The Achiko Philosophy Company

10:42 pm - Some thoughts of late

The bad news: there's a real dearth of jobs in publishing. I won't say it's worse than I thought, but let's just say I'm starting to take the idea of Plan B a little more seriously. No, I won't do grad school instead; I'm just starting to accept that my early 20s may be spotted with some unfortunate jobs. And that's okay; it's how it happens.

The good news: apparently I'm in decent shape relative to the competition. I'm not very good at networking or anything, but I've gotten around the industry enough (and have a sense of direction in it--well, kind of) to look good to employers. Yay.

I've started to think about other cities I could live in besides New York in case things don't work out. I'm keeping speculation confined to the U.S. as of now; if I moved abroad I'd start receiving weekly emails from Nisim about my mother sticking her head in the oven. Unfortunately the only other city that comes to mind is San Francisco, which isn't exactly much more affordable, thus defeating the point.

The material reality of graduation is starting to get a little less daunting. The social implications: still terrifying.

For a while I've been going through a literary dry spell. I've barely read anything, in part because I've been busy but also out of lack of motivation. I'm wondering if all this reviewing has sucked some of the joy out of it. Writing has also been much more difficult. I hate blogging. Reviews come slowly, ideas slower. I feel less articulate when speaking and my writing feels less interesting (where's the style?). I think my affair with writing fiction is over. I need to jump start the machinery, get ideas churned up into words again. This all then leads me to wonder if I've become less interesting.

On the plus side, I've been more fascinated by ideas recently: American and Russian Futurism (and their accompanying anxieties), dys/utopianism, the future of publishing, urban planning and aesthetics, artificial intelligence, collective internet activity (does this mean I have to stop hating Twitter?), virtual reality--and it's all coming together. Sort of. So beneath all the usual pessimism and fears of inadequacy there's excitement, which makes a decent proxy for optimism.

Cast iron is awesome. I've used it a bit in the past, but after employing it in several diverse applications on decades-old skillets I restored myself, I feel like I never want to use anything else. How many things do we own for which we can say they actually improve with age?

Mad Men is my new television additiction. It's about Madison Avenue Advertising in the 1950s. I expected the satire and send-up of the industry; I didn't expect a nuanced and powerful exploration of the nature of happiness coupled with careful, precise storytelling. The acting, cinematography, and writing are also superb.

I just saw the pilot for Virtuality, Battlestar creator Ron Moore's attempt at non-epic character drama. Fox, being Fox, tried to can it before ever giving it a chance--it's not on the Fall schedule--so the only thing that can save it is really high ratings (which is why I watched it live). It was good--dark, funny, and engaging--not cheap, not plain old sci fi.* Its quality is what Caprica should have been (which I will consider a failed homage to the greatest sci-fi show of all time). Here's hoping Moore can get it off the ground. Or do the sensible thing and start talking with Sci Fi Channel--I mean SyFy--about moving it to cable. But if their rebranding is any indication of the health of decision making at the network, Moore's fucked. Also, after watching Fox (and its commercials and promotions) for the first time in a while I've concluded it's like an apocalyptic ouroboros: Fox will destroy America. Fox is America.

*Three things have happened of late: 1) more sci fi concepts are becoming realities; 2) sci fi TV and movies have gotten much better; 3) sci fi has integrated itself into mainstream literature more than it used to be. Besides raising the bar for what makes good sci fi (and good literature/television/film), I wonder if we're heading into some new age of science fiction. But that's another topic for another time.

10:53 pm

Dear Women of New York City and Long Island:

Wearing Uggs or Ugg-knockoff snowboots with your miniskirts or summer dresses doesn't look cute, sexy, or original. At best, those looks we give you are confusion.

Regards,
M. Falkowitz

04:17 pm - Verbatim

95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family

KALAMAZOO, MI–A full 95 percent of the opinions held by Justin Wilmot, 26, were kept to himself Sunday during a Father's Day visit with his family.

"No one in my family really gets my worldview, so I find it easier just to smile and nod and agree with everything," Wilmot said Monday. "When I'm with them, I tend to be a lot quieter than when I'm hanging out with friends."

