THE ENTERTAINMENT EQUIVALENT OF RANCID FISH GLUE

The apartment mate is home today, obviously because it's Labor Day (first Monday in September), during which we Yankees celebrate International May First. We just gotta be different. Anyhow, she's a lovely person, and I enjoy her company, especially when she's channeling for multiple stuffed creatures. The voices in my head come out of her mouth.

Still. It can be a bit ..... fraught-full.

No, not because of the smoking issue. I'll simply step outside with my beverage and a cigarillo. Nor because the shared apartment is rather small and crowded with bookshelves. And the kitchen is only large enough for one person to move around efficiently and briskly while preparing oneself a tasty, nutritious, and culinarily complex snack.
I can shrink if I want to.

It's the vulgar crap on teevee. She likes watching reality shows with some of the most actively dislikable individuals on the planet, many of whom are blondish or well-dressed. Shall not mention which shows these are, because I do not wish to encourage such behaviour.
But good lord. Painful.

The problem is that the television is in the same room as both computers, as well as the rickety rattan chair and a tray of pipes and tobaccos.

Obviously the pipes and tobaccos are my pidgin.


While reading the news, several entries about languages on Wikipedia, plus an in-depth piece about the history of the Nilotic peoples, tall angular body types, DNA, haplo groups (that was a re-read), and viewing an informative tobacco-related video by an industry insider and former pipe-maker, as well as a how-to on a dish that most white people won't like, the television show with repulsive stuck-up badly behaved entitled acting blondish dingoes was on in background. She had it on while she did her own computer reading at the other end of the table.

The only relief was a smoke break and heading into the bathroom.


"ARE YOU SMOKING IN THERE?!?"


"Nope. Not me." Of course I was lying. The window was open, the heater was on to blow the damp smelly air out, the door was firmly closed. A man cannot shave in public on his front door steps. It just isn't done.

Binge-watching, though I understand the phenomenon and sometimes practice it myself (Youtube: Monty Python, Food Videos, Linguistic Stuff, Cartoon Clips), isn't quite the thing. Blondish people, football, the Jewelry Channel, skin-ailments, true murders, game shows, porn; all pretty much the same. It's like being forced to witness a basement full of Midwestern Lutherans eating Lutefisk.


I've read about Lutefisk, and how it's made. Nothing encourages me to ever prepare it myself, although if someone were to do a sambal goreng version, chilipaste garlic ginger, I might try that with a modicum of enthusiasm.

From Wikipedia: "Lutefisk prepared from cod is somewhat notorious – even in Scandinavia – for its intensely offensive odor. Conversely, lutefisk prepared from pollock or haddock emits almost no odor."

One imagines sectarianism among the Lutherans; cod only people versus haddock, versus those horrible freethinkers who mix or alternate.

It's NOT a machlokes l'shem Shemayim.

One OR the other only.

Heretics.




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