So, um, I seem to have misplaced today’s blog post. Mea culpa.
Today’s post wound up on I’m Bringing Celibacy Back, a blog that belongs to my friend Robby Rasbaugh. (He’s a really cool dude, and has awesome hair.) I’m Bringing Celibacy Back is a funny, sassy, well-written series of commentaries on marriage, singleness, Christianity, culture, and underrated Disney couples.
My latest post, “Five Blessings of Being a Single Guy,” can be read here!
What in the heck is Operation Yuletide?
Operation Yuletide is a Christmas charity fundraiser sponsored by this blog.
Another charity fundraiser? Didn’t you do one last Christmas?
Yes. Yes, we did.
Why are you doing another one?
Short answer: People need help.
Slightly-longer-but-still-pretty-short answer: A number of years ago, I heard about the Advent Conspiracy: a movement in which people raise donations for charities instead of asking for Christmas gifts. In other words, the Advent Conspiracy takes some of the money that goes toward holiday shopping and puts it toward helping people.
Helping people how?
The Advent Conspiracy benefits all kinds of charities. TMTF’s fundraiser, Operation Yuletide, is raising money through a Christian organization called Living Water International to provide clean water to people in impoverished areas.
Water? Why water?!
Clean water is one of the world’s most valuable and desperately-needed resources. Safe access to clean water prevents disease, saves lives, enables better education, transforms communities, and brings hope to poverty-stricken areas.
Besides, fresh water is necessary for making coffee. Everybody deserves a cup of coffee, especially at Christmas!
Can’t you discuss anything without mentioning coffee? You have a problem.
I do not have a problem. I get up, I drink coffee, I feel better—no problem.
So this fundraiser, Operation Yuletide, is raising money to provide clean water to poverty-stricken people.
Yup. I named it Operation Yuletide because it’s giving clean water for Christmas. Get it? Yuletide, tide, water. It’s a pun!
I hate you.
We have a mascot and everything. Meet Oswald Grimm.
That’s your mascot? Yeesh.
Oswald is one of Santa’s elves. Well, at any rate, he was. He’s between jobs. Look, Oswald Grimm is all I could afford, okay? This blog doesn’t exactly have a high budget.
Speaking of your blog, where does TMTF fit into all this?
We’re sponsoring the fundraiser, and providing rewards for people who donate.
What kind of rewards?
Well, um, pretty much all the same ones as last year. Donor rewards are divided into tiers. Here they are!
Give $1 or more: Droplet Tier!
Receive a public thank-you on this blog, and bask in the satisfaction of making the world a better place!
Give $5 or more: Trickle Tier!
Receive a personalized thank-you message, sent to the email address of your choice! How nice! All previous rewards are included.
Give $10 or more: Splash Tier!
Receive a personalized thank-you card, sent to the mailing address of your choice! A welcome change from bills and junk mail! All previous rewards are included.
Give $20 or more: Wave Tier!
Receive a brief video in which I thank you personally! Catch a rare glimpse of this blog’s introverted writer and his bespectacled face! The video will be sent as an email attachment or web link to the email address of your choice. All previous rewards are included.
Give $30 or more: Cascade Tier!
Receive an original blog post, or an original poem, on any subject you choose! Receive a guest post for your blog or satisfy your poetic fancy! You may feature this blog post or poem anywhere (or nowhere) on the Internet. All previous rewards are included.
Give $50 or more: Tsunami Tier!
Receive an original short story written to your personal specifications! You choose anything and everything: characters, setting, theme, plot, etc. Enjoy an original story, or bring your wildest, fan fiction-est ideas to life! You may feature this story anywhere (or nowhere) on the Internet. All previous rewards are included.
I can’t guarantee the donation page will track donor information, so send me a message via this blog’s Contact page after donating to make sure you get your rewards!
Let me get this straight. You’re bribing people to throw money at you.