Wilmot, who grew up in Kalamazoo and now lives in Chicago, described the visit as "seven hours of self-censorship."

"We're totally not on the same wavelength at all," Wilmot said. "I'm not just talking about dangerous subjects like politics or religion, but pretty much everything they bring up–the shows they watch, the things they buy, the people they know. So if someone says Daddy Day Care was hilarious, I may be thinking, 'I can't believe Eddie Murphy was once respected as a subversive comic genius,' but I sure as hell don't say it."

( Full Article )
I try; I really do. I've made progress on it. Just sometimes, I can't.

10:58 pm - Happenstance gone right

I realized I haven't posted anything substantive here in quite a while. I have a final due tomorrow at 3, so now seems like a good time.

I'm not sure how or why, but for some reason both groceries in Hyde Park have really good beets around--fresh, with greens attached. Beets are a fall/winter vegetable, so I don't get how they're here in spring-becoming-summer, but I'm not complaining. A while ago I bought some beets, and this past weekend I purchased some asparagus and basil-infused jack cheese from the local farmer's market (still pretty pathetic, but getting a little better; the asparagus is good and reasonably priced, and the cheese is really good and dirt cheap). Sorting through vegetables for dinner tonight, I came upon my three small beets, pound of asparagus starting to go south, and measly couple ounces of cheese (I had snacked through most of it by this point), and had no idea what to do with it. I was growing tired of simply roasting asparagus with garlic and lemon, my typical go-to recipe, and wanted something new for the beets. Then for some reason a corner of my unconscious sqeaked gratin, and all became clear.

I roasted the beets in foil (okay, so this is technically steaming--it's the only non-messy way I know to cook beets, so sue me) until nearly tender, and then sliced them thin. I cut the asparagus into 1-2 inch-long pieces, and because I had it and figured why not, thinly sliced the remaining half of a vidalia onion from days ago. At this point, I got a little worried that three sugary vegetables would make the dish too sweet. But then who should pop down to the kitchen but Kathleen with some extra swiss cheese she didn't need--problem solved! So a tablespoon of butter went into a 12 inch cast iron skillet to melt, at which point I then added the asparagus and onion to coat in fat and salt for a few minutes. I arranged the beet slices on top and popped it in the oven (about 400 degrees) till the asparagus were nearly done, and then sprinkled the two cheeses over the top. The result was the first dish I've ever made which I'd call gorgeous: the beets were, well, beet red, which contrasted nicely with the bright green asparagus. The onions were a blend of pearly white and blood-stained from where they had contact with the beets. And let's not forget that gorgeous cheesy crust.

It tasted even better. The vegetables were bright and tasted exactly like they should--because of the short cooking time they didn't blend together/get washed out. It was really sweet, but also quite buttery, salty, funky (in that swiss cheese sort of way), and for the few bites that got the basil jack, basil-y. Okay, in a perfect world, I would have had more basil jack there (or just actual basil), and real Gruyere instead of Boars Head Swiss. I would have added the cheese slightly sooner so it could get some tasty burned spots, which would have meant a slightly firmer asparagus, but I'm hardly complaining. It was delicious. I want to make it again very badly. And with only a tablespoon of butter and about 4-6 ounces of cheese, an entirely different beast than the cream- and cheese-based potato gratins I've had before (which, don't get me wrong, are also out-of-this-world delicious).

But what pleased me most was how all of this came about through complete chance. I just happened to have this random assortment of ingredients around. I just happened to have some cool cheese supplemented by someone else's cool free cheese. Hyde Park Produce just happened to have really good organic out-of-season beets. And I just happened to think oh, I'll cook them au gratin. But I should stop asking questions and just have more gratin. Except that we just finished it. Oh well.

12:10 pm - Why I love my job

The professor I do research for sent me an article to read (and do a write-up for) after I told him I couldn't find a lot of articles on the theory he was looking into. After 40 minutes of reading it, I realized it was the article I sent him (and wrote a memo about) several weeks ago.

