This May Be the Greatest Paragraph Ever Written

Don't ask me why, but earlier today I heard that wombat poop comes out cubic.  As in: wombats poop little cubes.

I doubted, and so went to the internet, and found: 

Wombats leave distinctive cubic feces. As wombats arrange these feces to mark territories and attract mates, it is believed that the cubic shape makes them more stackable and less likely to roll, which gives this shape a biological advantage. The method by which the wombat produces them is not well understood, but it is believed that the wombat intestine stretches preferentially at the walls, with two flexible and two stiff areas around its intestines. The adult wombat produces between 80 and 100, 2 cm (0.8 in) pieces of feces in a single night, and four to eight pieces each bowel movement. In 2019 the production of cube-shaped wombat feces was the subject of the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics, won by Patricia Yang and David Hu.

This warrants a closer look.

As wombats arrange these feces to mark territories...

It occurs to me that these are, basically, ready-made poop bricks, and so could be used to build a little house.  That's kinda how humans mark their territories, right?  

...and attract mates...

Yeah, that's weird, but seeing as how dogs get right up and personal to sniff other dogs' butts, despite having dog-like senses of smell, I figure animals just see these things differently.

...it is believed that the cubic shape makes them more stackable and less likely to roll, which gives this shape a biological advantage.

Why would that be a biological advantage?  Unless you're stacking them into walls to keep predators out... I mean, rabbit poop is round, and that just stays where they leave it.

The method by which the wombat produces [cube-shaped poop] is not well understood...

Science has failed us.

The adult wombat produces between 80 and 100, 2 cm (0.8 in) pieces of feces in a single night...

That's 200 cubic meters of poop every two months-ish.  Somebody check my math.  How have wombats not built their own cities by now? 

In 2019 the production of cube-shaped wombat feces was the subject of the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics, won by Patricia Yang and David Hu.

My first thought was: how do you suppose they answer the question "what was your Nobel Prize for?"  You gotta go straight-faced, right?  "Wombat poop."  Full stop.  Sip your drink without breaking eye contact.

But then I clicked through.  The "Ig Nobel Prize" is satirical in nature (a pun on the word "ignoble").  Kind of a good-humored joke which, nevertheless, seems to be taken at least a little seriously, and which includes a full-fledged award ceremony which sounds like a lot of fun and to which I should really be invited.

I know this is going to sound like a great big nothingburger to you, but...

...something in this commercial really bugs me:*

Did you catch it?

"...the cumin, the coriander, mixed in with that fresh lime juice and that cilantro and it just brings out those flavors."

It's that phrase.  "Brings out those flavors."  What does that mean?  What flavors?  Meat flavor?  Are we saying that adding a bunch of spices makes the meat's natural flavor more noticeable?  Because it doesn't.  It covers the taste of meat with the taste of the spices.

Okay, fine, I'm being ridiculous.  Nitpicky.  I'm taking a great slobbering bite out of a big juicy nothingburger and then slurping down a swig of beer without wiping my mouth in between.

Don't watch too close, because I'm going in for a second bite now, and my napkin's never been cleaner.

Hey, I'm sure all those spices and flavors taste amazing.  I've only been to a Chipotle once, and it was really quite tasty.  But it wasn't just basic ingredients.  It wasn't just meat and rice and tomatoes.  There was a lot of stuff in there.  Little bits of stuff, most of which I couldn't identify, but which made the whole thing taste really good.

What it didn't do was: bring out any flavors that wouldn't otherwise have been "brought out."  

Now: maybe I'm wrong.**  Maybe there's another interpretation to that phrase.  Maybe combining certain ingredients in certain amounts causes all the flavors to coalesce and compound and catalyze into something greater than the sum of its parts.   

If so, we should say that.

Or maybe it's one of those pseudo-meaningless colloquialisms that evolved somehow into "the thing we say" that nobody quite understands but accepts without consideration because we've come to a place in the sentence where we have to say something, so it might as well be that.

That's my guess: it's a filler phrase that actually means less than what it's intended to mean.  

