Shit-talking

Hello, it's been a while.  3 years.  I still don't know if anyone reads this.  It might as well be my diary except to all the companies that spy on me.  Hi, Steve Jobs!  Congrats on your monopoly!  By the way, you should treat your workers better.  If you do, maybe I'll stop boycotting you.  :)

This is just a little rant.

About shit-talking.  

I keep hearing different things about it. 

1. (From various articles on bad friends) Someone is a bad friend/person if they shit-talk people.  If someone is shit-talking people, you can bet that they are shit-talking you.  

2. (A rebuttal I hear a lot toward the first thing) Everyone gossips and shit-talks.  It's a part of life.  We need to vent about things and people that bother us.

3. (Variation on #1, also from various articles about bad friends) Someone is a bad friend/person if they shit-talk their close friends/family, not so much people outside of that group.

The last one seems like the most reasonable.  However, I can honestly understand the sentiment behind all of them despite the fact that they contradict each other.

What do I think?  I really don't know.  I know that the status quo, at least at work, seems to be that shit-talking is all well and good.  Whenever someone is complaining about someone, most people are happy to snicker or join in on the shit-talking.  Although, on occasion I see people disagree when they feel differently, saying things like, "really?  I like her."

I admit that I will often agree or laugh with the person in an attempt to fit in or because I do actually agree, but I feel guilty after, thinking I should have stood up for the person.  

There are a lot of people who think any shit talking at any time is cancer.  In fact, it actually feels like a common sentiment that everyone shares:

Are memes evidence?  Eh, I don't know.  No one said this was journalism.  It's an opinion piece.  Goddamn!  

However, for all the memes about how terrible it is to shit talk and all the articles on Huffington Post and Thought Catalog, I see so many people at work, at home, amongst my friends and in overheard conversations in public shit-talking other people like it's going out of style.  

I guess it bothers me that online shit-talking is almost universally seen as terrible but when you're at work or at a party if you stand up against shit-talking you might get some weird looks like you're uptight.   

With something like murdering people, unless you are in an online community on the deep web dedicated to murder, the universal opinion both online and in person is that murder is bad.  Shit-talking, not so much. 

But I don't know.  I think I lean toward the more reasonable stance - you shouldn't shit-talk your close friends and family but it doesn't matter as much for other people.  But I still think some shit-talking should be allowed if you need to vent about someone because they did something that pissed you off.  You just have to be okay with the other person doing it back to you.   

It's better to say it to their face though.  Easier said than done in many cases for me because I'm shy.   

But even with other people, I think it should only be if they did something to piss you off, not to just bully or put them down for no reason like, "John still wets the bed."  I don't think we need to shame John for still wetting the bed.  It's mean and unnecessary. 

Or making up rumours about people.  If you are bullying the person or making up rumours, I think that shit-talk is really bad.  

But for the most part the shit talk I hear is about a person screwing other people over, although some of it is just straight up making fun of people for no reason and I try not to engage with that, even if I just don't say anything.  Not always though.  I hate that I sometimes agree, almost on impulse.

That's something I need to work on.  Don't shit talk people unless they did something bad and I need to vent or get advice.  And don't agree with shit-talk unless I truly agree with it.

What got me thinking about this topic was a friend of a friend of mine, let's call him Quentin (because why not)...

Credit: Fansided

Well, he used to be my friend, but he did something that pissed me off and I stopped hanging out with him or talking to him except about work stuff that I couldn't avoid because we work together.  

And then I told Quentin's friend the reason why I stopped talking to him - him generally being disrespectful to me and rude to me.  I also talked shit about Quentin quite a bit because his behavior was pissing me off.  That friend (let's call him Mr. Loose Lips) told Quentin.  In response, Quentin started shit-talking me and I shit-talked him and back and forth because this mutual friend of ours had very loose lips.  Quentin was saying mean stuff about me and I got defensive and said mean stuff back.

Eventually it got really petty with Quentin saying I was jealous of him and me constantly making jokes about one of his flaws.  It was awkward at work as well.  

This all sounds pretty toxic, and I think it was.  So what happened?  I needed a somewhat big favor from Quentin and he did it without incident.  And I said thank you.  And for a few hours we were actually cordial and looked each other in the eyes instead of pretending not to see each other.  We didn't become friends again after that but we were less awkward and cold with each other at work.  

And I wondered if maybe he wasn't actually as evil as I had decided he was.  Perhaps I wasn't as innocent as I thought.  We were BOTH shit-talking each other a lot.  Maybe he was just defensive.  And I never told him to his face why I stopped talking to him - he only heard it through a friend.  That might have worsened things.

