One of my coworkers, a Funky Little Company lifer who used to sell me folding cartons back when I was a lowly purchasing assistant at Big Cosmetics Co., has identified a genre of literature that he has dubbed "Only You, McAllister." It is what he said when he saw me sitting in the cafeteria one lunch hour, my nose in the pages of Curry in the Crown, Shrabani Basu's study of curry houses and ready-chilled Indian meals as a cultural signifier in Britain. (It is a fun book to read, even though I was a bit taken aback by Basu's repeated assurances that most of the workers at the food companies profiled therein were happy to be working in non-union factories. But I have a soft spot for any book that states its thesis by quoting from "Vindaloo" by Fat Les.) It is what he said when I told him about the egg book. Granted, he didn't say it when I was reading Geek Love or Mrs. Caliban, but that was only because we had not yet met each other. And he missed his big chance to really let me have it with double-barrelled sarcasm when he and my boss-at-the-time found me on another lunch hour, nose-deep in The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: 20 Years of the Best Food Writing from the Journal Petits Propos Culinaires. "What'cha reading, Fin?" asked Boss Fella. I showed him the book. "Is it any good?" he asked. "It's brilliant," I answered. "There's an essay in here about the Norwegian Porridge Feud of 1864-66." I didn't even think about what these words would sound like until they had already left my mouth, turned into sound waves bound for infinite deep space. I waited for the inevitable "only you, McAllister", but Boss Fella beat him to the punch. "The problem, Fin," said Boss Fella, "is that I can never tell when you're kidding." As if I would kid about the Norwegian Porridge Feud. The past three months have been a summer of mewling and puking, in which very little bread was baked, very few pies emerged bubbling and shining from the oven, very few words of any consequence were written chez PTMYB. Every Friday, I would slouch, rough-beast-like, out of the LuthorCorp office and onto the N train, vowing that this was going to be the weekend that books would be cracked, notecards filled, fabulous new insights gleaned. Every Sunday night, I would slide into bed, full of aromatherapeutic devices meant to calm my nerves, but somehow they didn't do a thing to stop the cartoon-like noise of my eyes blinking. (Yes, I make xylophone-like tones when I blink, just like Bugs Bunny, or the Powerpuff Girls.) Now, though, summer is over, in a cultural if not temporal sense, and I am suddenly finding myself itching to take notes, make citations and read through 50 years' worth of grocery trade magazines and farm commodity reports. I want to call complete strangers and ask them if chicken-bone fossils have ever been found that would help end the controversy over exactly what sort of chickens were the first to arrive in the Americas, and when. I want to read about Chinese seapower in the 15th century. I want to read about the creation of brioche and kugelhupf. I want to tell everyone I know that Mesopotamian Egyptians hatched chicks on a massive scale, a scale that was not matched until the mid-20th century. Whether anyone wants to hear any of these things is beside the point to me, for I am a woman in love. If my newfound focus and desire for study has not yet translated into a peaceful night's sleep, if my dreams are still cluttered and confusing and vaguely anxiety-producing, I can, as always, turn to the movies for comfort. I had forgotten about an exchange between Robert Burke and Martin Donovan (a/k/a Yet Another One of My Boyfriends) in Simple Men, in which they are discussing the tough, nervy Kate (played by Karen Sillas); Robert Burke says "I like her, but she seems kind of jumpy," and Martin Donovan replies, "Jumpy women are great." I have decided to add that to the list of t-shirts that bunni and I want to have made for ourselves. I want this one on a baseball jersey, bright blue with bright red sleeves and print, so that everything looks like it's vibrating. But I digress. I am in the mood for nerdy, poindextery pleasures, and right now nothing satisfies that mood, nothing gives me such pleasure, like considering the Norwegian Porridge Feud. You would think that I would be a sport and answer your questions such as "Gee, Jen, just what was the Norwegian Porridge Feud, anyway?", "Gee, Jen, how many times can you say "Norwegian Porridge Feud in a single post?" and "Gee, Jen, you're not going to tease us by rabbitting on about this Norwegian Porridge Feud without telling us what it is, are you?" I'm afraid so, dear friends. It is late here in beautiful uptown Astoria, so late that I can actually hear the crickets chirping in the backyard. (Yes, we do have crickets in New York City. Squirrels, too, although both the crickets and the squirrels tend to disappear when the feral cats are in heat.) It is only in the interest of beauty sleep, and in maintaining functionality at the box factory tomorrow, that keeps me from telling the whole story now. It's certainly not because I want to leave you on a cliffhanger note, coming back to see what happens next, the way those bastards Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins used to do. Heavens, no. Until such time as I can tell the story, and tell it properly, I recommend that you take three more stops on your pass through the World Wide Internets: A final nonsequitur before bed: When I was adding the links to this post, I happened to click on the "memorable quotes" link on the imdb page for Simple Men. There is another fine moment in which Robert Burke's character, Bill, gives his new friend Ned a medallion of the Blessed Virgin. Ned observes that the Blessed Virgin is pretty, and Bill answers, "Not only is she pretty, but she's got a nice personality, and she's the mother of God." I do like a man with a finely-tuned sense of scale.
September 14, 2005
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