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It was in my first semester at UC Berkeley that I got fully introduced to just how dumb, rambling, and endless a "question" could be. There was this woman in my Modernist Poetry class (don't laugh, it was the best class and Thom Gunn one of the best lecturers I ever had, may that gifted man forever hyperbole (ie RIP)) who was obviously a re-entry student. These students are people that I admire in general. They're coming to college at a late point than the rest of the students (post 30's) and they're balancing a full time job and often raising kids to go to school. They are usually only at a state college level though and you don't see too many at the UC level. Regardless, there was this woman, who I think was some kind of ex druggie that had slipped her way in to Berkeley somehow. I assume this because of the ragged, negatively synaptic questions she would ask. Here's a typical example:       "Ezra Pound was a really complicated guy. I think that in your reading a lot of things make sense and a lot don't, but overall he was trying to do something new. So, do you think it was possible, that maybe, he could have, possibly been interested in attempting to wonder how it could that he was never ever thinking about how it could have been that he was ahead of his time?"       To which Gunn would usually respond, "Sure, I think that's possible. Next."       And I kid you not. Her questions were really like this and if you had been on the South Side of campus kicking back badly-mixed sangria from someone's bathtub the night before, it was all the more painful to sit through. Well, it appears she was preparing me for real life.       It seems that white people in the US can't really ask a proper question most of the time. At first I thought it was everyone and just a certain subset of population at large, but after sitting through a talk by John Francis at the SF Public Library yesterday, I realized that a) it's not everyone and b) it's freakin' white folk who can't simply get to the point of asking a question.       I mean, Dr. Francis was an animated speaker who talked about things that are relatively common sense, but are things he has had a great deal of time to think about due to a vow of not using motorized transport and a vow of silence that lasted for a good chunk of his life. But after the talk, there were the white folk stating these idiotic pontifications before actually getting to a question that was ultimately uninteresting. All these questions were blueprinted on the similar ones that the re-entry student asked back in my Berkeley days and Dr. Francis would always have to think for a second and ask for clarification on what they were asking. Whenever it was anyone nonwhite asking the question, it was just that, a question.       Now that I've realized this behavior I think that it stems from one of two possible causes:       1) Hyperactive Political Correctedness. I think that those who are more liberal in the white community at large are so scared of offending someone that this translates in to padding everything that we Caucasians say so that there is no possible way it could be taken wrong. I often get accused of generalizing by folks. And from their standpoint, it's true, I am. But, from mine, I'm just getting to the point. I'm not beating around the bush because I believe that if you have something to say: fucking say it.       2) Arrogance. A great many of these "questions" seem to start with a good deal of reaction and "insight" on the part of the person asking the question. The question seems to be merely an excuse to show off how much they know or how smart they think they are on a subject. I think that whiteness plays in to the equation as they have grown up with the benefit of someone telling them that their opinion matters or is more valid simply because of their skin tone.       Whatever the real cause, the end result is that whenever one of my white brothers asks a question in a Q&A session, I cringe. I know that in what little question there is posed, it will be so shrouded in linguistic mystery that it was better off not being asked, which is why I often don't ask question at these things because it is very rare that I feel I have anything terribly important to ask for everyone to hear.