So about a week ago I decided that I would try an experiment: stop shit-talking Quentin.  And see what happens...  Would he stop shit-talking me?  Was it all a counter-strike against my attacks or is he just a mean person?  

What would it do anyway?  Mr. Loose Lips will just relay it and give Quentin another reason to hate me and he'll fire back and I'll have another reason to hate him.  Venting in a blog or a diary is much nicer than venting to Mr. Loose Lips anyway.

Right now, not enough time has passed for anything to happen.  I mean, so far he hasn't really said anything about me, good or bad. Mr. Loose Lips keeps me updated frequently though.  That's another thing to watch for when shit-talking - don't do it with people who have big mouths...  Wow, that sounded dirty.  If you have to shit-talk someone to get it off your chest, pick a good confidante - a trusted friend, a notebook, a blog, reddit...

But I'm hopeful.  I'm a hopeless optimist so I could see us being friends again (but probably talk about what pissed me off and see if he apologizes first).  However, even just not being as weird at work and being able to talk at mutual friends' parties and not avoiding each other anymore would be nice.  We will see.

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 7 - The End

Tonight is the end of the stoner food reviews for a while, probably a great while or indefinitely.  I will end with an intriguing liqueur and one of the best foods in the world: Bombay Grill's Paneer Makhani with rice.

Time to get to "work"…

Listening to: The Who, Metric (early, not late)

CHAMBORD

 

It's a black raspberry liqueur imported from France and it comes in one size at $40 a bottle; expensive but a great mixer.  

Raspberry is obviously the first flavour.  A bit artificial tasting, but that's liqueurs for you.  Mmm…  I always find it too sweet on its own but otherwise it's a very nice raspberry liqueur.  Tastes like candy, classy candy.  That was good.  Now... I can hardly wait.  La piece de resistance.

PANEER MAKHANI

It looks so beautiful with the curved, spiced grains of rice smiling at me.   “Eat me, eat me!” they say.  And I weep, “yes, dreamlings, I will eat you.  I will eat you until the end of time.”  Nice big triangular chunks of paneer.  So excited.  Mmmm... cheesy and spicy and the the soft paneer and rice.  The rice brushes my mouth like a light breeze.  And it has this nice tomato flavour as well.  If this was my food for the rest of my life I wouldn’t be that pissed.  They just do both the rice and curry so nicely.  My one complaint is that the paneer isn’t very flavourful in the middle but the sauce does a good job at distracting from that.  I mostly taste creaminess and tomato to the sauce and a little spiciness.  The rice perhaps has a bit of coriander and possibly cumin seeds.  I don’t know about the rest of the flavours and spices, but they work together like perfection.  Nice and buttery as well.  As I said, one of the best foods in the world.  

I am done.

But the moment I am back we will eat chocolate jesus.

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 6

Bonjour bollygoggles!

Before I become intoxicated, I would like to say that tomorrow will be the last day of these reviews because a week just seems like a good amount of time to do this seeing as I just wanted to revisit it for fun.  To end off the week, I will get take-out from a magical indian restaurant called Bombay Grill because their Paneer Makhani is one of the greatest dishes I have ever tasted.

Now, time to take care of business...

Listening to: Kid Cudi and other emerald-aimed music.
Watching: 30Rock

Yep, now I'm high.  So, I found the perfect thing to review high.  Fucking...

VANILLA CUPCAKE-FLAVOURED GOLDFISH



So I am starving.  It sucks to wait to eat food, which is one reason I'll be glad this is over tomorrow.  Really looking forward to that curry.  Nom nom nom.  Okay, let's try this.  Savoury and sweet, reminds me of those teddy graham cookies.  Ok, that isn't that weird.  They're basically cookies.  I should have known that seeing as it was in the cookie section, but you kind of assume it's going to be like the crackers and then if it's vanilla cupcake-flavoured then that's a weird food, but it tastes bready and sweet, like a cookie and it has a cookie texture.  Why is eye contact so frightening?  I don't know.  Maybe it's because you are clearly being watched intently.  It tastes artificial but not enough that it's bothersome.  Agh, got really freaked out just remembering this video --  Film Theory quite convincingly alleged that Wall-E has cannibalism.  Shudder.  Now let me continue this nice food review.  This does not taste like vanilla cupcake but instead vanilla teddy grahams.  So tired, so high… It's good.  They'd make a nice sugary work snack.  I'll definitely finish the bag.  Not tonight.  We've got bigger and better things…



SWISS, POTATO CHIP AND SOURDOUGH SANDWICH



This is turning out to be high food combo night, even thought the first one kind of tricked me.  Don't you think Goldfish is tricking stoners?  Thinking they'll be crackers when they're cookies...  Geez.  But you're right, I could have probably thought of some even weirder stoner food combos.

