Flowing through the Drains
Oct. 12th, 2006 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonIn the old Hal Roach shorts, having to take cod liver oil is always presented as a sort of semi-punishment. I recently started taking the stuff on my doctor's advice, and I'm finding I quite like it. I got some in gel capsules, fully expecting it to taste completely awful from the faces that people made in the movies when they had to take it. As stuff in gels will do, the flavour came faintly through the gel, and what I could taste prompted me to bite it. It's strong fish oil. I'd thought it would taste like beef liver or something. Next time I'll just get a bottle of the oil instead of capsules.
*****
I've always been fortunate in that I liked the cheap, oily fish better than the more expensive, delicately flavoured ones. Cod oil is cheap, oily fish taste in spades.
*****
When I lived in Rochester (a strange place if ever there was one) there was this restaurant on the lake there that served this horrible, flavourless breaded fish. Several of my acquaintances surprised me with carryout at various times, knowing that I liked fish but hated the town, and hoping a gift of fish might soften me. They meant well.
The chief reason I always heard people give for liking this stuff was that it didn't taste like fish. That was in their advertising as well - "Doesn't taste fishy". That was the most surreal place I ever lived, and not in a good way. It was the surrealism of discovering that you're living in a particularly uninspired television sitcom, but with something dark and foul just bubbling away half-glimpsed and half-guessed under the veneer of tediously folksy humour.
*****
There are few things as evocative as the city at night, in the rain. On my way home, in the hour before dawn, I have to cross the wide, shallow valley of the Olentangy river. When I crest the last ridge before the river, I can see for two miles ahead, six lanes of oncoming traffic. The warm incandescent colour of the headlights smears over the wet pavement, with the lights themselves floating along like hot jewels in a river of light. It's a sight that never fails to delight me. There's something very clean and safe about the city, far from the despair of small towns like Rochester.
*****
It rained much of the day today, a cold, soaking autumn rain. The dead leaves are matting together in the corners of the parking lot, where the flowing water brings them. Pretty soon the tree in front of my window will be bare again.
*****
I've always been fortunate in that I liked the cheap, oily fish better than the more expensive, delicately flavoured ones. Cod oil is cheap, oily fish taste in spades.
*****
When I lived in Rochester (a strange place if ever there was one) there was this restaurant on the lake there that served this horrible, flavourless breaded fish. Several of my acquaintances surprised me with carryout at various times, knowing that I liked fish but hated the town, and hoping a gift of fish might soften me. They meant well.
The chief reason I always heard people give for liking this stuff was that it didn't taste like fish. That was in their advertising as well - "Doesn't taste fishy". That was the most surreal place I ever lived, and not in a good way. It was the surrealism of discovering that you're living in a particularly uninspired television sitcom, but with something dark and foul just bubbling away half-glimpsed and half-guessed under the veneer of tediously folksy humour.
*****
There are few things as evocative as the city at night, in the rain. On my way home, in the hour before dawn, I have to cross the wide, shallow valley of the Olentangy river. When I crest the last ridge before the river, I can see for two miles ahead, six lanes of oncoming traffic. The warm incandescent colour of the headlights smears over the wet pavement, with the lights themselves floating along like hot jewels in a river of light. It's a sight that never fails to delight me. There's something very clean and safe about the city, far from the despair of small towns like Rochester.
*****
It rained much of the day today, a cold, soaking autumn rain. The dead leaves are matting together in the corners of the parking lot, where the flowing water brings them. Pretty soon the tree in front of my window will be bare again.
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C.L.O. 2004
Date: 2006-10-12 09:53 am (UTC)"And what will Sir have to drink with his steak?"
"BRING ME OIL!"
Re: C.L.O. 2004
Date: 2006-10-12 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 09:51 am (UTC)They've been massively overfished esp. since the 1950's with the massive industrial trawlers.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-13 10:47 am (UTC)