Frog Sauce

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It’s kind of like trying to imagine your own death. You can’t do it. No matter how many deaths you may have seen. Plants. Insects. Animals. Humans.

Even if you’ve witnessed the demise of other humans, you’ll be disarmed to try to imagine your own. You’ll suddenly find yourself out of imagination ammunition. You’ll be impeded by your subjective minutiae—every emotion, sensation, determination, and mental construct—we try to inject them in the scenario, ’til the scenario breaks down.

I call it Frog Sauce. Frog secretion is real enough. Its essence is to cause hallucinations in whatever animal comes in contact with it. It’s that natural defense that certain tree frogs have that coats their skin—and to which the frog itself is somehow immune. Lots of questions should immediately pop into your head. Does that happen for you? When I hear some cooly info about some living organism or scientific fact (and even “scientific facts” hee-hee-ha-ha-ho-ho…foo!), I suddenly have a head full of questions. The questions that come to my mind on this one:

Does the frog even know that he is a four-legged drug pusher?

Does the frog ever affect other frogs?

When the frogs are born, do they have this natural defense, or does the process take time? Are younger frogs more potent? Are older frogs impotent? Are pollywogs hyperactive?

Do any other self-destructive animals besides humans ever lick the frog on purpose?

Why do I trip about frogs when I only mean Frog Sauce metaphorically?

 

The “frog sauce” is not the defense, but the idea. That’s why it’s Frog Sauce. It’s all those things that we title and align and robustly define within our minds. It’s all those things so defined that they still elude us. We think we know so much about some distant thing, only to find we’ve been covered in it our whole life.

There’s a mathematical formula for Frog Sauce. It goes a little like this:

For every [ngleekh] there is an unequal, yet necessary [horkh].

 

Read that however you want, because my Frog Sauce is definitely not the same as yours.

 

How To: Debate with Humor

peekholesI tell this joke a lot. It never really happened, but I tell the joke so much, I think people might get the idea that it really went down the way I tell it.

So I was walking down the street and I see this friend of mine coming the other way. This friend of mine told me a long time ago he’s an atheist. We waved at each other and walked up to each other as if to talk, but when he got close enough, I kicked him in the shin really hard. He lurched away shocked and screamed, “Oh my God! What’d you do that for?” So I pointed my finger at him and said, “Ha! I caught you.”

The point of the joke is that even a self-professed atheist will often use the name “God” or “Jesus” in their everyday speech. And the question begged seems to be: Don’t they see the contradiction?

In reality, I have one friend that I know is a confessed atheist. He really does claim to not believe in God, and it takes all of my will-power to not ask him about the specifics of the god he doesn’t believe in. I’m really trying hard not to entrap him like that, because if your friend the “a-the-ist” starts defining God, or any god, you’ve got your friend in that predicament of listing attributes he should have already denied.

Despite my efforts of curbing my prankster self, there is very little wrong with debating people through your sense of humor. Case in point: my “agnostic” friend.

In the real world, I also have an agnostic friend. She has a more cyclic belief system. She says she believes that no one can know God–“if there is one.” Sometimes you can visibly see her facial expression change as she believes in God and then disbelieves. I don’t think it’s funny at all, or rather, I don’t make fun of her about it, but she laughs it off. Could she take on a debate with humor? Absolutely. And I think that makes a world of difference. If you can discuss a subject with someone, and you can both have fun with it, then you’ll both be winners at the end, even though debates are supposed to end with one winner and one loser.

Keeping with the theistic/atheistic theme here, I like to point out to atheists that the word a-the-ist can be broken down exactly like that. The T-H-E in the middle of that word means god (from Greek the or theos, meaning: god). So it’s kind of ironic, and definitely contradictory, that a person who doesn’t believe in a god of any kind would place a reminder of God right in the middle of their chosen name. Even better, the end of the word, the I-S-T part, means a person who adheres to a belief system. So even though the atheist believes there is no god, the atheist still has a belief system, a creed.

I know quite a few more jokes about atheists, and a few about God-fearing folk as well, but I think I’ll share those some other time. For this barchive, I want to end with a quote from Oscar Wilde:

“The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else…”

I’m not even sure he said that in seriousness or facetiousness, but it does seem like people* these days are cultivating that feeling, aren’t they?

 

*Especially me.

Fitness in Space

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Treadmills. Ellipticals. Recumbent bikes.

All things of the past.

When we, the human race, go exploring the spaces between planets, we’ll need some exercise routines to help us prevent bone loss. Plus we might need to be fit when we get to wherever we’re going.

Spherical mills with artificial gravity will be great for lower body work. They’ll keep us toned in our glutes and calves and quads as we try to maintain our balance atop a rotating sphere big enough for four people. One of the fun parts of this exercise will be to try to make other users lose their balance.

Resistance will be key to a lot of our weight-training exercises, so of course no bearings will get any grease. Anything with a tendency to oxidize will have its oxidation potential maximized, to create even more resistance. Moving parts on our weight equipment will not ever be lubed, but sprayed with oxidizing agents to promote the rust. Better still, we’ll just spray things down with a shaken can of Pepsi. Then all the moving parts will be sticky. We’ll never wash it off and let the cosmic dust collect inside. Would a can of Pepsi make it all the way to outer space? Would some enterprising scientist conduct an experiment to find out the answer to that question? Thanks.

