Yelling From the Mountain Top: A reason to blog

It has occurred to me on several occasions since my mates and I decided to create this esteemed blog that there was a reason for it in the first place. I am not getting on this particular soapbox to opine how we have strayed from our once noble goals to bitch about video games and the shit around us (although that second one is fairly close to our original idea) but instead to bitch about something we were actually fairly knowledgeable and snobbish about, restaurants. Now you may be asking yourself what in the name of Poseidon's engorged blue crank could possible qualify these nerds to talk about the relative quality of restaurants in any credible capacity. Well myself and Typhus both went to Johnson and Wales University for Culinary arts. I graduated last year and while my esteemed colleague did not graduate per se, he is bitter and highly opinionated and on the internet what more do you need, really?

All that being said, this is the event that caused us to actually go and make this blog happen. Typhus and myself were at his local mall and were waiting for our showing of the Watchmen movie to come about and we were hungry. not content with the selection offered to us by the food court and frankly feeling a bit too lazy to drive to one of the surrounding restaurants, we settled on a Pizzeria Uno in the mall. Nothing outstanding, this is the sort of chain restaurant you find peppering the country, formulaic restaurants that serve food that is generally acceptable, but far from notable. Anyhow, Typhus and I took our table and place our drink orders with our server, some 20-something guy named Chris, and sat back for our usual sort of discussion, drinks came and we looked over our menus. Now I will say up front that when it comes to ordering at this sort of place I am spoiled. I have working in kitchens for almost 7 years now and been cooking for 6 of those years. I have also taken a good amount of courses that discuss the principles of menu writing and so reading a menu from this sort of place is kind of disappointing, in the way that insiders can see through the surface and read the subtext. Anyway, after a bit of perusing the menu trying to decide what I felt like eating I settled on a pasta dish involving Jalapenos, chicken, and a cream sauce. Now as I said I don't expect much from this place, but what I got still managed to let me down. It was bland, barely appealing and there was no really effort put into it. I ate about half of it and Typhus didn't fare much better with his own dish.

This is more or less the point where the story begins, the rest is just background and context. When we had decided we'd had enough of of our respective dishes we began to look around for our server and low and behold he was no where to be found. Now Typhus and I consider ourselves to be polite and civil people when regarding professional workers. We both hate rude customers, I have seen more than my share in restaurants and Typhus in the bookstore he works at. So we decided that since we still have some time before our movie, we would just sit, converse and wait for our server to show up again, no doubt he was occupied, despite the fact we appeared to be his only table.

Twenty minutes later, there was still no sign of Chris and we were becoming quite annoyed at this point. The topic of our conversation at this point had moved to complaining about the things that bug us about mediocre restaurants such as this one and talking about starting a blog based off that topic, sort of as amateur food critics. After a few more minutes where we basically decided that Chris wasn't coming back we headed to the front of the restaurant where a manager was at the main station. We asked where our server was and were informed, that basically his shift had ended and he had left...in the middle of serving us. Either he had switched us over to another server (as is standard in this industry) and they had forgotten about us. Or he had ignored or forgotten about us altogether. Either way were were mildly insulted and this obviously did nothing to our dining experience. We decided to take the obvious route and return insult with insult. We paid our bill and left a tip of 25 cents, sure it was unlikely that this would ever come back to our original server in any meaningful way, but that didn't matter. To us the point had been made.

Yelling From the Mountain Top: Smile for the camera

I decided to get some food while I was out and about today and since one of my errands took me to an area where the handiest thing was and Au Bon Pain so that is where I went. I asked for a steak sandwich and was directed over to a warmer to get a sandwich from there. Now I could go on for hours about how this is not quality, nor is this very good service, but hell it's a franchise what did I really expect (that's a whole different rant altogether). So I take my sandwich and proceed to eat it and I have to admit, for what it is it wasn't really bad, sure there was too much jalapeno for me to finish it let alone enjoy it after a few minutes, but it was palitable.

Now as I sat there eating my mediocre sandwich I am looking over the menu behind the counter and more specifically the pictures of the food and that got me thinking. Why are those pistures such good advertising. We all know that the food will never look that nice, after all the food in those ads is crafted by the exectutive chefs of the company and photgraphed by professionals. it's something I've never been able to get a really satisfactory answer for so it continues to bug me.

Yelling From the Mountain Top: Tolerance and Ignorance

Those that know me know the way I feel about other people and their beliefs. For those that may read this and don't here is the basic summary, I don't care what you believe in, I don't care what you do do in your spare time, I don't even how you practice either of the above, so long as you are not trying to force it down my throat.

To me this seems very simple and practical, some may call this a position of ignorance. That I am refusing to look at anything that doesn't affect me, but the fact is that I take this attitude because to me it is a position of tolerance. For the record I would like to state that in many senses of the word I am a racist (aside from the fact I am in fact white, see Urban Dictionary). I do not however feel any particular need to respect a person of any given ethnicity anymore than a person of any other ethnicity. I am a firm believer in personal merit and personal responsibility. (More on those later)


I am not perfect by even the most delusion, sanity depraved imaginings of the concept, even using regular human behavior as a standard, I come no where close (First class ticket to Hell bought and paid for). So basically who the fuck am I to judge what other people do with themselves.

I personally do no believe in any form of religion or worship. I include all forms because I may miss a few if I get too specific and I would hate to leave anyone out. I have nothing against faith, hope and all those other qualities that religions generally seek to inspire (and in a few isolated incidents they actually come close) but organized religion is crap in my opinion, and any really good intentions have long since been lost to the course of time in the storm battered ocean of human nature. But enough of that, this is another rant in and of itself.

Then there is sex. I am a firm believer in the theory of Quantum Fetish Mechanics and in that theme I also believe that whatever a person may want to do with themselves (or other consenting individuals) in their own space and time is entirely their own damn business. Who am I to judge or dictate how a person conducts themselves in private (used in it's loosest meaning here). Who are we as a group to judge anyone in such a manner. This is of course excluding illegal acts as they are most likely violating the primary rule of forcing one's beliefs or practices on another. If I have to explain what sort of things qualify then you deserve to be smacked brutally around a cave with a baseball bat made out of frozen hate.

Back to the subject of racism. The idea of racism is the idea of hating another person based on their race (Shocking revelation I know). To me this is all well and good but in this day and age it is more a rationalization (and a lame one at that) more than anything, to the point it is impossible to make even the most accurate observations without being labeled a racist. If you are still reading at this point then you either; understand where I am coming from or have your email windows open and are getting ready to start flooding me with emails will never read. Either way My point is that assholes are assholes regardless of the color of their skin and Ignorance is like a bullet, as in it does more harm than good.

More rants, when I have the time and booze to write them.