Close, but subtly different.
I am so using that in exactly that fashion.
re misheard lyrics that portend a lifetime of loneliness -- as a teenager I heard the last line of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" as "You'll never find somebody to love" until I discussed this with a friend who explained to me the lyric was actually "You better find somebody to love."
For some reason, I almost never tear up while chopping onions. When I long ago worked fast food this meant that, in exchange for chopping the day's onions, I never had to chop any of the rest of the toppings, which took far longer.
I almost never tear up while chopping onions.
A clear sign of soullessness.
the old, crazy bachelor
Such impulses are universal among perceiving beings; being solitary just instantiates some of them. For the harried and the married, there is a cloud of virtual behavioral tics, restrained from actually flickering into being only by laziness or being late for something.
Um, cutting underwater? You fill the sink and chop away?
(I don't tear up, actually. But it's a handy trick.)
When I had my heart issues, the cardiologist's spent more time talking about how fortunate I was that I didn't need beta blockers.
I finally stopped him and said that,if it got to that point, I was cool with my heart being more important than my sex life. Apparently, cardiologists spend a lot of time talking about sex.
She told me it was over
And though this was something I had known long ago,
Still, I couldn't help but cry.
But, now, I remember I was chopping onions at the time.
3: Contacts? I never used to, and then I gave up contacts about five years ago, and now I do. They seemed to have a protective effect.
You fill the sink
Oh yuck. The sink is probably the most unsanitary place
in the typical home. The amount of compulsive bleaching and then rinsing to make this a good idea brings tears to my eyes.
I almost never cry while chopping onions. I have cried after chopping hot peppers. Do not touch your eyes if your hands have pepper juice on them! Do not touch!
7: Cardiologists are all blog commenters? Do they proffer dating advice, too?
I love how indifferent everyone is to Ogged's existential crisis, but we're terribly concerned about the poor onions.
Cats are the solution for old crazy bachelors. Dogs are more demanding and are almost like a relationship.
Note that most cat bloggers are married. Think what that says about their "marriages".
Emerson beat me to it, but I was just wondering whether we should buy Ogged a cat.
I'll chip in.
13: Eh, this post has been done before.
Houseplants or a pair of cockatoos. Or foster parenthood.
11: especially, do not put contact lenses in after chopping hot peppers. DO NOT.
Do not touch your eyes delicate parts if your hands have pepper juice on them!
Fixed.
Routine is a good thing, ogged. The constant lust for novelty and excitement is what leads some bloggers to become jaded husks of humanity at such a young age.
20: But what about your manly parts?
yeah, the insight about how you become old is dead on.
i ride a bike in the city, and so i think it's important to be visible.
i got this nice blinky light for the back of my bike.
then i put another one, a red one, on my back-pack.
then i saw a pair of smaller ones on sale, with clips on them, and it occurred to me that those would go well on my trouser-cuffs, to give that combination of light and movement.
and then it occurred to me:
you don't get to be the pathetic doddering old crank whose bike and person are festooned with blinky-lights all in one day. nor does you get there because of a flagrantly erroneous idea.
no; you get there bit by bit, and each step of the way seems very sensible, very well-reasoned.
also, it's important not to let the city remain littered with beverage containers. there's one there now. perhaps i should have a large green bag with me, too, in order to carry them. that's only reasonable.
23 is making me snicker out loud.
And as for 22, well, I can only say that he who jests about this has obviously never had an, ahem, interlude go awry due to a girlfriend's earlier kitchen activities.
Kid Bitzer makes me laugh out loud. Laughing with him/her, of course. Not at him/her.
24: I felt rude asking her to brush her teeth and use mouthwash beforehand, but hey, some things are too important to let decorum stand in the way.
17. pair of cockatoos
I thought we weren't suppossed to mention that Ogged has kissed a cockatoo. Not that's there's anything wrong with that.
I would wear my trousers rolled, if I had any trousers. Just kidding, I got a nice pair of jeans back in the closet for funerals & jury duty, and some with holes and ragged cuffs for the five cold days a year in Dallas.
I don't eat onions.
bob--you showed up just in time.
these young punks are laughing at us.
just because we're more practiced in the art of life.
but i know i can count on you to straighten them out,
and show them the difference between mere involuted eccentricity, and properly seasoned sagacity.
Contacts?
