From the Archives - Cockroaches at La Loma

Introduction

Here’s another blog post from way before there were blogs. As with so many other random essays from my college days, I’d printed this, photocopied it, sent copies around to my friends and family, and then just waited for the accolades and admiration to come flooding in. I’m still waiting, actually. See? Proto-blog!

Cockroaches at La Loma – March 18, 1989

Before I came to California, I had never seen a cockroach. I had read about them in books (e.g., how they’d be the only survivors of a nuclear war) but only recently have I become acquainted with these foul creatures. Ironically, we never had a roach problem at La Loma until just after they fumigated our apartment for the first time. Now the kitchen is literally crawling with them.

Roaches aren’t like other insects. When you squash an ant, for example, or at least when you squash many dozens at once, you can hear a tiny crushing sound, as the exoskeletons are shattered. But roaches seem to lack body armor; they’re just smushed into a greasy spot on your finger. But even more interesting is their flight instinct, which I think is unique for an insect. Unless ants take over a man’s kitchen, you see, they’re generally safe from mass slaughter because they just aren’t very much fun to kill. They never run; they just amble about carrying crumbs of food back to their anthills, completely unaware of their impending doom. And actually, a random ant can feel reasonably assured of being left alone. I myself don’t have much visceral negative reaction to seeing an ant. They can be kind of fun to watch as they purposefully move about, carrying an object many times their own size. We can even respect them, since they have sophisticated colonies and so forth. I don’t tend to bother killing them unless I have a full invasion, in which case I might take drastic measures like creaming them with a dish sponge.

Look, I know this essay is supposed to be about cockroaches, and I promise to get back to that. But I realize I have more to say about ants. When I lived in Colorado, it was very rare to have an infestation. Maybe ants weren’t as copious there due to the harsh winters or something, who knows. (I never said I was an entomologist.) But the downside of Colorado is that at high altitude it’s hard to bake. Cakes in particular disappoint. So during a family visit to my grandpa’s place in St. Helena a couple years back, my mom baked a gorgeous chocolate layer cake. We knew it would be moister and denser and more delicious than the airy, dry cakes we’d get in Boulder, so we went for a long walk to work up an appetite. The cake was waiting in one of those cake thingies old people have, with the pedestal and the tall glass cover. Upon our return we lifted the cover to discover that the cake was absolutely swarming with ants. Where the hell had they come from? They were stuck in the frosting and struggling to even move. We couldn’t face the loss of that cake—it was just too huge a disappointment—so we decided to just eat it anyway. I loved the thought of these intruders being literally eaten alive, sliding down our throats with no hope of escape. The cake was still great; the ants gave it a little piquancy.

But normally, there’s no sport in killing ants; it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. And I think we all know how easy that is. Because we all have friends who call us up and are like, “Hey, I have a bunch of guns, and my uncle just delivered a big barrel full of live fish. You wanna come over and shoot some? Just for sport?” And of course you head right over, because it’s not disgusting at all, the way they bleed and bleed until the water is basically red and you start to wonder if a fish can feel terror, until you remember watching your high school friend’s piranhas chasing goldfish, and it was obvious the goldfish were fleeing, and so in that barrel the more selfish fish are diving for the bottom, squirming past others and hoping the spree ends soon, and oh my God, why are automatic weapons legal in this country?

Gosh, sorry, I got a little distracted there. I had been saying how ants go about their business blithely and never flee, whereas cockroaches must know that they’re the most hated insect on planet Earth, because they always run for it. Once you surprise them by turning on the kitchen light, they take off helter-skelter (or is it pell-mell?) for the nearest place to hide. If you’re lucky, you can kill one or two before they’ve all escaped. Strategy really comes into play here; if you can anticipate their escape route, you can head ‘em off at the pass. But when you do kill one, it’s not so much fun because you get that oily black smear on your thumb. I think it’s a kamikaze defense mechanism.

My roommate really hates roaches. It’s not that I don’t; I just respect their survivalist tendencies and their lightning speed. But he behaves as though their existence is a personal insult to him. I doubt he’s self-aware enough to realize that he’s probably the reason we still have them; he’s easily the biggest slob of our trio here. For example, if he doesn’t feel like washing a pan, and fears I might prompt him to do it because it’s my pan, he’ll actually hide it behind the fridge. So if anybody deserves to be angry around here, that’d be me. But who gets angry at a damn insect? Answer: my roommate. (And you thought that was a rhetorical question!) He totally lost it the other night after failing to kill a roach, and actually punched the fridge. I was secretly kind of pleased about this because that fridge had it coming. It sucks. It’s the loudest fridge I’ve ever heard and it runs constantly. Its noise is so annoying, when I sit down to eat in the kitchen I often reach around back and unplug it. (That’s typically how I end up finding my pan.)

