You Gotta Eat

First of all, before I get into my nigh-daily funny, how about those Bluecoats? Crazy! They're going to be in the Top Four come August, if not Top Three (although that's admittedly a stretch). Below are the most recent July scores in descending order. Check this out:

1. 83.05 - Blue Devils
2. 82.60 - The Cavaliers
3. 82.20 - The Cadets
4. 81.90 - Bluecoats
5. 80.45 - Phantom Regiment
6. 78.15 - Carolina Crown
7. 78.10 - Madison Scouts
8. 77.60 - Santa Clara Vanguard
9. 77.15 - Boston Crusaders
10. 75.40 - Blue Knights
11. 73.40 - Colts
12. 72.40 - Crossmen

Now, I realize that these are from at least four different shows, some separated by one or two days, and that this is pretty early in the season, but look at that. Bluecoats .3 behind the Cadets? And 1.5 ahead of Phantom? Amazing. And to think that as recently as 1999, Bluecoats weren't even in Finals! Now here they are knocking on the Top Four door. Also, it's worth noting that Crown's in 6th, Vanguard seems to be having another tough year, and the Blue Devils will win.

(I've only included the current Top 12 corps here, but right in the thick of the fight for 12th right now are the Blue Stars, back in Division I competition after over 20 years as a lower-division corps, so congrats to them.)

OK, enough of that for now. I'm missing the whole drum corps season over here, so I have to make do with cold, impersonal numbers.

You hear a lot about how bad British food is, apart from the fish and chips, of course, although it seems to be generally accepted around here that the fish and chips on the pier, which ought to be the best place to get it, is pretty nasty. One of England's delicacies is the packaged sandwich. Ah, the packaged sandwich. Restaurants like Pret A Manger and Eat predicate their businesses largely on this plastic-wrapped treat. They're not like the packaged sandwiches you get back home. I mean, they can't be. These cost more.

Food's a big deal around here, then, for us students, and I'm willing to bet that nowhere is it a bigger deal than here in Park Village 10. One of the girls who lives on my floor, My (that's her name, My), is from UCLA, and was apparently brought here by four or five other girls to serve as their cook. Our freezer and two refrigerators are packed to the gills with bottles, jars, cartons, boxes, bags, and packages labeled "My 10D," so much so that finding room for my one-liter jug of milk can take a few minutes of searching and rearranging. My cooks every meal for these girls, some of whom don't even live in our house, morning, noon, and night. Our kitchen isn't a bad size, but it isn't huge either, so I've learned to eiter anticipate their mealtimes and beat them to it or go hungry for thirty minutes or so while she works her magic.

"I don't really know how to cook," she told me, "but I'll try new things."

So... if she doesn't know how to cook, how'd she get stuck cooking for her friends?

"Because they won't cook for themselves!"

Ah. See, this is where some people just plan better than others. I was so preoccupied getting ready for this trip that I neglected to pack a personal chef. Seriously, I don't mean to sound like a student of nontraditional age, but this is ridiculous. They don't feel like cooking, so she does it for them? What, they can't bother to fix their own meals? I'm not saying they should all eat separately, or avoid pooling their resources to make genuine meals together, but putting it all on one thick girl... I don't get it. Is this a function of coddling at home? Are they so used to living in a dorm or with their parents that they just haven't had enough cooking experience to toast some bread when the occasion calls for it?

Incidentally, I say she's thick because of a conversation we had last week. My asked me what I wanted to do with my degree, and I said I wanted to be an editor because (stock answer) "I enjoy correcting people, and I want to get paid for it." She replied to this with no recognition whatsoever of the obvious joke (or at least facetiousness) of my remark by saying, "That's good. I don't really like correcting people. But it's cool that you do." Even given the existence of people out there who legitimately enjoy correcting others, who among them would be so brazen as to say so? Isn't there the implication that when you say something like that, you must be kidding on some level? Wouldn't you assume that whoever said that would be kidding? Why--?

As a final note, My's cooking generates a lot of trash, so much so that our kitchen "bin" is full every day. Today I noticed a bunch of ants around it, and followed the line out of the kitchen, into the little hall, past Diane in 10C, and under the door to 10D, which, if you've been paying attention, is My's room. I put up a note in the kitchen saying "Hey! Let's not have ants," but I'd like to think that My will have a special motivation for throwing her garbage out from now own.

So nobody cooks for me but me, which is as it should be. There has been some concern among some parties that perhaps I'm not eating. This couldn't be farther from the truth. I do occasionally tithe to the birds, true, but most of it I keep for myself. I think I eat pretty well, actually.

