This post is brought to you live from my dorm room, which sounds unexciting, but if you were here, you'd realize that the atmosphere is still thick with the excitement of prefrosh weekend, the first of two times in a Harvard student's life when some piece of College-issued paraphernalia will irreversibly brand you as younger than everyone else on campus.² There were a lot of good moments, including a great intro meeting, a sweet evening of partying like Republicans (the first time, and hopefully only, in my life I've ever popped my collar)³, and Sam Novey dressed in a donkey costume (much more appropriate than this). But my personal favorite was our unqualified beatdown of the Republicans in a debate about health care. You will probably get the gist of the debate if I tell you that at one point, the Republicans claimed that the single biggest cause of preventable death in the United States is gun violence related to the crack cocaine trade.⁴ It doesn't get much better than that.

Of course, the debate wasn't all fun and games, because lo and behold, we were repeatedly accused of attempting to create a "socialized" health care system, despite the fact that we were advocating a very straightforward version of the Obama/Hillary mixed public/private system. Never fear; I managed to brush my shoulders off and move on with life. Still, I think, that just goes to show you, I think, that it's kind of difficult being a Democrat. Being right is just such a burden.

More than that, there are an awful lot of demands on the average liberal's time. For one, there's maintenance of this really complex brain:⁵

And there's never a moment's rest, because even when I'm finished with my weekly panicking about global warming, blaming America for everything, and polishing of the sickle in my shrine to Karl Marx, I have so many other liberal obligations to attend to. Of course, the homosexual agenda is awfully pressing. Going out of my way to buy my hourly triple-shot extra-hot soy latte from the barefoot hippie collective in the next town, rather than the nice family-owned store down the block, burns an awful lot of transit time, even though I'm pretty sure that not supporting the patriarchy is worth the extra effort. And there's all that bicycle maintenance (I just couldn't bring myself to burn fossil fuels, especially not in an American-made car), consciousness-raising, and hemp-weaving.

Given all of these constraints on my time, I must confess, it's pretty difficult for me to find time, between chats with Jane Fonda and sips of Chablis,⁶ to settle down with that old liberal standard: the New York Times. Nonetheless, today, after a long and hard weekend of recruiting impressionable young minds into the elitist liberal ivory tower that is Harvard, I felt that I deserved a break, so I settled down in front of my RSS feed and found out some interesting things in the Times.

Naturally, lots of articles really spoke to my world of rampant promiscuity and sexual fluidity, like this one about young gay couples getting married⁷ and this one about the complexities of legal marriage when you're transgender. In both cases, of course, the Times dared to insinuate that LGBT folks might actually be people, too - a truly radical proposition.

My sense of comfort was a little bit disrupted by the audacity of the Times' decision to offer some excuse for John McCain, should he fail to capture the presidency: it's not that he's old; it's that the 1930s sucked. Nonetheless, out of habit, I soldiered on. But what I found was not so much an infiltration by the vast right-wing conspiracy, but rather reporting on some pretty obvious stuff.

For instance: did you know that Florida has problems with elections sometimes? And that people buy less in recessions? Me neither! Thank you, New York Times!

Also enlightening was the fact that, much to his owners' dismay, 2002 Kentucky Derby champion War Emblem does not want to have sex. The horse's obstinate refusal to impregnate every mare he meets has cost his owners an estimated $55 million in stud fees. Now, in my book, fathering seventy kids is not exactly reluctance, but I guess standards are different for horses employed to make babies. A suggestion for the owners of Shadai Stallion Station: MAYBE HE'S GAY. That's probably why the Times has an in with him.

But the single most disappointing article I found in the Times this week was this seemingly innocuous piece on one Melissa Clark's quest for a perfect chocolate pudding. The first page or so is fun to read; it's about the author's decade-long search for a good chocolate pudding recipe. I found myself drawn into the story, even wishing her well.⁸ But then we got to this fatal line, when she's starting to expand her odyssey into variations on custard:

Back in my kitchen, I tried something new. If I wanted an American-style pudding that was ultraluxurious, the trick would be to reduce the cornstarch and increase the eggs and chocolate to compensate for the loss of thickening power.

At the same time, I would make pot de crème and pit it against my best stove-top efforts.

But why stop there? I’d also investigate flan, which is baked custard gilded with caramel. And what is ice cream? Frozen custard!

On behalf of the great state of Wisconsin and of dairy-product lovers everywhere, I would like to bring you, Melissa Clark, and the general public the following message: ICE CREAM IS NOT FROZEN CUSTARD. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Chapter 1, Part 135, Section 110(a)(2):⁹

Frozen custard shall contain 1.4 percent egg yolk solids by weight of the finished food: Provided, however, That when bulky flavors are added the egg yolk solids content of frozen custard may be reduced in proportion to the amount by weight of the bulky flavors added, but in no case is the content of egg yolk solids in the finished food less than 1.12 percent.

In short: frozen custard is made with eggs; ice cream is not. Now, to borrow from John Edwards, this is personal for me. As you would have to be daft not to know by now, I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of lots of dairy products and, more importantly, lots of people who have come up with an unceasing stream to concentrate as much fat and sugar as humanly possible in those dairy products. Hence, frozen custard. Kopp's, Gilles, and Leon's (the inspiration for Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days!)¹⁰ were all staples of my childhood (and adulthood, too). One of my principal reservations about Massachusetts, as much as I love this bluest of states, is that you people don't seem to have any frozen custard. So I can't stress enough that frozen custard and ice cream are two entirely different delicacies. I will also happily advance the argument that frozen custard is categorically superior - but you won't believe it until you taste it. Hence, I publicly issue an invitation to Melissa Clark and all of you lovely DemApples readers: come visit me in Wisconsin, and I will take you out for frozen custard. You may never go back.

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Thanks for taking time out of your busy liberal day to read!

¹ For the sake of transparency, I will be straightforward about this: I didn't know whether to say 'Grey Lady' or 'Gray Lady,' so I decided by Google Fight. A friend and I pioneered the technique of using Google Fight to make choices last week in the dining hall, while searching for ways to objectively confirm our mutual sentiment that pie is better than cake. Which it is.
² I am referring, of course, to the red folder. The second time would be the lanyards issued to freshmen on their arrival. Honestly, though, who wouldn't want to display their dorm room key?
³ Probably not surprising given that I also don't own a polo shirt.
⁴ I should add, for the sake of being gentlemanly as well as because these are my actual feelings, that it's always a pleasure to debate the Republicans - but this was especially fun.
⁵ Courtesy Conservopedia, although I'm sure they wouldn't have been very courteous if I'd actually asked. On a related note, it's really refreshingly ironic to see a fair-use statement on a conservative website.
⁶ Sorry. Is that appropriate? I don't actually know if that's even a stereotype. I come from Miller country, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance of the more elitist mechanisms of inebriation.
⁷ Featuring Harvard's own Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II!
⁸ Not to mention really freaking hungry. Like I am right now.
⁹ I am not making this up.
¹⁰ Which I've never watched. Why bother when you have the real thing?