The Underpants

One floor below me lives my neighbor José and his unnamed wife ("never mind her name"). They are not a fun couple. This apartment of mine, which cost like a rat-infested fourth-floor walk-up in a bad nabe of Queens, is top-drawer for here, which means I live among the local aristocracy. And I always need to be reminded that aristocrats rarely brim with good humor and joie de vivre.

Horror of horrors. Recently, a pair of underpants fell from my line, splatting directly atop Nameless Wife's undergarments. I slid this note under their door (here's an English translation):

Good evening, José and family!

I hope you enjoyed my generous gift on your laundry line! I assure you, it’s perfectly clean!

I was planning to buy new underwear next week anyway, so it’s fine to throw it away if you don’t want it!

I hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather!

The next morning, I opened my door to find my underpants in a shopping bag. A thick one, carefully chosen to steer clear of full snideness yet clearly alluding to the potentially noxious condition of said underpants, though they were, as I pledged, 100% copacetic. No note. The bag had been hung from my door knob. Silently. Neutrally. "Here's your underpants."

I imagined the up-to-the-elbows rubber cleaning gloves she'd used to deposit them into the thick-but-not-too-thick bag. And the many additional wash cycles she'd given not only her adjacent undergarments, but every last item hanging on her line.

Flash forward two days.

I leave my apartment and find yet another thick bag dangling from my doorknob. It contains a pillow case I hadn't even known had dropped. I went directly to the supermarket, bought a spool of shopping bags, and left them dangling from José's doorknob. The unspoken point, of course, was "Expect more drops!"

I imagined José's pinched grin, wryly amused by the gesture, while she-who-must-not-be-named ran through nasty scenarios. "Does he think we can't afford shopping bags?" "Is he giving us gifts in order to obligate us in some way?". If José won, there would be no response, and no returned bags, and the arc would be smooth. If Wife won, I'd find the bags back on my doorknob. And I get the vibe she normally prevails.

One thing was for sure: she'd find it unthinkable that her neighbor was expressing irony as a whimsical gesture to stoke joy. Because life ≠ joy. The notion of burning a single calorie for shits and giggles would be mind-boggling and paradigm-shaking. I had to be up to something malevolent or taunting or ugly and the bags would be sent back. Note-lessly. In an even thicker bag.

A player of long games, I plotted my next step: If the bags came back, I'd heighten the absurdity by buying a fishing pole, attaching an oversized gleaming metal hook, and lowering the line with underpants hanging from the hook right to her eye level.

The escalation proved unnecessary. The bags were not returned. My joke appears to have landed. I have bullied—with wit and consummate politeness—the encounter onto my terms, even in their building in their country, and even being the shmuck who keeps dropping underpants and whatnot into their midst like space debris.

But it just occurred to me that I'd never have left them a bunch of bags if this were Brooklyn or Chicago. I opted for it here because it's keyed in to Portuguese sense of humor. Among my puny superpowers is the ability to play to the humor sensibilities of different people and cultures (it's a framing thing), and I realize that's exactly what I did here, unconsciously. It was a joke custom-designed for Portugal.

The Value of Rapport

There's a guy I met online years ago who is a brilliant programmer and a joy to work with. The harder the problem, the more he likes it. If he wasn't so busy with his day job, I'd make up projects just to prod him into action and watch him overcome adversity.

Over the years, he's quietly helped me with a number of endeavors, always refusing compensation. Most recently, he worked on my smart phone app, "Eat Everywhere", and, per usual, he saved the day with some clever, elegant tech that did the equivalent of building a stable bridge between a mountain peak in Peru and one on Alpha Centauri. He handled the sprawling, deal-killing technical nightmare like folding a napkin.

I told him I had a cool apartment in a great town in Portugal, and invited him and his family to take over the place for a week or two, since I hardly need an excuse to travel (I moved here in part for €50 round trip flights to Milan, Budapest, Berlin, etc.). I left him, naturally, copious food tips, and overlapped for a couple days to show him my haunts and secret treasures. I also left him my bank card, because foreign credit cards often don't work here. I told him he could Paypal me when the bill comes in.