Ah, Frog's Leap, how I adore thee. Sure, I've written about how much I liked this winery the first time I went there last year, but now I have even more reasons to gush like an idiot. For one, they don't charge for their tastings and tours, which I erroneously thought were $10 when I wrote about them last year. They make you attend one on a schedule and no, you can't have the tasting without the tour, but they do not charge. They also give you healthy pours and are willing to top you off at any point you might need it.       Our tour guide was a bit irreverent and we had to hear the founder's name a bit more than way too much, but she was fine and even borderlined on funny at points, but just borderlined. It was great to learn more about the winery, since I just thought they made great wines. As it turns out, they solar power the place, geo-thermally cool it (pipes 200 feet underground), organically (and damned near biodynamically) farm it, employ their "seasonal" workers full time with full benefits, as well as dry farm the grapes. For those unfamiliar, dry farming is using no irrigation. Most everyone in Napa does use irrigation which is part of the reason the wines are so idiotically high in alcohol because they are able to keep them on the vine longer. At Frog's Leap, they're forced to harvest when the grapes and weather say it's time, which means that they have a lot lower sugar and thus, less alcohol in the finished wine. Why would you want less alcohol you might ask? Simple, you get more flavor and just more betterness. Plus, you can enjoy a lot more delicious wine instead of just one glass of a Zinfandel that might be 19% these days from other wineries. I mean, when you think about it, that's nearly a 40 proof wine, which is kinda nasty. With Frog's Leap, you don't get that.       Naturally, the wines aren't super cheap. They're lower in price than a lot of other wineries in Napa that I think aren't nearly as good. They are also damnable because there is simply no way you are going to get out of Frog's Leap without buying something. Hell, even their Merlot is good. I am going to run with the assumption that this is why they don't charge for tastings.

Napa Valley confounds me as to how it is able to change so radically from year to year. It's not so much that there are new things popping up, but more that the price of the place keeps going up at an alarming pace. My last visit there was a touch over a year ago. It seemed to be the case that wine tastings generally ran about $5 minimum and up to $12 maximum with some rare $25 tastings like at Rubicon. This latest visit over the weekend showed that tasting fees have just about doubled. Finding a $5 flight seems nearly impossible and attached to that is the fact that you don't even get to keep the glasses anymore, which wasn't something that drove me to taste at a winery, but at least it was something.       Don't get me wrong, but I do completely agree with having some kind of tasting fee. Back in the days when there were no tasting fees, it was nuts. People got thoroughly tossed and were pretty much just mooching wine up there. The fees keep this in check to some degree, but as we saw there still are accidents along the treacherous Highway 29. But it has to be said that at some point the tasting fees are just out of hand. For $15, you maybe get around 2 dl or a half glass of wine after finishing all the tastes; maybe. It's actually getting to be cheaper to go to a wine bar outside the area to try new wines, which doesn't make any sense when you're tasting at the source.       Time and again, I keep thinking that the wineries should band together to create a shuttle bus that picks people up at the Vallejo ferry terminal to a) cut down on road traffic b) cut down on drunk drivers and c) promote the valley more in an environmental manner. But, when I look at how much these guys rake in, like V. Sattui whose wine is crap and yet manages to sell 100,000+ cases just out of his winery, I understand why Napa doesn't take on a shuttle project. And this is what it really comes down to: greed. Of course, this is starting to bite back at the wineries.       Whereas San Francisco is flooded with tourists, all of the folks I asked up in Napa said that their receipts were down. All the Europeans coming to the City aren't making the rounds up to Napa. Perhaps it is time for that shuttle after all? But, a lot of the folks up there were hoping that locals would come back more because of high fuel costs, except that we aren't because to go and spend $10 on average to taste wines and then spend $35+ on a bottle of wine is not tenable. I know that this is going to be my only trip for the year.       While I don't know for certain, we might actually start to see some changes with how Napa does business. The wine market is flooded with tons of wines these days and good wines too, like those from Spain. There are tons of other options in this area including Sonoma Valley, Alexander Valley, and Paso Robles. The latter of these has some of the best priced California wines I've had in some time. Who knows though, as Napa Valley has massive brand recognition and folks bound to amble up and back to there for some time to come, unless gas continues to be more properly priced.

