Growing up, our family had cereal for breakfast multiple times a week as many American families do. I don’t remember my mom’s or sister’s favorite cereals. Or mine, either; maybe Peanut Butter Crunch. But my dad would always have Frosted Flakes. This must have been why I had the misconception that Frosted Flakes was an “adult” cereal, and kids simply didn’t eat it.*
One morning, at the age of 7 or 8, I was sitting at the table while my parents were preparing breakfast. All of a sudden, I get a bowl of Frosted Flakes thrust in front of me. Subconsciously, “This is grown-up food!” runs through my mind. My eyes reacted by widening in terror and welling up with tears. “I don’t like Frosted Flakes…” I whinily muttered in complete intimidation (and even though I’d never even tried it before).
My dad irritatedly said I didn’t need to cry if I didn’t want it, and got some Cap’n Crunch. It was about 3 or 4 years until I had the guts to try it. Never found it that good.
What about you, dear reader? What was one of your bizarre fears?
* If you’re wondering whether I simply wasn’t observant or bright enough to realize the Frosted Flakes commercials targeted children…you’re right.
Today, I found out some very disturbing facts. It’s not enough that humans subject billions of eggs to torture by frying, scrambling, or poaching them. Check this finding from some page named CHOW:
At CHOW’s local Safeway, one dozen Grade AA, extra-large white eggs from Lucerne sell for $3.19. Their brown counterparts, same size and grade, go for $3.98 per dozen.
You see, humans not only discriminate against each other, they put a price tag on eggs based solely on the color of their shell. Whites like me get treated like second-class citizens. (Well, actually third-class citizens, since eggs are already considered “lower” than humans. I just found out the other day we don’t have any Constitutional rights.)
The American Egg Board (you’ll find them in the “Enemies” section in the links) is a sadistic organization dedicated to convincing people that eating eggs is healthy. But I can’t disagree with what they conclude: “Eggshell color does not affect an egg’s … quality….”
1,000 thanks to Joe Lee of ROTK for this find: “You know you start to wonder what the age of the biochem researchers demographic is when they start releasing ads like this.”: It’s called EpMotion
Tonight I went to a restaurant called the Knife. It’s an Argentinian-style steakhouse (it’s a meat buffet). Oh, man, they have a lot of beef. And free wine; I’m not drunk, but definitely tipsy, so I may live to regret this post in some way.
Unfortunately, wine comes with the meal (which is $28 on weekend nights). The bad part is that I don’t drink much, and I accidentally had too much. Since win isn’t a “hard liquor”, I tend to treat it like drinking water. You don’t know how many times I re-typed some of these words to get them right.
Anyway, it’s a meat buffet, and it’s massive. Insert standard joke about the arteries hardening just looking at the food. The table near us had these two girls, with diving, diving, DIVING necklines; I don’t know if neckline is the right word it was so far down. One of them saw me looking but somehow I think they did not mind the attention.
One of the things my ex told me is that there is a sliding scale of how women react if a guy is staring. Like if it’s Brad Pitt, they are flattered, but if it’s obese 60-year-old guy it’s not so welcome. Being still 29 and not ugly, I can get away with more than say old fat guy but it’s also good not to make the girls uncomfortable. At least I think it is polite to keep eyes reasonably in control. Rule of thumb as I have heard is “glance OK/flattering, stare creepy”. What do you girls think?
Anyway, the beef was really good and for dessert was flan which was good. The coffee was average; they probably used Maxwell House or something.
An airline passenger discovers there is no joy in being assigned the “other” jumpseat. (Story)
Than Shwe, you held your sham vote instead of helping millions of your cyclone victims. Grats. (Story)
Bank tellers tend to get a little suspicious when you start throwing around 360 billion dollar checks. (Story)
My exercise habits have been very poor. This morning, I discovered I now run a 13 minute mile.
A 13 minute mile.
Now maybe in 30 years, that’ll be something to be proud of. But I used to be able to run one under 7. Nowadays, if you stick me in a race with the 38-ish chessloser and 50-something Polly, they’d be breezing through like a couple of Olympians to the finish line while the crowd starts mocking me as I’m only halfway through, wheezing and gasping.
During my college days, I attended a church with a more “contemporary” style of worship. Despite attending for three years, I never found it easy to worship seriously there. At the time, I rarely talked about it, nor was able to put a finger on why that should be the case.
Eventually, I figured out one thing, made obvious when “Shout to the Lord” by Darlene Zschech was sung during the service. There was a particular point during the song when, without fail, a bunch of people would shoot up their hands and do the hand-waving thing. This was when there was a modulation (change of key) and the volume was kicked up a notch.
It was the music itself that was eliciting such a response from the congregation, not the song’s content. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons that music is frowned upon in Islam?)
While at my parents’ house some time back, a second point was revealed. One of the articles in the October 2007 issue of Tabletalk discussed contemporary worship. Here is what Gene Edward Veith had to say:
They are mostly in the form of secular love-songs to Jesus. They are often from the feminine point of view, singing “Jesus, I am so in love with you” in a way that makes men squirm. Sometimes, “Jesus” is never mentioned, with the song being addressed to a “you” who could just as easily be a human lover.
These “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” types of songs can be sacrilegious or profane.
Now I remember. That always felt weird to me, even as other students tried to convince me it was not.
Gorckat recently mentioned that he saw me pop into FICS, but was too nervous to say hi. At first, this seemed strange, because online chat is not that personal, but this (along with other experiences) lead me to develop a theory of social barriers.
As one moves up the scale below, interaction becomes more personal and it takes an extra layer of guts to communicate in this fashion for the first time. However, it’s not very hard to move down the scale.
Face-to-face
Telephone
Online chat
E-mail
Blog or forum responses
Of course, if you’re naturally social, the amount of guts it takes to move up the scale may be very small, and romantic interest can throw the scale completely out of whack.
