Monday, April 23, 2018

Don't Throw (Gall)Stones

I think it was some Michael Pollan book that talked about analyzing people's carbon molecules and finding that most everyone is mostly made of corn. This finding gave me pause: not because I have anything against corn, in fact I love corn and you can't stop me, Michael Pollan, but because I am reasonably sure my family is made of potatoes. Well, the kids might be made of peanut butter, and DH is possibly hops-based, but me? I am definitely made of potatoes.

I love potatoes. I literally wept with happiness the first year I dug potatoes up out of my own garden. I was also very ill and a bit delirious with fever at the time, which may have affected my emotional state somewhat, but there really is something special about seeing those precious little nuggets peeking out of freshly-turned soil. And then peeking out of a pot or roasting pan. And then peeking up from my dinner plate. Nomnomnom.

In fact, I have an entire friendship that is founded upon a mutual love of potatoes. There are other things, too, like parenting or native prairie conservation or whatever, but we are sure to include at least an honourary mention of potatoes in every conversation - praise be to them for bringing us together. On the other hand, I'm afraid I have had to cut some people out of my life entirely over their galling lack of respect for potatoes (they are so a real vegetable, Andrew). (Ugh, I'll bet that guy eats all the cauliflower.)

I like to imagine pie charts for things. Since I read whatever book that was about the corn, one of my ongoing mental pie charts is of where all my carbons have come from. Potatoes of course comprise a hefty slice, as does wheat (major sub-groups in descending order of occurrence: bread products, Triscuits, assorted baked goods, pie crust, pasta). Beef has been creeping steadily up the charts since we started buying freezers-full of it a few years ago (coincidentally, from my PFF - potato friend forever); and it seems to me that other fruits & vegetables (although potatoes are definitely vegetables, just worthy of their own category!); cheese; beans; oatmeal; sugar beets; and, yes, probably corn, make up a large majority of the rest.

That's not so bad, right? You can't judge me too harshly over my fondness for bread and potatoes - just think of all the dolphins I didn't eat! Y'know, for instance.

But what's this mystery slice over here, you say? Oh drat, you've found my mental list of Things I've Probably Eaten My Body Weight In, But Shouldn't Have. (Technically, sugar beets should be on this list, but it's my pie chart so I get to justify my behaviours slice it how I like.)

McDonald's is on this sub-list, as are butter, bacon, those tiny KitKats I steal from the kids at Halloween, and the surprise contender, cream cheese frosting. But before I draw your eye to perhaps the most shameful entry on this list - yes, more shameful than several lifetimes' worth of cream cheese frosting - perhaps I could interest you in compiling your own mental pie chart? I mean, I'm pretty sure we're all in glass houses to some extent here...

I, Frecklepelt, hold the legitimate concern that I have consumed my own bodyweight in Cool Whip over the course of my life.

What can I say? I'm from Saskatchewan. Cool Whip is basically its own food group there.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Venus of Sigma

Venus was a mathematician.

Unfortunately, she has been remembered primarily for her looks. "Seriously," she is wont to say at parties, "you do one life drawing session in college to make ends meet..." At this point she trails off meaningfully - the joke tells itself, really - but women in particular tend to read a slightly bitter undertone into the telling. Men, on the other hand, are unable to grasp how this could possibly be construed as a bad thing, and thus interpret the subtle whiff of sombreness as... humility, maybe? Whatever it is, it is just so hot - 10/10 would totally hit that. She usually takes the ensuing pause in the chatter, where everyone awkwardly sips their drink and avoids eye contact, to make a quick exit. It's basically her only good line, and anyway she hates events like these.  

Ugh, and that Goddess of Love business - speaking of jokes! She was appointed to the Ministry of Human Affairs in a cabinet shuffle hastily conducted after yet another illicit deity-mortal "interaction" scandal. Ironically, she was assigned the post because she was the most studiously disinterested in humans of them all, i.e., voted least likely to take the "Human Affairs" title as a personal challenge. She wasn't even qualified, yet had such unprecedented success in simply avoiding the types of scandalous behaviours that her predecessors had engaged in that she was never relieved from the position, and that ridiculous moniker stuck. Some a-hole reporter from a right-wing rag coined it - she's usually a stickler for ethics but she made the tiniest (and arguably well-deserved) exception for that guy, and pulled some strings over at the Ministry of Human Health. A pox upon his ass, indeed. Literally.

She had done some groundbreaking work in geometry and algebra before joining the Ministry, but the credit went to her male colleagues. Mortals at that! It soured her on academia for a while, hence the ill-advised foray into government.

Uninterested in managing the emotional needs of humans, yet unable to secure a transfer to a department better suited to her skill set - or even an assistant, for Pete's sake! - she set about automating the process. I mean, when you think of the overwhelming emotional needs of humans, multiplied by their incredible ability to, well, multiply, it was only logical. (Which, by the way, she had also dabbled in during her undergrad; you will note her name isn't associated with her advances in that field, either.)

You are, of course, familiar with her system, although you can be forgiven for not previously having recognized it as a system per se - it would be like, as they say, a fish describing water. Let me assure you it was revolutionary at the time, given both that the branch of mathematics governing it hadn't been invented yet, and that it represented a rather substantial departure from the water the fish had been swimming in up to that point: everything used to rest on the tedious approaches of endless praying and sacrificing and other forms of personal appeal, but even with only a few hundred thousand humans kicking around at the time it was obvious that the model was unsustainable. Especially without even a single assistant...

So, with the kind of political will that can only occur in someone utterly disinterested in politics, she developed and implemented a new system. One so ruthlessly equitable (even if not what one might call "fair", depending on one's experience of it) and so unsusceptible to divine meddling that its practical appeal was irresistible; it was eventually applied to all other departments as well. Well, all but the Ministry of Human Sporting Events; guess you didn't pray hard enough last season, folks.

In this manner dis-employed, the various and variously long-overworked deities all cashed in their vacation millennia to catch up on sleep and neglected hobbies. (They received generous retirement packages as well, in case you're concerned about their welfare over the long term - it is government, after all.)

Oh, people kept burning livestock and so on for a while, but most of them have caught on by now that no amount of charred sheep is going to help you find love, luck, health, wealth, a bumper potato crop, a particular gender of fetus or even your car keys, anymore: it's all up to chance.