Why can't things just work?

Here's a little something I've been struggling with lately. Technology. I wouldn't say I'm horrible at it, but I know enough to make me dangerous. I make things for the internet, after all! The best part is that I'm not the only one. There are plenty of people out there that make things for the people that make things.

Tools, platforms, plugins, packages, whatchamacallits...

Very talented people put together some really cool shit to make my life as a developer easier, but sometimes these talented people don't know how to document their shit, and that usually makes my life harder.

In the advertising industry, speed is a necessity. If you can build products faster than the other guy, then you're probably alright. To get that edge, you can't keep reinventing the wheel by writing your custom code all of the time. Do you miss your deadlines? You're probably too creative for your job.

To remedy that, we use these tools and plugins to develop quicker, getting the same results from someone else's hard work (but they usually make it open source, so it's totally okay).

My struggle is when a certain tool or plugin is highly rated, but I'm the idiot that can't figure out how to use it. Basically, I'm not winning, and I don't like it.

/rant

A Lesson on Immigration

One of the hottest topics in today's politics is immigration. More specifically, our people are divided in trying to either keep illegal aliens out of the country, or whether they should be granted citizenship, and I'll tell you something right now; I'm a registered Democrat but my British fiance and I agree with the Republicans on this facet, and here's why.

Everyone is focused on illegals.

Americans are forgetting that legal immigrants are totally a thing. And the fact of the matter is that these legal immigrants that want to join our country, and are trying to go about it the correct way, still have a difficult time, if not more so than an illegal immigrant that just does things anyway and doesn't tell anyone about it.

So let me ask a few questions.

If this person is here illegally, why are they still here? When landlords rent to tenants, they have very specific contracts and there are laws to protect both sides from bullshit, such as sub-renting, and letting your friends live with you without being on the contract. Those people get evicted. So why are we so lenient with illegal immigrants?

If California is giving away free healthcare to illegal immigrants, why can't our legal immigrants or even our own citizens get free healthcare? We're giving them driver's licenses in North Carolina. Fuck, we might be giving them citizenship in the near future. Why are we even giving benefits to illegals at all? That's like telling them it's okay to be illegal!!!

"Hello Ma'dam, I'm glad to see you've successfully evaded the U.S. government for several years now. Here's your citizenship card!"

So what does that say to our legal immigrants? "I'm sorry, you should've sneaked over here if you wanted to be a citizen"??

Just about every single American's knowledge of the immigration system comes from watching The Proposal, which is totally and utterly wrong. When I tell people that I'm getting married to a British guy and that we can't leave the country for our honeymoon because of his current visa status, they always say, "But you're getting married. Doesn't that make him a citizen?"

No. Just no. That's so totally wrong. Now let me tell you why.

My fiance is here on an educational visa. That means it's temporary and he was expected to return to the U.K. when it expires. Because of a very specific set of circumstances, his visa status became subject to a two year home residency clause, which also meant that when his visa expired and he went back, that he couldn't come back to the U.S. for two years, even if he was married with children. Getting married and starting a family has no bearing on his visa status, because his visa is like a contract with the federal government and it specifically states that two year home residency.

Now there is hope for us, and we did successfully get through this, but John applied for a waiver that would essentially remove that two year home residency clause from his visa. It took many months for the Department of State to do its investigation on him and then send their favorable recommendation to the Feds for them to make their decision. Well luckily for us, they decided to give him the waiver. So now the next step is available to us.

After we get married, I can then petition the government to sponsor a green card for John. Yes, I said that correctly. I petition the government to sponsor a green card for John. We don't just submit an application and get it. It is yet another lengthy process. The only thing that movie got right was that they do get interviewed, except that you can totally bring your lawyer with you to the interviews, and that they only interview the couple, not your entire family.

Also, the green card that he gets is only a temporary green card. If we were to divorce within the first two years of our marriage, I could revoke my sponsorship and his green card could get taken away. At the two-year mark, we will have to fill out another form to make his green card permanent. Just so everyone knows, this still does not make him a citizen. For John to become a U.S. citizen, he will need to have a permanent green card, and then go through the naturalization process. It basically ends with a history test on the U.S. Most naturalized citizens know more about our country than the American born citizens.

