Jacob's Hierarchy of Appropriately Fried Eggs

I'm a fan of eggs.  I like them many ways.  Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, even poached eggs.  So why the fuck can't restaurants make them the way I order? Seriously, I can make eggs like a bagillion different ways.  Why is it so goddamn hard for people, who are employed to do as much, make eggs to someone's order?  I get that there will always be a bit of room for variance (for a little artistic license if you will) but for the love of everything that is sacred can we please clearly define the differences in fried eggs?  This is consistently the most frustrating and annoying part of eating breakfast at any restaurant.  Let us begin:

Sunny side up is pretty straightforward.  You never flip the egg and baste the "uncooked" side.  It is generally accepted both with the white a bit runny or not. When you say sunny side up, you expect there to be a little bit of leeway with the consistency of your white.  Yolk is of course runny as hell.  This is the fried egg you want to order when you are looking forward to cardiac arrest.

Over easy is also not to difficult.  While it requires a delicate flip of the egg, over easy means your white is going to be runny as will your yolk.  It's pretty simple, though I have experienced the over easy as over medium in many places.  This revelation usually comes after over medium comes out over well and I have to send it back.  Actually that's not entirely true because sometimes I ask my partner to have it sent back since I'm really a giant wuss with microscopic testicles when it comes to asking the server to fix something.  I mean, it's honestly not their fault, they're innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire.

Over medium.  I should probably stop saying these are not difficult as none of them are actually difficult but holy shit if this is not the bane of my existence. Apparently this one is difficult for everyone but me.  The appropriately made over medium fried egg has it's white cooked through and yolk still wet but a tad more solid than the runniness of the over easy.  This is your classic dipping egg.  The yolk is of excellent consistency for your toast and is usually held in it's bowl by the slightest layer of solid yolk.  You cannot actually order this in a restaurant.  They will give you an over easy egg or over well, but never over medium.  Why?  I have no fucking clue.

Over well is by far the simplest form of fried egg.  Just cook the fucking thing. Everything is solid, just don't burn it.  There is not a soul on Earth who can't cook this egg.

If you are not cooking your eggs according to this handy guide, you are doing it wrong.  And since I titled this "Jacob's Hierarchy of Appropriately Fried Eggs" let's place these types in their proper order:

Over medium - Superior in all aspects, the over medium fried egg contains the best of both worlds; cooked through white and nice liquid yolk.  It is, beyond a doubt, the best way to cook a fried egg.

Over well - This one is really a situational style but remains at the top of the list for the sole reason that you're not dealing with runny white.

Sunny side up (only if the white is thoroughly cooked) - Better than snotty ass over easy, the sunny side up with white cooked through makes a decent change of pace from the over medium and you can feel superior to other cooks by showing off your basting skills.  There is the psychological problem of knowing that one side of the egg hasn't touched your cooking surface and also the heart attack.

Over easy (as long as the runny white is minimal) - And I mean minimal.  If the white is barely noticeable in its runniness then this egg is serviceable for purposes of potatoes and eggs and skillets as the runny white gets hidden in the mixing of ingredients.

Over easy - Can be vomit inducing when the white is jiggling on your plate.

Sunny side up (non-cooked through white) - Fucking disgusting.

So there you are world.  I just dropped some knowledge on you and knowing is half the battle.  Go forth and prepare your fried eggs appropriately.  You're welcome.

In Defense of Difference

My partner spends her work week corralling 3-year-olds and exposing them to school for the first time in their very young lives.  Some of them are not potty-trained, most of them enter the year crying for their parents and all of them have a hearing loss of some degree or another.  The challenging part of all of this, as if there needed to be more complication, is the children (because of their hearing losses) generally come in to the classroom with very little language and quite often none at all.  Her job is to teach them to speak; sometimes with their voices, sometimes with their hands.  I think what she does is nothing short of miraculous, a fact she would never admit.

