Mysteries of the Universe

Most days, I wander carefree down the corridors of life, stopping only to smell the flowers, hug the children, and high-five my teammates after every play, no matter how badly we messed it up.

(OK, I don't smell the flowers. With my allergies, any indiscriminate pollen inhalations would result in migraines, clogged sinuses, and the kind of brain-dead incoherence you normally only get from meth users and congressmen. And I only hug children with whom I have avuncular relationships; I'm no Walter Mondale or anything. But you get the idea...I'm normally a happy-go-lucky fellow. Let's move on now, shall we?)

Some days, though, I gets myself to ponderin'. Something happens that makes me think deeply about the mysteries of life. And for some reason, those questions seem to occur most frequently when food is being prepared.

Which brings me to the main point of today's lecture: Happy Birthday America! Whoo hoo! Fourth of July! Is this a great country, or what?

I hope you all got to watch fireworks, listen to Ray Charles, enjoy some baseball, and make disparging remarks about all the crappy countries who care about soccer and speak languages that no one can understand. And I hope you got to eat lots of good ol' American picnic food.

And therein lies one of the food preparation mysteries I was talking about: Why do we eat (and indeed love) hot dogs, when we know what's in them?

I don't have the answers to any of my Independence Day food-related mystery questions, but I'll leave you with a few others to ponder as we resume the long holiday-free period that extends over the next few months:

How does pudding work? I was making some the other day, and it began to mysteriously thicken as I stirred it. The ratios of liquid to powder just don't seem to provide the proper bulk for it to gelatinize the way it does...and I find this very strange and improbable. I mean, with ice cream, it kinda makes sense; you're freezing the stuff -- so you expect it to thicken. But the pudding is just sitting there in a bowl on the cabinet and growing spongier by the second. Weird.

I probably don't want to know the science, although as it is with hot dogs, the grossness of pudding technology probably wouldn't keep me from eating it. Same with Jell-o.

And why is it that my clothes seem to get small colored spots all over them every time I prepare food in the kitchen? Hmm. I do not know.

And the final mystery I'll leave you with today: How can a person live in a place for years, and then suddenly find himself walking directly into the corner of the kitchen cabinet with such force that he screams in pain and squats on the floor sobbing for the next 10 minutes? Um, this is a rhetorical question, of course, since I would never do such a thing, what with me being a finely-tuned athlete and all. But I'm sure you know someone who has done it, and are just as curious as I am about the physics (and/or metaphysics) involved.

(By the way, that giant bruise on my hip is from where I got hit by a, um, baseball. Yeah, that's it...I was just walking down the street smelling flowers and junk when WHAM! -- it came out of the blue like Skylab. But don't worry, it'll heal.)

Anyway, I hope you all had a fabulous Fourth, and will continue to enjoy picnics and stuff throughout the remains of the summer. Have a great day!