A conversation I'm tired of having

NetLoon: I read something from a guy who says cheese is made from corn. Does anyone know anything about this?
Me: As far as we can tell, there is no way to make cheese out of corn.
NetLoon: It makes sense what he's saying since corn is yellow and so is cheese.
Me: A lot of foods are yellow. That doesn't mean they're all related.
NetLoon: Look here where he says that polenta is "creamy" and so is Gouda!
Me: Take any two foods and you can find resemblances in texture between them. This still doesn't prove anything since they could be due to chance.
NetLoon: What do you know anyway? He's got a lot of comparisons on his website.
Me: I have a degree in food science. Near as I can tell, your man's credentials are that he used to be a fry monkey at KFC.
NetLoon: KFC has a bowl that mixes CORN and CHEESE!!!
Me: ...

Verschiedenes

Once again, I've been living life too fast and furious to have the time and--more to the point--the energy to write about it. Some highlights:

• Today I saw something I didn't think existed any more in this country, something I'd only ever read about in books: an itinerant knife sharpener. He was pushing a red-and-green cart with a whetstone mounted atop it down the sidewalk; I could hear the bell clanging from blocks away. It sounded remarkably like a knife against a sharpening steel, or was that only the power of suggestion?
• There was a deadlock Saturday over where to go for lunch so I successfully bid for Tre Kronor in Albany Park. My stekt potatis was slightly burnt, my köttbullar somewhat bland (which is perhaps why they were anomalously listed as "Norwegian meatballs"?), but it was all very filling and warming. Plus I got the Old Man to split a plate of pickled herring with me and found cloudberry preserves at the gift shop across the street. Go me!
• What really made my day, however, was seeing "Dandelion & Burdock" among the featured sodas lining the counter. (Unlike most brands, apparently, Fentimans' is actually made from fermented dandelion and burdock.) None of us could imagine what it tasted like; I would describe it as somewhere between chicory tea and birch beer. monshu wasn't pleased with the aftertaste, but I think a judiciously chosen alcoholic mixer could take care of that.
• Last year, monshu and I missed the annual Metro shelving sale at Container Store and have been kicking ourselves every since, counting the days until the next one. Worth it? I'll say; we tripled our shelf space in the pantry for a third the price I thought we'd have to pay (mainly by displacing our affections to the less-than-commerical-grade InterMetro line). I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out how best to arrange our worldly goods for easy retrieval. This could take a while.
• I finished up The Irish signorina last Friday and am already 150 pages into a new novel. A former Man Booker Prize winner describes it thusly: "The tone...throughout is one of vague, helpless desperation, while the wit is dry to the point of snapping." Any guesses?