Stay Fat

Stay Fat


I was surfing my favorite website for obscure news (MSN) and I found this gem:

So if you can make it past the article about gun rights, the article about congresswoman Giffords being shot by a gun and living, and the article about how Giffords being shot by a gun is somewhat overshadowing an outdated federal holiday concerning a certain civil rights icon who was shot by a gun and didn't live, then you'd see the juiciest of them all.  (It's conveniently circled.)  (And yes, I said MLK's birthday is an outdated holiday.  It's on par with President's Day and Colombus Day.)  Anyway, the gist of the article is this: if you're already overweight, the odds are, you'd be better off staying that way instead of losing the weight.

-What?!?!?!  
-I know, shocking.
-So does that mean I can eat yummy delicious Oreo cream sandwiches to my clogged heart's content for as long as we both shall live?
-Well . . . that's a little creepy and I'm not sure what it means, but sure.
-And exercising?  Does that mean I should start training for the next Law and Order marathon?
-Yes, as long as you wear running shorts.

The real gist is this: body fat tends to store nasty pollutants and pesticides like PCBs and DDT.  They supposedly get into body fat by eating overly-processed foods, under-cleaned-chemically-treated foods, and touching public restroom door handles after people who don't wash their hands (or at least two of those reasons).  Well, when you begin to lose significant amounts of that fat, typically by means of diet and exercise, those chemicals get released into your bloodstream.  Subsequently, diseases like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease have all been linked to those chemicals, also known as persistent organic pollutants.

Luckily, the article mentions two methods of avoiding these toxins getting into your blood.  First, exercising and sticking to a plant-based diet while losing weight.  And, "of course, not becoming obese in the first place..."  There's a real pearl of wisdom for ya!

Attached

Attached


Have you ever sent an email and promised an attachment, but forget to actually attach something?  (You're not alone.)  Then, you have to post-proclaim your brain lapse by writing a follow-up email, usually containing a "duh" or an "oops."  Sounds intelligent, doesn't it?

If this sounds like you, I have a solution:  Gmail.  (I promise Dry Humor Daily is not a google spokesperson.  They just keep coming up with good stuff!)  Here's a message you might get from gmail if you forget your attachment:

I remember thinking, as a matter of fact, I did mean to attach something.  Thanks, gmail!  (I might have actually said it out loud to myself.)  Anyway, pretty cool, huh?  From now on, I don't have to be that person: the notorious attachment-forgetter.  

What will they come up with next?  (Hopefully, teleportation or light sabers, you know, something cool like that!)

Coors' Blue Mountains

Coors’ Blue Mountains

One of my biggest pet peeves is when companies “dumb down” their products for the general public.  It’s insulting.  And it definitely doesn’t make me want to buy their products.  The example that has been on my mind for a while is the Cold-Activated bottles and cans from Coors. 

Let me just ask this question.  Before cold-activated bottles hit the shelves, how did you know when your Coors was cold?  You picked it up, right?  If it was cold to the touch, then it was cold.  Duh.  It’s pretty basic.  (If you don’t drink Coors, imagine any bottled beverage instead.  Like root beer.) 

Aren’t we all fairly experienced in beverage cooling matters, anyway?  I’m sure you know several ways to cool down a bottle of something and even further, you know about how long each method takes.  It’s like the honchos at Coors think a bunch of Neanterthals are running around, drinking their beer:

“Me like beer.  Blue beer cold.  Me drink Coors.  Ug like Coors.”

All I have to say is: come on, Coors.  We’re not that stupid.  (At lease, not all of us.)

Tuesday 4/27

Time Travel

The first part of a series of documentaries from the mind of Stephen Hawking aired last weekend.  I missed it, but my brother told me about it.  Here’s what I took from it.

My brother told me that he had watched the show last Sunday. 

“Cool,” I said, “how was it?”  (At this point, I didn’t yet realize that it was to be a multi-part series.)

“Pretty interesting,” he said.

“Isn’t he supposed to know how the world ends, or I’m guessing the probability of it, at least?”

“No,” he replied, “that’s next week.”

Wait a second.  Next week?  Bummer.  I guess I can cancel my summer vacation.  This is when I realized there was at least one more show.

“Oh,” I quickly pondered the end of the world, “well, what was it about?”

“Aliens and time travel.  Aliens are likely to invade our planet for resources.”

“And time travel,” I asked, “what’s that all about?

“Well, theoretically, it’s possible.”

I thought for second how cool that would be and that someone beyond our lifetimes might figure out how to do it.  It would be nice to float through time and fix some things here and there.  I wouldn’t have eaten those bad leftovers.  Maybe go back and get some wining power ball numbers… then my thought was cut short.

“But you can only go forward.”

“What do you mean?”  I asked him.

“Well you could travel through time, in theory, but you can only go forward.”

