Shortcomings

I wonder if it should count as another of my meaningless peeves that people talk about "ethnic" food. Hamburgers and french fries are "ethnic" food, too; I guess I'm clearly not a fan of indicating Otherness (which I'm intrinsically ok with, when appropriate) by pretending that the native (so to speak) culture is not just as equivalent and relativist as all the others. It's a tiny echo of the blinkered racial thinking we've got in America, where any analysis of what the word "white" means, ethnically, indicates that it's not about picking out one ethnicity at all, but simply marking the accepted from the unaccepted. Although I did greatly appreciate the clever humor of a friend of a friend in college who, on meeting me, asked me, "Are you...cultural? Because you look...cultural." Yes, I am of culture.

The foregoing should probably not be a surprise to those who are familiar with my attitude towards "Mediterranean" cuisine.

In other personal news, I have in my life been compared by friends and family to a number of celebrities. In my youth, the most popular point of comparison was Pete Sampras; one misguided friend identified me with Jeff Goldblum, and not long ago an aunt told me she'd described my appearance to a third party as "kind of like John Mayer." But these are outdated and false comparisons, Gentle Reader, for I have seen the truth, the light, have looked, as 'twere, on myself in a mirror and yet the mirror was another man's face.

Behold the ghastly visage of [Medrawt] in his mid-20s:









Well, to be fair, my legs are way better than hers.

Or, more seriously: yeah, I need to keep losing weight.