Masticatory Musings

Evolution is a funny thing. Its sole purpose is to promote the survival of adaptable species while allowing the retarded, worthless species that have somehow managed to make it as far as they have to die off in a decidedly unsatisfying yet appropriately inconspicuous puff of smoke. Basically, evolution's job is to be the bouncer at a popular but horrifyingly douchey night club: if you're not awesome enough to be on the list, get ready to be turned away in a flurry of public shame and very large fists.

In any case, we humans are supposedly relatively highly evolved. I say "supposedly" because in my comparatively short existence, I've seen enough slobbering, swivel-eyed mouthbreathers to question seriously whether evolutionary biologists have spent all these years just sitting around swilling Schlitz while thinking up the best way of playing a monstrous joke on the rest of us. Then again, the fundies have already beaten me to this possibility (albeit with an entirely different agenda in mind), and I try to make it habit not to side with brainless jerks.

Anyway, evolution has, in its own spectacular little way, provided our species with certain convenient little features that make our meaningless, tortured lives a bit more prolonged so that we can bestow life on a few poor bastards relegated to their own meaningless, tortured existences, mainly just to get back at them for being younger and more attractive than we ourselves have become. Evolution has given us things like bipedality. Speech. In the case of a few lucky humans, complex brains. And my personal favorite, the ability to chew things with our pukesome, germ-ridden gobs closed.

If there's one thing I hate, it's sitting down to dinner, thoroughly enjoying the fact that some poor slob other than myself has slaved over making my meal, only to turn my head and see some disgusting creature chomping away with its gaping maw open so wide that it seems seriously in danger of turning its head inside out. It's not that I frequent stockyards or farmyards or whatever kind of yards animals are kept in; these are the pitiful excuses for sentient beings that can be found just about anywhere there's food.

Here's the thing: I may be a complete moron when it comes to a lot of things, but I do know that humans are equipped with the capacity to feed without displaying the half-masticated contents of their vile blowholes. Why, then, do people feel the overwhelming urge to smack and slurp away, spraying flecks of saliva-soaked fodder all over everything and everyone within a 10-mile radius?

Because they're disgusting. Disgusting, self-important slobs. There, I said it. And I challenge you to come up with any kind of plausible proof that they're not. Thing is, I can't decide whether these monocellular slack-jaws are doing it on purpose ( "Look at me! I'm EATING! Lavish me with praise! I am a hero of the universe!") or whether they're just shamefully ill-mannered.

In any case, I propose that anyone caught slurping and smacking away like this in public should be hauled off and locked in a small dimly lit room with nothing but a knitting needle while the children's song "Frere Jacques" is piped in on a continuous loop. If after 72 hours they haven't poked out their own eardrums, they will be reintegrated into society under the condition that any further incidents of lip-smacking will result in permanent musical incarceration.

I have a feeling the ACLU won't like it, but then they hate pretty much everything.

You suck at driving, or: Get the hell out of the passing lane

Picture it: it’s a gorgeous autumn day, mid-morning, and you're driving down the freeway. Maybe you’ve got your window down, because gosh darn it, it’s just such a super-duper day outside and you want to enjoy it, by golly. The birds are singing. You’re singing along to whatever embarrassing music is on your iPod. Life is good.

You move over into the passing lane because, hey, you’ve got kind of a long way to drive, and maybe you want to cruise at 70mph. Meanwhile, the dim-eyed, slack-jawed simians who slid through the cracks at the DMV testing office—which coincidentally is also run by dim-eyed, slack-jawed simians—putter along at 45mph (on a 55mph highway, mind you) to their apeish little hearts’ content in the righthand lanes.

So far so good. But just as you’re feeling the wind in your hair and thinking about the delicious cup of coffee that awaits you at your destination, one of these idiots merges into your lane at a mindnumbingly slow speed, right in the middle of your soul-filled rendition of Journey’s classic hit “Don’t Stop Believin’”, causing you to slam your foot onto the brake and nearly have the front half of your head imploded by your own steering wheel. OK, you think, he’ll speed up—surely that’s why he merged into the passing lane.

