Things Aren't Always What They Seem

Friday, November 23

         I took my daughter and her fiancée to the airport today at noon – it was too short a visit. I can’t feel sorry for myself, though. The two of them see each other only once a month or so; he is still at UC Riverside, and she's in Monterey, California. They need a time machine, which is why, I suppose, they are such intense Dr. Who fans. Here's Jackie, on the right at a company Halloween party, dressed as Amy in "The Impossible Astronaut" episode about the Edvard Munch-inspired Silences.

         The Silence has a face that sticks in my brain like Hannibal Lector, the only movie character I've ever had a nightmare about, unless I count the Teenage Zombies I saw when I was seven. The figure must have been in my mind when I glanced at a small photograph in a New York Times article on the WWII military carrier pigeon skeleton found in a Surrey, England chimney. Before I noticed the headline, I thought I saw the Silence figure lurking in the dark. If only the pigeon had been wearing a suit!

         The pigeon's aren't the only battle-scarred bones to be unearthed lately. An intact human male skeleton was recently found at an archeological dig near the site of the Battle of Bosworth, where King Richard III died in 1485, and where he was reportedly buried. The skull showed trauma consistent with a sword wound, and a barbed metal arrowhead was wedged between two upper vertebrae. Most interestingly, a twist in the spine suggested scoliosis, which might have caused the living person to hold one shoulder slightly higher than the other: King Richard's famous "hunchback." DNA testing, to be complete in December, will give the definitive answer; the royal bloodline is of course alive and available for comparison today.  

The site is apparently guarded by medieval knights!

         The hunchback is one of those theatrical signs of evil, something to be feared. It fits with Richard's character: conniving and power-hungry, willing to manipulate his subjects and even commit murder to gain the throne. At least that's the image we know from Shakespeare's play. It turns out that the evil king is about as real as all those ghosts in Richard's dream. In an interview on NPR's Morning Addition, Chris Skidmore, a current member of the British Parliament and author of Bosworth: the Rise of the Tutors, proposed that Richard III "had a very strong desire to promote the welfare of the poor and the ordinary people in his kingdom." He was apparently popular as well. The Tudors, who came to power upon Richard'd death, had an interest in discrediting the deceased monarch, and began a campaign of disinformation to help establish their legitimacy. Politics in 1485 was so different from now, right? If the DNA proves the royal lineage of the skeleton of Richard III, tradition may require the king to lie in state before his reburial. Let's hope it's not open casket.

Methamphetamine For The Tongue

         Apparently I have been depriving my son of a miracle substance. After being sick for a week and a half, still on antibiotics, the first food he requested was cookie butter, a product sold by Trader Joe’s, originally made from the Dutch cookie, Specuoos. How could I have been so long in the dark? We are regular TJ shoppers – it’s my favorite store, in fact. If I could find an apartment at the corner of Guadalupe and McClintock, where Trader Joe’s abuts Changing Hands Bookstore, I would move right in; all my needs could be met within a short walk. We eat Trader José’s mini tacos and Trader Ming’s pot stickers; maybe there’s been less of a promotion for Cookie Butter because there’s no Dutch equivalent to Joe.

         The main ingredient, Speculoos, does translate, as does Cookie Butter itself, the Dutch practically a homonym: koekje boter.

         Like the invention of graham cracker crust, the recipe for Cookie Butter has taken a common sweet-but-plain ingredient and changed it into something intricate and heavenly, destined to become a standard its own right. With the conversion of Speculoos, however, the intent is more sinister, the inventor more demonic than heaven-sent, like the one who first made heroine from poppies. Look at the ingredients:

         To the nearly sixty percent cookies (whose own second ingredient is “candy sugar”) the creators have added, in order of abundance, sugar, sugar syrup, two kinds of oil, and more sugar. Though it appears unhealthy but innocuous, no one who tastes it can put it aside; one spoonful equals addiction. In texture and beta-carotene-enhanced color, it resembles an actual food product, a purposeful ruse to lure unsuspecting parents into buying it. A side affect of excess beta-carotene consumption is orange-tinged skin; watch for this as a sign of CB abuse in your own family.

         Cary first ate Cookie Butter at a friend's house on apple slices, another ploy to enhance its innocent-appearing front. Its use has spread throughout all the high schools in the area. Now he has introduced the drug to my daughter and her  fiancée, in from California for Thanksgiving. Today they hopped on their airplane as new addicts. I suspect Levi will soon be setting up a home cookie butter factory in his basement alongside his miniature microbrewery.