Bullseye

Decisions, decisions . . .

Should I post about the rapture, today, or go make myself a sandwich?  Hmm . . .
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. . . . . . . sandwich.

Word Verification #16

Word Verification #16


Happy Friday!  I know I'm glad!  Here's this week's Captcha.

Mencliff:


-noun
1. A high, steep rock face reserved strictly for the gathering of males.

Ex: Few women have ventured to a mencliff and returned to tell the testosterone tale.

Ode to the Stove Crevasse

Ode to the Stove Crevasse

What terror lurks hidden between the stove and the neighboring cabinet?

Crumbs?  Most likely.
Resident insects which we'd sooner like to forget?  Possibly.
Or is it something more devious? . . . Who's to say?

Try to recall what you've swept into that black void over time.  It is most certainly a combination of culinary refuse along with the chemicals used to clean it.  A graveyard of exoskeletons: insects which ventured but never returned.  But why?  Why does nothing emerge from that void?

Perhaps an evolutionary experiment carries on among the carrion.  Something evolves down there.  It grows.  And it's omnivorous appetite is endless.  Every niblet of disregarded corn and each stray dehydrated noodle serves to nourish and satisfy the mysterious depth's hunger.  The same fate awaits every splatter of marinara and drop of poultry drippings.  As well, each and every rolled oat, rounded pea, and roasted peanut all stand to feed the anathema in the dark.

But it's never enough . . .

Brush whatever substance you desire into it's gaping mouth.  It is insatiable.  Do you think that's the floor creaking when you walk by your stove?  Think again.  Someone, or something, is hungry. . .

Google Blindly

Google Blindly


A little while back, Google started guessing what you're looking for for you.  What I mean is, if you start typing something into their search box, suddenly the top searches form a drop down box.  That way, if you are searching for one of the same things everyone else is, you can just select it from the list.  (I suppose it saves you a couple seconds worth of typing the remainder of your query.  I mean, I'm busy, but not that busy.)  Sometimes, I set out to search for one thing and then get sidetracked to something else Google suggested.  And sometimes, it can be pretty entertaining.

If you start typing "can blind people see," Google flashes this list:

The first suggestion is legit.  And the last three are decent, too.  But the second, "Can blind people see the taste of cinnamon toast crunch," is just funny.

This list is essentially based on numbers.  In this example, for all of the people who started typing "can blind people see," these five phrases completed the string as the top five searches.  Apparently, somewhere between wondering whether blind people see dreams and whether blind people see their dreams, the great Google public wants to know if the seeing-impaired can see the taste of cinnamon toast crunch.  I couldn't help but laugh.  (Then, I seriously wondered whether this was a joke like the Google/Chuck Norris thing.  I honestly don't think so.)

Either General Mills is funding some twisted advertising campaign in cahoots with Google or we searchers are really this idiotic.  Unfortunately, I think it's the latter.

I Wonder . . .

I Wonder . . .

We all want the world to be a better place, right?  Sure we do.  So how do we get there?  Ask this one question:  “Why?”

Yep.  It’s that simple.  (Not to be confused with easy).  There’s always a better way to do things, but how will we ever know if we’re not actively seeking them.  Well, like a 3 year old, I ask “why” all the time.  However, I’m not exactly wondering about a better way to split an atom.  I like to think I wonder about more practical subjects.

I’ve been collecting a list of wonderings and now I think I’ve got a post’s worth:

-Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?  (Or goldfish crackers, for that matter?)  (Or Teddy Grahams?)

-Why does sour cream have an expiration date?

-Why is a doctor’s business called their “practice?”  (I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I like being practiced on.)

-Who decided the order of the alphabet?  And why isn’t Q at the reject end of it with X, Y, and Z?  (It’s kind of out-of-place where it is, now.)

-Why do they put Braille on drive-thru ATMs?

-Why don’t they call non-stop flights one-stop flights?

Anything y’all wonder about?  

OCD or Crazy?

OCD or Crazy?

The other day, I was listening to the morning show on my commute to work and I heard a segment about deciding whether certain habits were either crazy or just plain old OCD.  The DJs asked listeners to call in and tell them about any habit of theirs and the DJs would vote on which category it fell into.  I sat there wondering if the fine line between the two was really all that fine of a line.  I mean, I think crazy is pretty easy to tell from OCD. 

…Then, people started calling in.

Without going into detail, some certifiably crazy and OCD people called in.  It got me thinking.  Is there anything I do that’s borderline OCD/crazy?  Probably.  Although, it took me a while to think of a habit to question.  Here it is.  I guess y’all can be the judges. 

For me, the volume on the TV always has to be an even number.  To clarify, when changing the volume on my TV, a number and a bar both pop up to display what level (number) the volume is at.  The higher the number, the louder the TV is.  Well, inexplicably, I can’t leave it on an odd number.  It has to be even.  I usually keep it at 18 or 20, but never 17, 19, or 21.  And when the kids are watching a movie, I put the volume to 28 or 30, not 29. 

