Tag Archives: taste

Decentralize

Decentralize: (v) to distribute the administrative powers or functions of a central authority

The premise was simple:

Make sure that every Big Mac served in a McDonald’s restaurant anywhere in the world tastes equally as good.

Yet I will tell you, even if you have identical ingredients, it is still being made by people who rise and fall based on their level of passion.

  • You can organize.
  • You can inform.
  • You can bolster.

But there are certain individuals who will excel above others simply because they’ve established a standard which they refuse to abandon, even if inconvenience threatens them.

I know it is popular to believe the government can be decentralized—that we don’t need so much power in Washington, D. C., but instead, should distribute it throughout the states and local principalities.

But is it really possible that there are four hundred thousand respectable, trustworthy leaders to honor goodwill for the people?

How difficult is it to find one?

So if we can get that one example to be so shining that it encourages others to do better, then we have the makings of a possibility instead of a flop.

For I will tell you, even a leadership conference requires leaders.

And if you put fifteen people in a room, they will shake and rattle to their levels of importance and value unless you try to mess with it.

To provide for the common good means we need to have a central point where nothing but the common good is discussed, considered, honored and revered.

To expect this to be the same in Buttrick, South Dakota, as it is in Grassley, California, is not only optimistic, but maybe endangers good folks from getting good things.

Crowd

Crowd: (n) a large number of people

Buying a pair of shoes.

What is necessary for this task? Me, shoes and a good fit.

Like every human child born on the Earth, I have bought shoes because they looked good, hoping that I would be able to tolerate how they felt on my feet. It was always a huge mistake. No—shoes are about the fit.

Food.

It needs to taste good—and it needs to taste good to me. I always take into consideration whether it’s healthy or not—but only in determining how much of it to eat.

Car.

I want every car I own to do three things for me:

  1. Drive
  2. Be able to be maintained without developing terminal problems in its crankcase or transmission
  3. And finally, it should look decent enough that it’s at least ignored.

What do I look for in a friend?

Someone I can trust. Because I don’t know about you—I use my friends to help me learn how to become friendlier. So they’re going to find all my dumb spots, and I would rather they wouldn’t post these flaws on social media.

My passion? Maybe it’s my mission?

That thing that rings my bell.

I want to be able to do my thing without having people wonder why I’m not getting rich from it or haven’t received an award.

When I used to travel on the road, performing, the first question people asked after the show was how many people attended.

“How big was the crowd?”

When I told the truth, they would quietly back off—thinking it must not be that good, or more people would have been there.

We can’t judge our efforts by the crowd we draw.

If you think about the most important things you do in your life—parenting, being generous, lovemaking, praying, education, exercising—do any of those draw crowds? I don’t think so.

There will always be crowds.

There were crowds in the Coliseum to watch the animals rip apart the flesh of the early Christians.

There were huge crowds in Germany in 1935 to cheer for Chancellor Hitler.

Massive crowds of soldiers gathered on the battlefields in the Civil War, fighting to keep black people in slavery.

There have been crowds associated with every disaster.

Crowds for every tyrant.

Crowds for every fad that came along, and within a short period of time, found themselves embarrassed because they got so worked up over such a stupid idea.

Don’t look for the crowd. Look for the good cheer in your heart.

Don’t look for the crowd. Look for the benefit to humanity.

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Broth

j-r-practix-with-border-2

Broth: (n) soup consisting of meat or vegetable chunks, and often rice, cooked in stock.

Although it may seem bewildering, it is one of my fondest memories.

I was in the midst of one of my festering needs to lose weight and had fasted for about a day-and-a-half (though at the time I would have insisted it was two).Dictionary B

I was hungry.

You see, as a fat man, I never allow myself to become hungry. The presence of food is the ushering in of appetite.

I’ve never been able to consider the consumption of calories to be nutrition for survival, but rather, a pleasure I grant myself in large quantities, to confirm that I have the power to relish what is available.

Bluntly, I’m never starved. I just eat.

On this particular occasion, though, I actually gained the pangs, the passion and the purpose to receive food.

My body was growing weaker and weaker, and threatened to shut down in protest over my abstinence from meals.

Yet there was a thirty-minute passage of time when I felt more alive than I had ever felt before. I needed something–and was fully aware that I was about to receive it.

I was really famished.

I sensed a yearning rather than a burning.

