So I planned on writing something else here, but I'm watching Hungry Detective and he's in Houston eating waffles & wings at the Breakfast Klub and they actually had an answer to the question "why waffles and wings?" And not just an answer, but a good answer, that it was a meal enjoyed by jazz musicians after gigs (since they didn't know whether they wanted dinner or breakfast, as the owner of the restaurant put it).

While I'm distracting myself with TV, let me put in a plug for Worst Jobs In History. History Channel International were running the Victorian episode tonight; we'd seen this show before, altho this time we avoided the shaking, chills, and gastric distress. I love Robinson's enthusiasm for all the nasty jobs he takes a try at. Watching the segment on the Victorian workhouses tonight, I had this insight into Victorian prisons, which I'd done some reading on for the VTW book. I'd wondered how the Victorians had gotten so attached to the pointlessly punitive (having to move piles of cannonballs back and forth from one stack to another, etc). But people in the workhouses were set to tasks like breaking rocks or picking rope down to oakum --in order to stay in the workhouse, they had to do horrid, menial work; work that was needed but they probably couldn't even pay people to do in the "free market." So if that's what was going in the workhouses (punishing people for being poor), then clearly prison had to be even worse. Thus, horrid, menial back-breaking labor that was completely pointless.