Hi Stephanie:

I am asking really nicely if you can give me some help.It’s a very basic question, but one I feel sure others have as well.

I’ve heard the debate of red wine with beef, white with fish and chicken, or hell, just drink whatever you want to and damn to the wine connoisseur.What is your expert opinion on the selection of wines?And seriously, are the screwtops really that much below standard?

Winey and Clueless

Dear Winey,

My short answer for you: Drink whatever the hell you want. That opinion — more of a deeply held belief for me, actually — is supported by more than a few chefs out there.

It’s only on very rare occasions that I’m in the mood for white wine, so I will drink favorite Italian reds with everything from a salad of bitter winter greens to a dessert of dense chocolate cake — they’re cheap, accessible, and really quite wonderful. We always have a jug — yes, a jug — of Italian red on our counter. I’m not talking jugs with the finger hole, either. These are just ordinary bottles that happen to be twice the size of the regular 750 mL. Try looking for Citra Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, San Lorenzo Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, or Bolla Sangiovese di Romana if you want to live in my purple world.

Within reds there are varying degrees of weight and intensity. Lightish reds (and we’re talking fruit weight, not color), like Montepulcianos, Valpolicellas, Sangioveses, or Bardolinos can definitely be drunk with fish or poultry. For richer birds like duck, goose, or game, you can even have something a little more intense — a Barbera or a Gigondas with a Frenchy accent. I wouldn’t choose something as heavy as Barolo merely to sip on its own, though — a glass of that really needs a side of beef or lamb. Since whites have their own weight range, the reverse can also be true.

But I could go on and on about my own preferences, and it could still mean as little to you as what the sommelier recommends at your table. Just like your taste buds, wines are very individual and no one should ever make you drink anything you don’t like just in the name of snob appeal. Happily, these days I’ve noticed that if you express a preference for a glass of red with something that might once have been traditionally paired with a glass of white, the sommelier will suggest a red that will go beautifully with your dish, and he will not give you nasty looks or smirk at the chef when he places your order.

As for screwtops, the debate is long and multi-leveled. I’ve only had one wine that had a screwtop and it was Ca’ del Solo Big House Red from Bonny Doon Vineyards. I really liked it, and I really like Bonny Doon — he’s doing stuff in his California vineyard that people didn’t think was possible outside of Europe — so I respect his choice to use screwtops to extend shelf life and keep wine from being ruined by cork taint. That said, I do love that great sucking noise corks make when they’re popped out. In the name of romance and tradition, I’m on the fence with this one. But I will leave you with this: it’s not the screwtop that makes a wine inferior, it’s the vineyard.

Dear Sars,

First, for the hairball-less future of my cat: I’ve got a new kitty,
Kobe, that’s got semi-short/long hair.No matter how much I brush the poor
thing, nothing seems to get rid of any of them. I normally have to just cut
the huge ones out.He seems to be pretty bothered by them and will chew on
them until I cut them out (which produces an uncomfortable, murderous kitty).
Is there some trade cat owner secret I haven’t discovered yet?

Also, I was curious about your opinion on a moral/ethical question
regarding Kobe.A family my grandma was renting to got up and left one day
in the middle of the night and left their dog, and Kobe, behind along with
all of their things.After the eviction papers went through, they had sixty
days to come and claim the pets and any belongings.They came after two
months (the eviction papers had come two months after they initially left)
and got a few clothes, some keepsakes, and the dog.They left the
Kobe (an inside cat, left outside) — which is how I got him.Now, their
sixty days from the eviction are up and the cat no longer legally belongs to
these people.But.They have a ten-year-old boy who loves the cat dearly
and wants it back.

I know this kid loves the cat, and will be heartbroken if he doesn’t
get it back.But his dad made the choice, as the caretaker of Kobe, to put
him outside and leave him and not come back for him.I don’t think it would
be fair to Kobe to go back into that family (a less than responsible family
of drug addicts) since they have abandoned him for a total of three or four
months now.The cat seems a lot happier to be at my house, with food and
water every day, toys, a cat box, and not left outside next door to three
pit bulls.It now has a collar, current shots (these people skipped it for
a year), and no crazy dogs chasing it. I love this cat.

I want the best for this kitty, and I think I am the one to offer it.What
is your opinion on the whole thing?

Thanks for the help,
Kitty’s New Caretaker

Dear Caretaker,

First of all, keep the cat.You leave a pet outside, you give up the right to say what happens to him, so let the ten-year-old’s parents come up with an explanation for why they abandoned Kobe in the first place.Not your problem.

As for the hairballs, I’ve never had a long-haired cat (for pretty much that exact reason), so I have no idea whether it’s a grooming issue for you, or for the cat, or if you should take Kobe in for a clip or what.My advice is to take Kobe to a vet or a reputable groomer and ask for their advice, because no doubt they’ve addressed this issue many times.

Hey Sars.

I have an officemate that sometimes, when he’s stressed, gets a little cranky and/or snippy. And since I am the only one in the office lower on the totem pole than he, he often takes said crankiness out on me. I respond usually by ignoring it and realizing that it’s not personal. Except for this One Time.