Say it with me: All this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

12:56 am

I just finished my first round of edits and formatting for Euphony's Spring 2009 issue, and damn this fiction is good! I'm so excited to see it get published--I really really love this writing. Speaking of which, if any of you have 5 x 8 inch compatible art with enough blank space for some text, we're looking for a cover for our Spring issue. Send me things!

I've decided today--this time with utter finality--that there are two tedious and laborious things I want to do for the rest of my life:

1) Edit and format text

2) Make latkes

09:30 am - They really should know better

Of all the courses in the Psych department here, there are only two you're forced to take: a quarter of Statistics and a quarter of "Research Methods." However elementary and impractical-in-all-the-wrong-ways statistics was, it still taught me valuable stats basics I didn't know before. Granted, we only got to new material at around 6th week or so, but still.

Research Methods, in which I'm currently enrolled, may dethrone my political science seminar on evolutionary psychology was Worst Class Ever. The theory behind the course is that if you sit in lecture twice a week and section once a week, all while reading a textbook that insults your intelligence, learning abstract, testable material about how to be a good scientist, you'll be a good scientist. From last class's lecture: "A good theory should inspire future research." That was a PowerPoint slide. Really. To expect this material to make a difference when students become researchers is laughable. Another serious point from class: "Just because a paper is obtuse doesn't mean it isn't contributing something meaningful." Thank you, professor, for enlightening me.

If you're interested in becoming a Psych major, chances are you'll sample one of the five introductory classes: Social, Cognitive, Developmental, etc. Or a class in a topic where you have specific interest: Attitudes, Decision Making, etc. Chances are you won't be taking the awful intro courses designed to lull committed majors to sleep, not seduce undeclared students to the program. If you know from the start you want to be a Psych major, you probably already know these basics and this is all redundant. You may have done research on your own already. But most importantly, every Psych class I've had here has made (and graded me on my ability to) think critically on the research process and closely read journal articles. Yes, I already know to pay little attention to non-peer reviewed journals are. And yes, I know how to identify a fucking hypothesis in an abstract. And teaching someone how to review the literature takes a five-minute instructional YouTube video with a link to Web of Science, not a whole class.

In fairness to Research Methods, it does force you to work in groups and run your own experiment. I'm looking forward to this project: I can meet fellow Psych majors, design a study interesting to me, and have my one chance at playing Dr. Falkowitz before I go off into the workplace. And getting students to do research is important--either through a class, an honors thesis, or work with a professor. So important that the department has a research requirement forcing you to do one of those three things. It's probably the most vital single requirement the department offers for those who wish to become future psychologists, and is incredibly valuable even if, like me, you have no intention of going into the field. Oh wait, they got rid of the requirement this year.

09:38 am - Distict 9

This summer, a South African director is releasing a film called District 9. The premise is that aliens have [crash?] landed in South Africa, and now there's all sorts of racial intolerance/uneasy political issues to deal with. It looks to have all the poignant social commentary and gritty visuals of Children of Men, making me incredibly excited to see it--especially after watching this short film upon which it is based.

If nothing else, the film's website is the most elaborate film website I've ever seen. It's part of a large viral marketing campaign which includes marking bathrooms as "for humans only" at recent conventions and such. Hopefully the film will check any preaching at the door and let the action speak for itself; if so, this may be my new movie fix, which I haven't had since Children of Men.

10:34 pm - Two comments on break thus far

1. Dear publishing house interviewers: stop making me feel like I have to defend my choice in major. It's not like an English major would be more or less useful to my work. I explicitly said in my resume I've done extensive literature work. I'm getting a liberal arts degree from a good college. And it's not like I'm choosing academic psychology over publishing--that's why I'm trying to intern with you. There's only so many times I can answer why I'm studying psychology before I shout "because an English major would have been a waste of my time!"

2. If you're ever in the New Haven, CT area, be sure to check the location of the Cupcake Truck at followthatcupcake.com. Like California taco trucks, the Cupcake Truck picks a different spot to park each day (detailed on their twitter, linked on their website; this is the only valid use for twitter I've encountered) and sells a rotating selection of freshly-baked cupcakes. You pick a cupcake, a frosting, and an optional topping. The toppings range from crumbled oreos to candied violets to edible gold leaf (a pretension I really can't stand), but I don't know if it's possible to spend more than $3, a steal given the exorbitant prices at specialty cupcakeries. I got a chocolate cupcake with caramel frosting and coarse sea salt, and it was hands-down the best cupcake I've ever eaten. This was a cupcake that redefined what a cupcake could be. A life-transforming cupcake. I'll remember it the way people in happy-go-lucky romantic comedies seem to remember their first kiss.