TL;DR
Getting married does not make my alien fiance into a U.S. citizen. It takes years of submitting forms to the government. And apparently we're okay with granting illegal immigrants citizenship for evading the government for five years.

Honestly, the only scenario in which I have any empathy for an illegal immigrant is one with which had no choice in the matter. And by that, I mean a child that was brought over. We should protect those children as they grow up, because they've grown up with Americans, believing that they too are Americans. That doesn't excuse the friends or family that brought them over, but not everyone is equal.

A Rant Regarding Modern Developers

Anyone remember that whole Mac vs PC debate? Yeah? Well you're right, it was so 1980's... (shut up Linux users, nobody cares about you... yet!). In all reality, I'm actually quite shocked that this is still a thing. I mean, okay, I guess it's okay for Bloggers and gamers, and people that use computers because they don't have to think about anyone but themselves. They can use whatever they want because to them, computers are leisure activities, so they can play with what makes them happy.

Image Credit

But I work for an advertising agency. More specifically, I develop websites for this company's clients. This company just so happens to be a .NET shop. And for those of you that don't know, .NET was developed by Microsoft for Microsoft products like Windows, aka "the PC." At work, we use a lot of Microsoft products and programs like Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio. When I started working here, I didn't know anything about .NET. I knew HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, things of that nature, etc. I knew mostly basic stuff. But I'm pretty open minded, I think, so I learned how to develop a website in .NET at this company. If I had gotten a job in a place where they created websites solely in PHP, I would've learned that too because that's what the company uses, so as its employee, that's what I needed to learn and use.

I sometimes forget that people are vastly different. And honestly, I'm still surprised and baffled by their decisions. During my time at this company, we've hired people that are not just people that prefer Apple products, but are actively anti-Microsoft.

Image Credit

Now as a developer, specifically a developer in a fast-paced environment such as the advertising industry, I firmly believe that the developer should use whatever tools they want in order to be most efficient in their work so that it can get to QA as fast as humanly possible. And that works perfectly when you work independently. But when you're on a team, and when you're expected to hand off files to another developer to continue working, there needs to be some kind of standard so that the "ramping up" time for the new developer to pick up where you left off is minimized. Nobody wants to waste time teaching (or being taught) how to make your website files run. When you're on a team, everybody should know that. It's not just basic, it's necessary. You might have to show them around the codebase a bit for the new developer to get familiar, but otherwise, they could (and should) just as easily pull the files down from the cloud and just start tinkering with stuff.

What I'm saying is that while developers can have their biases, their opinions, and their preferences, that these should not be what dictates their tools. Developers should not be anti-Microsoft or anti-Apple. They should be open to learn whatever tools are necessary for doing the job, and doing it well. When you start your own company, you can use whatever you want. But while you're working for a company that primarily uses .NET, you better fucking learn .NET.

Not happy with it? Get a new job.



Disclaimer: Despite what you may think, this rant is not "pro-Microsoft" and you probably only think it is because you're anti-Microsoft. The fact of the matter is that my job demands that I use Microsoft products. Had I been working at a company that requires me to use Apple products, then this article would still be the same except with the roles reversed.

Video Game Escapism: The best medication for Anxiety

I'm a big advocate of using video games as a coping mechanism for dealing with the stresses of real life. I usually get very ingrained in the characters lives and problems and forget all of my own stresses just for the time I am playing. I find that this is the best way for me to cope with my own anxiety and depression. When I'm having a particularly anxious spell I feel stuck in my problems, like I can't move forward or even begin to resolve them. In video games, I can see real quantifiable progress as I complete quests and gain experience.

I can play four to five hours at a time given the chance, which I know some people would find very strange or even a waste. Usually it depends on what the game is.

Since real life is so open ended, problems have no real black and white solutions and meeting objectives is usually not a linear endeavor. I enjoy the rigid black and white world of video games. Sure, the most recent generation of games is aiming to be more gray and less defined, but the very fact that someone programmed a series of choices and outcomes makes the game digital overall.

This is not a bad thing, I like the fact that video games have hard and fast rules that I can learn and use to my advantage. I like that I can't make any mistakes so bad that the world changes fundamentally and I like that at the end of the day, all of my problems are eminently solvable.

