No Corn In The Lounge

Watched King Corn tonight. Not surprisingly, mostly just repeats of stuff in the first section of Omnivore's Dilemma, but I don't think Josh is going to read Omnivore's Dilemma, so now he knows more about what I am talking about.

It also occurs to me that at "South Dorm Vegetarian Night" they didn't really eat what they thought they were eating. The deal with "Vegetarian Night" was to go to Black Angus and "eat things that eat vegetables." Except most beef in the US doesn't eat grass anymore, they eat corn.

I think the first I was really aware of the excess of corn in the US food system was two years ago when we were planning a backpacking trip during Passover with Rachel and Benj, and had difficulty finding food to bring that didn't contain corn (since normally when backpacking we eat mostly prepared foods). And I thought that was bad, before I realized that the principle ingredient of the beef and eggs we ate that weekend to avoid corn and other grains was, in fact, corn. As far as I know, Passover rules don't disallow eating things that ate grain, but it would be an interesting experiment...

As for me, I had corn at 3 meals today. At breakfast because I mistakenly put white corn meal into my muffins thinking it was whole wheat flour (switched their canisters recently) and didn't get it all out. At lunch when I ate more of those muffins, plus the nachos Josh made. And also at dinner, in the bacon I cooked our potatoes, in and the cheese we put on our broccoli, and in the butter we put on our asparagus. And this was in a meal that was practically all vegetables (potato with some bacon, that cabbage and apple dish, broccoli with cheddar cheese, and asparagus). And for all I know, there was also corn involved in the making of the vinegar that was in the cabbage dish. And this is making everything (except those corn chips) from scratch. (Though I'm sure if I was having this conversation with my dad, he'd point out that "scratch" is what we feed the chickens... hmmm, I think there might be something deep to that.)

1945 RCA Victrola Cabinet w/ Working Electronics

Yesterday, Josh and I bought an amazing old RCA Victrola cabinet for $195 off craigslist. It came with it's original receipt from 1945 when it sold for $495 (which would have been almost $6K in today's dollars, so we're talking about a nice piece). The woodwork is amazing, though it needs some cosmetic work where it's been scratched up over the years, which we know how to do.

Our intention in buying it was to build a subwoofer into the bottom (where the original speaker is currently built in), and store our stereo equipment inside and on top. Here's the thing, it still has it's original combination record player and radio (short wave, AM, and FM), the built in speaker (12 inch driver and tube amp), and it all still works. Of course, "still works" is a relative term: it sounds like a radio from the 1940s, and the sound is mono.

On the one hand, it seems kind of cool to modernize this outdated piece of furniture, give it new life as it were. And it would be prominently placed in our living room, and we love it. On the other hand, since it all still works, it feels like we are going to be cutting up a really cool piece of history if we proceed with our plans. (Of course, we have little to no interest in owning the thing if we can't make it into something "modern" and useful... because we really don't have the space for an antique gallery in our home.)

Opinions as to whether or not our plans are bordering on criminal would be appreciated.



The rest of the photos, including insides and 1945 receipt: http://pics.livejournal.com/sillygoosegirl/gallery/0004dzs8.

ETA: We've now taken out all the electronics.  I tend to forget this, but it turned out that like so many nice old things, this one was clearly designed for easy disassembly, probably so you could get in and repair any part of the electronics that might break.  Other than pulling a few staples holding wires securely out of the way, everything was easily unplugged or unscrewed.  We could put it back together in an afternoon, if we wanted to.  I feel pretty good about that.  So now we can pretty easily store the electronics until we decide what else we might want to do with them.  Furthermore, I came up with the brilliant idea of instead of building the subwoofer into the cabinet (Josh was making me nervous with talk of adding reinforcing because he's not sure all the walls are strong enough, plus putting in goo-stuff to seal it), slapping together a really basic/ugly subwoofer out of MDF just the right size to slip into the bottom cavity.  We think this will be easier than building the subwoofer actually into the cabinet, plus it will mean not actually making any permanent alterations to the cabinet.  Plus it will mean that the subwoofer can come out for moving the piece, which is already extremely heavy.