The cake was incredibly moist and actually tasted like chocolate, an achievement for a cupcake I've only seen before at my beloved NYC Crumbs. The frosting had a deep caramel flavor, but it was decidedly more icing than dulce de leche. Rich and intensely buttery, it could only have been improved by the slightly crunchy sea salt, which lingered on the tongue and shooed away any too-sweet aftertaste. The cupcake was so good because I could taste the freshness of it. It couldn't have been more than a few hours old. The shorter a cupcake's life, the better. This also makes it somewhat irreplaceable; I couldn't just have bought more--they wouldn't be the same.

The Cupcake Truck has a somewhat mythical status in New Haven. Many have gotten one from the happenstance of passing by, to never see it again. (I only got to it because it was unusually close to the Yale campus.) Thus it's something like an ancient, magical beast that proudly roams the land, dispensing a few hours of happiness wherever it goes. So if you're in the area and see what looks like people lining up at an armored truck, join them. You'll be glad you did.

02:56 pm - On grouping information

For the past few weeks I've been using Google Reader as an RSS feed. I've never used one before, but I've caught on quickly. I've even created a site-specific browser (using this handy app for Leopard) so I can have it open all the time, even when firefox isn't. I get notifications on my dock when I have new stories. It's all very snazzy.

I was worried I'd do nothing but read blogs since they'd be streaming into one source constantly, and chances are, by the time I finish reading through a set of posts, a new one would be available upon refreshing the page. This has happened a bit. Mostly late at night or when I'm in class. But for the most part, it's decreased the amount of blog reading I've done. Not only does it save time by avoiding repeated visits to multiple websites without knowing whether there are updates or not, but it also means that when I do get a flood of posts, I only read the ones that actually look interesting against the background of noise and hit "Mark all as read" for the rest. Since I'm no longer visiting websites, I don't feel obligated to read what's there. It also forces me to think about what's actually worth my reading time and keeps my constant media slurping under control. An unexpected finding, but a positive one.

08:43 pm - Recipe instruction I never thought I'd see

Coat with lard to cover by 1/2 inch.

09:30 am - Annals of Productivity

As our brains were rather fried last night, Eric, Lee, and I wound up spending almost an hour staring at my iTunes visualizer (the new one with floating spheres, dancing lights, and cosmic dust). I suppose visualizers and German techno are this generation's version of getting high, putting on some Dylan, and staring at a lava lamp.

04:16 pm

The more I talk to people, read, and learn about food sustainability the less I feel certain about making any kinds of purchases. I found this article particularly fascinating. In brief, it argues that 1) organic farming isn't a mass solution to our industrial food dilemma (as it undercuts the solutions that have kept Malthusian economics from destroying us) and 2) local and farmers' market foods can use even more petroleum than mass-shipping cross-country, seriously complicating their eco-friendly status. While I don't know if the numbers add up or how right the science is, it certainly has me thinking.

I don't idealize farmers' markets. I don't get warm, fuzzy feelings from buying from farmers or their employees. The produce isn't strictly better (though usually is), and I don't drool over a bunch of particularly lively kale leaves. And the prices (at least at the New York Greenmarket, the only one I really use; I find the one here in Hyde Park pathetic) can be prohibitive. But even moving past the easy toppling idols off the pedestal, I increasingly feel like there's no "safe" option for buying food, no matter where I am. Plus there's the question of ecological priorities: do carbon emissions take priority over soil treatment practices? How important is it to support small farms? Is paying the "organic" premium worth it when 1) it's unclear if organic means anything relevant  and 2) more "sustainable" farmers who use some chemicals can't be called "organic" over technicalities? How important is eating seasonally if I don't know where the food is coming from (does drudging through California-grown cabbage during the winter really count as "seasonality")? And how does my farmers' market stack up to this--is the Greenmarket system actually "green?" (It'd help if I knew anything about what New York state farms.