Not at all. I’m thanking people for donating money to give clean water. All donations go to clean water projects sponsored by Living Water International. We at TMTF shan’t receive a penny! This is our little contribution to the Advent Conspiracy. We enjoy being conspiratorial.
If I donate, when can I expect to get my rewards?
You’ll get ’em as soon as I can finish ’em. I’m afraid I can’t offer any estimated delivery dates.
Does your fundraiser have a definite goal?
The goal is $700 USD.
Flipping heck, that’s a lot of cash—not to mention a weirdly specific number.
I wanted to aim for more than $500, but $1,000 seemed overoptimistic, so I settled on $700. I don’t know if we can reach it, but we can try!
How long will the fundraiser last?
Operation Yuletide will end shortly after Christmas. We’ve got one month to make the world a better, wetter place!
Didn’t you support two charities with last year’s fundraiser? Besides the clean water one, wasn’t there a charity for kids? Why aren’t you supporting it this time? Do you hate kids? You monster!
Hardly anyone donated to the kids’ charity last year, and its website wasn’t very user-friendly. Besides, it was a headache to manage two separate charities in a single fundraiser on top of the usual December craziness.
Fine. How can I support Operation Yuletide?
TMTF now has a button (or widget if you want to be technical) on the top right-hand side of the homepage that will take you to Operation Yuletide’s donation page.
Are you done rambling, or do you have any final thoughts?
Clean water saves lives. I can’t stress this enough. I believe that we, together, can do something to bring life and hope to people in desperate need this holiday season.
Please consider giving clean water this month, and spread the word! A murry Christmess merry Christmas to you all!
Caution: This blog post contains furious ranting. Sensitive readers, and readers averse to things being smashed, are advised not to continue.
It’s that time of year again. Today is the day I stay inside, bolt the door, drink tea, and reflect upon the injustices of the world. Of all these, one of the greatest is that Black Friday, America’s annual celebration of consumerism, takes place on the day after Thanksgiving.
Look, Black Friday has every right to exist. I may not like the event, but I don’t think it’s inherently bad. Black Friday is a great opportunity for businesses to make money, and an equally great opportunity for consumers to buy things cheaply. Everybody wins. There are few problems, except for the fact that Black Friday now eclipses the one day we set apart for being thankful.
Black Friday’s timing is the worst kind of irony. It’s infuriating. The whole thing… I mean… it’s so frustrating… it makes my stomach hurt…
HULK TIME! CAPS LOCK ACTIVATED!
BLACK FRIDAY HAS WORST TIMING OF ANY EVENT IN UNIVERSE. HULK WOULD SMASH BLACK FRIDAY, BUT CRAZED SHOPPERS ALREADY CAUSE ENOUGH DAMAGE.
HULK ADMIT BLACK FRIDAY ITSELF IS NOT BAD. EVEN ITS TIMING AFTER THANKSGIVING MAKE SENSE—PEOPLE HAVE DAYS OFF FOR HOLIDAY AND CAN SHOP FREELY. DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING IS ALSO START OF CHRISTMAS SHOPPING SEASON AND CONVENIENT DAY FOR BUYING THINGS.
DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING IS ALSO STUPID DAY FOR BUYING THINGS.
THANKSGIVING IS ONE DAY OF YEAR WE SET ASIDE TO BE THANKFUL. THANKSGIVING IS NOW OVERSHADOWED BY CRAZY CONSUMERISM. BEAUTIFUL HOLIDAY IS NOW CLUTTERED WITH AGGRESSIVE ADS FROM BUSINESSES TO BUY MORE AND SPEND MONEY AND GET STUFF. MESSAGE OF NOVEMBER MONTH IS NO LONGER “Relax, rejoice, and be thankful” BUT “You can buy a TV for 70% off at Wal-Mart—OMG, guys! Go buy it! Buy it now!”
