On getting another cup of coffee

Posted on by

I sure wish I had another cup of coffee this morning. My head hurts, I’m sleepy, my tongue feels like sandpaper, and my stomach is making noises. I’d like to be drinking another cup of coffee, but I don’t have one, so I can only imagine drinking that other cup of coffee. I’m in the middle of a conference session with thirty other people, and if I get up and walk out, everyone will notice. Sometimes you just get into a situation where you can’t change the parameters, so you just suck it up and wait. The difference between what you have and what you want is often huge, but unless you set the world on its head, you can’t really change anything. The balance between happiness and having that other cup of coffee and making people happy by not doing anything, is too often an imbalance that you cannot rectify without upsetting the apple cart and upsetting others. So you don’t to anything, let you stomach rumble a bit, and you get along without that other coffee. You see, that other cup of coffee is not necessary at all. It is pure caprice. Another cup of coffee would be a huge solace, especially either very early in the morning or very late at night, but life goes on just the same, with or without the coffee. You have to balance your desires against the realities of the possible. Sometimes getting up and walking out of the room for another cup of coffee is just rude, and people might not understand the thirst driving your desire. You can tolerate thirst. It need not be slaked always or immediately.

On getting another cup of coffee

Posted on by

I sure wish I had another cup of coffee this morning. My head hurts, I’m sleepy, my tongue feels like sandpaper, and my stomach is making noises. I’d like to be drinking another cup of coffee, but I don’t have one, so I can only imagine drinking that other cup of coffee. I’m in the middle of a conference session with thirty other people, and if I get up and walk out, everyone will notice. Sometimes you just get into a situation where you can’t change the parameters, so you just suck it up and wait. The difference between what you have and what you want is often huge, but unless you set the world on its head, you can’t really change anything. The balance between happiness and having that other cup of coffee and making people happy by not doing anything, is too often an imbalance that you cannot rectify without upsetting the apple cart and upsetting others. So you don’t to anything, let you stomach rumble a bit, and you get along without that other coffee. You see, that other cup of coffee is not necessary at all. It is pure caprice. Another cup of coffee would be a huge solace, especially either very early in the morning or very late at night, but life goes on just the same, with or without the coffee. You have to balance your desires against the realities of the possible. Sometimes getting up and walking out of the room for another cup of coffee is just rude, and people might not understand the thirst driving your desire. You can tolerate thirst. It need not be slaked always or immediately.

On onions

Posted on by

Why I have never written about onions is a little bit mysterious–even to me. I’ve been eating them my whole life–white, yellow, red, green. Yes, onions bite back, but that’s why us onion lovers eat onions in the first place–for the bite. Onions are strong stuff, which is why they are so lovely and enchanting. Certainly, they give you dragon breath, but all of us who eat onions are willing to stipulate to that, keeping a bottle of mouthwash at hand. Onions are a vital ingredient in thousands of dishes–soups, stews, hot-dishes, casseroles, sauces. Fried onion rings are delightful, but those of us who eat onions, eat them because they are raw, brutal, raging, fiery, violent. The release of endorphins that we experience upon eating the hottest of onions is what we live for. Onions are strong food, not for the weak of heart, not for the wishy-washy or bland who want to eat gray food their entire lives, never being driven to tears by their food. We also eat jalapeños, limburger cheese, and menudo, looking for that same food high. You can have your macaroni and cheese, your tuna hot dish, or even chicken fried steak, none of which is hot and bothersome. We eat onions because we want our food to fight back. Yes, onions have layers, but a true onion lover cares nothing for subtlety. We love garlic, super-picante salsa, burny hot sauce, and any other food which might make you cry. I love onions. I make no apologies. A hamburger is just not a hamburger without onions on it.

On onions

Posted on by

Why I have never written about onions is a little bit mysterious–even to me. I’ve been eating them my whole life–white, yellow, red, green. Yes, onions bite back, but that’s why us onion lovers eat onions in the first place–for the bite. Onions are strong stuff, which is why they are so lovely and enchanting. Certainly, they give you dragon breath, but all of us who eat onions are willing to stipulate to that, keeping a bottle of mouthwash at hand. Onions are a vital ingredient in thousands of dishes–soups, stews, hot-dishes, casseroles, sauces. Fried onion rings are delightful, but those of us who eat onions, eat them because they are raw, brutal, raging, fiery, violent. The release of endorphins that we experience upon eating the hottest of onions is what we live for. Onions are strong food, not for the weak of heart, not for the wishy-washy or bland who want to eat gray food their entire lives, never being driven to tears by their food. We also eat jalapeños, limburger cheese, and menudo, looking for that same food high. You can have your macaroni and cheese, your tuna hot dish, or even chicken fried steak, none of which is hot and bothersome. We eat onions because we want our food to fight back. Yes, onions have layers, but a true onion lover cares nothing for subtlety. We love garlic, super-picante salsa, burny hot sauce, and any other food which might make you cry. I love onions. I make no apologies. A hamburger is just not a hamburger without onions on it.

