July 22, 2012

Eating Sucks

I don't like eating. Don't get me wrong, I love food. Tasty tasty food is the best, especially when you've spent the last two hours at work just imagining the awesome steak that you put out to marinate the night before. But mostly, being hungry is just annoying. There I'll be, minding my own, when BAM! tummy rumbles. 


'Shut up tummy,' I'll say, 'I don't have time for your crap right now.' 


You see, if I didn't need to eat, then I could eat whenever I wanted, and it would be purely indulgent. I wouldn't be halfway through a big project (completing a quest in an RPG is a project, right?) when I suddenly have to drop everything, and scramble around cooking things. It's frustrating. As soon as I get on a roll, there's my hunger, screwing things up for me. Like right now, I just heard a tummy rumble. 


This time isn't that bad though. I for some inexplicable reason woke up at 4 this morning. I don't know why. I had some beer last night, and I tend to wake early after drinking, but I didn't get trashed or nothing. I got a good buzz for a few hours while watching Mytbusters. They're the reason I drank last night. They were testing alcohol myths, how could I not join in on the fun? Sure, I chose which episode to watch, but that doesn't make me responsible for my own actions.* Regardless, I didn't drink near enough to wake me up before sunrise, and I was hungry when I woke up. 


I told my tummy to shove it, got up, checked my email. After that I puttered around for an hour or so, and took a shower. Then I went grocery shopping. Twice. Why twice you ask? Because I needed a frying pan. In truth, I have two already, but one's small and the other I use a lot. So I figured I'd get another frying pan because doing dishes every night kind of sucks.


It wasn't until I started checking out my groceries that I realized I had just enough money to pay for everything except the frying pan. Bummer. So I put it back, went home, and unloaded the groceries. I was about to clean my old frying pan when I decided screw that. I got online, transferred some cash into my checking account, and out the door I went.


Ah, home. Once I got back with the new non stick frying pan, I immediately began unsticking the stickers from the non stick frying pan. Wait, how do they do that? My guess is magic. Or gremlins. Whatever, I have a new pan, and it's sticker and glue free. So I fried me up some bacon and eggs and toast and it was freaking awesome!


And that's what I love about food - when you do eat, especially on a ridiculously empty stomach, the high you get from suddenly being satisfied is amazing. Heck, I was so elated that I actually cleaned up after myself, and did the dishes and everything! Granted, that doesn't happen every time I eat. Most of the time I just shove whatever is quick and easy to make down my throat and call it good. Not because I don't like tasty food, but because eating is annoying. You can't do much of anything else except watch something. Talking while eating is awkward (especially when you're alone in your apartment). Plus there's the prep time, and the mess, and ugh. Eating sucks. Food is awesome, eating sucks.


Except this morning. Living alone means I buy way more frozen foods then perishable. It's hard to buy a salad for one, or eat an entire loaf of bread before it goes bad. So the whole bacon and eggs thing was a bit of a treat for me. Breakfast today was a completely satisfying, totally awesome experience. And I've been waiting all day to experience it again. That's right, today, in contradiction to almost every other day, is a day I want to be hungry. Today is a day I want to eat. I'm looking forward to making eggs again, with nice thick slices of bacon, and maybe even an English muffin or two. I have salsa, and cheese, and all manner of fixins. I can't wait to be hungry again!


Oh wait, that's why I started writing this - tummy rumbles!



*The only actions of mine for which I am responsible are the ones that turn out well. All the others aren't my fault.**
**When I grow up I want to be a politician!


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July 06, 2012

A Substantial Image

What's in a name? Would a font by any other name be as hated, or would it convey the content of the words any differently? I'm talking about comic sans font, its detractors, and the scientist who use that font. You see, CERN decided that it was high time to admit that they have possibly found something that could be a Higgs Boson (this is how a scientist talks when they're only 99.9998% sure about something). They decided to use comic sans in their presentation slides. This has not been taken well by the internet.

Now, the sci-ence comic isn't that big a deal - They're a comic; they're allowed to make snarky comics about such things. But really, Verge, 256 comments, many of them vitriolic? Yes, comic sans is slightly whimsical. But it is also easy to read, is widely available, and starts with 'c', so it's near the top of the list of fonts you need to scroll through to find a font.  I haven't heard of CERN science teams submitting research to journals using comic sans. Nor has there been a ruckus raised over their use of comic sans for their press releases. No, the only time they used comic sans was in their presentation to an auditorium of people who worked on the project. They were jubilant, and can be forgiven for feeling slightly whimsical.

Or maybe they just wanted something that was easy to read. This was being presented to a fairly large crowd, with a video feed to the internet. Legibility may have been an important factor. Or maybe the creator of the slides wasn't concerned too much with the font, and went with the first one they liked.

This whole thing seems rather shallow. "Oh my!" cries the internet, "the particular shape of these perfectly readable letters is not to my aesthetic satisfaction! Quick, we must write about this absurdity, for that is far more important than what those scientists were actually talking about!" Apparently form is everything and content is nothing. Image far outweighs substance.

And isn't that what really matters? The discovery of a new fundamental particle is truly historic. Thousands of people have spent uncountable hours of their lives in pursuit of this discovery. It has taken decades, and there were many setbacks. But they kept at it, steadily plugging along until finally, at the end of all that hard work, they had a graph with a bump right where they expected a bump to be. This is far more awesome than I just described. Ultimately, I don't care what font is used to present amazing new discoveries; I care that the discovery was made. So long as the slides are legible, I am happy.




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