Journal Entries
7-25-99, 9:54 A.M.
Posted Jul 25, 1999
I hope all of you out there are having as lovely a morning as I am! See, it didn't start out that great. (I was having a lovely dream and the fish tank woke me up.) But after a few simple steps, it was scrumptious! Here's how:
Step One: Take a shower. Even if you took one the night before, take another one. They make you clean and awake.
Step Two: Power up. Eat! Eat something that tastes good. Mornings are no time to diet.
Step Three: Have fun. Talk to somebody you like, go for a walk, watch a T.V. show, come to the Guide, whatever!
Step Four: Do everything else. You know, like cleaning, cooking, work, all that un-fun stuff. This step is OPTIONAL, and not a part of having a good morning. But it might be part of having a good tomorrow morning.
This may seem very simple, but it works for me. Thank you and Good Morning!
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Jul 25, 1999
7-24-99, 3:56 P.M. "Tapioca"
Posted Jul 24, 1999
Having just cooked (and consumed) a great deal of tapioca, I am struck by a thought. It doesn't happen that frequently, so listen to it...
I have been told that tapioca is from manioc root, which is extremely poisonous, some kind of acid is in it. In order to create tapioca, you have to scrape and pound and scrape and pound the root. I may be way off base here, but I think the premise is that it takes a lot of work to get food from this poisonous plant.
This isn't a modern-day invention, either. It was some tribe or other that worked it out. And my question was:
How?
Let's say that you're living in the jungle. You and your family are subsisting on roots, berries, fish, the usual. You find this nice-looking root that smells good (I'm taking liberties here. I have no idea how it smells.). You hack off a piece of it and hand it to your brother, who immediately dies a painful foaming death.
Point taken? Of course not. You scrape all the brown stuff off of the root and give an inner piece to your sister, who dies a horrible foaming painful death.
Not to be deterred, you whack the root with a rock until it's soft, then kill your father with it.
After a long period of working on this, and after killing your family, the root is finally edible. You enjoy a nice, solitary meal of "tapioca."
It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that just pops up randomly, does it? Was the jungle so barren that poison looked tasty?
My conclusions:
1. Mankind considers anything worthwhile as long as it has not been done before.
2. Tapioca is worthwhile (and yummy).
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Jul 24, 1999
7-24-99, 6:35 A.M.
Posted Jul 24, 1999
My chance to spout off? Sounds damn good to me. My particular gripe at this very moment is jet lag. It is unnatural for anyone under eighteen (and most over) to be awake early enough to see the sun rise.
I propose that we remove the concept of measured time altogether. It's overrated and people give it too much credit.
I refuse to wear a watch. Putting yourself in constant contact with "time" at all... times will make you grow old too soon.
Think about it. Time passes, whether we are measuring it or not. You've had days that seem to go on forever, right? And moments that you wish would never end?
There is absolutely no way to accurately decide when one unit of time begins or ends. The sun? Winter days are shorter, summer's are longer. The tides? From the time table in my hotel room at Spanish Head, OR, I'll assume that they're irregular as well. Your heartbeat? Speeds up, slows down, all the time. Without our little ticking machines, we don't exactly know when one day begins and another ends.
I'm sitting here right now beside one of those mechanical little timers where the dial spins around. It can measure an hour. I set it on fifteen minutes. Every once in a while, it stops ticking, and stops measuring time. To get it to work again, I have to give it a whack with a book. From this I have concluded that even our current methods of measuring time are wildly fallible and inaccurate.
And without the concept of measured time, everyone else on the west coast would be properly awake, instead of sleeping in until nine like I feel like I have.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jul 24, 1999
Lares-The-Lost
Researcher U50953
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."