Well, after feeling like the jackass that he is over his bruised hand, my roommate finally bit the bullet and laid out some cash for two Roach Motels. I’ve only seen these devices in advertisements and “Far Side” books, and was kind of surprised to learn they still exist (as do Ginsu steak knives, which I’d thought were mythical). I always wondered how Roach Motels “kill roaches dead” without being toxic. I mean, after all, I don’t want any deadly chemicals in my kitchen (besides the ones in my food, of course). Well, therein lies the biggest advertising fraud in commercial history. Roach Motels don’t even kill roaches once, so the redundant slogan is misleading twice over. They actually work on the same principle as the Eagles’ celebrated Hotel California: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. It’s basically a box with ramps leading into it, and a sticky floor that smells, to the roach, like a tasty treat. The unsuspecting roach walks up the ramp, falls into the goo, and spends the rest of his life trying to un-stick himself. He eventually dies either of old age or exhaustion.

It’s really kind of sad looking into the Roach Motel at all the little black bodies, often stacked on each other, desperately trying to escape this horrible doom. Roaches never give up, either. From the moment they drop in, they pull frantically with one leg at a time, but the leg snaps back again as the sticky goo proves superior even to the roach’s proportional insect strength. Entertaining a fanciful notion that perhaps I could hear them screaming, I put my ear really close to the Motel. What did I expect to hear? I remembered the scene of Johnny the Boy desperately begging Max Max for mercy: “What are you doing? I wanna know … what you’re doing! You think I’m silly don’t you. Don’t do this to me!”

I have fairly large feet, and I wear these cool Nike Team Conference basketball shoes, which are black and white, and which I like to call my Shamus. I think they’d do a great job of stomping these Roach Motels flat, and putting all those poor roaches out of their misery. You see, I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of feel bad for those roaches, working themselves to death in there. But the motels don’t belong to me, and still have vacancy. My dippy roommate probably thinks he could extract the existing roaches somehow and use the motels again and again. So, I dare not mess with them. I guess my best bet is just to go hide my pan.

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More War of Words

Introduction

I’ve long envied syndicated columnists, because a) they make money from writing, and b) people actually write to them with questions and comments, from which the columnist can often wring a whole column.  He can get past writer’s block by performing a kind of alchemy, turning a mere reader’s humble feedback into literary gold.

Of course, this blog doesn’t bring about many useful comments.  The percentage of albertnet pageviews that have resulted in comments stands at 0.36%.  Occasionally I take on the role of the reader and write in myself (e.g., Ask Dr. Beer, Ask Dr. Pasta) but of course that’s cheating.  At other times, as with my recent “Grammar Wars” post, I write something provocative and hope for the best.

I was not disappointed in the case of “Grammar Wars.”  A friend of mine, Trevor, posted not one but two comments, comprising a number of contrarian statements.  (Ah, that last sentence was satisfying ... a boss of mine once argued that “comprising” cannot be used this way—that you can only say “comprised of”—and it hurt me to subjugate the truth of my position beneath the greater truth that you must not alienate the guy who controls your salary.) 

I have waited awhile before countering my friend’s arguments, to see if anybody would come to my defense (as happened with an incoherent and profane attack leveled at my British Faucet post).  Nobody has, though a mutual friend posted a simple “Wow,” most likely in response to the comments rather than the post.  Knowing that Trevor’s comments were deliberately (if playfully) pugnacious, I will give him the honor and satisfaction of a thorough rebuttal.

But first...

It’s tempting to get right to it, and if you’re growing impatient, just scroll down to the phrase “Shibboleths and marketing” right now.  But if you enjoyed “The Deer Hunter” and feel that all the pre-Vietnam exposition was worth the trouble, stay right here because I’ve got a couple of asides to get to.

