Is this what wisdom smells like?

• In certain cultures, hunger is personified as a wolf. When you get just a little bit hungry, then eat, it is like you ate the little baby wolf. How could you do it. If you get moderately hungry, you then kill the hunger by eating the adolescent wolf, a better adversary. But if you get really really hungry, then the wolf grows stronger. Too strong. Now the wolf is invincible no matter what you eat to kill it. Then you have no choice but to call upon the deity known as the Crazy Hunger, who alone is capable of dispatching this terrible wolf-beast. You set up a massive feast, I mean we're talkin' a competitive eating type of setup here, just neverending let's say hot dogs and apple pies, and you get down on your knees, and you shake your fists and call out to the heavens, 'Crazy Hunger, EAT THIS WOLF!"
  
• I noticed I waste a lot of time worrying about things that actually turn out to be just the problems I was worrying about. Like, e.g., waking up thinking about how later on I will have to pay some bills and find something to eat and figure out what to teach some kid on the piano. But this is such a stupid thing to worry about, because whether or not I worry, I'm still gonna pay those bills, find something to eat, and figure out what to teach some kid on the piano. So I was thinking what are better things to worry about. Of course the saints among us can probably worry about something unrelated to themselves, like global warming or hunger or that sort of thing. I tried that and it doesn't do the trick. Don't get me wrong, I care about those things, but I can't get myself to wake up too early worrying about them. I need some self-interest in there. So my new plan is instead of worrying about the inevitable and inescapable knots and obstacles of the everyday, I will start worrying about what to do in unlikely situations. Like for instance, say you were falling from a blown-up airplane towards the sea from not all that huge a distance. I figure if you are able to streamline your body into a perfect dive, you might not break all your bones and die when you hit. Or how about if you hear a nuclear explosion but it is a good ways off and you have like ten seconds to get somewhere safe from the shockwave, where are you gonna go? Or say someone wants to mug you, what sort of things are you gonna do to make them think you're too crazy to fuck with? Or what if someone decides to interview you about something you did, what are you gonna say to not sound like an idiot? What if you are driving across a bridge and there is an earthquake and you have to decide in like two seconds whether to try to slam on the brakes or accelerate enough to jump the newly formed gap in the middle of the bridge? These are the sorts of unlikely but possible scenarios that I want to waste my worrying energy on from here on out.
  
• Every single time I ever get annoyed with someone, and I mean EVERY single time, I then realize it is really something about myself I see in the someone. This goes for cats too.
  
• I taught a kid to play the drums. I am a dude who taught a kid to play the drums. If I didn't teach him, well, probably someone else would have. But still.
  
• Little kids like Buster Keaton because people falling is still the funniest thing.
  
• It turns out it is really easy to make delicious mustard at home with nothing but mustard seeds and water, and probably you want some vinegar or white wine too.
  
• It ain't no Hubble deep field, but when you look in ordinary binoculars, you are fucking looking back in time. I mean, not much, just a tiny little infinitesimal micro-nano-mini-second, but still.
  
• Our understanding of the things and relationships in our world can be favorably compared to the Hubble deep field. For one thing, we only see shit if we look really close at a spot. For another, things look 2D unless we use our brains and more evidence (like, say, the red shift caused by the electromagnetic radiation doppler effect from galaxies receding from us at varying rates) to figure out how they fit together in 3 d's. There's always gonna be more to understand the closer you look, and you're still gonna be wrong from the perspective of the dude in the future who gets a better look.
  
• You should google up some info on the Hubble deep field, I decided it is kind of ridiculous to link to general information like that in a blog post.
  
• If you're naturally curious, the internet makes you smarter.
  
• The most normal person you know is completely fucking weird as HELL.
  
• Keep your eyes on CERN, they are gonna discover some shit that will blow all our minds, even though it is just the shit that everything is made out of. Which fact itself blows my mind.
  
• I guess not all of these count as wisdom.
  
• I guess potentially none of these count as wisdom.
  
• Just because you're older doesn't mean you're wiser.
  
• It's not up to you whether what you say is wise anyhow.
  
• Just because you put things in topical bullet points doesn't mean they follow any sort of organizational pattern beyond the visual.
  
• Good bye.

The PhD Omelet

Well, I decided to try to start working on my dissertation again, so naturally I commemorated this decision with its own omelet, the P (for Provel-style* cheese) hD (for hot dogs).

I get a lot of flack for my cavalier use of cut-up hot dogs, but I don't care. I like them. I put those shits in all kinds of stuff. I mean, in a perfect world, I'd only buy grass-fed free-range beef that had its feelings affirmed, and bacon from pigs who were read the Bhagavad-Gita daily from birth. But right now it is Spring Break, which means I make no money cuz all my students are on vacation, which means when I see a pack of shitty hot dogs at Aldi's for 81 cents, I'm going for it. If you cut 'em up and fry 'em, with some spices on there, they taste fine. In fact, if you spice them right (salt, pepper, a little chili powder, some like oregano or thyme or stuff) I'd say they are a better-tasting meat product than Dominos' sausage or the turkey in Lunchables, for instance, though still well below fried Spam or the cheaper, "off" brands of beef jerky.

So you spice-n-fry the cut up dogs, a couple of them, and then you pour in three or so eggs you whipped up pretty good and put pepper and a little salt in. The hot dogs will magically rise to the surface, and once the bottom starts solidifying, put in a slice and a half or so of your Provel-style* cheese. Hell, you know how to make an omelet. Fold that shit in half at some point, and then also flip it over, it ain't rocket science. Eat it. It's good. Especially if you put on home-made hot sauce that your friend made, if your friend is good at making home-made hot sauce and generous in sharing it.

*Provel is a registered trademark, I think maybe it always was, of Churny Company from Glenview IL, but Churny was recently bought up by Kraft, and now all the sudden when you go buy provel at DiGregorios it is called provel-style instead of provel. I wonder if Kraft stopped making provel, or if my fave deli changed wholesalers. I don't remember ever being this interested in such a boring subject. It must be that PhD omelet, focusing my mind once again on the most arcane and most over-thought details. Maybe I'd best get to a-writin'.

Fun with anagrams

I saw that movie The Vanished a few days back, and like a week or two before that, Shutter Island, and then maybe a couple years ago Memento, all of which got me thinking about anagrams in the back of my mind somewhere, I guess, cuz then lo and behold the other day my mind went blank for a while, then when I came to I realized that "saint" and "isn't a" are anagrams, and then I did this thing you always have to do in music theory where you find the different "rotations" of a series of notes, resulting in something like this (only scrawled out in the sort of messy writing indicative of a crackpot revelation in progress):

isn't a saint
(sntasainti)
(ntasaintis)
(tasaintisn)
as ain't isn't
saint isn't a
ain't isn't as
in 'tisn't as a
(ntisntasai)
(tisntasain)
isn't a saint


Then I thought it would be cool to make a poem where you had to use all the five letters before you reused them, but I had to sort of cheat, and it looked like this:

saint isn't a saint
-but-
saint ain't isn't as saint isn't
-so-
ain't a saint a saint?


I dunno, it seemed worthwhile at the time but now it seems like Matty ran out of crosswords and the internet was broke.