen the videos of geese eagerly lining up for their feeding and the idyllic living circumstances of high dollar French foie gras geese. These birds are not suffering. To assert that they are suffering amidst a backdrop of the breathtakingly inhumane treatment of the average American chicken is so absurd as to be motivationally suspect. Does any of your funding come from the poultry industry?

Sincerely,
Max


Dear Mr. Vidrine,
Thank you for your email. I appreciate your interest in animal welfare. I would be very interested in speaking with you further about this issue. Would you be available to speak by phone in the next week, and if so, when would be a good time?

Meanwhile, I will explain briefly Animal Legal Defense Fund’s position on foie gras:

While the video featuring Mr. Bourdain suggests that the conditions in force-fed foie gras farming are humane, it appears that it shows only the early stages of the force-feeding process. Our research has shown that ducks in the mid and late stages suffer serious health consequences as a result of the high-calorie, nutritionally deficient diet they are fed. Aside from the risk of injury to the esophagus from repeated insertion of the feeding tube, ducks develop lameness, bone and skin disorders, respiratory problems, and an inability to groom properly as a result of obesity. Some ducks, unable to walk, attempt to push themselves around their pens with their wings, causing themselves injury. In some cases the excess food leads to aspiration pneumonia. Many ducks develop painful foot infections due to the combination of their increased weight and the wire-mesh flooring of their pens. Finally, the accumulation of fat in the liver interferes with liver function. Many ducks slaughtered for foie gras would otherwise die of liver failure or other conditions brought on by the force-feeding. Based on this information, we do not believe that this production is humane.

You can find more information in an EU study of foie gras production and in a report by the Humane Society of the United States.

Although it is true that some ducks naturally gorge in preparation for migration, the amount of food that is force-fed to ducks in foie gras operations is well beyond what a duck would normally ingest, even while gorging.

Finally, I assure you that Animal Legal Defense Fund does not accept funding from any industry that exploits animals. We are fully in agreement with you that the treatment of chickens in factory farms is unacceptable and inhumane. Addressing those conditions is one of our aims as an organization. The attention we give to foie gras is in no way meant to express an endorsement of other forms of factory farming.

Sincerely,
Michelle Lee


Dear Ms. Lee
After perusing the literature you linked, it seems clear that foie gras production has been subject to considerable rationalization in the last 20-30 years and that it is no longer as uniformly idyllic as my father and Anthony Bourdain would present it.

That said, most of the health consequences you mentioned refer back to the ducks/geese being made extremely fat. I'm afraid I do not find the existence of such health problems troubling. This is because of two things, the first being that fatness is the point of force feeding and the second being that these animals only live in such an extremely fat state for a relatively short period of time before they go to slaughter.

Frankly, as a foodie, being indulged to the brink of death doesn't sound so bad. Furthermore, however rationalized most foie gras production now is, the fact remains that the poultry involved are substantially better off than mainline poultry on factory farms. Also important is the fact that foie gras ducks/geese represent a tiny, delicious minority of all poultry produced and consumed.

Now apart from the humane-ness or inhumane-ness, I dislike foie gras restriction as a political issue. It sits, along with curtailing deer hunting (deer are overpopulating throughout the US without natural predation from wolves), as one of the most misguided routes attempted in the name of animal rights. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it is brought up as an issue: it is both moralist and populist without actually affecting the welfare of poultry in any significant way. It makes activists feel like they are accomplishing something without incurring the wrath of business-conscious conservatives. Imported luxury goods are always an easy political target to raise a rabble with.

Unfortunately, this does nothing to address the very real problem of inhumane living conditions for chickens and other factory-farmed poultry. It wastes political capital on eliminating one of the handful of reasonably ethical segments of the poultry industry. It discourages people like me who eat meat, but would like to see meat not produced in a living poultry hell. It is a slap in the face to gourmets (who, generally speaking, do care about how their food is treated). It discredits animal rights as a movement by giving emphasis to its bleeding heart, little picture, meat-is-murder contingent.

I'm glad your organization receives no money from the poultry industry, but I hope you understand my distaste for foie gras as an animal rights issue. Thank you for bringing me to a better understanding of how foie gras is actually produced.

Regards,
Max Vidrine

Between you and me, I lied about having bought foie gras. I've only eaten it, but now I'm super hungry for some. If only I weren't so poor...

