Oysters and Pearls

A grain of sand, upon entering an oyster, becomes so agitating to the creature that it will surround the sand with some sort of oyster saliva to ease the itch. This eventually hardens and in turn continues to aggravate the oyster, which angrily reacts the same way it does at the very first – that is to say that it spits upon its problem and makes it bigger. In this way, a pearl is formed.

Ideas can be placed in just the right circumstances to grow into something awe invoking. Today’s pearl began as most do – in a very small way a few hundred hours ago at a work Christmas party. The event was typical of such a gathering: it was a small group of employees, some with wives or dates, cracking jokes and receiving superficial awards. The food was excellent, consisting mainly of stake; chicken; salad; a variety of beverages; and something long, flat, and breaded that was offered to me as “[something inaudible] fries.” I asked for the name to be repeated and heard “bulf rinds.” Too proud to ask a second time, I made my wildest of guesses and decided on fried bullfrog. I’d heard that frogs are tasty when prepared correctly and so decided to try one, thinking that if I’d missed my guess whatever it was couldn’t be any more outlandish than what I’d already anticipated and that at the very worst I’d accumulate another experience for my cultural repertoire. (I mention here, that this unknown foodstuff became my proverbial grain of sand – a preparation for a gem of an experience.)

I sampled this new fare after dipping it in cocktail sauce and decided that it tasted almost like shrimp though a little beefy. The flavor, the chewy texture, and the appearance of this unknown delicacy all layered themselves rosily about its pestering animosity; as did the next layer of truth which was willingly placed at my feet by an obliging universe in the form of an overheard conversation:

“You’re not really going to eat that?” said a female coworker to the male one at my right.
“Why not?” said he.
“Don’t you know what that is?”
“Certainly.”

At this point I rudely interjected and asked, “What exactly are those?” I also quickly consumed my last morsel of the meat in question, fearing that I might not want to do so upon hearing an answer. This proved to be a very wise move. The man chuckled, turned to me with a knowing look and a twinkle in his eye, and leaned closer to me. Looking intently at me, like a vulture about to gobble up its prey (or more accurately, like a person about to immensely enjoy a beautiful moment at my expense), he replied in conspiring tones, “Well… you’ve heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters?”

I had.

For those of you who have not so heard, I will expound. You may be mystified to know that every bull owns two oysters which he carries with him always. When these are stolen from him he is considered a steer. I had just eaten a breaded and fried oyster, removed by force from a rightfully indignant bovine – tactfully dubbed “Bull Fry.” The puzzle solved, my pearl came into full view, and I gazed speechlessly upon it.

Our story, however, does not end here, for the next day at work (I work at a private school) the cafeteria was serving leftovers from the past few days, including from the party. One boy heard “fry” and loaded his plate despite the lunch lady asking repeatedly: “Are you sure? Do you know what that is?” (His reply each time was “Yeah. Bull Fries. You told me already.”) A little while later he gained view of his own pearl, and I will confide in you that while I’ve never actually seen an oyster spit at its pearl, I am nearly certain that one could never match the vigor with which this young man spat at his.

It is a rule at my school that students are to eat every mouthful of food that they take. My resulting pity for the boy got the best of me and so I offered moral support in the form of taking a second contemptible abomination. As I chewed my fare I thought heavily upon that age old adage “ignorance is bliss.”

-Schlange

In honor of this particular occasion I follow this experience with a favorite poem:

The Oyster by Baxter Black

The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents.
"How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence,
"I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain.
"Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane."

"I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?"
"No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink
But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true
And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!"

She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone.
I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a stone!"
The cowboy winced, imagining a calf with her beneath,
"Me, I use a pocket knife and yank ‘em with my teeth."

"Oh my," she said, "You're an animal! How crude and unrefined!
Your masculine assertiveness sends a shiver down my spine!
But I prefer a butcher knife too dull to really cut.
I wedge it in on either side and crack it like a nut!

I pry them out. If they resist, sometimes I use the pliers
Or even Grandpa's pruning shears if that's what it requires!"
The hair stood on the cowboy's neck. His stomach did a whirl.
He'd never heard such grisly talk, especially from a girl!

"I like them fresh," the sweetheart said and laid her menu down
Then ordered oysters for them both when the waiter came around.
The cowboy smiled gamely, though her words stuck in his craw
But he finally fainted dead away when she said, "I'll have mine raw!"

Mattel made WHAT?

And now, for the first time ever, a Barbie that boys will like more than girls: complete with angry ravens comes the Barbie from "The Birds." Too bad Hitchcock isn't around to see this. I wonder if they are going to put out a new Alfred line... maybe we'll get a “Vertigo” play set complete with Monastery Bell Tower.