I call this "commentator syndrome."  You know: the sports color commentary guy, who's a longtime veteran of the sport he's commenting on, and who should be such an expert that his every statement brings wisdom and knowledge to all who can hear, but whose actual statements are so insipidly vanilla that you'd rather watch the game in complete silence instead.  Turn on almost any NFL game on TV, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

The thing is, it isn't their fault.  Oh, they could do better.  They could realize that they're saying silly and sometimes stupid things.  Or, more to the point, the producers could realize it, and take steps to make their commenters better.  Why they don't, well, I dunno.  Probably has something to do with chemtrails and flouride in the water.  

Regardless, broadcasting hates silence, so color commenters have no choice but to talk.  They have to talk.  They have to come up with something to say, and more often than not, the things they think of on the spur of the moment leave us all feeling dumber.  

Which brings me back to "brings out those flavors," by which the person speaking (or writing) probably means "loads it up with flavor," or "makes it taste sooooo good," or some such like that.  

Why don't we just say that instead?  Because if we did, I'd have to come up with something else to write about today.

End rant.

* I realize that, last week, I said I would write an Annual New Year's Column.  I do not regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

**Naw.

The Annual Christmas Blog Post

The what, you ask? The annual… what?

I understand your confusion. The blogosphere isn’t what it once was. That vast, chaotic wilderness of wildly swirling anarchy that made the most lawless Wild West towns look like nursing home tea parties has faded to a mild and corporatist kitten of its former self, so there’s really no place for the average internetizen to experience this former staple of the basement keyboard warrior.

So I’ll explain. The Annual Christmas Blog Post is, at its core, a blog post. This blog post was written and posted once per year, and it in some way recognizes, describes, uplifts, and/or celebrates the Christmas season or Christmas Day itself.

Ideally, this post should be written pre-Christmas and posted just before or, if possible, on December 25 each year. This can be problematic: families frequently frown on Christmas Day blogging. Luckily, most blog platforms allow for scheduled posts.*

How does one write a Christmas Day Blog Post? Glad you asked.

First, choose your subgenre. Examples:

• Humor: avoid Chevy Chase references, if possible.  He's not funny.
• Nostalgic: childhood memories, or memories of young children are great.
• Sappy: for those of you who cut your own Christmas trees.
• Traditional: kind of like nostalgic, but with less nostalgia.
• Christian: nice to recognize Jesus now and then.
• Cynical: it’s a pagan holiday! It’s capitalist propaganda!

There are others, of course, and of course many of these intersect in the Great Venn Diagram of Blogging.  

Next, the basic construction. While there is no end to the combinations  and structures a writer might use, I find this to be the most effective:

• Part one: a short anecdote, usually from the Traditional subgenre with a hint of Humor. 

One could simply start the post with something basic like “It’s Christmas!”, but one should keep in mind that the reader already knows it's Christmas, and isn’t reading your blog to find out what day it is.

• Part two: a short explanation of what the anecdote means today.
• Part three: expansion on the above.

This is where you include humorous references to shopping, weather, decorating, overeating, kids (young, teenaged, home for the holiday), in-laws, etc.

Please note that humor, in this context, will work even if you are writing a serious and/or cynical post.  Lance's Xth Rule of Blogging**: if you don't make them smile, they'll never read to the end. 

• Part four: a more recent but related anecdote.

Ideally, with a strong implication of roots in either the earlier anecdote or the main subgenre of your post.

• Part five: the conclusion. 

This will usually at least touch on the sappy subgenre, unless you’ve gone heavy on the cynical subgenre.

And there you have it: the Annual Christmas Blog Post.

Side note: I realize that I'm demanding what seems like an awful lot of anecdotes.  Worry not, it's not that hard.  Christmas traditions are traditions, which means they happen every year, and they already have something in common: Christmas.  It practically writes itself.

Now: I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why I don’t just write an Annual Christmas Blog Post, to give you a real example of what I’m talking about.   

My answer: Christmas was two days ago.  It's too late.  Check in again next year.

Maybe.

Next week: the Annual New Year’s Blog Post. 