Wrong. He merged into the passing lane because he’s a complete barking retard who clearly doesn’t understand the purpose of this particular feature of the American freeway system. For some reason, he can’t get it through his thick, nuclear warhead repellent brain housing that the passing lane is for passing. If it were known as the happy funtime going for a leisurely drive in the countryside lane, his actions might be justified. Even reasonable. You still might want to run him off the road in a fit of blinding fury and then punch him square in the face while belting out rock legend Bruce Springsteen’s anthem “Thunder Road,” but that’s neither here nor there.

So what do you do? This oxygen-sucking fleshbag is clearly oblivious to the fact that you have crept up dangerously close behind him, so you do a quick flash of your headlights to let him know you’re there. Sort of a non-verbal way of saying, “Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I believe you may have mistakenly entered the incorrect area for moving at a pace which is considerably slower than that of your fellow motorists. Might I ask that you kindly move over?” But of course, your polite request goes unnoticed—or ignored—by the thought-deficient sack of rocks before you.

You’re a law-abiding citizen. You’re an exceptional driver. So of course, under normal circumstances, you would never think of passing illegally on the right. But you’re desperate: your increasing pulse rate and steadily rising temperature indicate that a full scale meltdown is in your immediate future. You turn on your signal and look to your right. DAMN. As would be expected given your rotten luck, the next lane over is jam packed with an entire army of halfwits driving even more slowly than the beacon of stupidity in front of you. You flick your signal dejectedly into the off position.

So that’s it. You have no choice but to resign yourself to your torturous, slow moving fate. You’re reminded of one of those dreams where no matter how fast you try to run, it feels like your limbs are under water. Or encased in a block of stupid, stupid concrete. But this time, it’s all 100% real, and you’ve left your throwing knives at home. Again. So not only can you not hurl them with seemingly superhuman force at Retardo McMoron up there, you can’t even slit your own wrists with them. Maybe one of these days you’ll learn.

A revelation, perhaps...

I was contemplating some things today, and I kind of came to a realization--maybe due to the excellent scotch of which I partook last night, maybe due to the fact that my bitterness (realism?) has finally made me the wise old woman my friends claim that I am.

My realization is this: men don't want strong, intelligent women. They will always--always--say that they want strong, intelligent women. But the reality of it is, men want dumb girls with no goals (or at least ones who are dumber than they are) because those girls can be molded into the "perfect" mate. Dumb girls won't stand up for themselves because they think that their man knows best. Dumb girls won't argue a point because they are blissful in their ignorance. And dumb girls with no goals can never make more money than their man--the "provider." And the worst of it is, men like it that way.

Now one might ask, "But shouldn't a guy be flattered that a smart, independent woman is attracted to him? Shouldn't he feel like a superstar instead of running as fast as he can in the other direction?" Of course he should. But it's almost never the case because of one simple, stupid principle of human nature: a strong woman will threaten his masculinity. That's right, ladies--if you have brains and ambition, the world has doomed you to be single for life because Ugg over there thinks he might have trouble bashing you on the head with his club and dragging you back to his cave. If he were able to see out from under his brow-ridge, he might notice that you're beautiful, witty, intelligent, and an all-round awesome catch. But apparently you're just too highly evolved.

So what's the solution? Should we women try to pass ourselves off as blithering australopitheci? Should we stave off our outgoing, ambitious personalities in favor of simpering meekness? Should we hide our graduate degrees like we hide a zit (i.e. with lots and lots of makeup)?

I, for one, am not willing to do any of these things. Then again, I'm not really willing to die a lonely old cat lady either. There's got to be some kind of tradeoff, but hell if I can figure out what it is.