Transmissions from Acadiana

Hey Mom,
I'm fine. Louisiana is nice, I think. I'm mostly staying with Memeem (my grandma), which is going pretty well. I'm enduring her micromanaging and in turn she's been super sweet. Uncle Pierre is a peach. Most of the fun I've had here, I can chalk up to him. Chris (my cousin) has gotten old enough that he's interesting to talk to. I'm totally at peace with the weather, but not the mosquitoes. The food is alternately amazing and, y'know, Memeem's frozen tidbits reheated plus pickled carrots.

I've been going to church with Pierre's family, which makes me a little nostalgic for when we used to go (how much should I give at collections? $5?). The actual work of putting together the family's land records is tedious and organizationally challenging, but it's kind of fascinating to dredge up all the family history.

So that's how I've been doing,
Max


Some anecdotes from my time here:

We shot an alligator that was in our lake. It took a few tries, but the third shot was "Swamp People good" and killed it dead. Unfortunately we fumbled on the collection and the alligator sank like a stone. So, no alligator steak for us.

We cooked half a pig in what is called a "Cajun microwave" (large metal box with coals on top that cooks by radiative heating). I will never forget the image of my uncle Jacques stepping out from under the roof into light drizzle, looking skyward as he very slowly chewed some morsel of pig, an expression of perfect ecstasy written across his face.

I drive my late grandpa's Lincoln town car (executive edition). Yes, I feel like a bad ass.

I listened in on a detailed discussion of how pretty much all animals taste good.

Instead of enduring the heat and humidity, I've mostly been enduring the arctic winter of Louisiana air conditioning. There is no reason for the thermostat to be set at sixty-five, guys.

We picked up some box lunches from a gas station mart that tasted better than any "Cajun" food you can find in California. It's roughly the equivalent of going to a taqueria in SoCal. Pork, beans and (dirty) rice.

Everybody is warm and friendly and knows how to have a good time. The parties are all-ages and always a blast.

We had a discussion of how some people in a small subdivision were angry at a black guy for moving in because it would lower their property values.

The clerk of court's office charges $1 per page of legal documents you print out and I've been printing hundreds of pages at a time, but nobody is going to count the pages for you or second-guess how many pages you say you printed. It would be called the honor system if it needed a name here. Have I mentioned that Ville Platte is a small town?

Beginning of Summer Update

Let me catch you up on my life:
I got fired from Monsanto in April. I agreed a month later to spend the summer in Louisiana doing property management for my family. In two days, I leave for southern California to visit (step-)family from South Carolina, then Saturday I leave for Wisconsin to visit maternal family for a week. From there I fly to Louisiana, where I will stay until the end of August (living without air conditioning or in-home internet access). When I get back I'll be moving to the Bay Area. With luck, I will have lined up a job there to start on. I've been dating Sarah for about six months now and she is presently looking for jobs in the Bay Area too. I'm unsure whether or not I will apply again to graduate school or indeed if I will remain in biology. I got fired because I essentially sucked at following molecular bio protocols.

This blog has been on my back burner for awhile and I apologize to you, my loyal readers. It's not for lack of ideas, but for preoccupation with life. Just as last September boasted a bumper crop of fresh material because I was freshly employed, had nothing to do and lots to write about, since April I have been unemployed and my future has been decidedly uncertain. I'd like to point out that this blog passed 5000 unique views and 100 posts a little while ago. This blog is not dying anytime soon, but be patient.

Oh, also, I just turned twenty four, so happy birthday to me. I definitely feel like I am in my mid-twenties at this point, which is something I couldn't say a year ago. According to my dad, I still have ten years before everything goes to shit physically.

Turning Back the Clock

I had a dream that suddenly I was fourteen again, in my Dad's house. I asked Dad what had happened. He wasn't sure, but suggested that I take this opportunity to correct my life's mistakes. I thought about what I would do differently. I thought briefly that I'd have more incentive to keep my grades up. My life would be so much easier if I'd gotten a grade point higher by 0.07 (anything below a 3.0 is a tough sell for grad school). Thinking on that, I realized that no, I'd probably repeat that particular mistake. It wasn't as if I was unaware of the consequences the first time around. I'd know how to deal with a few ornery classes and professors, but it wouldn't make enough of a difference. I'd probably be more successful with dating, knowing how to deal with girls. I thought about all the roads untaken and how different of a person I could be but for a few matters of happenstance. Would I have flowered in a more competitive university like Berkeley?
I looked for the bathroom, but I'd forgotten that a little later in my original timeline my sister had discovered two secret rooms in Dad's house that had been converted into the main bathroom (the other one had become a closet, I think, by 2011). So, I re-"discovered" those secret rooms, thereby changing the course of history according to my priveledged knowledge of the future.

