Beware of Oogies

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you try to eat a healthy diet. You eat lots of fruits and vegetables, you avoid fat whenever possible, and you try to eat reasonable portions. Let's say, in addition, that you love cheese and have poor self-control. One of the worst things you could do, in this situation, is to buy a bag of Oogies Gourmet Popcorn in the Smoked Gouda flavor. Now, the odd thing about this situation is that I don't even like Smoked Gouda. It is one of my least-favorite cheeses. And the name "Oogies" is weird and doesn't sound like something that should be eaten. But once I tasted a kernel, I was lost forever to the thrall of Smoked Gouda popcorn. The first taste isn't even that impressive--the first note of the flavor on your tongue is unassuming--pleasantly seasoned but nothing special. But the true flavor hits the back of your tongue as you swallow and the next thing you know your whole head is inside the bag.

Overheard on Overheard: I think I know this book

1PM Dude, Seriously, Switch to Historical Novels
Project manager, discussing book: It was so tragic! It's not just that they were clones and had their organs harvested, but they never got to really love each other!

Main Bountiful, Utah
via Overheard in the Office, Jun 13, 2008

I think I've read this book. I think it's Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's an excellent book. But I guess there may be other tragic love stories of clones who have their organs harvested.

Baked Naturals What Crisps

I am eating these crazy good new crackers, they are called saltines. Ha, I’m just kidding. Pepperidge Farm has these new “Baked Naturals Wheat Crisps” that are very tasty. They are kind of like wheat thins but a bit lighter. They have kind of a wheatables texture, but with a much better flavor. They have a light sprinkling of salt and spices on top. They are addictive.

Speaking of Pepperidge Farm, I always thought it was Petridge Farm, for some reason, even though it clearly says Pepperidge on the box. I mean, I thought this up until several years ago. It’s like how I used to think a piece of luggage was called a “soupcase.” This isn’t when I was a cute little toddler either. I was, like, twelve, or something ridiculous when I finally got it. I mean, I never traveled with soup, but I never traveled with suits either, you know?

Deli-Style Rye

What I am eating: Triscuit Deli-Style Rye
What they taste like: Triscuits with caraway seeds
Why the name doesn’t make sense: Delis aren’t known for selling crackers

Also, I have a confession. My love of crackers didn’t start out as a pure love. It began as a backlash against bread. You see, I also love bread, but bread goes bad quickly, and I am paranoid about mold. I would buy a loaf of bread, eat half of it, and then throw the other half away because I was afraid it had some invisible mold that would kill me. I tried putting the bread in the freezer, but then I had to toast it before I ate it and what if I wanted untoasted bread? I would end up with ancient, half-eaten loaves of bread in my freezer and guilt in my heart. (In addition to being paranoid about mold, I also feel intensely guilty about waste. It’s a tough place to be.) So I started buying crackers instead of bread! And I lived happily ever after.

Really bad book of the week: Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares

So, I tutor an adorable girl from Bangladesh. Every Thursday I walk over to her school to listen to her read whatever book she happens to have at her desk. Today, the book was Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares. Now, last week we spent half of our session wrestling with the library system at her school, trying to find a book that she would enjoy reading. I’d found that most of the books she’d been reading were too difficult for her and were about things she didn’t know about or care about. She reads enough of that kind of stuff in class every day, so I thought for our tutoring sessions it would be good for her to read something she was actually interested in and understood. We found a book about a girl whose father was from India. We started to read it last week. Anyway, when she came out of her classroom today she had the book we’d found last week, but she also had the book about Ben Franklin. She said her language arts teacher told her to read it. Anyway, the first half of the book is about Ben Franklin’s inventions, and that part was fine. Kind of boring, but fine. But the second half was about Franklin’s inventions of “magic squares.” You see, he found that if drew nine squares in a box (like a tic-tac-toe board), and put the numerals one through nine in a certain order (although they never explained how he discovered the order), then each row, column, and diagonal would equal 15. Amazing. But they never explained what was magical about this fact, what it meant about math, or why anybody should care.
I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t understand math.

Let me know in the comments: Can you explain what magic squares are? Do you have any suggestions for books that girls learning English as a second (or third) language might enjoy and relate to?

The Bread of Affliction

It's Passover, which means that I'm not supposed to be eating bread of any sort. Not even crackers! This is supposed to remind me of the exodus from Egpyt, when the Jews (who were slaves in Egypt) had to hurry to leave before the Pharaoh changed his mind. They didn't have time to let their bread rise, so they had to cook it in its unleavened state. The matzo we eat at Passover is supposed to remind us of this unleavened bread our ancestors ate. The problem for me is that matzo is basically a big ol' cracker, and you know how I feel about crackers. I love them.

The Best Moments in Reading

The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
—Hector, a general studies teacher, in The History Boys

I went to see The History Boys at the Studio Theatre last night. Central to the play is the question of why we study literature. This is a cerebral question, but reading itself can be visceral. Through most of the play I was thinking, rather than feeling, but when Hector talked about the feeling that a hand has come out and taken yours, I felt a thrill, a physical reaction as if the author of the play, Alan Bennet, had reached his hand out and touched me.