First, I must point out that debating Trevor in a public forum feels a bit like an insurrection, like Obi Wan Kenobi deciding it’s time to give Yoda a real beat-down.  This is because for the first couple years of our friendship, Trevor and I observed a strict pecking order:  he was the star cyclist on our UC Santa Barbara cycling team, and I was the mere domestique (i.e., selfless helper).  It was I who nicknamed Trevor “Red Five,” after Luke Skywalker; I came upon this nickname while giving Trevor a lead-out, sprinting just ahead of him well before the line and pulling off so that he’d be in perfect position to win (“You’re all clear, kid!”).  Here’s a picture of one such lead-out, at the National Collegiate Championship criterium.  I’m the third guy, having already done my work and pulled off; the second guy, Dave, has just finished his pull, and Trevor is about to launch.  (Did he win this sprint?  Of course.)

One more thing.  You may be curious about the last thing Trevor wrote:  “[Heh.  For those of you who know Dana really well, this is the proverbial birthday cake covered in ants.]”  This comment establishes—in fact, celebrates—Trevor’s appreciation of how much I love a good showdown.  It refers to the tale I told him of a gorgeous, perfect chocolate layer cake I almost lost.  I grew up in Boulder, some 5,000 feet above sea level, where it’s basically impossible to bake good cakes, because they rise to much and become fluffy and tough.  So I was really excited about a cake my mom baked at my grandfather’s house in the Napa valley, down here at sea level.  To draw out our enjoyment, we put the cake one of those old-fashioned covered cake pedestals and went for a two-hour appetite-inducing walk.  When we returned, the beautiful cake was absolutely teeming with red ants.  They were all stuck in the frosting, either battling to get free or in the throes of a sugar orgy.  For a moment it seemed all was lost and I could have just wept.  But then anger took over, and I decided to get Keyser Söze on their ant asses and just eat the cake anyway.  It filled me with the deepest satisfaction to give those ants a terrible death, matching their rapaciousness with my own.

Shibboleths and marketing

“I've been duped!” Trevor writes in his first comment.  “Where’s the grammar?!  Shibboleths and marketing!”

Well, I can’t argue this point:  my “Grammar Wars” post was as much about spelling (“just desserts”) and pronunciation (“process-ease”) as it was about grammar.  In response to “where’s the grammar?” I can at least offer up the “who” vs. “whom” tale, because grammar is at the heart of that (specifically, the issue of whether a certain pronoun replaces an object or a subject).  I’m not willing to call that a spelling error because nobody spells who “whom.”  What would other misspellings be?  Whobever?  Whonever? 

Meanwhile, “shibboleths” really threw me.  This is one of those words that I always have to look up, and then after understanding and appreciating its meaning I promptly forget it, and then the cycle repeats.  The gist of “shibboleth” is judging somebody by how he speaks; in an Old Testament tale, “pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect lacked a /ʃ/ phoneme (as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect did include such a phoneme.”  The consequences of mispronunciation were dire:  Gileadite soldiers would detain and quiz suspected Ephriamite war refugees, and “If anyone said, ‘Sibboleth’ because he could not pronounce ‘Shibboleth,’ then they would seize him and kill him.” 

This shibboleth concept is a nice way to explain why grammar, spelling, and pronunciation matter:  because whether you like it or not, well-educated people will judge you by these things.  So perhaps I should have called my post “The Shibboleth Wars.”  I’m not sure that would attract much of an audience, though.  It sounds to me like the name of the next installment in the “Star Wars” series, continuing along the descent-into-boredom trajectory set by “The Phantom Menace.”  But why does “The Grammar Wars” connote marketing in Trevor’s mind?  Is “grammar” a sexy word?  I don’t think so, and  I deny the suggestion that I deliberately duped Trevor the way a marketer would, simply because I give my blog post titles very little thought.  “War of the Words” probably would have been better, but it’s too late now.

Artisanal

Trevor argues quite rightly that “artisanal” is not only a legitimate word, but is a very useful one in identifying “that certain type of Bay Area hipster pretension that we love to hate.”  Most of the paragraph he devotes to this matter is useful and persuasive, and ties in nicely with his earlier mention of shibboleth.  But I cannot abide his opening sentence, “The suffix -al is perfectly fine and acceptable to form adjectives, nouns, and verbal actions.”  There is an admirable air of authority about this bold declaration, bringing to mind the breezy but ironclad rules set forth by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style.  Unfortunately, Trevor’s sentence is only sometimes true.  You can’t just slap “-al” on any old word you please; if you could, we’d have words like craftsmanal and mavenal.  Also, how do you form a noun using the suffix “-al”?  Were “bacchanal” and “finial” formed this way?  I think not.  And verbal actions?  What verb ends in “-al”?  Total, as in “I totaled my parents’ car?”  Okay, the more standard “corral” is a legitimate verb (and noun), but again, I doubt it was built out of “core” + “-al.”  Neither was “coral,” I might add.

