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Click the photo to see it at full size.

T minus 12 days…

The clip above is from the TV show Scandal, and it features an exchange that any non-white immigrant kid should find familiar. In it, main protagonist Olivia Pope, a crisis management expert, gets lectured by her father that “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have!”.

The version of this talk that came from my parental units was less dramatic and didn’t take place with a private hangar with a limo and Learjet in the background, but the message was the same: You’re not white, and they’ll always see you as an outsider, interloper, or intruder, even if you’ve lived here longer than they have.

The “you don’t belong here” message is still there, although in this civilized era, it’s now encoded in actions, such as the police assault on Sureshbhai Patel, whose only crime was going for a walk while being Indian. He was visiting his son in Alabama (there’s your warning right there) to help with a newborn grandkid. While out on his morning walk, a local got freaked out about a dark-skinned man in their neighborhood and called the cops. Between Mr. Patel’s limited English and Officer Eric Parker’s limited policing ability, Mr. Patel got walloped and wound up partially paralyzed in the hospital:

Can you imagine a white European with limited English skills getting the same treatment? Or even being reported to the cops?

On the national level, this comes in the “dog whistle” form of accusing a black president of not being American enough. It started with the Birther conspiracy:

• Rudy Giuliani said that he does “not believe that the president loves America“.
• Ann Coulter called him a “Manchurian Candidate”.
• Dick Morris worried that he might not be “pro-American”.
• He’s been accused of “undermining this country’s national defense on purpose” by Representative John Fleming of Louisiana.
• Donald Rumsfeld said that he “actually switched sides in the war on terror”.

Meanwhile, this guy, who’s figuratively in bed with the family business masquerading as a country that’s been aiding and abetting extremism, is a true patriot:

I’ve had dates with less physical contact than this. Can you imagine the furor if there’d ever been this kind of smooch between the late King Abdullah and President Obama?

“Not porno tongue, but church tongue.” Or maybe mosque tongue.

Here’s the money paragraph from the New York Times piece titled Why Giuliani and Other Obama Critics Play the ‘American’ Card:

Whatever his intentions, Mr. Giuliani’s statement reflects the ease with which people dissociate Mr. Obama and other African-Americans with American identity, especially those who don’t like him. A 2005 study examined this pattern using the Implicit Association Test, which measures the associations between concepts using differences in response timing during a categorization task. People tend to respond faster when categorizing paired stimuli that are congruent with their implicit associations (for instance, “thin people” or “good” versus “fat people” or “bad”) than those that are incongruent (the opposite pairings). In the study in question, the authors found response timing patterns that suggested that African-Americans as a group are “less associated with the national category ‘American’ than are white Americans” relative to the category “foreign” — a pattern that holds for other nonwhite groups such as Asian-Americans and Latinos.

Yours Truly, stopping to enjoy the view during the Toronto-Tampa drive last year.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

In less than a fortnight, I’m marrying an American. As the husband of a U.S. citizen, I would be eligible for a green card, and eventually, citizenship. I’m also the direct descendant of a U.S. citizen, but I’m told it’s easier to get it via my wife rather than my great-grandfather, James O’Hara. One option is to stay here in the subtropical climes of Accordion Bay, which may mean that someday, I might apply for citizenship.

I come here bearing goodwill, skills in the areas of technology, writing, and rock and roll accordion, cultural and language skills that surpass those of many of the locals (it’s Florida, man!), and a jacket (pictured) that cannot possible be any more American than it already is. I have what it takes to be American. But the question lingers in my mind: will Americans ever consider me to be one of them?

Of course, since I live in Florida, you can come back with “Why are you living where people high on bath salts eat your face?“

See the article I posted earlier today.

I was born in the year of this Chinese zodiac animal, the only sign for which there seems to be some disagreement on the name. That’s because the symbol for this zodiac sign, 羊 (yáng), could refer to either “goat”, which the Chinese call the shānyáng  or “mountain goat”, or “sheep”, which they call miányáng“or cotton goat”. The Vietnamese unambiguously use their word for “goat” in their zodiac, the Japanese insist that it’s a sheep, and like English speakers, Koreans and Mongolians say it could go either way.

I prefer go with the most badass-sounding interpretation: Year of the Ram.

As the 8th sign in the Chinese zodiac, it’s an auspicious one, what with 8 being the lucky number in Chinse culture. For the year 2015, the element is wood, which means that if you play Settlers of Catan, the old joke “I have wood for sheep” is going to be the catchphrase of the year. Consider yourself warned.

If you were born in any one of the Years of the Ram — 2003, 1991, 1979, 1967 (my birth year), 1955, 1943, 1931 or 1919 (hey, I could have a reader that old) — you’re in good company. Along with me, there are:

• Literary Rams: Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,
• Tough Guy Rams: Hulk Hogan, Chow Yun Fat, Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Zhang Ziyi (c’mon, she kicked ass in Crouching Tiger!)
• Renaissance Rams: da Vinci, Michelangelo
• Musician Rams: Franz Liszt, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Harry Connick Jr., Joni Mitchell, Billy Idol
• and of course, Geek Rams: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, William Shatner (not just the original Captain Kirk, but the one who also single-handedly invented software testing)

If 1991 and 2003 are any indication, the Year of the Ram is generally a good one for me. Both involved recovery from some rough times.