Contacts just delay the effect, so the sulfuric acid that makes you cry forms not with the moisture on the surface of your eye but with the moisture in your contacts. And then &mdash AAGH! FUCK! &mdash sulfuric acid in my contact lenses!
Some of us are excessively sensitive to onions and are plagued with a bothersomely active libido. Others, like Ogged, point the way toward transcendence.
Having a family doesn't stop you from becoming a crazy old person. It just gives you people to boss around. "No no, son, I told you that you have to put a fan behind you when you chop onions! Now you're just going to get all teary. Must I do everything for you!"
Somehow I had the sense that the older the onion(s), the more likely they were to cause tearing.
"Of the father of one of our friends, [dr. johnson] observed, 'He never clarified his notions, by filtrating them through other minds. He had a canal upon his estate, where at one place the bank was too low.--I dug the canal deeper,' said he."
it's the isolation that leads us not to clarify our notions.
and the worst unclarities are not of technical detail and
instrumental rationality, but of values and relative priorities.
Buy a cat!? There are always spares around. Plus Ogged is probably too persnickety to pass the demanding screenings of your average Bay Area SPCA.
34--
that's very kind, but after all i *am* merely echoing the aperçu that forms the core of ogged's original post.
if there's any difference, it's just that i'm more believable in the role of the crazy old guy.
I think anyone who lives by themselves falls into some odd routines eventually. Living with roommates (or a S.O.) after living by yourself is a real eye-opener as it throws a lot of those things into stark relief.
Um, cutting underwater? You fill the sink and chop away?
Tried that once. Unless I'm missing something, it makes it a lot harder to cut them more than once. (They float off the cutting surface.)
It apparently drives shivbunny up the wall that I frequently forget to put one of the covers back on my contact lens case after inserting the lenses in the morning. I have no idea why I do this.
it's important not to let the city remain littered with beverage containers. there's one there now. perhaps i should have a large green bag with me, too, in order to carry them. that's only reasonable.
I actually do pick up garbage and carry it around until I find a trash can. Yesterday, at the beach, it occurred to me that I should maybe carry a plastic bag inside my purse for just this purpose.
THAT SAID. Ogged has been the crazy person who needs everything *just so* ever since I've been reading this blog.
I was given cats by my co-blogger. Clearly he is trying to inflict crazy-old-bachelorhood upon me.
i thought only bachelorettes got cats.
also my last apartment had the vent/duct thing right over the counter in the kitchen, so as long as the air was on, no onion problems. now i just cut them really fast. Whats really fucking deadly is frying onions and chiles in oil with cayanne. that makes me cough like crazy
no; you get there bit by bit, and each step of the way seems very sensible, very well-reasoned.
This is the standard sociology of deviance analysis, used to explain, e.g., how people become committed to getting a sex change operation or what have you.
I'd become the old, crazy bachelor who does everything just so, and dreams up ingenious solutions to non-problems because he's got nothing but time and nothing to take care of but his own space and body
Of course, with a partner much the same thing happens, except you become a pair of old coots, instead of just the lone coot. Think of how most everyone has stories of the batshit things their parents used to do that just drove people nuts, etc.
Living with roommates (or a S.O.) after living by yourself is a real eye-opener as it throws a lot of those things into stark relief.
You know what else is interesting? Being a houseguest. You're either staying with someone who trusts you to get their various weirdnesses and/or house quirks, someone who refuses to reveal them to you and instead goes around adjusting everything you've done.
I seem to have run into a lot of the former type.
I don't know what the association of age with *just so* should be. It's true that my parents had many such features, but I'd be surprised if they got worse with age, merely more obviously out-of-sync with those around them. My dad would change into the lane from which, many miles later, he'd be turning, and would suggest to me when I drove that I do the same.
But I've known young people like that, and on the other hand I could use a little more imposed order in my life yet.
I think company and needing to adapt and keep adapting to other people is healthy for sure, although not just for this. This *just so* might be a sign of somebody withdrawing, at whatever age.
We discussed impenetrable houseguests last week. I want to be the guy it's easy to talk to about what I'm doing if I'm ever in that position, but don't know how to give off that vibe.
What the heck is this post about?
Solitary idiosyncracies? I tilt all the lampshades for maximum chiaroscuro(?). I have many cheap throwrugs to avoid vacumning. I freeze my water bottles half full, then top from water cooler.
I got the only room with a northern window, which I leave open all winter. I like it around 50, wrap myself up in afghans, and overclock the computer til it screams. Whole neighborhood gets my music.
