Friday, January 23, 2015

things I hate that everyone loves

Paris.  It smells bad, and everything costs too much.  The most overrated city in the world.

This one Indian restaurant in my neighborhood everyone adores.   It's the only Indian restaurant I've ever run across which has next to no vegetarian options.  And weirdly it serves virtually everything in wraps. Now I have been to southern India and know what a dosa is, so I know that a "wrap" is a version of an authentic Indian dish, and if it were a dosa, I'd be fine.  But meat in a wrap?  And that's Indian food?  Get off my lawn!  Which brings us to..

Wraps.  To begin with, the word is so unappetizing.  "Wraps."  It looks and sounds like the antithesis of good food.  And it seems to stress that what is inside the food doesn't matter.  All that matters is that it's wrapped up, because you are too much of a slob to get your lunch in your facehole without it being hermetically sealed.  Also, I like to be able to see what I am eating.

Amazon.  It killed off so many independent bookstores.  It tried to go after beloved publisher Hachette by not selling Hachette's most prominent authors.  It didn't give a fuck that it was preventing authors from making sales by barring those authors from its site, when they were just innocent third parties.  And it treats its employees like slaves.  Warehouse employees faint during the summer.  They are kept under fear of firing.  Their bathroom breaks are severely limited.  I could go on and on.  In summary:  it's an evil, evil company.

The Sober Husband has been recruited by Amazon many, many times, including for really interesting and fun jobs (most notably working on their delivery-by-drones program).  We've had some conflict over this.  "I'd rather you work for online porn.  Or spam," I have said.

The mountains.  I don't want to go skiing; that's much too cold.  I'd rather be by the sea or off in a nice, toasty warm desert.  It puts a strain on my poor car to heave us up some giant peak, only to have to turn around and come back down to a more sensible level.

Tomatoes.  Why are they in everything?  Why is it assumed that vegetarians live off tomatoes?  I tried some online eating program where they give you recipes and shopping lists so you can eat healthy but fabulous diet foods, and every single last meal was crammed with tomatoes.  Tomato salad, tomato flatbreads, stuffed tomatoes, chopped tomatoes, grilled tomatoes, pureed tomatoes.  One of my favorite cookbooks, a seasonal menus book by my beloved Melissa Clark, is unusable all summer because every single fucking thing revolves around tomatoes.  Last year at Burning Man someone decided that, as a kindness, they'd make dinner for those of us working on building our theme camp, and the vegetarian option was spaghetti in tomato sauce with chopped up tomatoes all over it.  And then the only topic of conversation amongst everyone during the whole meal was how weird it is that the Drunken Housewife doesn't eat tomatoes, did you ever hear of anyone who didn't like tomatoes, why doesn't she like tomatoes?, surely she would like the tomatoes if she only ate them, everyone loves tomatoes, tomatoes are the best thing in the world, it must suck to be her, god, what a picky eater. And then the next day everyone wondered what the hell was up when I snapped and said, "I don't want to hear ANOTHER WORD about how I don't like tomatoes.  Seriously." In summary, tomatoes are loathsome, oozing their nasty little seeds everywhere.

4 comments:

Carol Ann said...

With me, it's red and green peppers in everything. They disagree with me, and they just seem like lazy cooking.

Claire M. Johnson said...

Paris. Yes, it has decent bread, but it's way overpriced for everything, and you always get the impression that we should be grateful that we are spending far too many euros on things that no way should cost that much. However, I am willing to give them a pass because the French government have basically told amazon to fuck off. The French see their bookstores as national treasures. We see them as place holders for yet another Starbucks.

amazon: please do not get me started. It is THE hot button issue in our house (and full disclosure, I did publish a book with them and I regret it every single day). Their recent collaboration with Mr. Allen says it all.

Wraps? An poor excuse for food. See love of REAL bread above.

I like the mountains but prefer the sea. However I hate the desert because I spend any time in the desert, and I come back looking like an extra from one of those old mummy movies: the crypt creature. I went to Phoenix for a long weekend once, and I looked at my hands on the flight home and they had morphed into gigantic claws. The atmosphere sucks every erg of moisture out of my skin.

Tomatoes: overused. They should be used to brighten and add a little acidity. They are NOT entrée. In salads acceptable, and with buffalo mozzarella and basil, acceptable.

NonymousGoatsePants said...

You forgot one. Me!

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love most of these things (although I'm prepared to concede that your local Indian restaurant may well be rubbish). And I'm totally baffled by your love of camping, the desert, and *shudder* camping IN the desert... We clearly have nothing at all in common. However I've just spent a few weeks reading your entire archives, start to finish & I have loved every word.

I'm completely in love with your smart, funny, weird, talented family. Your writing is so powerful, particularly when you write about anxiety & depression. (I was wrong, we have one thing in common...)

I just wanted to let you know that your blog is awesome.