To my surprise, he was flabbergasted by my "generosity", since we'd never actually met. And I've been struggling to make sense of this. Was I missing something here?

If someone clearly demonstrates kindness, brilliance, and solid dependability, is that mere trivia compared to the vivid in-person evidence of personal style and presentation? If he'd had a pimple on his nose, would that have lowered his stock?

I get that rapport matters. But when competent, kind people recognize each other, that's a deeper rapport. Working eagerly and selflessly to build cool stuff without ego or acrimony. How does that compare with the shallow rapport of being fun to hang out with? I don't hand my apartment and ATM card over to lively conversationalists. It's a fine trait, but it doesn't stoke trust.

Social rapport—as every con man knows—can easily be faked. Tell someone they're awesome, and they'll open their hearts and their lives. This planet is a psychopath's delight; fakery gets bought, hook, line, and sinker.

Someone who contributes meaningfully to your life, is never unkind, and asks nothing in return? That's the good guy! Such qualities are not fakeable (at least not over the long run), so that's who you trust, no?

Well, it makes sense to me. While I enjoy a lively hang—and admire dermatological savoir faire—such factors strike me as a very poor basis for establishing trust or extending generosity. But I'm apparently in an extreme minority. And as I mull it over, lots of mysterious weirdness here on planet Earth suddenly makes sense.

Apartment Feedback by Status Level

I've lived in every status level (currently an aristocratic pad in a Portuguese town which cost less than a 4th floor rat-infested studio in a bad nabe in Queens). So I've experienced friends' reactions to every level of dwelling. Heres how it pans out:

Hellish: "It's nice!"

Dull: "You can fix it up nice!"

Normal: "So how's Shirley's gall bladder?"

Nice: "It's nice!"

Very nice: "So how's Shirley's gall bladder?" (with surreptitiously darting eyes and barely concealed sneer)

If no one ever says a kind word about your home, it means it's either 1. completely normal, or 2. impressive. Either way, don't be alarmed. You're doing just fine.

This also applies to everything, of course.


See also:
"Jealousy"
and "Jealousy Redux"

Non-Aspirational Lunches

I've been running weekly photo essays on Facebook sharing non-aspirational lunches in anonymous Setúbal restaurants. I'm keeping a running index, updated weekly, here, if you want to bookmark. Don't miss the captions.

October 18, 2024
October 25, 2024
November 3, 2024
November 12, 2024
December 1, 2024
December 6, 2024
December 14, 2024
December 22, 2024
December 28, 2024
January 5, 2025
January 10, 2025
January 18, 2025 (bad week)
January 24, 2025
January 31, 2025
February 8, 2025
February 13, 2025
February 20, 2025
February 28, 2025
March 8, 2025
March 15, 2025
March 20, 2025
March 27, 2025
April 4, 2025

And here is a downloadable 23mb PDF showing all the outstanding Bengali food I ate last year at Setúbal's Leiteria Montalvo in chronological order (the olives in the second shot are hilarious. She's trying hard to fit in in Portugal!).

Why is This Stupid Hotel Breakfast So Good?

That was a neat bit of chowhound detection work.

I reluctantly poked my head into the hotel free breakfast, because hope springs eternal. And my first bewilderment came from the scrambled eggs, which were real scrambled eggs, though in a trafing dish, not fresh. Also, the ham looked good. I loaded my plate with uncommon enthusiasm and carted it back to the table, and every bite was wonderful.

This should have brought me nothing but pleasure, but I can't resist a mystery. So as I worked through eggs, ham, stewed tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, pasty beans, small pastries, a slice of whole grain toast, a roll, some peach jam, and a glass of mixed fruit juice, I pieced it together.

At dinner, this is a legit great 5 star restaurant, more expensive than I can afford. Of course, this is not that. The staff's not here and no one's aiming to dazzle. Their Michelin star is not hanging on the tenderness of my scrambled eggs.

I realized that the breakfast is terrific due purely to muscle memory. The good chef is still home in bed, sleeping off the substances he did after service, and the fancy stuff is all put away, but everyone in front and in back serves some minor role or association to the big show, so they know something, and they have been trained to have standards, so this is the shittiest they can possibly do. They'd like to do worse, but can't.