This is all complicated by the fact that there are certain things I won't give up. I want to eat fresh chiles all through winter. I need ginger year-round. How guilty should I feel for this? (On this note, a recent finding. Fresh (i.e., not canned) offseason tomatoes have a 90% chance of being grown in a part of Florida that has enormous workers' rights abuses edging on slave labor).

To cut down on what seems to be an undue amount of anxiety when buying onions, I wrote the following personal shopping guidelines to help sort things out for myself. (Please don't take this as bragging of any sort or preaching to anyone. I don't like to talk about this stuff often because I figure it makes people uncomfortable. And it'd be ridiculous for me to expect anyone to follow this plan since it's largely based on my personal eating habits.) I also cheat sometimes.

• If I'm going to a restaurant, buy no meat that week. (Any meat-free restrictions are off for me when I eat out as vegetarian options are often very unsatisfying for me--plus it's a special thing to eat out. And as I eat with a vegetarian almost nightly, I typically only eat meat when going out, barring some special occasions and a few times when I just have a craving).
• Almost never buy beef at grocery stores (rarely at restaurants)
• Make the meat count--go for full-flavored and fatty cuts. (Since these cuts are less popular, they're cheaper and also mean using less animals.)
• Purchase (for the most part) vegetables during their growing season, +/- a month or two
• Have vegetables make up the bulk of what's in my shopping cart
• Buy organic vegetables if 1) the vegetable doesn't look ratty and 2) it doesn't cost a fortune
• Try to only buy vegetables grown in this country
• Buy only one item of secondary animal products a week (either cheese or butter, each of which lasts about two weeks. As I don't eat eggs or have [edit: much in the way of] other dairy [not counting desserts], this is easy). Use the high price of cheese as a check against buying too much.

01:56 am - New Cookbook Test Drive

Tonight was the inaugural dinner from Real Stew: 300 recipes for authentic home-cooked cassoulet, gumbo, chili, curry, minestrone, bouillabaisse, stroganoff, goulash, chowder, and much more by Clifford Wright, a culinary historian and general food nerd. I decided to make his Romanian Chicken Stew: I've had chicken thighs in my freezer for months longing for a purpose; the recipe called for lots of paprika, a favorite of mine; it also called for a curious step of roasting flour before adding it to the pot as a thickener. It would be cheap, intensely flavorful, and with an interesting twist.

The recipe is fairly straightforward: brown three pounds of chicken in a 1/4 pound of clarified butter, cook onions till soft and gooey, then add some tomato, white wine, and spices to stew. Even the final step of roasting flour in an oven to add before serving (which Wright claims provides a distinctly nutty, coffee-like flavor) was easy enough. However, some modifcations were required.

For starters, I'm not really okay serving anything to people with a stick of butter in it. Second, three pounds of chicken and a lack of vegetables was a problem. So I more than halved the fat, used olive oil instead of butter, and cut the chicken down to one pound. To compensate, I decided an abundance of potatoes and carrots would keep in the spirit of the dish. But it wasn't as cut-and-dry as that. Cutting the fat made me worry how much flour I could add before it would start clumping together (as flour does in water in the absence of fat, unless one is a very vigourous whisker, which is rather hard to do in a stew pot full of meat and vegetables). Would this be enough fat to brown the chicken and onions? If I was adding less flour, would the "distinct nutty flavor" come through? Was I commiting a sin against authenticity to use a Mediterranean lipid in lieu of good 'ol central European dairy fat? These questions plagued me for days. At the end I decided to let authenticity be damned: I'd use less fat, add a bit of flour at a time, not freak our if lumps formed, and use rosemary instead of parsley (bowing to the demands of what I had on hand). My rationale was the presence of allspice in the spice listing: a berry of West Indies origin, while delicious in the final product, is not a native part of any Romanian palette, so far as I'm aware.

