I’ve figured it out, gentle reader. My glasses are my PhD–it’s like my prescription is professorial or something. While picking up some contact solution for the ol’ peepers at Target yesterday evening, I decided to wander over to the movie section to see what was new. I was daydreaming about getting LASIK surgery when a cute brunette materialized out of nowhere.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied, ready to impart my wisdom with a blue-light special flourish.
She wanted to know the merits of fullscreen and widescreen formats, and I held forth with relish.
“Ah, so it’s about the future,” she concluded, widescreen version of Schindler’s List in hand.
Indeed, with the increasing popularity of widescreen televisions, it seems that widescreen versions have more staying power. Besides, fullscreen editions usually feature more cropping than a beet combine in the Urals, and that’s like asking to have your movie experience circumcised. If you were sitting at a concert, would you want to listen to Elgar with a couple of sixteenth notes shaved off in every measure?
If only someone would express some curiosity in pop-up advertisements. Yep, anytime now.
Some people have the culinary intuition to combine unrelated ingredients into a delicious meal, a feat that I attempted yesterday evening. I fondly recall how one friend mixed a bunch of leftovers into a tasty breakfast bar. A few weeks ago my co-worker painted, in rather tantalizing strokes, a dinner scene wherein his children reveled over Cheez-It chicken while his wife refused to sample any. You probably have similar people in your life, gentle reader.
With move-out day fast approaching, I’ve been trying to empty my pantry to make for an easier move. Around dinnertime I wandered into the kitchen and spied some pasta, an orphaned packet of salsa from a taco kit, frozen broccoli, and various spices and condiments. My dinner certainly began well enough. I brought the water to a boil and shoveled pasta into the wok with fervor, making sure to check on the pasta for optimal firmness. The trouble started when I overlooked this little concept called “defrosting” and emptied half a bag of frozen broccoli into the mix.
It all went downhill after this oversight, let me tell you. Nutritionists and mothers espouse the mighty virtues of broccoli, to which I say, “Broccoli? Brocco this.” The water instantly stopped boiling. My pasta, which previously had been on its way to al dente, suddenly became al just like it came out of the box. I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend any more bottled water on this abomination, so I let my pasta sort itself out.
When the steam had settled, I proceeded to cover up the mess with salsa, Worcestershire sauce, and oregano. I apparently added a little too much Worcestershire. My concoction tasted as nasty as it looked, and to the culinary world it was akin to Wolfgang Puck repeatedly clubbing Julia Child over the head with a George Foreman Grill. An unqualified disaster, to be sure, but if you ever need the recipe for failure, I’ve got it memorized. Bam!
With the recent hubbub surrounding my professorship, you may wonder what and where I’ve published. The answer is simple, gentle reader. Instead of publishing in high-falutin’ journals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and/or Narnia, I publish in flyers–maximum reach with minimal feedback, all on a weekly basis.
I can see you running to me with flyer in hand, eager to point out how my findings are nonexistent. There’s a simple explanation for that, I assure you. I publish in anagrams. Here’s an example. A revelation that “all five gentle readers don’t care” could proactively turn into a “race to find eleven legal retards.” Notice the economical usage of letters. A supermarket flyer advertising “buy one chicken, get one free” and “20 oz. cappuccino mix on sale” could contain the title of a recent treatise such as “No Moor Elves: Genocide Evaluated and Championed.”
I’m sure you’ve many questions for me, and questions are indeed the lifeblood of academia, but for Pete’s sake please stop. I can only be so wise for so long. I theorized in an earlier publication, which is to say last week’s drugstore flyer, that Socrates started chugging on his hemlock unintentionally. His dimwitted followers probably tired him out with question after question after question, and Mr. Wizard-in-a-Toga mistook his poison for water.
He should’ve said straight up, “Oh, shitticus! Did I just drink what I thought I drank?”
Instead, the poor fellow got all brooding and philosophistical and he was like, “Oh, I meant to drink that. All part of the plan.”
Wait, you’re still here? Wasn’t that brief aside enough of a hint for you to leave? No? Then try your hand at unraveling this anagram: gettheuckoffmyporchf.