29 June 2006

Why

After running 6 1/2 miles this afternoon, I went to my apartment with the goal of replenishing the 10 pounds of water I lost. I made an orange juice/ice cream/concentrated milk mixture. On the can of concentrated milk it says, "Warning: contains milk." Apparently, (you know this had to be true), somebody sometime somewhere purchased a can of concentrated milk under the general idea that what was in the can was not milk, but another substance entirely. What I would like to know is, "What did they think was IN the can?"

When I go to the grocery store and I see a can of tuna fish, I generally assume that the contents of the tuna fish can contain tuna. It's a simple principle really. Tuna implies fish.

28 June 2006

Rain

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.

The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain. The rain in Virginia also falls mainly in the flat tidal saltwater flats of this peninsula I live on and has been for the past week. I spent 2 1/2 hours in my car during a thunderstorm watching people who should be out driving. . .driving and wrecking. . .and waiting for large tow trucks and police to arrive and carry them away. I feel like I'm in Seattle or England, where they (They in this case refers to the 1,001 books I've read by British authors who always mention the rain) say it always rains. Actually, I've never read (to my knowledge) an author from Seattle. I've been there. And it rained the entire two days. Which I thought explained why all the buildings are gray. But most metal skyscrapers are gray. I'm talking to myself. (Conversing really.) I do this a lot since I live alone on a peninsula with a swamp on one side, the Atlantic on the other, and criss-crossed by hundreds of roads.

Car accidents: You never want to be in one but you always want to see one. This is because humans are twisted fallen creatures and usually bored from working in a cubicle all day. People don't want to see just an accident...oh no gentle readers...they want to see blood, and mangled metal, a bumper flung 50 feet away and sticking in the earth like stonehenge. They want to see a fat woman with too much make-up with Big Mac and fries breath crying and screaming into a cell phone. They want to see shattered glass all over the highway. If they have to drive slowly off the road to maneuver around the car parts then so much the better. We live in a society of gawkers. We love to gawk.

Another thing people want to see is snakes. Everyone hates snakes, but we all want to see them. Every human on the planet has a good snake story to tell. Take a room of complete strangers from all the continents who hardly speak the same language and have absolutely nothing in common. One person mentions this snake they saw, and almost stepped on, and soon the party's going on strong with snake speech. It's amazing.

And have you ever met someone who saw a bear in the wild. That's all they talk about for 6 months. They may forget their wife's birthday, but they'll ALWAYS remember the day they "saw that thar bear in the woods."

And how do they usually begin their bear-talk? Like this.

"At first, I'd thought it was a dog."

People ALWAYS think bears are dogs at first. Probably somebody has written a thesis on this topic and earned a PhD on this very subject. And why do they always think bears are at first dogs??? It's complicated to be sure, but it mostlikely needs a lot of math to explain.

22 June 2006

Fierce Gatorade

An actual drink.

It tastes like a popsicle, which of course reminded me of eating popsicles as a little kid. I craved banana-flavored popsicles. All other flavors were mere 2nd class ice foods. My sole purpose in eating them was to get the stick. I saved popsicle sticks. . .not sure if this was a West Virginia thing or not. I had a dream to collect enough popsicle sticks to eventually build either a huge basket or a wooden castle-depending on how many I collected. So one day I'm in a hobby store with my mom who was buying plastic eyes and what do I see?

A BOX of popsicle sticks.

Unlicked!

I could scarcely contain my enthusiam. I felt I should inform my mother of this treasure. I said,"Mom-they sell boxes of UNLICKED popsicle sticks here!!! Do you know what this means?

Unfortunately, she didn't agree with my logic of purchasing every single box in the building. Not even one. That was a sad sad day for me. And so, we left the hobby shop with nary more than a few plastic eyeballs.

19 June 2006

No word yet on the dirty rotten clean thieves

I'm looking for them. Everytime a see a suspicious-looking character with extra clean clothes, I take note.

