Today is the fourth day in a row that I have attempted to not ingest unnecessary amounts of pork, especially the kind cooked in the delicate blend of butter, vegetable oil and left over ham fat used at the place where I pretty much ate breakfast everyday for the last year. The fact that Morir Sonando is still closed is starting to make me feel like I have willpower. Alas, here I am eating a delicious "everything" bagel with cream cheese and pesto on a paper plate.
What?
A paper plate?
Oh, and, I got a paper cup for this coffee too.
I mean, I guess the coffee cup I didn't really notice cuz that's a pretty common thing to be getting coffee in. A paper cup that it.
But a paper plate? I haven't used a paper plate since my 11th birthday party back in 1843.
Actually, those were styrofoam plates.
What's that? Oh, you've never heard of styrofoam?
Well, why don't you bring your pretty little self over here and sit on my knee for a while ...
See, you kids may not know this, but a lot of people, including yours truly, used to consume all manner of foodstuffs using plates and cups made of a material whose chemical makeup is a long chain hydrocarbon with every other carbon connected to a phenyl group (the name given to the aromatic ring benzene, when bonded to complex carbon substituents) containing the chemical elements carbon and hydrogen, which, because it is an aromatic hydrocarbon, burns with an orange-yellow flame, giving off soot, as opposed to non-aromatic hydrocarbon polymers such as polyethylene, which burn with a light yellow flame (often with a blue tinge) and no soot. Complete oxidation of polystyrene produces only carbon dioxide and water vapor. Because of its chemical inertness, polystyrene is used to fabricate containers for chemicals, solvents, and foods.
What? Was that a little confusing?
Okay. No problem. Here's a visual example of what I'm talking about:
You're welcome. Anyway, apparently it took a few years for everyone to realize that good ol' Polystyrene (Ed. Note: Styrofoam is actually a brand name. If this confuses you, just think about Kleenex) never stood a chance of biodegrading in the stream where we unceremoniously threw our garbage after family picnics. And, if you have time over Christmas or whatever sucker for advertising holiday you're celebrating next week, you should totally ask your grandfather about how hard it was to successfully eat a Greek salad on one of these gems of DOW Chemical (who will soon be celebrating the International Year Of Chemistry) engineering without accidentally also digesting some amount of the chemical formula (C8H8)n. Assuming grandpa's not suffering from memory loss due to Alzheimer's, I'm sure he remembers how the styrofoam plate would be so easily defiled under the brunt of even the least expensive serrated plastic butter knife (of which Aunt Phyllis would conveniently purchase 1000 count boxes of for the everyday low Caldor price of $1.99) and thus upon cutting your cucumber into smaller cubes you'd end up with a crumbling mess of little white styrofoam balls getting all mixed up into your feta cheese. The only solution of course being to transfer your salad onto a fresh styrofoam plate because, as Aunt Sarah would say: "We've got plenty!" And then Uncle Phil, the one who used to be Aunt Phyllis, would chime in: "They were two for one over at Bradlees! I bought six cases." And then Aunt Sarah would say: "Yeah, we can hardly walk in the basement anymore. We've got enough styrofoam plates to feed all of Africa on." And then Uncle Phil would retort: "You should be thankful I'm not wasting our money." And then Aunt Sarah would say: "I should be thankful to eat on an actual piece of porcelain someday." And then Uncle Phil would retort: "Think of the money we are saving on water!" Anyway, if you you can't imagine this sort of conversation going on and on, you should watch more sitcoms. For the rest of us, I'll be moving right along now to say that eventually everyone got tired of constantly having indigestion on account of all of the styrofoam we were accidentally ingesting on account of some really great advertising by the Greek Feta Cheese Board. Some of you may remember those ads. If you're too young, suffice to say that you could hardly get through an episode of Cheers or a rerun of All In The Family without sitting through 60, 30 and 15 second variations of ads about the health benefits of Feta Cheese. So, of course, because Ted Danson was so popular and Carroll O'Connor was so funny, pretty much everybody with a pulse was watching these commercials and constantly eating Feta Cheese. Off of styrofoam plates. Maybe you see where this is going? Yup. Soon, alarming headlines throughout the US read: "Mass Epidemic Of Accidental Styrofoam Ingestion On Account Of Eating Of Feta Cheese". It's true. Every paper in the US had that same headline one day. You can imagine the ensuing backlash and protesting of DOW headquarters and the relevant suppliers of super-products. Which of course explains why stalwart Connecticut based retailers Clador and Bradlees went out of business and forced people throughout New England to stop using styrofoam as part of their dining experience. The astute among you will likely surmise that they switched to ... that's right, paper plates. And now I'm here in a state that's not even part of New England and I'm being forced to participate in mass deforestation all because I'm trying to not eat less healthy and the people that own this cafe fired their illegal immigrant dishwasher and started shopping at one of the seventeen 99 cent stores on Havemeyer St. between Grand and Broadway because they finally realized that giving away internet access doesn't make them enough money. Wow. Apparently everyone really does win in a free market.
And speaking of winners, I'm not even going to comment on the fact that I just overheard a woman say that her boyfriend lost 100 pounds in 60 days by only consuming juice.
In today's episode of "Rock And Roll Saved My Soul, Or So I Hope"... I offer you the following historical nugget from our good friends at VH1 that's sure to impress all of your annoying nieces and nephews over the forthcoming Holiday: 'In 1981, fifteen-year-old Christopher Tyrer sees the metal group Saxon in Wolverhampton, England and head-bangs along to their set. When he wakes up the following morning, Tyrer discovers that he is paralyzed down one side and can't speak. His condition deteriorates and dies on Christmas Day. A coroner rules it was "death by misadventure."'
And finally, here's a human interest story that's actually kind of interesting.
Oh no, wait, this is the human interest story I thought was interesting:
Oh no, wait, I think it was actually this one:
Oh no, wait, this is actually the one I was thinking of, even though it's gonna be way too long for you:
Mwah!
M
P.S. http://mirror.wikileaks.info/
P.P.S. http://mirror.wikileaks.info/
P.P.P.S. http://mirror.wikileaks.info/
P.P.P.P.S. http://mirror.wikileaks.info/
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. The following "P.S." completes my Christmas shopping list ...
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. The following digital representation of a receipt entitles me to an 8x10 autographed photo of Tony Hawk.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Speaking of online Christmas shopping for the greedy sonofabitchofaboss that you'd naively hoped would not make you want to barf every time you walk into the office to find him glued to his 81" iMacProBookAir perusing the finer details of Facebook pages of women half his age ...
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. You should totally use the convenient link to amazon.com provided here, free of charge by me, in the bottom right margin of this page to buy all those cases of overpriced wine.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. dhjlsfkgsyoiufghs.dfgjh;sdfigsdjfgsdfigsfdgjsdfgusdhgsdfgnlsjdfglsdfgwer'qfdhawkjfbdskfgf.
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