re: how can this be?

amazing! the ny times heard my call and rescued me from my bafflement. from "Thinking Outside the Can: A Fresh Look at Food in a Box" by kate murphy, nyt, march 14, 2004

"...Aseptic packaging tends to cost more, but it also allows for more delicate processing of foods than do alternative methods like canning. As a result, aseptically packaged products are especially plentiful in high-end natural and epicurean food stores like Whole Foods Market, where shelves are stacked with boxes of roasted red pepper soup, hazelnut milk and loganberry juice....

"...The technology for commercial aseptic processing has been available for a half-century and took hold in Europe in the early 1960's, but it was not approved for food in the United States until 1981. Parmalat, the Italian conglomerate now in bankruptcy and embroiled in an accounting scandal, embraced the technology early and became the world's most widely distributed brand of milk.

"The process involves sterilizing the packaging and the food product separately and then filling and sealing the containers in a sterile environment. That allows the food to retain more color, texture, taste and nutrition than it does when subjected to the more heat-intensive conventional methods used in canning and bottling.

"Manufacturers were slow to adopt aseptic technology in the United States because of high equipment costs and slow line speeds, and because the brick-shaped packaging was unfamiliar to American consumers.

"But the cost of aseptic machinery has declined significantly in the last five years, while energy costs have gone up. "It takes less energy to run an aseptic plant," said Andrew H. Jacobson, general manager of the nondairy division of the Hain Celestial Group, based in Melville, N.Y., which sells more than 100 aseptically packaged products, including Soy Dream and Rice Dream beverages and Imagine soups and broths. Manufacturers also save because they do not have to add vitamins and minerals to replace those lost in processing.

"And, of course, there is no need for refrigerated storage or refrigerated delivery trucks. "The return on capital is great if you can stand the initial investment," which is $5 million to $7 million for a basic aseptic operation, Mr. Jacobson said. The major equipment suppliers, all based outside the United States, include Tetra Pak of Sweden, Krones of Germany, Shibuya Kogyo of Japan, Procomac and SIG Simonazzi of Italy, and Stork Food and Dairy Systems, a unit of the Stork Group of the Netherlands...."

link to article

our graceful new prez

if you go to www.mtr.org, you'll see right at the top a picture of our new president. even tho it's only a picture of his head, he somehow manages to look short. he is. he's also the type who doesn't think it polite to nod to his underlings even when they are standing right next to him, nay, scooping cream cheese from the same tin as he. damn yankee jew.

damn the man, save...empiricism

this weekend ed and i watched empire records (he had never seen it!), only it was the dvd version, and so of course they had to put in scenes (some of questionable merit, as is usual for dvd rereleases) that were not in the original movie. like, after rex manning fucks renee zellweger, and a.j. jumps him and then rex punches a.j., and the kids say 'you're just a washed-up has-been, man,' 'we all hate your new album,' and 'your hair looks stupid,' instead of mockingly bowing and saying 'why don't you all just...fade away' rex says, 'hmm, you may be right' and leaves. they had this whole undeveloped dimension of rex's character being a real person, a guy who was passionate about guitar and who was sad about his campy fame (there's even an implausible scene with rex and berko smoking in front of a lake, and berko inexplicably has his guitar with him so they can have a lead-in for this soft-side-of-rex conversation. and there's even an extra scene in which the band on the roof at the end plays 'say no more, mon amour' in this alterna-rock way, and rex and berko sing together, and rex looks truly happy and isn't wearing eyeshadow anymore. also the dvd includes the whole 'say no more' video, which is hi-larious. lots of frilly shirts and water and ros-ay being splashed orgasmically on the harem of rex women. i recommend the dvd version if only for that. otherwise, you're in for a lot of partially developed subplots, some details you probably would have inferred from the vhs version if you had thought really hard about it, and a graphic comment about blue cheese dressing.

how can this be?

