Be Curry-ous, Buy Curry

Experimentation can spice up your life in many regards, including in the culinary sense. Whether you normally cook for just yourself or for others, trying new things
in the kitchen can be extremely gratifying. And especially around the holiday season, it offers you all sorts of pronounced reactions that you’re looking for, as well as those you’re not: everything from “Mms” and puckered faces to flatulence and heartburn. So tread softly, friends.

Should I Give to Hobos?

Ahem. This question has often circulated within religious and intellectual communities, not that the two are at all mutually exclusive. Since people inevitably fall pretty nicely into one of the categories, (that is, their actions are governed either by rational thought and ethical principles or by rational thought and moral dictums) let’s explore both sides.

We’ll start with religious people. I've seen countless examples of industrious Christians asking if they should share their hard-earned dollars with beggars, and the overwhelmingly popular answer is no. With “charity” and Christianity being so closely associated, it is an interesting phenomenon. The argument is as follows. Some people think that since Christ often begged himself and performed generous acts, he was all for charity. He didn’t just hand out cedar walking sticks and try to teach lame men how to adapt, he actually healed them. Or I guess we could just go with the whole “Give a man a fish; he’ll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” expression, because he did that, too. Jesus gave people fish, okay? Yet others point out that saving that dollar bill handout is actually doing society more of a favor. Having that industrious Christian spirit and contributing instead to larger charities and institutions is promoting help for those who deserve it, who want to better themselves and will put the work in like the rest of us. The Bible stresses the importance of work to human existence and how staying away from idleness contributes to all people in society.

Sex Toys and Dolphins

Living in a household of phenomenally empowered and progressive women is a life experience everyone should have. In every discussion, from politics to religion, you get insights into the roles of gender, specifically women, as well as sex’s position in the issue. Whether it was during the presidential campaigns or a more recent trip to a sex shop, larger issues are always available upon which my roommates jump to elaborate and inform. While searching for bachelorette party gear at this particular store, we had the opportunity to engage in some particularly stimulating conversation. (And for fear of this whole entry becoming a succession of sexual puns, I will henceforth disengage from such colorful vocabulary… or at least try to.)

College Campus Preachers

There is a woman known simply, yet widely, by the name of “the blue coat lady” on campus at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Whether she lives with the feral cats in a nearby bush or in one of the huts people have constructed for the strays, she makes frequent appearances in the union plaza and has worked overtime to make such a name for herself.

Most parents are under the impression that college is a godless environment where youth frolic about doing drugs and having orgies in tiny rooms with springy mattresses and never hear God's saving name from their pastors, reverends, ministers or priests. That covers most of them anyway. Oh, how gloriously mistaken our parents are. Thanks to a number of Supreme Court cases, college is actually a haven for the most deeply zealous preachers one can encounter. And they’re after us children, shoving makeshift flyers into our hands, convincing us that an omnipotent being will love us hard if we only repent, and giving us the strong faith foundation we need while away from mum and dad. Sort of.

Blue coat lady is actually a campus favorite, although godless university students can’t say the same for crucifix-staff man; “rant to me about God, I’ll listen” man; European, man purse, “come to my Bible study” man; or the “we’ve put our children in coffins on the ground for you to see” family. But blue coat lady, who exhibits every stage of schizophrenia, has actually obtained sympathy and thus some open ears (as well as suspicion by others that a professor is conducting a long-term social experiment of sorts to test us. You never know. But what she does have in common with all the others is that they collectively disturb afternoon naps, walks across campus, and sinful lifestyles of all sorts with their fire-and-brimstone rants that inevitably turn political, racial, and very personal.

{In fact, we’re going to start a game right now that some of us use to throw these speakers off, if only slightly. Every time you hear (read) a word like one which these preachers might use (gay, sin, serpent, etc.), take note. Four in a row is a Bible Bingo, so yell it out loud. }

As a result of encounters with such people, many Americans have the same question: why the hell do we put up with this shit? Well, once we were finally free-ish of prior restraint and speech of “bad tendency” here in America, which we can agree was quite restrictive and vague, First Amendment issues concerning “hate speech” started popping up everywhere. The trend of rulings has been in favor of more rights. Take that as you will. We moved first into the “clear and present danger” test for such speech; then onto the question of to what extent speech “incited imminent action”; and finally to speech’s level of intimidation and threat of bodily harm. The result? Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and our dear Pastor Phelps of the Westboro Baptists have all been allowed to speak as, when, and where they will. From my experience with these preachers alone, I resent that … and I’m a liberal, First-Amendment-rights loving hippie. Take that as you will, as well. The reason for my frustration is that their right to free speech is interfering with my right to religion: both First Amendment issues. Screaming at me that I am a sinner and a godless whore of whom Jesus would be ashamed is creating a hostile environment for me in which to practice my lack of religion. The number of other issues to be contested are countless.