The other side of the world in which she exists professionally revolves around heated debate over auditory-oral and total communication modes of education. It's a debate that is nuanced on many levels and far too complex to adequately explain in a single blog post and yet, here is a ludicrously brief synopsis of each:

The auditory-oral methodology uses techniques for teaching communication by working with residual hearing (whatever hearing an individual still has) and speech in order to equip the individual with the ability to communicate self-sufficiently. Essentially, they want an individual who is deaf/hard of hearing to be able to speak and hear as accurately as an individual who is hearing.

The total communication philosophy attempts to maximize an individual's ability to communicate by using whatever works best for them.  This may include but is not limited to various types of sign language, body language and natural gestures, visual cues and auditory/speech training.  The aim is to provide each individual with the most suitable avenue to effective communication (which will look different from person to person).

The two "camps" are divergent initially in that one is a methodology and the other a philosophy and become more convoluted when expanding the debate beyond the education system.  Questions emerge over the tension between a majority hearing culture and minority deaf culture, the influence of money from cochlear implant and hearing aid companies behind the push for auditory-oral teaching and even the very definition of disability.  It all illustrates nicely some of the more telling pieces behind our reactions and interactions with difference.

I don't think that deafness and deaf culture would be so problematic for a hearing society if they weren't so adamant about remaining happily and productively deaf. To many who live within deaf culture, deafness isn't a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured, something that we hearing people either don't want to hear or don't understand how to hear.  For the rest of us (those who communicate by voice and ear) this kind of difference is inconvenient.  It might require us to exist (if only for a moment) in a world where we're not entirely at ease.  It would mean having to grapple with a culture we're not comfortable around and have very little knowledge.  It might, in fact, feel something like a deaf person interacting with a hearing culture on a day-to-day basis.  It's horribly privileged to think we need to fix what someone else doesn't identify as a problem simply because it's an inconvenience for us.

My partner recently shared a story with me about a friend who works in a school system where there is a student whose primary care-taker is a deaf grandfather. No one wants to deal with the grandfather because it's difficult and the school has all but stopped trying to communicate with this individual because he is "stupid" and "illiterate".  He'll sometimes be waiting in the parking lot for hours before dismissal to everyone's concern and school officials have actually been close to calling the police because he "touched" a student.  The problem with all of these characterizations is that they're completely a product of the school's ignorance and unwillingness to learn.  He's neither stupid nor illiterate.  He uses American Sign Language (ASL).  ASL does not use English grammar and sentence structure so when this man uses English to respond to notes written home by teachers you'll generally find that nouns and verbs aren't in the expected place because ASL follows a French grammar and sentence structure.  He waits in the parking lot for hours at a time because no one has been able to effectively communicate to him the days that are early dismissals and the days that aren't. His concern is that he won't be there in time to pick up his grandchild so he errs on the side of caution (which I think makes him a good parent).  And the "touching" of the student business?  The student had dropped something and the grandfather noticed and attempted to get the student's attention.  In deaf culture, one doesn't yell at the other person, because, well, obviously.  What people who are deaf usually do is tap each other on the shoulder, which is exactly what he did to this student.  And for all of this man's troubles he is treated as unintelligent, weird, creepy and a security risk.  God forbid.  The heartbreaking piece for me?  These are daily things most deaf people run into, mostly because the rest of us hearing people are too busy or too lazy to care.

Sometimes I can't help but hear comments made by people screaming about homosexuality ruining marriage or how black people need to get jobs and illegals need to go back home.  They ring in my head long after they're said as if I'd just heard them, like those things tend to do when you're disgusted by hate and frustrated by misunderstanding.  It's hard to reach for compassion and empathy when I hear those things and it's rarely ever the first thing I want to do.  If nothing else, we could all be better teachers and listeners.  PBS has a wonderful documentary, Through Deaf Eyes, that gives a good look at 200 years of deaf history.  I recommend a watch if only for the history lesson.

Trophy Husband

This past weekend I was fulfilling spousal duties and appeared as arm candy for my partner's 10-year high school reunion.  Granted, I'm something akin to a 10-year old strawberry bon-bon you find in the back of your junk drawer and are unable to satisfactorily separate from the wrapper kind of arm candy, but there I was anyway just as my partner insisted.  As the "trophy husband" I spent much of my time telling people, "My eyes are up here," and dropping hints about my partner's net worth.

