🚀 go-pugleaf

Julian Macassey <julian@tele.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 00:16:41 -0800, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
>>
>> But, having spent time with Chowhound and with my home food newsgroup,
>> ba.food, I have to say that Chowhound is a pale imitation of a real
>> newsgroup.

>       Web forums like chowhound are for people who don't have a
>decent newsreader and haven't learned to edit.

I hope this isn't a blanket statement.

That is, a great many web forums -- not all, and Tim was careful
to make this distinction -- are pretty dull. A web forum, after
all, is only as good as the people running it. Most of the time
they're administered by people who just want to promote their
business, and discourage anything that doesn't do this.

Chowhound, which was featured in _The New Yorker_, is a food snob
forum. Our friend "Charger" looked at the chowhound site, and said
it was designed for the sort of person who would demand to see a
steak before the restaurant cooked it. On the other hand, if someone
wants to set up a web forum for a more interesting purpose, they can
do so. And in at least one case I know of, they have.

ObFood: Today I went into the Ranch 99 Asian market in Cupertino.
I bought many Oriental goodies, including a durian.

When I went to the checkout line, I noticed a cart full of groceries
waiting to the side. A few minutes later, an older Chinese woman
walked up. I asked her if she had been there before, and told her
that she could go ahead of me. 

She said that was OK, because I didn't have very much stuff. She
looked at my durian, and said it wasn't a very good durian. She
told me that she would go back to the durian display and get me
a better one.

I kept an eye on her stuff. In a few minutes, she came back with
a better durian. She showed me the bright yellow flesh showing through
a nick in the side. She handed me the durian, put her arm around me
and tickled the palm of my hand.

The clerk admired the durian, and said it was a really _good_ durian.
She and my friend gabbled in Chinese about what a good durian it 
really was.

I'm not sure if this woman was a lesbian, or just being friendly.
I didn't stick around to find out.

I'm left, however, with two questions:

1) How _do_ you tell what's a good durian?

2) If someone was going to be groped in a Ranch 99 market by an
aging lotus blossom, why, why on earth couldn't it be Julian
instead of me?

Lenore Levine

-- 
"I repeat for all prospective despots, kings, saviors, democratic
freedom fighters, and the like: _Frequent rummage sales_. You never
know but you might pick up the secret of universal domination at
one, and at a sweet price." -- Tony Daniel