Even though there is a “clear and present danger” that a bunch of students will attack these offensive persons, “incite” violence, or feel “intimidated” and fear personal attack, since these preachers are throwing the word “monkey” around to denote ALL people of a specific race, as well as disprove evolution and condemn ALL atheists, there is no problem, considering the current rulings on hate speech. Yep, our freedom of speech is working at its best. Everything from campus codes against hate speech and marches of groups with ongoing histories of violence against other groups is fair game because stifling such speech could stifle other minority voices. The argument could go on, but I'd like to think that most people don't need much convincing on this point to reach a state of agreement. Oh, and if you haven’t said “Bingo” by now, you’re long overdue.

For a succinct, useful overview of First Amendment cases relating to hate speech, see this guy’s article:

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/Hate-Speech-Cases.htm

Bittersweet, a lament for coffee in America

This may sound heretical coming from a barista, but I consider myself first a coffee connoisseur and secondly an employed victim of grounded dreams and today’s increasingly popular coffee shop. So here goes.

I’ve fantasized about working in a coffee shop for a long time now; it seems like the perfect place to encounter artsy types of people who like weird music, organic food, have dreadlocks, tattoos, whatever. But hipsters and hippies be warned, the coffee shop has been degraded by corporate rule, and it’s more expensive than ever.

I finally scored a job in one such coffee shop this past summer, completely thrilled. The first week was “training”: a time to polish new employees’ mopping, ass-kissing, and video-watching skills. Among other valuable minute-long videos, “How to Make Whipped Cream” taught me exactly what 12 cents worth of whipped cream looks like beneath a plastic domed lid. The rest of my training was hands-on handing out of drinks to real customers. I’ll just take the time now, then, to apologize sincerely to all those middle-aged women who stepped on the scales after a week and blamed themselves for my mix-up of lowfat and heavy bases; all those people with caffeine aversions who were mysteriously wakeful for a six hour period on a work night; all those who sipped some liquid they deemed delicious only to find that their cup was left with an ice chunk of nothingness in no time. Not to undermine my heartfelt apology, but in my defense, as I ran back and forth tossing poorly timed espresso shots into blenders filled with fat and sugar, I was told I was doing well. If I admitted to tamping a shot of espresso badly, an extra pump of mocha was suggested…which brings me to my first complaint about the modern coffee shop: sugar and fat.

They’re delicious. Don’t get me wrong, flavored drinks have their place in the world and in the world of coffee shops. But our store sold almost entirely drinks drowning in fatty milk-based products or sugary syrups. The fact that people complained when their ESPRESSO drink tasted coffee-y could possibly be overlooked, if those few who actually wanted the taste of espresso weren’t so devastated by my second complaint: bitter espresso. Truthfully that should be my first complaint because you should not be able to succeed in a coffee shop with poor quality espresso, but as the solution is simply sugar and fat, no worries, right?

Wrong. My dad paid me a visit after my first week or so, and asked simply for a soymilk cappuccino. My fingers twitched over the register screen, waiting for him to say what flavor he wanted, but alas, none came. A cappuccino, as I know now, is made by tamping a shot of espresso into a cup, steaming milk to a foamy consistency without burning it, and pouring it directly onto the shot without stirring and ruining the layers of espresso. I did not do that. And it showed, as I believe my father’s exact words to his newly “trained” daughter were “Honey, this sucks.” He didn’t even want me to remake the expensive creation.

My point here is that people should be scared out of their minds if they are true coffee lovers and approach one of the many newly opened shops like this. The rest of you are fine. How do you know which you are? Well, if you are like the majority of customers who drive through and ask for your coffee black, with three splendas and an inch of cream, you're definitely fine, keep doing that. True coffee lovers know. For example, when I ask my dad how he’ll take it, every day of my life his response has been the same: "black like my soul". And I know not to add sweetness or caloric joy. But I also know that because the quality beans are freshly roasted and ground, there's no way his black coffee, or soul, could be bitter.

Modern day coffee shops do too much in the wrong areas and do too little in the right ones. There is too little training with too much pressure for speed and shortcuts, too many drinks to memorize and too few to perfect, and poor quality essentials at too high a price with too little spirit or care. I used to idealize working in a coffee shop, making drinks that even hardened connoisseurs like my father could compliment, but that experience was ruined for me by a place that shares its name with electric mobility vehicles used by the elderly. And as for those corporate assholes that are carelessly raking in profits from their expensive, disgusting drinks, underpaying and overworking employees, and most importantly, brainwashing society with sacrilegious ideas about coffee and espresso, thanks a latte.