My Culinary Guilt Trip

When I was a couple weeks shy of my nineteenth birthday, the air force sent me to Keesler Air Force Base at Biloxi, Mississippi.  Basic training in Texas had transformed me from a civilian into an air force enlisted man; at a school in Mississippi, the air force was going to turn me into an electronics technician.

Biloxi is on the Gulf Coast, near the western end of an arc of coastline that today is called the Redneck Riviera.  Casinos dominate the area these days, but I remember the place as a strip of waterfront with a nice beach, a few restaurants, and a large multi-use hall operated by the USO, the United Service Organizations.  The USO is a charity enterprise that often serves as the GI’s home away from home.  I appreciated the Biloxi USO building as a quiet place off base where I could sit in a comfortable chair and read.

Once a month, on payday, I rode a bus from the base into Biloxi and ate dinner at a beach-front restaurant.  I always ate the same thing:  chicken-fried steak.  I don’t remember the air force mess halls serving chicken-fried steak; nor do I remember eating it at home, but somewhere along the way I had tasted it and become hooked on it.

Why not?  It was tasty although being of dubious, probably negative, health benefits; tasty is all that counted.  Back then most of us knew little about cholesterol, and the word triglycerides could have referred to a kid’s toy.  I like it, folks, and I’m gonna eat it.

And it was popular.  I spent most of my first year in the air force stationed in the Deep South, and restaurant menus there gave me the impression that chicken-fried steak was the national dish of the Confederate States of America.

So here I am, a lifetime later, once a week going to Perko’s to eat chicken-fried steak.  If you’re unfamiliar with this culinary delight, you can watch a YouTube video and see how a piece of beefsteak is breaded and fried and served with a cream gravy.  Right there I can start to feel my arteries begin to clog up.  I get it with green beans and a baked potato slathered with butter and sour cream, more clogging of arteries, and a glass, okay two, of cabernet.

Of course, it’s not a good meal for a diabetic, or anyone for that matter, and it’s definitely not top-tier dining.

But it comes with a fringe benefit:  good old Christian guilt.  Christ may have died for my sins, but I’m willing to be that he didn’t know one of them would be chicken-fried steak.

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One of My Failings--No Recliner

A few days ago I was killing time with a bunch of other gray-haired people.  We were at a local library waiting for an event to begin, and we were talking about recliners. 

That is, everyone else in the group except me was talking about recliners.  I was out because I don't own a recliner.  I always figured that I could slouch very well in a chair without needing a levered contraption to help me.  And one time I sat in a vinyl-covered recliner whose surface was so slick I thought I was going to slither down to the floor.

But ownership of a recliner was unanimous among the rest of the group—one man owned two—and they lauded the values and comfort of the device.

So, based on a limited sample of available old people, it appears that a person must have a recliner to really be considered old.

Or maybe not.

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A Peril of Pedantry

One of my pleasures is membership in the Dull Men’s Club.  This group has male and female members throughout the English-speaking world.  It is an online group with a website and a Facebook page.  The Facebook page is regularly loaded with witty and erudite comments posted by people trying to show that they not witty and erudite but indeed quite dull.  I spend about an hour each afternoon reading it.

Every now and then a pedant gets a word in.

About the word pedant.  It sounds like a tiny insect on a bicycle, but it’s not.  It’s too close for comfort in its nearness to pedophile or pederast.  And if you say we need people to watch out for the little things, I’d say you are dead right.  But it can be foolish to swat at mosquitoes while being stomped into the ground by elephants.

Anyway, a member of the Dull Men’s Club recently authored a Facebook post about the United Kingdom’s flag.  He called it the Union Jack.  A pedant came to arms and wrote, “the flag of the United Kingdom is actually only called the Union Jack when it is flown on the jack-staff on the bow of a Royal Naval ship. The correct name for the flag is the Union Flag.”

Now, you see, one of the guiding principles of pedantry is that it is incredibly easy to be wrong.  And here we are guided toward correctness by an organization in London, England—the Flag Institute.

As to what to call the UK’s flag, Union Jack or Union Flag, the Flag Institute says, “in 1902 an Admiralty Circular announced that Their Lordships had decided that either name could be used officially. Such use was given Parliamentary approval in 1908 when it was stated that “the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag.”

So there.

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Redacted Message

To read this redacted message, hold your monitor up with a bright light behind it.  The words will appear as if by magic.

Saving Keystrokes

It's been a while since I posted anything here, and this is my reason.

You see, I've been saving keystrokes.  I am not a touch typist but instead use the Columbus System of typing--discover and land.  Some times many landings are necessary to locate the right key.  Thus, where a touch typist might use 200 keystrokes to compose a simple note, I can pass through 300 and counting.

Fatigued as I am by numerous trips across a keyboard I decided it was time for a rest.  Thus no posts.

But I haven't forgotten that I need to feed this blog from time to time, and, as The Terminator says, "I'll be back."

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Mairzy Doats

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been lazy.  In fact, I've been so lazy that I couldn't even think of a good excuse not to post and just had to come right out and admit to my slothfulness.

But then the indolent ooze in my skull bubbled up a flashback about those thrilling days of yesteryear, and I got stirred up enough to want to let everyone in on it.

It's a song called, "Mairzy Doats," and it was a hit when it came out in 1944.  According to Wikipedia, the song made the pop charts several times, and was  a number one sheet-music seller with sales of over 450,000 within the first three weeks of release.

"Mairzy Doats" will do absolutely nothing for you except rattle around in your skull for an indeterminate period after you first hear it.

This link is to one of the original recordings of "Mairzy Doats," by the Merry Macs.  The lyrics are translatable and at some point in the song are sung in ordinary English.

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This Just In......

It's been a while since I posted--there are so many words floating around that I didn't feel up to increasing the mess--but I became entranced by headlines on today's Google news feed that I felt I just had to repeat a few of them here.

1.  Arizona woman, 92, shot, killed son who tried putting her in assisted living, cops say--Fox News

2.  A church put Jesus, Mary and Joseph in ‘ICE detention’ to protest Trump’s immigration policies--Washington Post

3.  After fish pedicure, woman loses her toenails--CNN

4.  Did Something Massive Smash Into Uranus?--Gizmodo

Remarks:

1.  I guess that'll teach him a lesson.

2.  No comment.

3.  What happened to the fish?

4.  Oh, I hope not.

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