Fauna No More

The other weekend, my roommates and I had a handful of friends over. In the course of our normal (or abnormal to any other reasonable person) conversation, the topic inevitably progressed to animality. For whatever reason, I have found myself in a congeries of conversations with this peer group, ranging from the reproductive nature of sea creatures to the posturing of quadrupeds during sleep.

So it was only logical that our conversation inevitably turned to a unique food item that speculators believed included animal product; the marshmallow. This stout cylindrical fluff, best known for its leading role in the delicatessen s’mores, was suggested to contain horse hooves. Amidst gasps and outright denials, stealthy investigation led to the conclusion that in fact, animal bones, skins, and hides are used. To top it all off, due to the extensive processing, the federal government does not even consider the marshmallow an animal product. Woof. (At least, that’s what I think the wolf said before he was skinned!)

I seemingly found this information fascinating and repulsive, and marshmallow abstinence is an early front runner for next year’s resolution. While recounting this story to my friend Ben, he decided to illuminate the fact that red velvet cake contains the food colorant carmine, which happens to be made from Central and South American ground beetles. Turning to my viral myth buster, Snopes, I once again felt victimized by this unpublicized reality. One might call this egoistic, seeing as the actual victim in this cake is the beetle.

Based on my fairly scientific research, this simple sample of two reveals that the fifth food group atop the pyramid is not fats, oils, and sweets, but rather horses, beetles and unicorns. It hasn’t been proven yet, but I’m putting money on nutritionists discovering traces of unicorn horn in that trendy cupcake shop down the street.

Iced Iced Baby

For the past few months, I have observed with awe and a tinge of fear as the frenzy of Bros Icing Bros catapulted to feature articles on CNN and in the New York Times. The novel concept behind Bros Icing Bros, the effeminizing of the masculine, the simplicity of the rules, has officially launched an epidemic that will likely result in the coming of the next Ice Age.

The game is summarized by two simple rules.

1. When presented with a Smirnoff Ice, the Bro must drink it while kneeling (Getting iced).

2. When getting iced, a Bro can present their own Smirnoff Ice to cause the initiator to be iced instead (ice block).

Since first being introduced to the game, I made two complementary lifestyle choices:

1. Never attempt to ice a bro, in a subtle attempt to forge an implicit strategic alliance with fellow bros so as to avoid all contact with ice.

2. Assist all bros in becoming self-sufficient. Example: Can you grab my hat while you’re over there? (Read: If you pick up my hat, you’ll be iced.) No.

Well, my chameleonic strategy of fading into the background has done nothing but backfire (or backice). In the span of one week, I have officially fallen victim to this bubbly cancer, not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times!

1. Reaching for a popsicle. Not content with the orange and grape flavors at the top, I scavenged for the green one all the way at the bottom. Digging my hand deep into the bag, Bam. Iced.

2. Yearning to fill the void in my stomach, I opened the microwave to heat some leftovers. Bam. Iced.

3. Opening what I believed to be a cooler full of sandwich essentials taken to the beach. Bam. Iced.

4. Grabbing a beer from the case in the refrigerator. Bam. Iced.

The troubling thing is that all four icings have resulted from need for nourishment. My analysis has concluded that only a strategy of starvation could have prevented these icings. I suppose the silver lining is that I’m playing in the minor leagues, with the standard 11 ounce Smirnoff Ice. The big deuce deuce would most certainly be my Waterloo.

Swindle Me This

The other evening, I was dining with an assembly of friends, enjoying my oven baked pizza, salami with fresh mozzarella and grana cheeses, and a sprinkling of grilled peppers, while making pleasant table conversation. Around the time the bill arrived, the conversation transitioned from politics jabber to credit card fraudulence.

Coincidentally, Molly, Kyle and I had all fallen victim to credit card fraud in the past few months. The fact that so many of us have become wounded soldiers in this hustle led me to believe that these thieves were becoming collectively more intelligent and furtive. But the deceitful charges led me to believe the contrary.

Exhibit A: Molly’s identity thief used her American Express card to make a $5 donation to the March of Dimes. While a thoughtful gesture, it is egregiously impractical; committing a felony without any personal payoff. Maybe this lack of practicality when it comes to personal finances is what landed you in need of this knavery in the first place. My personal belief is if you are desperate enough to need to surreptitiously borrow from someone else’s bank account, you’re not really in the position to be giving.