Recently, I have been playing through the Witcher 3, my console of choice is the PS4 and it has basically enslaved me for the best part of a month. This game feels different from any other I have played. Many reviewers have raved about how it has changed the landscape of RPG gaming and raised the standard of narrative and quest design. While this may be true, there are deeper implications with this change.

Being a perfectionist, I also strive to do video games correctly. I want to get the "good" ending. I want to collect everything and I want all the good characters to like me and all the bad characters get their comeuppance. If I do something wrong, I am always tempted to reload and try again rather than living with my flawed actions, I get enough of that in real life! I try to not look at guides to story line to manipulate the game to my desire and I try not to correct actions but sometimes, it is so easy to just try again when you have that conversation with an attractive female character that didn't quite turn out how you were hoping.

In the Witcher 3, it is actually quite difficult to see the puppet strings. You make decisions important to the game without even realizing it, innocuously seeming NPCs take on an entirely different and unexpected role and there is no way of knowing what the right choice even was. Consequences can happen hours after the event when you barely even remember what could have caused the outcome. The game introduces you to a vaguely familiar character or situation and says...

"Hey, remember this random thing you did that you thought I wouldn't notice? Well here's a steamy bowl of consequences, and if you don't like it then just reload back a few hours!"

...Knowing full well you have long saved over that timestamp and you couldn't bare losing the character progression. Well played Witcher 3, well played...

Well for a person like me who likes the fact that I can do everything "right" in video games and no screw up is too large. It was hard to deal with at first. I thought I had done the right thing, played by the video game rules, only to find out that what I did had done had dire consequences for the future.

*Warning* Spoilers for the Witcher 3 beyond this point!!

For example, I met a random guy tied up on a river bank by bandits... Pretty cut and dry, don't even think there was a quest, just a random event, untie him, send him on his way, he promised me a big reward when he got back to his camp...

Several hours later...

Bump into the same guy at a camp, turned out he is head of the bandits now and murdered a camp full of innocent men, women and children and is so grateful for me helping him he offered me a bunch of gold that might as well have had blood literally dripping off it... So I turned down his gold, murdered him and his friends and tried to forget that my actions got a bunch of random people killed.

Then there is Fyke isle... Long story short, no one goes there because it is terrifying as balls and haunted. I meet the ghost at the top of the tower. She tells me a heart wrenching tale about how she was eaten from the inside out by rats while in a paralytic state, able to feel the pain but not cry out. I thought that sounded pretty nasty so I agreed to help her put her spirit to rest at last. I chose to release her from the tower and.....

...she murdered her ex-boyfriend who she blamed and then disappeared into the ether to wreak havoc on more innocent lives across Novigrad. Great. Good job me, you fell for a soppy story and released an insane spirit on the innocent.

So it seems nothing is as it appears in the Witcher 3 and regular video game tropes don't seem to hold up at all. I could do nothing once I realized my mistake, other than take it and walk away. No second chances, no righting my wrongs, just live with it.

Then there's the Witcher contract to hunt a prostitute killer... I trace him to a brothel, burst in to find him about to kill a prostitute he tied to a chair, so naturally I kill him... Only to find another body much later on... apparently the guy I caught literally red handed was the wrong guy. Or at least he had an accomplice that I didn't bother asking him about as his head rolled across the floor.

Then you have the love interests, Triss and Yennifer. Naturally I assumed that no bad could come from seducing both because that's how video games work. I'm the hero so they should both be lucky to have me. I seduce both for the whole game then expect to have a grand moment of choice scene at the end and choose a winner while the other goes her separate way with absolutely no negative consequences...

Well, come the end game and things were better than I could imagine: a threesome! Just as I predicted, the hero always gets his way...

Except it was actually a trap and I ended up embarrassed, alone and tied to a bed... WTF! And that was it, I had failed and was doomed to be alone thanks to my own selfishness.

There's many more scenarios, but I think I made my point.