THANKSGIVING IS NO LONGER QUIET DAY TO EAT AND BE THANKFUL AND SPEND TIME WITH FAMILY. THANKSGIVING IS NOW DAY OF PREPARATION FOR BLACK FRIDAY.
SOME STORES NOW EVEN OPEN ON THANKSGIVING DAY! HULK ASK AMERICA: IS NO THING SACRED?! YOU NOT SATISFIED TO ECLIPSE THANKSGIVING? YOU MUST STIR UP GREED AND FRENZY ON THANKSGIVING DAY ITSELF?!”
BLACK FRIDAY IS DAY OF CHAOS AND VIOLENCE. PEOPLE GET ANGRY. PEOPLE GET HURT. PEOPLE HAVE DIED. HULK USUALLY MAKE POINT BY SMASHING THINGS, BUT SHOPPERS TODAY BEAT HULK AT HULK’S OWN GAME.
THIS DAY OF GREED, SELFISHNESS, VIOLENCE, STRESS, AND NOISE CASTS SHADOW OVER THANKSGIVING: DAY OF PEACE, REST, JOY, FEASTING, AND FUN. BLACK FRIDAY COULD BE ANY DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY.
HULK ASK AMERICA: WHY CHOOSE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING FOR SHOPPING DAY? WHY DISTRACT FROM PEACE AND THANKFULNESS WITH WORRY AND GREED? WHY? WHY?!
HULK NOT UNDERSTAND. HULK NEVER UNDERSTAND.
HULK BEG PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. PLEASE. HONOR THANKSGIVING. REST. EAT. BE THANKFUL. AND IF YOU SHOP ON BLACK FRIDAY: BE KIND AND RESPONSIBLE.
HULK OUT!
Whoa, that was disorienting. Did I turn into the Hulk again? I blame the mutagenic effects of my wireless Internet connection—it may not be as dangerous as gamma radiation, but it sure does the trick. I suppose violent, unpredictable mutations are a cross we bloggers must bear. Well, I had better go put on a shirt.
This post was originally published on November 28, 2014. TMTF shall return with new content on November 30, 2015!
As much as I like the United States of America, I’m confused and disturbed by some of its customs. (The traditions in my homeland of Ecuador seemed so much simpler.) For example, Americans will celebrate a festival of ritualistic gluttony known as Thanksgiving in just a few days.
We at Typewriter Monkey Task Force pride ourselves on our anthropological researches. Although we generally reserve our investigations for important matters such as geek culture and cartoons for little girls, we’re expanding our vision to cover American holidays. Our research is completely authentic, and presented in a factual manner utterly devoid of humor, sarcasm, or silliness.*
As I recovered from last month’s sinister pumpkin rituals, I heard disquieting rumors of a November celebration for which Americans gather to disembowel turkeys and observe brutal bouts of gladiatorial violence. Halloween was odd, but Thanksgiving truly takes the cake… or the pie in this case.
Let’s start with the turkeys.
I’m guessing this is some kind of ritual sacrifice.
According to tradition, many American families prepare a turkey for the Thanksgiving festival. The bird is slaughtered and disemboweled. Then, in a macabre twist, its innards are replaced with a mixture of dried bread and spices. Thus desecrated, the turkey’s carcass is placed in an oven, cooked, and then served as part of the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
I can only speculate that the Thanksgiving turkey is a sacrifice offered as an act of thanksgiving for a good year, hence the name of the holiday. Note that the bird is not immolated as a burnt offering. It is eaten instead by participants in the Thanksgiving festival. I can only infer that the turkey’s ceremonial function is similar to the wave offering prescribed for ancient Israel in the earlier books Old Testament: an offering dedicated, but eaten instead of burned.
The sacrificial turkey is generally served with foods such as mashed potatoes, gravy, ham, corn, bread rolls, pies, and sauerkraut. (I presume sauerkraut is eaten because it has ceremonial significance; I can hardly imagine anyone actually liking the stuff.) Collectively, these foods are called Thanksgiving dinner.