I'd forgotten how incredibly small Bri was when I was fourteen. Now she's roughly my size, give or take six inches, but back then she was much smaller than me. She hadn't had any kind of growth spurt and was the little, feisty kid I remember her being. As soon as I started knocking at walls she began ferreting out the painted-over outlines of hidden doors and casing the new rooms.

Pitchfork and Allmusic

It all started with Sufjan Stevens.

Sufjan Stevens was at the height of popularity when I was finishing high school, having just released the second album in his fifty states project. All of my hippest friends had him in heavy rotation on their iPods, right up there with Radiohead. The next year, in the dorms, I used iTunes's network to view and listen to the libraries of fellow students. It became apparent that Sufjan was among a group of bands whose popularity could be traced back to heavy promotion by Pitchfork Media. It also became apparent to me that Sufjan Stevens was a sort of fraud.

His music was all surface and no substance. That was notable enough, but my real epiphany was the realization that his music's surface catered to the sensibilities of critics and aspiring pretentious white kids everywhere. The elaborate arrangements, unusual instrumentation and hyper-empathetic vocals broke through bored critics palates and bypassed well-rehearsed cynicism. This would be all well and good if most music critics emphasized songwriting/musicianship over the progression of music's sound. Sometime before they actually wrote a review that sounded like a fourteen-year-old having a wet dream, they would have realized that the songs just weren't that great. It wasn't that Sufjan Stevens was bad, he just wasn't the musical genius he got billed as.

In the last couple of years Sufjan has admitted that the fifty states project was a publicity stunt that he never actually intended to carry out. At the end of last year he released his densest, most use-weird-noises-to-cover-a-lack-of-underlying-talent album ever, to an excellent reception by Pitchfork.

Hype is a pretty natural tendency of art criticism, especially when the critics in question are relatively young (when I was finishing high school the mean age of Pitchfork staffers was in the mid-20's). Some amount of self-policing must exist for an organization to produce a thoughtful body of criticism worthy of respect. The "Pitchfork band" phenomena indicated that shiny new, rapidly rising Pitchfork Media was (and continues to be) the most prominent, most irresponsible perpetrator of music over-hype in the industry.

Sometime during my freshman year, I started reading AllMusic. They gave the Queens of the Stone Age respectful reviews, said nice things about Sufjan without implying that he had any real talent, and panned Radiohead's alleged masterpiece Kid A. That last bit caught my attention and it earned my respect, even though I disagreed with their review right up until they backtracked and conceded to the album's greatness last year. In short, AllMusic embodied the contrary, thoughtful kind of snobbery that I saw in myself.

With the aid of dorm broadband, I was downloading music about as fast as I could keep up with. AllMusic provided comprehensive artist bios, discographies and a wealth of internal hyperlinking (genres, similar bands, bands influenced, etc). It's design was ideal for me to rapidly sift through music and investigate and expand my tastes into unknown territory.

It soon became apparent that I faced a dilemma. If I continued to blindly trust AllMusic's reviewers, my tastes would quickly become beholden to and bounded by the tastes and knowledge of a small group of individuals. I had to decide whether or not to sell my soul to AllMusic.

I mulled the decision over for a couple of weeks, but in the end it was an easy choice. I was fresh off my discovery of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. I was eager to develop a taste for the "classic" bands and albums of rock and roll. I never put much stock in individualism and indeed, I'm irritated by the definition and cultivation of "personal taste". Personal taste should be treated as bias that must be filtered out of any final, "true" assessment. There is such a thing as great art in absolute terms.

I sold my soul to AllMusic. And I never looked back.

On Militant Atheism

The following was compiled from a debate with Rob about a post of his titled Schmutz about ridiculing a passerby for having ash on his head on Ash Wednesday. For the purposes of this post, please read "religion" as "Christianity". Also, and this should go without saying on my blog anyways, if you have hate for this post, please don't remain silent. Address me directly and thoughtfully, either by comment or email.

For what it's worth, Rob, I don't consider you militant anything either. You say that in defending religion I am "defending the indefensible"? Lines like that ensure a long return letter from me.