Of course, there will be a few of us who take advantage of the weightlessness of space and we’ll do a lot of “heavy” lifting of objects hundreds of times bigger than us. Then we’ll holler out to our buddy, while we have the satellite over our head, “Hey, take my picture!”

Whatever. It’s still a workout.

Protein pills. We’ll also swallow lots of protein pills.

That’s all. The future is in a pill.

 

 

What to do with yer Bot

robot-2657140__480What to do with yer bot:

1. First you have to buy one. There should be a local bot store near you. Check the infonet for locations.

2. Cajole it. Don’t know how to do this? You’re already an irresponsible bot owner. (Just kidding. See the * below for a brief definition.)

3. Feed it Nanobytes brand bot feed.

4. Change its papers. You know. The papers in the bottom of its cage.

5. Comb its furry parts. Oil its scaly parts. Trim its claws. File its hardnose off.

6. Exercise it. Take it out for walks every day. Let it defecate on the neighbor’s lawn.

7. Shave the yakky parts. Ignore the gnuey parts.

7.5 Never put it in a cage.

8. Ride it like a horse until it’s nearly dead.

9. Vacuum out the pillow bed you’ve made for it in the garage. Let it rest.

10. When it’s rested and looking healthy, sell it at the bot farmer’s market.

11. Buy a new one.

12. Cajole it.

 

*Cajole: 1. Coax. 2. Lie. (So you either coax yer bot, or you tell it lies, whichever meaning of the word cajole you prefer.)

A Playlist for Weight Lifting

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Not too long ago I saw an article on a fitness web site that claimed to have a “manly” “get-your-pump-on” playlist. They claimed it was a great playlist for lifting weights. Featured were some seriously unmanly artists like Marshall Mathers and some other goofy kid with the last name Dogg that I’ve already forgotten. I’ll admit that human tastes run to every end of the musical spectrum. But here’s a clue for you: silence. What does silence mean? Especially when you show someone the error of their ways, which I tried to do in a comment on their site.

Silence, in this case, means they had no rebuttal to offer. Did they even look at my comment? I wonder. The only satisfaction I have is that there were no replies but mine when I left the site. There could have been some later, but I haven’t visited since. I must have been one of the first to see the article, and in defense of the web site, I so wanted for them to have some good suggestions. I clicked their link, didn’t I? They had me visiting their site, but then they let me down.

One of the other suggestions on the playlist they created was AC/DC. It stuck out like an elephant trying to hide among hippos. So here’s what I had to say about that.

“I find it interesting that your playlist contains both Eminem and AC/DC. These are complete opposites. Eminem even describes himself as ‘slim’ and ‘shady’, two words that describe turds really well. But none of his songs really get my ‘pump on’, if you know what I mean. I would use other words to describe his music: words like flaccid, querulous, and pusillanimous. AC/DC, on the other hand, I would describe with words like priapic, energetic, and yes even manly. Their music could be included in a pumping-iron playlist, though I might choose a whole different set of songs. I tried to listen to some of the selections you have on this list, but they made me feel like a nervous butterfly. How’s a nervous butterfly going to lift anything? Hells bells! next time warn me that your playlist is for children who don’t know the difference between Eminem and AC/DC.”

Okay, granted that might have come off a bit over the top critical, but they gotta understand, don’t they? Do you think they actually use their own playlist when they exercise, or were they just aiming for a demographic? If it’s the latter, then I hope some of that younger generation demographic reads my comment and understands those words I used. They’ll get the difference eventually. Sooner’s better than later, though.

Of course I’d be a fool and a hypocrite if I didn’t include my own preferred playlist. Feel free to criticize it. You know I would.

“Breakdown” by The Blackwater Fever

“Back to Shalla Bal” by Joe Satriani

“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” by Jimi Hendrix

“Freedom of Expression (F.O.X.)” by Living Colour

“Mr. Surfer Goes Jazzin’ ” by The Brian Setzer Orchestra

“Grinder” by Big Black

“Mexicola” by Queens of the Stone Age

“Dialectic Chaos” by Megadeth

“Water” by ohGr

“Hey Man, Nice Shot” by Filter

“Sunburn” by ohGr

“Do the Evolution” by Pearl Jam

“It Ain’t Like That” by Alice in Chains

 

As a final note, I have a friend who gets his “pump on” every day. He’s huge. He would make a playlist containing only Slipknot songs. How do I know this? I asked him. He’s that guy you see at the gym lifting the entire weight stack. Anyway, I’m not saying that listening to Slipknot will make you huge. I’m not saying that the playlist I made here will get you pumped either. But I will say that you’ll get a lot more confident in your weight lifting with songs that were made by confident artists. Try to stay away from any music that uses the word “bitch” in it. That’ll shrink your wank like an old man in a saltpeter sponge bath.