Thanksgiving dinner is often devoured with reckless enthusiasm. This annual display of gluttony occurs so widely that it may be ritualistic. Worship has taken many forms in different epochs and cultures: singing, dancing, praying, meditating, offering sacrifices, making pilgrimages, giving alms, and even inflicting self-harm. Could overeating be a form of worship unique to the Thanksgiving festival? Of course, these are just speculations.
The final custom we will examine is that of football.
This so-called game, a demonstration of unbridled savagery, baffles me.
This athletic event is not to be confused with the sport of the same name, known as soccer to Americans. Having done a little research, I have concluded that American football is a gladiatorial competition in which armored men ram into each other on a field. Their goal is to take, by means of extreme force, an elliptical object that seems to be the eponymous football. This football is carried by hand, not propelled by foot, rendering the origin of its name an incomprehensible mystery.
We conclude that Thanksgiving is an appalling display of gluttony, violence, and unexplained rituals. However, in the interests of anthropological study, we intend to sample Thanksgiving dinner this year. For science.
*Nah, we’re just kidding.
This post was originally published on November 24, 2014. TMTF shall return with new content on November 30, 2015!
For those of my readers who are squeamish, queasy or any of those other funny adjectives, this may be a good post to skip. You have been warned.
Long, long ago, when I was just a senior in high school, I took AP Biology, a college-level science course. It was fantastic. The other students and I were privileged to visit a cloud forest, travel to the Galápagos Islands, dissect fetal pigs and witness the dismemberment of a deceased human being.
Well, I suppose the removal of a single arm can hardly be called dismemberment, but I digress.
One fair morning I and the other students in AP Biology took a field trip to a local university. We were scheduled to meet a professor who would give us a guided tour of the human body using the university’s resident cadaver as a visual aid. (A cadaver is a corpse used for official purposes, such as police investigation or medical research.) The professor’s lecture would be a vital part of our scientific education, or so we were told by our teacher.
The plan was for us to enjoy Part One of the professor’s lecture in the morning, head back to school for our afternoon classes and return to the university the next day for Part Two.
We arrived at the university and filed into the laboratory to find the professor waiting for us. I don’t remember his name, so I’ll call him Dr. Frankenstein. A cadaver was stretched out on a slab. Dr. F’s assistant, whom I’ll call Igor, was bustling around the lab.
Dr. F had an interesting way of lecturing. The cadaver had been emptied of its organs; as in those Mummy movies, the organs were kept in jars. As Dr. F lectured, he took out the organs from their jars and put them back into the cadaver to show us where they belonged.
The lecture ended. Dr. F departed to teach a class, leaving Igor to put away the cadaver. As we watched, Igor removed the various organs from the cadaver and put them back in their jars. Then he detached the cadaver’s arm.
I was, I freely admit, a little shaken by this. Arms are usually attached more permanently. It was unnerving to see a cadaver disarmed—forgive the pun—so casually.
I was one of only two male students in my class. The other male student, whom I’ll call Socrates, was standing beside me when Igor pointed at him and asked, “Would you please help me put away the cadaver?”
Igor and Socrates hoisted the cadaver onto a stretcher, carried it into a back room and lifted it into its niche, leaving me to wipe the anxious perspiration from my brow and contemplate how close I’d come to the awful experience of carrying around a corpse.
The other students and I went back to school with our teacher. Next morning we returned to the university for the second part of the lecture. When we arrived, Dr. F was running late and Igor was still in the process of setting up the cadaver and its organ jars.
“Could you please help me get out the cadaver?” asked Igor, pointing at Socrates. I breathed a sigh of relief, only for Igor to add, “Oh, and could you reach into the niche and get the arm?”
The second request was very clearly directed at me. I had no choice but to reach into the niche (wearing gloves and a lab coat, of course) and retrieve the missing arm.