They'd like to make rubbery scrambled eggs, but it's actually hard for someone with a shred of diligence to produce execrable hotel buffet scrambled eggs. And the olive oil used in those tomatoes is the good stuff (they're not going to haul in cheaper oil just for breakfast service). And the stupid mini croissants are from one of the hotel's snooty suppliers, not a big white truck from an industrial park. The restaurant doesn't have business relationships with drek suppliers.

So, when the second and third string staff of a great restaurant try to serve you shitty breakfast, the result won't completely delight, but it will be 100,000 times better than the shitty breakfast they're trying to cook, and you'd expected to eat. It will be food.

Nonlinear Exertion and Myth

Maximal exertion, in the case of extremely capable individuals, requires nonlinear effort. Duly challenged, exertion becomes a runaway chain reaction.

The legend of the Red Shoes was never about an inability to stop dancing. It was about the peril of confronting the geometric curve where great capability and maximal effort converge to meet daunting challenge.

The legend of Samson was never about a haircut. It was about the plight of extremely capable individuals jarred from the precariously narrow conditions wherein they're able to exert at full capacity.


As a kid I thought a lot about a lonely waterproof heater lost overboard in the Atlantic, trying to heat the whole ocean.

This *IS* Democracy

This is democracy.

Every time I try to clearly frame the situation, that's what I come up with. While I hate every bit of it, this is democracy.

Everyone's treating these political shenanigans like some fresh hell, but it's all stuff we knew about. The extreme right has wanted to dismantle the federal system (and gut medicare and social security) for decades. It was a queasy background rallying cry even for moderate conservatives, who didn't really mean it. Reagan and the Bushes couldn't ever pull that trigger, though President Pat Buchanan would have done so in a hot minute. But this was queued up since forever.

As was reported as early as 1964, a pervasive slab of conspiracism, malice, and gut ignorance—even among highly educated people (MAGAS are mostly boomers, our best educated generation) has always been out there, and never as sparse as we've hoped. It's a ton of people.

So this is democracy. Democracy means everyone gets their shot. Democracy doesn't mean you win every time so it's just how you like.

And, anyway, the cancer is not exclusive to one side. The urge to stifle dissent while hollering about free speech is as unconstrained on the left as on the right. Same for the favoring of certain groups and the disfavoring of others. Truly, it's all fucked, but we're reacting by doubling down. It's a simple process: the left moves extra left and the right moves extra right because no one can stand a whiff of Those Assholes, so we all recoil into the opposing extremism rather than the sane center. And it's a vicious circle because extremists smell worst of all, ensuring the most extreme revulsion both ways.

Democracy doesn't mean you love and support the country only when your side governs. The MAGAs don't own "entitled hypocrisy". Democracy means sharing power and, again, we knew these people and these ideas were out there. We knew we were living in a democracy, yet now we're shocked—shocked!— that they came to power and are making it happen. The shock is because we assumed that the beauty of democracy was our perpetual control, and that's inherently anti-democratic! We're certainly not being pro-democratic by hating the people with whom we share the country and its governance! Think about it!

So now, yeah, the vicious cycle is such that those guys are, in fact, legit killing democracy (for them, it's merely their side controlling things). From my perspective, it's a terrible tragedy. But from the higher perspective, it's a huge slab of the country getting to do what it always wanted to do. It's like traveling by minivan and some want to stop for dinner at Burger King. Sometimes you have to tolerate stopping at Burger King. Even if you're a vegan. Tough sell, alas, for a society of entitled aristocrats far too entitled to happily share power. If you don't want the assholes to ever run things, don't do democracy!

Our notion that half the country must never be allowed to get their ugly, terrible, no-good way is not democracy. If we can ever re-acquire a clean view of what democracy actually is—and what tolerance really is (other people's tolerances are different and if you can't tolerate that, you're the intolerant one)—maybe this won't go all Jew/Palestinian. I'm stating the one and only hope. I know you blame the other guys. And I've been doing the same! I write this not as a sanctimonious preacher, but as a repentant sinner.