It's true that pancakes are not so common in The Europe and that being the case, there are next to no recipes using metric measurements which aren't actually recipes for crepes in disguise. Every time I try to make pancakes when at the in laws, things go a bit, well, screwy when I try to convert things since the American/British standard system of measure is crap, nonsensical, and doesn't covert well in to a base ten system. Because of this, I finally sat down and properly weighed and measured everything in metric from a pancake recipe that I happen to like a great deal.       Ingredients:       250-275ml of milk       130g of flour       30g sugar       10-12g of baking powder       2g salt       45ml cooking oil       1 egg       You mix together all of the dry ingredients first. If using all purpose flour, then just 10g of baking powder is needed. If using whole wheat flour, use a solid 12g of the baking powder.       Mix the milk, egg, and cooking oil together. Start with 250ml of milk in that mix. Add in the wet ingredients to the dry slowly and stir. If it's too thick, add in a bit more milk. If it's too thin and watery, you've basically gone crepe and add more flour. If you really want to go crepe, then have it thin and toss in another egg.       Use a non-stick pan or use butter to grease a standard pan (my preference as they cook up more golden.) Pour out a small spoonful on a pan and cook that side until the batter starts to bubble. Flip and let it cook to golden brown. Remove and repeat until the batter is gone and that's it, pancakes for the rest of the world. I mean, it's so much easier to increase the batch, since doubling 250ml instead of 1 2/5 cups makes a lot more sense.

I came across mention of Mohammed Bello Abubakar before. This is a Muslim Nigerian fellow with 86 wives. Naturally the question arises as to why anyone would want to have that many wives, but who am I to judge.       Word has come down the he must choose only four. Yes, that's right, he has to really back it up and have just four ladies. If he doesn't comply with this, he's going to be put to death.       I see two outcomes for this. Seeing as how he's 84, he could very just go with the death option. That would probably be my choice. The other choice would be to sell this to an broadcasting company to make some kind of American Idol show where we go through an elimination system. I see the title now, Wife Hunt: Nigeria. You know it would spawn massive ratings as well as subsequent seasons. I can even see the reunion show now:       "Wife 37, how did it make you feel to be eliminated in just the first round?"       "Well, Carson, I was sad at first, but because I didn't have any children, I eventually found my way in to a home where there were only eight wives. It was really a step up for me."       "So, everyone was a winner?"       "Yes, yes, Carson, I'd have to say that everyone was a winner."       "Dear god I love doing my part to save Africa."       This article was cross posted on Subsaharska

I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade now. I've live in San Francisco for just a bit over half of that and I have never, ever seen it so packed with tourists as it is now. The vast majority of them are from EU countries because naturally, SF is a pretty good bargain when you factor in that exchange rate which makes everything 1/3 off. It's a lot better than going to Europe where suddenly everything is 50% more.       Folks seem to be coming from everywhere on the Continent. I haven't seen so many British as a weak dollar is nothing new to them, so why go and hang out with Spaniards, French, Germans, and the Dutch when that can be done in Spain. It's just wild to see the streets looking like Barcelona or Venice. Thankfully this only really happens in August, so in theory things will be returning back to ho-hum in a few weeks.       I would chat about it further, but why bother, when there are great reporters like Mr. Nigglebits who does it so much better, although I seem to have a touch of congestion which is making it harder to be the man...

