Thursday, February 24, 2005

why don't you fuckers ever keep any snacks around this place? Frequently I go to my kitchen and check all the cupboards only to be vaguely annoyed that no one ever keeps any snacks around this place.  But I quickly remember that I'm the only person living here. (you should probably stop reading here) I am actually quite amazed at (other) people that can keep a cupboard full of snacks on a consistent basis.  Like, you go in their cupboard on a monday (without asking) and you find a bag of Ruffles that's 3/4 full, but has been neatly closed up with a "chip clip" or a rubber band.  Then you go back a week later and the Ruffles bag is about 2/3 full, and neatly closed again.  (My Nanny and Pop-pop were unbelievable snack savers.  They had a whole closet of nothing but snacks and they would keep them around so long that they would go completely stale.  And still I would wolf down their stale snacks and hunger for more). I just can't fathom this kind of measured, restrained snacking behavior.  When I do buy snacks at the store, I start eating them on the ride home.  Honey roasted peanuts, apple chips, corn tortillas--I will stuff them in my mouth in big handfulls as I'm operating my motor vehicle.  Usually one whole snack package has been emptied by the time I'm back at my place. I'll go through the motions of putting the remaining snacks away in my kitchen, but then I immediately take the snacks out again and bring them to the living room to gorge myself while watching tv.  I'll eat handful after handful and handful until I've eaten an obscene amount of snacks and I have this mild feeling of self-revulsion.  Then I'll  roll up the snack bag, with a final and authroritative crinkling sound as if thats all the snacks that Im going to eat for the evening. But then about 70 seconds later I'm unrolling the snack bag and eating more snacks. Before long there are no more snacks in my house and my cupboards are filled with weird joyless things like cough drops and vegetable oil. (I am very hungry and now there is really nothing to eat at all in my house.  There's a shot glass full of Vodka, and a stick of butter and some mustard.  I mean there's not even stale cereal.  Well, I guess there is uncooked spaghetti.  I used to resort to uncooked spaghetti all the time as a kid, but its been years.     11:44:24 PM    comment [] joke books and magic books Two disappointments of childhood:  joke books and magic books. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to do great and amazing things--and what could be greater than keeping people in stitches with funny jokes, or dazzling them with amazing magic tricks. So, after a daydream of being amazing and funny, I would go to my local library and check out a magic and/or joke book. The problem with the joke books was that the jokes were kind of stupid.  I remember there was that knock-knock joke that ends with, "orange you glad I didn't say 'banana?"  I would recite that whole long stupid joke to my mom and she would just kind of roll her eyes when I said the punch line, and say, "very funny!" But beyond that, I realized to be funny, you pretty much had to already be funny.  There were issues of timing and inflection and basic human empathy.  Of course, I was too young to understand these subtleties, and I just had this general disappointment with joke books. The magic book disappointment was a little different.  It seemed like the tricks in the books were of two basic types: there were tricks that were very easy to do, but weren't very impressive.  Like this one where you stuck a carrot under a hankerchief and told people it was your thumb.  Then you stuck pins in the carrot under the hankerchief to freak people out. The trouble was, people would lift up the hankerchief and see that it was just a carrot. The other types of tricks, that seemed really impressive, like making things levitate or disappear, were impossibly complicated.  They had these very sophisticated diagrams and paragraphs of explanation.  And after reading and studying them I just didn't come anywhere close to making things levitate or disappear. When I grew up and had a kid, however, I found out that I was able to trick her pretty easily since she was very young and gullible.  I could just take a  coin or a ball or whatever and show it too her, then distract her and hide the thing and tell her it had disappeared.  I could pretty much fool her all the time.  She thought I was magic. 5:37:04 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Mark Michaels. Last update: 3/1/2005; 5:36:07 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.