So what the Witcher 3 teaches us is that we should choose a partner, be faithful and spurn the advances of all others. Then we can live happily ever after. So kinda like real life then... In real life I would never act the way I made Geralt act. The worst part is that throughout the game I couldn't stand Yennifer, she acted more like my mom than a lover and I really liked Triss. Yet, when push came to shove I saw no problem in telling Triss I Geralt loved her only to go and cheat on her with Yen.

Why? Because that's the old video game rules, I can have it all! If I wanted to be monogamous and not murder everyone who looks at me funny, I'd go outside! And I was genuinely pretty disappointed that I Geralt ended up alone in the end because of my own poor choices.

I mean come on! Even Lambert ended up with Keira! And he was a total A-hole the whole game!

But there you have it, video games have changed, no longer does being the protagonist guarantee a happy ending with no consequences of your actions. and now I will have to be a lot more careful about the decisions I make.

Just on a random aside: How awesome was the 'mission' where you get drunk with your Witcher friends, dress up in Yennifer's clothes and drunk dial a random mage on the mage phone in an ill-fated attempt to invite over some hot sorceresses to the party. One of the funniest scenes in a video game of all time.

Dear Childhood Best Friend

We haven't seen each other in a very long time, and I've found myself thinking about you this past week. You moved very far away a few years ago, and I figured it was time I finally wrote to you.

You broke my heart. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. You kept doing it and seemingly without remorse. You grew up and became a psychopath and I hope you're living a miserable life.

But I still miss you.

Not the you you are now. I miss the you I knew when we were kids. You were tons of fun. I still remember when and where we met.

I had just moved to the area and was riding a new bus. I got on for the first time, and I saw this mousy brunette sitting in the middle. There were some bitchy girls in the back and few other kids speckled around. I sat across the aisle from you. You were very quiet. Didn't look at me at all. Just read your book. So I just kept to my own business and looked out the window. The bus was almost never packed.

It would seem like you brought something new with you on the bus every day. First it was Beanie Babies. I had a pretty good collection on my own, but you had some I've never seen before. Other times, you brought these really cool animal robot toys. I saw you had this one like a lion, so I finally spoke up.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a Zoid," you responded.

"That's cool. What does it do?"

"It fights other Zoids. This is Liger Zero X."

And so our friendship began. I started asking my mum to buy me Zoids when we went to Walmart, but my collection was never as big as yours. It didn't matter, we shared them and made up our own stories.

We learned about our other interests like drawing, and eventually discovered anime together. We could never pass by Walden's book store in the mall without going in to look at the manga rack to see if the newest book of favorite series' were there.

Some of my favorite memories include buying random fabrics from JoAnne's and running around the woods by our houses, playing pretend. We were queens of the various animal kingdoms. We were warrior princesses of an anthropomorphic fox species. We were super saiyans. I was Sailor Jupiter and you were Sailor Uranus. We both crushed on Legolas and Aragorn, son of Arathorn.

I brought you to all of my family functions. You met my cousins, and she's just as quirky as us, so we had loads of more fun making music videos. We were so close, we promised each other that we would all be each other's Maid of Honor when we got married.

We had wondrous adventures together, but it came to an abrupt halt when we started dating boys.

I wasn't mature enough to really care. I thought boyfriends were just friends that were boys. I got a boyfriend before you, but I still made time to hang out with everyone because that's how I was. You turned into something different when you got a boyfriend.

You started to ignore me. You essentially forgot about me. Then you actively avoided me. It really sucked. It tore me up because you were my best friend. I shared all my secrets with you. When something shitty happened, you weren't there for me. I needed you.

When your boyfriend dumped you and you remembered that I existed, I forgave you. I missed you. I was excited that things were going back to the way they were before. But it didn't last long. You turned into a serial dater. You forgot about me every time you had a new boyfriend, and every time, it broke me down just a little bit more.

I moved away for college and lived in my dorm in the city for a year. We barely saw each other. I had hoped you had changed because I asked you to come be my roommate in the city for our first apartment. You did. We had some fun, but it quickly deteriorated. I started to learn you weren't who I thought you were.

