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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
December 17, 2025 at 9:57am December 17, 2025 at 9:57am
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I have decided to turn this blog into a cheese-themed one.
Okay, no, just kidding. But cheese is my favorite condiment (bread is the only food; everything else is a condiment), so you get cheesy links from time to time. This one's from Salon:
As with any recipe, they can't just give you the recipe. Oh, no, can't have that. Gotta write the Ph.D. thesis first, then get to the recipe.
I know it's for search engine fuckery. I don't have to like it.
In this case, it gives me something to comment on.
For years, the cheese ball has been my quiet party superpower.
Me too! I'm always a cheese ball at parties.
A well-made cheese ball has gravitational pull.
If only I could attract people by being a cheese ball. No, wait, I don't really want that. Then there'd be people around.
Visits to my grandmother’s house always began in the same place: the refrigerator.
How's that dissertation coming along?
[Her cheese ball] was a marvel of its genre: cream cheese, sharp cheddar, a splash of Worcestershire, a spoonful of sugar, crushed pineapple, pecans.
Snark aside, that does sound damn delicious.
That cheese ball has stayed with me all these years...
Around me, it wouldn't last three hours.
And cheese has, of course, become the modern shortcut. The board. The wedge. The baked brie doing its annual molten collapse.
Confession time: I'm not a big fan of baked brie.
Don't get me wrong: I'll eat it before I eat anything that's not cheese or bread. It's just too messy. Like a sloppy joe when I could have a hamburger. I'm just not into messy food, is all.
“Cheese balls are celebratory and fun, but sometimes the flavors feel a little outdated,” Erika Kubick, author of “Cheese Magic”, told me in a recent email.
Some flavors never go out of style. Like the myriad flavors of cheese.
(Her most popular recipe from her first cookbook, “Cheese, Sex, Death,” was the Everything Bagel Goat Cheese Ball, if you were wondering.)
And if you were wondering, yes, that parenthetical sentence is the real reason I'm sharing this.
There's more dissertation there before it gets into the recipes. Yes, recipes, plural. Now, I haven't made these. I'm probably never going to make these. There's no point to doing a cheese ball for oneself; not when one can simply add different toppings to one's sad, lonely cracker.
But maybe someone out there will like them. |
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