eating – The View from a Drawbridge

Mukbang

It takes my mind off the fall of civilization.

I’m on the ragged edge. Between this accursed pandemic, the thick blanket of smoke that’s blotting out the sun, the loss of our beloved RBG, unnecessary drama at work, and discovering that someone I love more than life went to a large, multi-day party and posted pictures of himself marinating in the maskless, close-knit crowd, when he knows I know firsthand how precious and fragile life is, and how it should never be squandered, I’m at the end of my rope. I mean, just look at me funny right now. I dare you.

Fortunately, there is a way to turn off my brain without the use of electric shock. It’s called mukbang. It’s a Korean word that loosely translates as “eating show”. And that’s about the size of it. You can find it all over Youtube. You just sit there and watch people eating way too much exotic food, often while talking to the camera.

Yeah, I know. Maybe this is evidence that I’ve lost it already. I have to admit that I find mukbang oddly comforting. Maybe it’s the crunch, crunch, crunch sound. Maybe it’s because when I’m really angry, I tend to eat, and these people do the eating for me. Maybe it’s just that I get to watch people just doing their weird thing at a time when the world seems so utterly out of control. I don’t know.

My favorite mukbang channel is Stephanie Soo. She sits there and eats and talks about true crime, which is another interest of mine. Check it out and tell me what you think.

My second favorite channel is Food Monster. This one shows footage of a girl working really, really (supposedly) hard in the Korean countryside, and then coming home and (supposedly) eating about 6000 times more than a normal person can eat. It’s kind of funny.

Yes, there is a reason to criticize mukbang. It promotes extremely unhealthy eating habits, food waste, and in some extreme cases, animal abuse. I don’t condone or encourage any of this. And yet I can’t seem to look away. (I’d never watch the animal abuse ones, though. Never. Give me a little credit.)

I know, this is nutty. But it takes my mind off the fall of civilization. And hey, I once wrote about my obsession with pimple popping videos. Surely this is a step up. Right?

Tell me I’m right. Please.

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Living in Gingerbread Houses

Now that I live farther from work, and my commute is a typical Seattle nightmare (I had no idea how spoiled I had been!) I have even more time to take flights of fancy. In today’s traffic snarl, this is where my mind went:

What would it be like if we all lived in gingerbread houses?

First of all, neighborhoods would be much more whimsical. That would be fun. And if you woke up hungry at 3 a.m. you could simply reach over and break off a piece of your window sill. But impulse control would definitely be critical to your quality of life.

People who had fallen on hard times would have problems concealing it, because they’d probably start eating their houses for pure survival. And they’d be blamed for their own diabetes.

And you’d see homeless people gnawing on your candy cane fence posts all the time. That might cause an atmosphere of vigilantism. “Hey, you! Hands off my gum drops or I’ll pelt you with life savers!”

And rich people would find a way to corner the market on gingerbread, and tax all jelly beans and pretzels. Only the upper class could get their hands on M & Ms for their roofs. The 98% would have to settle for mini marshmallows, and they sure wouldn’t keep the rain off your head for long.

Even in Candyland, with its sweet foundations, we’d manage to sink to our lowest common denominator.

gingerbread houses

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Ennui with Aplomb

Oprah Winfrey loves bread. (I can’t get that commercial out of my head.) I love words. Two of my favorites appear in the title.

I suspect 2017 will be the year of ennui for me. The current political climate has left me feeling listless and dissatisfied. It’s as though I’ve been trapped under something heavy. Please send pizza.

But rather than lie around gazing at my navel, I intend to do so in style (hence the aplomb)! I vow this year to take more baths, take more naps, and when the weather is nice, I plan to spend a great deal of time in the back yard, gazing up at the pine trees. I hope to read a lot to stay informed and write in protest a lot and eat a lot of delicious things.

Above all, I hope to not work up enough energy for excessive worry. I mean, seriously, what’s the point? Hell is going to break loose without any help from me. As long as you send the pizza, I’m good.

ennui

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That’ll Fix ‘Em: Self-Destruction as a Form of Aggression

There’s nothing more absurd than someone who harms himself to punish others. Everyone knows a story to that effect.

I know a woman who started smoking as a teenager simply to piss off her parents. 30 years later she has cancer. Was it worth it?