Just pray that they don’t decide to honor Edger Allen Poe…

Butt Munch

(Post 24)

Pardon the potentially offending post title, but that's really what we're talking about today - grasshoppers that stay on the move to prevent their hindquarters from becoming lunch. For those of you who want to read the whole thing you can read it here.

The main idea of the article is this: swarms of locusts get where they are going because the bugs in front are afraid that the bugs in back are going to nibble their bottoms. There were two paragraphs in the article that made me think about life in general:

The defensive movement away from the perceived threat sets up a domino effect,
as each individual locusts' movement causes them to touch another locust, which
then makes the second locust move away.

"You have millions of individuals all going in the same direction, because if they change direction much, they are likely to come in contact with each other," Sword said.

I think that sometimes people are just like this. We all move defensively away from everybody else, often because we are afraid of getting a "but chewing." That's what defines the direction of society. We all move in a direction that minimizes the negative contact we have with other people - thus we don't really go where we want to go, we just go where we all herd each other to.

Now, the locusts have a legitimate problem. They're cannibalistic and if they don't head for food they become food. We on the other hand have a tendency to imagine the things that other people are going to think. Most of the time we're wrong. Even when we're right we're spineless.

It's a pity.

-Schlange

Bl-ah-g

Post 18

I just posted a post in the which I made apologies for being away for so long and posting a topic that I'll discuss soon. The "cyber-ether" absorbed it with some mysterious error. I think the keeper of the void has it in for me. I still apologize, but not so nicely. Unpolished topic intro follows:

Topic will be:

"Most things you consider to be evil are really just lonely and lacking in social niceties"

Feel free to comment on the topic before I do, as I can't right now. Consider this virtual circle time.

Write in such a way that if your blog is called upon to die prematurely (as mine are prone to do) they'll have a happy reunion with the good blogs of the past. However, it's likely that their tarnished descendants (like this one) will end up going to the postMaster Demon (and yes I know that's not what it is, but Demon is far more appropriate than what's his bucket)

-Schlange

Inviting Yet Fruitless

(Post 15)

I just had a hollow experience. I attended an activity where food was provided (likely as an incentive to improve attendance). Amongst the table's insentivery chief weaponry were gourmet crackers with ranch dip, grapes of two varieties, orange juice, and a twinkling gem: pastries of some wonderful nature or another, glazed with gleaming sugar, and most temptingly oozing apple or raspberry filling from every crevice. I excitedly took one of each kind, found a corner free of distractions that might take from the experience, and lovingly lifted the apple pastry to my salivating taste tester. I placed the treat delicately between my teeth and applied pressure slowly, so as to extend the sensation of watering my tongue with sugary fruit goodness.

The expected flavor bomb never arrived. I began to chew vigorously and discovered that what should have been a masterfully crafted vehicle packed full of natural (but chemically enhanced for preservation) gifts for the nerve-endings in my tongue was nothing more than a thinly breaded carpool of the gasses that make up air. It was as a fig tree full of leaves but barren of fruit. (Fig tree's produce fruit before leaves… seeing leaves on a fig tree means you can expect ripe fruit).

After the crash of disappointment I looked at my raspberry pastry. "Little raspberry manna-cake," I thought to the sister of the sinful apple hypocrite, "your counterpart must have surely been a dud. You most certainly will not fail me. Not with such beauty in your figure and promise in your eyes… or icing in their absence." So I popped the raspberry pastry into my mouth. More disappointing than the first, this air pocket gave a hint and promise of forthcoming flavor that vanished with the breeze generated by the air escaping it.

I was crushed. But I yet could not believe that what I had sampled was the standard for all the beckoning desserts upon the table, so I ate four more. Whited sepulchers, all of them. It was like watching the food channel, but worse. Everything you see looks amazing and you wish that you could reach into the screen and pull out a sample. Well in this case you can, but when you bite into it you find that cable can't broadcast substance (which may be true in more senses than this one).

I'm fairly certain that the heinous company that made these tempting little heart breakers isn't going to make it through Armageddon. Particularly considering that the amount of residue that the filling on the OUTSIDE of the pastry left on the box they came in was greater than the filling occupying the centers of these great and spacious baked buildings.

So, I have some parallels to draw and re-reference; morals to extend; and lists to number:

• One: Don't be like a Pharisee… you don't want to end up like the cursed fig tree.
  
• Two: Sin is like a bad pastry. It tempts one with much, and leaves him with no fruit fillings. The more one places it in his mouth because he thinks it'll be better this time, the fewer flavors he'll have in life, along with a continued longing for the realization of never to be fulfilled promises.
  
• Three: A handful of God's own good grapes can make the world right when all joy has vanished.
  

-Schlange

~ Sunday, February 24, 2008 ~

The meaning beyond the satire.
(Stop here if you just wanted to read a rant about pastries. If you're looking for more substance click here. Also Schmetterling's post on The Eccentric Sage links this post to another fellow's post for the sake of making an interesting point. I recomend that you check it out.)