Alas, there is no photographic evidence of this event. I wish a photo could’ve been taken of me with the arm—one of those “Hey, look at this big fish I caught!” pictures—but the incident went unrecorded.
Dr. F arrived, gave the second part of the lecture and left. So did the other students and I, before Igor could request assistance from any of us.
I have many great memories from that AP Biology class. I’ve already written a post about one. Others I may post someday on this blog: That Time I Met a Wild Penguin and That Time I Saw a Hummingbird Wearing Go-Go Boots, to name but two.
However, of all the memories from AP Biology, That Time I Held a Severed Human Arm is one of my favorites. It’s certainly my favorite story to tell—as my longsuffering friends and relatives can testify.
This post was originally published on February 24, 2012. TMTF shall return with new content on November 30, 2015!
TMTF will be taking a three-week break, during which it shall republish old posts on its usual schedule. The blog shall return with new content on November 30!
Today we celebrate four hundred posts on TMTF with a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the Five Stages of Blogging.
These describe the creative process experienced by people who write blogs. (They are unrelated to the Kübler-Ross model and its five stages of grief.) Of course, some bloggers may experience more than five stages. Some may experience fewer. The stages may vary from person to person. After all, every blogger is unique!
In writing posts for this blog, I have experienced five distinct stages. The easiest posts took only one or two, whereas the most difficult ones demanded all five.
In this extra-long and extra-special blog post, we’ll take a quick look at the Five Stages of Blogging. (This post took me through all of them.) Then I’ll share a few bits of TMTF trivia before concluding with grateful acknowledgements and a couple of announcements.
Here we go!
Blogging Stage One: Optimism
I enjoy thinking of ideas for new blog posts. It’s the effortless part of blogging: the deceptively easy warm-up to sitting down and, y’know, actually writing something.
Blogging Stage Two: Annoyance
At some point, I struggle to translate the exciting ideas in my head to words on a computer screen. Ideas are elusive. They don’t like to be pinned down. Sometimes, when written down, ideas change and grow in alarming ways. This is sometimes an amazing thing to see—except that by “sometimes” I mean “roughly 0.086% of the time.” It’s usually just annoying.
Blogging Stage Three: Frustration
At some point, annoyance escalates to frustration. I scowl at my laptop, mutter under my breath, brew another pot of coffee, and wish I had chosen a better hobby than blogging. I could have been a cyclist or amateur voice actor, after all. TMTF was an awful idea. At any rate, whatever post I’m trying to write is clearly a stinker. I should really just give it up.
Blogging Stage Four: Depression
Frustration darkens to depression, anguish, and bitter regret.
“I just… I just wanted to have a blog, y’know? I didn’t ask for this. This is impossible. I’ve put so much time and stuff, y’know, into this post, this one flipping post, man, and it’s a mess. It’s such a mess.
“Even if I fix it, and I’m not sure I can, it’ll take hours. Hours wasted, man, for one flipping blog post. Then I’ll write another post, and another post, and another flipping post. It never ends. Nothing new under the sun. It’s like that poem, y’know, about the mariner and the albatross. ‘Day after day, day after day, we stuck, no breath nor motion, as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.’ I’m stuck, man. This blog is my albatross.”
Then I stare into my empty coffee cup, crying on the inside.
Blogging Stage Five: Talking to Plush Toys
I can’t afford counseling. Don’t judge me.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About TMTF (but Were Afraid to Ask)
Moving on, here are a few pieces of TMTF trivia in celebration of four hundred posts.
I love collaborating with creative people!
My dad, God bless him, handles most of the original art for this blog—monkeys and all.
Grateful Acknowledgements and Obligatory Threats
Speaking of typewriter monkeys, I have a few words for my blogging assistants, who have just set fire to a corner of my desk. These words aren’t appropriate for this blog, however, so I’ll have to settle for threats: If you monkeys don’t start behaving and put out that fire right this instant, I will end your employment and donate you to the zoo. I mean it this time.