*At least, the two blogging platforms I've used do this.

** Lance's Rules of Blogging is an ongoing, meta-evolving, pan-amorphous project that has not yet been fully compiled.  Since it hasn't been compiled, a priority system has not been set.  Since a priority system has not been set, Lance's Rules of Blogging cannot yet be numbered.  We do not regret any confusion.

Life After the Snooze Button

My alarm clock is broken.  Not the clock part.  That works fine.  Not the alarm part, either.  That still howls its annoying, penetrating buzz-slash-whine at the exact moment I told it to, several hours ago.  

It's the snooze button.  My snooze button isn't working. I press it, the alarm stays on.

It's awful.

Maybe it shouldn't be.  Maybe I should just be able to get up out of bed when the alarm goes off, like the wife in "Babe."  Alarm goes off, she's up and running.  Her mouth.  A real talker, that one.  Yikes.

But, alas, I'm not like that.  Bed is never so comfy as that moment when the alarm goes off, and at that moment 51-year-old me has a lot in common with 8-year-old me: I just want five more minutes.  

Four more minutes?  Three?

Twenty-seven, actually.  Yeah, I hit my snooze button three times.  I actually factor that in to how I set my alarm: I know I'm going to want a few snooze alarms, so I set the initial alarm that much earlier.

I wonder if that's normal.  I also wonder: does every snooze button reset the alarm for nine minutes?  And if so, why?  Who chose the number nine?

Heh.  Got that song stuck in your head now, I bet.  

But back to the issue at hand.  No snooze alarm.  Now I'm stuck with a few other options: get out of bed right away; let myself just lie there a bit and risk falling back to sleep; or bringing a backup system to bear, like my phone.  

Problem #1: get out of bed right away when the alarm goes off?  What am I, a caveman?

Problem #2: if I fall back to sleep, I might be late for work.  I may not have the most important job in the world, but there are people depending on me to do it.  If I don't show up... well, I dunno.  It would at least put my department a couple hours behind for the day.

Problem #3: I don't like bringing my phone to bed.  I don't want to hear it ring, as small as that risk is at night, and our plug space in that area is limited.  Plus, I hate the way my phone's alarm sounds, and I don't know how to change it.

Get off my lawn.

The obvious solution is: go get another alarm clock, which brings us to Problem #4: Christmas is less than a week away, and we have a rule against buying ourselves things at this time of year.

I once heard a comedian say that the snooze button is the end of civilization as we know it.  The snooze button, he said, means: when the alarm goes off, I'm not getting up.

It's kind of true, and kind of not.  I mean, even with the snooze button, it's still my alarm getting me out of bed on time.  

And anyway, I like to think of this as an example of the adaptability of mankind.  We're adaptable.  We think we couldn't possibly live without this, or in that kind of place, or if this other thing happened, but I bet we'd all be surprised by what we can get used to.

Point being, we've adapted to the snooze alarm.  I've adjusted my alarm-clock habits to include my snooze-button habits, and I'll bet a lot of you readers (snort) have, too.*

But here's the problem with that nice little bit of logic: if I'm really so adaptable, I should be able to adapt to life without a snooze alarm.  

But do I want that?

* In fact, I bet every single person who reads this sets the alarm clock earlier than necessary in order to accommodate snooze alarm usage.

Moving Things from One Place to Another Place

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a sweater.  A brand new sweater, just off the factory floor in, let's say, Malaysia.  You've got a long trip ahead of you.

The first thing that happens is: you're placed in a box with a bunch of other sweaters.  That box becomes part of a stack of similar boxes.  You are then (probably) staged in a secondary spot and loaded onto a truck; then staged again; then loaded onto a ship; then moved off the ship; then moved again; then put on a train; then taken off the train and onto another truck; then into a warehouse; then onto yet another truck.  Possibly to a second warehouse.  Another truck, and finally into a store.  You spend a few days “in the back” before someone carries you out and places you on a shelf.

All those movements.  All those vehicles.  All those people whose only job was, literally, to move you from one place to another place, and nobody’s even tried you on yet!