Seeing as how this week started off all about tea and tea reviews, I thought I might mention a couple of kitchen items that I'd been meaning to write about for some time. One is loose leaf infuser and the other is a bag squeezer (no bondage jokes please...)       Sometime back, Alton Brown did a show about tea. It wasn't a bad show. It may have been a bit technical and really, a 30 minute show all about making a cup of tea is a tad long winded, but he had one really good salient point. All those tea balls and other things for making a cup of loose leaf tea? They don't work. The tea can't expand and reach its full flavor potential. There are tons of them out there, but they're pretty much all the same. He recommended just steeping the tea in a pot and then straining it when pouring. This is obviously the purist's way to go, but I'm a big fan of the infuser. It's just a meshed item that you set in the cup or pot that allows the tea to expand and steep. Mighty Leaf has a really fancy one, but I've been using this one from For Life Design. They have others as well. They're great because they make good tea while at the same time keeping waste down to only tea leaves. That and you have very little to clean up when all is said and done. I highly recommend one if you're in to the loose leaf like I am quickly becoming.       But when it comes time to using the bag, while you're not supposed to squeeze the bag (especially according to Alton) we all do it anyways. For the longest time I either tried to wrap it around a spoon to squeeze it (awkward) or just use my thumb and forefinger (painful). I often found myself using the second method the most and as unmanly as it is (or maybe manly in some circles) I actually got a callous on my thumb from doing this too much. I still don't know how my wife was able to see beyond this to marry me...       Anyways, the best solution to all of this is a bag squeezer. I went around to find one and unfortunately found that they're all made in China. This is the one exception where I broke my general rule of thumb to not buy Chinese-made goods and I got one from Sur La Table. Beyond the fact that it's saving my thumb, it's great for fishing out those bags that don't have a string on them. It's a solid purchase that's cheap and I place to have for a long time due to it being one piece of formed stainless steel.       But anyways, these are just a few suggestions for those in to tea. I wrote about kettles earlier for those interested in that item. Oh and while there are 15 comments on the tea giveaway from two days ago, I assure folks that it is still indeed open and you should toss in your hat on that one as I'm putting together a good box of stuff to send out.

I guess it's because of the US's lack of a true cafe culture that this came about. I don't really know how long it's been going on but when I'm chowing down on a burrito, hamburger, or fried rice in a glorious meal that is maybe 5-10 minutes of eating at most, I often look around and see people having a deep discussion about well, something. It's not to say that people can't have deep discussions. I for one encourage this and think that we should really ponder the economy, politics, and racial equality whenever possible. I just raise the question as to why people do it in a place where someone is yelling, "Twenty five! Veinte y cinco!" every three minutes? I would say that even talking about such things over the phone may be a more fitting setting.       Personally, I like the cafe for such discussions as that's what it's really for. But maybe that's just me. Maybe there is an earthiness and grittiness that permeates one's thinking while using a bathroom with phone numbers to transsexual hookers. Maybe I'm missing out. Maybe my five minutes at Pancho Villa or Chef Jia have been nothing more than a series of wasted five minutes all my live that haven't allowed me to, "get it". Or maybe I'm just too busy stuffing my face as fast as I can to wallow in greasy glory and don't give a damn what my head is telling me in the meantime.

If you enjoy tea, then you should read my Tea Reviews section. If you don't enjoy tea, you should still take a look in there and see if my cutting edge style percolates some kind of interest in the leaf.       Anyways, reviewing tea was something I never really set out to purposely do. I just threw together a page one day in March of 2005 listing a variety of teas that I've had. If you're curious, you can see this older version, here. While it was something that I had been tossing around doing for awhile, it was a previous co-worker who suggested that I make a page, since he realized that he (and others) were always asking me what tea I'd suggest, since I seemed to drink a lot of them; about 5-6 cups in a typical day.       That single static page got rather lengthy at some point and thusly begat a database driven system to catalog all my teas with a rating. Then I adding in company info. Then I added in pairings. It's pretty much taken on a life of its own and looking back on it, I'm pretty surprised how far it's come. In fact to date, there are now 100 teas and 17 tea brands in there. And while I don't get paid for this, it resulted in making it a lot easier to pitch the Mighty Leaf Travelogue series that myself and #1 Fan did last year.       That being said, the samples, the boxes, the tins and everything are getting out of control. I don't even know how many random teas there are around the apartment now. But because of this, I want to open up a tea sampler giveaway. Entering this giveaway is simple: leave a comment on this article. If you're up for it, write which of my reviews you like the best to be eligible for a runner up prize if you're not the lucky sampler recipient.       Once this article slips off the main page (that's about 5-7 days from now) I'll randomly, unbiasedly, and super scientifically pick someone from the comments to ship a sampler of a whole bunch of different teas to, which is going to be interesting and maybe introduce people to stuff they never had heard of or tried before. So, leave a comment, take a chance, and hopefully some leafy goodness will be coming your way soon. Just make sure you put in a valid email for your comment, or I'll have no idea how to reach you if you win.       

