Althouse: At the Negativity Café...

November 18, 2011

At the Negativity Café...

... it's not all bad.

33 comments:

Meade said...: As if that could possibly pull you through.; 11/18/11, 2:20 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I decided to start cooking with my boys. For the kickoff today, I handed my four year old my main cookbook and told him to pick anything in it. As long as it didn't require special equipment, we'd go get the ingredients and make it together. I had the book open to the appetizers section, thinking that these might look appealing to a four year old.

He immediately flipped over to the cakes section and picked yellow cake. Score!; 11/18/11, 2:22 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @Meade I'm putting on airs.; 11/18/11, 2:22 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @Freeman Ha ha. We used to make cakes all the time when I was a kid. Cake seemed soooo important back then.; 11/18/11, 2:23 PM
Henry said...: @Freeman - My four-year-old cracks eggs surprisingly well. I think the egg gets some credit. Amazing how you can smash them and the insides usually find a way to slop out into the bowl.

It's the 10-year-old licking his fingers and putting them into the sugar jar that I have to watch.; 11/18/11, 2:33 PM
Scott M said...: You look a little pale in that picture, AA. Are you feeling all right?

500cc's of good, fine brandy...STAT; 11/18/11, 2:42 PM
edutcher said...: Can't wait to see the Positivity Cafe.

PS I think a lot of kids, including boys, can get into cooking because something is accomplished, they understand how it happens (pretty much), and they can do it - or most of it - with minimum supervision.

The Blonde's youngest brother started out like Freeman's son and now he's the go-to guy in the house for food.; 11/18/11, 2:44 PM
ricpic said...: When I was a kid it seemed to be the coolest thing to reverse the film being fed through a projector and watch everyone flying out of the water instead of diving in. So maybe that'll be the followup to the Negativity Cafe...the Backwards Video Cafe.; 11/18/11, 2:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Boy, I wish I could get paid $150,000 a year to take pictures of myself and watch the Daily Show. Too bad I went to law school in the 2000s.; 11/18/11, 2:57 PM
Anonymous said...: http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2011/11/pile-of-badger-dung-university-of.html

Thoughts?; 11/18/11, 3:02 PM
traditionalguy said...: That must be a photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the gravitational field of the Althouse Mind.

Cheer up! Even black holes have their purpose in keeping everything in order.; 11/18/11, 3:04 PM
coketown said...: @Freeman: Some of my best memories with my parents were when we all cooked together. I hope you keep that tradition going.

Anyway, this Cafe reminds me of my 8th grade photography class, when a girl had a meltdown in the darkroom because she developed a roll of film that had pictures of her ex-boyfriend on it and she started crying hysterically. So the teacher said something like, "Just remember that life is like photography. We use the negatives to develop." And the girl replied, "But we're not film... We're people." I don't think she understood metaphors very well.; 11/18/11, 3:06 PM
madAsHell said...: I'm looking at the images on the upper left hand side of the photo.

Have you been creepin' around Area 51 again?; 11/18/11, 3:08 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I well remember my attempts in college to improve my cooking skills, especially when I went home for summer and holidays. My mother's words of encouragement"

"Get the hell out of MY kitchen!"

I still learned to bake a cheesecake that was always in demand for college bake sales.

@Coketown:

when a girl had a meltdown in the darkroom because she developed a roll of film that had pictures of her ex-boyfriend on it and she started crying hysterically.

Jeez, and I sure the ex-BF was sure glad to be shut of that budding drama queen!; 11/18/11, 3:15 PM
coketown said...: Jeez, and I sure the ex-BF was sure glad to be shut of that budding drama queen!

Ha! She only got worse through high school. I think she's the one who turned me off of women. I just remember being in the darkroom, dipping on of my exposures and thinking, "Holy shit, I wish this developer would hurry up. I'll toss it in the stop bath and get the fuuuuck out of here." I was cynical in junior high, mind.; 11/18/11, 3:20 PM
DADvocate said...: We used to make cakes all the time when I was a kid. Cake seemed soooo important back then.

