A lot of serious stuff is happening in the world and I don't feel like discussing it or think I have anything to add. But there's one incredibly stupid, inconsequential thing going on in politics that amuses me, and that's the idea that there are a lot of "fake Melanias" running around. Every once in a while people will share a picture of a person who looks to me like Melania Trump, and then they will say "that's clearly not Melania."
from left to right: military guy with medals, famous guy we’re sick of, Melania Trump or equivalent
Many times this has happened, never is it clear to me that it isn't Melania. But then, it wouldn't be clear to me. For example, in the movie The Departed, it was never that clear to me without a lot of context clues who was Leonardo DiCaprio and who was Matt Damon, even though most people are able to tell them apart - it's why they get paid different amounts of money than other actors.* It gets even worse for actresses than actors, because there are fewer different ways a lead actress is allowed to look, so 80% of white Hollywood lead actresses in the same age cohort (+- 30 years or so) are indistinguishable, while for lead white male actors it's only 65%. Melania Trump, while not officially an actress, is basically an actress, in terms of type of looking person. Obviously not a voice actress, having heard her speak, but I digress.
* (In public even I can tell those two jokers apart, because they have different haircuts, but in the context of the movie, Martin Scorsese likes giving all his actors the same haircuts and clothes, for a challenge or something.)
The point is, when it comes to whether or not someone looks like Melania Trump, I guess I have to take people's word for it. In high school – and to this day, I assume – my friend Brendan had anosmia, the inability to smell. People would sometimes take advantage of this mess with him, joking about smelling this and that – for example, you'd say the modem really stinks, you can smell how bad that internet was – and while he could generally figure out what smells were real, because he was a smart guy, he never had the sensory means to know for sure. So it is with me and these allegedly fake Melanias. I do not have the senses to individual distinguish one of them from Melania, if there is a distinction.
The nice thing is, my ability to know is perfectly matched to my need to know. I have zero of either. Even if there were fake Melanias, what would I conclude about anything that would change anything? It does not seem to be in dispute that Melania Trump exists (although, so what if it were), so the fakery seems to be an effort to convince people that, what, she was in a particular helicopter, or outside a particular car? Why? "If Melania's not in the car, then...." I don't know, she's somewhere else, also doing nothing? I cannot think of a time it was important to me, or important to anyone, whether Melania Trump was present at a particular location. I doubt it is even important to Melania Trump, who does not seem the kind of person to care about her place or purpose in life. Maaaaybe Barron cares, but from what I've heard he isn't particularly attached to either of his parents.
But I don't know, maybe the Trump team would fake some dumb inconsequential thing like that, who knows, they've done far stupider. I just hope someday we're in a position to unravel trivia like this while they're all safely far away from power.
$0.39 worth of tomato paste from Aldi’s. But is there potentially $1.95 worth of tomato paste in there, if its secrets can be unlocked? Or, look at it the other way, am I only getting $0.07 worth of tomato paste out of it?
In the meantime, there's actually an important thing in life: tomato paste. Tomato paste is pretty great. You use just a little bit of it and you get a lot of tomato flavor, with a nice acid taste that you just can't get from real tomatoes, which taste mostly like nothing. The tomato paste, on the other hand, has just enough of this nothing to really kick. Two tablespoons is about all you need. In comes in tiny 6 oz cans, just about as small as a can can reasonably get.
However, when it comes to tomato paste, "as small as a can can reasonably get" is nowhere near small enough. Each can contains five servings of that two tablespoons that you'll need, and good luck using all five. Good luck even using two. The cans turn to poison or something once they're opened, so you can't even store them in the fridge, and every time you transfer it from one vessel to another, you lose about half your tomato paste, because tomato paste is sticky as hell. It's so sticky that it's almost not worth it to measure, because in the process of measuring, you lose so much into the measuring container that the measure has no accuracy whatsoever, but then again you need to try because the paste is so powerful that you can't really afford to make any errors with it. It's a disaster waiting to happen, repeating itself regularly in millions of homes across the world, but still it's just put in cans but with no warning, no "6 oz* *extremely sticky 6 oz, actual usable volume will vary wildly" it's put on recipes like putting a reasonable amount of tomato paste in things is just something an average human can do, no, like "you're dealing with tomato paste here so good fucking luck."
But still they keep cranking out these little six ounce cans, throwing tomato paste in all kind of recipes, no attempt ever to solve the damn thing. Well, there is one false solution: the tomato paste tube, which lets you roll it out like toothpaste and can be resealed safely. Sounds great. That's the kind of thing that I'd pay twice as much for. Problem is, you gotta pay like three and a half times as much for the tube, just enough to make you feel like you could maybe get two uses out of the can and get a better deal, 2 for 1 being better than 5 for 3.5. And so you're back at square one.
It must be that they’re allowing the great tomato paste crisis to continue because they can afford to. It must be cheap to make. Boiling old tomatoes or leftover juice in giant vats or something at the end of the day. Cheap enough that it can keep going on in its crazy ways, wasting most of its potential, just like Billy Faulkner could keep cranking out those books even though he was spending most of his life drinking. "We only use 10% of our brain, imagine if we used the other 90%," teachers would say (answer - we'd go fucking nuts! too many thoughts at once!) and I say "we only use 20% of our tomato paste, imagine a society where we used all of it, all the things we could cook."
Funny thing is, I don't think I've ever actually fucked up a recipe with tomato paste. It seems to work out.
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Okay, back to politics for a second: I'd be down for a food town hall. Nothing but food. No politicking, just talking about what people are eating, how they're eating, where they're getting their food, see if you can relate, see who knows, like, what kinda stuff's in the supermarket, how to cook things, not at a chef level but at a trying to cook in your house level. I'd watch.
I'd be looking for a candidate who describes things with a lot of familiarity but not a lot of expertise, like they're like "you know the way the cream cheese package has like a flap on the back that seems way too big for it, like half the width of the block, but then if it was smaller you'd probably squish the cream cheese when you pulled on it because your hand would be mushed against the block itself?" and maybe they don't know the name of it but you know they've sort of half-noticed it, just like you have, and they're figuring out the limits to their knowledge in real time, as a collective experience. I mean, vote for someone who won't harm people as much, but if there's gonna be bullshit, I just wanna see a very calm talk about what food people are eating, being real about that.
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