This is a sandwich I just regularly like to make, usually with a white or sourdough baguette.  Almost forgot to think about what I'm tasting haha.  Sour, potato chip taste.  There's a sharpness to the flavour of the bread.  I think I'm not used to savouring sandwiches such as these which is a shame.  I think I eat too fast.  The bread has a good texture, nice and fresh-tasting.  When you really taste all three it's a nice flavour.  I prefer the white bread version however this is also good in its own unique way.  The swiss is the least prominent flavour but you can subtly taste it and it complements the chips and bread.  I also love the texture of chips in a sandwich, crunchy and thin.  Very nice, a lovely lunch that one might consume at some normal place like a bath house or inside a piano or maybe at a microscopic, nah, why can't I think of one that isn't scary?  A lovely lunch to consume at a microscopic level inside a water bottle on a sunny summer morning in Santa Fe.  Ye.  I declare this sandwich quite nice.

BEER

I've chosen Muskoka Cream Ale.  I am too high.  I drank several sips before I remembered that I should be reviewing it.  Very nice.  Piney, sweet.  I'm not super familiar with cream ales and what they're all about.  Lots of hop to it and yet there's a sweetness to the flavour somehow.  It's good but not remarkably interesting.  Maybe I'd pick up more things sober but I'm just getting hammered by the hops of it and the piney-ness.  It says it has floral tones on the bottle.  That makes sense.  English pub style ale is smooth and easy-going, according to the bottle.  English pub-style would explain the hoppiness.  Easy-going is accurate.  It won't assault you with a lot of flavours.  And it is smooth.  I like it although it's a little too hoppy for me to love it.

That's it!

Tomorrow Soviet Russia review you!

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 5

Bienvenue, spirits!

I am starving so Imma just dig in.

MAC AND CHEESE

This is No Name brand mac and cheese, the cheapest Kraft Dinner in all of the REAL. CANADIAN. SUPERSTORE.  So real, so Canadian, so super.  It was 59 cents and it looks beautiful, smells beautiful and I forget what the other senses are.  Look, smell, feel, taste, hear.  It sounds squishy when I mix it.  Unfortunately I had to heat this by microwave because I seshed a while and my food got cold because I was waiting to be high to eat it.  Heating it up again with a microwave is yet another sacred rule I am breaking, a cardinal sin to my know-it-all goody-two-shoes wine snob brother who believes in all this wine tasting bull that is based on nothing and has never improved the way things taste in any way ever!  That is SACRED RULE BREAKING #2… wine snobs had better leave right now because they should be expecting many more of these rule breakings.  Just letting you know.

Okay, now to actually taste the thing before it gets cold again.  Hmm…  kind of bland.  Cheesy but not prominently cheesy.  The texture and the temperature are really good; chewy and moist.  It's bland but I'm high enough that I like it and could probably eat the whole box if I was in an eat-the-whole box-binge-watch-30-Rock sort of mood.  I am just mindlessly eating this now and very confused.  Staring straight ahead and shovel, shovel, shovel, not even reading or watching anything.  Haha.  Kind of sweet and bready.  It does also taste artificial.  Can taste the butter as well.  This is definitely a nice attempt at mac and cheese for 59 cents.  I know what to subsist on if I become homeless.  I do have a sinking feeling that a sober tasting would be worse.

Next, I got a Mug Cake cookbook for my birthday so I will be making a mug cake today.  I will be making…

ROOT BEER FLOAT MUG GAKE

I am actually so pumped to make a bunch of mug cakes from this thing, fuck, maybe even one mug cake every day.  They even have mug cheesecake!  This is a recipe from 100 Mug Cakes by Leslie Bilderback.

Having this with whipped cream…  As I stab my fork into it, there is a spongey texture.  Smells eggy and blandly cakey.  Sweet.  Whipped cream and cake work nicely together.  Nothing immediately gross.  It's very tough to get a scoop.  So far, good but kind of bland, like the last food.  It's tolerable but nothing to write home about.  There's an eggy taste as well.  I do not taste the root beer at all haha.  Maybe I should have used the root beer extract.  The texture is firm and cooked but kind of tough.  I basically had to stab it with my spoon several times to get pieces off.  I declare this mug cake meh.  Not a good start to this cookbook, but I'm hopeful for the other recipes.