I’m not going to go bonkers if the volume is an odd number and I can definitely force myself to change it to one, but I’ll always make it even out of habit.  Sometimes, I’ll hold the volume up or down button for a little bit to change the volume quickly, but if it lands on an odd number, I just as quickly adjust it to an even.  I suppose I just feel at peace when it’s even.  If someone were to ask me why, I wouldn’t have an answer for them. 

So is that crazy?  Or OCD?  Do you have any of said borderline habits?

Friday 8/13

Friday the 13^th

Happy Friday the 13^th!  I hope you’re not superstitious.  If you are, don’t start anything new and stay away from leaning ladders, questionable mirrors, indoor umbrellas, and black cats.  (Those bad luck charms don’t necessarily have anything to do with Friday the 13^th, but you definitely don’t want to compound the effects!) 

So what the heck is all the hype surrounding Friday the 13^th?  It’s really just a culmination of bad things that have happened on Fridays in history and the bad aura surrounding the number thirteen.  (By the way, the fear of Friday the 13^th is officially called friggatriskaidekaphobia.)  Honestly, we’ve kind of ruined it for ourselves, if you think about it. 

Black Friday sometimes refers to stock market crashes.  Basically, everyone who had money those times . . . lost a lot of money those times.  Jesus was supposedly crucified on a Friday.  Shopping is nightmarish (albeit entertaining) the day after Thanksgiving.  Things like that. 

The number thirteen is the kicker, though.  For some reason, thirteen makes people uncomfortable.  Thirteen is deeply rooted in even the not-so-superstitious.  Many tall buildings in the U.S. rename the 13^th floor.  One building that I used to work in actually had all of the mechanical services on the 13^th floor instead of businesses.  Thirteen is often tied to the bad luck of Apollo 13.  There were thirteen people at the last supper.  You can see why it would be so spooky.

Mathematically speaking, 12 is kind of a complete number.  It works really well with circles.  Adding 1 to make it 13 throws a kink into everything.  There are 12 months, 12 zodiacs, 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 hours on the clock, etc.  12s are everywhere, but not 13s because it obstructs the wholeness of 12. 

You know what I think?  Any day can be a bad day.  I’m sure plenty of disasters and deaths have occurred on Tuesdays and Sundays.  (And Mondays, and Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and Saturdays.)  And think about it, if we all survive the impending apocalypse in 2012, 2013 is going to be a pretty good year!

Superstitious or not, have a good weekend.  Just know that you just saw the number 13 in this post 13 times!

Monday 6/21

Wormhole

We all lose socks in the laundry sometimes, don’t we?  I do.  But where do they go?  It’s about as mysteriously unsolved as the Bermuda triangle.  Socks are special, though.  They just as magically almost always turn up after subsequent launderings.  So an equally important question to be asking would be, How do socks ultimately reappear?  Well, I think I finally understand. 

The first reason no one can seem to figure it out is because we’re all asking the wrong question. (Isn’t that the base of all scientific hypotheses?) We want to know where socks go when we lose them and we want to know where they came from when we find them.  The answer, however, is an endless circle.  The process is simple.  Socks are in the drawer, and then they get worn.  Next, they go through the laundry and finally, folded and put back into the drawer.  What we should be asking is, How do they get from the laundry to the drawer?  That’s where they get lost, and that’s the mystery.

Obviously, not all socks get lost.  We’re particularly concerned about the outliers, the few.  Relatively few, actually.  Look no further than the theories behind wormholes.  Wormholes (in theory) can be extremely large like the ones you see in Star Trek, which can send entire space ships careening instantaneously to a different point in the galaxy (or another galaxy).  Or, some wormholes (again, in theory) can be smaller than a pinhead, some even scattered around here on Earth. 

What if one of those smaller-than-a-pinhead-sized wormholes connects your dryer to your sock drawer?  You would never know it.  For the sake of theory, let’s say the wormhole in question is really, really, really small.  So small that only an object the size of a sock would get sucked through.  Then, let’s say the wormhole fluctuates in size, too, so that when it’s not zapping socks around the universe and into your sock drawer, it shrinks to a size too small to affect anything.  Lastly, somehow the wormhole is selective.  (I’m not sure how, but it only likes socks.  I mean, I don’t ever lose my underwear or shirts.  Just socks.) 

What about time?  If a wormhole is whirling my socks instantly to my drawer, how come they aren’t there right after I start the dryer?  We’ll just assume that wormholes also bend time as well as space.  It might take the sock a half second to zip to my drawer, but in my perception of time, it has been a week.

