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.
Oh, even better. The Kid Next Door is now singing in falsetto along with the song “Time’s A Wastin’” by June Cash and Carl Smith. The lyrics can be found on CowboyLyrics.com:
The cakes no good if you don’t mix the batter and bake it
And loves just a bubble if you don’t take the trouble to make it
So if your free to go with me, I’ll take you quicker than 1, 2, 3
Let’s go
Times a wastin
He’s on his second time through it right now; he tends to adopt songs and then play them over and over and over and … over. Whoops. I spoke too soon. He’s now on his third iteration of the song. Seriously. As I type this. You can’t make stuff like this up. He also has a certain affinity for the Beatles lately - and you know what that means — I get to experience every note of Paul McCartney’s bass playing. Wondrous.
Silver lining? He doesn’t like rap. Silver lining silver lining silver lining …
12 nails into his head and he lives - Here we go: this guy was on drugs and shot twelve nails into his head with a pneumatic air gun. He lived.
It actually reminds me a news story in the area a couple of years ago where a workman was coming down a ladder with his nail gun pointing straight down, and it tapped a guy on the top of the head and unloaded a nail into the guy. Apparently the nail missed important blood vessels by millimeters (blood is poisonous to the brain). Chance is such a funny thing.
Apparently some sort of spice was pulverized when the chicken was breaded a couple of nights ago, resulting in green chicken at the Binz Refectory. It was not a particularly bright green, but a rather sickly green - almost the color that people turn when they are very sick. We were assured by Mary (she is the sandwich lady, who is a very nice person — her son actually goes to school here) that the chicken was normal. This wasn’t anything remarkable, though it does merit note, especially given Food at the Binz’s remarkably long silence.
But no, noble readers, the real story lies in the beverages. I experienced something not particularly disgusting but truly novel in my pre-meal beverage gathering during the night of the green chicken. This will require some background. At your local fast-food restraurant and at most places that serve pop (or soda, as your geographical region may dictate) in large quantities, they do not simply have large amounts of liter bottles lying about. This is not cost effective. So, in a process regulated by beverage companies (who want their product to taste as it was intended), tap water is purified, carbonated, and mixed with soda syrup (the high fructose corn syrup, flavoring, and caffeine) on site and as the beverage is dispensed.
Enter me, who never gets pop, but who’s eye was caught by a missing label above one of the pop dispensing buttons. “Try it!” urged Dan, the ever-adventurous soul. I placed a glass beneath the nozzle and hit the button. Cold transparent liquid immediately filled my glass. I didn’t think much of it, and resolved to find more interesting new things to try. Upon returning to my seat, I tried the mystery liquid. It was heavily carbonated water. I mean, this stuff had the bite of a cola, with the strange taste that only an old purifier can impart to St. Paul municipal water. I was brought back to the days of “H2Oh!” — that horrid carbonated water drink that was so popular before Aquafina and Dasani tackled the market.
Green chicken and really fizzy water = our cafeteria. Yes, yes. We’re considering adding orange juice to the fizzy water to see if we can homebrew some “Slice” knock-off or something. Spring-fever, indeed.
Trading up from a paper clip to a house - Over the course of about 10 trades, this guy has gone from a large red paperclip to a year’s free rent in Arizona. He’s looking to continue trading until he gets a house.
Panopticon - When researching that previous link, I ran across the panopticon, a prison designed by a philosopher (sounds interesting already) that would: “allow an observer to observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a ‘sentiment of an invisible omniscience’.”
Perhaps the internet really can make you smarter — or at least armed with a trivial storehouse of knowledge.