Process[ease]

Trevor has no problem with “process-ease.”  He suggests that this pronunciation often has a purpose:  to differentiate between the noun and verb forms of this word:  “Those who say process[ease] almost always reference the noun and not the verb.”  It’s sweet to think that people are this helpful, but a) in my experience people aren’t that helpful, b) the English language relies heavily on word order, not pronunciation, for meaning, and c) it would be pretty hard to confuse the noun and verb forms of this word anyway.  Can you think of a single example of a sentence where the meaning would be hard to distinguish through context alone?  “Tom processes the invoices carefully” is not likely to have anybody wondering, “What are ‘Tom’ processes, and what do they do?”

Now, one thing I didn’t so much as mention in my post is the matter of the “o” in “processes.”  Trevor suggests that somebody might say, “This device pr[aw]cess[es] widgets by different pr[oh]cess[ease] depending upon which buttons you press.”  Whoa, whoa, whoa. 

I don’t have a big problem with the long “o” in “pr[oh]cess,” it being a perfectly valid pronunciation and the norm in the UK.  (I fact-checked this with a British friend of mine, and though he validated that he’s heard only “pr[oh]cess” over there, he was quick to add that he can’t speak for the whole nation.  This is exactly the kind of timid priggishness America’s founders came here to escape.) 

I sometimes say “pr[oh]cess” myself, though only when talking to my kids (and mimicking the British female robot voice of a talking ATM from which I first heard this pronunciation).  But I don’t think I could bring myself to say “pr[oh]cess” in other situations because, to my mind, a British pronunciation from the mouth of an American smacks of affectation.  I grow increasingly aware that a British accent, especially in business, connotes intelligence, sophistication, and global savvy.  Many years ago I worked with a customer who, to my surprise, turned out to be an idiot despite his strong British accent.  It didn’t seem possible for an idiot to speak that way.  Since then I’ve been less naive and have discovered that a British accent doesn’t actually guarantee intelligence or education.  In fact, I’m suspicious now when I hear a British accent; I ask myself, “Could this person have risen this high in corporate America for no other reason than that cool accent?”

With all this in mind, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear an American saying “pr[oh]cess,” and the kind of American who strives to sound fancy and intellectual by saying “process-ease” is exactly the kind who would affect the long “o.”  But I cannot imagine there’s anybody who mixes the British and American pronunciations in order to help differentiate between noun and verb forms, as Trevor suggests with “pr[aw]cess[es] widgets by different pr[oh]cess[ease].”  This kind of mix-and-match usage would be almost as absurd as the flat-top mullet I talked a barber into giving me back in the 1980s.  I know it’s impossible to prove a negative, but I hope to God there aren’t really people out there mixing British and American pronunciation of a word within a sentence.  If anybody reading this has heard such a thing, let me know.  (If there’s anybody reading this at all.  Hey, you, there in the back ... wake up!  Have you heard this kind of British/American pronunciation mash-up?)

I wish I could stop now—I feel like I’ve eaten three or four large pieces of ant-infested cake—but I’m not done yet.  I still have to deal with a sentence so inflammatory I almost wonder if it was consciously designed to sacrifice logic and Truth for the sake of pure provocation:  “The noun [process-ease] is frequently used in some quasi-scientific context and the [ease] is consistent with the pronunciation of the plural forms of analysis, neurosis, prognosis, and so on.”

First of all, citing the frequency of a pronunciation is no justification.  Should we also accept “nuke-yoo-lar” and “ree-la-tor” just because lots of people pronounce “nuclear” and “realtor” that way?  And how does “some quasi-scientific context” deserve my support?  To me, “quasi-scientific” brings to mind disgraceful ideas like the Atkins diet (don’t even get me started on that). 

As for the second part of that statement, the “process–ease” pronunciation only seems consistent with words of Greek origin like analysis, neurosis, and prognosis.  As the American Heritage Dictionary points out, “’process’ is not of Greek origin, and there is no etymological justification for this pronunciation of its plural.”  Proceeding from analysis/analyses to process/process-ease is no more valid than saying “gen-WEE-nee” for “genuine” while pointing to “linguine” as justification.  And we don’t say “van-EE-ah” for “vanilla” even though you could claim it’s consistent with the pronunciation of “tortilla.”