Besides my usual threats, I guess I owe my dirty dozen a reluctant thank-you. Here’s to you, Sophia, Socrates, Plato, Hera, Penelope, Aristotle, Apollo, Euripides, Icarus, Athena, Phoebe, and Aquila. Thanks for working on my blog. I love you guys. At any rate, I’m trying.
As always, I owe my readers many thanks for their support and encouragement. Thank you so much for reading, commenting, liking posts here or on Facebook, writing guest posts, taking part in Be Nice to Someone on the Internet Day, and generally being wonderful. I appreciate every one of you.
Special thanks to my parents for their support over the years. My dad deserves an extra round of thanks for all the kind emails and monkey pictures. Thank you, old man. Special thanks also to JK Riki for being the most thoughtful and supportive reader in the history of people who read things. Seriously, JK, thank you.
As always, as I write about Disney villains, chain mail bikinis, and other nonsense, soli Deo gloria—to God be glory.
What Next?
TMTF will be taking a three-week break, during which I will republish old posts on its usual schedule. The blog shall return with new content on November 30!
In other news, TMTF will sponsor a Christmas fundraiser this December for charity! I’m still working on the details, but it will be very similar to last year’s fundraiser, with donor rewards and whatnot. I’m open to suggestions for rewards and fundraising, so feel free to share ideas via Twitter or the Contact page. I’ll release more information about the Christmas fundraiser at the end of this month.
We’ll be back!
My family has been visiting for a little more than a week, which has been weird—the very best kind of weird. My parents live in Uruguay. My brother and his family moved to the Dominican Republic more than a year ago. It’s rare for my family all to be in the same hemisphere at the same time. At the moment, we’re all in roughly the same place. The wonders never cease.
During my family’s visit, I’ve been busy traveling, growing a patchy jaw-beard, making my dad watch Marvel’s Daredevil, and catching up with other things. With this and that, I’ve had hardly any time to work on this blog, so today’s post is just a few photos from the past week and my illuminating commentaries thereupon.
Enjoy.
My family and I spent a few days visiting various friends and relatives. With only one car—the trusty, rusty vehicle I’ve christened Eliezer—it was a challenge to coordinate our individual plans. Fortunately, we still had time to stroll through pretty, sunshiny places.
For the third consecutive year, my my parents, younger brother, and I stopped at a doughnut shop by a lake. (Despite the lens flare, this photo was not taken by J.J. Abrams, I swear.) The shop’s founder, Tom, was there fixing something. My parents struck up a conversation with him, because chatting with random strangers is what they do.
After the doughnut shop, I threw myself onto a park bench, clutching an empty coffee bottle and soaking in the sunshine like an iguana on a cold day. My mum sat demurely beside me. She is one of the most fabulous people in the universe.
I come from a family of coffee drinkers. At one point, my dad kept his coffee cool by chilling it in a river. It’s a shame the bottled stuff is so flipping expensive.
Sunshine, shadows, and cool water.
My older brother and his wife gave presentations on Sunday about their work in the DR. They manage a school for troubled teens, living on faith, donations, and coconuts. If you want to support their work, you can donate here—just look for Stuck Family: Lead Teacher and Family.
My parents brought back all sorts of goodies from Uruguay and Ecuador, including the best chocolate bar in the known universe. MANICHO IS LIFE.
My dad usually hides behind the camera, but every now and then he and his ever-present leather jacket are caught on film. He is known to my family variously as Dad, the Paw, the Dude, the Dude-Paw, or Old Man. He receives these names as he receives everything else: with good humor.
My older brother gave me a machete as an early Christmas gift. It’s great for shaving.
My family visited a zoo yesterday. (I would make a joke about my family belonging in a zoo, but they’re actually wonderful people.) I spent a few moments communing with this statue, and wondering whether the zoo would accept my typewriter monkeys as a donation.