So you say it was your laughter after being angry, bigoted and confrontational that made it ok? I guess it depends on the kind of laughter. I laugh a hard, cruel laugh when I've made a particularly witty joke at someone's (or an implied group's) expense. That was the laughter (maybe muted, but the spirit anyways) I envisioned in your post. It is a laughter at one's own horribleness, but it's also a sort of victory lap, a twisted embrace of all that is unholy about wit and being born to, frankly, a superior mind. It has its place in my life and I expect it has its place in yours. I'm just saying that if that kind of laughter has made its way to strangers simply for having ash on their foreheads, you've gotten a little far afield.

Life is not nearly so simple, and I'm not talking about the minority of nonbelievers who will wear ash each year. I'm talking about the bivalent nature of something as enmeshed into human life and culture as religion. It can be very bad for people, but if you miss its capacity to genuinely be very good for people or indeed miss the extent to which it genuinely helps most people within its clutches, you are missing something very important.

Living in Davis taught every person of notable intellect how boring militant atheism can be and frankly, how crass it is. I've lived the dream of a majority atheist/agnostic society and I can tell you for certain that it is a place of rationalized persecution, bigotry and, this is especially important, a notable lack of philosophical thought. Can you believe we have an atheist/agnostic club in such a place? What the hell do you think they discuss at their meetings? Seriously, all I can think of is getting out "the word" and why non-non-believers suck. They certainly don't have much to discuss in terms of personal philosophy. I can't imagine a UCD organization less likely to include an individual of insight and imagination.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I was just as helpless in not believing in god as so many people are helpless in believing in him. To think otherwise is to give oneself too much credit. There is no minority of people who came to religion by choice. There is a minority of people whose environmental inputs were balanced enough that their decision was decided by native personality rather than those environmental inputs. People are simply not that freethinking. I'm not a determinist, I just recognize genuine free choice for being the intensely rare thing that it is.

I know a handful of enormously intelligent believers. That's not enough, by itself, to give me pause before deriding poster boys for a largely retarded sort of follow-the-leader mentality. It was hearing intelligent people talk about the significance of religion to them that explained to me why religion has existed as something enduring and powerful with deep relevance to the human condition rather than as some transient fad. That, is enough to give me pause before deriding even people who are obviously floatsam upon the tides of religious alignment. It's even enough to give me pause before deriding a person who so clearly is being negatively affected by their floatsamesque religious affiliation, because I cannot easily estimate the positives that religion contributes to their life.

The "is religion more good or bad?" topic is an especially poignant one for me, because my very favorite "intelligent believer" has been affected both so positively and so negatively by her religion. I've tried to imagine what kind of person she would be without her religion and I find it just too inextricably tied. The knee-jerk agnostic reaction would be a revulsion that somebody could be so consumed by a human institution, particularly under the false notion that the institution was superhuman in origin, but being affected by religion is no different from being affected by anything else and there is nothing inherently wrong with being affected so deeply by human institutions. Individuality is, after all, just another value of human construction.

Back to my point, though. My friend is affected in incredibly positive ways by her faith and in dangerous and potentially limiting ways. She lives a life with both more pain and more joy than I think she would live without religion. As to whether religion made her already-intense personality "gel" into the amazing person she is or whether it has straitjacketed her true potential or paved a road for her eventual self-destruction, I cannot say. Surely there is an example somewhere for every case. For now, I have decided it is best that I take it on faith that it does more good than bad. Whether or not that is true, though, I think her life is unquestionably the richer for having religion.

My highest hope for the world is not that people live happy lives free of the worst kinds of sorrow. My highest hope is that people live rich lives, full of both enormous happiness and enormous sorrow. My hope is that somewhere in the process that experience imparts to them tremendous insight into human nature. If religion makes the world a more painful place on the balance, that is still worth the richness and wisdom it brings to the world. Peace and happiness always sounded terribly boring, anyways. I concede that my belief as to what the balance comes to can be reduced to simple faith in my own educated guess. I also believe that if you had any kind of appreciation for its good, you'd see it "being more good than bad" for the very likely possibility that I see it. You say the hurt unleashed on the world by religion is unfathomable? The good unleashed is certainly also unfathomable. To think otherwise is hubris. Who are you to call the balance in religion's disfavor?

Militant atheists often write-off religion's appeal as grounded in fear of "meaninglessness and death". Let me open by saying people respond poorly and inconsistently to ultimatums ("Go to church or burn in hell! Donate a dollar to Red Cross or burn in hell! Wash your hands or go to hell!"). In practice, it only gets you so far in coercing action and loyalty. Cults are just religions without the staying power. Religion survives because there is wisdom inlaid in the tradition, rules and ceremony with genuine human relevance that resonates with people and their children.