Spaces after a period

Trevor goes on to write, “And since we're bringing it, do my poor eyes deceive me or are you adding two spaces after every period? From Robert Bringhurst’s ‘The Elements of Typographical Style,’ which I highly recommend:

In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit.

At first blush, this instruction seems compelling.  I have blogged at length about how the limitations of early typewriters have created the terribly awkward QWERTY keyboard that society is still bound to.  Having put forth the considerable effort required to abandon that layout, I would be happy to switch to a single space after each period, if I were to agree that this practice was based on a long-ago design principle that is now defunct.  What I’d like to ask Bringhurst is why compositors were encouraged to add extra space.  What is meant by “dark and inflationary” age?  What is the link between the behavior and the equipment?

I do add two spaces after a period, because I was taught to do so by my junior high typing teacher, Mr.  Todd.  This wasn’t his idea, of course; it was right there in the textbook.  The idea is that the extra space helps the reader identify the end of a sentence.  Sure, we have a period for that, but periods exist within sentences, too (e.g., when you see an abbreviation like Mr.), and, given how fast people read, two indicators is arguably better than one.  Thus, it is not obvious to me that there’s anything quaint or obsolete about this practice.  Meanwhile, given the sacrifice Mr. Todd made for his students—he lost most of his hearing because he shared a classroom with thirty roaring Selectric typewriters for so many years—I feel compelled to honor him by continuing to put two spaces after a period.

The American Heritage Dictionary

Trevor comments, “Oh, and the American Heritage Dictionary? Total crap. I looked up ‘irregardless’ in it, found it, and then threw it away. ‘Bungled affectation’ is only legitimate if you can successfully defend ‘irregardless.’”  When I quoted this dictionary in my original post, I was almost sure I’d draw Trevor’s scorn, as he’s lambasted this dictionary before.  In terms of eliciting a response, dangling this citation out there was practically entrapment. 

I’d say that before we go picking on this dictionary, we should establish whether or not it’s the sole offender.  I consulted the Webster’s Unabridged Third New International Dictionary and it also defines “irregardless,” however briefly:  “adv [prob. blend of irrespective and regardless] nonstand : REGARDLESS.”

So it looks like Trevor, if he maintains his position, will have to throw out Webster’s too—but I suspect he wouldn’t discredit this noble dictionary, since (I happen to know) Trevor highly regards Vladimir Nabokov, whose favorite dictionary is Webster’s, as described here.  (This discussion, of a barbed public dispute that Nabokov had with the critic Edmund Wilson, reminds me somewhat of this very post, except that for Wilson and Nabokov the stakes were high.  After all, those two actually had readers, and relied on their literary reputations for their livelihood.  In comparison, what you’re reading here is trivial, all in good fun.)

Here is Nabokov with his beloved Webster’s dictionary.  (Not shown:  the word “irregardless,” which is most certainly in there.)

Frankly, I think the American Heritage Dictionary does a much more thorough job than Webster’s does with “irregardless,” by providing a useful commentary about it:

The problem with a dictionary simply leaving the word out is that it leaves arguments unsettled.  Let’s suppose Trevor gets in an argument with some idiot about whether or not “irregardless” is a word, and together they look it up in Webster’s.  The idiot may feel that he has won, because the word is in there, and “nonstand” doesn’t do much to discredit it.  Now suppose they look it up in Trevor’s Oxford English Dictionary and it’s simply not there:  this doesn’t provide closure on the issue, any more than the lack of “artisanal” in my American Heritage Dictionary does.  Isn’t it better to include “irregardless” in order to fully disparage it, rather than just leaving the matter open to endless moot debate?

Conclusion

There’s no real conclusion, of course—there can never be.  I’m sure I’ve left myself vulnerable, in these 3,000 words, to further assaults on my own grammar, rhetoric, and reason.  I don’t have a proofreader, nor the time to scrutinize my work for typos.  There are even logical flaws that I can’t bring myself to fix, like saying “I decided to get Keyser Söze on their ant asses.”  This statement practically begs the reader to say, “Obviously this is an allusion to ‘The Usual Suspects’ and the bit where Keyser Söze’s enemy is holding Söze’s family hostage at gunpoint, and how Söze shoots his own wife and child just to show his opponent how illusory his leverage really is.  But ‘getting Keyser Söze on their ant asses’ is a ridiculous metaphor, as merely eating ants is nowhere near as bold as killing your family, particularly given that eighty percent of the world’s population eats insects on a regular basis.”  (Ha!  Beat you to it!)