My family will soon scatter like the autumn leaves. My parents will return to Uruguay in a few days, and my older brother will go back to the DR with his family. My younger brother and I will remain in Indiana, where we will do… whatever it is we do around here. I guess we mostly drink tea and argue about Steven Universe. (Greg is the best character; that’s all I’m saying.)
I thank God for my family. It has been nice to spend some time with them.
My younger brother, John, has a number of talents, such as recreating pictures in pencil. (You should check out his DeviantArt page!) Some of his other gifts are a little less, um, ordinary. For example, when pausing movies or videos, he often freezes them on bizarre or creepy frames.
The greatest of John’s unusual talents is his involuntary tendency to mangle the English language in everyday conversations. Some time ago, I began keeping a meticulous list of his mispronunciations. For science.
The list, titled John’s Word Derps, has grown larry vong—excuse me, very long. When it was shutter, er, shorter, it wasn’t worth sharing, but when it plast, um, passed a certain point, I thuck—I mean, I thought—the time had come to unleash it upon the world.
I need hardly add that every one of my brother’s verbal fumbles is genuine. All were mistakes; none were intentional.
With John’s blessing and no further ado, TMTF is delighted to share dozens upon dozens of examples of how English words can go wrong.
There is an old Greek legend of a king named Sisyphus. This lawless man deceived the gods, murdered travelers, and was generally a bad egg. After his death, the gods punished Sisyphus in the afterlife by forcing him to push a huge boulder up a hill. The boulder was enchanted to roll back down the hill before he could push it all the way to the top. Sisyphus was doomed to an eternity of maddening repetition, rolling the same rock up the same hill over and over again, never reaching the top.
I am growing a beard. Like Sisyphus, I am making yet another pointless attempt to reach an impossible goal. Just as the boulder rolled away from Sisyphus before he could make it to the top of the hill, my beard will certainly end up a failure. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
As I ponder my Sisyphean situation, rubbing my stubbled jaw and thinking gloomy thoughts, I recall my last attempt to grow a beard. It was an abomination that caused desolation. What could persuade me to unleash such a loathsome thing once more upon an unsuspecting world?
Oh, that’s right. I was playing Metal Gear Solid 4, a video game whose tough-as-nails protagonist has a rugged beard. I can only call it a jaw-beard: a line of thick stubble along the jawline. Since my own beard was strongest along the jaw, I wondered whether I might not manage a respectable jaw-beard. My hope is a forlorn one, but in a moment of quixotic stupidity, I resolved to try.
Why? Why have I returned to my folly as the dog to its vomit? What insights can I draw from my Sisyphean attempt to grow a beard? This is an opportunity for philosophical introspection. What can my patchy jaw-beard teach me about myself?
Is my beard a reaction to stagnation? After months of stressful transition, I have finally reached some shaky semblance of consistency—thank God. Does some small part of me rebel against the comfortable predictability that has settled over my life? Is my latest attempt to grow a beard a subconscious effort to escape the numbing influence of familiarity? That’s one possibility.
Is my beard an attempt to feel more grown-up? For all my twenty-something years, I don’t feel particularly competent or mature. I don’t feel very grown-up. Perhaps my beard is an attempt to instill some sort of confidence in myself as an adult—a hideous emblem of putting away childish things and embracing adulthood—a preemptive preparation against whatever grown-up challenges lie ahead. That’s another possibility.
The simplest explanation, of course, is that I think jaw-beards are cool. If that’s the case, my beard is merely a childish attempt to ape the good looks of a computer-generated character in a video game. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
A final possibility is that my beard has no sane explanation. It may be no more rational than the impulse a man feels when standing on a high place to jump to his death.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Like Sisyphus, here I go again.
This is probably a good time for me to mention that this blog post is fairly sarcastic, and not meant to be taken seriously.
Caution: This blog post contains furious ranting. Sensitive readers, and readers averse to things being smashed, are advised not to continue.
