Q: Who played the In-curry-edible Hulk?
A: Aloo Ferrigno

This terrible joke brought to you by some late-night aloo that I made earlier this week. Potatoes, chickpeas, peas, cumin, coriander, ginger, and an extra sprinkle of garam masala.

I briefly thought to myself, "Self, do people really need your slapdash excuses for recipes?", but apparently the answer is "Maybe!", because I recently read a big article about how AI Slop recipes are taking over the Internet. (Give me grandma's traditional recipe for slop instead!) Like all information generated by AI, some of it is completely valid, some of it is painfully wrong, and all of it is combined into one document presented confidently and proudly as if it were factual information.

People following the AI recipes have been producing food that tastes wrong. People searching for reference images find fakes, people searching for cute animals find AI-generated animals, everything from video game guides to health advice (yikes) has now been filled with AI-generated slop so good luck using the Internet to find information.

(I mean, it's not just AI; I read an article the other week that apparently Facebook serves 15 billion scam ads PER DAY, so please never click on any ads on Facebook, and if you see anything that looks good on Facebook, search for that thing somewhere else.)(Last winter I made the mistake of clicking on a few Warm Fuzzy Blanket Robe ads on Facebook and my feed was flooded with endless ads for months.)(I mean, it's always flooded with endless ads, but for warm fuzzy blanket robes specifically)(This year I was smarter and dug out my fleece-lined hoodie and Debbie has done the same, so this weekend we're luxuriating in comfort with our Thanksgiving leftovers.)(I endorse and recommend the fleece-lined hoodie, available at some place you've heard of and not a site registered last week.)(I also endorse and recommend Thanksgiving leftovers, although I'm not responsible if yours don't taste as good as ours.)(Which logically means that if yours do taste as good, I could be responsible. But I'm not.)(At least AI doesn't write like this yet.)

OH, THE INTERNET

Admittedly I'm going to live on the Internet regardless (who can afford to live anywhere else?), so I see a lot of the discourse, and perhaps one of the silliest and most preposterous things I've seen in some time was an article complaining that Americans are "device hoarding" by not constantly upgrading to the latest smartphone model every year, which hurts the economy and makes the billionaire tech CEOs cry etc.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that a) the economy is hurt much more by billionaire wealth hoarding, and b) people would probably buy more random crap if we had a strong middle class with disposable income again.

But too bad! Even before I read that article, I had already submitted my most recent column which is about the concepts of needing more and having enough:

• More Than Enough

An excerpt:

I love this time of year because the holidays encompass the two messages we constantly hear in this country: "You Need More" and "You Have Enough".

Thanksgiving is a time for being thankful for what we have, a lesson drummed into me by my parents who insisted that every Thanksgiving meal growing up was preceded by going around the table to share what we were thankful for. (And they were never fans of "I'm thankful some people know to be brief so we can eat.")

These days I'm mostly thankful for leftovers. The Thanksgiving leftover sandwich is one of my Top 5 Sandwiches, as I was recently discussing with a friend who also had it on his Top 5 list. (I don't listen to many albums or watch much TV, but it's important to have a Top 5 list to discuss something that isn't the news.)

Still, there's something essentially American about spending a Thursday in late November gathering with your family or friends to express your gratitude for having enough... and then heading out the next day for a shopping frenzy to go buy more.

Black Friday isn't just a day where people have literally trampled others to death in pursuit of lower prices, it also heralds an entire month of ceaseless commercialism and messages of consumerism, which as Tom Lehrer noted is truly the Christmas spirit in this country.

I'll admit Black Friday has lost some of the magic for me because I can never seem to find a sale on the things I need to buy, such as health insurance.

And my previous column in the Banner:

The Man From the 1920s

A BRIEF THROWBACK

Speaking of the 1920s (and 1930s and 1940s), I've been reading some older books lately - HL Mencken and Evelyn Waugh (one of the best authors named while falling off a cliff), each on the recommendation of a friend, and then Dorothy Parker because I figured I was overdue. And there are some very modern and relevant nuggets in there, but also there's a lot of scattered racism. (Please don't scatter your racism, keep it neatly in an appropriate container.)(May I recommend a coffin?)

That's just what you're going to get when reading century-old American texts, and even amidst all the current daily horrors it's worth appreciating how far we've come, but also appreciating that seeing "racism on main" as the kids say may be new for government social media accounts (albeit not new for government policy) in the modern era but was common in the past (technically nobody made a single non-racist post on Facebook in the 1940s).

But we must plow forward (as I was reminded by the plow that just went by).

EATING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND

One of my favorite ways to spend a cold and snowy weekend is to not go anywhere and just enjoy sitting around with Debbie playing games and eating Thanksgiving leftovers (very dangerous for cold and snowy weekends in March). Conveniently, that's the plan for this weekend, and it's still close enough to Thanksgiving that those leftovers are delicious and non-toxic. ("this yelp review seems damning with faint praise")

Anyway, as always I thank you for reading, and not-as-always expressed but always felt I specifically thank the many friends and family who have embettered my life in various ways even if younger me was rarely sufficiently appreciative at the time. I'll be back in two weeks with another column, like clockwork. (Which is to say, the jokes will be second-hand, and if you stare at it for too long five minutes will seem like an hour.)(Hours will seem like days)

Bidding you all an enjoyable weekend filled with tasty food for minimal further effort. I'll be eating Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches because I'm addicted and could never stop eating them -- although I do prefer them warmed up.

Can't Go Cold Turkey,
Seth