On mystery

Posted on by

Human beings are intrigued by the unknown and strive endlessly to know more, to clear up the mystery. Yet, we are also plagued by the unknown, the inexplicable, the mysterious. Modern manifestations of pop culture delve deeply in the mystery genre, and weird pop culture delves into cryptozoology and make-believe monsters, trading in ancient astronauts and Bermuda Triangles. Many mysteries are not mysteries at all when seen against the background of real science and rational empiricism. A person disappears, a bank is robbed, someone lies dead in their own living room, a painting is stolen, the power goes out, a window get broken, the car won’t start, your stomach hurts, and you don’t have an explanation for any of it. A letter is lost in the mail, the washing machine breaks, the roof leaks. We have a hundred mysteries around us all of the time: a strange noise in the night, a familiar looking face at the mall that you haven’t seen in twenty years, a ringing phone but no one answers. We are constantly trying to solve one mystery or another. One of the greatest fictional detectives of all times, Sherlock Holmes, is the modern model and poster boy for mystery solving and rational empiricism. Holmes’ success drove his creator, Conan Doyle, to distraction because he had no idea his detective would turn into one of the wildly successful characters of all time. The mystery genre publishes thousands of new titles every year–the reading public can’t get enough. Mysteries are probably popular because the mirror the chaos of daily life, and since we can’t bring order to real life, we live vicariously through the detectives that bring order to their fictional world. We feel better about our own chaos as order is restored when the detective lets us know that the butler did it.

On mystery

Posted on by

Human beings are intrigued by the unknown and strive endlessly to know more, to clear up the mystery. Yet, we are also plagued by the unknown, the inexplicable, the mysterious. Modern manifestations of pop culture delve deeply in the mystery genre, and weird pop culture delves into cryptozoology and make-believe monsters, trading in ancient astronauts and Bermuda Triangles. Many mysteries are not mysteries at all when seen against the background of real science and rational empiricism. A person disappears, a bank is robbed, someone lies dead in their own living room, a painting is stolen, the power goes out, a window get broken, the car won’t start, your stomach hurts, and you don’t have an explanation for any of it. A letter is lost in the mail, the washing machine breaks, the roof leaks. We have a hundred mysteries around us all of the time: a strange noise in the night, a familiar looking face at the mall that you haven’t seen in twenty years, a ringing phone but no one answers. We are constantly trying to solve one mystery or another. One of the greatest fictional detectives of all times, Sherlock Holmes, is the modern model and poster boy for mystery solving and rational empiricism. Holmes’ success drove his creator, Conan Doyle, to distraction because he had no idea his detective would turn into one of the wildly successful characters of all time. The mystery genre publishes thousands of new titles every year–the reading public can’t get enough. Mysteries are probably popular because the mirror the chaos of daily life, and since we can’t bring order to real life, we live vicariously through the detectives that bring order to their fictional world. We feel better about our own chaos as order is restored when the detective lets us know that the butler did it.

On invisible

Posted on by

The very idea of “invisible” is a little hard to grasp. I’m not just talking about something that is really, really tiny such as an atom or an individual molecule of water, which are pretty much invisible to the human eye. What I want to talk about is something you should be able to see, but for some reason you don’t, and no, I’m not talking about stealth technology, or am I? I am not entirely sure what “invisible” means at all. The Predator can make himself “invisible” by turning on his high-tec camouflage, but that is stealthy technology that makes him hard to see, but he’s not really invisible. I think one needs to ask the hard question, can anything really be invisible that has mass? We know that a magnetic field is invisible, but it also has no mass. Light is visible and invisible according to its wavelength and the ability of the human eye to detect certain wavelengths. Again, for the Predator, other wavelengths are also visible, not invisible. Smells are invisible because the detectable parts per million are so small, we can’t see them with naked eye. If ghosts were real, they would be both visible and invisible at the same time. Certain bombers are invisible in the dark and even radar cannot seem them, but they aren’t really invisible either. Sound is invisible, and the wind is invisible, sort of. I think that it is both frightening and ironic that there are series of horror movies about men who have made themselves invisible, that the invisibility causes insanity and false grandeur. Even the tiniest bugs, amoeba, diatoms, and the like are only invisible because they are tiny and the human eye cannot distinguish anything at the atomic level. Love, or hate, are invisible, but then again, wild emotional abstractions don’t exist in the physical world other than as ideas, not as concrete realities. The closest thing to invisible in our world is the fictional cloaking device that exists in the world of Star Trek, which alters something at the sub-atomic level, changing the time phase of the object, rendering it invisible within its current physical frame and/or context. So I not only don’t know what invisible is, I also have no way of really describing it either. The actual physics of light reflecting off of an object so that said object appears invisible has yet to be truly defeated, except for the world of science fiction. None of this means, however, that we still aren’t working on it, albeit, clandestinely.

