condiments tender square i. dante’s inferno “dumb & dumber” is one of my favorite movies of all time. if it’s airing on tv, i’ll watch it no matter how much i may have already missed, with the exception of one scene: whenever lloyd and harry, after eating a bunch of hot peppers, start retching and try cooling their tongues off with a steady stream of ketchup and mustard, i cover my eyes in horror. ii. a very short list of acceptable condiments 1. ranch dressing 2. aioli* 3. trace amounts of bbq sauce (only in the rarest of occasions) *but never mayo iii. kenny rogers while bonding over a shared love of the "jackass" franchise, mr. tender square pulls up a "madtv" spoof of will sasso in a white mullet wig and hits play, thinking i’ll enjoy it. “i’m kenny rogers and welcome to jackass. this is the condiment challenge.” ::: huge bowls of condiments are set on a table and a bunch of men start shoveling it into their mouths and throwing it on each other ::: i recoil from the screen, exclaiming, “IT’S EVERYTHING I HATE ABOUT CONDIMENTS!” mr. tender square had no idea; how in the hell did he intuit my achilles heel without me ever having mentioned it? iv. some definitions mortuusequusphobia (noun) a fear of ketchup and other condiments. mortuusequusphobic (adjective) a person with a fear of ketchup and other condiments. v. without fail why is it that every time i’m trying to watch a show, all of the commercial breaks must have at least one ad with not just condiments, but oozing ones? a slow-mo roll of ketchup creeps out of a glass bottle for an eternity; fast-food chains with their omnipotent hand that gently taps the bun for the final squishy shot; a little girl opens sauce packets in the backseat for her burger, and condiments are dripping all over her face, her clothes, the car interior, and her dad just smiles up at her from the rear-view mirror like it’s the cutest fucking thing he ever saw. vi. an irreconcilable contradiction “i don’t get it babe, how can you be so averse to condiments when you worked at mcdonald’s for five years?” i stopped having exposure therapy, i guess? vii. everything in its right place i can be a little type-a when it comes to organizing. i like order. i prefer schedules. the “big 5” personality test classifies these umbrella characteristics as “conscientiousness.” several studies have found that there’s a correlation between high levels of conscientiousness and disgust sensitivity. apparently, when i was a baby, i couldn’t stand having a dirty face or hands. viii. truce if ever i start razzing mr. tender square for his hobbit feet or tie the strings together on his hoodie, he’ll say to me, “babe, let’s go outside and turn on the mustard spigot so we can fill up the kiddie pool for you to play in” and i have to run from the room with my fingers in my ears. who brings a nuclear warhead to a street fight?! ix. an unholy alliance why are condiments so shiny and viscid? and why are their colors so damn saturated? it’s unsettling. it’s not just the sauces themselves that bother me, it’s the containers they are bottled in. seeing the lemon-yellow plastic beside the ruby red is visually inharmonious. it offends my eyes. x. my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard i took a big sip of my chocolate shake, gagged, and spit it out. turns out john had sucked ketchup through the straw when i was in the bathroom. he and paul and tj nearly fell out of our booth, howling. note to self: never leave food unattended, lest you let the condiments win. 210829 ... unhinged korean food banchan i go to the little h mart near the university and find the gojuchang paste section. i can't read any of the labels because they are all in korean. i choose the one with the blue thermometer that ends in a chili pepper rather than the red. i'm not a wuss about spicy food but all the korean friends i've had over the years can tolerate superhuman levels of scoville units. i am getting better at being illiterate in the h mart. my guess seemed to be correct...my american tongue of eastern european ancestry tolerates the cool gojuchang to the point where i am almost brave enough to buy the red thermometer the next time i run out. almost... 210829 ... unhinged i mean gochujang dangit 210829 ... epitome of incomprehensibility gochujang - I'll make a note of that. I don't mind the taste of mainstream ketchup and mustard, but why ARE they those colours? Not appetizing. Homemade ketchup is nicer! It's like fruit chutney. A simple dressing for a sweet-tinged salad (like one that has pieces of apple, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, mint, or other sweetish things): -Peanut butter (w/o added salt or sugar) -Peanut oil (about the same amount as the peanut butter) -Lemon juice (about half that amount) -Honey (same as the lemon juice) Yes, it's like a peanut butter sandwich in a salad dressing, but I've put weirder things on the_salad_page. Actually, this is probably ON that page already. Regardless! 210829 ... e_o_i puts lemon juice on everything (or most of it) 210829 ... e_o_i Like, salad? Lemon juice! Tea? Lemon juice! The Statue of Liberty? Lemon juice! The quadratic equation? Lemon juice! Jan Sobieski III, warrior king of Poland? Well, only if he's into it. 210829 ... unhinged one of my korean culinary_epiphanies that i would have never discovered in the midwest...well at least when i left a decade ago i don't remember any Korean food easily available because i detested chicago...more than likely there is korean food there it's fermented chili paste so it kinda has a miso taste to me and i buy the not so spicy kind and also use very sparingly. i feel more as adventurous with food lately...maybe as a productive distraction. 210830 ... tender_square michael casually mentioned that duke's mayo bowl was held a couple of days ago in charlottesville while i was chopping up veggies for my salad. "you know that thing they do at games where they dump gatorade all over the coach?" i looked up from chopping on the cutting board. "yeah?" "well, they did that at this game but with something different…" he trailed off, arms crossed while he waited for my reaction. i knew what he was insinuating immediately. "oh, they did not! you're making it up to mess with me!" he chuckled, held up his hands in surrender. "i’m serious." "no!" i was horrified. i turned from him and started shaking my head repeatedly to dislodge the image from my brain. "and get this, the two guys handling the cooler, accidentally hit the coach on the head with it before they dumped it out all over him." "that’s *terrible.* wait—remind me, do they do this dumping thing on the coach for the team that wins, or for the team that loses?" "the team that wins." michael was grinning. i started faux gagging in response, which led to real gagging, because of my high disgust sensitivity. "imagine your shoes after that was dumped on you," he said. "imagine you had to get on a plane after and those were the only clothes you had to wear." "no! don’t! i can’t!" he was bent over in laughter. "that’s, like, my worst fear!" he shot up back up and stopped laughing. "fear?!" i opened the fridge to return the veggies to the crisper. "yes," i said emphatically. "it is." "you can’t have a 'fear of condiments!'" "yes. you. can. you have a fear of heights and i don’t tease you about that." our banter had turned serious. "that’s because you can die from a great height," he argued. "you can’t die from condiments." "that may be true, but i still fear them." "what’s to fear?" he sighed. "i can't stand engaging with it on a sensory level at all. what you described happening to that coach is—literally—my worst nightmare." michael knows this. he's known it from when we first got together. 220101 what's it to you? who go blather from