In his lovely, meandering essay, On Being Blue, the philosopher William Gass ponders blue - "the word and the condition, the color and the act." He begins...

Blue pencils, blue noses, blue movies, laws, blue legs and stockings, the language of birds, bees, and flowers as sung by longshoremen, that lead-like look the skin has when affected by cold, contusion, sickness, fear; the rotten rum or gin they call blue ruin and the blue devils of its delirium; Russian cats and oysters, a withheld or imprisoned breath, the blue they say that diamonds have, deep holes in the ocean and the blazers which English athletes earn that gentlemen may wear; afflictions of the spirit - dumps, mopes, Mondays - all that's dismal - low down gloomy music, Nova Scotians, cyanosis, hair rinse, bluing, bleach...

Gass continues his lyrical litany for 134 more words before he ends the sequence with my latest obsession ... cheese. Blue cheese. Roquefort. Gorgonzola. Stilton. Danish Blue. Devon Blue. Dorset Blue Vinney. Bleu de Bresse. Bleu de Gex. Cambozola. Adelost. Roaring Forties Blue.

Keep your cubes of cheddar, your Monterey Jack, your tasteless and plasticine rat trap cheeses. Give me sharp, salty, and pungent. Give me moldy, cave ripened, penicillium roqueforti riddled curd.

Beautiful blue blue cheese.