We can retain some sanity by reframing like this. But it compels the question: how to proceed? Easy! Play the democracy game! Fight and resist! I don't mean screeching on social media or keying your neighbor's Tesla. We might start with voting. 24-37% of voters in key battleground states did not vote in 2024. Way more than the margin of difference. So could we invest some slim fraction of our bounteous shaming energy on people who don't? Maybe allow an occasional "nigger" for "kike" to slip by unremarked upon while we concentrate our cleansing focus on not letting husbands/sons/daughters/friends/coworkers get away with not voting? Can we use some of our hounding/screeching prowess to bully every like-minded voter in our perimeter to vote every damned time, and to consider pulling only Democrat levers?

I am evidently no pure Democrat, so if I suggest that last part, you've got idealogical coverage. No decent Republicans remain, and in my opinion they must be voted out en masse. But this can't happen if we don't vote. We need to find new channels of resistance beyond keying Teslas and preening in our Resistance drag. Like voting, for starters.

It comes down to whether we're enjoying this—suffering and all—too much to look away from the shouty pizazz and turn up the glaring houselights for a few seconds? To stop dramatizing and actually do a thing? To flip a voting lever?

I had problems with absentee ballots last time, to my enormous shame and regret. But I'm on it for midterms.

Smashing

Thumbs up for smashed windows in Tesla stores! Yay, smashing!

The psychology is not complicated. 1. Adopt a two-dimensional cartoon view of the world, removing humanity, consistency, and morality from consideration. Then... 2. Smash, with relish.

I don't like Elon Musk. I pray for his stock price to keep crashing so his loans get called in so he no longer has infinite money to perpetrate evil. I'll do anything legal and principled to try to stop him.

But Tesla dealerships are not run by Luftwaffe colonels. They're run by actual people, inconvenient as that might be to the two-dimensional cartoon view. I can't believe this needs stating, but a vandalized Tesla or Tesla dealership might be (and probably is!) run by a progressive who was trying to reduce carbon emissions. They're likely trying to get out from under their investment (tricky given the market). They might even be LGBTQ or trans or some other victim group you deem worth loads of extra consideration.

This is just one reason smashing is a bad tactic. The problem with summary judgement is that we're incredibly shitty/sloppy judges.

Smashing stuff smashes the vaunted "rule of law" you're suddenly super in love with this year. If you celebrate illegal smashing, you deserve a Daily Show-style clip contrasting that with your weighty pronouncements about Institutions and The Rule of Law, because—surprise!—now you're the flag-waving fake patriot hypocrite goon.

If you don't want to live in a cartoon world where the rule of law means nothing whenever anyone decides that Baddies need smashing, consider adding the magical third dimension of thoughtfulness and morality. At least don't *egg on* the smashers. Could you manage the milquetoast credo of "No 'Thumbs Up' for Smashing!"? That's not a heavy lift, is it? You don't necessarily need to scold them amid their smashy good fun. Just maybe don't offer your full-throated support.

Because the face-eating hyenas always eat your face in the end. Guaranteed. Not just the MAGAs. All extremists. All smashers. And your admiration fuels them.

Fuck.

Lobster Boil Update

Three years ago, I wrote about the sticky wicket of knowing when to jump out of the pot when you sense an impending lobster boil. I proposed a way to prepare for such eventuality without obligating yourself or going to undue expense or trouble (How to Plan an Alternative Timeline While Remaining Momentarily Complacent (Part 1) and How to Plan an Alternative Timeline While Remaining Momentarily Complacent (Part 2)).

The boil is now explicitly revealing its heat. You're not in immediate personal danger, but it's getting too late for a dilative, comfortably thoughtful appraoch. What is happening is not cyclical. Things are broken that will stay broken, and we are only getting started breaking things. And it's difficult but essential to register that the burn-it-down thirst is broad, and not confined to the Right. That, to me, is the tectonic problem, not Elon Musk's scampering atrocities (I may be wrong, but I imagine he'll be gone sooner or later).

