I am an inveterate snob. It�s something that I have nearly ceased to apologize for. Really, what I mean is this: I am a lover of pleasures of the flesh. I do not refer to The Sex, strictly, but rather a love of the world and the things of the world. I don�t bother eating food if it�s lousy. I won�t waste my time and money on things that are cheap yet ill-made. I have nothing wrong with things cheap, just so long as they won�t break beyond my skill to repair them.
I guess I find some things worth the money. I have a very high standard when it comes to food, and feel that while charging more money for something doesn�t make it better, good bread can cost you. Good store-bought tomatoes will cost you a mint, but I will not eat any other store bought tomatoes. I won�t waste my time on bad, cheap bread, or lousy airy ice cream. I would rather go without (and often do, I am on a student�s budget, believe it or not) than eat lousy food.
I argue with my friend about the four-dollar-a-pound tomatoes my family has been known to buy. Our grocery store has been stocking Brandywines, which are arguably one of the meatiest and flavorful tomatoes bred. If you grow them on your own, they are rich and dark. They are the highlights of my summer � I eat them straight in thick slices with olive oil and basil and vinegar. They are also hideously ugly, particularly if you grow them yourself. They break and ooze no matter what, but it�s fine, and you just cut away the broken parts and enjoy. Store-bought Brandywines aren�t as good as home-grown but they�re still pretty impressive for store tomatoes. My family feels it�s worth it to buy them. I mean, what can I say? We choose to delegate some of our disposable income for good tomatoes, fine bread, good olives and olive oil, champagne vinegar. There are only so many meals in a day, and we make expensive choices. We also make inexpensive choices: we grow our own vegetables; we live out of the garden.
I hate having to justify myself in this regard. I fully anticipate a day when I will not be subsidized by my parents and I will be on a meager income living out of an apartment. I won�t be able to grow tomatoes, and I won�t be able to afford expensive Brandywines. So I will do without, or my parents may send me some canned tomatoes, and really canned tomatoes from the supermarket are fine for most purposes and likely better than fresh tomatoes. I will buy cherry tomatoes, because they�re good and inexpensive. I will live well without blowing a budget. But I won�t eat lousy food just because I haven�t got a lot of money. They don�t understand this. They don�t understand that I think it�s worth it to buy better produce. They think I�m a wild spendthrift, but I�m not, I just think that few things are so intensely pleasurable as a really good orange, or a really good tomato.
Look. I shop at thrift stores. I buy my books and records used. I make my own postcards. I prefer to attend the movies on cheap days, the museums when they�re free to students. I�m fine with scavenging for furniture, for doing things myself, for saving my money and being frugal. I know I�m an expensive child for my parents but they offer to pay for things and I take them up on it. And yet I�m the extravagant one of my friends. A bad haircut isn�t worth the money. My friends may cut my hair for free, but they don�t necessarily do a very good job. Sometimes I like going out to expensive places for dinner, though the expense doesn�t mean the food is great, the expense alone shouldn�t make one cut it out altogether.
Another thing my friends don�t understand is this: I don�t live in fear of The Bomb. They�re all horrified by the end of Dr. Strangelove, but I�m not. If that happens, it won�t be (directly) because of my actions, I mean, I�m an American so I suppose I�m somehow indirectly responsible for what my nation does, but I can�t really picture that too well. Anyway, it will be out of my control. I�ll be dead or I�ll be alive, but it won�t matter. There are things in the world that over which I have no control, and I don�t worry about them. It�s the things I do control that make me worry because I never seem to have such a great grasp on them anyway. They think I�m such a monster, or beyond comprehension for thinking things like this. I don�t understand it.
2002-09-15, blah
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