Not once did you get a real job when we lived together. Your job as a stripper paid well. Too well. In fact, all of your boyfriends were previous clients. You dated a 32 year old man (we were still only 19 and 20 at the time). You dated a computer savvy college student (probably your best yet). And you didn't come home a lot. Almost ever. Our apartment was more like a storage space for your shit while you slept at mens' places. I'm sorry, clients. Sure, you weren't the stereotypical stripper that got addicted to drugs. But you were the stripper that dated clients and allowed them to pay you under the table for going on dates with them like an escort. I never asked if those packages included sex because it just wasn't my business and honestly, I didn't want to know.

The biggest blow to my heart is when you started visiting my cousin without me. I thought we were best friends, only to feel betrayed when you two started hanging out behind my back. It's not like she was a short drive away. It required a lot of planning to visit each other because she lived four hours away. It also sucked because my cousin never visited me when we lived together, but she visited you after we got our own, separate apartments. She visited me for the first time just last October, and I've been living in this city since 2009.

Regardless, you chipped away at my trust in you. You're the reason why I can't stand you now.

Since we've parted ways, my cousin got married. You couldn't even be bothered to attend her wedding when she asked you to be her Maid of Honor because you'd rather take your shirt off at your job. It's okay, I attended but didn't get to be her MOH either. I'm not even mad about that. I'm mad because you blew her off.

Now I'm about to get married, and my cousin will be in my bridal party, but you won't. And that makes me happy. You moved to the Virgin Islands to live with a guy you met online when you were 15. I hope you make each other miserable. You are such a despicable person, you had the gall to accuse someone I love of raping you because you needed to pull the "victim" card to keep your relationship with that weirdo together.

You're a liar. You're a heart-breaker. You're a disgusting human being and I hope you get what you deserve, because I certainly am.

Cheers.

White Pride! Straight Pride! Wait, what?

I've noticed an increasingly, interesting trend happening on the internet these days, and it was a rather collective, but subtle (until recently this last week), movement I dare say: pride for the majority.

Before you angrily disagree, let me clarify what I mean when I say pride for the majority (and you're probably still going to disagree, I promise, I totally have a point after this next paragraph).

I mean the students in Ohio that celebrated a Straight Pride Week, or this website dedicated to celebrating Heterosexual Awareness Month (though I can't really tell what month they're claiming since they've marked July 6th as Straight Pride Day and July 22nd as International Day Against Heterophobia, but you can buy T-Shirts and mugs!). This forum that is for White Nationalists that say they support true diversity and a homeland for all people, but want to promote the interests, values, and heritages of the white majority simply because there's so many organizations that already do it for non-white minorities. There is this radio and billboard project that claim to be the voice of the white resistance.

None of this is new. That radio station I linked to is run by the Ku Klux Klan, and they've been around for a really long time. And that's also kind of my point. I'm a firm believer that when people don't learn their history, it's doomed to repeat itself. In this technological era, and millennials in particular, we have no real understanding of what it's like to see a repressed minority. We grew up in a world where everyone is equal on the internet (go Net Neutrality! Woo!). We asked everyone their ASL (age, sex, and location, for those older and newer folks that missed the trend before we had online profiles, and for people who don't say folks), so you could be chatting up someone of a completely different background whether that's racial, financial, sexual, religious, or something else. While you may have your personal bias of who you PM'd (private messaged), the melting pot of an open IRC chatroom did not.

This is how we used to internet. (The Fine Bros.)

So we have a generation of people coming into their twenties in America that have only experienced a world where everyone can have an opinion. Anyone can become instantly famous in 140 characters or less. We've also experienced a world where Black History Month is celebrated every February,  there are annual LGBT+ parades, and feminists can be found everywhere spreading awareness for equality between the genders both personally and professionally.

Equality.

We see that word, and we know the definition. But now we're starting to get confused. We see everyone fighting to be equal, but we forget what they're trying to be equal to. We've started to see these awesome parades and celebrations as privileges for the minorities, not as something as equal. And that's a hard thing to say. In fact, I'm kind of disgusted to say it, but I believe this trend to be true.

We watch silently as the rainbow flags wave above our heads. We diligently learn about Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and the abolishment of slavery that followed. We learned why World War II and our own Civil War started (we briefly covered the Women's Suffrage, if at all in my school). But it all seemed so long ago. Those are just in our history books, and there are few people to recount memories of those events are alive today. In the time of the internet, those events may as well be in the Dark Ages because we move faster with the ever changing current of information available at our fingertips.

