DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

“A study of affluent Bay Area residents who were seeking health benefits by eating lots of fish found that they were also loading up on toxic mercury.”

It’s unfair, in a cosmic sense, that people who are trying to take responsibility for their health get caught in a trap like this. And it’s a pity that the folks who stuff their snouts in the fast-food slop trough two or three times a day will use this story to justify their dangerous addictions — “These super-size fries may not be very healthy, but at least I won’t die of mercury poisoning…” Feh.

Anyway, if you eat fish, especially swordfish, sea bass, halibut, or tuna (including canned tuna), you need to read this article: Rich folks eating fish feed on mercury too: ‘Healthy diet’ clearly isn’t

The study mentioned in the Chronicle article is supposed to have been published in the November issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, but I’ve been unable to locate it online. There is good background information on the controversy (and, yes, there’s always a controversy) in this AP story on ENN.com: Research of mercury contamination leaves huge gaps in knowledge.

A few weeks ago a friend asked what makes French bread into “country” French bread. It seems to me, from having baked a few hundred loaves of it, that “country French” bread is white bread with a handful of whole grain thrown in. The result is a loaf of white bread with little specs of dark stuff. Depending on the coarseness of the whole grain, the specs can actually look like dirt.

This strikes me as appropriate, because when I think of “country” the main image is of the land — farms, fields, dirt roads. Soil is so central to country living, it seems, the residents even put it into their bread. If you ever see a loaf that advertises itself as providing a “taste of the country,” be aware that this may be more literal a promise than you expect.

Germans have taken this concept to an extreme. They favor heavy breads which reverse the “country” proportion — they contain perhaps a handful of refined flour amid several pounds of whole grain berries and seeds. The result, “Vollkornbrot,” is so dense it must be sliced thinly lest the slab implode from its own mass. Connoisseurs claim they chew the bread slowly to savor the layers of subtle flavor brought on by the wild-yeast starter, the slow fermentation, and the organic grains. But, really, they’re chewing slowly so they don’t bite down hard on an under-hydrated rye berry to end up sending several hundred dollars worth of dental appliances back to the bodyshop for a frame-straightening and a new coat of paint.

Whenever I make Vollkornbrot I am shocked anew at how dense and leaden it is. I call it “brick bread,” based on the assertion that a loaf of it makes a suitable replacement for foundation material, e.g. if you’re building a bomb shelter or, say, town, and you end up short one cinderblock, you could just mortar in a loaf of this stuff and no one would ever know the difference.

Most folks would resent being treated as a stereotype. Me, I sort of enjoy it.

I was cooling off at the gym, breaking one of my New Year’s Resolutions by reading celebrity news (Entertainment Magazine — could have been worse; could have been People), drenched and steaming after finishing my treadmill session, when a diminutive woman approached to ask a favor. “Could you go sweat somewhere else,” I expected her to say, for I was sitting in the only chair in the room.

This single chair is usually covered in clothing because many inconsiderate gym patrons use it to store their jackets and sweatshirts while they work out. There are two locker rooms provided for the express purpose of storing jackets and sweatshirts, but the locker rooms are about 10 steps away, apparently too far to go, and anyway, it isn’t as if any of these people came in to get exercise.

This particular day, the chair was only partially covered in clothes, and so I sat on it (and them), reasoning that if people disliked having sweaty guys dripping on their jackets they could instead stash them safely in a locker. It’s a sort of conditioned-response experiment; if it doesn’t work I’ll have to break out the electrodes.

Anyway, when the woman approached I suspected that I’d sat down on her coat. But in fact she had a different concern; she wanted to borrow my muscles. One of the other patrons had apparently left the 35-lb plates on the Smith press, and this woman was afraid she was not strong enough to remove them. She’s tiny — her biceps are about the same circumference as my wrists.

The best part about being asked to help was realizing that, of the ~33814080 remaining minutes I plan to live, I would otherwise have spent another one reading about Spider-Man. Yikes. She interrupted me just in time.

The new house needs very little in the way of remodeling, but with five years’ home-improvement experience behind us I guess we’re just not comfortable without having something be taped up or torn down or, at least, cluttered with replacement parts still wrapped in plastic packaging.

So, we decided to paint the decks. There are 600 square feet of redwood decking on the east and south sides of the house. All of it was due for some sort of treatment, because the old stain had faded, leaving bare patches and uneven coloration. Winter rains are coming, and although no wood deck will last forever, a fresh coat of sealer ought to buy us a few extra years before the decks peel away from the house and collapse into the orchard. (Untreated redwood should last for at least 17 years, which is how old our deck is. Because it was treated for part of its life, it looks like it has a few years left in it — and we’re interested in extending those years as long as possible. See this informative PDF: Comparative Durability of Untreated Wood in Use Above Ground (208k)).

Normally we don’t do a lot of home improvement work ourselves, because over the years we’ve learned that the projects we do ourselves take longer, cost more, and turn out less nicely than the ones we contract out. There are exceptions, for things that we have some experience with: remodeling closets with wire shelving, painting, … and actually that’s all I can think of. I am not a handyman.

The paint salesman at the local home-improvement emporium suggested a 3-coat “paint system” from Olympic: one coat of oil-based sealer followed by two coats of latex solid-color stain. Rather than hire our ultra-reliable painting contractor for this project, we figured we could quickly slop some paint on the decks ourselves. There would be little need for masking or other tedious prep work, which is the part we like the least. At the time it sounded like a fun weekend project.

Twelve hours of work later, I’d managed to paint 100 square feet of deck. I can do this math even without a calculator — I’d need 60 more hours to finish the job. Finding 60 hours of time, mid-day, when the sun is out and the ambient temperature is above 60°, in Northern California in November, would take me approximately 18 months. Which means I’d sort of miss this first winter, and the next one too, and my half-painted decks would be lying in the orchard after all.

Having painted ourselves into a metaphorical corner, we called our painting contractor for an estimate, and learned that he has a secret weapon: a spray rig. He and his assistant can prime and paint the remaining decks in 1.5 days. He can even put a third coat of color on the small deck I painted (which, despite my 12 hours’ attention, still shows bare patches and uneven coloration, because this ridiculous paint system uses a bright white primer and a wimpy thin topcoat that just doesn’t cover). And he’ll charge me a heck of a lot less than I’d charge someone for 1.5 days of work (much less 1.5 weeks). And so, I again learn the lesson: I can pay in money, or I can pay in time, and if I do it myself I’ll pay in both.

Just as I was contemplating my apparent obtuseness, the tree surgeon came to collect his $520 check. He’d cut down four dead madrone trees and chopped the wood into 16'' rounds — probably three hours of work at the outside. As I handed him the money, I thought, “Damn, for this much money I could have bought a chainsaw and done the work myself!”

Sigh.

In response to a piece I wrote a few months ago about curiously California food choices at a nudie dance jam, a friend from the Midwest clipped out a newspaper ad from the local slaughterhouse, which I’ve posted for the sake of all my treehugging granola-county neighbors who also can’t fathom such a thing.

I’m entertained by the blissful expression on the cow and the blue ribbon on the pig. Yeah, they’re satisfied now, but little do they know they’re about $20 and 25 minutes away from being sliced and bagged.