Stuff to See!

Cookies and Cataclysms

"So what are you bringing to the party?"
(Zen wants to move to Montana)
Like many things in life, both good and ill, this began innocently.
(Three wise men got lost and found themselves staring at a baby in a manger in the Middle East. If this happened today, the baby would be up for ransom and Herod the Great would be promising tax cuts)
"Put me down for cookies," I says.
(Traffic is horrible. It's even worse in the rain in Maryland where it's the law to drive like a dumb ass at the merest drop of precipitation)
"We're expecting about 100 people," says she.
(I wonder if Jesus really went through all that stuff in the last day of his life as detailed in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ?)
"I can handle that."
(I have two mint-in-box Hasbro Alternators, Meister and Autobot Tracks, as well as a G1 reissue Dirge, sitting in my living room. They've been there for over a month. I'm scared)
So the conversation ended. Well, it was email, but still, there was rudimentary communication involved. I figured that 300 cookies would be enough for that many people, although 500 would be safer, what with the season being cold and sweets always popular. 300 is just this side of gluttony. 300 is also the title of a killer graphic novel by Frank Miller about the Battle of Thermopylae, a battle, much like the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD, or perhaps the thwarted invasion of Italy by Hannibal in the Second Punic War, that quite possibly changed the course of history to favor the Europeans. Excellent graphic novel, I highly recommend it, even with all the male nudity.
(And I preordered the Predaking box set)
At any rate, I was on board for my cookies. My cookies have a high reputation, especially among women from 18-49. I may not have baked any for years, but I still believed I had the touch.
(I didn't scratch the phrase Kill 4 S@T@N into the concrete in Mt Vernon)
I figured on four batches of chocolate chip (standard toll house recipe, without nuts) and three batches of my signature toffee-chip snickerdoodles would total around 400, a goodly total, accounting for the inevitable burnt batch or three that comes from my appalling lack of attention to things oven. As it turned out, I didn't burn any this time.
(I'll always associate the coming of spring with the death of romance)
Any of the 437.
(Is Teflon flammable? I've always wanted to know)
Eight hours of total labor (two mixing, six baking) brought forth into this world from piles of sugar cane juice, flour, and tons of butter or shortening (depending on the type of cookie), 437 separate and unique cookies. The thought came to mind that some people do this for a living. Having worked in kitchens for love and for money, I almost envy them.
(Never ask a woman for a chainsaw. No matter what happens, it can't possibly be good. At worst, there is an uneasy nothing that occurs after she goes to look for nothing in particular, forgetting all about you. Trust me, I'm not wrong about these things)
Naturally, being the dilettante that I am, I sought an easier way out first.
(Have you ever driven down the highway wishing that you had missiles or laser cannons at your fingertips? I often have these thoughts as I'm humming the Ride of the Valkyries and dealing with traffic, even if no one is on the road. I just think it would be cool)
I priced cookie trays from various supermarkets and bakeries in my neighborhood (and, I suspect, others), and found that regardless of the type of cookie, I'd most likely be spending at least $100 to reasonably feed 100 people. $1 a person? Nope. I have toys to buy!
(There are many degrees of enslavement. The abject servitude of the Africans in the United States is probably the most culturally relevant, but consider how long you've been bound to your mortgage. Rent is no better, as you're just throwing money away with nothing to show for it except dry possessions. I'm not advocating slavery by any means since we have enough machinery on hand to do the menial tasks, as well as the more laborious ones, for which slaves were needed in less technologically advanced times. This is why I don't have a maid or a butler, not that they'd have anywhere to sleep except for the floor or maybe the closet. Then there are those who use illegal immigrants as a cheap source of labor. Those people need to burn in hell. The illegal immigrants just need to be put in jail)
So I went au naturel. For the first time in years, I pushed a shopping cart up and down the aisles of the local market (too small to be called super in my opinion), or rather down the dairy aisle (eggs and butter) and up the baking goods aisle (all the other crap for cookies). 10 pounds of flour, 10 pounds of sugar, four bags of chocolate chips, three bags of toffee chips, three cups of shortening, three pounds of butter, 18 eggs, one pound of light brown sugar, a vial each of vanilla extract and almond extract, and some red and green colored sugar stuff (to worship Christ). Throw in some dinner and a couple of 40s and we're pushing $30-$40.
(I'm pretty sure that no matter what the descent was from father to son in my genealogy, I'm the son of Tomas de Torquemada)
I like baking, normally or abnormally. Since my kitchen wasn't exactly at its best, I decided to make up the batters and refrigerate them prior to the marathon baking sessions.
(How would a tiger cub end up on the surface of the moon? I have this mousepad with cute tiger cubs who bestride the moon like felines colossuses. It's much like considering how an otter can write the works of Shakespeare if given enough time. Much like betting on sporting events, pondering such things is a waste of time. It's much more productive to write things on your bathroom wall in red crayon so that you can blame your kids and give them their rightful inheritance of shame and anger toward the world and all authority types. Then there's the trauma of seeing your parents naked, hopefully not together play fighting, as they like to put it. Talk about scarring the young for life. No wonder teenagers are so obsessed with sex)
After six hours of baking (using my patented three cookie sheet (TM) system, one baking, one cooling, one ready to go), I felt strangely tired. A half starved kitten may stand a chance of taking me down, I thought. Since there weren't any half starved kittens around, I use the phrase in a purely speculative sense. Thankfully it was speculative. Those kittens can be deadly.
