Let's Do Coffee!

The other day I ran into a friend whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while. He had moved away and now he was back—or so he told me. My suspicion lies in the following remark he made after I suggested that we try to get together: “Yeah, we should do coffee.” Now, in and of themselves, I’ve always found such expressions a bit strange, “let’s do coffee,” “let’s do lunch.” Of course I know what they mean; but whenever I hear them I always wander off on a mental tangent wondering how it is that they came to mean what they mean in the first place. Unfortunately, once in a while this is mistaken for hesitation and I’m afraid that here and there this might have cost me a friendship or two. But really, the question is just too tantalizing. How can one not pause to try to imagine what exactly it was that the very first coiners of the phrase were actually doing to their meals and beverages at the time of the idiom’s inception? For example, no one in America says “let’s do tea,” but if they did, I could at least have invented a fictional etymology originating in colonial New England, pictured the Boston Tea Party, put the question to rest and moved on once and for all.

The suspicion about whether or not the real reason I hadn’t seen my friend in so long was that he had moved away had come from my end, not his. So let me come back to “yeah, we should do coffee” in its more interpersonal implications. First, why coffee, not lunch, or, if I even dare be so presumptuous as to think it, dinner? Now, from a pragmatic standpoint it is true that people who are really interested in catching up and in lively conversation with their interlocutors should favor coffee over a meal. It sure is a lot easier to quickly swallow your sip and jump in with your witty repartee than it is to swallow that huge bite of steak you had just crammed into your mouth—especially since the bites tend to get bigger and bigger as you get more and more frustrated with the seemingly endless and progressively rigorous sawing away at the beast. (How easy it is to mistake gluttony for sloth!) As a rule, it is always of course at the moment when your oral cavity has been packed to maximum capacity that you are asked news of your Aunt Millie or your Cousin Fred. (Those two have always had a knack for annoying you even from 800 miles away. It almost forces you to admire them for it which just makes them all the more annoying.) At any rate, you are now forced into a bovine comedy where you put your hand in front of your mouth and try to joyously imitate “happy chewing,” head lilting side to side with a little shrug of the shoulders as you try to speed chew, only to gulp down an insufficiently masticated lump that you will no doubt feel lodged in your chest for the rest of the day or night as the case may be.

Pragmatism aside, everyone knows that an invitation for coffee indicates a lesser desire for social engagement than dinner, lunch, brunch or “lunar,” for those who, like me, sleep in until ludicrously late hours on the weekend. I’ve always been curious about my friend’s East Asian heritage but too politically correct to ask. Too bad his beverage of choice was caffeinated rather than alcoholic since loose lips drink such sips and I might have mustered up the courage to ask. I wanted to imagine that he was inviting me to participate in some exotic dance ritual or martial art that I had never before heard of: “Yeah! We should do ka fi! ” But allowing myself to indulge in such delusions is only tai chi-ting myself, setting myself up for an even greater fall; and I’ve learned the hard way that judon’t want to do this because in the end, you only wind up feeling all the more kung fulish.

Letter Better Late than Never?

Today I received a letter from a friend, an actual handwritten letter! It was delivered by mail—you know the guys in the quaint little blue suits that you speed by all day. At first I felt nostalgic and kind of tickled. But about a nanosecond later I felt just plain old. I’m not sure anyone under 30 has ever written or received a handwritten letter. And for those 20 or younger, I should probably explain that a letter is a means of communication that your ancestors used to use to exchange greetings and information. It was kind of like an e-mail or an IM except that it was produced with a pen (these you might still recognize from high school multiple choice exams) and it was visually represented not on a computer, blackberry or other PDA screen but rather on paper. Paper, I assume, you probably still have a clear notion of thanks to unsolicited credit card balance transfer checks and, of course, Valpacks—will they never die? No, I don’t need coupons for laundry detergent! I have my laundry picked up, cleaned and dropped off by immigrants every week as do all civilized individuals; I’m not a Neanderthal!

I’m not sure how to respond to the letter. Do I “bite,” do I play along by writing one in response myself? This seems rather complicated. Can paper and pens be delivered 24/7 or are they a novelty item with a two (or more?!) day shipping delay? On what web site can I place the order? How will my speling and gramaticul mistakes be be corrected?

Once upon a time the major combat fronts against signs of aging were more or less limited to the world of cosmetics. Now, the danger of exposing yourself is everywhere. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve spent on botox, liposuction, chemical peels, plastic surgery, dye jobs… Once you’ve accidentally asked someone to hold on while you look for something in the other room (despite the fact that you are holding a cordless, portable phone in your hand) the game is over. And wouldn’t you know it, I was just getting over this horrifying gaffe when I received the handwritten letter! Damn! Now I’m probably going to need to schedule another web cam teleconference with my therapist for this week. Thanks a lot, Emily!