Now that we've grown up in this world, many of my generation are failing to understand why we celebrate the minorities like we do, and thus it results in my generation being led to believe that we are no longer the majority. That we no longer have these privileges that the minorities claim us to have had. That there are so many minorities banded together for equality, that we have actually become the outcasts.

And so white pride is born. Straight pride is born. We are trying to claim pride for ourselves because we're starting to feel like we're the minority.

People actually think this. I didn't just make it up. (USDemocrazy)

It simply isn't true.

Sure, you can be proud to be who you are, and you should be! But the problems begin when we start repeating history because we failed to learn it, or learn from it. I'm not saying you should be ashamed to be proud because you're heterosexual. I'm saying you should be ashamed for your ignorance when you get upset, angry, or annoyed when someone else expresses their pride for being something different.

If I were a parent of a child with a bad habit, I'd say that even though I don't agree with your choice of habit, I accept it. That's what we need to do as humans. We need to agree that we may disagree with each other's choices, whether that is who they identify as, who they choose as partners, what they choose to believe or not believe in, whatever, but we need to accept each other gracefully.

We need to tone it down with this pride for the majority stuff. We didn't have to celebrate it before because it was already known. It was already "default", if I might say it like that. What we celebrate for the minorities is because it isn't "default." We're celebrating the differences in people so that they don't feel so different after all. But now it's turning into celebrating all but one...

On the other side, Morgran doesn't want anyone to celebrate anything.

In the end, we may find ourselves on the cusp of another civil war, with businesses and buildings taking down their confederate flags because of what they may represent. Is it white history? Is it American history? Is it Southern heritage? Is it a reminder that we once coveted slavery and fought to keep it? Whatever it means, it may cause us to repeat history because we either didn't learn it or have decided to only believe the parts we want to believe.

Read a history book from England. I'm sure their take on the French and Indian War is much different than ours.


Tessa is a feminist that falls along the LGBT+ spectrum and supports equality for everyone. She believes racism and sexism are both virulent in our culture and hopes to spread the awareness. Tessa is also in support for turning our current "rape culture" into awkward conversations in order to return the value of the word to it. Yes, she will overreact to rape jokes because they're not funny. Neither are jokes founded upon mental illnesses or physical disabilities.

SPB: Vomit Chocolate

So have you always wondered why Hershey's chocolate tastes disgusting?

What's that? You like Hershey's chocolate?!

Then you must be American, because most people from outside the U.S. would agree there is just something not quite right about Hershey's.

The first bite is tasty, sweet but then there's a sort of rotten milk aftertaste that you can't quite put your finger on. Well, being a chemist I was curious about what this might be. 

It turns out that the rotten milk aftertaste is actually.... rotten milk. Not sure why I was surprised. More specifically, it is a chemical called Butyric Acid. 

Butyric Acid is the chemical that if you ever find yourself in a chemistry lab and open the wrong fridge, it hits you in the face like a jug of milk left on the radiator for a week and makes you wish you could remove your entire olfactory system with the nearest blunt instrument.

Fun fact about Butyric Acid: it's gross!

So here is a run down of Butyric acid's close cousins:

Formic acid (C1): The shortest cousin, and the stuff that red ants inject you with that burns like a son-of-a-bitch!

Acetic acid (C2): aka Vinegar. Okay, can't fault this one, vinegar is delicious! but many people think I'm insane to think that. Sorry, it's a British thing, fish and chips need vinegar!

Propanoic Acid (C3): aka Sweat! Yes, this is the smell of BO... 'nuff said.

So Butyric acid (C4) doesn't exactly find itself in excellent company....

But, the best part about Butyric acid is that it is not only literally the chemical that gives sour milk its delicious, "oh holy god, why did I just put that into my coffee?!" morning wake dry heave taste. But also the chief ingredient of vomit. 

So why you might ask would it be in chocolate of all things!

Well that is just a byproduct of how American chocolate is made. In an attempt to increase profits, the milk used in U.S. chocolate is partially lypolyzed... 

Okay so I probably just lost most people. Let's back-up.

