Snow

It’s been an odd week, weather-wise. Yesterday it was reported that 49 of the 50 United States had snow on the ground (I’m sure you can guess the odd one out). And Dallas had 12 inches of snow, which is unprecedented. The pictures are from the 6^th floor window of American Airlines headquarters, on a day when almost 20% of their flights were cancelled due to the weather.

 

So I’m limited to the local area for the weekend, and my thoughts turn to food. I’ve read recently that a new product – “Taste No. 5” – is about to be introduced to Waitrose supermarkets in the UK. It’s apparently been around in Japan for 100 years, and is only now poised to stun British taste buds. When I googled it, I found myself at an online Daily Mail page, with Taste No. 5 advertized on one side of the page, and K-Y Jelly on the other. Now, there’s two products you wouldn’t want to get mixed up …

While confined to my hotel room, I watched what is euphemistically called a cooking program on PBS. They were making roasted tomato salsa, which sounds quite appetizing. “We’ll start with two cans of roasted tomatoes”. Hmmm … if you’re going to do that, why not just start with two cans of roasted tomato salsa? Never mind – they ultimately blended their way to the finished article. And what did they do with it? They added it to “Mac and Cheese”! Now it seems to me that that adding good food to crap is like multiplying by zero – you always finish up with zero.

America is astonishingly oblivious to anything that is happening around them, and in their arrogance (appearing to the world, as Guy Forsyth says, like a “spoiled drunk 15-year-old waving a gun in their face”) are destined to go the same way as the Roman Empire (I’m not the first to make this observation – Michael Moore, in “Capitalism” captured the analogy convincingly in the first few minutes).

If you’re planning to visit the US to “find America”, I think you may already be too late.