There is, however, one more thing I’d like to point out.  You may be under the impression that I consider Trevor an opponent in a verbal “war.”  In fact, that’s not at all the case.  The real opponent is the guy who couldn’t care less about proper language (or worse, the guy who “could care less” about proper language) and who, when confronted with a question of spelling, grammar, or style, simply says, “Whatever.”  Such flaccid, passive word slobs are the real enemy.  Their apathy wages a silent war on our language, with precision, order, and grace all hanging in the balance.

Ask Dr. Pasta

Dear Dr. Pasta,

 My husband is driving me crazy.  Whenever he makes pasta for our family and friends, he insists that  everybody be seated at the table before he puts the dry pasta into the boiling water.  I hate this but he refuses to even discuss it.  He said to consult with you.  What is going on here?

Sandra S, Spokane, WA

Dear Sandra,

I hate to say it, but your husband is right.  There’s nothing worse than serving pasta that has sat around getting cold and sticking together.  (OK, I guess there are worse things, like Spaghetti-Os, but you get my point.)  Ideally, the pasta is strained the moment it’s done (never rinsed!), tossed quickly with a little extra virgin olive oil, and plated within a minute or two.  Say your kids are slow getting to the table and spoil this small act of perfection:  that could cause intense family resentment.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

Can I store pasta in bulk?  Or will it go bad?

Chuck M, LaCrosse, KS

Dear Chuck,

Yes, you can store pasta, in a dry place.  (This doesn’t mean you should buy it at Costco though.)  It won’t go bad unless it’s that fancy colored pasta, which often has vegetable matter in it.  That stuff will start to break down and crumble, and turns mushy when boiled.  It’s safe to eat, but who would want to? 

The only other risk you run is insect infestation.  This happened to me once.  The pasta was perciatelli, which is tubular like macaroni but long like spaghetti, and the insects were weevils.  They burrowed right in there.  I went ahead and ate it (dozens of boxes), to take my revenge.  It tasted fine and, as 80% of the world’s population eats insects, I wasn’t worried about my health.  Still, it was a bit gnarly.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

Everybody knows that farfalle means “bow tie” in Italian, but my friend insists it means “butterfly.”  Will you set him straight?

Scott B, Jersey City, NJ

Dear Scott,

The paucity of your research skills is matched only by your ignorance.  Can a thousand menus and waiters be wrong?  Yes, they can.  Technically “farfalle” means “butterflies” (the singular is “farfalla”) but your friend is basically right, and deserves an apology.  I’ve been there:  I was at a fancy restaurant and got into the same argument with a friend of Italian descent and his dad, and they tried to use their Italian heritage as evidence.  I wasn’t having it, so they appealed to the waiter, who agreed with them that “farfalle” means bow tie.  I told the waiter to go ask the cook.  The waiter came back and said, “Yep, I was right, the cook says it means ‘butterfy’!”  I don’t know if he was trying to be funny or what.

Why would a great nation name a great pasta after the most useless clothing accessory in existence?  A bow tie technically does meet the requirement of formal attire, but makes the wearer look like a damn clown.  Only the Daniel Craig James Bond can wear a bow tie and still look cool, and that’s only because, when asked if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, he replies, “Do I look like I give a damn?”  That and because he beat a guy to death in a stairwell.  But I digress.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

 I recently moved to the Bay Area from Chicago and have found that my favorite metaphor for a person being lame—“That's like putting ketchup on a hot dog!”—doesn’t work around here.  Nobody here seems to appreciate a properly dressed hot dog.  But these same people all seem to be foodies, and are nearly fascist about their pasta.  Is there a pasta-related metaphor I can substitute for “ketchup on a hot dog”?

Mike T, Alameda, CA

Dear Mike,

 Yes.  You can say, “That’s like breaking pasta in half before boiling it!”

Dear Dr. Pasta,

I’m trying to become a better cook, but I’m not ready to make my own noodles, slave over complicated sauces, etc.  What’s the best way to improve my pasta dishes?

Emily W, San Antonio, TX

Dear Emily,

If you’re shaking granulated parmesan on your pasta from a green cardboard or plastic canister, stop.  (The white can labeled “Italian topping” is even worse—it’s parmesan stretched with rice flour to increase profit margins.)  Or, if you’re buying little tubs of pre-shredded parmesan, cut that out.  Use a hard block of parmesan, and grate it with a zester.  Another simple trick is to buy Italian parsley, chop or tear it finely, and sprinkle that on top.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

 Two words:  pasta erotica.  Help me out here, bud.