I've repeated this thought twice in the last month not because I'm getting old and forgetful, but because it's super important: Bernie Sanders in 2015 was giving speeches proposing, with populist fire, sweeping, tectonic changes to institutions, while crowds roared appreciatively. There was serious MAGA energy (same vibe, different credo) at the time among the progressive Left, and it hasn't dissipated any.

A fundamental credo of this Slog is that "Recognizing stupidity doesn't mean you're smart, it just means you're observant". Same for spotting delusion, or bad behavior of most sorts. Simply noticing how deranged the Right is does not make you sane.

I'm not taking shots at the Left because I have a political credo to push. My point is that we don't just have a problem on the Right, we have a national problem transcending partisanship. As we learned from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it's possible to have extremely legitimate beefs with an opposing group without earning moral high ground for yours. Both of you might be awful. You must add that possibility to your calculus...or else consider moving to the lonely Center.

The Right seems a trillion times worse right now, but that's only because they actually got their shot at it. So I don't see a cyclical problem (which might get better) but a systemic one (which will get worse).

I'm looking ahead here, which is an unusual move amid tumult. But it's not my thing to stand frozen in a stupor repeating "This can't be happening!" I perpetually scan for the next shoe-drop. My life has been more difficult than most, so protracted struggles to accept the here-and-now are indulgences I could never have afforded. I've taught myself to reframe on a dime—to immediately accept the immediate and pay all attention forward.

To conclude: a piece of good news, and a piece of bad (or, ok, "even worse") news:

GOOD NEWS (doesn't start off sounding good, though): America is fast losing its position in the world (destruction is much swifter than construction). How much does this matter to an individual life? By chance, I asked the same question before moving to Portugal: "What do I give up going from the strongest country to a smaller, weaker one?" The full answer would require a separate posting, but the upshot is "not much".

Pundits and columnists are ruing the potential end of the American Century, but that big picture view is what they're paid to consider. For you and me, unless we have a severe case of scorekeeping and a rabid desire to be "NUMBER ONE!!!", it doesn't matter much. Individual lives are small, and living deeper down in the pack offers a helpful reminder of this. I don't need Portugal to be an awesome force in the world, I am completely ok with it merely feeling like home.

It might even make living in America more pleasant in the long run. The vibe is considerably kinder and chiller when you're not living amongst world-ruling titans, who can get a little tramply. So don't get too caught up in the pundit/columnist big picture framing. Tectonic changes are interesting for historians, but none of us are historic figures. So shave that lofty part off of your personal stress load and motivation.

BAD NEWS: Five Eyes, an Anglosphere intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, has either stopped, slowed, or plans to stop (depending on news reports) sharing some or all intelligence with the United States. Frankly, I wouldn't pass the crown jewels of my country's safe-keeping past Tulsi Gabbard, either, even if the ultimate destination weren't Donald Trump.

Five Eyes is the most important thing you never heard of. Five Eyes is what keeps us safe, particularly when it comes to terrorism (I read up on intelligence stuff as a hobby). So if you live in a major city center, you might want to move somewhere less targetty. The insecurity urbanites felt in Fall 2001—which thankfully didn't amount to anything but spurred many of your neighbors to leave town, along with the second migration post-COVID—may have quietly passed a tipping point, creating a reasonable imperative, if not immediate panic. Sorry.

A Rarely-Considered Angle on Food-Borne Illness

As a food critic who's eaten in tens of thousands of eateries in dozens of countries, I've felt pretty expert about foodborne illness, both experientially and scientifically. But four months with a seemingly unpurgeable Campylobacter infection—so severe that I lost 35 pounds and filled my kidneys with tiny stones from dehydration—proved educational.

Scientists know a lot, and eaters know a lot, but it takes an ordeal like that to bridge the two. I've pieced it all together, and it's useful knowledge for all chowhounds.

There's a widespread notion that greasy little ethnic joints can make you sick because they're careless and sloppy. And while you can get sick anywhere, odds do seem empirically worse in certain venues. It feels xenophobic to ascribe sloppy carelessness to certain groups. Also, it's wrong. Any human grouping cooking dangerously wouldn't last long. Humans are super good at reproducing, defecating, eating, and cooking. Those things are bedrock for us. Every group cooks healthy for their group (or at least did until modernity shifted diet).

