The Observer's Blog

"Carrots are sweet . . ."

I don't usually write anything about what happens in the workplace for fear of being found out and possibly exposed for all of the things I could be linked to via the Bigwhoop. However, I can't help myself this time because the story is just too bizarre. There was a conversation over coffee today that began innocently enough, discussing the home-baked goods proffered for general consumption.

A faculty member, whom we'll call Abe, picked up a piece, bit into and asked, "What is this?"

I had tried a piece of the bread-like stuff a minute earlier, and I wasn't sure what it was myself. A fellow grad student, we'll call her Sarah, chimed in, "I don't know, but it sure is dense."

"Yeah, it's almost like bread pudding," Abe agreed.

I thought bread pudding was more pudding than bread, and shouldn't be something you could eat with your fingers. But I didn't argue with Abe because he's English, and I figured that the English probably invented bread pudding and so he knew what he was talking about. Anyway, this reminded me of an obsession of Abe's concerning American cake, which he claims is too foamy. "This is pretty dense. Is this like the density of European cake?"

I struck a nerve, as only I can, and Prof. Abe started going on about how you can't get a decent cake in America, because it's too foamy. Though, he noted the stuff we were eating was in fact more dense than English cake.

"Well," I interjected, "some cakes here are fairly dense. For example, carrot cake isn't usually very foamy."

"Carrot cake!" Dr. Abe exclaimed, "That's just wrong! You can't mix vegetables and cake together."

Though he was surely being facetious, this is the moment my fellow grad student Sarah chose to defend the honor of carrot cake in a most bizarre fashion. "Actually, carrots are naturally sweet," she explained.

There was a moment of stunned silence as Dr. Abe and I mentally replayed what Sarah had just said, making sure we really heard what we thought. I left the argument to Abe, who after all believed that carrots had no business in cake in the first place. "Carrots? They aren't sweet, they're a vegetable." This was the best he could do. Haven't we all eaten carrots, doesn't everyone realize they are not the sort of thing one usually describes as sweet?

"But they have sugars in them," Sarah replied. Only in my own behavior have I ever seen such a desire to earnestly defend such a ridiculous position, and I must say I admire Sarah on some level for that. However, the man who discovered the Kuiper Belt would have none of this "carrots are sweet" nonsense and continued to try to convince her how wrong she was. In the end he only succeeded in arguing her into silence, and Abe's position was vindicated as he presented Sarah's position (protecting her identity) to his 10:30 a.m. Solar system class. The class laughed multiple times, but not because they understood what Abe was talking about. A man arguing strongly a point about carrots is just intrinsically funny.

Closed Captioning Provided By . . .

I recently made a discovery that could signal the beginning of a new era in music video watching. I wouldn't recommend it for a first review of a video, but after a few times I just recently realized that the closed captioning has lots of information in it. Accurate lyrics are so hard to come by these days (lyrics websites seem to consistently be wrong when compared to the liner notes), and the closed captioning seems to provide that. The truth is, I tend to misunderstand lyrics, and I don't generally care enough to try to look them up for common pop songs. But with the all-powerful remote control I can watch my music videos and when the chorus is unclear, I can simply turn on the lyrics. This alone is not the power that closed captioning holds. No, the power lies in the ability now to further discriminate between good and bad videos through the use of lyrics. Before, I could make the lyrics into anything I wanted to hear, something that was good or bad. Now, I am forced by the unrelenting light of closed captioning to face bad lyrics when they are bad and good lyrics when they are good.

Also, I meant to mention how ironic it is that there is actually closed captioning for music videos. I have never really known many deaf people, but I wonder how many watch TV, let alone music videos. I think if I were deaf I would definitely find TV pretty boring, and I would probably read more. I wonder if deaf people tend tobe really smart . . .

Texas Rock Renaissance?