(The Orioles still haven't made a serious free agent signing. I have a notion that Eric Milton will be signed by Baltimore, then he'll have to have Tommy John surgery, and maybe he'll just become pregnant and give baseball up altogether. I need to buy season tickets and sell them on eBay, except I can't sell them for a profit because no one will buy them. The power of hate is a wonderful thing)
Now with the baking behind me, I feel the urge, the itch, to do some more. Cookies are a good way to seduce people, I've found. The way to a man's heart, or a woman's, is through the gut. A bad meal at a critical time can kill a relationship. Besides, a crazy girl I know asked for peanut butter chocolate cookies. Both peanut butter and chocolate are known aphrodisiacs, so I can only imagine what she'd do with them. Then again, maybe I'd like to know.
(I haven't been to the movies since I saw Kill Bill II, a movie that I thought dragged incessantly for hours on end, although I know this isn't fashionable. My uncle keeps recommending Hero to me. He has excellent taste in movies and loved Kill Bill. Plus the Extended Edition of Return of the King is coming out Tuesday, so that should be good for a four hour Tolkien feast. Better than Schindler's List on Christmas Eve, at any rate, or Howard the Duck)
For nearly a year now I've been living on frozen pizza, or frozen burritoes, or some other easy to prepare item that doesn't require much thought or effort to achieve taste. Gone are the days when I would look forward to preparing any number of scrumptious treats (usually for company), to pushing the envelope of my culinary prowess. What remains is forty pounds, although whether that is from the food or the alcohol (which comes and goes on its own irregular schedule), I cannot say.
(I will be watching Transformers the Movie as 2005 begins. This I swear on the souls of my children yet to be born kicking and screaming into this vale of tears and blood and sweat and love and hate and nonchalance. So will many other people. I wonder how many of them will be alone as well? Are they happy with this? Am I? I prefer to nibble on the shoes of fate)
I miss cooking salmon in particular. Salmon has this association in my mind with erotica, although why exactly I don't know. Salmon is particularly good when you bake it with onions and potatoes, dill, lemon juice, and assorted spices. It is also a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, although I don't remember what benefits those substances provide. I even stuffed a salmon filet with crab meat once, to general acclaim.
(Rage. Rock. Roll. Fight. Raw. Fall. Rumble!!! The Wu Tang Clan never ceases to amaze me. I wonder if they would welcome me if I was to knock on the door of one of their cribs in New York? Old Dirty Bastard, in particular, is a hero of mine. He earned more money from one album than I have in my entire working life, and he still collected food stamps. Then someone shot him in the back. He'd change his name to Big Baby Jesus after that. Plus the hairdo is just so cool! I want to meet him)
But this is the season for charitable thoughts and giving and crap like that. Or, to turn it around, it's the season to watch with unbearable hesitation as box after box with your name on it appears under a tree someone else chopped down for your amusement, a tree that was just busy doing whatever it is that trees do until they die. Sure, I realize that we're connecting with the cross and the druids and all that jazz, and that we're reenacting the whole frankincense and myrrh and gold and good stuff like that, even if some of the people who would really appreciate this season of greed and charity are those least likely to taste of it, but the whole prospect of going out in the world, spending money, and watching people have love fests, watching couples young and old holding hands, and generally trying to convince the world that they're happy makes me feel a little depressed.
(For some reason I have an insect bite on my left wrist. It's the middle of December. Insects are not warm-blooded creatures. How in the hemorrhaging f*ck do I have an insect bite? And is it still around, because I'm starting to feel hungry. I'd be more than happy to drink pureed scorpions for money, if that is what it takes. As long as the puree has at least four ounces of nutmeg, I'll drink anything, even hemlock)
Sure, it's nice to see the little ones in my family go nuts over stuff that Satan brings them in his remarkable marathon burgling sessions. I tried to watch out for the jolly old fellow, as they call him at work for fear of offending the non-Christians like myself who could care less, once, when I was five or six. He never showed up. I was convinced that this was because I was a bad boy. The fact that I was right had little to do with the nasty psychological effect the absence of Mr Claus wrought on my fragile psyche. To the little ones in my family, I say that he stops by my place when all is said and done and has a beer with me. They believe me. I'm happy with that.
(Making spanakopita takes patience. It's not easy to work with fillo dough the first time, if indeed it ever becomes easy. My grandmother recommended keeping a damp washcloth on hand if the dough started to dry up. I scoffed at the thought, although she's right in everything she says. I just learned to move very quickly with the less than paper thin flaky fillo goodness, brushing each sheet with butter flavored with garlic and dill. The real tricky part is squeezing the liquid out of frozen spinach. This is why I buy cheesecloth whenever I happen to notice it. Cheesecloth is your friend if you deal with lots of frozen spinach)
I even get into the spirit when Christmas comes after the hullabaloo is said and done. It's still fun in the end, although the journey has become fraught with unhappiness. Then again, I'm a natural pessimist. It's fun because you're never disappointed.
(There are some books in life that you will never finish reading. The more you read, the larger the number of books you'll never read. This is logically impossible, but nonetheless entirely true. Think about it. You know I'm right)
In the spirit of pessimists everywhere, I have shopping to do.