apropos of anything

As long as you hate, there will be people to hate. — George Harrison

Ain’t that the truth, George. The more you hate, the more there is to hate, and soon you hate everybody.

You know it’s bad when you spend thirty minutes trying to compose an email that won’t get you fired and doesn’t end with “P.S. I HATE YOU.” Actually, just having to remind yourself that you can’t tell somebody you hate them should send up a flare: Red alert, red alert! The hatred, it is spilling over and it’s infectious!

Of course, here in the South, I could just bless their hearts, the darlings, and it would be exactly the same thing.

Last night we went to Sambuca in Buckhead, which, for all its glitzy decor and flashy Web site, is vastly over-rated. Also sick-making, as I think my overpriced, underflavored, and extremely tardy salmon from last night is currently wreaking havoc on my digestive system. So of course today I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns because today is a day for hating and loathing and other fun things.

We were out lateish (for a work-night), and then I had to come home and pack and watch the season premiere of Alias because I had to know what happened to after the car crash and if (spoiler-tagged to avoid the great Alias Season Finale Fiasco of May 2005) the rumors that Michael Vartan is leaving the show are true. Which they were. And… I kind of hated it. Sydney wouldn’t respond that way! Vaughn wouldn’t do those things! How did Vaughn not die immediately after being sprayed with sixty-five machine gun bullets?Why are they destroying a dynamic we’ve loved for four years? Is this Ben Affleck’s fault?

Things are looking up, though. It’s ice cream Friday, and tonight I get to see Leta! Hopefully by then the ice cream will have done its work and I can go back to at least pretending that I don’t hate everything.

“Zen wrapped in karma dipped in chocolate?” Do you HEAR yourself? What does that even mean? And is there seriously anything more disgusting than a chocolate body wrap, so sticky and gooey and not at all good for your skin?

Somewhere, an advertising firm needs desperately to be fired. And a marketing exec at Yoplait needs to never be allowed to work ever again.

Am I the only one who thinks perhaps this is a little inappropriate coming from the president of a country that purportedly keeps church and state separate?

Sometimes when I eat by myself, I’m watching television or catching up on my Web sites. Sometimes I’m reading email, occasionally even responding to it, particularly if what I’m eating is conducive to juggling. But usually when I’m eating by myself, I’m reading cookbooks.

It appears I am not the only one who reads cookbooks.

I read them for fun, for information, for unique tidbits tucked away in the margins. I spend weeks scouring Amazon for reviews and then hours on the floor at Borders, flipping through pages, weighing the pictures-to-words ratio and judging the gloss of the paper, not to mention the accessibility of the ingredients and the complexity of the recipes. I cannot buy a cookbook without first getting to know it to see if we are compatible.

In college I discovered Allrecipes and Epicurious and quickly decided I adored the former and loathed the latter. The Epicurious recipes were too difficult for someone who had to carry her cutlery down a flight of stairs into a shared kitchen where somebody else might possibly be washing her hair despite the RA’s large sign, “PLEASE WASH YOUR HAIR IN THE BATHROOM.” But Allrecipes and I, we became bosom buddies, surviving through multiple redesigns and site changes. I had over a thousand completely free recipes at my beck and call.

Then things changed, or perhaps I did. The site began diluting its collection with “premium” sections and less savory offerings. There were suddenly twenty different ways to make chicken tetrazzini, and I was interested in exactly none of them. I wanted more than casseroles and stews and two hundred uses for condensed cream of mushroom soup. Coincidentally, I got my first cookbook right around then too.

	I too would like to be a domestic goddess, I think, but Irene Sax at Epicurious has a mixed review.

The Internet versions are faster and more accessible, but I think, generally speaking, I prefer the real thing, the book I can touch and spill things on. I like writing my notes in the margins. I like knowing, as I pass a certain slightly crinkly page, that I made that recipe for the Evans Girls winter party in 2003, the one where Jason set his foot on fire and almost took out my brand new hardwood floors. Or that in this book, there’s a grocery receipt marking the page that has the recipe for the chocolate-raspberry cake I make for showers, and in that book, my coconut waffles with mango-strawberry compote that I made for brunch last week.

The problem, though, is that I can never make up my mind about what to buy. You don’t really know about a cookbook until you’ve taken it home with you, and cookbooks are too expensive to simply take a chance on. I’m looking at Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, recommended by the forum denizens at Chicklit, but I haven’t had a chance to devote an hour to poring over it at Borders yet. If they even have it at Borders, actually. And Irene Sax at Epicurious has a whole section on cookbook reviews… but they’re mostly all positive. On the surface, anyway. Her opinion of Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess seems complimentary, but falls apart some in the right rail. Also, I look for things most people wouldn’t — what percentage of the recipes have wine as one of the ingredients, how many use pork/sausage/ham, etc.

I guess, like most things, the return is directly related to the effort put into the project. There’s a line in one of the Lloyd Alexander books about the struggle being worth more than the actual achievement, but I can’t remember it exactly. Not that cookbook hunting is all that arduous a struggle anyway…

The reporters, they are getting personal now. There isn’t so much by way of “objectivity” anymore, not for these people who have been at ground zero since the beginning and don’t understand why the ones in Washington are wringing their hands very much and actually doing very little.

“Don’t you guys watch television?” Ted Koppel asked when FEMA director Michael Brown claimed he didn’t know until last Thursday that evacuees were stranded in New Orleans’ convention center.

Anderson Cooper tore into Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (text transcript here), pointing out that no, he hadn’t heard about the $10 billion supplemental bill Congress had just passed because he’d been at ground zero, walking past dead bodies.

Even some anchors at Fox News are refusing to push the pro-administration spin, and that’s when you know being on-site, watching all of this unfold, has really gotten to the news corps.

It’s about time something did.

Ken said the other day that one of Bush’s statements made him want to punch through the television set. David and I asked him where he’d been hiding, as some of us have been angry for four years now. Remember the motto from around the election? If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

Chief Justice Rehnquist dies.

May he rest in peace.