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THE QUOTE
“In my lifetime, we’ve gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We’ve gone from Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we’ll be voting for plants.” — Lewis Black
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WISCONSIN IN ONE WORD
Damn!
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WEDNESDAY BLOOMINGTON HAPPENINGS
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THE ARCHAIC BRITISH CLASS SYSTEM BY MOONLIGHT
The transit of Venus wasn’t the only celestial event to hold Bloomingtonians rapt yesterday.
Did you catch the spectacular full moon overnight?
Sometime around 3:00am, Steve the Dog and I woke up and, as we often do, padded around the house aimlessly for a few moments. This time, though, we stopped in our tracks.
The world outside the Chez Big Mike windows was oddly bright. The full moon was so brilliant that I wondered if I could read by it.
I know, I know — I do strange thing in the middle of the night. So I grabbed the nearest book, a volume of PG Wodehouse‘s Bertie and Jeeves stories. I flipped the thing open and — whaddya know? — I was able to read it without the aid of a lamp.
Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry As Bertie & Jeeves
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Cool, huh?
I’ll keep you posted on further nocturnal experiments as they occur.
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SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE PROVES: FOODIES ARE JERKS!
Hah!
Even though I consider myself the smartest, most sensitive, fairest-minded member of our species, even this humble reporter can fall victim to the phenomenon wherein we read and believe that which we already hold to be true.
As an example, I nearly thrust my arms in the air and cheered when I came across an article with this headline in the Big Think this morning:
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Take it from a guy who once worked for years at Whole Foods Market (in the education department, no less) — this article nails it.
My years at WFM only strengthened my preconceived notion that natural and organic food aficionados are merely mirror images of Puritans and Savonarolas.
See, foodies believe there’s a clean and pure way of living — a conceit I know to be false. They also believe that anyone who doesn’t agree 134% with them is either an evil agri-business lackey or is a deluded victim of the forces of Dick Cheney.
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Don’t get me wrong: I do my best to minimize my intake of red meat, I refuse to eat veal or pate de foie gras, I try to stay away from hydrogenated oils and white flours and sugars, I strive to eat a variety of varied-color things, and I rarely buy salt-laden prepared foods.
But, see, there’s the rub — I try to do all those things. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I have a taste for a Big Mac. Sometimes I don’t have the time or energy to cut up fresh vegetables. Sometimes the siren song of that bag of Wavy Lays is too strong for me to resist.
I am neither a Puritan nor a Savonarola.
But by and large, I try to hold to a general foundation of healthy eating habits (save for the fact that my portions usually are about the size of those served to hippopotami at the Indianapolis Zoo.)
Let’s Eat!
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Anyway, I’ve always felt that foodies believe they’re going to cheat death, much as the Puritans believed they’d attain eternal life through their belief in god. Like the Puritans, as well, foodies tend to think they must save the ignorant masses of unwashed humanity from themselves. And like religious zealots flagellating themselves or confessing their sins to cleanse the soul, food zealots purge and cleanse their alimentary canals in hopes of achieving some sort of higher level of existence.
To which I reply, Leave me alone so I can eat my Tombstone pizza in peace.
Yeah, foodies are pretty jerky. And now I’ve got science to back me up.
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