Look around the room you’re in.  Everything in it – everything – went through a very similar chain of events before you put it where it is now.

I drive a forklift for a living these days, which means my livelihood comes entirely from this act: the act of moving things from one place to another place.

Not doing anything with those things.  That’s not my job.  Not making, or changing, or fixing, or even looking at them.  Just moving them.  I pick a thing up in one spot, I put it down in another spot.  Sometimes I’ll move it a second time, and sometimes even a third.  Other times, it’s someone else’s job to move it that second/third/fourth time. 

Eventually, those things get to a spot where somebody does something with them.  Examines them, replaces them, communicates with the person who sent them.  But not me.  I only move them.

Okay, that’s not true.  I do that other part, too.  Roughly half of my worktime, I’m one of the people in the immediately preceding paragraph.  I examine, replace, communicate, bag, and then place those things on a conveyor belt so other people can do other things to them.  

After those people are done, I can only guess. I think fairies and ley lines become involved at that point.

That part of my job – the non-forklift part – has its bright points.  It’s the kind of job where you can listen to music of an audio book while you’re working, and there’s just enough variety to keep it interesting.  

But the forklift part of my job is way better.  It’s a little bit physical – I’m moving around all the time – it requires some initiative, and I get to drive a forklift.  Two kinds of forklifts, in fact.  It can get a little nervous, because there’s a lot going on around me.  A lot of people, a lot of stuff, and one very inconveniently placed steel beam.  

It was scuffed like that when I got here, I swear.

I'd only been forklifting for a week when I realized: my job is - literally - moving things from one place to another.  That’s it.  That’s the entirety of this job.  One hundred percent.

That’s what I get paid for.

A truck backs into a bay.  I take a forklift and move stacks of enormous boxes off the truck.  I stack them in another place.  Then, later, I unstack them and move them to a third, nearby place.  Still later, I use a hand truck to move them onto a machine that dumps their contents onto a conveyor belt.  The other half of my job is at the other end of that conveyor belt, but we’re not talking about that right now.

Other times, I only move the stuff off the truck once.  Someone else then moves it, usually onto another truck, where yet another person will move that stuff to yet another place.

And other times, somebody else moves the stuff off the truck and I’m the one who moves it the second time, usually to a freight elevator where – c’mon, take a guess – yet another person moves it onto the elevator and then to someplace else.

And that’s just what happens inside our building.  Think about how many times those things were moved before they got to us.  How many people moved each box!  Imagine, for a moment, just how vast the “moving things from one place to another place” industry must be.  I mean, these boxes didn’t just appear at my worksite.  A truck driver brought them there.  They didn’t just appear on the truck, either.  Somebody moved them onto that truck.  Somebody moved them to the spot where that guy could move them onto the truck.

Naturally, this brings me to teleportation.  Once we invent that, most of this will go away, right?  Well, maybe.  Maybe someday, a sweater removed from an upscale boutique shelf will be instantly replaced with another sweater, zapped directly from another shelf in Malaysia (or, more likely, the Gale Crater on Mars) to which it was zapped moments after being created.

Of course, by that time, we’ll have been largely replaced by our technological and mechanical overlords and, to the extent that things like sweaters and upscale boutiques exist at all, it will only be to help keep us occupied and out of our betters’ way.

Until then, we’ll have to settle for being dominated by the people who move things from one place to another.  Yes, fine, I see you, people who fix the things we use to move things.  I know, we couldn’t do our jobs without you.

But where did your tools come from, huh?

Writing This Post Makes Me Want a Cup of Coffee

So I quit drinking coffee. 

Before you ask: yeah, I was a big coffee guy.  Big.  Thirty years, pot-a-day kind of coffee drinker.  Started in college and never stopped.  I got a real reputation for coffee consumption at a previous job (it was closer to two pots a day back then), and I enjoyed having that reputation just as much as I enjoyed a nice hot cup of well-brewed joe. 

