This Post Is About EARWIGS or God Doesn't Want Me Eating Peaches

At the beginning of the week I usually by fruit to eat at work the rest of the week. Lately I’ve been buying peaches. It’s a bit of a fine art, picking fruit that will be optimally ripe on each successive day of the week. At best, it’s a highly inexact science.

Now, if you’ve been following my XF Bite posts for this week you’ll know the events I’m about to recount.

The two ripest pieces of fruit I bought for the week were two white peaches. Upon diving into the first one on Tuesday, I realized: I really don’t like white peaches. They have no taste, or rather, they taste like slightly peachy water. The one I had was over-ripe in parts and under-ripe in others. All in all, it was not very good.

So Wednesday I skipped the white peach and didn’t have fruit at all.

Today, I decided to partake of the first of two yellow peaches I had purchased. By now they seemed appropriately ripe after spending the last two days in my designated fruit drawer. I moved the second peach to the fridge to prevent it from over-rippening.

I bit into it and it was a little mealy, but mostly juicy and delicious. As I chomped away I noticed that the fruit had seemed to grow free of the pit, leaving an empty space in between the fruit and the pit. As I continued eating I chomped into a part of the peach that was all discolored and bad. Taking a closer look, I discovered that the gap between the fruit and the pit was FILLED WITH MOLD. Fortunately I did not hurl.

So now it’s this afternoon. I’m wanting something to snack on and considering the two peaches I have in the fridge: one unevenly ripe white peach and one possibly internally moldy yellow peach. I decided to pull the white peach out and cut it up so I can look for mold and bad bits before I start eating it.

I cut it in half and the pit breaks in half too, but the fruit itself looks ok. I start cutting off wedges with some difficulty as this peach is clinging tightly to its pit. Then an earwig crawls out of the one of the pit halves.

EW!!!

I’m sorry, but that’s just gross. I couldn’t eat the peach and felt a bit of guilt about that. I mean I’m sure there are plenty of starving people in the world who would have loved to eat that peach earwig or not, but it would have made me puke. Does that make me a spoiled child of a decadent culture? I’m not sure I care. My sister had a traumatic encounter with an earwig when I was younger. I will not recount it, but I still don’t want earwigs anywhere near me.

Tomorrow I will cut open the yellow peach before I eat it. Stay tuned for updates.

(photos from Flickr Commons, taken in Colorado in 1940: link)

Project Runway 5, Episode 2: Models! Finally.

I thought the choice of challenge for Project Runway Episode 2 was brilliant for several reasons. One of the problems the show has had since the beginning is that it’s also a competition for the models. In Season 1, the models got more face time and were much more well developed as characters. Subsequent seasons pushed the model competition to the fringes of the show (Season 4 had three challenges that didn’t even use the competing models) and struggled to keep it relevant.

I understand why they don’t eliminate the model competition aspect, as it raises the stakes for the models. The designers need models who are engaged and out there doing their best work because they stand a tangible benefit from being paired with the winning designer. The model competition just doesn’t add much to the show because there isn’t room to develop it.

Bringing back the models as clients challenge from Season 1 was a great way to give the models more face time. Then they took it a step further by having the models shop for the fabric. Boom, suddenly some of them start to develop as characters. (Though, it does make me wonder if every challenge this season will be a re-hash of a Season 1 challenge.)

It was also a great challenge for the designers. Episode 1 should have challenged them to think outside the box and use different materials, but it didn’t. This challenge did force them to use fabrics they would never have purchased themselves.

Stella created a wonderful dress, making a dramatic comeback after her near elimination garbage bag dress from Episode 1, but she never would have made that dress had she not been forced to use fabrics outside of her comfort zone and forced to please a client. And yet, she still put her style into the dress. She still showed the judges her aesthetic.

She could make it far, if she doesn’t stay inside her leather box for the rest of the challenges.

Leanne and Wesley got screwed by the fabric their models choose. Watching it on TV, I thought Leanne’s dress was uglier, but they kept her because they saw potential in her. Looking at the dresses online, Wesley’s looks far crappier. My girlfriend was sorry to see him go because he was hot, but he really screwed that dress up something awful.

Leanne won’t last though. You can see it in her eyes.

(photo credit)
(Left: Suede's winning dress. Right: Wesley's losing dress.)

Shorts

I will be performing a two-man improv show with Christian Utzman Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night this weekend as part of the San Francisco Improv Festival.

**

In the interest of equal time, and because it’s amusing:
Project Run(A)Way: Nevin Barich’s running diary of every episode of Project Runway Season 5, even though he hates the show.

**

The evils of plastic bags. Thanks to my sister for sending me the link.

**

I posted about my weekend at the lake on Our Intrepid Hero.


**

I posted about this week’s rehearsal on Something Like a Chicken Sandwich.