Sincerely,
Your dear friend, Blue Genes

Another Inconvenient Truth with Gory Consequences

I didn’t watch the Oscars, but last night as I was surfing for the news before going to bed (obviously, as this practice would indicate, I’m not one to subscribe to the “never go to bed angry” philosophy) I read that Al Gore had won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth. If true, I should think this Oscar would most conveniently favor achieving stricter environmental regulations, a cause most noble, though I’m not sure it would have any effect on Gore’s possible Nobel.

Last night, in relation to the news of the Oscar, with the memory of the 2000 election still anchored in my brain, I advised myself to keep in mind that the category of “things Al Gore won” is one of the trickier ones. It is worthy of far more skepticism than, say, “things Kelly Clarkson won” (American Idol circa 2002) though still a tad more objectively grounded in public and/or media consensus than that of “wars America is winning.” I cautioned myself for the need to be open to the possibility that by morning the Supreme Court might have ruled that Gore had not won the Oscar after all. I am glad to report that this appears not to be the case.

There is no doubt some mysterious algorithm used to calculate the probability of different outcomes for these competitions. I know nothing of such mathematical matters (except that Fox News never calculates in base 10 and its computers don't use binary, only monetary, code). I will thus leave all calculations to the statisticians. Still (with the possible exception of the Democratic Congressional victory, though it remains to be seen whether they will actually do—or, and perhaps more essentially, undo or prevent from having done—anything) it seems to me that some kind of inversely proportionate relationship weighing the variables “importance of outcome,” “concrete or symbolic nature of outcome” and “actual outcome” has perversely determined the results of all sorts of contests ever since the turn of the century—what I sadly refer to as the turn of the screwed.

A Black, a Woman and a Giu...!

The media have been going crazy talking about the potential advantages but mostly disadvantages facing an African American and a female presidential candidate. Will blacks vote for Obama? Not necessarily—for the multitudes of African Americans expunged from electoral lists and denied the right to vote, race is indeed not an issue, not an issue, that is, as far as the candidates are concerned, more of an issue where police chases are concerned. Ready, set, go! To take but one, single, individual example, the Washington Post reports that “[…] Tampa residents were among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-felons in Florida who civil rights lawyers contend were wrongly prevented from voting in the Nov. 7 election after state election officials and a private contractor bungled an attempt to cleanse felons from voter rolls.” Needless to say that these disenfranchised residents were overwhelmingly minorities and I dare not even mention the effects of Katrina… Unfortunately for Obama, in today's America there may very well only be one presidential race.

Could a woman or an African American be a viable candidate for president in 2008? Are Americans ready? What’s in a name? Why are the soles of my new shoes squeaking? Where did I put my car keys this time? Where oh where has my little dog gone? Oops, I digress. Back to "what's in a name?": “New Q-Poll Highlights Name Power” reports the New York Times. Is Hillary advantaged by her name recognition or does this merely point out her lack of charisma when compared to Bill and/or bind her to all of the old impeachment baggage? Perhaps Americans are growing weary of oscillating between Bushes and Clintons and want someone nude…I mean new. Sorry, Freudian slip from free association with Bush, The Emperor with No Clothes and President Clinton and the Intern with no clothes--hey, if that’s what it takes to keep the guy with his finger on the button on an even keel, I personally think such an internship should be made into a permanent post; but on that one I seem to be the minority.

Pundits have seized upon the liabilities not only of Obama’s race but also of his name and its sonorous similarities that may subconsciously evoke latent prejudices or just plain unhappy thoughts: Barak/Iraq, Hussein/Saddam or insane, take your pick or go crazy and subliminally splurge on both! Obama/Osama. However, they seem to have quite unjustly neglected to acknowledge the uphill onomastic battle facing ex New York mayor Rudy Guiliani (yet Fox continues to insist that it’s “fair and balanced”—those damn liberal media!) How can it be that nobody has yet asked “Is America ready to elect a New York Gui...?”

Postdata

My husband is a certified, perhaps certifiable computer geek. Gadgets and gizmos render him all Googley-eyed. Here are some of the things he elects to do on a pleasantly warm and sunny Saturday afternoon: research the history of the supercomputer, experiment with fonts and design of PowerPoint slides to make them more aesthetically pleasing (profits may be down but the cheerful, harmonious blend of the colors of the graph will surely lift the clients’ spirits, even if they’re not getting their fair shares of the pie chart) or learn a new computer language (as if “computer” were not already a language in and of itself). He keeps talking about C++ but I think this is due to his systematic modesty and I am certain that he Excels at it. Fluent speakers have told me he has a Lisp but he is nonetheless a true computer language wizard and has always had a way with Word; so, to my mind, that cannot Eclipse the inDellible achievements of his Intel-ligence. I guess in the end it’s all a matter of your Outlook.

Lately though he hasn’t been feeling very well and as rats often carry disease and pestilence I am convinced that it simply cannot be healthy to always have your hand on a mouse. (Not to mention the enormous stress that living hand to mouse entails.) I am terribly afraid that he might have caught a nasty computer virus and am monitoring his condition very carefully. Oh Dear God, please don’t let it be terminal!