Tom F, Brooklyn, NY

I can only imagine you’re referring to the pasta equivalent of “bike porn,” that being glossy bike catalogs designed to titillate.  (If I've misunderstood what you mean by "pasta erotica," please don’t write back and correct me ... I don’t want to know.)

The most enticing pasta writing I’ve come across in recent years is this article by Bill Buford in “The New Yorker,” chronicling part of his pasta-making apprenticeship  under the chef Mario Batali.  Here’s an excerpt: 

Mark, having cooked up a large quantity of linguine for its regulation six minutes and thirty seconds, emptied it into a pan of New Zealand cockle-clams, sloppily dripping lots of that starchy water on them in the process, a big wet heap of pasta on top of several dozen shellfish; he swirled the pan, gave it a little flip, swirled it again, and then left it alone so that it could cook, bubbling away, for another half minute…  Then he took a strand and tasted it.  He gave me one.  It was not what I expected.  It was no longer linguine, exactly; it had changed color and texture and become something else.  I tasted it again.  This, I thought, is the equivalent of soaking bread in gravy…  But what was the sauce?  I looked at the pan:  the cockle-clams had been all closed up a few minutes earlier, and as they cooked their shells opened, and as they opened they released the juices inside—lots of juices.  That’s what I was tasting in this strand of linguine:  an ocean pungency.  (“It’s about the sauce, not the little snot of meat in the shell,” Mario told me later.  “No one is interested in the little snot of meat!”)

Click here for the full article, or here for info about Buford’s book, “Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany.” 

By the way, the presence of fresh clams in your linguine alle vongole does not guarantee that it’s good—this can merely be a way for a mediocre restaurant to be flashy.  Check out this crazy plate I got at a restaurant in Bath:

That entree was like a train wreck.  The pasta was broken up into short pieces; it was like Noodle Roni to begin with; half the clam shells were empty (!); and worst of all, every third or fourth bite had tiny shards of what must have been broken clam shell.  Given the incompetence of this kitchen, I’d have been better off with “little snots of meat” from a can.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

My cousin’s husband is a really snooty foody.  Can you give me a little-known-fact to one-up him with?

Julie R, San Diego, CA

Dear Julie,

As Buford (see above) has pointed out, in Italy the words “ravioli” and “tortelli” have always been used interchangeably, but technically “ravioli” are the filling and “tortelli” the pasta casing.  (Tortellini, meanwhile, is just little tortelli.)

Dear Dr. Pasta,

Help!   My wife wants our family to eat whole wheat pasta.  What can I do?

Mark A, Grand Junction, CO

Dear Mark,

That’s rough.  From the standpoint of health, it’s hard to knock whole wheat, but of course whole wheat pasta is just wrong.  There are three tacks you could take.  One, you could reclassify pasta and call it a treat instead of a staple, and then cast whole wheat pasta as a poor substitute in the tradition of Hydrox cookies (vs. Oreos), soy cheese, skim milk, and turkey dogs.  Or, you could go along with her and hope she stumbles upon a “fake” whole-wheat pasta like Barilla’s so-called “Whole-Grain” pasta, which is a blend of whole wheat and refined flour.  It’s not as bad.  Your third option is to ask for wheat germ on the side.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

There’s all this hoopla about homemade pasta or this or that premium pasta brand ... but isn’t it the sauce that really matters?

Laura D, Council Bluff, IA

Dear Laura,

It’s true that it’s harder to find a good sauce than a good pasta.  Many a grocery store will carry top-notch De Cecco pasta, or at least Barilla, but the run-of-the-mill jarred sauce (Prego, Ragu) isn’t up to snuff.  But that doesn’t mean the pasta isn’t important. 

One of the most disappointing pastas of my life was at Kuleto’s in San Francisco.  The sauce was incredible … I don’t remember much about it except it had sun-dried tomatoes and was a great ungodly godlike sauce.  Delicious.  But it was served on some colored homemade pasta that was limp and soft, somehow simultaneously doughy and overcooked.  It could have been the greatest pasta dish ever but instead was the greatest disappointment.  I couldn’t have been more bewildered and let down if Natalie Portman had shown up wearing a beard.

If you’re looking for a really great sauce you can make yourself, click here.  I know it seems crazy trying to get useful information from somebody’s blog, for crying out loud, but this guy’s Bolognese recipe is actually very good.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

I hear you used to do a bit of pasta racing.  Is this true?  If so, were you any good?