On invisible

Posted on by

The very idea of “invisible” is a little hard to grasp. I’m not just talking about something that is really, really tiny such as an atom or an individual molecule of water, which are pretty much invisible to the human eye. What I want to talk about is something you should be able to see, but for some reason you don’t, and no, I’m not talking about stealth technology, or am I? I am not entirely sure what “invisible” means at all. The Predator can make himself “invisible” by turning on his high-tec camouflage, but that is stealthy technology that makes him hard to see, but he’s not really invisible. I think one needs to ask the hard question, can anything really be invisible that has mass? We know that a magnetic field is invisible, but it also has no mass. Light is visible and invisible according to its wavelength and the ability of the human eye to detect certain wavelengths. Again, for the Predator, other wavelengths are also visible, not invisible. Smells are invisible because the detectable parts per million are so small, we can’t see them with naked eye. If ghosts were real, they would be both visible and invisible at the same time. Certain bombers are invisible in the dark and even radar cannot seem them, but they aren’t really invisible either. Sound is invisible, and the wind is invisible, sort of. I think that it is both frightening and ironic that there are series of horror movies about men who have made themselves invisible, that the invisibility causes insanity and false grandeur. Even the tiniest bugs, amoeba, diatoms, and the like are only invisible because they are tiny and the human eye cannot distinguish anything at the atomic level. Love, or hate, are invisible, but then again, wild emotional abstractions don’t exist in the physical world other than as ideas, not as concrete realities. The closest thing to invisible in our world is the fictional cloaking device that exists in the world of Star Trek, which alters something at the sub-atomic level, changing the time phase of the object, rendering it invisible within its current physical frame and/or context. So I not only don’t know what invisible is, I also have no way of really describing it either. The actual physics of light reflecting off of an object so that said object appears invisible has yet to be truly defeated, except for the world of science fiction. None of this means, however, that we still aren’t working on it, albeit, clandestinely.

On snoring

Posted on by

A nasty thing to do, but not all of us can control the fact that we snore. Personally, I would prefer to not snore, pass the night in total, sepulchral silence. Because the night is for total, blackout silence. Maybe a cricket, maybe a ticking grandfather clock, maybe the creaking of centenary Victorian home. No one should get up in the night. Snoring is an interruption in the peace of the night. Snoring is non-lineal, unpredictable, chaotic, torturous. If sleep and rest are about restoration and redemption, how can snoring be anything but trouble? I have startled myself awake from snoring too loudly. Luckily, this has only happened once or twice. My snoring is annoying, but it’s not consistent. Many nights I pass quietly in the arms of the sleep angels who watch over this simulacrum of death that we call sleep. Snoring is an ironic and bitter development that interrupts that sweet rest which restores and rebuilds after a hard day at work, or just a had day. Given the right circumstances, we all snore: a cold, allergies, to many drinks, too tired, crabby. So this is the dilemma: who sleeps on the sofa? Snorer or snoree? If the paint is coming off of the ceiling, or the wallpaper is pealing, perhaps the snorer should be encouraged to seek refuge in another room and leave the poor suffering victim to enjoy the bed alone, especially if earplugs are not an option.

On snoring

Posted on by

A nasty thing to do, but not all of us can control the fact that we snore. Personally, I would prefer to not snore, pass the night in total, sepulchral silence. Because the night is for total, blackout silence. Maybe a cricket, maybe a ticking grandfather clock, maybe the creaking of centenary Victorian home. No one should get up in the night. Snoring is an interruption in the peace of the night. Snoring is non-lineal, unpredictable, chaotic, torturous. If sleep and rest are about restoration and redemption, how can snoring be anything but trouble? I have startled myself awake from snoring too loudly. Luckily, this has only happened once or twice. My snoring is annoying, but it’s not consistent. Many nights I pass quietly in the arms of the sleep angels who watch over this simulacrum of death that we call sleep. Snoring is an ironic and bitter development that interrupts that sweet rest which restores and rebuilds after a hard day at work, or just a had day. Given the right circumstances, we all snore: a cold, allergies, to many drinks, too tired, crabby. So this is the dilemma: who sleeps on the sofa? Snorer or snoree? If the paint is coming off of the ceiling, or the wallpaper is pealing, perhaps the snorer should be encouraged to seek refuge in another room and leave the poor suffering victim to enjoy the bed alone, especially if earplugs are not an option.