Blog meme from Very Good Taste via News from the Flip Front. Even though I eschew meat these days for the most part, I've tried most of the items on this list. Why have I never had currywurst? Is it too late to rectify this now, and can it be accomplished at The Red Lion Tavern, I wonder.

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

   1. Venison
   2. Nettle tea
   3. Huevos rancheros
   4. Steak tartare
   5. Crocodile
   6. Black pudding
   7. Cheese fondue
   8. Carp
   9. Borscht
  10. Baba ghanoush
  11. Calamari
  12. Pho
  13. PB&J sandwich
  14. Aloo gobi
  15. Hot dog from a street cart
  16. Epoisses
  17. Black truffle
  18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
  19. Steamed pork buns
  20. Pistachio ice cream
  21. Heirloom tomatoes
  22. Fresh wild berries
  23. Foie gras
  24. Rice and beans
  25. Brawn, or head cheese
  26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
  27. Dulce de leche
  28. Oysters
  29. Baklava
  30. Bagna cauda
  31. Wasabi peas
  32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
  33. Salted lassi
  34. Sauerkraut
  35. Root beer float
  36. Cognac with a fat cigar
  37. Clotted cream tea
  38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
  39. Gumbo
  40. Oxtail
  41. Curried goat
  42. Whole insects
  43. Phaal
  44. Goat’s milk
  45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
  46. Fugu
  47. Chicken tikka masala
  48. Eel
  49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
  50. Sea urchin
  51. Prickly pear
  52. Umeboshi
  53. Abalone
  54. Paneer
  55. McDonald’s Big MacMeal
  56. Spaetzle
  57. Dirty gin martini
  58. Beer above 8% ABV
  59. Poutine
  60. Carob chips
  61. S’mores
  62. Sweetbreads
  63. Kaolin
  64. Currywurst
  65. Durian
  66. Frogs’ legs
  67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
  68. Haggis
  69. Fried plantain
  70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
  71. Gazpacho
  72. Caviar and blini
  73. Louche absinthe
  74. Gjetost, or brunost
  75. Roadkill
  76. Baijiu
  77. Hostess Fruit Pie
  78. Snail
  79. Lapsang souchong
  80. Bellini
  81. Tom yum
  82. Eggs Benedict
  83. Pocky
  84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
  85. Kobe beef
  86. Hare
  87. Goulash
  88. Flowers
  89. Horse
  90. Criollo chocolate
  91. Spam
  92. Soft shell crab
  93. Rose harissa
  94. Catfish
  95. Mole poblano
  96. Bagel and lox
  97. Lobster Thermidor
  98. Polenta
  99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
 100. Snake

I'm not sure that Obama's academic demeanor -- by which I mean the willingness even to acknowledge common ground before outlining a critique -- will have served him well in the eyes of those not already in his corner, esp. at the end of the debate.  McCain was really taking control of the floor, and Obama, in deference to Jim Lehrer and the rules set forth at the beginning, seemed to allow McCain to get more in, make a stronger finish.  And really, what people are going to remember from a nearly 2-hour long debate is the finish, which is a shame because to anyone listening, Obama's facts and message were much more in line with the realities and needs of this country and its place on the world stage.

So, I think it was kind of a draw.  The polls and the press feeding off of them might well spin that 'draw' into a win for Obama, since The Foreign Affairs Debate was supposed to be McCain's strong-suit and was favored, by some, to win this one hands-down.  Substantively, Obama won.  McCain, though, held his own in terms of rhetoric - even if he seemed cantankerous, grumpy and condescending toward Obama much of the time.  Obama seemed magnanimous and "presidential."  Which posture do those undecided swing voters want?  I have no idea.

I notice Biden made an appearance on all the major networks after the debate, and he was doing great.  The Republicans sequestered their embarrassment of a VP candidate Sarah Palin from the press after the debate, sending out Rudy Guiliani to speak in her stead.  Pathetic, really.

When  this photo was taken, back in the fall of 2007, I had just begun to emerge from what was probably my second worst bout of depression to date.  So here I am smiling, because I had just gotten my Enfield Tennis Academy t-shirt in the mail and also, though I didn't really comprehend it consciously at the time, I was just starting to believe, on some deep level, that love was possible still, again.*  That maybe it had been there all the time, only I didn't understand what to call it because I had been consumed for too many years by something that closely resembled love, but wasn't really.  In the comments, you can see me engaged in the very typical activity of extolling Infinite Jest to a new reader of the book and pointing them toward wallace-l for community.  The only thing one longs for more after finishing IJ than more pages of it to read is a group of people with whom to discuss it in lovingly obsessive detail.

