Food for Aliens

Nowadays it is very easy to learn anything that there's really no excuse for anybody not to learn something new everyday except extreme laziness. In fact, all you need to do is go online, ask Google for a step-by-step video demonstration on Youtube and voila, you can be an expert at anything.

Three minutes. That's how long it took to learn how to make Sushi. It's so brilliantly simple that the whole process just felt so beautifully zen, so wonderfully Japanese.

Sushi 101. Sticky japanese rice+salmon+carrot+cucumber. 

When I think about Japan and the Japanese, I always have this idea of them as kind of an alien race. How they always seemed so mentally advanced, coming up with out-of-this-world ideas like Ultraman or Tamagochi, Casio watches, Sadako, Hello Kitty, Hentai, Harakiri, Harajuku, Dragon Ball Z, Yoko Ono, the list of perverted pleasures go on.

Yoko Ono at her performance art, "Cut piece." 1965. 

Even their flag is so strikingly strange and elegant that only they could possibly think of putting a bloody red circle smack in the middle of a white cloth and pull it off as their national identity. Of course it might also trigger a vision of fresh white panties and the first blood stain of a 14-year old Lolita, but isn't that kind of the point?

What does this remind you of? 

Anyway going back to Sushi, I start to think of the Japanese and how far ahead they seem to be from the rest of us. I mean just think about it, you're one of the first few people in the world, and you're sitting alone trying to figure out what to do with fish, seaweed and boiled rice. Would you really think of rolling your food and cutting it into pretty little round pieces?

It sounds so easy but would you really think about doing it? I bet, being the sensible (and lazy) human being that you are, you will do the right thing and try to stuff them all in your mouth with your hands.

Fat sushi vs. slim sushi. 

As I stare at my sushi, I think to myself that THIS is where the genius of the world lies. THIS is what separates the artist from ordinary everyday people. The discipline and the ability to create sushi, to find something neat and meaningful in a world of chaos and mediocrity. Maybe sushi is the answer to life's biggest question and the Japanese - with advanced chip processors lodge in their brain centers since the 8th century - knew it all along.

Okay, maybe this also means that I have watched too many X-Files episodes and have spent a major part of my adolescent years thinking about aliens and existence, but damn you Japanese and your Sushi. You are weird, and you are awesome.

It's 2014, and I made my first-ever sushi. Evolution.