All went well during prep. Eric and Stacy helped chop vegetables: four large carrots, about 5 onions, and who-knows-how-many potatoes. The amount of olive oil we had to use was more than enough, and although we had to double the amount of white wine and add an equal amount of vegetable stock to yield the appropriate amount of liquid for this much stew, it took off easily. The instructions for Wright's book are for the most part easy as pie--as is the art and pleasure of stew (minus the three-page recipe with ultra-detailed instructions for authentic Provencale bouillabaisse). Wright also helpfully admonished that the stew must never boil as that would toughen the chicken. Fine, I thought, this'll take about an hour once all the ingredients are assembled. Totally doable. But in all my obsessing over cutting the meat and amping up the vegetables, I never paused to consider the differential in cooking times; root vegetables take far longer to cook than chicken, especially on ultra-low heat. More than an hour in and most of the vegetables were still raw.

After a lot of poking at the stew (and adding a lot more paprika--more than a 1/4 cup in total) and feeling awfully guilty about how long I was delaying my dining companions, I decided to let tenderness be damned and increase the heat with the hopes of having tender vegetables by, say, midnight. This is a constant problem of mine--underestimating cooking times--for which I always feel bad, and am eternally grateful that my friends are so accomodating. Even on a substantial boil, the vegetables still took quite a long time, but more than an hour after I said dinner would be ready, I decided to pull the plug. They were mostly cooked, though there were some still-raw specimens and they overall could have benefitted from more time. However the chicken was still marvelously tender, which I can attribute to the exclusive use of dark meat and the fact that it cooked for so long on low heat. I had to roast the flour on the stove because there weren't any baking sheets around, but that meant I got to add a bit of oil to brown it, which trimmed the cooking time from 15 minutes to just a few. Besides contributing a distinct flavor to the broth (though overshadowed by our heavy hands with the paprika), it turned a thin, greasy liquid into a beautiful, luscious stew base.

The end result was excellent, and everything a stew should be. Though there were some interesting flavors that played very well together, which made this much more sophisticated than stew I'm used to making. It was sharp, sweet, spicy, and earthy; only while tasting did I come to appreciate the incredible balancing act Wright performed when assembling his ingredients. When I do this again I think I'd want to increase the amount of onions even more and exchange cabbage for carrots, which in truth I don't like all that much. And I'd do it in a slow cooker to ensure equal meat and vegetable tenderness. But all in all, Wright scored very high. I look forward to using him again the next time I need to cheaply feed an arbitrarily large number of people, or just a few with leftovers to spare. As for tomorrow, these leftovers will be so good they hardly deserve the name.

09:44 am

10:32 am - From the files of the Mildly Unsettling Department

When your aunt sends you a facebook gift of a heart with the words "Free Love."

On another note, this Soviet era article does a marvelous job of summing up so much of what I hate about kitsch and why I get so riled up by it:

09:27 am - Things I do not understand

49 degree winter.

My body's insistence on waking up at 8 regardless of when I went to sleep (12:30, 1:30, 3:00).

10:48 am

Several years ago, New Yorkers in Manhattan awoke to the smell of pancakes and syrup. The smell covered substantial portions of the island. Some thought it was nice. Others freaked out and thought it was a terrorist attack.

The real answer, finally revealed: fenugreek processing to make perfume from New Jersey factories. In other words, thanks, New Jersey, completely non-ironically this time.

Source

09:35 am - There are times I'm deeply embarassed to go to college here

Such as when I find this in my inbox:

Flirting for Nerds

Wednesday, February 11th

7:00 pm

 Third Floor Theater of Ida Noyes Hall

Having trouble shaking your nerdy image and attracting the apple of your eye?

Well, push those glasses up on your nose, take a puff off your inhaler and learn to flirt like a pro.

 Instructor Rebecca Steinmetz will teach you fun, non-cheesy ways to break the ice

and brush up on fundamentals such as reading body language.

Brought to you by ORCSA and LGBTQ Programming Office

10:16 am - On the difficulties of reconstructed memory

It's very difficult to parse conversations I actually had with people from subsequent dreams I've had about those conversations. As an open note to all of you, this means I may not only be surprised to discover we had a conversation about something I have no memory of (a fault of my memory generally), but that I may be surprised when you don't remember the part of our conversation where we discussed chickens.