The Sociology of Breakfast

I am a stranded hiker on a mountain of term-end work, so obviously I spent twenty minutes composing a graph that documents my eating habits.

The website of _____ College/University has a handy feature that tells you the precise minute you swiped your ID to get into the dining hall (it also tells you when you did laundry, so keep on the lookout for a laundry-graph-sequel-blog post!). I thus decided to investigate potential patterns in the swipe-in times of all 48 weekday breakfasts I have enjoyed and/or eaten so far this term.

There are grid lines in the background, which makes it official.

Check out that linear trend all up in my breakfast business. Sadly, though, my results are actually not as scintillating as they might first appear. When the two outliers of post-morning-class breakfast are excluded, my average swipe-in times for the first and second halves of the term differ only by a minute, 7:59 AM vs. 8:00 AM.

The power of science teaches us that I arrive at the dining hall at pretty much the same time each morning.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Dear Friend,

If you know me personally, which you very likely do if you read this blog--in fact, I'd say that you are quite potentially a creeper if you started reading this blog after finding it somewhere in the digital netherworlds of the Googular realm--you know that I consider The West Wing to be the grand embodiment of everything television can and should be. It's got smart white women talking, smart black women talking, smart white and black women talking to each other about things other than gender, sex and race, smart Republicans, stupid Republicans, and speeches that simultaneously elicit tears, laughter, and longing for a world in which Josiah Bartlet is really President and C.J. Cregg silences enemies of all that is righteous with a a little snappy Sorkinese.

Then there is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the second-best thing that television producers ever had the good sense to broadcast. High school girls (who care about grades!) and high school boys (who don't care about sports!) take down arrogant vampires and Jabba the Hut lookalikes with a certain irresistible ratio of wit, brawn and cunning that is far too rare in mass media. Plus, Buffy features some very feminist ass-whooping: it's the women who slay and the men who just sort of watch.

Actually, this one Watches.

So, yes, The West Wing and Buffy: two extraordinary pieces of extraordina. But you know how chocolate and lasagna really don't work well together at all? Or how, if you eat too many cookies, all you want to do is sit in a chair, jiggle your legs and groan? I could go on, but all I have are food-related analogies, so instead I'll just get to the point: this is totally unacceptable. Get rid of it, Internet, and while you're at it, take hashtags with you.

Thank you for your consideration.

A Concerned Friend

The Scourge of Humanity

Humanity is afflicted by more than a few scourges, but I have one in particular in mind on this balmy fall afternoon: leaf blowers.

There is something deeply unsettling about leaf blowers. Maybe it's that their very existence is predicated on the WALL-Eesque goal of removing all remnants of nature from human settlement. Yet rakes and hoes, in my opinion, are just fine. No, what's so outrageous about these noisy-ass lawn tools is how unnecessarily and how excessively they pollute our otherwise pleasurable autumn air.

What exactly does the man above hope to accomplish by using a leaf blower? There are no leaves in that photo. All he seems to be doing is displacing some poor earthworms from their homes--oh, yeah, and elevating sea levels, driving polar bears, penguins and other perennial Pixar stars into extinction, flooding New York City, and generally bringing about a secular, human-induced Armageddon.

In conclusion, leaf blowers are the scourge of humanity.

An Original Joke

Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Harry Potter.
Harry Potter wh--
EXPELLIARMUS.

There are at least three dimensions to this one; think about it!

A Pottermore-Inflicted Existential Crisis

I finally received my Pottermore early access last night. Digital events ensued, and now I have some proverbial things to get off my chest. So let it be written, so let it be done.

I'll stop mincing words. Let them stay roughly chopped instead. There were not a number of digital events that I found disturbing, bewildering, strange and demeaning--there was really only one. I got Sorted into Hufflepuff.

Badgers are easily run over by cars.

I am a pretty tolerant and accepting person. I have friends who claim to dislike J.K. Rowling's masterworks. I even have friends, if it can be believed, who have never cracked open one of her sacred texts yet who have seen every single one of Warner Bros.' cinematic heresies.

But when I found out that I am, in fact, a Hufflepuff, and that I have been deluding myself for twelve years about having qualities of wisdom, daring or even cunning, I let out one giant obscenity. Hufflepuff, after all, is the house of "the rest," taking every magical (and, yes, fictional) 11-year-old from the British Isles who does not exhibit any remarkable demonstration of a personality. It has the common room in closest proximity to the kitchens, presumably so that its gluttonous students can snack between meals. I'm also pretty sure that each of the other house mascots eats badgers.

There is no conclusion to this sad story. My intellectual capacity is probably not strong enough to develop one.

A Jimmy Lolcat II

Two out of two professors agree: my humor is "for the most part well-placed." I will confirm this sound endorsement with a second Jimmy lolcat.

Jimmy Carter show'z meshured thinkin!!!!11

Cupcakes

This morning, in the baked goods section of my college dining hall--not the dungeon-like one with the more complete salad bar, but the one with a slightly more pleasant ambiance and rather less good food--I saw a perplexing sight. It was an array of cupcakes. Now, seeing such an unapologetically non-breakfasty dessert on my first morning of classes--in my choice of chocolate or vanilla, no less!--was enough to catch my attention; but what was on these cupcakes, far too appetizing for 8 am, was even more bewildering. Formed in icing atop a chocolate or vanilla base were the words "I [heart] NYC."

My initial, early-morning reaction was to pick one up. After all, I do love New York. I am from New York! Plus, it was a cupcake. I could save it for after my first classes.

Then I showed the cupcake to my friend. "Wait," I said, my neurons quickening as the drowse of the morning began to slowly wear off. "Do you think this is a 9/11 cupcake?"

My friend the dormant blogger agreed. There were no other possibilities. Football is a favorite theme of our dining hall cupcake decorators, but New York City (thankfully) lacks its own team, and ____ College/University is sufficiently far from the city to justify a show of New York pride.

I ate the cupcake, but I am still not sure what to think of the sentiment of 9/12 cupcakes. Sure, the design was certainly less offensive than what they could have possibly conceived of, but maybe it would have been for the best to keep recognition of the 9/11 anniversary off cupcakes entirely. Or, I guess, we could just as easily have gone without cupcakes for breakfast.

What do you think?