At the lab: This is bizaar. We got a new janitor who felt the need to clean at 3 o'clock in the morning. When the janitors come, they use the front door, and have the ability to enter the building unseen and unheard by any unsuspecting chemists in the back of the building. So one night the new janitor enters at 3 AM while a certain chemist is busy performing some routine task. This chemist (who shall remain nameless) heard some sort of snuffling wheezing sound. He looks over his right shoulder and sees the head of a small black man, with wacked out hair and a little pointy demonic-looking gotee staring at him. The unnamed chemist asks, "who are you?" The janitor (who had some sort of larynx problem and is unable to speak properly and sounds like a grizzly bear, makes some sort of attempt at speech. Chem-guy doesn't understand grizzy so just stares...because he's...you know interested in things like meeting perfect strangers in the middle of the night who sneak up on you unannounced and growl like furry animals when he should in fact be nestled snug in bed sound asleep with his beautiful young wife and dreaming of sugary-food items like sugar plums dancing the polka. The speech-impaired black man strolls over and asks, "what are you doing?" Feeling talkative he explains how he's been blowing up, melting, and incinerating chemicals at very high temperatures and pressures all night long because he gets paid money and went to college far too long to do anything else in life. He nods knowingly.

14 June 2006

Robbed!

I've been robbed!

Burglarized, stolen from,. . .thieves have paid our apartment complex a visit and stolen our washer and dryer. Seriously. Sometime in the last two days (nobody knows when) some hoodlums came in and picked up our W/D, along with the quarters that we painstakingly put in them. I called the lease manager and he said it would be a few weeks to get a replacement.

A few weeks!!! How long does it take to get a new W/D? An hour? Really.

My biceps are a full inch larger than they were in January. Why? I think all the weight-lifting is paying off.

This is the last year I am ever going to rent. Next year I'm buying a house, condo, castle or something.

13 June 2006

Avoiding the Elephant

Have you ever liked someone but told yourself that you didn't like them because they're not your type, even though that other person actually is your type. . .not yet. . .but in the future. And you go out of your way to show that this other person is merely a good friend and that nothing will ever happen between the two of you, though you wish it would. . .sometimes, not always. . .but not yet for reasons you're unable to articulate clearly or even in your own mind's eye. And that even though the chemistry between the two of you is perfect, if you got any closer. . .it would be less than perfect. . .and if you grew further apart it would also be less than perfect, though in a different way.

And that the other person feels exactly the same way?

And you know it. And they know it. And you know what they know that about what you know about it. And neither one of you can do anything about it. And even to think about it is to commit some type of cultural or psychological no-no, because talking about it would simply spoil the perfect chemistry and so, as a result, you both end up not talking about this subject ever and try not to so much as even think or dwell about it, except on an instinctual level even though it's not an instinct but another part of your being called your spirit?

I think this is what the two protons in a helium atom go through.

Always orbiting one another at the same velocity and keeping (more or less) the same distance apart.

Always separated from one another and hidden from the other's view by the nucleus, but always aware of the presence of the other due to the strange laws of nature.

No wonder Uranium atoms-with their 238 protons- are so volatile.

(I'm glad I'm not a Mormon)

12 June 2006

Dancer

This guy is absolutely hilarious. Watch as he goes through the evolution of dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

10 June 2006

I resemble a candy cane...

Because my arms and legs are red, and everything else is white.

The great thing about running on Saturdays at the reservoir is all the walkers and pic-nicers chasing all the snakes of the trails.

The picture below is of a tabby (from New Jersey) who had the audacity to chase a bear up a tree. According to CNN, (also where I got this pic), this cat chased the same bear up 2 different trees. I like this cat.

08 June 2006

Blak

I just drank what may very well be the most vile tasting liquid in the known universe. This vile substance is called Blak, and is produced by Coca-Cola. It tastes like warm, flat, three-week-old coke and warm ice cream with a drop of vanilla extract. I'll give Coca-Cola credit though-the bottle looks cool.

If anybody out there in cyberspace disagrees with me, send me a note (written on the back of a twenty-dollar bill).