My first clue that this was going to be an enjoyable weekend was when my partner mentioned her wardrobe change bag which she quickly glossed over after noticing my face and decided to refer to as a back-up bag "because there are some things in there that are back-ups...like a bra."  I guess she wasn't wearing a bra or maybe she was and anticipated some accident that would require a bra change, I'm not really sure.  It was all very confusing.  The concern and confusion grew as we got closer to our destination.

My partner is usually a very good driver.  A tad lead-footed at times, but a good driver nonetheless.  I noticed that her decision making ability was diminishing exponentially the nearer we got to Farmington.  "I don't see a speed limit sign," was apparently code for I'm going to begin driving like a fucking maniac.  There were some harrowing turns onto highway interchanges.  Of course, she could have simply been distracted by some awesome things we saw on the road.

Smitty's Sporting Goods sells guns and ammo as well as fishing and archery equipment.  Apparently those are the only sports down there.  Either way, there's nothing like a sporting goods store the size of a Waffle House.

I couldn't help but think of what a team President George W. Bush and Jesus made in the White House for eight years.  Nothing like having "the Decider" and the "Problem Solver" on your side to make sure things go smoothly.  What's that you say? President Bush's eight years were a complete clusterfuck?  Oh. Nevermind then.

My disdain for consumer Christianity was greatly mitigated by the fact that this church sells fireworks.  I want to go to fireworks church.  Who wouldn't want to go to fireworks church?  Clearly these people get it.  I am in.

This place wins the internet for best name ever in the history of naming things. This is in fact an ice cream joint (frozen custard to be exact) and is so eloquently named that we had to stop and sample the wares.  Sadly their frozen custard was terrible which I guess is why they had to come up with such a kick-ass name. Crafty owners they are.

The rest of the weekend was your general homecoming fair.  A parade, a football game, and of course the all important actual reunion booze and schmooze.  It was exhausting.  My plan from the get-go was heavy on the booze and light on the schmooze so I took up residence at a table with my beer and proceeded to yell at various football games on TV for the rest of the night.  The other part of the plan was to incessantly text my buddy with snarky remarks and wallowing self-pity until the night ended.  Did I mention that my partner graduated from a podunk town and the reunion was in the middle of nowhere?  Yeah, no reception and to spice it up a bit we almost hit a few deer on the way out there.  I was thrilled.

On the bright side, we did fill up the gas tank at the rock bottom price of $2.93 a gallon.

"Never Forget" Ten Years Hence

I was sitting in a student lobby watching TV's that had been rolled in on carts after a math class the morning of September 11th.  By then both Tower 1 and Tower 2 had been hit by hi-jacked planes and the news anchors were calling whatever had happened a terrorist attack.  I stood watching, trying to wrap my head around what was going on and soon after the South tower collapsed.  The first thing I thought was I need to know that the people I love are okay.  It didn't matter that they weren't in New York, it didn't matter that they weren't in any danger, I was simply grasping for something to steady the world in which I now existed.  And it strikes me now how starkly innocent and naive my reaction was compared to the world that we already existed in.  I lived in America where the true ravages of war or constant threat of terrorism had never entered the psyche of an entire nation. These things didn't happen, at least not here.  They happened to other people. Once I reached my (now) partner on the phone we sat on the line with a great deal of silence, comforted by each other's quiet voices and not knowing what to say.

The popular refrain since that day, "Never Forget," is one that haunts me and infuriates me and disgusts me.  Not forgetting means there's something we should remember and the tricky part about remembering is the onus to learn from those things we remember.  So what have we learned?

A year and a half later, when President Bush had made the decision to attack Iraq, I sat with my suite-mates in our college dorm room watching the video footage of the first bombs dropping in the Iraq War.  The live video feed was in that eerie night-vision green.  The cheers from various people on our floor echoed through the hall and in open doors as the bombs began to fall.  Finally, something was being done, someone was being paid back for what they had done to us.  Except, nothing was being done and no one that had anything to do with the September 11th attacks were being paid back.  Instead we learned a great deal about our own use of violence and war as a tool for personal gain and mask for a new world in which we no longer sat comfortably.

