The Hooplah: Breakfast Thoughts II - The Brunchening

Bad coffee in a good mug tastes bad. However, the same dark brew ensconced in Styrofoam is passable to decent. Is it the gradual melting of the Styrofoam under the intense heat, a melting that takes so long it really doesn't happen, that improves the palatability? The mug I am using today is quite nice, with a slight tapering in the middle and a sturdy heft. I don't think it's breaking apart inside and tainting the coffee. But an identical cup, poured at the same time into Styrofoam, tastes better. It's almost like diet vs. regular Coca-Cola. What an oddity. Yet I refuse to switch back to Styrofoam. God, aren't I eco-friendly! Maybe it's the heat-conductive properties of the two materials, ceramic vs. Styrofoam, that impact the flavor. This calls for an experiment. As the great man once said, "Stand back! I'm going to try science!"

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I posted not long ago that some women smell. Well some men smell too. Like women. It is very disconcerting to note in a hallway or elevator a strong floral aroma, like a funeral parlor or retirement home, only to realize the space is shared by another man. What is he thinking? Do the women in the world desire men to who smell like their great-aunts? This barbarity must be stopped. Conversely, a rotund basement-dweller filled my train car with the chewy aroma of B.O. this morning. Does no one remember the shower and simple three-swipe deodorizing that follows?! Are we all French that we forget good hygiene*?

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How is David Archuletta not being torn apart by the judges on American Idol? (Yes, I watch it. Wanna make something of it?!) The boy signs like he's in a high school summer camp variety show and yes, there is talent there. But to win American Idol and against the folks he's up against? He cannot hold a candle to some who have gone before him (Michael Johns, Carly Smithson) or those still there (David Cook, Syesha Mercado [supermarket?]). His butchering of two Neil Diamond songs did nothing to break the thralldom in which the judges find themselves whenever he opens his mouth. Do you want as your next pop sensation a boy who looks like he's halfway between crying and peeing his pants whenever given words of encouragement? Vote Cook or die trying.

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In honor of Buck's bacon-infused post, I too must make a confession. Yesterday, I had a chicken salad sandwich. I know I need to stay healthy (the di-uh-beetus and all...), and my initial thought was to have it on multi-grain bread with lettuce and tomato. The latter two remained, but the bread was swapped out for a croissant. Not content to stop there, I added a thicker-than-normal slice of pepperjack cheese and then the pies-de-resistance! Bacon. That sandwich sung. Add some Diet Pepsi (look, Mom - no sugar!) and nacho cheese Doritos (...sigh. There's nothing healthy there. Powdered cheese? It probably causes AIDS) and you've got yourself a meal.


-Hooper


*Just kidding. The French are a clean and industrious people with a rich cultural heritage.

Read on, faithful few!

The Hooplah: Some women smell & other thoughts

I have been subjected to several very aromatic women in the last few days in the elevator, waiting for food, walking down a hallway at work. I am sure these women bathe, or at least stand in the tub and look expectantly at the shower head hoping clean will wash over them. But they stink.

It's not even body odor around them, though it certainly hints at the edges.Can I say they are unique smells? Let's take an example.

A woman, let's call her Julia since I know no Julias, stands next to me waiting for the elevator to whisk her downstairs. We've all just come from the lunchetorium with our salads and carvery sandwiches and inexpertly made stir-fry. We carry this food in our hands, full of thoughts of eating, drinking and the sustenance and enjoyment such acts bring. What do we all hate to intrude on our dining experience? Bad odor. Julia smells, a mixture of decaying leaves and a Chinese fish monger.

And she's laughing!

Her friends must be drunk or stoned, because they too are full of merriment. Maybe it's because of the cloud of funk their friend is in. "My God, do you smell that woman?!" one whispers to the other by the fruit counter. "I know," replies the woman with water wing fat waddles hanging off her arms. "Someone should tell her..." Do they? They laugh!

It's like a story I heard somewhere,-- maybe at work or church or in the local bars I don't frequent because I'm not really that "hip" with it. A man wearing khakis and a button down, long-sleeve white shirt goes to the bathroom. He is in there for a suitable amount of time for No. 2, and exits after hand-washing and so forth. He returns to his cube space, perhaps nodding hey to the girls around him. Part of his shirt is hanging out the back, improperly tucked. And what do these same girls see, smeared like so much fresh mud across the bottom of his crisp, blanco shirt? That's right. How he did it remains a mystery to this day, but he somehow managed to twist the front of his shirt into the path of the toilet paper. Or else there was a Vesuvian burst that no one could control, much less contain, and the shirt was the least of his concerns.

But the point is thus: no one told him. He worked the rest of the day - hours, people - with poo on his untucked shirt. And so "Julia" smelled, and probably smells, because no one told her it was bad form to roll in a compost heap behind General Chang's fish bazaar. Are we sparing people the shame and embarrassment, or just getting some cruel laughter in at their pitiful expense? Hm....

"Guadalupe", another woman with a memorable bouquet about her, did not bring to mind Gorton's discards. Hers was an odd smell, sort of dry. I want to say like death, but death can be wet. But that's the best I've got. It was a faded smell, like old books you pull down from your Great Uncle Johann Frucht's shelves. When you open them, these whithered words try to escape the page at the same moment time is attempting to break down the book into dust. It slaps your septum before settling behind your eyes, that old book smell. Guadalupe had something like that, only for people,-- and she was young! Too young to smell like Uncle Johann with one foot in the grave and other in a Kleenex box because he forgot where he put his slippers.

Stink and smell hold a special place in my heart. How could they not, when I have as a pet the basset hound Neville, who sometimes releases time-delay bombs of such exquisite pungency that I question whether or not his bowels produced them or he purchased them off an ex-pat Iraqi scientist. I was talking to a co-worker about scent memory, which is very strong for me, an important part of the day-to-day. I constantly find smells triggering some random memory from years ago, and usually I'm left frustrated that I can't exactly rebuild the entire scene where that certain recollection came from. But such strong funk recall is why days after the fact, I can still recall the aromas of these women who really need some better lotions or fragrance-masking soap. Dial, for example.

I could on for hours about Dial soap and what its particular redolence means to me, but I've taken up enough of your time already.

Until we meet again, and I share my peculiar relationship with sports and how they loathe me.

-Hooper

Read on, faithful few!