The Lana style of architecture is very distinctive

Tallulah has learned three new terms in the last week. 1) Sarcasm, which is not a new concept for her.  She has been exposed to it her whole life.  Now she has a name for it. 2) MSU (Making …um… Stuff Up).  Tallulah has been given the secret to her father’s failure to fail: when in doubt, bluff.  Statements made in an authoritative voice, especially when they include numbers, will be accepted at face value most of the time.  76% of those who say they read Maxim for the articles are actually functionally illiterate.  (Of course, you see the obvious fallacy.  Maxim is written for people who are functionally illiterate.)

The third and final term is flatulence.  Every morning on the way to school, we listen to Car Talk from NPR, National Public Radio.  This is Tallulah’s favorite show.  If you listen to Car Talk from NPR, National Public Radio, you know that they often have the callers recreate a noise which they are hearing in their cars.  You might also know that Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, hosts of Car Talk from NPR, National Public Radio, have a very distinctive laugh which is prone to get you laughing, especially when there is a good fart joke involved.

So this lady called in and described this sound as akin to her car having flatulence.  She laughed.  They laughed.  I laughed.  Tallulah no laugh.  So I asked if she knew what flatulence was, which she did not.  I defined it.  Tallulah laughed.  Farts are funny, or so says our family crest.  Most farts, anyway, but not cow farts of course.  At least not in the volume that they are currently being expended.  You know the routine.  Methane is a greenhouse gas.  Since most commercial meat production requires the transportation of the hooved or un-hooved meat via carbon emitting vehicles, the process adds more fuel to the global warming fire.

Michael Polan does a nice little deconstruction of the images we are presented in the grocery store which are meant to distract us from these realities.  Pictures of farms on the packages of backbacon or sidemeat are meant to get us thinking that these were products made by Earl.  You know Earl.  Lives over there in Pegram and has that farm.  Nice guy that Earl.  If I ate meat, I’d buy his sidemeat anytime.  But I don’t eat meat.

Mango, however, I do eat.  Sanuk D loves the mango, my precious.  Sanuk D lives nowhere close to any place where mangoes grow indigenously.  Worse yet, I have tasted the fruit from Thailand and find it deelish.  I can only imagine what the cow fart equivalent is to the emissions necessary to get my mango to me.

Standing in an Ingles for which I have no catchy nickname, I stared longingly at the dried mango looking for something on it’s packaging to reassure me that this purchase was not killing the planet.  Yes, it says it’s from Thailand, but look, there is a picture of Earl’s farm!  I had no idea Earl grew mangoes!  Why will I buy them? Because I like Earl.