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Have you ever heard of a Grapple?

I hadn’t.  I mean, I’ve heard of a grappling hook.  And I have heard of “grapple” as a verb: it’s something one does with a large monster or comic book villain. 

Apparently, now it is also a fruit.  A hybrid fruit.  Apparently when an apple and a grape love each other very very much…  well, you get the idea.  Somehow they (presumably evil scientists) have genetically engineered a fruit that is a grape-apple hybrid! 

Obviously more research is warranted.  So far my research has consisted of stumbling across them in the supermarket, yelling “OMG GRAPPLES” to my perplexed mom, and consuming two of these futuristic fruits (when I got home, not while I was still standing in the produce section).  Now, beyond the concept, they are not so terribly exciting.  But they are quite tasty.  And they smell super grapey!  I could just sit there with one and inhale for a good 5 minutes.  And I did.  At work.  They’re used to me.

Anyway, they look like apples, smell like grapes, and have an extremely pleasant taste that fuses the two flavors quite elegantly.

I can’t wait for them to do this to other fruits!  I mean, hello, strawberry-banana anyone?  How fantastic would that be?  Orange-raspberries?  The possibilities are endless.

It’s too bad that coconuts are not a fruit, otherwise we could fuse it with a pineapple and have a pina colada in fruit form.  Sadly, bacon is not a fruit either.  If bacon fusions became a reality, I would probably need to go lie down for a little while.

People, we are EATING THE FUTURE!  Today, grapples.  Tomorrow, flying cars!  I mean, you can’t eat flying cars, but you get the idea.

So, I have two questions…

**What hybrids would you want to see created?

**Does anyone have any moral objections to this?

Also, an edit:  much to my dismay, I have learned that they are probably pronounced “grape-ells.”  Oh well.

Recently (okay not so recently - it’s called procrastination, ever heard of it?) I wrote at length about an article called Treat Me Right, which was featured in GQ magazine, and has had me rankled ever since.  You did read my previous post, didn’t you?  You did?  Great, what was your favorite part?

Ah-ha, I KNEW you didn’t read it!  Well, go back and read it.  I’ll wait.

Okay?  Okay.  So, I certainly gave all those possibly female panelists a piece of my mind, since I am 100% positive that they read this blog.  I paid very little attention to the men (assuming, of course, that the men were not writing the females parts and setting up their own jokes, as suggested by commenter Michael).

So, in a list of sixty-one “bits of wisdom,” the editors made a whopping thirteen annotations.  Way to burn the midnight oil, boys.  I would say that a good four out of the thirteen are solidly decent contributions.  And when I say “solidly decent,” I mean “kinda mediocre but harmless.”  Another four out of the thirteen are complete garbage: unhelpful, unnecessary, annoying.  And a whopping five out of thirteen are the comments that are argumentative, childish, misogynstic.  Now, I’m not saying that they all had to be gems, and I’m not saying that I had to agree with them all.  But I can say unequivocally that I believe that the number of editor comments falling into that last category should have been zero. 

So, with no further ado, I bring you The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

(more…)

Okay, so I don’t generally read GQ, but despite not being a regular reader, I somehow found myself alone with the April issue (I was at the boyfriend’s house and needed some, ahem, bathroom reading).  Well, suffice to say, I was… displeased.

I flipped through page after page of male fashion, cologne, espresso machines…  until I got to an article called Treat Me Right, in which a panel of “women” discuss how they want men to, well, treat them.   Why the quotes?  I mean, I can’t prove that they aren’t real women…  But they sound suspiciously like snarky men doing their best impression of what they think women are like.  Or maybe it’s not the panel’s fault, because Lord only knows who was doing the paraphrasing.

And then along the side, there are little asterisks, which then lead you on a little dotted-line adventure down the page to where the “editors” have “editoralized” with what I assume are supposed to be clever and witty comments.  Really, they are mainly a male nudge-wink behind the female panelists’ collective back.  Which then takes the tone of the article, which was supposed to be Let’s-find-out-what-women-really-want-from-men and makes it into a Dude-check-it-out-they-think-we-really-care-what-they’re-saying-oh-man-that’s-rich!  Basically, the nature of most of the editorial comments lead me to believe that the in-office draft of the article was covered in ketchup fingerprints and smelled of beer.