So let me get this straight.  The arguably smartest man in the world is on TV explaining that time travel is theoretically possible, but we can only go forward?  Maybe I’m missing something here, but… DON’T WE DO THAT EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY?  I’m no rocket scientist, but if that’s all it takes, then I’m fairly certain I’m traveling through time right now, at the rate of about one second per second (normal speed).  

I’m not bashing Stephen Hawking or the network, but can’t the people that are way smarter than all of us come up with cars that run on garbage or ways to build cities on water or something?  (That’s a lot of real estate, by the way!)  Just a thought.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 4/13

And Counting

Any calorie-conscious consumer will tell you, it’s tough.  Counting is generally an easy thing to do and we’ve all been counting since we could play hide-and-seek.  It’s the adding that’s the hard part.  But even the adding isn’t the hardest thing.  There’s the serving size (who has time to figure out exactly how much their eating).  You need to figure out how much you should eat at each sitting and how many calories are in each food being eaten and add them all together and . . . well, it’s turning into rocket science.  What is a calorie, anyway, and who decided that it was a good idea to start counting them?

That’s a two part answer (Great… now we’re answer-counting.)  What is a calorie?  Easy, it’s the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degrees Celcius.  (I know what you’re thinking: . . . what?)  In other words, one calorie equals 4.184 joules.  (That didn’t help either, did it?)  Oh, and the real name of the food calorie is the kilocalorie.  ( . . . )  Simply put, a calorie isn’t really a thing.  It’s a measurement.  Think of it as like an inch or a centimeter.  You know what an inch is, and how long it is, but you can’t physically touch it.  Even the word ‘calorie’ comes from the Latin word for heat, which is another way to look at them.

How do you count something like that?  Thanks to the Nutrition Facts labels on foods you buy, you don’t have to.  It’s right there on the side . . . or the back . . . or somewhere on every package (except those ones that say ‘not labeled for individual resale’).  Sometime back in the 80s, someone started a movement to label foods with all this information because Americans were unarmed in food facts.  Then it became law in 1990 and has been changing ever since.  Thank the government for making eating so hard.  (Help us if they ever start requiring nutrition labels on those little produce stickers.)

So the question is still out there: Why count?  I’ll answer that question with another question: Why do some people still wear tie-dyed shirts and have mullets?  Because it was all the rave at one point in time. 

Intuitively, people know whether or not something that’s going in their mouth is beneficial for their body and that exercising is a good thing.  The best advice?  Don’t emo-eat, patrol your portions, regularly recreate, and enjoy less junk. 

So I’ll leave you with one last question: Are you hungry yet?  I am.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 4/9

Burnt Sugar

Something undeniably and divinely delicious happens when you melt sugar and boil it to around 240® F.  A sweet, rapturous aroma is released.  The sugar turns to a perfectly creamy, light beige.  You might have second thoughts about what was originally planned for that caramel.  Maybe you’ll just eat it all yourself and cook up a replacement batch.  Good thing there’s a kitchen towel nearby to wipe the drool from the corner of your mouth.  I’ve met very few (if any) people who don’t enjoy the gift of caramel.  One thing is certain: caramel is a well-loved treat.  One thing, however, is far less certain about the concoction.  That is, how to say it.  So that begs the question.  What is it: Carmel or caramel? 

Well that’s kind of a trick question.  (Actually, if you weren’t tricked at all, then it was a dumb question.)  Carmel and caramel are not the same things, not by a long shot, but it was the easiest way for me to express, in writing, the two different ways to pronounce it.  So let’s rule out Carmel.  Carmel is: a city in Indiana, a community in Louisiana, a town in Maine, a town in New York, a mountain in Israel, an ancient town in Judea, a river in California, and a town in California, just to name a few.  Carmel is anything but candy.  Caramel, on the other hand, is basically burnt sugar.  (Burnt, ooey, gooey, yummy sugar).  So I suppose a better question would be: is it cäramel or cāramel?

You see, Carmel (the non-food) has two syllables and sounds like what you drive down the street (like “car”).  Caramel (the food) has three syllables and sounds like when you have strong feelings about something (like “care”).  Arguably, (but not originally) caramel (the food) could also be pronounced like “car” (vroom, vroom).  So which one is right? 

Unfortunately, they’re both right.  Look in any dictionary.  Well, caramel quite possibly originated in France (at least, some people speculate) which would make the original word have three syllables.  Typically, with foreign food words assimilated into English, the pronunciation goes relatively unchanged.  We don’t shorten burrito to burto.  Likewise, escargot doesn’t become esgot and manicotti doesn’t become mancotti.  But caramel slips through the cracks.  So how to pronunciation disputes get settled?

Easy, dictionaries publish them both.  It’s like compromise, but no losing for either side.  And it doesn’t really solve the debate.  Just know that words usually start out with just one way to say them.  Judge the facts for yourself.  So choose sides: potato, tomato, pecan, vacuum, envelope, caramel, whatever.  I recommend you check the facts yourself.  Who knows?  You might have been saying it wrong all along.

By: S. Cole Garrett