After years of prodding from friends and family I’m finally (with a ton of help) going to start a cooking blog.
For a while it’ll just be old pictures of delicious food I’ve made. Then hopefully more detailed descriptions of the food and how to make it. My good friend @keniehuber is a very talented video producer and we’re going to make some videos of me cooking. I’m sure I’ll be terrible in them at first but if you stick with me, she’ll stick with me and hopefully these will be videos you’ll want to watch and maybe even learn something from.
I take comfort in the fact that there are two human moments that seem to be doled out equally and democratically within the human condition—and that there is no satisfying ultimate explanation for either. One is coincidence, the other is déja vu. It doesn’t matter if you’re Queen Elizabeth, one of the thirty-three miners rescued in Chile, a South Korean housewife or a migrant herder in Zimbabwe—in the span of 365 days you will pretty much have two déja vus as well as one coincidence that makes you stop and say, “Wow, that was a coincidence.”
The thing about coincidence is that when you imagine the umpteen trillions of coincidences that can happen at any given moment, the fact is, that in practice, coincidences almost never do occur. Coincidences are actually so rare that when they do occur they are, in fact memorable. This suggests to me that the universe is designed to ward of coincidence whenever possible—the universe hates coincidence—I don’t know why—it just seems to be true. So when a coincidence happens, that coincidence had to work awfully hard to escape the system. There’s a message there. What is it? Look. Look harder. Mathematicians perhaps have a theorem for this, and if they do, it might, by default be a theorem for something larger than what they think it is.
What’s both eerie and interesting to me about déja vus is that they occur almost like metronomes throughout our lives, about one every six months, a poetic timekeeping device that, at the very least, reminds us we are alive. I can safely assume that my thirteen year old niece, Stephen Hawking and someone working in a Beijing luggage-making factory each experience two déja vus a year. Not one. Not three. Two.
The underlying biodynamics of déja vus is probably ascribable to some sort of tingling neurons in a certain part of the brain, yet this doesn’t tell us why they exist. They seem to me to be a signal from larger point of view that wants to remind us that our lives are distinct, that they have meaning, and that they occur throughout a span of time. We are important, and what makes us valuable to the universe is our sentience and our curse and blessing of perpetual self-awareness.
Style and taste are a particular sort of intelligence, and vice versa.
Aesthetic judgments rarely transcend the culture of the judge.
The style of studied nonchalance is the psychological triumph of grace over order.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. Which is why Fashion is shallow, but taste is deep.
There’s no right or wrong about style. Like a poem, it simply is what it is.
Real luxury is understanding quality, and having the time to enjoy it.
In the end, aesthetic judgments are perhaps merely enthusiasms.
In matters of taste, if you can see the trees well enough, you don’t have to see the forest.
To consciously avoid fashion is in itself a fashion.
Today tradition is commercially merely another commodity. As is History.
In a world of plentiful choices, taste is the hallmark of restraint.
Luxury may be, as Balzac says, less expensive than elegance. But both are less expensive than fashion.
Uniforms both include and exclude.
Taste is one of those human concerns in which a lack of experience is no hindrance to opinion.
Precision in dress is the neurotic refuge of the perpetually insecure.
Deliberate nonchalance is intended to imply a strength held in reserve.
(via putthison)
I’ve been thinking about Louis CK lately. I’m a fan of his show on FX, and I’m so happy his recent adventure in distributing his newest comedy special himself has been a rousing success. But my thoughts are going elsewhere to wonder why he has blown up in popularity in the past couple years, and why his comedy seems to resonate with these times. It always feels like there’s a comedian willing to address contemporary concerns with insight and honesty for each moment in time. All the greats had their focus: Richard Pryor and Chris Rock had race, George Carlin had absurdity, and I think Louis has hit on some sort of subterranean undercurrent of emotion that I didn’t realize might be swelling until I listened more closely: shame.
My grandmother sent me a package for Christmas. It requires an adult signature for delivery. I know UPS delivers a lot of packages but how many sorts are usually home to sign for a package at 4:30 PM on a Monday?
So when I got home from work at 7 pm I went online to request that the package be delivered to my office. Send like a pretty straightforward request, but I was charged $4 for the convenience.
Fast forward to today when I’m trying to find out when I can expect it. UPS.com says it didn’t know. I called and spoke with an operator and she told me to just keep checking the website.
I’m going out of town for the holidays on Thursday and big brown can’t tell me if I’ll get the package in time or if my most co-workers will be sitting around starting at my present for a week, trying to resist the urge to open a package that requires an adult signature.
