On the smoky horizon, a silhouette. A gunslinger. No, a pen-slinger. Wait, “pen-slinger” sounds dirty. Let me start over.
In a time when men and women slaved over dusty keyboards, crying out for clarification, there came a man. A man who reads your blog instead of doing his own work. A pedantic sort of man. And they called him…THE OMBUDSMAN. Is he good? Evil? Some sort of amoral cyber-wraith? My money is on the latter, because “amoral cyber-wraith” sounds pretty awesome.
THE OMBUDSMAN first struck on Tuesday at All You Can Eat, the blog of his Seattle Times colleague Nancy Leson:
> NOTE: After a heads-up from my exceedingly smart and talented food-writer pal, Matthew Amster-Burton, I’ve deleted some erroneous info regarding the tamarillo, which you’d be reading right here in this paragraph had I not given it the old heave-ho. I originally stated that, having consulted one of my favorite produce reference books, I learned that the tamarillo is actually a guava. [ERRRRT! Thanks for playing!]
One correction does not a trend make. Bloggers looked on with interest, the way you’d look pityingly on a guy forced into a conversation with an unthreatening but verbose street person. They did not know that THE OMBUDSMAN was already planning his next assault. Helen Rennie of [Beyond Salmon](http://beyondsalmon.blogspot.com/) didn’t believe it could happen to her. Until…
It’s ok to wash your mushrooms
> Dear Matthew,
> Thank you for bringing me out of the mushroom dark ages and dispelling the myth that getting mushrooms wet is a no-no. I am a liberated woman now. No more wiping, no more brushing, no more scrubbing to get those pesky little pieces of dirt of my fungi!
Out of which dark ages will THE OMBUDSMAN bring you? Yes, you?
(Oh, in case you’re wondering about THE OMBUDSMAN’s uniform, it has a picture of a tomato with the word “fruit” stamped on it. And tights. Wait, I need to rethink this uniform.)