Occasionally a great rock band arises in Texas and makes it big, getting national attention. As far as I can remember, the last time this happened was in the 90's with the Toadies. It seems that over the last couple of years another bands is looking to bring a revival of the alternative rock greatness that the Toadies once embodied. The Mars Volta has been quite successful, and this is becoming evident as many of the freshmen at University of Hawaii even count themselves as fans/believers of the band (and are aware of it's Texas origin). Another personal favorite of mine, Eisley, may be able to ride the interest in Texas rock; they already have a video showing on Fuse.

I'm not sure if the geographical heritage of a band is that important anymore. It seems like more than a coincidence that so many artists came from Seattle to go national in the 90's, but things like that don't seem to happen often these days. However, I can't help but think the Arkansas band Three Doors Down somehow helped with the success of fellow Arkansans Evanescence. I mean, Evanescence's musical niche was more carved by say Linkin Park, but maybe Three Doors Down made the music biz execs look preferentially at Arkansas for their next band to sign. We'll see if any of The Mars Volta's success leaks down to the lower echelons of rock bands in Texas.

The Five-Dollar-A-Day Diet

I'm currently in the process of honing a daily food plan which will cost me on average $5 in cash per day. This plan comprises two away-from-home meals; anything I eat at home I won't be figuring into the cost, since I go to the grocery store rarely enough that the average daily cost is negligible. If you now grasp the concept, allow me to introduce the key players in such a plan:

- Free snacks at 10 a.m. coffee at the Institute for Astronomy. (Note: This also ensures my arrival to the office by 10 a.m. even on days when I have no class in the morning, which is a good thing.)
- Boston's Pizza student lunch special ($2 per slice, a meal in and of itself)
- Taco Bell/Pizza Hut items
- $2.34 huge basket of fries at Bonacasa (a NY style deli)
- $2.95 vegetarian burrito at Andy's (possibly the best burrito ever, Shane/Andy/Eric, would you care to point out how this contradicts a famous claim of mine?)
- $6.24 Subway footlong special w/ 2 stamps
- possibly $0.90 manapua
- possibly ~$1 sushi (though sushi doesn't ever seem to fill me up)

Maybe more realistically I should call this a $3-a-meal diet. I am becoming as fanatical about this plan as I have become about my $3-a-CD policy. Pawn shopping revolutionized the way I envisioned used CD shopping. Will the Manoa Marketplace and its environs do the same for the way I buy my lunch and dinner? The other major question is: Will the reduced portions cause a slimming effect on my figure, or will the decrease in the quality of food (increase in percentage of fried/greasy food) cause me to gain weight?

Stephanie Elder

Thanks to a miracle of Facebook, yet another Caddo Middle Magnet classmate has caught up with me in cyberspace. This time it's Stephanie Elder, a girl who was pretty cute back in the 7th grade. I don't have much to say except it interesting the things we remember about people we didn't know that well. The only thing she remembers about me is that I told her that her make-up made her look like a prostitute. Now, I know for a fact that I learned the meaning of the word "prostitute" no earlier than 6th grade, and I think it was actually 7th grade. So I'm betting she probably is the first girl whom I ever spoke the word to (since I think she moved away after grade 7).

The only thing I remembered about her is that she turned me in for "stealing" in 7th grade, causing my one-day sentence to ISS (In-School Suspension). A fact that has shocked many true believers in my goodie-goodie nature, I was sent to ISS for taking Stephanie Elder's silver coins out of my homeroom's can in the pumpkin contest. To vote on the best cans, students could place positive votes using pennies or negative votes using silver coins. This raised money for something (probably a pizza party for the winning homeroom), but at the time I was convinced that silver money was not allowed in the cans. So when I saw her put silver money in my class' can I removed her coins and tried to return them to her right then. She refused to take them back and ran away. I knew something bad was happening but I couldn't just put the silver money back in the can, my class (Mr. Wells) would lose votes! Unfortunately, Mrs. Arnold didn't buy the excuse that I didn't understand the rules (ignoratia non excusat as I learned later that year in Mrs. Hamerick's Living Law class). In a mass hearing at which several offenders were dispensed justice in one meeting with Mr. English, I was sentenced to one day of suspension. That is a whole nother story, and all thanks to Stephanie Elder!