Exhibit B: When I called Wells Fargo to ask why all of my attempted charges were being denied, I was informed of the temporary hold they had placed on my card was a result of suspicious charges. Did you make an $8 charge for breast milk in Detroit, Michigan? This opened the floodgates for the litany of questions running through my head. Do you think I charged $8 for breast milk? You can actually buy breast milk? How much breast milk does $8 buy?

It appears that we’ve entered the age of the Skittish Swindler. What ever happened to the precept Go big or go home? I guess it’s been supplanted by Go big or March home and feed your baby.

Boinked

The point of competing isn’t to trounce the competition, but to elevate yourself. – Cherie Gruenfeld, Inside Triathlon Magazine

My friends Lee and Ryan (also former collegiate athletes who could single-handedly and single-leggedly out athleticize me), recently founded a sports event management group that specializes in producing and hosting triathlons. The name, Elevation Athletics, was partly inspired by the above quotation.

Not long after hearing about the organization’s first Triathlon, to be held in Waynesboro, Virginia, fish-bowl friends/foes Stuart, Rhino, and I fell victim to the Abilene paradox, deciding to participate in the sprint-triathlon, despite this decision being counter to each of our individual preferences of physical apathy.

Preparation: The sprint-triathlon was a combined 400 meter swim, 14.9 mile bike, and 5 kilometer run; the true antithesis of what I might deem sprintable. Against the imploring of Ryan to train for the tri, the three of us found ourselves 24 hours before the race, having collectively forgone all training. I later learned that boinking is the action verb commonly used to describe this extreme physical activity without physical preparation. Perhaps in an attempt to combat the inevitability of our impending death, the day before the race, Rhino stopped by the pool and swam a few laps, Stuart went for a three mile run (after which she admittedly nearly collapsed on her bedroom floor from exhaustion), and I went to my parent’s house to pick up my mountain bike, test riding it two houses down and back. My idea of a sprint-triathlon. We calculatedly decided that the three of us would take on the tri together and collectively cross the finish line as a team.

Start to Finish: Prior to racing, registrants were required to submit their personal 100 meter swim time, off of which the participant order would be determined. Seeing as I had never been timed in the 100 meter swim, I entered Slow as a snail, placing me right behind Stuart, whose 100 meter time was Very slow. Surprisingly, about 10 individuals were queued up behind us (likely due to day-of registration); God bless them. After completing the grueling swim (to which I was mentally hummed VV Brown’s lyric Baby there’s a shark in the water as a means of self motivation), we proceeded to the transition area to move to the bikes. Well, whomever was not ahead of us after the swim certainly surged past us in the bike.Not long into the biking, Rhino had a mountain bike malfunction, her gears getting stuck in a lamentably low gear, resulting in a comedic peddles-per-miles-travelled ratio. Proceeding into the final leg, we paced ourselves during the run (a 12:30 minute mile pace to be specific). We stopped at the final water station to rehydrate and stretch out, the embodiment of chatting around the water cooler, before the last push across the finish line. After all, we wanted to make sure we had enough energy to express our excitement when we crossed the finish line; we had quickly emerged as the fan favorites and did not want to disappoint!

Reflection: The term sprint-triathlon is very deceiving. I would have elected for something along the lines of Traithlong. But I am proud that we lived up the quotation…or at least the first part of it: The point of competing isn’t to trounce the competition, as we finished a respectable 2nd…from last place.

Dixieland Delight

The time finally came when my roommate Hunter and his beautiful fiancé Emily tied the knot. While I was incredibly happy for the two of them, I was less than happy about the prospects of losing the roommate (and his superior culinary skills). I was secretly hoping Emily would decide to move into the sunroom-converted-to-Hunter’s-room instead of losing both of them to the state of Tennessee. Apparently my persuasive argument wasn’t as bulletproof as La Roux.

Alas, the beautiful union did give me the chance to explore a part of the Dixieland I had never seen; Memphis. My overall impression of Memphis was that it met my general checklist of requirements for places I could live, to include outstanding barbeque, Beale Street (Memphis’ own Bourbon Street), and a religious edifice at every street corner.

I should have learned from the last wedding I attended not to wait until the week of the wedding to purchase a wedding gift. But, I was fooled yet again into waiting until the wedding week to gift hunt. As the famous saying goes, or so I remember Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again. Wise but inaccurate. Trying to maximize utility, and feeling a bit overwhelmed about wedding shopping, I outsourced the gift selection process to my friend Remy, whom I know would shop for wedding gifts as a career if someone offered her the job.

