Archive | May, 2016

The Happy, Skipping, Pylons of Fear

17 May

May 17, 2016

pylons-skipping-gif

I found that gif floating around Facebook. I’d like to take credit for it but I can’t. I can’t even take full credit for the story I’m about to tell, but here it is.

When my brother, the long-lost Allan Keyes and I were little tykes, we’d often be bundled into the family car to take a trip through the wilds of New Jersey to see our relatives, an aunt and uncle and cousins. It was a chore. We rarely wanted to go. And being rotten little kids we were never too well behaved on the ride. 

New Jersey is known for a few things: toll booths every three yards on the highway, The New York Jets, and those endless miles of electrical wires stretching pylon to pylon all the way down to the horizon. So any trip on the highway was accompanied by an almost non-stop view of those metal monoliths. During the day they looked kind of boring and industrial, but at night they could be eerie with all the lights on them, sometimes blinking on and off.

Anyway, my brother and I were young and stupid and probably very annoying to the adults in the car until one day my Aunt told us that the pylons were monsters that move when you’re not looking at them.

I know what you’re thinking- Doctor Who totally ripped off the weeping angels from my Aunt. She should Sue. (Ha! See what I did there? Two of you will get it.)

BvuRYSw

Anyway, we’d calm down and look anywhere but out the windows and then, suddenly whirl around and try to catch them moving. We never did, but we kept trying. Did I mention that we were young and stupid? I was 24 years old! NO, no, just kidding. 

As soon as I saw that gif online, this is the story that popped into my head. Crazy thing is… it’s true. The Pylons. New Jersey. All of it. It’s all true.

EP7-175875-1377-1378-01

Meanwhile, they say New Jersey is the Garden State, but did you notice that they never tell you what’s growing in the garden?

Triffids. New Jersey is full of triffids.

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PS: Happy Birthday to Saarah!

 

 

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A Simple Sandwich Question

13 May

May 13, 2016

I’m no expert when it comes to food. Oh sure, I know how to eat it. I really know how to overeat it. And I can cook a little, as long as adding boiling water to a
Cup O’ Soup counts as cooking. But something as simple as a sandwich has got me stumped. Not making it, but understanding it.

In other words, is bread an ingredient in a sandwich?

Ask someone at random what goes into a BLT. They’ll tell you bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Some people may also mention mayo, or mustard, or some other condiment or topping. And that’s all fine and good, but what about the bread? No one ever mentions the bread.

Is it just assumed that bread is what makes the sandwich, so it isn’t an ingredient? Bread is integral to a sandwich- it isn’t a sandwich without bread, so it can’t be a mere ingredient.

But when assembling the components of your BLT, you take out the bacon, the lettuce, the tomatoes, and the bread. The bread is obviously a component of the sandwich.

nom nom nom

nom nom nom

So what’s up with bread? Is it a sandwich ingredient or not?

Better minds than I need to answer this one.

Here is what a far lesser mind has to say. This is from Wikipedia, which if it were a sandwich would be composed of lug nuts and antlers, no bread.

“A BLT (Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato) is a type of bacon sandwich. The standard BLT is made up of four ingredients: bacon, lettuce, tomato and bread.”

I guess that’s the final word. If Wikipedia says that bread is an ingredient, then I have to believe that the opposite is true.

 

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