06 June 2006

Avian Excreta

So, the other night somebody calls the lab and asks, "Who do I talk to about the bird poop?" I had no ready response. . .polite that is. . .so I gave him the owner's personal home phone number. In hindsight, I probably should not have done that.

03 June 2006

Decorating

Help, I need somebody,Help, not just anybody,Help, you know I need someone, help.

My apartment needs decorating. I have narrowed it down to 3 choices.

1. Middle Eastern motif: When I was in Kathmandu, I picked up some neat little trinkets...a couple statues, an incense holder, three handwoven yak sweaters, a hand-carved wooden cobra with a missing eye...stuff I can build on. Maybe throw in a few ancient Egyptian false gods and goddesses from E-bay. And, I'm thinking since the carpet is a Saharan Desert tan, this would complement everything quite nicely.

2. Antique/Colonial American motif: I love wood. Wood amuses me. Conceivably, one day I will have an entire house comprised almost entirely of wood...wooden floors, wooden cabinets, a library with paneled wood (along with 10,000 books on every subject imaginable), grandfather clocks...stuff you'd find in an Eddie Bauer catalog.

3. Neo-Post Modern motif: I own exactly one item that could conceivably fit into this category (my computer.) This would be a start from scratch kind of deal and really not me. However, a third option was needed.

Current motif: which can be described as neatly piled stacks of books and not so neatly stacked (some would say...jumbled) piles of paper arranged into topics like bills, miscellaneous, work, miscellaneous, random notes, telephone #'s, more random notes, and miscellaneous.

My only caveat is...it must be unique and creative. (One of the benefits of a stimulating environment is that the brain exhibits increased neuronal synthesis, and greater cell-to-cell axon adhesion, thus allowing more linkages and pathways for mental events such as thinking, feeling, language processing...yada...yada...yada to occur.) Anyways...I've been drinking lots of coffee and Mt. Dew today :)...and so es muy importante that somebody gives me good, sound, whole, rational, advice because...you never know. I could come up with a great epiphanous idea that would change the future course of history, or...should the wrong motif prevail...like your typical Leningrad apartment...I might be forced into a dull, grey, lifeless, gloomy, life-long depression of which there would be no hope of my ever recovering from. And eventually...I would pack...and move to a cave, alone.

Washing clothes

I have four stacks of clothing in my apartment that upon reaching a certain height tells me it's time to wash them.

1-white things
2-dark things
3-wool things
4-artificial things

To elaborate, artificial things are things that are not made of natural things. Things like nylon, plastic, Cool-max, etc. Most of my running gear is composed of artificial things.

I also have a section devoted to special things. These things are taken, whenever the spirit moves me, to an an old lady or some Asian people who dry clean them. I have no idea how they clean these special things without water, but they always come back clean, ironed, and wrapped in plastic.

7-11

Have you ever tried to get a plastic cup from the plastic cup dispenser and find out that you are physically unable to separate the two because somehow nature has seen fit to put in a vaccum between the two cups? This happened to me Thursday night at 2 o'clock in the morning at 7-11.

"What did you do?"

I filled the two-cup system with coffee and steamed milk and paid for it. I told the nice lady behind the register my problem...so she wouldn't think I was trying to pull a fast one on her, like trying to STEAL a plastic coffee cup.

"And?"

She took her dirty three-inch-long Lee press-on nails and put them on the lid...right where my mouth was supposed to go...and squeeeeezed...then she sliced the outer cup with her nails and peeled it like a banana and grunted.

"She grunted?"

Yes, she GRUNTED. Grunted like a gorilla. And charged me $1.55.

"Will you be purchasing any more coffee at this particular 7-11 in the wee hours of the morn?"

I don't think so.

01 June 2006

Curiosity

I wonder how many people read this thing???

And if there is more than a few, do I really want them to know what I'm thinking?

I think 2006 will be a record year for catastrophic weather-related events...more so than 2007, and 2008, or any previous years.

Thoughts anyone?