“You Never Win”

(post 12)

I just had a unique opportunity. It came about because I've been up so late blogging. (I always forget what I want to blog about, and tonight I kept thinking of things, so I kept going… it's now 3:17 am and I'm exhausted – by the way, if my parents ever read this it's ok. It's a 3 day weekend and I just wired myself by programming for several hours. – These kinds of things are important to parents of college students who are suspected of staying up way later than is healthy.) Anyhow I had just finished the last post and published it to the web; I about to power down (I had an update threatening to turn off the computer in 3 minutes anyways) when my roommate started talking in his sleep. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get it down and remember it… when I ever do wake up to the noise other wake up in their sleep I can never remember what was said or done. So, here it is:

Sympathetically: "I'm sorry."

*Pause*

*Soft laugh – the type reserved for the humor of cruel irony*

*Pause*

With humor in voice: "You never win."

*Pause*

Trailing: "You never win…"

Here's the best part. I'd forgotten about that update. I never told it to wait. I was just about to post something similar to the above (what he said is accurate, what I said is different), when everything turned off without asking me to save or anything. I had to wait for the power up to retype this because I was determined to win. Today is the same day that I posted "Pain" and "Redemption?" as the result of losing everything I'd written for the last half hour; and "Pretzels" in the which I note that the program I spent 30 hours on over the last week was 2 hours too late to be on time. Everything I posted today was the epitome of " You never win."

*Much Laughter*

Word just crashed on me again (the first time I was writing "Pretzels") and then came back with a message that said something along the lines of "We've noticed that office has crashed on you frequently lately. We recommend that you run our office diagnostic tool." Fortunately, I'd just saved and Word has a good auto save…. I hadn't saved on "Pretzels" and it gave me most of it back. It crashed two times after that and I lost this post both times (I wasn't very far in either time). May I repeat: "You never win." Thanks for the hilarious timing Schmetterling. By the way, office has never crashed before on me, so I'm attributing it to the power of today.

Pain

(post 9)

I wrote on this space for 30 min just a minute(or thirty) ago. The title of the blog was "Calm." It was a decent post. Not spectacular, but decent. Somehow I deleted it when I was trying to copy it and spellcheck it. That was ok because the awesome autosave feature kicked in right before I killed it. I only lost my signing out line. Easy to reproduce, no big deal. I felt elated. So I proceeded to copy it to spellcheck it and guess what, I mysteriously killed it again (and it still didn't make it to my clipboard). "So what?" says I, "I'll just go back to the saved draft and grab it again right?" As I think this the autosave does it's job again, only a half second before I could tap the appropriate button. *Deathknell* I'm thinking that the cruel irony is worse than the original pain of loosing it. Besides that, my stupidity is being rubbed in my face.

by the way. no spahellerChecking for this one. ever.

-Schlange

Unintentional Conversations

(Post 5)

So... I have this incredible power: I'll give you an example first and then tell you what it is.

Two years ago I was in a public restroom stall. An other fellow walks in, sits down in the stall next to me and says in a very friendly voice, "HEY!"

"Hi... " I say in a tone of voice that indicates that my right eyebrow is raised.

"So, what are you doing?"

"Um... " (This was not the kind of question I was expecting.) "I'm using the toilet. How about you?"

At this point my friendly neighborhood restroom goer changes his tone of voice dramatically from one of friendly and outgoing to one of extreme annoyance, and uses it to say, "Hey! Would you shut up please? I'm trying to talk on the phone here!"

I laughed for days. It was really therapeutic actually.

So there it is from time to time I attract a cell phone user who is engaged in a conversation to be around when I'm not aware that they are in a conversation. I then speak and receive responses in a very real feeling pseudo-conversation. I wish it would happen a little more often. Some days I just need a good laugh.

When the World throws you Lemons...

(Post 3)

Today I've been astounded as I think of some of the great men and women who have taken the lemons the world has chucked at them and made not only lemonade and a variety of pies, but also industrial strength cleaning products and a decent shaving cream!

That's right, today I purchased "Foamy Lemon-Lime: Gillette Comfort Glide FORMULA."

It smells nice, but other than that I really can't tell a difference -- though I haven't shaved with a manual razor for over a year. Maybe my lack of amazement comes from my lack of use.

At any rate, my face is clean and my heart is pure. Hopefully when I arrive at the pearly gates they won't look too carefully under my fingernails...

Speaking of lemons, I was given an interesting statistic today in my Programming Class. Last semester my professor took a survey of all students in his classes (300 or so). He asked a broad range of questions, and statistically analyzed what characteristics belong to students of differing final grades. In the "A" range, nestled along with "Does every assignment" and "Turning lab assignments in on time" was "Being married."

How's that for a tart taste of citrus? I can only accomplish six sevenths of the listed attributes of "A" students... I hope that doesn't reflect on my grade. =P