Tryin to think of eccentricities shared with partner. Nuthin. She keeps me a lot cleaner than if I were alone. A lot.
especially, do not put contact lenses in after chopping hot peppers. DO NOT.
Last time I chopped chillies, I tried to get my 5 year old to take my contacts out afterwards. (I wear daily disposables, so I wasn't worried about what she might do to them.) She couldn't quite bring herself to squeeze hard enough to pick them up so I had to wash my hands several times and hope for the best.
An Ani diFranco song warns that "old age will distill you." Now I'm extra careful to try to break the routines: I find that living with flat-mates helps you keep expectations in flux. It's extremely challenging, but it keeps you on your toes and reminds you that gunky toothpaste on the tube cap is NOT the end of the world (no matter how much I HATE it, but not re-filling the Brita once you've emptied it, now that's a different story. Grrrrr.)
About the cat thing: I've received two cats and a herb garden from exes. I'm starting to think they are trying to tell me something....
got bad news for you, lucy.
old age will get you stuck in routines and fix your expectations.
there's pretty good evidence for that.
but will breaking routines and unsettling your expectations prevent old age?
not much evidence of that.
here's ben franklin on trying to acquire the virtue of orderliness and routine:
"In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it. "
without routines, the effects of age are more severe. you get older quicker.
now if i could only find my keys.
53: Of course routine is important. I doubt that anyone could live routine-free. Even not having a routine becomes routine. However, some of the most aged people in my life are actually the most youthfull. For example, a good friend of mine has just celebrated his 63rd birthday, yet he is "in the loop" much more than I am. He's always got a finger on the parties that are going on, and on occasion puts me to shame on the dancefloor.
He's also one of the least jaded people I know. He carries an infallible hope and trust in the human ability for kindness that I can't help but look at him askance sometimes. Which leads me to believe that you can choose how old age will "distill" you (as Ani so aptly puts it.)
Nothing can prevent old age, nor would I want anything to. My ever more frequent wrinkles are my own, and I hold them close to my increasingly wrinkled heart. But you have to decide how you want experiences to affect you.
i think that's a very useful observation, lucy.
Yes i also think its true more than i realize.
My nurse friend likes to tell the story of a patient who had been prescribed capsaicin for topical pain relief. He was apparently quite irate when he decided to go the bathroom after having used it.
I actually enjoy capsaicin on my balls.
re: onions.
Keeping them in the fridge makes a massive difference. They don't make your eyes water if you chop them straight from the fridge. Admittedly, I don't generally get watering eyes from onions anyway, but keeping them in the fridge minimizes it even more.
re: chillies, why not just wear rubber gloves? After a couple of nasty chili-finger incidents [eyes and other 'delicate parts'] I always wear gloves unless I know the chillies are mild. I've also heard that rubbing a little olive oil on your hands before chopping stops the capsaicin oil adhering to the skin so it's easy to wash off.
Onions?
Cut them under running water.
Existential crisis?
Get laid.
Simple.
re: 60
You can't properly cut onions under running water.
the old, crazy bachelor who does everything just so
Can I admit I'm a little jealous? I haven't done anything just so in nearly a decade.
59. The ex of a friend once advised me not to scratch my anus after chopping chillies in the nude. I pointed out that a better and more general rule might be not to scratch your anus while preparing food in the nude, but he couldn't see it. I think this outlook had a lot to do with his becoming an ex.
re: chillies, why not just wear rubber gloves? After a couple of nasty chili-finger incidents [eyes and other 'delicate parts'] I always wear gloves unless I know the chillies are mild. I've also heard that rubbing a little olive oil on your hands before chopping stops the capsaicin oil adhering to the skin so it's easy to wash off.
I hate wearing gloves, and I've ever tried the oil trick, but washing your hands, drying them not quite thoroughly, and then rubbing some salt into them before commencing chopping definitely wards off the chilies buring your skin, and seems to make the washing up afterwards easier and more efffective too.
Also, lemon juice (or lime or other citrus, or other weak acids like vinegar) is a good antidote to capsaicin burning your mouth or hands or other delicate parts, although I'm not sure squirting lemon juice in your eye is a good remedy for that particular version of the malady.
A little lemon juice on the anus, however, is a delightful way to eliminate that not-so-fresh feeling when cooking chilies in the nude.