This may surprise you, but I drink a lot of coffee.
This is a fairly accurate depiction of the area around my desk.
As an addicted enthusiastic drinker of coffee, I know a thing or two about this heavenly beverage. For starters, it’s flipping tasty. Coffee also clears the mind and refreshes the spirit, bringing health to the body and nourishment to the bones. It warms and strengthens.
As a final benefit, coffee is pretty cheap. Sure, exotic or flavored blends of coffee are expensive, but these are easily ignored in favor of cheaper options. Plain, simple, honest-to-God coffee is an affordable luxury.
Well… plain coffee is sometimes an affordable luxury. You see, when it’s sold in a can or bottle, coffee is outrageously expensive. I’m looking at you, Starbucks.
What makes coffee so special when it’s put in a can or bottle that Starbucks demands so much for it? Starbucks is apparently the only big company to sell canned and bottled coffee. Why is this? Why?! Why are there no major competitors to challenge Starbucks’s ruthless monopoly of the coffee drink industry? How hard can it be to put coffee in a can or bottle with some cream and sweetener?
From the price of its coffee drinks, I can only assume Starbucks uses coffee beans imported from the mythical land of Shambhala, sugar from the tables of faerie kings, and milk from the sacred cows of the Himalayas. How else can Starbucks explain charging two or three dollars for a small can or bottle of coffee?
It makes me angry just thinking about it. I mean… there are no cheaper options… it’s just… I… I….
COFFEE OR SMASH!
COFFEE IS LIFE. HULK LOVE COFFEE. KNOW WHAT? HULK NOT ONLY ONE. AMERICA LOVE COFFEE. AMERICA ALSO LOVE CANNED AND BOTTLED DRINKS LIKE TEA AND SODA.
OBVIOUS STRATEGY IS COMBINE SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MODELS BY SELLING COFFEE IN CANS AND BOTTLES. LIKE STARBUCKS. STARBUCKS MAKE LOTS OF MONEY BY SELLING COFFEE DRINKS.
WHY NO OTHER COMPANIES OFFER CHEAPER ALTERNATIVES? PLAIN COFFEE NOT EXPENSIVE. PUT PLAIN COFFEE IN PLASTIC BOTTLE—NOT PRICEY GLASS BOTTLE LIKE STARBUCKS—WITH CREAMER AND CORN SYRUP. THIS NOT FANCY COFFEE DRINK, BUT IS CHEAP AND PLENTY TASTY.
WHY IS EXPENSIVE STARBUCKS COFFEE ONLY OPTION ON MARKET? WHERE COMPETITION? WHERE CHEAPER BRANDS AND OTHER OPTIONS?
AND WHY ALL STARBUCKS DRINKS SO PRICEY? WHY STARBUCKS NO OFFER BUDGET-PRICED DRINKS WITH CHEAPER INGREDIENTS IN PLASTIC BOTTLES?
OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE NON-STARBUCKS COFFEE DRINKS. JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA SELL OTHER CANNED COFFEES. (HULK BEEN TO KOREA AND DRUNK CANS OF COFFEE.) IT CAN BE DONE. IN AMERICA—COUNTRY ADDICTED TO COFFEE AND DRINKS OUT OF CANS AND BOTTLES—WHY STARBUCKS ONLY BIG COMPANY TO COMBINE THESE PRODUCTS?
PLEASE STARBUCKS. OFFER CHEAPER OPTIONS. PLEASE OTHER DRINK COMPANIES. PUT COFFEE IN CANS AND BOTTLES. SELL CHEAP COFFEE DRINKS. GIVE AMERICA OTHER OPTIONS. END REIGN OF STARBUCKS. END MADNESS.
HULK OUT!
…Sorry. I spaced out there for a minute. What was I talking about? Coffee. That’s right. Flipping heck, I could use some. Please excuse me. I need a cup of the strong stuff.
Typewriter Monkey Task Force 