I think you can guess what I will be sampling next…

ROOT BEER

Boylan Root Beer, American company, I believe.  Yum, really strong flavour.  Sweet and sassy.  I like.  This would probably be good root beer float root beer.  Not much else to say.  It's quite nice.  I wish the mug cake had tasted like this. :(  Yeah the spice is nice and prominent.  This is probably one of the best root beers I've had.  Nom nom nom.  It tastes quite natural as well, not very artificial.  Although for all I know it's as unnatural as Mug Root Beer and I'm just fooled by the fact that it's in a glass bottle.  Who knows?

Later tonight we eat the dingo and your baby.

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 4

Howdy poltergeists!

Listening to: The Weepies

Today I will review some Christmasy delights.  This may be a booze-soaked endeavour, fair warning.  And I am a sloppy drunk.

First!

EGG NOG WITH SCOTCH

Nice, nice, nice.  You can taste both very well.  It's a nice eggnog in which you can definitely taste the spices and you get bite and warmth from the scotch.  My wine-obsessed brother would call it blasphemy to imbibe an entire scotch before reviewing another liquid.  Ha!  He doesn't know what he's missing!  Very tasty is all I can say.  A nice winter buzz drink.  Probably wouldn't want to get drunk on this seeing as it has so much dairy but it's a nice day drinking kind of mixer in my opinion.  It's no Caucasian but at the very least it's an Oriental (racism is hilarious!)

CANDY CANE LANE TEA

Decided to play the Weepies' Christmas song "All that I want" for this so I feel all Christmassy right now!  This tea is great.  Can taste the mint, not too weak and it's nice and sweet and flavourful.  It's a good tea, what can I say?  And it's warming me up really well.  My mouth feels a bit of a cold feeling from this afterward.  Let's try a swish.  Eh, more mint, nothing new.  But it's warm and the mint is prominent and I like it and that's that, alright?  Leave it alone for God's sakes.

Okay bye.

Announcement!  The saddest song of the week is Stars by The Weepies (especially this particular music video for the song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pV9M7GYOKM

Next week we eat greek fire.

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 3

Greetings ghosts!

Listening to: Death Cab for Cutie, Taylor Swift, The Weepies
Watching: 30 Rock
(Don't worry, this becomes important later.  Nah, just kidding.)

Today is feast day apparently.  I'm staying up late for this but it's worth it because I am having a stoner tea party for one!  Today's spread consists of 6 items; a chocolate crepe snack, strawberry wafers, macarons, super special crackers with swiss, cheddar and smoked cheddar, Johnnie Walker scotch and cinnamon-vanilla tea.  Nom nom nom is all I can say aboot that, eh?

First item I will eat is… hard to pick.  Okay, I think I'll go for the crackers.

CRACKERS WITH CHEESE

These are actually special, super thin crackers that I got from Loblaws (Savoury Crisps by 34 Degrees) with a cute spirally design that essentially stand back and let the filling speak for itself and offer a few little improvements.  I'm using cheddar, swiss and smoked cheddar inside the crackers, very thinly sliced in cracker sandwich format.



Cheddar:

Mmmm, great chewy texture, the cheddar is just so nicely emphasized yet shrouded a bit by the cracker.  I love how thin they are. Super tasty and a cute, pleasant-to-feel-in-your-mouth snack.  Does that mean it has mouth feel?  Fuck if I know.

Smoked cheddar:

Taste the smoke right away.  It seems quite emphasized and perhaps also coloured by the cracker.  Tastes like a roaring fireplace in the dead of winter. The texture of the smoked cheddar works really well with the thin, malleable, chewy cracker.  Bam! is all I can say.

Swiss:

Mmm… So good.  Swiss is so much lighter than the forceful smoked cheddar.  To me, it tastes like stinky feet, but like a delicious stinky feet that you would eat.  Yep, all of these cheeses taste phenomenal with these crackers.  Can't get over how nice the texture of the cracker and cheese feels it my mouth.  These crackers are truly a pleasure to eat.  Sad that that's over, although that does mean I'm onto my fucking 3-course dessert because why not diabetes, right?

MACARONS

Got these from my local grocery store bakery.  I love these so I'm guessing I will enjoy this.  3 flavours, which will be announced as I go.  Also, that is what they were labeled as but the labels could be wrong.

Blueberry:

Ultra amazing great!  Texture hits me right away, super soft and easy to bite into.  Definitely blueberry. Sugary, but that works for this dessert.  Very flavourful as well.

Pistachio:

Yup, definitely pistachio.  They nailed the flavour.  Absolutely delicious.  Nice and creamy and sweet.  My god these things are wonderful.

