Chive Kitchen

Hallo frands,

Have you ever been doing _____ and wondered to yourself, “I wonder if there’s a robot that does _____.”?

I have.

I usually wonder it out loud.

I talk out loud to myself all of the time.

Well, not all the time.

But more than the average bear.

Let me put it like this; if there’s a fine line that you walk between sane, thoughtful talking out loud to yrself and lunatic talking out loud to yrself, i’m tightroping
that baby.

I’m doing it now while I write this,

But I guess that’s neither here nor there.

Anywhodiddly…

I don’t wonder that because I’m doing _____ and don’t want to do _____ and think it would be useful for a robot to do _____ for me.

I just wonder if it’s out there.

And if you wonder about that like I wonder about that, well, our sunny future world of 2019 has an answer
for you.

Yes.

I read about a robot that folds yr clothes.

It is called the foldimate.

It can fold a load of laundry in 5 minutes.

You just have to feed all of the items in like dollars into a vending machine.

But you can’t put in anything that’s very big.

And nothing that’s especially small either.

It won’t fold them.

It’s a little stubborn that way.

Alternatively, you could use those same five minutes to fold the laundry yrself, big and small.

Yr call.

This little convenience is set to run the consumers of this world about $1000.

Lucky us!

There is a hairbrush that tells you when to stop brushing your hair.

There are toilets that play music with voice
activated flushers.

Mirrors that tell you the weather.

Belts with USB ports.

Bluetooth toasters. *Quick note; If you think Bluetooth Toasters sounds like the name of a future ska band that you hope to never ever ever hear, yr not alone.

Water bottles that tell you when to drink water.

Salt shakers w/ wifi.

Underwear that suggests when to change it.

And so on…

If you don’t believe me, that’s fine.

Skepticism is healthy, so good for you.

But search “robot that does _____”

Go on.

See?

If you think about it, most of the things that are floating around out there are of little to no real use.

That’s what happens when we create problems instead of solutions.

By that I mean that folding clothes or drinking water or dispensing salt have never really been a major issue for us humans.

But in order to sell all of this useless crap, these problems are invented for us, and lucky us again, some company has the solution — and it’s for sale.

But in order to sell all of this useless crap, these problems are invented for us, and lucky us again, some company has the solution — and it’s for sale.

And the strangest part of all of that is that us humans have already got loads and loads of real problems.

Interestingly enough, it’s easy to get people to believe in fake problems and hard to get them to accept real ones.

It’s a real noggin-scratcher.

Especially because when it comes to the real problems, so many of the solutions are free.

Because ideas are free.

These ideas can’t fold yr t-shirts, warm yr toilet seat, or charge yr phone.

But they could help to keep this ship from sinking.

Lucky us!

Speaking of ideas, us VegHedz had a real humdinger this morning;

Let’s stop thinking about the world’s useless crap for a minute, and munch out at Chive!

First thangs first…

Arriving at Chive, yr hit with a bit of an oxymoron straight away because it is located in a pleasant little shopping center.

Pleasant shopping center is the oxymoron there.

Normally those are not words I would string together. It’s like saying elegant mud or steamy ice cream. But in this case, it’s sort-of true.

Don’t ask me how. I don’t have an answer for you.

Inside is v v chill; roomy w/o being a big place, bright daylight coming in through the wide front windows, dark wood, and a color that they would probably describe as chive green, but that I would describe as electric avocado. **Quick note; Electric Avocado is another band that I don’t want to hear. ***It is, however, a perfectly suitable chapter title within a memoir.

For drinks, we had a couple black coffees, an apricot bellini, and a bloody maria.

When you go out for brekk, you gotta get that bev station set up.

Get the trifecta going.

Coffee, misc other drink, water.

It should be just a little difficult to fit the plates of food on the table because of all of the bevs.

That’s just the way it is.

I didn’t write the rules.

I just play the game.

Mang.

The coffee was strong and hot, the bloody was nice and rich w a little kick, and the Bellini was light and bright and right. I wasn’t even gonna get a drink this morning, but if you start fuggin’ with apricot, chances are I’m in.

To eat, we ordered the Po Boy sandwich with Michigan Chili and the Open Face Fried Chickie.

Po Boy w Michigan Chili
To call this thang a sandwich, you have to be pretty liberal with your use of the word sandwich. If you can use yr hands to eat this baby, you’re either a very impressive or very disturbing person or maybe a very impressive and disturbing person. What’s not disturbing though is the flava’. Dang. Super nice. Plenty of flakey fried artichoke heaped on a toasted bun w fresh tomato, lettuce, pickles, and a sweet’n’tangy’n’littlebitspicy remoulade that falls into the wide category of sauces that I happily swab off the plate with my fingers and lick clean after the meal. Maybe I am the disturbing person in this scenario after all. If so that’s just my lot in life, and I accept it and move forward. Disturbingly forward.

I chose the Michigan style chili to go with it. This was the right choice. I always thought this style chili was Detroit style, but I guess it’s statewide. Doesn’t matter — it’s delicious. I would have been perfectly happy to have slammed it like a drink. I didn’t do that though. Some impulses you have to ignore.

Open Faced Fried Chickie
Some dishes just got it all. This is one of those. Mouth-melty sour cream n’ onion mashed potatoes, lightly sweet creamed corn, fresh arugula, savory gravy, and seitan that was so soft it felt like biting into a cloud that’s made from pleasure instead of from rain. ****Quick note; Pleasure Cloud is a band that I would be happy to listen to.

Shout out to my frand Lizeth that works at Chive and hooked it up with a fritter that I smashed like some kind of manic donut fiend. Thx Liz! Sorry you had to see that.

Well, that was that.

The meal did not charge our phones.

It didn’t feed itself to us or take my blood pressure or vacuum the floor or expand our cloud storage either.

But it was very delicious and made us very happy today.

And that’s doing enough.

Adios VegHedz. *****Quick little Cinco de Mayo Spanish flex for you.

xoxo

J