So Voila!  A very loose construction of a theory explaining the mystery of temporarily disappearing socks.  Like I said before, it’s just a theory and we might never know if it were true or even possible. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 5//28

Twenty-Three

Dr Pepper.  You either really love it or you really hate it.  I’m from Texas, so … I think I’m legally bound to openly love it.  (In secret, I’m more or less on the fence.  If I really had a hankerin’ for a soda and there was only Dr Pepper, I would drink it.  I certainly don’t go out of my way, though.)  Well, whether you’re a pepper or not, we can all agree on one question.  What in the world is up with the whole ’Authentic Blend of 23 Flavors’ thing and how could anyone possibly taste them all?

Since when did Dr Pepper have 23 flavors?  As long as I can remember, it only had one: Dr Pepper flavor.  I’ve tried to sit down and guess a few of them, but I don’t come up with much.  Is High Fructose Corn Syrup one of them?  Because that’s what I’m tasting.  Sweet-ness!  You could go on the website to inquire about the mystery, but you’ll find a very cliché answer.  “It’s top secret.”  I rolled my eyes when I read this.  They do, however, assure the public that prune juice is definitely not one of the 23 flavors.

They protect the ‘top secret’ recipe as if it’s written directly on the missing minutes of the Watergate tapes or something!  It’s silly if you ask me.  It’s like the press finally gave up on prodding Coca-Cola for their secret recipe, so they asked DP, “Coke won’t tell us what’s in coke.  So what’s your secret, Dr Pepper?”  Dr Pepper responded with, “oh.  Um.  Well…it’s a secret, too.  Why don’t you go bug Pepsi.” 

Secrets are for 3^rd graders.  Just tell us, already.  We all know Dr Pepper is just cherry-flavored root beer.

What other soda just happens to have a lot of ingredients?  Root Beer.  Many people agree that Dr Pepper’s mysterious taste profile is remarkably similar to root beer, with just a little extra something.  The two most common ideas for that extra flavor are vanilla and cherry.  Here is a list of the 23 most popular guesses for what comprises the elusive blend: Cherry, Vanilla, Almond, Plum, Blackberry, Raspberry, Apricot, Coriander, Clove, Amaretto, Anise, Caramel, Molasses, Birch Beer, Allspice, Ginger, Sasparilla Sassafras, Juniper, Spikenard, Wintergreen, Burdock, and Dandelion.  Now can you taste them all?  Not unless you can blindly pinpoint tastes like Spikenard and Burdock.  I know I can’t.

It’s only a matter of time before DP moves on to a different advertising campaign.  Until then, all we can do is keep on loving it or keep on hating it. 

By: S. Cole Garrett

Monday 4/12

Age Old Answer

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?  This is a very interesting question.  You ask someone and they usually have an answer for you fairly quickly.  Either the chicken came first or the egg.  Then you ask the counter-question to their answer, either the egg was laid by a chicken or the chicken had to have hatched from an egg.  Soon, you’ll start to sound like those vultures on the Jungle Book deciding what to do for the day.  It’s a vicious cycle of repetitiveness.  The more you think about the chicken or the egg, the more confusing it gets.  That’s kind of backwards from how you normally figure something out.  You’re supposed to come to a conclusion, not to venture out from it.  Well, there may be several reasonable answers for which actually came first.

So, again . . .

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1: The Velociraptor

Let’s say you’re a big fan of Charles Darwin’s work: evolution, natural selection, and all that jazz.  Let’s rule out the egg.  If the egg “came first,” then there would not have been any nurturing parent chicken or protector.  Anything that hatched from that egg wouldn’t have lived more than a week (and that’s just sad).  Your answer would be that the chicken came first.  You should also be ready if someone were sly enough to challenge you with asking where that chicken came from.  Just tell them dinosaurs because birds came from dinosaurs and so the velociraptor clearly came first. 

Answer 2: The Rooster

Well what if you’re not convinced by evolution.  You’re a hard-core creationist.  God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh.  Fact.  And in due time, He took some dust from the ground, created a man, Adam, and breathed life into him.  Then, from one of Adam’s ribs, He created Eve.  It might be safe to assume that some of the other animals that roam the Earth were created in the same manner.  God may just as easily have scooped up some dirt and made the rooster and when the rooster was lonely, He used a drumstick to make the chicken (no souls, of course).  Voila!  The rest is history.

Answer 3: The Chicken

(Well, that seems pretty straight forward.  What gives?)  Some believers out there think UFOs and extra-terrestrials visit Earth from time to time.  In my opinion, “to each his own.”  But let’s be open-minded.  We’re all waiting for aliens to visit us and bestow upon us unimaginably advanced technology and understanding.  Perhaps in an inter-planetary fly-by, some Alien race decided our world could be a better place with fried chicken, chicken kiev, and barbecued chicken pizza so they left us one to get started with (and a rooster, too, because . . . you know, it takes two to tango). 

So choose a side, or make up a different theory.  Just realize you’re practically justifying your entire religious and scientific beliefs in the answer to one silly, age-old riddle!