So are the perceived perils entirely xenophobic? No. There's a reasonable explanation: the third world doesn't sweat cross contamination. Not because its standards are lower, but because it's usually unecessary...for two reasons. We'll get to those reasons in a moment.

This is a terrible time to be writing this, with a big chunk of America increasingly vocal about third world immigrants as filthy spreaders of pestilence. I'm doing the opposite. I'm explaining what's actually happening, which is perfectly innocent.

Cross contamination, for the few who don't know, is when hands, implements, or surfaces touch raw meat and then come into contact with cooked meat, contaminating the cooked meat. Absurdly extreme diligence is required to prevent this. I'm hyper-aware of the issue, and even I find it difficult to be 100% conscientious in my food handling.

Cross contamination is a fairly recent peril in the First World which, in the 20th century, industrialized its meat handling (densely packed farms and slaughterhouses, multiple processings, etc.). At some point, it became so laborious—i.e. expensive—to keep meat safe through that production line that we gave up trying. As a result, our meat must be handed like medical waste.

Yes. We are the sloppy, careless, dirty ones. And the Third World is unprepared for our slovenliness. In less developed parts of the world, much of the meat is butchered from known animals within a few miles of home, and reasonable butchering/cooking/storing practices keep things safe for people with healthy digestive systems. And people do have healthy digestive systems. Kids play in streets with dodgy sanitation, stoking the super fortified guts and immune systems we all enjoyed before First Worlders began raising kids in sterile bubbles, leaving them asthmatic, colicky, and eternally sensitive.

The Third World has no concept of meat as medical waste, so immigrants may not treat meat like medical waste. They cope in their home cooking because their guts and immune systems are hardy. And when they take jobs as cooks, they learn the strange practices of avoiding cross contamination. We enjoy their food without problems, as their cohorts, licensers, and inspectors ensure they're up to speed (though restaurants in more insular Indian communities may be more prone to old-fashioned cooking methods for the old-fashioned Indian guts of their clientele).

In Portugal, off-the-boat Indians cook largely Indian-style with no sub-community of native-friendly Indian restaurateurs to spread word about the colicky, sensitive stomachs of locals, or about the medical waste nature of industrialized meat. And their largely Indian clientele experience no problems, so they work with no sense of peril.

The good news is that even in worst case scenarios, most of us can endure food-borne illness without medical treatment. 24 hour turnaround is normal. But not me. For various reasons, I'm unusually susceptible, which has forced me to puzzle this all out.

Even for me, there's a solution. A brief (seconds, not minutes) reheating to a modest 165F/74C (internal) kills relevant cooties.

Disclaimer: This reheating advice covers typical cross-contamination scenarios from conscientious kitchens. Truly hazardous pathogens arising from severe neglect require prolonged boiling or sustained high heat, but such outbreaks would make news and you're generally no more vulnerable than anyone else.

A risk scenario between the two extremes occurs when cross-contaminated food sits at room temperature long enough for bacteria to multiply significantly. While brief reheating will still kill the organisms, their abundant microscopic remnants may still pose risks. Such cases, fortunately, are less common. Reasonably diligent chefs from everywhere know to take pains to refrigerate.

Two notes:

1. Use a thermometer to ensure that interiors hit that temperature (position meats at the bottom of the rewarming pan, close to heat source).

2. Be careful of your own cross contamination. Until heated, handle everything like raw meat.

Since I can't possibly train every immigrant in the knotty practice of avoiding cross-contamination (to them it seems like hysterical paranoia—which, in a way, it is), when I want Indian food, I take it home and briefly reheat. No problem. And any thriving business with non-Indian customers is safe, too. Again, kitchens that sicken customers don't last.

I eat tons of Indian food (my Bengali food is cooked by an Ayurvedic practitioner who is extra-healthy in ways even I can't fathom), and I haven't had a recurrence in quite some time. That said, I haven't figured out how I can safely travel to the Third World. My wanderings may be done.


More general advice on gastric issues