why is parmalat 2% milk so rich and so creamy compared to its milk brethren, and how does it stay good for weeks, even once opened?

yeow, what a hangover

last night was the museum's annual gala, where semi-rich and semi-famous people pay $1000 a head to go to the waldorf and tribute a very rich and very famous celebrity. this time it was tom brokaw, and dan rather and peter jennings (who is a womanizer--who knew?) gave heartwarming and noncontroversially funny speeches. conan o'brien hosted. the idea is that well fed, emotionally primed people in a room with charming celebrities, lots of booze, and swelling music accompanied by nostalgic tv images will start to feel like they are part of something important and larger than themselves and, because they have nowhere in particular to spend their money because they are not famous and don't know it's all a load of crap anyway, they siphon it into the museum.

most museum employees go, and we check the rich people in, give them table cards, etc, but then we sit down too and see the whole thing. not really worth $1000, but i filled up on steak and wine, both of which were very red. the special events chicks had a room to stay the night, so we grabbed as many of the leftover wine bottles as we could carry and went up there in our fancy clothes and smoked in the bathroom. it was so very prom, except for the hours of gossip and dramatizations of catty situations at work, which are pretty threadbare to begin with. and, of course, there was the loud, drunken conversation about who at the museum you'd fuck if you had to pick someone, and frankly people's answers were very revealing. i was surprised--no one picked anybody our age, not even the chuck-taylors-and-a-tie kid, and instead it was a pretty even split between the tall white-haired vp (firm handshake) and the tall black maintenance guy who smiles at everyone.

if you want a sexy occupation, try copyediting

one of our upcoming screening series is the history of gays and lesbians on tv. it can make for some unintentionally racy emails, even in our rote officespeak. like the one i just sent, "how long is the young and restless gay teen package?"

also last week i saved museum face (perhaps regrettably) by turning a line in a brochure meant to attract socialites and make $$$. before i got to it, the first line of this brochure was,

These remarkable, invitation-only gatherings begin with cock-

really they mean to say cocktails, so i turned cock to the next line. but i'm beginning to regret it; i think they're better off beginning with cock. then we'll see about the cocktails.

so the other day i went for a second opinion on whether i should have surgery on my ankle, and it was the worst doctor experience i've ever had. i was there for three hours, most of it waiting. i think the little kids who sob in doctor's offices are onto something. no wonder there are lollipops. i've come to realize there's just no way to get around it--my ability to run five miles a day for the rest of my life is contingent on some other person's idiosyncratic way of gathering information and synthesizing concepts. maybe orthopedists are a slightly slower breed of doctor--the golden retriever of the medical world, if you will--but i wish they wouldn't let it all hang out so much. this one wanted to take an x-ray with my foot turned in sharply, which admittedly was a new way for me, and a good idea, i think (tho he took all these other x-rays and didn't look at my MRIs, and if i had known he would do that, i would have brought my x-rays instead), and this x-ray involved putting my leg in a vice-grip-type thing, but not before studying the diagram on the back of the grip's assembly manual for a good five minutes while i was standing there watching him, and then turning a handle so that my foot would turn in and turn in until my ankle hurt. except he put the pushy part of the grip in the middle of my shin, so of course when you go to turn the knob, my shin will be the limiting factor for the turning, not my ankle. and i was like, you don't understand, my shin already hurts; my ankle does not. you must move the grip. so he moved it UP my leg, and my ankle turned even less because my shin was even more in the way. i was like, sir, if you please, move this grip thing close to my ankle, and you will see how very far it turns. i have a hard time with spatial relationships sometimes, so i understand how easy it is to completely flip spaces around like in a mirror and proceed confidently in precisely the wrong way, but my god, if you are a surgeon!! this alone (never mind the cruel assistant, the hours of waiting, and the lack of lollipops) exempted me from listening to anything he said thereafter. i was so mad by the time i got home that i went for a run in the dark on an uneven surface.