And to rub salt in the wound even further, I can’t even link to it because they did not bother to put it up on their website.  Almost every other one of their feature stories are listed, so I do not understand why they left this one out - unless it is because they are well aware that it’s a sub-par piece.  Which it is.  Which is fine.  But I strongly suspect that the topic just did not rank high enough on their priority list.  Obviously it is much more important for them to post an article about the the twenty-five most emasculated, disempowered, henpecked husbands on the planet  (one of the more prevalent crimes?  daring to donate your hard-earned cash to a charity your wife supports!  gasp-NO!), pictures of a naked Adriana Lima covering her cooter with a palm frond (note to guys: I know you like it.  It’s cool.  You keep doin’ what you do.  I’m just sayin’.), an interview with Keith Richards, a piece on Russian mail-order brides (I am not making this up), an article about the founder of Girls Gone Wild, who is now in jail…  need I go on?

Anyway, since I can’t link to it, I will be forced to quote some choice tidbits. 

Okay, so, my first complaint: the women.  Yeah, you!  Well, not you.  The panel.  I mean, really.  Okay, so they came up with plenty of decent advice (some of it obvious, but many guys still don’t follow it, so I suppose it bears repeating), such as If you take our contact info, use it and Don’t talk to us about how hot your ex-girlfriend was and Place your hand gently on the small of our back.  There was even an excellent little section giving guys some good advice on: how to deal when there is a hot babe clearly in your line of sight while you are out with your girlfriend/wife.  It was a four-part section and probably too complicated for many people to be able to use in real time, but I agreed with most of it.

But then there were some other bits of advice that just made my eyebrows vibrate.  In a bad way.  For example, one piece of advice is: When debating whether or not to buy us flowers, the answer is always yes.  Great.  The next piece of advice: Except when it’s not.  Gah!  Oh, and by the way, send those flowers to our office, willya?  Um.  Oh, and never use FTD.  What??  Dude, I almost started hating women halfway through this article!  What gives?  Who are these women?  And why are they reinforcing this crappy stereotype??

Oh, and another of my personal favorites: Bathroom humor is never funny.  We women laugh so that you’ll think we’re cool and can hang with the guys, but we would like it to stop.  Okay, FIRST OF ALL, yes.  Yes it is.  Especially farting.  Farting is always funny.  Except dutch ovens.  Those are not funny.  But I digress.  Second of all, ladies of this article - WHY?  Why why why?  Why are you doing this?  This is why guys don’t trust women, why they think that the second they commit to a relationship, that the girl will morph from a stiletto-wearing hottie to a sweatpants-and-baseball-cap couch potato, why they think we will stop letting them hang out with their friends once we have our claws in them, why they think the sex will stop once there is a diamond ring involved.  That is a very negative (and, hello, inaccurate) portrayal of my gender by other members of my gender, and I have to say that I resent it.

There’s more, like about how we won’t appreciate anything men do on Valentine’s Day because they’re supposed to do it.  But of course, if they do nothing, we will never forgive them.  This is self-explanatory and I need not go into why this chafes me, right?  Right.  And then of course there is the ending disclaimer, “Every single one of the preceding sixty-one bits of wisdom is useless if she’s not into you.  And redundant if she is.”  You know what?  Fine.  Whatever.  I will just chalk that one up to them wanting a snappy ending.  Fine.

Ladies, some of these suggestions were good!  A couple of them were very, very good.  Why are you mixing them in with such dreck?  Some of these were just the opposite of helpful.  And something that is especially not helpful is reinforcing negative gender stereotypes!  No man is just going to accept that on Monday, you want XYZ, but if he gives you XYZ on Tuesday, then he is done for.  Nor should he accept it.  Writing this article is not going to turn men into mind-readers, it is not going to make them agree to be punching bags for your ever-changing whims, and it is certainly not going to make them like or respect women more!  All it is going to do is make the male readers of GQ even less tolerant of the diversity of female wants, needs, and opinions.  When the panel said We like when you take care of our cars… but don’t do it if you are going to muck it up, or or if you will say you’ll do it and then never get around to it, I think that is perfectly reasonable.  Female (and dare I say, human) desires can change based on circumstantial factors. But do not make it seem like we want what we want when we want it and the men are just going to have to follow along or get left behind.  Do you know what advice like that gets us?  It gets us resentful, cranky men and frustrated, dissatisfied women.  And writing advice like that and expecting any other other outcome is an action that can only come from living in a fantasy world of self-absorption and misandry.