Like everyone else on the planet, I have a blog that I write in from time to time. The one time I reacted strongly to his crankiness, I wrote about it in my blog. The entry was pretty full of venom, recommending that he take anger-management courses and back off and that he needs to think about the fact that he’s torturing the person he comes to when he needs something.

Of course he found the blog. And of course he read it. And now he’s ultra-pissed off at me. My defense is that I wrote in a fit of anger, and that I was venting, and that of course the point of viewin the thing is one-sided. It’s my point of view. His response was “Whatever.”

I feel very strongly that he should just read it as someone writing in a fit of pique, and not as the way I feel about him most of the time, which is fine and friendly. But I doubt that he will. Should I just hope that it will blow over?

Thanks.

Now I’m The Bad Officemate

Dear Bad,

I’m with your officemate on the “whatever.”Did you even apologize — for what you wrote, or for the fact that you put it out on the internet instead of bringing your annoyance to him directly?Or did you just expect him to suck it up because it’s “your point of view”?This situation isn’t his fault, so get your nose back into joint and stop acting like it is.

I know it’s your blog and your perspective, and I know the guy’s annoying, but the way you handled it is unprofessional.I mean, he is reading it as someone writing in a fit of pique — but fits of any kind in the workplace aren’t customarily greeted with supportiveness and understanding, if you see what I mean.People get fired over that shit.

Apologize to him, promise him that you’ll speak to him in person the next time you have a problem, mean it, do it, and stay out of his way for a while.And keep your job off your website, people.Seriously.

I understand that it’s is for “it is,” but is it ever for “it has,” i.e.
“it’s been a colossal waste of time.”This may just be a tense issue, but I
wasn’t sure, and my flatmate says only a pedant would know.So I’m asking
you.

Why do I keep buying clothes that I really like, but would never wear
outside of the house?I like bright, colourful clothing, slightly odd-looking maybe, but nothing insane.I’ll wear this happily around the flat,
but when I have to go out, I’ll change into jeans and a beige tee-shirt.Do
I leave my common sense in my flat when I go shopping?If so, why can’t I
learn to leave my credit card with it?

I had three questions, but I worked out the difference between “inquiry” and
“enquiry” by looking in the dictionary.And that made me feel smart.

Greatly Troubled By Tiny Things

(Okay, I’ve just laughed myself silly at that signature, so I thought I would
share the whole mail with you, I don’t usually send these so I hope you
don’t mind me taking your time.)

Dear Making Your Own Fun,

“It’s” can serve as a contraction for both “it is” and “it has,” depending, of course, on the context.And not to pick on your flatmate, but…that doesn’t qualify as pedantry.It’s pretty basic usage.

I don’t know what’s going on with the clothes — maybe you don’t want to attract attention to yourself, maybe you don’t have anything that really goes with certain bright-colored pieces.The next time you go shopping, stop before you pay and ask yourself what you can wear it with, or whether you’ll just take it off and change into the beige tee before you go out.

And for anyone who’s interested, my dictionary shows no difference between “enquiry” and “inquiry” in American English; it’s a spelling variant.British and/or Canadian dictionaries may point to one definition as used exclusively for legal proceedings, though, so your mileage may vary.

Sars,

Thanks in advance for your help.

I have been asked to give a nondenominational
invocation at my office’s holiday party and charity
fundraiser this year.When I agreed to give the
invocation, I had no idea how hard it would be for me
to come up with an invocation.The part that is
tripping me up is the “nondenominational” part.I
have Googled “nondenominational invocation” and
“sample invocation,” but have only found lists of
lawsuits and extremely denominational invocations.

So far I have two ideas.1) Write a prayer-type
invocation and then somehow delete out all references
to God or 2) find a seasonal poem or story to recite
or tell.

The first option is not attractive to me because,
while I respect that we each have our own religious
beliefs, I believe that prayers have an intended
audience (for me that would be God), and refusing to
name him or her makes the prayer sound just plain
weird.In my mind it would be like never addressing
my MIL by name because I couldn’t figure out whether
to call her by her first name or by Mrs. So-and-So.

That leaves me with the second option and a question
for you: Do you have any advice as to where I could
find a folk tale/fable/something about gathering
together to enjoy friends?

Signed,
Please don’t suggest that I recite the lyrics to “The
Christmas Shoes”

Dear Shoes,

Okay, then.How about “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”?

It’s hard for me to suggest anything here, because I don’t know if “nondenominational” means “not explicitly spiritual or religious in nature,” or if it means “not mentioning any specific winter holiday.”It’s not a huge difference, but a lot of people who would roll their eyes at a reference to the Biblical version of the Christmas story might not have a similar problem with a selection from “A Child’s Christmas In Wales.”

Try Amazon instead of Google for your search noodling; see if puttering around in the books section doesn’t knock something loose in your head, a memory of a winter story or poem you read once long ago (hint: do NOT use “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”).And try not to worry too much about offending people.Nothing against your oratorical skills, of course, but it’s an office holiday party — a lot of folks are going to forget the invocation moments after you stop speaking.

[11/26/03]

Share!