*That love didn't work out either, but at least I (still) know it was the real thing.

E.T.A.

Comments

	dogfaceboy    says: You look like someone famous. A pretty famous person. I can't think of who, but it's not one of the Simpsons, cartoon or otherwise. Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	brainylagirl    says: hmmm, sometimes people tell me this. (!!) Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )
	Diana K    says: Cool. Okay, I think I'm getting one too. Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	Elisha Cook Jr.    says: Nice shot. You do look like someone famous. Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	brainylagirl    says: EC, Jr. -- do you mean there's someone famous whom i look like, or that i have the look of someone who might be (at some point) famous? or both? Diana -- yay! more ETA t-shirts for everyone! Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )
	john curley    says: very very nice self portrait! Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	brainylagirl    says: thank you, john. flattered, as always, when you stop by... Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )
	katie.shapiro    says: you are so cute! Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	horsepj    says: I wonder if that shirt comes in black.... Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	brainylagirl    says: you favor stice's color palette when it comes to fashion? (it comes in many styles and colors, black among them, i'm sure.) Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )
	horsepj    says: I do. I'm only 25 pages until the last page. This afternoon will be the last day. Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )
	brainylagirl    says: i read IJ over the week of spring break one year. it was a completely consuming, dare i say mind-altering, experience. are you on wallace-l? (go to waste.org and click on their "lists" section.) cool group of people there who like to talk about DFW's writing and all kinds of other stuff, too. i've fallen off the rolls over there, but there was a time when i was fairly active. i made some great friends through that list though, with whom i still keep in touch and meet up with in real life, occasionally. Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )
	Diana K    says: Don't listen to her; those wallace-l people are a bunch of freaks. (Kidding.) (But a freak.) Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

A great light has gone out; David Foster Wallace hanged himself and is dead, the LA Times is reporting. 

I need to take some time to think about what to say, what to do.

A luminous writer - sensitive, precise, attuned to the array of human emotion and social systems they inhabit - Dave was also a dear, compassionate man.  On every occasion I wrote to him, he'd write back.  Whenever I got the chance

to see him in person, he responded so openly to my questions.  Though he clearly spent so much time going around his own head, when he had the opportunity to connect to others who had connected with him through literature (his own work or that of others), he took a genuine interest.  A meeting with him and a chance to speak was always an encounter of the highest order, because there was always a real exchange of ideas.  And this is always the case in his writing, too.

I will miss him so dearly.  There was still so much I hoped to hear and read from him.  There was still so much to say.

I've only been on digest mode at wallace-l for the past few years, but I have re-upped in the wake of this.  A remarkable thing happened when I read Infinite Jest : it brought me in touch with a wonderful community of people out of which grew some amazing friendships.  So, in addition to the writing he leaves behind and the kind words he always had for me, I have Dave Wallace to thank for some of my best friends, too.

What this must be like for his parents and sister and wife and all his close friends, I can only begin to imagine.

I'm getting more than a little weary of hearing this election being described as "historic."  I think the Clinton campaign was the first to set this particular word-ball in motion, HRC's own inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement woven with her desire to harness what remains of second wave feminist energy in this country as the first viable woman running for President of the United States.  So in her own PC way, not wanting the hog the "historic" limelight, Hillary was also quick to acknowledge the "historic" status of Barack Obama as the first viable African-American candidate for the presidency.  Obama, for his own part, tends to down-play that.  He so totally is of a different sort of rhetorical bent, one grounded in the classical liberal idea of the meritocracy.  He does not play up identity politics, instead relying on his inate gift for appealing to the masses who are fed up with GWB (apparently 80% of us, according to recent approval rating polls). 

Now that Obama has been officially selected as the Democratic nominee, McCain's camp has attempted to rally it's base by angling for a piece of the "historic" pie, selecting ultra-conservative, anti-Choice, Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.  Some were worried that this gambit was meant to lure hysterical Clinton supporters who in their defeat were declaring their votes for McCain, just to spite Obama (and their faces for their noses).  But any self-respecting Democrat who could possibly vote for McCain solely on the grounds that 1) he is not Barack "swooped in and 'stole' the nomination from Hillary" Obama and 2) that he's chosen a woman for his running mate is beyond disgruntled; they're irrational and dangerous denizens of our democracy and not unlike the short-sighted knee-jerk reactors we've been held hostage to by the Bush II administration, lo these eight long years.