Either Pumpkin Spice or Creamsicle (both of those were orange):

It's a gamble.  If it's Pumpkin Spice my crush likes me and if it's Creamsicle he doesn't.  PUMPKIN SPICE!  Oh wow, they did a good job.  That is a perfect Halloween treat.  Creamy again, the spices are there but not overpowering.  Really good.

STRAWBERRY WAFERS

Yup, those taste both good and of strawberry.  Great texture; that's half the reason you buy them right there.  Although, they do have a bit of an artificial flavour, definitely overly sweet as well.  They aren't as good as the other treats.

CHOCOLATE CREPE SNACK

Mmm… I warmed it up.  Chocolatey, definitely tastes like crepe (pun not at all intended).  The chocolate tastes very dark and rich.  I personally would prefer more of a milk chocolate but it's good for what it is.  I'm cold and the warmth of it is definitely making me feel cozy.  Not too sweet.  It's good, but not amazing.

SCOTCH

Bottoms up.  The sweet stuff from before definitely makes this taste sweet.  I wonder what kind of pairings I could do with this.  Very interesting flavour.  Tastes way better high than sober for some reason.  I think it tastes too gasoline-ish and bitter sober but high and after some sweets it tastes sweet and pleasant.  It really warms me up inside - very toasty flavour.  Oh, swishing it in my mouth is a recipe for burning of the mouth and bitter, gasoline taste.  Yeah, I think I'll just sip without swishing.  Well, one more swish just to make sure I didn't miss anything noteworthy beyond gasoline taste.  Nah.  Not a big fan of this scotch.  I hope that isn't blasphemy in the scotch circles.  I'm sure they consider me a troglodyte anyway so whatever.

CINNAMON-VANILLA TEA

Can't have a tea party without tea!  It's herbal!  It tastes kind of weird.  I can pick up the cinnamon.  Kind of a strange subtle cinnamon taste.  Can taste the vanilla only slightly.  It's mostly just watery.  Not a huge fan of this.  I steeped it a while so the weak flavour is not my fault.  Yeah, this tea is meh.

So… 2 were amazing, 2 were okay and 2 were bad or meh.  A full gamut of quality.  Honestly I thought I'd love all of it so that's surprising.  Ta-ta for now!

Next week we eat yellow snow and the little known orange snow.  

Stoner Food Reviews (Rebaked!), Day 2

Good afternoon, spectres!

Today I am waking and baking because I was actually too high to review last night.  As a stoner, I have a responsibility to drop the ball immediately upon doing any sort of daily regimen, yes, even eating.  So today I am doing two reviews.  Wake and bake and then evening delight.  As an added bonus I am going to go to work high (don't worry, I'm not driving, like a stoner would have a car!  Ha!)  Listening to Ed Sheeran today because that's relevant.

Okay, so our first dish is a dal makhani curry by Gits instant curries served with some succulent basmati rice.  I am dying of hunger.  It was extremely treacherous not actually eating the curry before writing.  Agh.  Okay so I'm going to eat now.

DAL MAKHANI

Yes, yes, delicious.  Nice and hearty, kind of almost has a beefy taste, the lentils in this.  Apart from Paneer Makhani and Chana Masala, this is one of my favourite curry dishes and Gits does a good job.  I think I added a hint too much rice to mine, but that was my mistake, not anyone else's!  Not being accusatory.  Yes, quite nice with the rice.  I had a thought, but I forgot.  Can taste the spiciness as well but it's pretty mild, which is good because I can't take things that are too spicy.  This curry is so creamy, it's just so good with a nice bed of rice.  I keep rhyming nice and rice.  I like that this one has both the lentils and some kidney beans because the beans really give it a nice beefy protein.  It is just a good curry.  Like a nice, proteiny, hearty hug that isn't going to kill you as much as other food that are hugs, you know, comfort food, filling and delicious and comforting somehow.  Make you feel full and fluffy and nice.  That's 90% of what I eat which probably explains my quite visible weight problem.  Aren't I fat?  Ha, you have no idea.

Next up, I guess I have time for an ice cream sandwich!

ICE CREAM SANDWICH

I believe these things are by selection.  Mmmm delicious, sweet, chewy soft texture.  Soo good.  Very tiny things.  Gone before you realized you wanted one.  Nah.  I am forced to savour today.  They make the cookies of these ones very soft and chocolatey.  Did a very good job.  Selection brand can be hit and miss.  It's just a very well done typical ice cream sandwich, nothing fancy.  I like.

Okay bye for now.

Next time we eat corn!  And this time it will be different, Steve!