She informed me that the only gift in my price range was a $32 Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Nonstick Meatloaf Pan (which might be able to convincingly double as a banana bread pan). The likely reason for this being available at all was that it was on backorder and would not be available until one week after the wedding. Done.

In addition to the meatloaf pan, Kyle and I got the newlyweds a second gift.

Background: There are a school of angst-filled Mer-maids on our hall that have a skull and cross bones welcome (or not so welcome) mat. Whenever Emily passed this doormat, she made a point to crinkle her nose and stomp on it to demonstrate her disapproval. I too, hold a grudge against the mat, and have been known to take it captive on multiple occasions. My philosophy: If you act like a pirate, be prepared to play like a pirate; a little looting never hurt anyone. Kyle seemingly disagreed, and would within the hour, find my pilferage and return the mat to its proper post.

The Gift: Kyle did some investigative research and found an exact replica of the doormat, except for substitute the skull and crossbones with a smiling yellow face. So Kyle made the purchase, and one unassuming night, we visited the pirates down the hall to make the swap. This is what I would call a win-win situation. Emily will now have a sign to stomp on at her new home, and I now have a friendly face to greet me every day after work. :-{#}

Embassy Row

I often overlook and take for granted the history and beauty of Washington DC. As part of my personal initiative to learn more about the community I live in, I went with a group on an Embassy Row walking tour; what was pitched as a walk to Revel in the architecture along Washington’s grandest boulevard.

The tour began just outside the Dupont Circle metro stop, in a location I am all too familiar, as Dupont Circle is a nightlife hub. Not surprisingly, within two minutes of leaving the Circle, I found myself in a wonderland of beautiful buildings nestled among embassies I have never seen before. I was figuratively, and I suppose literally, in a foreign land.

The tourguide, a petite toady female named Terry with a quirky sense of humor, paraded us down this nouveau-riche thoroughfare, speaking to its heyday and its transformation to the current status as the home to many foreign embassies.

The expression most overused on the walking tour was As you well know. Similarly, the expression that made me most feel like a blockhead was As you well know, because inevitably, I didn’t ever know the bit of knowledge shared in the second part of the sentence. Credit for my favorite expression on the walking tour goes to the late Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who declared If you don’t have anything nice to say, sit next to me.

Interestingly enough, many of these ornate works of architecture made the home-to-embassy transformation during the Great Depression, with the families' fall from riches. Oddly juxtaposed to these stories stood the Greek embassy, or compound as it is known, because of its magnitude. I’m ready to make a down-payment on the Greek embassy. Last I heard, they were in the market for some extra cash.

Blades of Inglorious Bastards

I genuinely am trying to live the life of the normal twenty-something. But being twenty-something with braces sometimes places me in compromising situations that no twenty-something, or any-something should find themselves in. Such was the case the other afternoon when I decided to go for a run through Arlington after a day at the office.

In an attempt to pacify my rumbling stomach, I elected to eat a few pita chips before the run, and then changed into my mesh shorts and moisture-wicking tee. As many metal mouths will attest, it is a common practice to tuck a snack away for later, and I have developed a subconscious habit of rolling my tongue along the outside of my brackets to dislodge these savory morsels. Some call this disgusting, I call it survival.

Well, this subconscious act, not even one block into my run, did not have the usual happy ending. Instead, for lack of better terminology, I found my tongue blade (the membrane that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth) hooked onto my lower left bracket. (I’ve since come to learn from Kyle that this is called the lingual frenulum, but I prefer my edgier name; tongue blade).

I had to immediately turn around, unable to retract my tongue into my mouth; instead looking severely challenged. I was drooling uncontrollably, and simply praying not to pass anyone I knew…or anyone I didn’t know for that matter.

Once behind closed doors and in the comfort of my own apartment, I attempted to unhook my tongue, meanwhile using a hand towel to control my slobber, before giving up all hope and upgrading to a drool bucket.

I could compose a florilegium describing the different techniques I used to free my tongue from the brace’s wrath, but to spare the graphic details, suffice it to say, I found myself desperate for assistance and fearful of finding myself in urgent care. I immediately began texting my Mer-friends to enlist their assistance in my mini-emergency. Thankfully, my neighbor Ellen remained composed and was able to decipher my words through my mumbling lisp. She provided me with the exact assistance I needed to separate blade from brace.

Thirty minutes and only a few drops of blood later, my tongue was free from the metallic grasp. Seriously? Seriously. Oh well, live and learn right?