And when I sat down at the end of that half-an-hour, to steaming broth with floating pieces of carrot and rice, smelling of chicken, I will tell you it was probably the most delicious delicacy I have ever devoured.

It had fragrance, taste and promise.

I’ve often wondered why I can’t return to that same fervency of appreciation.

Because on that day, a bowl of broth tasted to me like heavenly manna.

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Bartender

Bartender: (n) a person who mixes and serves drinks at a bar.Dictionary B

Most of the spirits that have come into me have entered through my soul instead of my mouth.

I am not a drinker. I am not self-righteous about it–it’s just not a part of my practice.

I do overeat.

I under-exercise.

It’s not as if I don’t participate in human activities that are capable of pleasure but also can quickly become foibles.

For me, it has always been an inability to get over the taste. Recently recovering from a throat condition, I was astounded at how horrible cough syrup is to ingest. To purposefully pour such intense fluid down my gullet on an ongoing basis is beyond my comprehension.

It started when I was eighteen years old and went on a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, with my soon-to-be wife. We decided to go out to a bar to catch some lively “Music City” entertainment. This particular establishment had a two-drink minimum. That meant you had to order two alcoholic beverages to be able to sit and listen to the music. I probably could have ordered a soft drink, but at age eighteen, such ineffective communication of maturity was unacceptable. I was allowed to order a drink, so a drink would be ordered.

I asked for a Michelob. When it came to the table, I took a huge gulp, which nearly regurgitated back in my direction.

It was so terrible.

I saw other people sitting around drinking it freely, as if it were some sort of pleasurable experience. Years later, working with a group of artists in Louisiana, we thought it was extraordinarily Continental to order wine with our dinner. After a couple of weeks of this practice, I had to turn to my companions and tell them that I was ruining my hamburger by having to survive my vino.

I say all this to admit to you that talking about a mixologist–or a bartender, in this case–is really beyond my scope. The only bartender I actually knew was a fellow I met in California. He was a minister who tended bar part-time in order to counsel and help folks who were drowning some of their sorrows in liquid refreshment.

I doubt if he’s a typical purveyor of the intoxicants. I’ve often admired bartenders in movies, mixing their blends together with such style and speed.

But I am the worst person in the world to write an article on bartending.

So I think I will stop.

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Acrid

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acrid: (adj.) an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell

I guess we universally say something isn’t to our taste, but I’ve never heard anyone say it’s not to their smell.

Am I right?

So is it possible that folks who love jalapenos and maybe will even eat grasshoppers, still universally despise the smell of crap?

For there ARE cultures which devour things that we would never eat, but I’ve never seen any place in the world where certain odors are tolerated.

(Well, take that back. There is the Midwest, where people drive into their small towns and seem to accept the air of cow manure permeating the surroundings. But even there, if you look deeply into their eyes, most of them seem to reflect a wish that the cows would poop elsewhere…)

And there ARE certain things we will tolerate and eat and not call them “acrid” because we’re trying to impress. For instance, I have never been a drinker of alcohol. Yet if I’m in Wisconsin and someone offers me a beer they’ve made in their basement (which, by the way, SHOULD be frightening enough) I feel compelled to take a drink and somehow or another come up with an approving phrase about the liqueur. They usually know very quickly that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but ignore that in deference to my politeness.

I remember the first time I was out on a date with a girl, very early in my years, and I realized that she was willing to kiss me–repeatedly.  But in the process of receiving THAT very pleasant experience, I had to reconnoiter her breath, which was a bit … acrid.

I was torn. Two sensations tugging at my soul–the pleasure of appreciating a woman’s lips and a revulsion in my gut which was suggesting we move further away from the attacking stench.

It is amazing what we will accept if we feel the results are to our benefit.

I was watching a show last night on TV. Young women were trying to lose weight by drinking green, slimy slushes to trim off the pounds. What struck me was that these lovely ladies will probably not want to drink this concoction the rest of their lives, and that we as a human race, have not found a way to produce good-tasting food that doesn’t kill us.

  • Why can’t we have peanut butter that’s low in calories?
  • Why not a beef steak that has the nutrition of broccoli?

This might be more beneficial than curing cancer. But we’re going to continue to eat and smell acrid things and pretend they’re good for us, knowing that in a moment of slight weakness, we will run away.

Acrid is NOT in the eye, the taste buds, nor the nose of the beholder. It’s pretty universal.

I guess it’s just the common conclusion to almost everything.

Some people just lie better.