Airport Absurdities

In few places does mankind dare to display the absurdity of life and the artificial social structures we put into place as overtly as it does in airports. I believe that it must have been the airport traversed on the way to the exotic, “primitive” land and not the exotic, “primitive” land itself that (ab)originally inspired structuralist thought. Claude Lévi-Strauss must have had an astronomical number of airmiles and nobody doubts that Lacan and Derrida were flying high.

When I arrived at the security checkpoint, I had a bottle of water in my bag and was told that I could not come through with it. I didn’t see the trashcan which was conveniently hidden behind the tush of the security guard planted majestically in front of it; so I asked what I should do with my bottle. “Drink it” his colleague said. I was thirsty (which was why I had purchased the bottle in the first place) but not thirsty enough to chug-a-lug 16 fluid ounces on the spot. Nonetheless, in no mood to argue with five guys twice my size at seven in the morning, I flipped back in my mind to one of those sweet old college memories and tried to visualize a group of drunken co-eds chanting “drink, drink, drink!” No dice, there were still 12 fluid ounces left. I gathered my forces and tried again; still there remained 8 ounces. So I asked about my bottle again and received the same answer though in a less civil tone since the guard was starting to get annoyed that I was “unwilling” to throw out my bottle—I had still not seen the trashcan. I have difficulty imagining any explosive liquid that one could chug 8 ounces of in two minutes while still remaining standing let alone still standing her ground. But okay, the rules are the rules, his job is to enforce them and unicorns aren’t real even if you develop a single corn on just one foot…I get it.

Waterbottleless, I tried to walk through the beep-wildly-when-anyone-who-has-forgotten-to-take-off-his-or-her-
belt-tries-to-walk-through-it machine and again I was stopped. I had already sent my coat through the x-ray scanner along with my shoes and my bag and was beltless to begin with. I was however wearing a fleece sweatshirt over my shirt and I was asked to remove that too. What the hell was this, airstrip tease? This time I convinced myself that I should be flattered. Since I could see no material reason for this request (in both senses of the term) I decided that they must have wanted to ogle my glorious breasts. At first I imagined this theory confirmed when the fleece top that had so concerned them and whose removal was so indispensable was forgotten in the machine. When I impatiently asked if they were done scanning it and if I could have it back they had no idea what I was referring to. Then I realized that the water bottle scenario was playing itself out again with another thirsty-but-not-quite-thirsty-enough traveler and the same portly guard still standing squarely in front of the garbage can. So much for my breasts; and so much for “security.” Evidently it is too difficult for five guards to enforce beverage container disposal and watch the x-ray monitor simultaneously.

When I finally made it through security (“Wow, they must be thorough if it takes them so long to monitor just one scrawny little woman!” some poor schlub desperate for reassurance must have been thinking) I was tired and frustrated. So, looking for a way to blow off some steam, I decided to provoke a nasty quarrel with the “courtesy phone.”

Not everything at the airport was bad though. With CNN blasting in the waiting area I learned two astonishing things: (1) that Anna Nicole Smith was dead and that the cause of death would not be known for several weeks. (What a relief, how else would the news channels have had enough time to prepare the tributes she so deserved before the case was shut and closed? Now they would have adequate time to prepare these stories and maybe even a little to spare to give us a few details about Iraq as well.) (2) That Barak Obama was running for president. (I’ve got to admit, his announcement floored me.) I am also happy to report that after having had the opportunity to view the safety procedure video on the plane again (it had been a solid four months since I had seen it) I am now relatively confident that I know how to properly attach and detach the seatbelt—confident enough anyway that I think I’ll still remember how to do it next week for the return flight home.

House Debate on Iraq War Resolution turns Anglo-American vs. Continental

Of the House debate concerning a resolution to oppose the President’s war plan for Iraq, the New York Times reports: “The debate, which was scheduled to proceed to midnight for three days in a row, was tightly choreographed. Democrats started with the war veterans, leaving many of the fiercest war critics until later. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, for example, did not speak until after the dinner hour.”

Earlier in the week this had lead to a fierce secondary debate among members of the House Gastronomical Committee. While some committee members felt that Kucinich is best served with dessert like a good bottle of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, others felt that his distinctive flavor made him more of a nightcap, like a cognac or a brandy. They were scheduled to reconvene the following morning over breakfast to settle this debate but were ultimately unable to come to a consensus over whether the breakfast should be continental or Anglo-American style. Most agreed that Anglo-American was the politically wiser choice which would allow them to eschew criticism from those who would accuse them of belonging to the east coast elite “hate America first crowd”. However, proponents of the continental breakfast argued that it would be disrespectful to Kucinich, their vegan colleague, to hold this discussion over eggs, sausage and bacon. In the end they were sharply criticized by proponents of both camps for waffling.

Although she did not wish to comment on this rift in the House Gastronomical Committee, Representative Maxine Waters of California, (sometimes referred to as “Sparkling Waters” by those who admire her spunk), leader of the 75-member Out of Iraq Caucus, did make a passing allusion to the gastronomical sub-controversy in her statement that the resolution would be a first step in opposing the “war giant whose appetite cannot be satisfied.”