Until yesterday, I never knew the true definition of Ragú, nor have I ever had the inclination to dig deeply into its etymological roots. For the past two decades, Ragú meant “sauce in a jar” to me, and God bless the people at the processing plant for mixing tomatoes with convenience. Ardent pastaphiles would likely argue, passionately and garden veggie chunkily, that refined palates should retch at the very mention of Ragú sauce.
To these people I’d offer the following two-step plan. First, you should remove the dozen cannelloni from your anus. Second, you should take a moment to ask whether I give a braised rat’s ass about your sauceology.
Would you like to know the real meaning of Ragú, gentle reader? You’ll find the following quote from Bill Buford in the recent Food Issue of The New Yorker. The article is called “The Pasta Station,” and it chronicles the making of pasta in the Old World as well as New York. This is what Buford learned at Babbo. “The Italian ragú and the French ragoût are more or less the same thing; in any language,” he writes, “the process (I now know) involves taking a piece of meat and, as it was described in the vernacular of the kitchen, cooking the shit of the fucker.”
Amen to that, brother. Maybe that’s why my Slim Jims frequently end up charred and molto nasty. Whoa, did I just speak Italian?
Believe what you want, gentle reader, but it’s actually Monday. You may have thought your clock said Tuesday, maybe Wednesday for our international friends, and your favorite newspaper probably agreed with your clock. Thing is, it’s very much a Monday evening as I sit and write to you. I’m at the bookend of a long weekend, so Sunday Syndrome–I hope you’re keeping these days in order–rides roughshod over my peace of mind. You know the feeling: it’s the night before work or school, the fermata before the plunge, and you’re wishing it were any other day.
Now, before you start preaching the virtues of being proactive and enjoying one’s work and synergizing shit, I figured I’d offer you fair warning. I’ve never digested self-help too well, at least in its traditional flavors. I remember picking up The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People after listening to a professor rave about it. Picking up the book, unfortunately, pretty much describes the extent of my involvement with the text. I don’t think I even got to Chapter 2, so if one of the seven habits is perseverance I’m plain outta luck.
I also attempted to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and boy did I make a lot of progress with that one. If memory serves, I almost got through Chapter 3, which was probably a treatise on not being a schmuck, when I permanently lent the book to someone.
Here’s my point. Traditional outlets of self-help haven’t appealed to me, but that won’t stop me from exploring alternative avenues of advice, meaning I want to make stuff up. You want to know how to beat those start-of-week blues? Listen up. The main cause of your melancholy is lack of anticipation. Our current work calendar plays out like an emotional rollercoaster, tempting you with long weekends and holidays before gutting you with long expanses of nothing. The solution is simple. You’ve got to make up your own holidays, one for every day of the year! Forget about those second tier holidays like Flag Day, Earth Day, or Guy Fawkes Day. Today isn’t Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s Wear Your Shirt Backwards Day. And tomorrow? Wear Your Pants Backwards Day, followed by Don’t Wear Any Clothes Day. The day after that is Try Not to Get Fired Day, and so on and so on. If you originally planned on celebrating Slit Your Wrists with a Copy Collator Day, don’t. Instead, you should put that collator on your head and enjoy Wear Your Collator like a Hat Day. Who’s a happy person? You’re a happy person, yes you are.
Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, September 7.