So, guys, we can't help being smart (and we shouldn't have to), but because we're smart, we all know that you're completely full of crap when you tell us you're "tired of games" and want a "strong woman who knows what she wants in life." What you want is a girl who doesn't think for herself but who looks pretty on your arm.

(I think I'm going to go read some Latin now or something...)

This is the reason I never keep journals...

...the reason being that I have good intentions, make a couple of entries, and subsequently become much too lazy to actually continue. But THIS time... this time will be different. I swear.

Anyway, rather than recap every detail of the past couple of months, suffice it to say the following: Syria was awesome. Great place (despite some pollution and garbage problems), great people (despite the guy at the visa extension office who seemed to think it necessary to stare at my boobs before finally looking at my paperwork), and really valuable archaeological experience. Oh yeah, and the "formal," the costume party, and other various weekend debauchery didn't hurt either.

Annnnd now I'm back to reality, trying to find some kind of decent-paying job (hopefully archaeologically oriented) that will tide me over until I can start a PhD program in a year. I've got a brand new game plan, though, and one that I think will be a lot more fruitful: I'm headed back to my anthropological roots and giving Classics the shove, though I still plan on working in the Greek/Roman/Near Eastern world.

I've also decided that this is the perfect opportunity to start reading all those classic books that I really should have read by now but that I've always managed to put off. First on the list is Moby Dick, and after that The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Finally, I'm headed back to Minnesota for a week at the beginning of August for a family reunion, which in and of itself sounds excruciating, but in actuality will allow me to get in some much relished swimming and fishing time at the lake. I hope they're getting the Sea King ready.

Damn Europeans, or: Thinking You're Smarter Than You Are

Ok, I'll just say it. I'm sick of the Europeans (and the Brits, since they don't consider themselves part of Europe) always jumping down the Americans' throats when we complain about our gas prices. Yes, we know that the price of fuel "over there" is twice what we pay here. But guess what? We in the US are pretty much forced to drive to most places we need to go, be it work, school, the grocery store, etc. Most of us aren't lucky enough to live in a self-contained, small town where everyone lives within walking/biking distance of everything. Hell, most of us aren't even lucky enough to live in a city that has a decent public transport system. Last time I checked, Europe and the UK had excellent public transportation, not to mention lots of small towns where it's actually feasible to go places on foot.

Blame suburban sprawl. Blame the size of the country. Hell, blame the government for all I care. But don't blame those of us who have no option but to drive our cars while the oil companies keep making excuses for why they "need" to keep jacking up our prices. Last time I checked, the price of oil was actually on the decline, yet they're already predicting that we'll be paying over $4/gallon by the end of summer. Why? Because it's summertime when lots of people do lots of driving, and they feel they can gouge us because we have no choice but to pay.

Ah, capitalism.

Leaving on a jet plane

I think it's probably a good thing that I'm finally done with school, for many reasons. One of which is the fact that I always forget how much work it is to get ready for a trip until one comes up again. I always end up scrambling about at the last minute, culminating in me having to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning the night before I'm supposed to leave on some ungodly 8:00am flight, which makes me pissy, which makes me argue about stupid things with the bitchy TSA people who all clearly suffer from delusions of grandeur.

But that's not the point. The point is that I've got two trips coming up, one to southern California for five days and the other to Syria for six weeks, and I'm determined that this time I'm going to be organized because really, I don't have much else to do these days. The funny thing is that while I love traveling, I hate packing and I really hate unpacking.

Now if I could only find a decent ticket into Damascus...

Well, I've finally done it

I've finally hit internet-rock-bottom. Not only do I have Facebook and MySpace accounts, but now I've got a blog of all things. What have I become? Surely not one of those annoying, cutesy, illiterate, mildly retarded attention-whores who ruin the internet for everyone by bogging it down with animated gifs with sparkles and various shades of nauseating pink, being sure to embed the latest seizure-inducing bubble gum pop chart-topper... right?

In any case, an intervention of some kind might well be in order.