My mother always made our birthday cakes and let us choose the type and icing. One year I wanted it all to myself, so I chose yellow cake with purple icing and green trim, knowing the color of the icing had nothing to do with the taste. I had the cake all to myself, as my siblings were grossed out. But, my mother reserved cake veto power in the future.; 11/18/11, 3:21 PM
Shanna said...: He immediately flipped over to the cakes section and picked yellow cake.

I made cookies with my 5 and 3 year old nephews and they loved it. I had to play referee and let them take turns measuring ingredients. And then I let them each pick a color and ice the cookies. The perfectionist in me worried the cookies were unevenly iced, but I let it go.; 11/18/11, 3:27 PM
MadisonMan said...: Cakes are delicious. Flourless cakes, though, are pretentious.; 11/18/11, 3:28 PM
Toshstu said...: Overexposed; 11/18/11, 3:29 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I was most of the way through mixing up a red velvet cake when I realized I had no red food coloring. I ended up making a green velvet cake*. Add to that I was short on time so I iced it before it was all the way cooled, so the white icing was very oozy.

It still tasted just as good, and the kids enjoyed the gross factor.

*I did have the option of making a blue velvet cake, but then I would have felt obligated to make it in the shape of an ear, and that just seemed like too much work.; 11/18/11, 3:32 PM
YoungHegelian said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/18/11, 3:40 PM
Anonymous said...: The people in here are far too positive for the Negativity Cafe.
CAKE SUCKS! PIE IS BETTER.; 11/18/11, 3:42 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @Ignorance,

I did have the option of making a blue velvet cake

In your dreams, buddy!; 11/18/11, 3:43 PM
Sofa King said...: Everything is horrible
Really really really terrible
I'm really depressed
I'm really downtrodden

The whole world is doomed
We're all gonna die
25,672 people die every single minute
Seventeen hundred and fifty people just died

Cancer
Death
Aids
Inflation
Taxes
George Bush
Hell
Satan
Cancer of the face
Cancer of the colon
Cancer of the wrist
and John Denver on compact disc!; 11/18/11, 3:46 PM
minimus said...: Gravity has apparently failed.; 11/18/11, 3:53 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: That is, honestly, the best picture of you I've seen in years.

Totally cool.; 11/18/11, 4:08 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Unemployment,

Boy, I wish I could get paid $150,000 a year to take pictures of myself and watch the Daily Show. Too bad I went to law school in the 2000s.

Stop it - unless you're a white woman who's based her entire career on feminist nonsense about how hard it's been to be a white woman. And can you go to sleep at night (probably laughing, knowing Ann) that you pulled off such blatant dishonesty for so long - and a tidy profit. Not to mention celebrity.

If so - and you still didn't get anything out of it - then, please, carry on.; 11/18/11, 4:23 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "unless you're a white woman who's based her entire career on feminist nonsense about how hard it's been to be a white woman"

Is that supposed to be what you think I've done? Based on what?; 11/18/11, 6:09 PM
Meade said...: White, shmite. Obviously, it's the hungry women who make a mess out of you.

And by you I mean one.; 11/18/11, 8:38 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Thanks a lot.

Signed,

The Goddess of Gloom.; 11/18/11, 8:41 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Hitting the harder stuff,

"Saint" Annie.
Rue Morgue Avenue; 11/18/11, 8:42 PM
Bill said...: " "Saint" Annie.
Rue Morgue Avenue"

--Ann, have you seen the Neil Young cover of that song that he did at Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert at MSG in '93? Still one of the best Dylan covers, bar none, that I've ever seen.

That concert is a 4-DVD, fan-made collection of absoute brilliance. I had to trade 15 or so Dylan bootleg concerts to acquire it. In the end, though? Totally worth it.; 11/19/11, 10:19 AM
Bill said...: Edit: Referring to 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," in case it wasn't obvious.; 11/19/11, 10:20 AM