Yum
I was going to take the time to write up a longish post with regard to the following incident during my chemistry studying last night, but it’s probably best to keep it short. I consumed warmish rancid milk with sugar and oats in it. The carton said “May 1,” but apparently this milk was not about to stay fresh up to that date … it smelled vaguely of yogurt when opened, but I thought it was OK. It then tasted a bit like flowers (and yes, I have eaten flowers, though I was much younger), with some weird yogurt flavor mixed in for good measure. It took me a good 24 hours to get the weirdness out of my stomach. Oh, the exciting life I lead.
Speaking of excitement, an ochem test finally went pretty well for me (I think), so this excites me in many ways, though I am disappointed with myself for failing to log this lovely occasion in either (a) an interesting way or (b) a humorous way. Onwards, then.
I’ve been considering the implications of stream-of consciouness posts, àla toothpastefordinner’s blog. Certainly, these types of writings can cut quickly through layers of crap to what you are actually thinking, but they also run the risk of being mind-numbingly dull, pointless, and humorless. I will try (a quasi) one, though:
Recently, my brain took me back to a time years ago, when I was a freshman in high school (the year 2000). I went on a band trip to Chicago and ate in a McDonald’s on a bridge. It strikes me as strange that we never see fit to build anything other than a fast-food distribution point attached to major roadways. We place such a high priority on eating. Surprisingly, some material on my philosophy class touched on this: a dog enjoys eating just as much as we do. No amount of excitingly expensive rare dishes, exquisite service, or posh surroundings can elevate the pleasure of consuming calories above a base pleasure. In the philosophical sense, there is no more pleasure in enjoying a glass of fine wine from a specially shaped glass that contains the “bouquet” than enjoying grape juice from an aseptic carton. Certainly, we fool ourselves with publications about food, television shows about food, and ridiculous words like “mouth-feel,” all in an attempt to elevate the past-time to an intellectual pursuit. Despite our best efforts, eating remains what it is: stuffing calories down our wide-open traps in an effort to satisfy a need we share with all life on earth. The philosophy continues, pointing out that what we can enjoy with our minds, the concepts, minutia, creativity, and imagination we can generate with our intellects encompass pleasures far beyond what most any other animals are capable of. Isn’t it our duty, our obligation, to focus on these higher pleasures, given the fact that we are lucky enough to possess them at all?
I think people are unhappy because they exert themselves with the exclusive purpose of ‘satisfying’ their basic needs which do not encompass higher intellectual pleasures: house? bigger house. food? better food. People chase things without paying any attention to nurturing that which makes them human and can make them truly alive — their minds.
Comments
John
You eat flowers. I eat dog food. With exuberance Yessssssssss.
Markoe
I always wondered what a drug induced post would look like.