Wormholes on Broadway

I finished work last night, called home for the usual "Do I need to pick anything up?" call and received instructions to get milk.
20 minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the OK Economy on Broadway and headed inside.
There's a certain headspace that arises when you've had a long day and a quiet drive and the night is dark and snow is falling quiet and slow like it does in Christmas movies. I came out of the sparkling deep blue night into the blinding flourescents of a grocery store that hasn't changed in 25 years. A muddy trail across the tile started thick at the door where people had knocked the snow off of their shoes and melted away to gradually disappear deeper inside the store.
Something about that triggered a memory somewhere. Not a deja vu, but an actual image locked in some neuron. OK Economy, circa 1984, going to pick up powdered donuts with Ryan Townsend so that he could try to chat up the check out girl that was in her 20s. I got to thinking about places and time, and places in time and it occurred to me that somewhere in this universe there is a vantage point from which I could see 1984 me and 2009 me walking around OK Economy simultaneously. It occurred to me that just because that moment has slipped into the past doesn't mean it's not here anymore. Walking around the store I had the distinct feeling of walking through an ethereal wake of time, that all the events and moments those walls had seen were still there, rippling in tiny waves, collecting in corners in extra-dimensional eddies and swirls.
Anyway, it was one of those weird, surreal little moments I wanted to write down.

Repo Man

So I'm sitting up at the bar with Dan, and Dan is ebullient and jovial and glad to be alive because it's his day off and he came into $200 he wasn't expecting or needing and was exercising his option to be frivolous with it.
It was a slow night for me so I checked out early and sat with him for a bit, swapping work woes and future hopes and what-not, in a generally jovial mood myself. Somehow we got on to the topic of career choices and the options we had if we were to wish a change.
"My buddy is a repo man." Dan said.
"I'd love to be a repo man!" I said. "It's up in the top 5 of jobs I'd like to try."
"Really?" Dan was taken aback. "I wouldn't think you'd enjoy dispensing misery to people."
"I'm pretty good at staying detached and reasoning my conscience away." I answered. "As a Repo guy, you aren't God taking things away from people with your power, you're simply the hand of God. I just think it wouldn't be dull."
Dan shrugged then raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "Well, my friend has a lot of stories about it, that's for sure."
"Like what?" I asked.
So Dan told me a story.
"One day he got this call from one of these rent to own furniture places. He had to go out to a reserve and pick up a big screen tv, a sound system, and some video game stuff. So off he goes, in the middle of winter, and he gets to the house, where this disshevelled woman in her 40s answers. Behind her, there are at LEAST ten kids, all ages, from 2 to 12, and not one of them has even a stitch of clothing on. After some initial arguing and debate the woman finally realizes that resistance is futile and lets him in, directing him through the house to a room at the back. There's nothing in the house. An old couch and chair and that's about it. Finally he gets to the room, and there's a big hole in the wall filled with snow, and snow pouring into the house. In that room is this altar of electronics from the rent to own place. Once the kids start to understand that he's there to take it all away from them and leave them with nothing but the snow for entertainment they start crying and yelling and arguing and begging him. He just dismantles it all, a component at a time, taking it out of the house piece by piece while they all cry and sob. And that was one day on the job for him."
"Wow." I said.
"Can you believe some people live like that?"
"Well if the pay is good and he likes it..." I said.

Social Networking, Neuro-linguistic Programming, Molecular Gastronomy.

Quitting Facebook has been tough. So tough that as of yet I'm unsuccessful. I've been checking it daily still, just not posting. Every time I do check it I try to do a little neuro-linguistic programming with myself, build some negative associations with the site etc. But I'm still interested. It's tough for me not to post info about everything. For example.
One of my cooks at work has taken an interest in molecular gastronomy. It's debatably a new form of cuisine that relies on chemical profiles of food to blend tastes, textures etc. It uses techniques, ingredients and equipment that are more at home in a laboratory than a kitchen; liquid nitrogen, syringes, calcium chloride, sodium alginate. The results are curious, beautiful, often tasty. It's nouvelle cuisine on LSD. My cook's facebook feed shows that he's joined a Facebook group for Molecular Gastronomy. A quick perusal of their wall shows comments from young aspiring chefs, many claiming to be great and talented professing an interest in this new cuisine. Most of them look too young to have even begun to understand classical cuisine, a grounding that is crucial to success especially in this path. There were a lot of arrogant statements on their site and it was damn tempting to break my facebook vows and berate them. Fortunately I have some self discipline, so I'll just air my thoughts here.
A lot of classical chefs don't think too highly of molecular gastronomy. They feel it's pretentious, serves a chef's ego more than the cuisine, is about showboating technique over the dish. I find to my surprise, that after an initial interest in molecular gastronomy, I subscribe to this school of thought. In my opinion, food should be simple, regional and magnificent, emphasis on the simple. I think on this, even Ferran Adria would agree.
To me simplicity is the corner stone of great cuisine. Fresh ingredients complementing one another in taste, color and texture, prepared with passion. I don't have any desire to see the word 'chloride' anywhere in my food. Molecular gastronomy is a neat novelty idea, a high end cousin to deep-fried cola or cotton candy, but it's little else other than a passing fancy. Students of molecular gastronomy would do well to pay attention to Adria's words in this video Ultimately, his work is first and foremost about the cuisine of Catalan, and it came about after 10 years of studying nouvelle cuisine, followed by another 10 years specializing in Mediterranean cuisine. Before you can make a lobster gazpacho, you need to be able to make a gazpacho.