Weetabix

Many cereals brag about how they stay crunchy in milk, or that they taste "great," but Weetabix is above all that. The Weetabix people have taken a different tack and created a cereal that's determined to get as soggy as possible as quickly as possible. Pour milk onto a Weetabix cake and it's as certain to disappear as if you'd poured it into a stage magcian's hat. I'm not exaggerating when I say that once the milk enters into the equation, you only have about ten seconds before your tidy little sponge-like Weetabix cakes are broken down into a bowful of undifferentiated brown sludge. And it tastes like it looks, more or less. So why eat it? I don't know if you can see this in the picture, but it's rather low in things I shouldn't eat and high in others I should. At least, I assume so. I don't see why they'd brag about the lowness or highness of an ingredient unless it were to my advantage that it be low or high. Besides, with a spoonful of sugar, it's like eating a bowl of sweet, wet cardboard.

Tea

I drink tea a la mode de l'Angleterre quite a bit at home, and it's no different here. The teacups that came with the place, though, are ridiculously small. I regularly found myself making two cups of tea at once, which was a bunch of nonsense, so I went out and bought the last decent-sized mug on campus for a scant 99p. Happy times! I frequently supplement my tea with honest-to-God crumpets (not pictured), as well. In Sainsbury's I saw a package of "extra-strength" tea. I've never really thought of tea as having "strength," let along the capacity for having an "extra" supply of it, so I'm intrigued. I think I'm man enough to drink extra-strength tea.

Hobnobs

This is where it's at. Like Weetabix, Hobnobs are high in some things and low in others, but unlike Weetabix they're great with tea. I guess they have a lot in common with oatmeal cookies, but they're not quite the same. The package describes them as "Nobbly, Oaty Biscuits," and I guess I can't argue with that (although I hesitate to investigate what "nobbly" actually means). They make chocolate-covered Hobnobs, too, but I steer clear of those. It gives me the illusion that I'm being healthy.

Peanut Butter

It may seem unnecessary to tell you what peanut butter is, or even that I eat it on a regular basis, but this isn't the same as American peanut butter. American peanut butter has an American flag on the label and is all red and white. This peanut butter, as you can see, has nothing of the kind. It's liberal, un-American peanut butter. It doesn't support the war in Iraq, drive an SUV, or agree with the government's wiretapping policies. It voted for Kerry and, before that, Gore. If I'm eating this peanut butter, the terrorists have already won. But how can I resist when it's so peanut buttery?

Super Noodle

None of your ordinary noodles here. No, this is Super Noodle. In terms of superness, it's probably the closest I'll get to seeing Superman Returns for a while. These are more or less ramen noodles, except that... all right, they're ramen noodles. But as you can see, even this is low in something in that it's 98% fat free. It doesn't have as much sodium as you'd think, either. At least, I don't think it does. It looks good on paper, at any rate. It's all moot, though, because I already gobbled it up, and may do so again.

Sainsbury's Cannelloni (frozen)

Two for £3! How could I pass that up? I'm amused by the cooking instructions on the package. Only 40 minutes in an oven! Wow, to think that we live in an age when your frozen cannelloni can be ready to eat in just 40 minutes. What a time to be alive! There are directions for microwaving it from a "chilled" state, which is presumably achieved by putting on an Orbs CD and placing the cannelloni next to the speakers, but no real thought has been given to microwaving it while frozen. I took my best guess, and it worked out fine. I had high hopes for this until I slopped it out onto the plate, where it resembled nothing so much as the Blob in reds and yellows. Still, it was surprisingly good. Regular purchase.

(The "B," incidentally, stands for "Bargain.")

Twiglets

I only got these because they were cheap and had been mentioned in one of my favorite British TV series, but the truth is they're pretty terrible. But I'm not supposed to eat them, anyway; they make me violent.

None of these are really on the menu for tonight, though, because we had a July 4th barbecue. I think there might be fireworks later, but I'm not sure. If so, it'll have to wait until 10:00 or so when it finally gets dark around here. They really went through some effort to give us Americans what they must feel is the genuine July 4th experience, complete with hamburgers and hot dog-like sausages and everywhere flags, flags, flags, but at this point in our nation's history, I can't see a bunch of American flags without thinking of David Cross' entreaty to eat flags, and to have tiny American flags sewn onto the underside of one's eyelids, and so on.

Paper due tomorrow-- only 1,500 words, so I'm not especially concerned. Finished Volume I of Our Mutual Friend, so yay for that. One down, three to go.