In a recent New York magazine article John Heilemann recalls the election of 1980 when, "In Ronald Reagan, the country confronted a charismatic, potimistic, oratorically gifted alternative running on the twin themes of hope and change, who had led a grassroots insurgency to defeeat the Recpublican Establishment's candidate, George H.W. Bush."  Sounds familiar, right?  Substitute Democratic for Republican and it's Obama-mania to a tee.

Heilemann goes on to recall voters' uneasiness with Reagan who "seemed risky, inexperienced, extreme," right up until the final days before the election when Reagan appeared in a presidential debate.  "Reagan assuaged those naggign fears by appearing presidential in his debate [...] with Jimmy Carter and then sprinted to a ten-point rout.  And thus it will be with Obama and John McCain, you just wait and see," says Heilemann. 

When this article first appeared back on August 18th, I would have totally agreed with Heilemann that McCain would self-destruct over the course of the fall campaign.  But this was before the two party conventions.  I don't know how we could perceive Barack Obama as any more "presidential" than he has always appeared from the day he threw his hat in the ring, to his tour of European leaders this summer and finally to the speech in front of the (much-maligned) columns on that state at Invesco Field in Denver literally bursting with 80,000 supporters.  He's just got "it," like Reagan did back in the '80s, in terms of charisma before the camera.  McCain, on the other hand is more of a go-with-your-gut sort of fellow, prone to hasty decisions based on his own moral compass that more often than not finds its true north with Republican policy (according to his voting record in the Senate), even though he's managed to paint himself as some kind of party outsider or, as he likes to say, "maverick." I guess that's his attempt to harness some of that rough-rider western appeal that Reagan had with the American public in the 1980 election -- not an officer and a gentleman, but a cowboy and a president.

While people liken McCain to Bush because of his stance on the so-called "War on Terror," universal health care, gay rights, women's rights, and the economy (to name only a few key issues), which is distressing enough, I am frankly more unnerved by his tendency toward hasty decisions and bad temper.  OK, fine - let's give him credit for serving honorably in Viet Nam and surviving the years of torture as a prisoner of war there.  But his service in the military does not translate automatically to effective leadership skills in the highest office in the land.  He's not reflective; he's not diplomatic.  Those are two qualities I want in my next president to counter some of the damage that has been done to the people of this country and our image in the eyes of the international community under the "leadership" of Dubya and Co.

And but, I've already heard members of the media sound pleasantly surprised by how "even-tempered" and "presidential" McCain appeared during his acceptance speech at the RNC last night.  But people, it's an act!  And look at the person he's chosen as a running mate, whose own speech was filled with a level of sarcasm and bold-faced lying the like of which I've never heard in such a venue.  Sure, convention speechifying is meant to rally the troops.  But, for all that Sarah Palin seems to have injected some life-force into the republican faithful, I really think she rallied the Obama supporters more.  A collective, "Oh hell no!" as thousands rushed to www.barackobama.com  to give another donation and maybe even sign up to do some telephone campaigning on the ticket's behalf.  Of course, the Republicans were charmed by her poise, and her breeder "hockey-mom" folksy delivery of anti-Obama conservative invective dripping with sarcasm and belittling remarks.  They also like that she wears skirt suits, shows a little leg and in her spare time from raising five kids and extracting federal funds for Alaskans, hunts carribou and likes to chow down on mooseburgers.  Can I see Sarah Palin as a star on "The Real Wives of Juneau, Alaska" or her whole family living next door to "The Osbournes"?  Heck yeah!  Can I envision her representing our country to foreign leaders in McCain's stead - hell, in my stead, in your stead. Not a chance.  This woman does not speak for me, but she certainly seemed to speak for those convention-goes in St. Paul on Wednesday night.  Again, scary and depressing.

I'm afraid that Heilemann's pre-RNC "just you wait and see" might be more applicable to McCain at this point.  The election of '04 changed me; I couldn't fathom Bush II winning a second term - it seemed obvious that he'd set us on the wrong path, gotten us embroiled in a pointless war on illegal grounds - and then it happened.  So today, I'm braced for the worst even as I hope against hope that we can actually vote the better of the two candidates into office.  I guess I'm a disillusioned optimist, a realist romantic.

I still believe McCain will self-destruct - say something irreparably wrong before the election rather than afterwards when his words and petulance could have international consequences, were he elected into office.  See it's not a matter of looking presidential and it's not a matter of "historic" -- it's a question of character and leadership and restraint as much as decisiveness and action.  You can have all of that at once; none of those are mutually exclusive.  I think we've had enough rough riders for president in the last century.  How about someone with a good head on his shoulders for president, who thinks with his brain instead of his gut?  Now that would be historic.