And then there’s the guy who has a tattoo on the back of his hand that he now calls his “stupid mark.” Everyone who knew him tried to talk him out of it, and that’s why, ultimately, he got it. Nobody was going to tell him what to do! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against tattoos, but if you’re going to get one of Tweety Bird, you might want it to be in a location where it will be covered up during business meetings 20 years later.

I used to work with a woman who would consistently come to work looking exhausted. I once asked her if she was getting enough rest, and she told me this story: When she lived at home with her mother, who was a real piece of work, one of her many rigid inflexible rules was that everyone had to be in bed by 11:00 pm. Not one minute later. It didn’t matter your age, or the situation, or whether you were sleepy. You absolutely HAD to be in bed, lights out, by 11:00 pm. Forget about dating. Forget about prom. Forget about late night Twilight Zone marathons on a summer Saturday night. So my coworker vowed that when she finally moved away from home, she would ALWAYS stay up past 11:00 pm. No matter how tired she was. Even if it was just until 11:01 pm, she’d fight to stay awake, even if it killed her. Because she wasn’t going to ever give her mother the satisfaction. Not even 10 years after her death.

After she told me this, I went back to my office and marinated with it for a while. Then I went back to her and said, “You know, by doing this, your mother STILL controls when you go to bed. Wouldn’t it be better to look up at the sky and say, ‘Eff you, Mom! I’ll go to sleep when I darned well please! Some days that will be 9:00 pm, some days it will be 3:00 am, but regardless, it will be when I decide!’”

I left that job shortly thereafter, so I’ll never know if she took my advice, but I hope she did, because she wasn’t punishing her mother. She was punishing herself.

But who am I to criticize? Whenever I get angry about something, what I tend to do is eat. My entire body is coated in a layer of furious fat. Does that solve the problem? Does that exact revenge upon the person who has wronged me? Does it even make me feel better? No. It puts me at risk for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a whole host of other health issues.

There has to be a better way. My instinct is to say that it would always be more beneficial to confront the person. Tell him how you feel. It may not be easy. It may not feel comfortable. But at least it’s not self-destructive.

My Crunchy Granola Epiphany

Last night at about 4 a.m., alone at work and struggling to stay awake, I had an epiphany, and now I’m looking at the world in an entirely different way. Before I present you with my concept, let me say that I’m quite sure this theory didn’t originate with me. There are plenty of crunchy granola new-agey types out there who no doubt have come to the same or similar conclusions. And how’s this for a revelation: my philosophy doesn’t even have to be true for it to have a positive impact on me. Awesome.

I’m calling it Net Theory, and it’s deceptively simple: Everything is connected. All of us are one. From what little I understand about Quantum Theory, I’m fairly certain that it supports this notion. On a sub-atomic level, we’re all a part of one big, uh….thing. We’re bathing in a sea of light waves. There is really no place where I end and you begin.

And once you accept this idea, the way you perceive the universe changes. For example, I’m not as irritated by obnoxious people. I’m just grateful that they are performing this role instead of me. I’m not jealous of people who are more successful than I am, because their success is a reflection of the healthy part of this great net. Politics seem even sillier if that’s possible. It’s just one side of us disagreeing with the other side of us, and whoever comes out on top, well, it’s still us. Prejudice seems absurd, as does war, violence, cruelty, selfishness, pollution, road rage, even petty grudges, because it’s all negative energy directed at the great net of which we are all a part. In other words, it’s self-destructive. I suspect that moving forward, I won’t be as bothered by boredom, because I’ll know that somewhere something interesting is happening. I won’t resent work, because it’s part of what needs to be done.

Charity will seem like a way to be good to myself, as will sex and learning. Religion makes much more sense, because it seems like someone must be keeping this massive organism, for lack of a better word, on track.

Eating, I was musing on the way in to work tonight, is kind of problematic. Am I eating myself? Yuck! But then, why not? It is the gift I give to myself to maintain life. That’s actually beautiful, if you ask me. It’s kind of like the last supper writ large. It sure makes me want to avoid junk food, though.

And the more I get into this concept, the less I am afraid of dying, because now more than ever I can believe that I’ll still be a part of this great interconnectedness that is all of us and everything. I can’t imagine anything more comforting than that.