 

Yes: joe.  As in coffee.  Not latte, not cappuccino, not half-caf something-something with a squirt or a twist or whatever the hell they do in those hifalutin’ little shops.  Coffee.  The strong black drink your grandpa drank out of a thermos while sitting on a steel beam at break time. 

I love coffee.  And I quit drinking it.  Why?  I won’t bore you with the whole explanation (maybe ninety percent of it), but it’s got to do with an ailment I developed: acid reflux, which I thought meant indigestion.  As I have now learned, it doesn't always. 

It did, however, make me so hoarse that often, I could barely speak at all.  I like to sing, and even in these Covid-ruined times our local theater folks are figuring out ways to put on performances, so something had to be done.  

Went to the doctor.  He said it was reflux.  Had to stop drinking coffee. 

Well, that’s not entirely true.  The instructions said to “at least limit caffeine.”  Also alcohol, spicy food, onions and garlic (even when the onions are cooked), carbonated beverages, and chocolate.  All the staples.  I’ve had to completely rethink my diet. 

 

I’m kinda fifty-fifty on half measures, so in this case “limit” meant “quit.”  I figured it would be good for me.  You know, do something totally different, see what life’s like on the other side, turn my middle-aged midlife-crisis self into somebody new, even if only a little. 

 

How did it go?  Oh, it was a blast.  

 

That doctor’s appointment was on a Monday.  I stopped drinking coffee that day.  Two days later, I bragged to my wife that, wow, it was so easy.  I wasn’t having any withdrawal symptoms at all.  I was fine.  No problem.  I’m almost superhuman in my ability to ditch life-long habits!   

 

The headaches started the next day. 

 

Okay, I figured.  That’s fine.  I can handle a little headache.  Just get through the next week or so.  No problem, he said, having no idea what was coming next. 

 

And what was coming next?  Worse headaches.    

 

In general, I’m not a headache guy.  I don’t get migraines.  I don’t even get hangovers to speak of.  A headache, to me, is a minor inconvenience easily fixed with a couple of aspirin and a glass of water.  Not these babies.  These were jackhammer-to-the-temple headaches.  Curl up on the couch with a blanket wrapped around my head headaches.  You’d have thought a newborn goddess was trying to pound her way out of my skull and, dammit Hephaestus, do something about it! 

 

Fun fact: caffeine withdrawal causes headaches because caffeine causes the blood vessels in your head to contract.  When you quit the caffeine, those blood vessels get bigger.  You’re literally putting physical pressure on your own brain. 

 

Oh, and of course there was the fatigue, and the inability to concentrate.  By Friday, it got so bad that I took a nap. 

 

I took a nap!  I never take naps.  Naps, for me, are even rarer than headaches.  As lazy as I am, as often as I'll just fritter away an entire afternoon, taking a nap seems like a complete waste of time, so I don’t.  Until I did.  Four days after quitting coffee. 

 

I wanted a new experience.  I got it.  Where the hell did I leave that monkey’s paw? 

 

Saturday, I’d had enough.  I brewed two cups of coffee, and drank one.  Wow, what a difference.  Headache: gone.  Fatigue: gone.  Inability to concentrate: gone.  Dull-witted surly gloominess: gone.  I actually got chatty enough for my wife and sister-in-law – who come from a family so incessantly talkative that they call each other after day-long family events, just to talk things over – thought I was talking too much.   

 

That was two months ago.  Since then, I’ve had maybe six cups of coffee, total.  They haven’t always affected me so radically, but I haven’t been suffering from acute withdrawal symptoms, either.   

 

As for the rest of it, yeah, I’ve cut out almost all the foods I’m not supposed to eat, and I’ve been taking a little pill every morning.  Has it worked?  Kinda.  Sometimes.  Other times, not.  I could blame the doctor for not making it go away completely, but I might need him, so I’ll blame getting older instead.  Although, I kinda need that, too. 

Oh, sorry, was that valuable (laser eyes edition)?

A giant stack of identically-cut paper snowflakes.  Backyard scrap metal art.  Instant amputation of zombie-bitten limbs.  Perfect grooming of foliage and otherwise useless dogs.