Lisa S, Louisville, KY

Dear Lisa,

I must confess, as a brash young lad I did go in for some pasta racing.  (This was many years before I settled down and earned my honorary doctorate in alimentary science.)  Sure, pasta racing seems barbaric now, but those were different times.  The Gondolier, an Italian restaurant in Boulder, had all-you-can-eat spaghetti once or twice a week, and every bike racer in the area would line up for it.  As a teenager with a vermicelli build, I always ate at least five plates,  usually six, and to keep my less voracious brothers and friends from having to wait around for me I tended to eat fast.  Nobody could eat faster than I, though several pals tried. 

One night, I was just in the zone and spontaneously decided, on my sixth plate, to set the all-time record.  I powered that bad boy down using two forks, and everybody clocked me at the same time—19.9 seconds—on their matching Timex Triathlon watches.  (Yes, that kind of nerd.)  An immensely corpulent woman at the next table was outraged.  “That is completely disgusting!” she cried.  No, I didn’t have the obvious Churchillian comeback queued up, and wouldn’t have had the nerve to use it anyway.  I either clammed up completely or said something Midwestern like, “Gosh, ma’am, I’m really sorry.”

The amazing thing?  It wasn’t even a racing plate (that is, oil and garlic, which slips down the throat faster).  It was standard marinara.  So, yeah, I guess you could say I had talent.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

It has been said that pasta is a blood memory.  What do you have to say about that?

Ron M, Boston, MA

Dear Ron,

I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.  Whoever said it must have been really poetic or something.  I’m not sure what to say, but I’ll acknowledge that my love of pasta does intertwine with my memory of eating, making, and observing it.  For example, I saw an episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood back in 1984 that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.  (I was a teenager, watching the show “ironically.”) In this episode, Mr. Rogers made pasta with a friend.  It was obvious that Mr. Rogers really wanted to see the pasta machine in action, but that his friend—clearly a pasta expert—had moved beyond the machine and wanted to cut his noodles by hand.  Mr. Rogers got progressively more persistent, but the friend was stubborn, and it must have been the closest Mr. Rogers ever got to kicking someone’s ass on camera. 

That Mr. Rogers episode may have inspired me to start making my own pasta, which I took up a couple years later, and the memory of the show certainly did inspire me, this past Father’s Day, to finally take the plunge and make my own hand-cut pappardelle.  I rolled out the pasta sheets, folded them over, and cut them with a big knife (kind of like making a jelly roll).  Then I had to peel apart the folded-over layers, which was a bit like unspooling Scotch tape.  It was a glorious success that, well, I shall never forget.

Dear Dr. Pasta,

 Are you some kind of elitist, or do you have a “guilty pleasure” pasta?

Angie W, Topeka, KS

Dear Angie,

I’d eat just about any pasta you could put in front of me, except maybe that Chef Boyardee beef ravioli (and that’s only for fear of mad cow disease, which—if it’s going to show up in this country—couldn’t find a better vehicle).  I’m not above Prego and Ragu (though I’ll generally sex it up with some olive oil, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, and herbs).  And I have a real soft spot for Lipton instant pasta sides.  (They’re marketed as Knorr now, but don’t be fooled.  Culturally, they’re pure Lipton.)  I first discovered this product when I did a cross-country bike tour with my wife and we needed something highly caloric and starchy that we could make on a camp stove.  To this day I’ll occasionally indulge in this trashy treat, just for old time’s sake and because it’s actually pretty yummy.  (Here I am making it for the first time, in March ’94.)

Dear Dr. Pasta,

I really want to use my knowledge of pasta as an affirmation of my self-worth.  Is there any way you can help?

Theodore B, Danbury, CT

Dear Teddy,

(You don’t mind if I call you Teddy, do you?  You seem like a Teddy.)  You might be better off becoming an expert on wine or something, but I want to help, so here’s a little quiz for you.  Match the pasta quotation with the person who uttered it.

1.  George Carlin

2.  Sophia Loren

3.  George Miller

4.  Christopher Morley

5.  Vladimir Nabokov

a.  “No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.”

b.  “The trouble with eating Italian food is that 5 or 6 days later you’re hungry again.”

c.  “Macaroni grows in Italy.  When still small it’s called vermicelli.  That means Mike’s worms in Italian.”

d.  “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.”

e.  “If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?”

Answers:  1. e; 2. d; 3. b; 4. a; 5. c. 

Note:  George Carlin is widely credited with quotation (e), but perhaps erroneously.  Should we care?