By: S. Cole Garrett

Thursday

Anywhere?

Where did all the phosphorus sesquisulfide go?  By phosphorus sesquisulfide, I mean strike anywhere matches.  I haven’t seen them in years and in most states, they’re illegal to sell.  That’s because they have been deemed as “dangerous goods” by the government.  Well, leave it to them to nanny us out of some of the most convenient innovations in our lifetimes.  Oh, strike anywhere matches, how I miss thee!

The convenience of strike anywhere matches is in the name.  They could be lit with enough friction on just about everything.  Here’s a list of some of the most creative ways my friends, brothers, and I figured out how to light them in our youth:

-         On zippers, front teeth, other strike anywhere matches, a finger nail, toys, sidewalks, shoes, watches, the edges of school books, bricks, trees, bicycle tires, the telephone (cell phones weren’t widely-owned yet), cereal boxes, bowling balls, forks, stale bread, the metal on a pencil, computer speakers, and (are you sitting down for this one?) even ice cubes. 

Were we pyromaniacs?  I don’t think so.  I’d rather our creative, inclination to ignite be called something along the lines of . . . how should we say . . . thinking outside the box.  In retrospect, I can’t say we were smart about everything we did with strike anywhere matches. 

We had a particularly entertaining game we played called “burn the forest.”  Sounds safe, right?  Anyway, it goes like this.  Two players each gather a pile of dead leaves and put it in front of them.  They set up facing each other about ten to twenty feet apart from each other (depending on how skilled they are).  Each player has their own regular-sized, 250-count box of strike anywhere matches.   The concept is simple: burn the other player’s pile of leaves first.  To do this, the match box (or anything rough, for that matter) is turned on its side so that the striking side is face up.  A match is stood up vertically with one finger holding it and with the head of the match to the box.  With the other hand, the player takes aim at the opposing “forest” and flicks the match at the base.  The friction lights the match and it fully ignites by the time it reaches the other player’s leaves.  The players take turns until one pile burns down. 

There are plenty of other irresponsible ways we found to waste perfectly good strike anywhere matches.  If something was flammable, knew about it.  Camping with open flame might as well have been called camping with open fun.  In all seriousness, however, I don’t condone playing with fire. . . unless maybe it’s controlled . . . and supervised . . . and involves strike anywhere matches.

By: S. Cole Garrett

3/17/10

Monday

Layers

Lasagna is a uniquely curious food. It’s very popular. It is highly customizable. It even has a noodle named after it: Lasagna. As a matter of fact, the noodle is pretty much only used for lasagna. This meal-food is surrounded in mystery as well. For example, who invented it? Lasagna is certainly Italian fare in most minds, but some legends tell the British baked it first. Ancient Romans stacked it up, too. Who knows? Well, something else yanks at the corner of my brain: why is the lasagna noodle flat in the middle and curly on the sides?

The “how” part of that why is easy. Dough is rolled or pressed out flat and cut into long strips. The edges are somehow stretched and curl up when dried. But why was it decided that noodles with curly edges were best for baking lasagna (before they were aptly named lasagna noodles, that is). Why not just use one over-sized flat noodle (by the way, you can buy completely flat lasagna noodles, but not pan-sized ones)? Or how about corrugated noodles which would be curly all the way across, like cardboard? All we can do is to speculate.

Perhaps the dawn of the lasagna noodle was by chance. Two Italian brothers were bickering over who was to lay the very first noodle of what was to become a world-wide food-phenom. The noodles they had cut were long strips and completely flat. Both brothers grabbed the corners and pulled, determined to steal infamy from the other. The edges they were holding stretched the sides of the noodle in their struggle. Like rubber, the noodle snapped from their hands at the same time. The first lasagna noodle of modern history was formed! The middle was flat and the edges now curled, a constant reminder of mankind’s outer conflict and inner peace.

Perhaps lasagna’s bright beginnings were scientific in nature. A great innovator discovered a great problem. Lasagna as-was was a complete mess! The flat noodle was not rigid enough to hold together the cooked consistencies of meat, ricotta, and ragú. Lasagna was well-loved and well-loathed once served. As delicious as it was, it was a slippery, sloppy, sliding mess! The layers were completely separated and the ingredients formed no bond. But the great innovator knew exactly what to do. A more proper lasagna noodle would be classically flat-centered, but wavy on each of its longer sides. Alas! The curly edges served a dual purpose. For one, they “gripped” the other ingredients, both up and down. Two, they allowed for ingredients to seep together through the small openings where the curls met, heating when baked, and ultimately bonding chemically. The great innovator turned a common dinner disaster into a magical meal!

We may never know the true history of the curly creation, but we do know this: no matter how you slice it, lasagna is surely a savory, sensational supper!

By: S. Cole Garrett
3/14/10