It doesn't surprise me that we attacked Iraq based on lies and misinformation.  It doesn't surprise me that both a Republican and Democrat have executed more wars since that day.  I'm not surprised by the notion that a larger military and greater defense spending will make us safer.  I'm not at all astonished by the amount of bigoted paranoia that surrounds so many public officials' statements about Islam.  It is, in fact, what we have learned since September 11, 2001.

The most poignant images and sounds that I've been unable to shake from the events of that day was the people jumping out of the towers and the faces of the firefighters-the split second registering of a crash followed by a punctuated moment of silence-as they try not to think about the sounds of the bodies while attempting to mount an effective rescue in the towers.  It represents in my head the confluence of the best and the worst of us.  It forces me to remember that, for all the hurt and malice and anger wrapped up in the perpetration of those attacks, there were those who were willing to put aside everything else and do what they could to help.  We could use more of those people and we could do a better job of making sure those people who did respond are taken care of today.  Instead we've become much more comfortable calling people evil and dividing the world between the good and the bad.

The controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" (as the media so ineptly termed it) is a heartbreaking reminder that we've forgotten a great deal since September 11, 2001.  We've forgotten about Touri Hamzavi Bolourchi, a 69 year-old retired nurse on United flight 175 who died when it collided with the South tower.  She was Muslim. We've forgotten Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23 year-old NYPD cadet whose remains were recovered months later after vicious rumors had circulated that he had fled in connection with the attacks.  His body was recovered near the North tower where he had gone to help.  He was Muslim.  We've forgotten Mon Gjonbalaj, a 65 year-old janitor at the World Trade Center who managed to call his son one last time to tell him, "I'm trapped. I don't think I'm going to see you guys again. Keep the family together. Be strong."  He, too, was Muslim.  I don't really hear people talk much about the Muslim victims of September 11th and the growing number of Muslims who have been (and continue to be) ridiculed, demeaned and accused because of what happened that day.  It is as if many of us don't want them included, as if we want to forget that Muslims lost just as much as anyone else.

Remembering "those people" and accepting that the world is more complicated than "there are good guys and there are bad guys," doesn't make for catchy slogans or powerful impassioned speeches by politicians.  But that's why we remember, right?  So when the next politician needs to paint his opponent he can invoke "9/11" to remind us all why so-and-so will let the terrorists win.  It's so a decorated military general can convince himself and others that war is the only answer.  People stop being people this way; they stop being people and instead become "evil."  In this day and age, can't we all just accept that calling people evil helps no one and does nothing but reinforce our own prejudice.  It's far to simple an explanation for some of the most complex moments in life.  It's the same reason why I've never liked the idea of hell and the devil.  It's to neat and tidy.  If there is anything I can be confident of since that day it is that life is almost always messy and living is never as black and white as many would have us believe.

To be honest, I didn't even register that this was the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks until a week or so before the date.  I'm not quite sure why it hadn't occurred to me until then other than to say I still have moments in life in which that day feels like it just happened.  We're still fighting wars that stem from the events of that day, we're still trying to solve the worlds problems by injecting a good dose of violence and we continue to act as if we exist in a world where we can completely insulate ourselves from everything that's happening beyond our borders.  I'm hoping that over the next ten years those things will begin to change. I'm not very confident that they will.

Return of the Chewy

This was an hour of terrible "photo-shopping". 

Chewy's back and without any gawd-awful orange ruining his sleek facade.  We've had words; he promises never to do that to me again.