We all know that milk has a shelf life, and left sealed the sour taste comes from the naturally occurring lypaze enzymes in the milk breaking down fatty acids to various carboxylic acids, one of which is Butyric acid. For this reason, sour milk tastes disgusting. Certain things, like exposure to light, oxygen, or excess heat can accelerate this process. So that's why milk is stored in the fridge where it's dark and cool.

To stop this process, milk in the store is pasteurized. This exposure to high temperatures destroys the enzyme (they are very sensitive to heat... as anyone who has studied enzyme chemistry can attest) meaning the milk can no longer sour itself as quickly and has a longer shelf life. The alternative is to lypolyze the milk slightly and actually partially sour it intentionally. This reaction produces some of the bad chemicals, but prevents the milk from fully souring. This is the method the chocolate manufacturers go for in the U.S.

So in the U.S. the milk is intentionally partially soured to increase shelf life and the profit.

To a non-American this is akin to urinating on a steak to keep animals away! 

But apparently Americans just develop some kind of immunity to the taste of vomit and just don't taste it! I have even given many Americans real British chocolate, Cadbury's Dairy Milk for example, and they all like it but somehow miss that sour milk vomit taste!

What is even worse to me is that this expectation is so widespread, and America is such a large international market, that rather than just make chocolate that is profitable, it just so happens to have Butyric acid in it. Legitimate chocolate manufactures actually add Butyric acid directly to their chocolate mixture!!!

Just let that sink in....

A guy in a chocolate factory somewhere is looking into a vat of delicious molten milk chocolate, and is actively getting a jar of concentrated super vomit and pouring it into said chocolate, presumably crying in actual pain while he comes to the realization that he is destroying something beautiful and basically declaring war on Switzerland. 

Hmm... needs more vomit.

This would be much like adding a mustache to the Mona Lisa to appease the mass market.

But don't worry, America, it's not all bad, There is still Ghiradelli and in my opinion the best chocolate in the world and made right here in the United States, so next time you're in the store looking for chocolate, do yourself a favor and get some real chocolate... hold the vomit!

Surprise Peanut Butter: An American Culture Shock

When you move from the UK to the US, most people would expect the degree of culture shock to be minimal. To a certain extent they are right. But the fact that you don't expect it makes those little things all the more surprising!

Early on in my American adventure I suffered from such a shock that I like to call Surprise Peanut Butter. 

Let me set the scene. In universities, most students are pretty poor so any promise of free food is likely to draw quite a crowd; that's basically the only sure fire way to guarantee a full auditorium of participants at a potentially very boring science lecture. So at my first such science talk, we were treated to a full spread of cookies and coffee (Princeton Chemistry department is certainly not shy about putting money into free food). I grabbed a plate of cookies and headed into the venue. I had grabbed a few of my favorites, oatmeal raisin included, as well as some unidentified plain cookies.

Getting the cookies I didn't fully understand was a huge mistake, but I figured, "How wrong can this go?" Apparently... very. The first bite was...

 SURPRISE! Peanut Butter!

To Americans, this occurrence is nothing strange but I'm sure my British kin can attest that biting into a cookie or biscuit from a varied platter and discovering peanut butter is very jarring. Not only is nut allergies a real possibility, and the tray was not labelled with a warning, but peanut butter seems to be one of those things that you either love or you hate...

I personally hate it!

So my delicious plate of sugary treats was turned to disappointment and broken dreams, and there was not enough coffee in the pot to drown out that flavor. 

Needless to say, I won't be diving into any unknown cookie trays from now on.

As a bonus feature, this is not an isolated incident.....

Everyone knows, at least in England, that purple is the best flavor. Loosely based on the concept of blackcurrant (although a poor imitation) in a mixture of colored treats, always choose purple, closely followed by red.

So imagine my surprise when in the US, purple means GRAPE!

What the hell is that all about! Grapes barely have a flavor anyway! why the hell would that even be a flavor, and why would anyone want to choose it on purpose! Needless to say, that candy ended up in the trash! And the candy based disappointment is continued.

Yet another jarring flavor experience, like when you are the passenger in a car and know where you're driving to, then the driver decides to take a different route and at a T-junction takes a left turn, when your whole body was expecting a right. It's unsettling.