What do all these things have in common?  Laser eyes would make them all so much easier. 

 

You know.  Laser eyes.  Like Superman.  Or Cyclops.  Powerful beams that shoot out of your eyes, and either blast through something, cut through something, or send a bad guy flying across the room to land unconscious with his clothes and skin still intact, except for maybe a really big bruise.  Whatever the plot calls for at the moment. 

 

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly (and I know you haven’t), you’ll know that I recently had cataract surgery.  Hell, it’s all I’ve been talking about lately.  You’ll know that cataract surgery entails removal of the original, natural lens, and insertion of a new, man-made lens.  You’ll also know how disappointed I was that, today, in the 21st century, there are no real options to be had with those man-made lenses.  No night vision, no infrared, no telescopic vision.   

 

No laser eyes. 

 

Of course, laser eyes would require more than just a tiny manufactured lens.  You need a power source, and some way to protect your own eyes from your own lasers.  There has to be some kind of control mechanism: you don’t want them getting stuck in the “on” position.   

 

These are obstacles, sure, and yet... are they really too much to handle?  Are these hurdles really too high?  I don’t see it.  Why scientists haven’t found a way to give us laser eyes, I just don’t know. 

 

Side note: of course, they have found ways to do it.  They’re just not telling the rest of us, and they won’t until their army of super Neanderthals begins their inevitable (yet ultimately vain) war of conquest.   

 

For the record, I’m in full support of our new laser-eyed Neanderthal overlords and their Poindexter masters, and I always have been.  Not like the rest of you people. 

 

End side note. 

 

The unfortunate thing is: age brings perspective, and while I’m not yet as old as about half of America, I am also older than half of America*.  I therefore have an uncomfortable amount of perspective to bring to this discussion, and that leads me to ask: what would you do with them? 

What good would laser eyes be?  You could cut your name into things.  Maybe cut through things?  Get a job at a manufacturing company, where you’d be a forgotten backup to the giant machines that do the same job faster, better, and more accurately.  Be on-call for the police, when they need somebody’s tires taken out during a high-speed chase.  Perform emergency surgery.  Win bar bets.   

x

That all assumes that these are actual lasers, and not some other form of comic book energy beam that can, as Cyclops’ apparently can, sometimes cut, sometimes blast, and sometimes just shove really hard.  If there is any such form of energy, I’m unaware of it. 

I’m looking at you scientists again. 

This also assumes that your eye lasers are powerful enough to cut.  Lasers are basically just tight beams of light, which of course you already know.  They can be powerful enough to cut, or just powerful enough to point out which part of the PowerPoint slide we’re talking about now.  That would still be a neat trick – no cat would ever go unentertained – but it would also be kind of pathetic.  Imagine, telling everyone you’ve got laser eyes and then being unable to do anything but annoy that loud table across the bar. 

 

See what I mean?  Useless. 

 

But then, exactly what superpowers would be useful?  When does the need for super strength ever really come up?  How often have you had to get the horribly damaged car’s door open before the burgeoning fire could reach the gas tank?  Or invisibility: it could be fun to walk around playing pranks on people for a while, but unless you’re planning to rob people or become a spy, what good is it? 

 

Telepathy?  We’ve got cell phones now.  Flight?  I suppose, if you could fly faster than you can walk.  At least, you could get where you’re going in a straight line.  No red lights. 

 

Okay, teleportation, if you can control it well enough.  Imagine what you’d save on gas.  Mind reading.  At least you’d always win at poker.  Fast healing, which, we should really have nanobots doing that for us already (scientists!).  You’d get invited to every party if you could make ice out of thin air, and every camping trip if you could create fire.   

 

I’m not saying I wouldn’t want these abilities.  Hey, the zombie apocalypse has to start sometime, and they’ll be useful then, at least.  But that’s the point: superpowers are only useful in dramatic situations, and exactly how many really dramatic situations are any of us ever in?  Might as well learn to juggle.  

*I am informed that this is incorrect: the median age in the U.S. is 38.2 years, making me thirteen years older than half of America.  I do not regret the error.