In 1991, after getting ejected from Crazy Go Nuts University for academic reasons, I got back in thanks to learning how to negotiate, schmooze, and cajole — a skill that has served me well to this day — and on the strength of my computer science marks. I returned to what were the best years of my colorful, Van Wilder-esque university career and landed that computer science degree. That piece of paper turned out to be useful as late as last year, as it was a key part in my getting TN-1 status, allowing me to work in the US and move in with this lady:

In 2003, after barely eking out an existence as an independent consultant in the post-dot-com-bubble burst and some relationship weirdness earlier in the year, I went on to attend a gathering with Doc Searls that ended up kick-starting my career as a tech evangelist: first at Tucows, then on to Microsoft and Shopify. As with my degree that I earned after getting back into school in the previous Year of the Ram, the experience I gained from that Year of the Ram also played a part in bringing me here, to Florida, just over two weeks away from getting married.

2003 is also the year of the Best Accordion Picture Ever:

This Year of the Ram sees me having paid off credit card debt acquired from working on a business that paid next to nothing, but at the same time hooked me up with my current employer, GSG. It will be my second year living in Tampa, my first year married to Anitra, and the start of a new life in many, many sense. It looks as though the pattern of the upward path during Ram Years will hold, so I’m looking forward to the coming year! I hope you are too.

Personally, I think beer would enhance this experience.

In “I have NO ONE to love!”, my recent post on the heartbroken guy at the grocery store near me on Valentine’s Day, I mentioned that the two items in his cart were a six-pack of beer and a store-bought rotisserie chicken. I linked to a Bloomberg article by Megan McArdle titled Everyone Wins When You Buy a Rotisserie Chicken, in which she links to Cat Vasko’s article for KCET, Grocery Store Economics: Why are Rotisserie Chickens So Cheap?, which sets out to answer its titular question.

Enough readers told me that they were surprised by the facts about these tasty bundles of joy that I decided the grocery store rotisserie chicken deserved its own blog entry.

Vasko’s answer to the mystery of why fully-prepped store-bought chicken is cheaper than buying a raw chicken and then putting in the time to cooking it can be summed in a single word: economics. Here’s how she explains it:

…much like hunters who strive to use every part of the animal, grocery stores attempt to sell every modicum of fresh food they stock. Produce past its prime is chopped up for the salad bar; meat that’s overdue for sale is cooked up and sold hot. Some mega-grocers like Costco have dedicated rotisserie chicken programs, but employees report that standard supermarkets routinely pop unsold chickens from the butcher into the ol’ rotisserie oven.

…

Rotisserie chickens aren’t even the end of the line. When unsold, fresh meats, fruits and veggies that have passed their sell-by points can be “cooked up for in-store deli and salad counters before they spoil,” per no less a source than a consultant to the supermarket industry.

At this point, you might be concerned that the chickens are cheap because you’re buying rotten food. That’s not the case. The datestamps you see on food products, often called the “sell-by”, “use-by”, and “best before” dates, aren’t safety indicators, but a general ballpark figure to give you a hint of when the food will be at its best. The sell-by date is often based on how long it takes for the product to change noticeably in appearance — not its safety — when stored properly. That’s why most of the time, food that’s a few days or more past its sell-by date won’t make you ill or kill you. In fact, sell-by dates are scaring people into throwing perfectly good food away.

In the end, your own good sense and education (or, if need be, a friend or family member’s good sense and education) is your best guide. You can augment your good sense and education at StillTasty.com. If you want to get the most bang for your grocery buck, bookmark this site!

In a world where buying something at a ridiculously cheap price means that something bad happened, the grocery store rotisserie chicken is a shining beacon of virtue. You get a cheap dinner, the grocery store wastes less food, the grocery store can sell fresh raw food at lower prices — everybody wins, except for the chicken!

I love what McArdle has to say about the importance of the store-prepped chicken:

This is the sort of thing that no one talks about when they talk about innovation –and yet, it’s a major way in which our economy has become more efficient over the last few decades. Reducing spoilage means grocery stores can sell us raw chickens at lower prices — and that we can get fresh, delicious prepared food at even lower prices. It’s a win for the grocer and the consumer.

So the next time you hear someone talk about the innovation economy, don’t just think of Facebook or Google. The folks who spit-roast chickens, streamline factory production, or think up any of a million ways to save a little money here and there are just as important in improving our standard of living. Especially when it’s five minutes to 7 and you still haven’t made anything for dinner.

(And in my opinion, it’s the chicken’s own damn fault. As an omnivore, I’ve always said that if animals don’t want to be eaten, they should vote.)

When the conversation topic turns to store-bought rotisserie chicken — it happens more often than you think, at least in the circles in which I move — the ones you can get at Costco eventually come up. At the time of this writing, the price of a tasty, roasted whole bird is still $4.99, which is less than most combos at a food court. When they reported some disappointing financial results (not big losses, but tiny gains) back in 2013, Costco’s CFO urged investors to think of their “incredible, giant” rotisserie chickens when they thought of Costco, and their stock price bounced back quickly. The birds get discussed by the foodies on Chow, covered in pieces in the Washington Post, and debated over in bodybuilding forums (“Emergency muscle food, brah!“). Costco maintains a Facebook page for their rotisserie chickens, and you can easily find fans on Pinterest.

While rotisserie chickens are great as-is, they’re also excellent starters for your own recipes, and since they’ve already been cooked, you’ll save time. Since I work from home and The Missus commutes, I’m usually on the hook for making dinner, so I’ve picked up a collection of go-to places for all sorts of meals. Here are mine for store-bought rotisserie chicken:

• The Art of Manliness’ 5 Delicious Ways to Use a Store-Bought Rotisserie Chicken
• U Create’s Best Rotisserie Chicken Recipes. Try the chicken enchilada soup!
• Cookies and Cups’ 50 Shortcut Meals Using Rotisserie Chicken.
• Real Simple’s 10 Recipe Ideas for Rotisserie Chicken
• Food Network’s Weeknight Rotisserie Chicken Recipes