I Worship At the Altar of Bo

September is peeking around the corner which means I'm allowed to talk about Michigan football without odd looks and poorly disguised attempts to exit the room at the first mention of depth charts and returning starters.  It'll be nice to be able to wax eloquent about college football in public without people thinking I sound like Jeffrey Dahmers discussing human anatomy - all is right with the world.  Of course, now that football is mere days away, lines are drawn and allegiances are run up the flag pole.  When people ask "Why Michigan?" I usually give a terse off-hand response about being born in Flint and brain-washed from birth but to be honest, that's not at all the reason I fell in love with Michigan.  Much of it has to do with my father and a bit of it has to do with one Glenn E. "Bo" Schembechler.

Football first appeared in my consciousness at a pretty young age.  The family packed up and moved to South Bend, IN before I started school and from then on I was inundated with images, dogma and fanaticism surrounding the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.  If nothing else, I am thankful for that experience because I was immediately aware of how much better college football was than pro football.  Give me marching bands and ancient rivalries over pyrotechnics and terrible rock music any day.  Besides, it was in the halls of colleges where this sport was born, nurtured and made; to transplant such a tradition into the sterile manufactured confines of professional sports arenas is simply a waste.  And while I'm thankful for all that living in a college town taught me, even if it was South Bend, I never once felt the pull towards Notre Dame.  That had a great deal to do with my father.

You have to understand a few things about my dad.  First, my father loves to call people by their first name, especially when he first meets you, especially before you've told him your name and most especially when you are a server at a restaurant walking on the other side of the dining area.  He has a "guy" for everything.  He is infinitely better at making friends than I am.  Second, my father will drop everything to help you out and I mean absolutely everything.  I have never met a person with a larger heart and more caring soul than my dad. He is infinitely more selfless than I am.  Last, my dad has an announcer voice that he turns on whenever he is excited.  The voice moves in a crescendo of exhilaration ending somewhere in a high-pitched falsetto that no longer produces discernible words.  He should probably be on the radio.

Dad

Catching college football on TV in the 90's was nothing like it is today.  What with ND's seeming ubiquitous presence on TV, thanks to their NBC contract, I remember seeing a lot of the Irish.  While no one in the family was a Notre Dame fan, it was football on a weekend and so that's what was on.  My dad would watch and he would comment.  His tone was almost always even-handed, his comments were respectful, it was clear he enjoyed the game but something was missing.  It wasn't until the first time I noticed Dad watching a Michigan game that I figured out what that was.  The announcer voice was out in force.  Much of Saturday afternoon would be punctuated by random spurts of loud high-pitched squeals.  He was alive and it was obvious and it was electric.  There was an honesty to the madness, a display of shear elation that I had never heard coming from another human being before and it was in those moments that my young elementary aged self was simultaneously intrigued and jealous by the reactions of my dad.  I smiled with him, I might have even clapped with him and I'm sure, at some point (even though I had no earthly idea what was going on or an attention span long enough to really care), I jumped up and down celebrating with him.  I wanted to know why and I eventually figured it out.

There was a name Dad used often when talking about Michigan, a name that would forever cement my love for the Wolverines and a name that is synonymous with the coaching greats of college football; Bo.  I bring this up because it's important to understand that my father never pushed his Michigan fanaticism on us.  It was never talked about without invitation; it was not force-fed.  Dad allowed us the opportunity and space to find our own paths through life which made some of the more important discoveries all the more meaningful.  So, when I heard the name "Bo" when talking about Michigan, usually in passing, I was intrigued, intrigued enough to listen to this speech the first time I saw it on television:

It was a sort of magical moment.  It struck something deep within me probably because it sounded exactly like things my dad had said and done before: not criticism, but encouragement; not me, but us; not for yourself, but for everyone together as a team.  It probably didn't hurt that it also appealed to my young budding socialist heart.  The funny part about all of this is that I didn't play organized sports in high school.  I spent much of my youth watching my brother's baseball games or my sister's softball games.  But what I heard in that speech, the thing that resonated because I had heard similar statements from my dad, was that the world was so much bigger than little ole' me.  That's probably the piece that I can point to and say, that's why Michigan.  Because Bo said things that I had heard from my dad, because my dad made sure to remind me that life isn't just about you and me (it's about us) and because my dad showed me that it was okay to be happy, embarrassingly happy, about something as seemingly meaningless as a college football game.  Sometimes I feel bad for people who can make it through a game without causing a scene.