To be sure, there is also the appeal of escaping "meaningless and death", but from my vantage point that appeal is rooted much deeper than such a predictable write-off would suggest. Religion is a beautiful and sophisticated allegory for dealing with death and meaninglessness. Just like old school fairy tales deal with childhood fears and traumas by conveying understanding and acceptance through allegory (ie. Little Red Riding hood is about sexual predation), so too does religion, albeit on a more sophisticated and encompassing scale. Religion, understood in my terms, does not deal with fear of death and meaningless through providing escapism, but by teaching understanding and acceptance through allegory. It is the best kind of coping mechanism.

This, perhaps, is the core of my belief system regarding religion. Religion is allegory that never breaks the fourth wall. Treated as such, it is not strident, it is not threatening, it just pushes gently and inexorably onto your skull, whispering how to live a good life, how to prepare for death, how to deal with problems both large and small. I've been working with this belief system for most of my adult life and I have yet to iron out all the wrinkles, but the beauty and reasonableness with which Christianity has opened up to me since then has assured me that I am onto something real and powerful.

Hopefully this clears up at least some of the enigma of my love for and defense of a religion I don't believe. I'm not an enigmatic person. I sometimes wish I was, which is why my first reaction to being called enigmatic is flattery. My second reaction, learned with time, is a recognition that any perception of enigma is simply a failure of mine to convey myself. I don't really want to be enigmatic anyways.

At the end of the day, these are arguments of belief and experience. There is a hard wall between us which you and I may or may not be able to bridge. Barring the success of such an appeal, I have this: Indulging in militant atheism and then posting it on your blog is cliche and contributes nothing to public discourse. Maybe in New Jersey militant atheism seems like an important voice that needs to be heard, but I assure you that your message is out there. Repeating it will only accentuate the misunderstanding and blind hostility on both sides.

Your post will provide no emotional comfort for militant atheists emotionally traumatized by the thought that their position is crazy. I've never met a militant atheist who thought their position was remotely crazy. Every one has been unwaveringly convinced that their position is the most sane position possible. Militant atheists need no comforting. What they need is a dose of reality. The crazier they think of themselves, the better. Their position is not valid. It is understandable, but it is not valid. Crazy is a label societies have traditionally utilized to cope with unconscionably destructive behavior. Militant atheism is destructive. It is hypocritical. It foments everything it seeks to combat. Its existence does no good for anybody, let alone people as a whole. What you are doing is at best, slightly bad for the world and at worst, extremely ugly. In either case it is not constructive in any artistic, philosophical or political sense I can think of. That post of yours is poison and it, my dear friend, is indefensible.

A friend of mine (a nonbeliever), after reading your post and my defending of your character, said, "well, still, you can be the nicest person and then turn around and say you hate niggers". I mean, unless that was the point, unless this was all an exercise in how slippery a slope hateful militant atheism is from a place of thoughtful agnosticism?

January Update

Quite a few things in my life changed with the new year.

Howard finally moved from Davis. He's helping his parents out for awhile and then he's going to move to Santa Barbara and live with his sister.

I got a new girlfriend. Her name is Sarah. She is cool and things are going very well. We went to San Francisco last weekend and had a blast. Props to Mereb for his restaurant recommendation (Burma Superstar). I bought some random stuff in Chinatown (6.50 a pound for dried shiitakes!). We hung out with Matt and Cory and I finally got to see at least a part their brewing process.

I got a pea coat and an mp3 player for Christmas, both of which have been in near-constant use since I returned to Davis.

The mp3 player has caused kind of a music renaissance in my life. Basically, it's allowed me to listen to music of my choosing at work and in transit. I've been able to give a lot more music my undivided attention and I've started to intensively research and download music again. I've been working on developing a taste for emo and the Rolling Stones. Somewhere along the way I acquired a taste for Sunny Day Real Estate, Supergrass, the Beta Band, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, the Jayhawks and the Vapors. I also reaffirmed my relationship with the Shoes and Wilco, finally listened to John Cale's solo work and finally acquired the two fabled power pop albums by the Searchers that I had been looking for since last spring.

Amidst all the fun and turnover, the application deadlines for various graduate programs have been rolling in. Which is why I'm apologizing for not posting anything else this month. It's not that my mind is not brimming with good post ideas, it's that I can't justify making good on them when I could be doing something so urgently useful. So, wish me luck. Heaven knows I can use all the help I can get to turn in a few halfway decent applications by their deadlines.