Foreign Food

Will sobrassada be the next ‘nduja? Did you know that salami is the plural of salame? To further confuse us, salame is a type of salumi.

By the way, if you don’t know how to pronounce ‘nduja, Wikipedia says it is pronounced like this: ‘ndu ja. Seriously. I think Wikipedia are not being as helpful here as they probably think they are.

But back to sobrassada (not to be confused with soppressata which is an Italian word for a food that is similar). Just when we were getting ‘nduja figured out, the Mallorcans are putting sobrassada on the charcuterie board. And for you sobrassada fans who think it should be spelled sobrasada, just know I’m using the Catalan spelling. Sobrasada is the Spanish spelling. I know, I know—Catalonia is technically part of Spain, at least it is as I type these words. Tomorrow? Who knows. Spain is complicated.

You may be wondering, “Why does ‘nduja start with an apostrophe?” Why indeed. I suppose because it can. Foreigners, you know—it’s like they write and speak a separate language.

LG

My LG smart phone bricked itself. In fact, it’s worse than that, because at least a brick has functionality; it serves a useful purpose. Now when I turn on the phone, the screen says “Downloading update … do not unplug cord.” It delivers this message whether or not a cord is plugged in. The message stays on the screen for as long as the phone remains on. I researched the issue and discovered that there is (supposedly) a way to restore the phone to its factory settings. So I followed the procedure. It didn’t work. The phone remained bricked.

I have an LG TV. The TV works fine, but the remote quit working. Not all the buttons on the remote—just the power button. The TV doesn’t have a power button on it. In fact, it has no buttons at all. Without a remote, one can’t operate the TV.

A friend who lives nearby had an LG TV. It went ka-blooey (figuratively) and he got rid of it, but he saved the remote. When I told him about my remote going bad, he gave me the remote to his defunct LG TV. It’s a different size and shape than the remote that came with my set, but it operates my TV just fine.

I have an LG computer monitor. So far it has performed well. No complaints. Well, there was that time the monitor made a fzzzt sound and the screen went to maximum white-out brightness. It took a couple minutes (turn the monitor off and on; reboot the computer) but then I discovered the problem was the monitor setting. I turned the brightness down and all was okay again.

I used to like LG but the shine is starting to get a wee bit tarnished.

The BFS

My small city has three tornado sirens. To say they’re loud would be an understatement. One siren is about 200 feet from my house. It’s deafening even with windows closed. I call it the BFS.

Let me explain how it works. The sky darkens with clouds. Rain begins to fall. Lightning flashes across the sky. The rain becomes heavy and turns into a gully-washer. The lightning intensifies and thunder rolls across the city. After a while the lightning and thunder fade away and the rain slows then stops. The sky becomes brighter. Then the siren sounds off.

Maybe it’s not a tornado siren. Maybe it’s a no-tornado siren. Or maybe it’s just the city’s way of saying, “Missed us again, Mother Nature. Nah-nah-nah.”

It’s probably not a good idea to taunt Mother Nature. Especially considering that the city has already been hit by tornadoes several times with loss of life. Whoever is throwing the switch on that missed-us-again siren is playing with fire. Dear city government: don’t say I didn’t give you a heads-up.

A Mystery Once Again

I’ve written about this kind of thing previously. In Go Figure I wrote about strange, unexplained sounds in my house. In House Ghost I wrote about a can of bathroom cleaner that was teleported. In Odd Stuff I wrote about a couple of odd incidents, including a flashlight being knocked off the fireplace mantle directly into a wicker basket that I had just placed on the floor below the mantle.

But now it’s time for another mysterious true story. Two nights ago I went to bed at my usual bedtime. I was sober. I had not taken a sleeping pill. Twice during the night I got up to use the bathroom. I experienced nothing unusual. That is, not until the next morning.

I awakened and reached for my phone. I usually keep it on the corner of the dresser beside my bed. A heavy, metal table lamp sits beside it. I didn’t find the phone, so I got up on one elbow to look for it. I noticed the shade on the lamp was knocked askew. The lamp had been moved from its usual location and placed on top of the phone.

I looked further around the room. The wastepaper basket had been turned over and was lying on its side. My pillow was on the floor on top of the wastepaper basket. The blanket on my bed was on the floor. What was going on? I set things aright and went about my morning.

At lunchtime I decided to make a sandwich, so I reached for a partially consumed bag of bread sitting atop the refrigerator. I untwisted the twist tie and opened the bag. I looked inside. All the slices of bread had large holes in the center of them. In fact, they were little more than crust.

I inspected the bag. There were no holes in it. I know for sure that the opening in the bag was securely closed with a twist tie. An ant couldn’t have gotten into that bag. And even if a mouse got in (without leaving a hole) it would have had to climb up the side of the refrigerator to get to the bag of bread. Can a mouse do that? And why would a mouse only eat the inner part of the bread and leave the crust untouched? Are mice that picky about their food?

There was no explaining any of it except, perhaps, for a mischievous poltergeist. But if that’s the case, at least the poltergeist gives me occasional fodder for my blog.