I recently took a dive in to trying to the new T-Mobile @ Home (link has autoplaying sound) service because well, I really want to get rid of my AT&T landline. I've never liked AT&T and they fact that the lost a payment and then required me to give them a deposit to reinstate my line after 10 years of paying my bill on time made me look for alternatives.       T-Mobile @ Home is $10 a month to call anywhere in the US. Similar setups from Vonage and Speakeasy are about $30 a month. Then of course there's Skype which is $3 a month with unlimited calls to anywhere in the US and Canada, which is a great deal, but unfortunately, it requires your computer or a wifi phone, while the others use a landline. So, @ Home seemed like a great deal. Of course, with any deal that seems to be really good, there are usually downsides and as I found out, T-Mobile @ Home is bad on so many levels, that I had to ultimately cancel the service and give up.       First of all, there are some basic issues which are bad. A fellow named Mark has covered a huge slew of questions in an @ Home FAQ. There is a basic problem I have which is the fact that I have to have a $40 a month plan with T-Mobile to get @ Home. I currently have the $30 a month plan, so this jacks up my cost to $20 a month additional for @ Home including this additional plan charge plus the @ Home charge. This makes the savings quite negligible for me as my AT&T plan (while without long distance) is a mere $18 a month.       The large issue is that @ Home is not for normal people. By this, I mean that hooking up the software is relatively simple. The catch comes in the type of internet connection you need to have to use @ Home, which is firstly broadband, secondly cable, or thirdly a phone-free DSL connection. I have the third item. Most people will not. They'll have AT&T DSL which requires an AT&T landline. Trying to change all this up is really beyond the Average Complexity Threshold, which I like to call, My Mom. Even if mom could get broadband out in the country, there is no way she'd be able to set all this up without many phone calls to me. There is also the issue that if you want to port over your current number, it's a process of a multiple of steps. Again, this is beyond Mom.       It is also the case that @ Home is not for geeks. The staff at T-Mobile, while attempting to be helpful, are extremely clueless in this whole thing, showing that T-Mobile really didn't train them well before launching the product. It is simply impossible to find any gooey tech details about the service either. Say you want to make sure you port your firewall correctly. Can anyone tell you what ports are needed? Nope. This fellow seems to have found out though, although I had no success with this information, so it may be pointless. Oh, and while the router itself is a decent Linksys box, attempting to set it up without using the included CD will present you with a smack down on your sensibilities.       But as to my personal experience with the service, I have to say that it was utter crap. I spent two days trying to get it to work. Tech support was worthless. The wait times are anywhere from an astounding 1 1/2 hours to a mind blowing 3 hours. I opted to have the call back option instead of just waiting on hold. When they do finally call back, they give the pointless, "Okay, I need you to power cycle your modem. Okay, now power cycle the router." This does nothing to fix real problems and to make matters worse, the tech support person said that she'd call me back once it reboots. Naturally, she never called back. I might have just as well had a monkey on the other end saying, "Eeee eee ooo ooo. Aaaa Aaaa." It could have actually been more helpful.       I took back the first router and got a second only to experience the same problems. I called up my DSL provider, Speakeasy to see if they were blocking any ports to which they said they weren't and I actually believe them as they're generally knowledgeable and fair with their service. I put the @ Home router behind the firewall. I put it in front of the firewall. I put it behind with every port in the world open to it. I used another one of my static IP addresses to point it as far exposed as possible. Nothing worked.       Thankfully, there is a 14 day money back policy with this damned thing. I made full use of that and of course they tried to keep talking me in to sticking with it. I said that I would as long as they gave me a Purchase Order number so that I could bill T-Mobile for the time lost working on their system. Surprisingly, they didn't take me up on it and I'm sitting here stuck with AT&T again.