So here's to another season of heartbreak and hope, euphoria and depression, new and inventive cuss words, beer, chex mix and Michigan vs. Nebraska with a few of the most amazing people in the world.

Why Lawnmowers are Ruining the World

Ye Old Time Mower

Anyone who knows me knows I can be a bit of a complainer enjoy righting wrongs via the use of surprising semantics and clever rhetoric, hence this post.  My beloved lawnmower, whom we will call Chewy, decided to take a giant steamy dump in the middle of mowing the lawn last week. Apparently it was time for it's nearly 10 year old battery to say goodbye. Well fuck you battery, you had one job in life, to hold a charge, and you fucking blew it right in the middle of mowing the lawn.  I don't blame Chewy.  Chewy has been good to me, I just think he could do a better job of picking and choosing who lives inside his little lawnmower heart.  To be fair, 10 years is a prodigious life for a lawnmower battery, but that doesn't excuse it's decision to really stick it to me in the end. And, also to be fair, I had a back-up reel mower that gamely picked up the slack after hitting Chewy with a few wrenches.

I would show you a picture of my beloved Chewy if I could find one floating somewhere in the vast reaches of the internet but it turns out my mower is so old that there's a recall on it and they have to pretty much replace the entirety of the mower's outer body and some of the electrical components.  When next I see Chewy (probably two weeks) it will look nothing like my old mower.  I'm sure it will feel something like picking up your ridiculously rich husband/wife from the plastic surgeon's office (minus all of the gauze, blood, and highly addictive pain meds).

Chewy's new digs, I can hardly stand
to look at him.

This disgusting looking thing (left) is what I will be handed when I pick up Chewy.  I'm sure the orange is some sort of safety precaution (you know, so you can dodge the oncoming mower in time) as Chewy was black where the orange is and green where the black is. Come to think of it, Chewy's recall probably had something to do with him being a stealth ninja mower seeing as he blended in so well with the grass and sounded like a vacuum.  Who would ever guess that a vacuum could be so deadly, thus sneak up on you and maim you, thus ninja mower, thus recall.  Flawless logic.

I wasn't really angry about taking Chewy to the plastic surgeon's office repair shop because of the old trusty reel mower and the fact that these old model electric cordless mowers are leaps and bounds better than the new ones.  I would survive a few weeks of mowing the old-fashioned way and perhaps even enjoy a boost in physical exertion and general well-being.  This was not to be as I am prone to the universal law of Shit Hitting the Fan All At Once, which makes for messy situations.  The old reel-mower took a dump as well (though not the explosive kind that requires you to clean up the toilet bowl afterwards).  It decided that I did not require it's handle to be attached to it's base anymore.  Why, you might ask?  Good fucking question to which it had no legitimate answer.  It was time to play hardball.

Then this happened

Under no circumstance was I going to throw in the towel and since we just dropped Chewy at the repair shop it was between me and the reel-mower.  After about an hour staring at various items in the garage it occurred to me how much faster my partner would have been able to come up with a solution.  Another hour later I had finally zero'd in on some crappy looking rope to tie to the handle so I could drag the reel-mower through the grass.  A few seconds in to plan B I gained unanimous consent from myself to declare this plan an absolute failure.  Plan C required me to acquire a tig torch, some oxygen and acetylene, and a crash-course in welding; this was not feasible.  Which left me with plan D, wait until the neighbor gets home and ask to borrow their lawnmower. Fucking piece of shit lawnmowers.

Fucking useless...

So basically, lawnmower's can fuck themselves, and grass can too.  Because, if we get right down to it, the only reason we have lawnmowers is because someone at some point decided that seeding one's property with grass was a great idea.  Fuck that guy too because now I'm stuck in this web of conspiracies and lies in which my neighbors call the village office if my grass is "unkempt".

I miss Chewy...


Update: Turns out the internet is vast and unending, you just need to know how to use it.  Anyway, a picture of Chewy in his prime that might help explain paragraph three: