Ask Yerac

Yerac, what is your best story of someone doing something stupid or illegal at a bank?

Also, what are the best condiments?

You have to give me a more specific topic. I like things that aren't super illegal but just really grifty/weird. Like the guy who stabbed a cab driver in the hand. Or fucking H4ro)d F0rd who would not take any meetings with anyone unless you bought some of his books first. And his office was full of boxes of them.

yerac what's the best Chilean fruit that you can't get in the US?

I put hot sauce on everything. I put only grey poupon on salads. I am pretty sure I am dying on the inside.

That one that tastes like a pear but looks like scallops/white uni, I have to look it up, I can't remember the name.

chirimoya?

Chirimoya.

Don't eat the seeds because you supposedly die or maybe just get bad moops. Yu are supposed to put lemon juice on the fruit meat too.

Te3dy R00sev3lt IV does not know how to use a computer or a phone. He still has a secretary patch him in to say one word. His favorite saying when he is angry "you're making me jaw tight. TIGHT!!!"

there is some chirimoya grown in California, I saw some at whole foods once but wasn't prepared to pay 10 dollars Canadian for one piece of fruit

me=my. I am in France right now (late) and on 2 bottles of wine. Going downey fabric softener time.

loads of cherimoya in los angeles chinese markets

they import it from some southeast asian country i believe

also trying to think of appropriate questions

got nothing

I've never seen it anywhere on the east coast but i have prolly have not looked too hard. LIke how my mom magically manages to whip persimmons out of her bag even though I never see them anywhere. There is a lot of chimamoya geltao. When russians come to visit us (i know) in Chile they really like to bring chiramoyas to our house. And that russian white sugary candy that has the cranberry in the middle.

loaads of persimmons in even non chinese produce stores in los angeles

yerac what do you think of zinfandels

They are fine. Some grape varietals get a bad rap because they had some weird cultural flashpoint that made a lot of people hate it. Like Sideways and Merlot. People hate zinfandel because of white zinfandel from the 80s and it being sickly sweet, overproduced, cheap. I like ones from Dry Creek. They are super good for Tgiving dinners too because they are fruit forward and lower tannin so work well with the range of foods served (carby, salty, high fat). I have a friend that can always recognize zin blind because it smells like cobbler to her and reminds her of her grandmother. Plus zin is higher in alcohol so you will be happy talking to family or finally telling them that they are out of your life for good.

nice

ya i love cali zins

anything full bodied and dry

Almost every wine produced nowadays is dry. I think most people are just scarred from when they accidentally got some riesling from Mosel or an off dry moscato or some bad wine in a box. A lot of US/AU/New World wine is very fruit forward so people interpret fruit as sugar when it's really just fruit heavy notes.

If you want to know if wine has real residual sugar just pinch your nose and stuck your tongue in the wine. You should taste sugar without needing to smell the wine. It's the jelly belly test.

Who drinks enough wine to gain weight off it anyway

Ummm can you expand on the hand-stabbing story?

i just don't like sweet things

It was all over the paper. We had a lot of bad employees. One let a client use his private plane once without getting approval (you were required to disclose gifts and entertainment activities). Of course his client crashed in the plane.

https://nypost.com/2012/03/02/banker-stabbed-cabbie-then-bragged-hed-get-away-because-he-pays-10k-in-taxes-docs/

I don't like sweet things either, but I do like dessert wines. I have one in my luggage right now that I bought today. 1985 Moulin Touchais (botrytised chenin blanc from Couteaux Layon, Loire).

Wow. Never trust anyone whose first name is “W.” or “J.”

xpost, I drink enough wine (call it depardieu'ing) to gain weight. And then I go cold turkey for a month or three, eat very well until I lose 20lb rinse repeat. I pretend I am preparing for a movie role.

yerac is a classic poster

Hardcore. I probably do too, but exercise/water/decent diet mostly seem to keep it under control xp

Yerac if someone told you that you could not drink wine again how would you feel

Yerac, you use the word "spouse" to describe your other half. I find the word amusingly old-fashioned. I don't think I've heard anyone else use it for years. Was it Nicholson Baker who talked about how there was no good word for it, just as there's no good word for belly? I'm probably remembering wrong. Why do you use "spouse"?

I would be ok not drinking wine. I think I once went two years without drinking. I looked like Tony Horton. I am very flexible with what is offered. I appreciate most spirits.

I went over this in another thread recently, but I hate the terms wife and husband. I'm not really into marriage either but I got married 2 or 3 years ago so whatever. I was with my partner ~15 years before we got married and I hated calling him my boyfriend before that. I usually just refer to him by his name. We mostly got married because there was this really expensive jacket that I was obsessed with and it was more money than I would really ever spend on a piece of clothing. So I said if I bought it I would wear it to city hall.

Also, I just remembered there is an old thread somewhere that I talk about how he got the maddest I have ever seen in my life. We were in our yard and I found a squirrel tail. I picked it up and threw it at him and he got crazy upset and left the house for hours. I think most people agreed that I was a jerk because the tail was wet and he was a vegan.

I went looking for the thread and found this other one and I literally made a Peanut Butter Solution joke 2 days ago. I just asked spousehead why I brought it up because he laughed but he has no clue what Peanut Butter Solution is and was just laughing to appease me I guess. I obviously need newer jokes. To All the bItches in Greenpoint last night

Thanks for the reply. Here's the Nicholson Baker quote:

"There is no good word for stomach; just as there is no good word for girlfriend. Stomach is to girlfriend as belly is to lover, and as abdomen is to consort, and as middle is to petite amie.”

― The Mezzanine

the bit about the wedding/jacket is lol

Yeah yerac is funny as fuck

Thx dude(s). I wish we had a better word for partner. We were having dinner with an older prof once and he was saying his Significant Other was meeting us late. But he said his "S.O." (pronounced es-soh). I thought he was using spanish slang like "ese" (pronounced es-say). I would temporarily post a pic of the wedding jacket, but I don't think I have used a temporary hosting site in a decade.

angelfire is good

I just wiki'd Nicholson Baker. I should read him.

He's great. I read The Anthologist most recently and loved it. I knew someone who called her bf her "feller" and thought that was cute.

The Anthologist is great although maybe not the best starting point. It may be better to accustom yourself to his approach and concerns by reading an early one.

My first was Vox, I think. Worked for me. A friend of mine hated it but I think he was just squeamish about sex.

Someone recently introduced their companion to me as "my person"--I appreciated this choice a lot. Idk how they each identify but imo they're both gender-nonconforming women-presenting ppl, and I just liked the avoidance of definition and also the expansiveness of it.

What do you call your compression principale (main squeeze)? And you know me, I've always been a weirdo about F.

I call C my boyfriend, but when I lived with someone I used to use "partner." Bf is unsatisfactory but there aren't really models for different kinds of partnerships. I don't want to get married, and I probably won't want to live together, but I might have to do the first so he can have health insurance for the first time in his life, and it might eventually make more financial sense to do the second. But also without marriage or cohabitation in the picture, everyone assumes you aren't long-term or you're not serious, ie you aren't taken seriously has having a place in each other's lives.

Was at a family wedding last week and I was excluded from family pics of bride & groom & only married family & offspring--"significant others" weren't considered part of the family. I was mostly ok w it but poor C kept saying, "WAIT YOU FORGOT [IN ORBIT]" loudly and embarrassingly.

we used to get that then we got married and then they found out how we married and we were relegated straight back to "you are not srs about it"

It's also come up a lot lately bc he bought a house outside the city and everyone assumes that means something for our relationship, that either we'll break up or I'll move there, or that because I'm *not* moving there, that we're not serious. I mean not ppl who know me, but, like, realtors and plumbers and idk just ppl. Actually even a lot of friends asked me, "Are you okay with that?" which I appreciate that they were checking on me, but also his choice of residence has nothing to do with me. (Also I like spending time apart--I admit it would be different if we were like "date night every Thursday!" kind of ppl).

xp lol yeah u can't win

Also true that Yerac is a total weirdo about her relationship, which I extra-appreciate because it creates more space to be a weirdo, and as it turns out I'm one too.

I'm not opposed to "gentleman caller"--it's gender-reductive but I like the "just visiting" aspect of our partnership, that we have our own spaces.

Yes, you are now sounding like the exact kind of weirdo I was/am, especially with the not needing to live together, to be in each other's asses all the time, or needing to define it. "BF" is totally unsatisfactory. "Husband" has too much baggage. That sucks about the pics, except that I think the wedding pic ritual is weird anyway. Especially with digital photography there was no reason for them to not take a pics with you in the moment.

Oh they took some shots with and some without. It was fine. It just made me pause.

Why you hate chocolate, Yerac?

xpost thx! all the pics from then are sooo 'of a time'. all those tall, lanky indie rock boys.

I've never liked chocolate. Even as a kid, I remember telling my parents it tasted like dirt. I eat it when people give it to me but I would never buy it, order it or put it in things on my own. Dark chocolate on pretzels is ok.

people say chocolate or coffee tastes like dirt and i'm like yeah, I'd eat dirt too

i love coffee. I always do dark roast, black, iced.

Yerac have you ever been a boss? If so what was that like

Yeah. It's terrible. People are entirely too much drama at work and most people are just not great at their jobs. I don't like being responsible for other people. My last job, I managed a team of seven (who had all been there 10-25 years and were in that exhausting 'everything used to be better when we didn't have to rely on computers and there weren't so many policies' spiral) before I eventually asked to be transferred to another position where I just worked by myself and with the original person who hired me (was great). Then my old entire team was laid off after I transferred and their roles moved to Mumbai and Baltimore and they totally blamed me.

You're not weird, I love black coffee and hate chocolate also. Never liked chocolate, it always gave me a migraine.

Speaking of your PS4, how are you getting on, and have you played any Yakuza games yet?

love it! It's only slightly ruining our lives!

Have Yakuza 0 but haven't played it for more than maybe 3 hours total. We kind of have been concentrating on finishing Spiderman and Zero Horizon before picking anything else back up. Next games to get are Death Stranding and OuterWorlds after we finish most of what I got. I kind of don't understand Fortnite, but I also was drinking while I was trying to figure it out.

Lol 3 hours on that game is like...12 on another. It’s long but soooo good & I am always happy to bore people on the subject!

I don’t understand Fortnite either tbh

Merely stumbling across the word 'Fortnite' is enough to force me to accept, once again, that I am one of the olds now.

I mean, I wasn’t going to say it.

Yerac had an alibi and I don't, so it's all good.

I meant I felt the same way about Fortnite for that reason!

yeah it's a little too story based and the feel feels too sluggish if you are coming from a newer game. But I like running around the city and hope there is more of that. Do have a favorite Yakuza game?
I don't know how many hours I have on Witcher 3 and God of War but those are the other two games that are likely over 30% done.

I really really didn't get Fortnite. I couldn't even figure out if I was playing the real game.

Did you play the first two Witchers?

no. I just got the ps4 last month after much deliberation about whether it would destroy any motivation I have left to do productive things.

the last console I had was in 2002.

They're both pretty good, but hardly essential if you've just hopped on the train via the 3rd instalment. But yeah, it's an absolute timesink either way. Steam says I've spent no less than 180 (!!!) hours on The Witcher 3 (completist run with all DLCs tbf). Fucking great game, but I sometimes wish I could unwind more productively. Do make sure you play the DLCs, though, it's the best part imo.

xps 0 is probably it because the story and depth of content, but I love Kiwami 2 even though it’s painfully early noughties at points. You can spend tons of time just running around playing mahjong/doing karaoke/playing koi koi/fishing etc before you need to touch the story. Oh! Also there’s a whole amazing minigame where you run a hostess club.

i am a very tediously completist mfer which is why I put off buying a console for so long. Am definitely doing the DLCs.

oh maybe this will help me become better at mahjong (and running a hostess club). I have a group I used to play with a lot but there was always the main friend guiding us and yelling at us to play faster. I have a mini mahjong set he gave me that I still have never used.

Mahjong is so fun and in all the other games except 0 it’s a great way to make money. Am sure you’ve been to Tokyo & Osaka cos you’re a lot better-travelled than I am but Kamurocho and Sotenbori are Kabukicho and Dotonbori and absolutely identical in loads of places.

I haven't been to osaka! I actually got the Yakuza game because of this article. https://kotaku.com/man-visits-japan-because-of-the-yakuza-games-gets-on-j-1841321441

I didn’t see that til now but I absolutely did want to see Kabukicho when we went to Tokyo for that reason! I got into the series when 0 was localised and my friend who’d been playing for years was like “you should play this, it’s full of betrayal and super intense everything and weird goofy shit too”, ie lots of stuff I like. And then there was the infamous Yakuza 3 reviewed by Yakuza article.

"The breaded pork cutlet bento box is like mega power. More than ramen. That's accurate."

lol I forgot about them saying that crystal meth should be a power-up

"The dish gets its name from the Japanese onomatopoeia “shabu shabu” meaning “swish swish”, which describes the light swishing of the meat in the simmering broth."

i wish that terrible Katy Perry song was about shabu shabu instead.

Yerac I read a profile in the New Yorker a few weeks ago of a woman with a preternaturally worry-free personality and a complete insensitivity to physical pain. Do you experience physical pain?

I don't really have a frame of reference. My spouse says I have a high pain threshold (we have tested this in a non-kinky way). Like I feel pain but I don't think it hurts me or I am bothered by it as much as an average people?

fascinating!

did you ever have an injury or illness that you didn't notice? that's p common with people who feel no pain at all (and why they end up dying prematurely)

Yerac: What was the highlight of your last few months (assuming your long stay has ended)?

xpost Oh, I just read the article. I actually did fracture/crack my kneecap and the ball of my foot and probably my hand, but only found out years later about my kneecap and foot when I had an xray to get orthotics made/approved. I knew about my hand because I saw the entire thing bend back when I fell and kind of wanted to throw up. I did just wrap it in a wet wipe and try to play it off though to my friend who was worried and it was my dominant hand that I couldn't really move for 6 months. It's fine now. I am super careful, conscientious about health/bad decisions though so I hope to live a long time. But I actually do never get depressed and sadness/ anxiety is super fleeting.

Hmmm...udon and sushi? I don't know, I just really like being near the water.

the weather was kind of bad for a bit, super windy, choppy water.

Ah... jealous of your proximity to Foodland Farms et.al., but I have heard the weather has been really wacky.

I think I told you that this is the first year in forever that I'm not going to visit? Very sad but at least it's more understandable this year...

i think i only ended up going to foodland 3 times? they opened a Target nearby and then the Don Quijote is closer.

I am pretty sure we will be there for the same months again next year.

I may have also firmly decided that I no longer like pre-made poké.

That is... crazy talk! What killed it for you?

i think it's something about the texture. Maybe because all the ahi is on top of each other so it gets compressed in the food bin and then in the takeaway container? I got it a couple of times from Foodland (I ended up adding more ginger, scallions, shisho, everything) and Ono but I much prefer it when it's mixed fresh. A new place for poké I was really into was the no7 Japanese food truck in Haleiwa, so much better now than the poké food truck across from sharks cove.

Yerac, can we clip a locator beacon to you somewhere? Every time I think you are in Santiago your are ordering Poké in Hawaii.

oh, i just got back from there a week and half ago (was there from before new years). Although I got my ps4 while I was there, so it was probably not the best use of the time.

Yerac what is your job and why do you travel so much

I am a dirtbag now.

no wait. i think I am way too much into hygiene and skincare for that to be correct.

Yerac, since the global financial crisis, venture capital has propped up thousands of stupid software startup businesses

where did all that fucking money come from

Would you (and yours) go to the Kaka'ako FM with me? (y/n)

Why do questions lie hanging in the snow

What is the nature of man

oero