Pilot's Log

I'm making a batch of Monkey Bread for the first time in more than a year and a half.

Oddly enough, this seems to be important...although I cannot guess why.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of December 22, 2011

The Environmental Working Group wrote the Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health. It concluded that if every American avoided eating cheese and meat one day a week, emissions would be lowered as much as they would be by removing 7.6 million cars from the roads. This is the kind of incremental shift I urge you to specialize in during 2012, Sagittarius -- whether it's in your contribution to alleviating the environmental crisis or your approach to dealing with more personal problems. Commit yourself to making little changes that will add up to major improvements over the long haul.

Earlier in the month my father announced that his physician had recommended that he take up a vegetarian diet and give up cheese and other dairy products in order to get better control on his diabetes. I already have a habit of meatless days (and in fact, I wish I knew the method the U.S. Government used during the World Wars to set Meatless, Wheatless and Sweetless Days on the calendar) tho' I haven't made it so firm and formal.

I'm the token skinny guy in any group these days. Everybody else seems to have a bigger appetite than I do.

A solid-frozen weiner, wrapped in a soft flour tortilla, needs more than 10 minutes at 350' in the oven to cook/heat thoroughly.

On the English-language news from Japan that we get from PBS World channel overday, there was a story about a Singapore department store that was a major influence on Asian fashion culture for years, celebrating a grand opening of a showcase store in its hometown. Since the narrator's English was not particularly easy to listen to, I muted the sound on the TV. Mum took that as a hint to start the conversation, telling about how "Western" the styles are now...

And my reply was that "no, their styles aren't Western...their styles are GLOBAL". Fashion isn't decided in Milan or Paris or Brussels or New York--it's decided EVERYWHERE now. The world's culture is now a melting pot and fashion is one way that it's emerging into its next phase. I mentioned that American culture--in particular, pop culture--is persisting in what has been termed "magical Orientalism"--in which the East (and the Middle-East) is presented as more exotic and mystical than not only it is but more than it possibly could be. Meanwhile, the real Orient has the same smartphones, the same Buick cars, the same social networks and the same television programs that WE do. And life is just as mundane, complicated, and tediously desperate as we have it here. Magic Orientalism could be excused in previous centuries, but not now. (Being the otaku that I am, I've never really put creedence in magical Orientalism--tho' what do you call the NewType phenomenon in comparison?)

As irony would have it, at the same time we watched that TV program, we were sitting down to dinner: our version of Chow Mein, which isn't exactly real Chow Mein but as close as we can manage here in the Tennessee country.

Meanwhile, the area I live in is probably looked at by outsiders through the lenses of Uncle Remus, KFC, Mayberry, The Dukes of Hazzard and old country music records. Do those other cultures see this one as possibly possessing something that may not be here? I guess if they didn't, Sevier County's economy would have never gotten going, eh?