(Next time, I take on the men of GQ.  I decided to cut things “short” here because, well, I have a day job.)

So. Meat. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about meat. I mean, okay, I spend a lot of time thinking about food in general. But with meat, there really is a lot to think about. First of all, I have a lot of vegetarian friends (well, several vegetarian friends, but it seems like a lot). So I think about the ethics of meat. Especially because I consider myself an animal lover. I mean, can one be both a lover of animals AND a lover of consuming their delicious carcasses with a side of mashed potatoes??

(side note: although I am tempted to do an entire other entry on potatoes, they are generally less controversial than meat, and therefore the entiretly of my writing on that topic may be “Mmmm. Want.”)

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes: meat. So, I do often think about whether it is hypocritical of me to love animals, want good things for them, want to protect them from harm… and also, eat them.
I am not here to answer that question, nor am I here to defend my choices. Honestly, I just don’t think that would be a particularly interesting read. I mean, if there is a huge demand for it, I can always write a defense of my carnivorous habits another time, but I am warning you in advance: the word “delicious” is going to feature prominently.

Another controversy: I have been informed time and time again about how wasteful, or at least inefficient, eating meat is. I can’t argue that. I can say that I recycle, I don’t litter (in fact I often pick up others’ litter), and I try generally to NOT be a wasteful person. However, when it comes to eating meat, I fail at efficiency. And I do love efficiency. I just love meat more.

Another thing that must be said for meat… it is very exciting, or at least I think so. In fact, I get my kicks attempting to sample as many different kinds of meat as possible. Well, I like to try different foods from each sector of the Nutritional Pyramid, but this topic is broad enough as it is. I really do sometimes think that I would like to taste every animal in the world. It’s probably not a good idea though.
Some people are grossed out by this desire. Some are even offended. I get a lot of, “Well, would you eat this animal?? Well what about this one???” in increasingly accusatory tones. Inevitably, somebody brings up dolphins, and we all know how it turns out. At best, I wind up on the receiving end of a look that suggests that my morals are… let us say, questionable.
“Would you eat cat? Would you eat dog???” That’s a common question. Also a difficult one, especially because I have owned cats and am around a lot of dogs. But I can’t say that I definitely would NOT try it once if I was in some other country where eating dogs/cats was a common occurance.
I mean, maybe I wouldn’t be so driven to eat the entire cast of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” if I got into extreme sports. Hear me out. We all want to experience all that life has to offer, and to try new and exciting things. For some people, this translates into surfing (I don’t have the balance), spelunking (I don’t have the endurance), snowboarding (I don’t have the coordination), and skydiving (OHMYLORDNO!). So, what is left for someone like me? Extreme-meat eating! Not that I will eschew the ever-faithful beef, pork, chicken, turkey, duck, lamb (as well as the usual seafood suspects). But when I want to break out of life’s tedium? When I want to have an adventure? Well, maybe I want to eat a cobra.
(side note: I was going to write “maybe I want to eat a snake,” but I realized that there are probably way too many immature asses reading this, and one immature ass writing it, so in the interest of finishing this think piece, I changed it)

I have not yet tried cobra, or any type of snake for that matter. I have tried alligator, but unfortunately due to the way it is generally prepared, have never been able to taste anything other than “fried.” Dammit, I want my alligator to taste alligator-y! Quail, venison, and elk have all registered as mediocre to my tastebuds, but again, it may have been the preparation. Rabbit tastes bland or delectable, depending on the exact dish. Ostrich has probably been my biggest disappoinment, but that’s my own fault for trying it for the first time at a damn diner! Next time I will consume ostrich at a more reputable dining establishment. Fuddrucker’s, here I come!!! Eating shark was, both times, a surprisingly delightful experience. I guess cold-blooded evil really IS scrumptious!!!
There may be others that I am forgetting, but you get the basic idea. Should I be experiencing life in some other way, one that is better for my aerobic and cardiovascular fitness, and perhaps a bit more environmentally conscious? Well, I am yet to be convinced. I plan to continue my culinary journey, sampling nature’s delicacies - the more exotic, the better!! Onward.