Those of you who subscribe to the comments feed on this blog must be aware of the recent controversy regarding barbecue . To me what’s so strange about it is that the original post had nothing to do with barbecue at all; it was about a road trip that involved a stop at Tamarack in West Virginia. Then one reader happened to mention that she would be going to State College the following week and a second reader suggested that she stop at Clem’s Barbecue while there. Incidentally, second reader must not follow the links in our blog, because first reader was Lindy of Toast who wrote a whole post about Clem’s at least a year before.

Anyway, that was about it until last month, when HungryfordecentBBQ must have eaten at Clem’s and obviously had an unhappy experience. I guess he or she then googled Clem’s and hit on my post, after which the fur started flying. It’s funny that I assumed that Hungry was a woman and my husband automatically thought he/she was a man. My assumption was based on my thinking that only a woman would be so particular about her food and then take the time to follow up like that, and he assumes that barbecue is a man’s specialty. I can’t understand why Hungry didn’t comment on Lindy’s blog, since she has actual posts devoted to Clem’s, how much she likes it and the flavor of their sauce. I was also quite excited to read comments from Clem’s themselves, since it’s the first time someone from a restaurant has written on the blog, outside of that violent busboy from Il Pizzaiolo who thought a reader should be punched in the face.

I think my favorite part of the flame war was when Hungry said that she would feed the whole mess to her dogs but she happens to like her dogs. Clem’s countered soon after that with the assertion that they sell over 15,000 pounds of meat a week and asks Hungry how many pounds a week she sells. My husband said that “Hungry wants to stop the inevitable evolution of the English language. You can’t stop it. All arguments of the form [x should not be called y because y means….] are a waste of energy.” That’s the argument he gives me when I rail against people who insist on saying “ciabatta BREAD” (ciabatta IS bread!) or mispronouncing “bruschetta” (the “ch” should sound like “k”). In Pittsburgh we have a lot of waitresses who snap their gum while asking “Do yunz want aw juice with that?” Um, “aw” or “au” MEANS “with”! Maybe my husband is right about the inevitability of foreign words becoming degraded in our country, but I don’t think you can use that argument with barbecue. It’s just too important.

On another subject entirely, and not even food-related, I was ignored this week by the sons of a girlfriend to whom I had placed friend requests on Facebook& and thinking about that led me to come of with a list of Top Ten indicators that you just may be too old to have a Facebook account, which I offer for your amusement. I may post these on my Facebook wall, so if you look at that you can stop reading now.

• 1. You have fewer than 50/25/10 friends

• 2. Of your “friends”, you are related to many/most of them

• 3. Any of your male friends are bald

• 4. When searching for your peers on Facebook you keep finding their offspring instead

• 5. You don’t know how/don’t bother downloading your photo on your profile page

• 6. You don’t know how any of the applications work

• 7. You write on your own wall (and if you didn’t you wouldn’t have anything on there at all)

• 8. You tag yourself in photos

• 9. You fill out the information blanks in your profile page completely seriously

• 10. The penultimate digit of your high school or college graduation year is not a zero