More subway thoughts: Both grilling (questioning intensely) and roasting (gently or harshly mocking) are terms we use about people – why are we comparing ourselves to food so frequently? And are grilling and roasting (food version) comparably similar/different to grilling and roasting (people version)?

Why don’t we talk about boiling people, or baking them? I guess we do talk about getting baked. And hammered! And, come to think of it, nailed (and…banged? No; I don’t think people get banged. They just bang)…so the major categories seem to be culinary processes and tools.

And screwed!

Other things people and comestibles get: cured, creamed, fried…glazed? Frozen, poached, reduced, seasoned, steamed, thickened…

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Yesterday I was on the train on my way home, though in theory I was on my way to yoga. Yoga would require getting off the train four stops sooner than I would if I were planning to go home, put on a panda suit and relax, which I kind of was. I knew that I would be glad *after* going to yoga, and that I would be content while there, but the idea of going was so much less appealing than going home where there was heat and food.

Because I felt myself wavering and in danger of skipping it, I fairly flung myself off the train at the yoga stop. I could have feasibly gotten off the train and then back on, or even waited for another train–i.e. my opportunities to skip yoga wouldn’t be extinguished–but I knew I wouldn’t. As soon as I stood up when the train pulled into the station, yoga was as good as done. The hard part was making a decision that felt irrevocable.

It was like asking someone to prom: I knew that if I could steel myself up enough to say “Hey, _______?” the thing would be set in motion and I would have to go through with it. Again, I could have backed out somehow, but that would have required more effort–coming up with some other reason I would have been calling this guy over, which I generally didn’t have unless I wanted to broach a discussion about Latin club.

(Fact: when I was back from college one summer and learning how to parallel park, I was startled to encounter my prom date driving a tractor. I backed over one of the bottles of Tide my mom had set up in lieu of cones, and none of us noticed that I had punctured it until I was back at college and it leaked all over my closet. Other fact: I did not go to prom the following year–my senior year–but instead went to dinner with friends and then gathered at one girl’s house to watch Silence of the Lambs and eat Teddy Grahams. We weren’t trying to make any kind of statement; we just had never seen it and figured we shouldn’t go to college so unenlightened.)

I’ve tried to figure out what that kickstart is for writing–what locks me into it (I am not one of the lucky and prolific naturally diligent writers. I like *having done it,* and sometimes doing it, but I don’t ever like STARTING to do it). I think at this point it’s setting a timer. My data is limited (I was recently going by number of pages revised or by word count rather than time spent) but I don’t think there’s ever been a case in which I set the timer and then just sat there.

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The other night I came home to a noise emanating from either inside of our apartment walls or the apartment above us. It sounded like the middle part of a Venn diagram showing the overlap of rusty pipes, angry ghosts/bees/ghost-bees, and oversized appliances. If our apartment was a face, the alcove where the washer and dryer sit would be the mouth, and last night it would have been screaming.

This was an especially unwelcome development because it was paired with the semi-regular, fully terrible chemical smell that sometimes comes up from the nail salon below us. They moved in in January and opened in February, and before they had their full ventilation system working my room was uninhabitable unless I kept the window open at all times. Now the toxic stench only makes its appearance (what is the word when it’s not actually appearing, but scent-ing? I know! It makes its a-scent to the second floor) every few weeks, but lately I’ve been waking up with a headache that returns in the evenings.

And the best thing for a headache, of course, is industrial-strength wailing within your walls.

I thought of this today in yoga because, somewhat unexpectedly, the teacher started to play the didgeridoo while we were in sivasana, and the sound was very similar, albeit more pleasant.

I once tried to learn circular breathing at the music camp where I worked. In the end, I was able to complete one circular breath at a time, and then had to stop. That is, I could do more than someone who couldn’t do it at all, but not enough to really claim I could circular breathe. It was like being able to juggle…but only with two objects. Kind of like the real thing, but not really crossing the threshold.

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A few weeks ago I was passing the time by trying to glean a pattern from the letters that are often paired with “J” for nicknames (BJ, RJ, DJ, CJ). You might think it’s the “Eeeeee” sound, but a) that’s probably the most common characteristic for letters of the alphabet, period; b) then you get to “MJ”

(And if you’re quicker on the uptake/more systematic than I am, you…get to “AJ first”)

Let’s see:

“A” and its rhymers: AJ, JJ, KJ,

“B” and its rhymers: BJ, CJ, DJ, EJ, PJ, TJ, (VJ?)

In their own categories:

MJ

OJ

RJ

Haven’t heard/can’t really imagine plausibly: FJ, GJ, HJ, IJ, NJ, QJ, SJ, UJ, WJ, XJ, YJ, ZJ

I’ve heard LJ but mostly as a nickname for someone with two first names/compound first name, and more on the internet as shorthand rather than spoken aloud. I don’t think I’ve ever met or read about a VJ, but it sounds natural to me. That may be primarily because I’m used to hearing Vee-Jay, like MTV VJ, as a title, or because of the name Vijay, even though the stress (and sound of the first syllable) is different.

So WHY don’t we hear the ones we don’t hear? (And I’m sure they exist in small numbers–I think there’s an author who’s SJ something–but for my own limited purposes I’m terming these “highly uncommon” in comparison to DJ and MJ and their ilk)

Some of them are easy to reconcile: UJ, QJ, XJ, YJ, and ZJ are not going to be common because U, Q, X, Y, and Z names are already less common. There’s a smaller pool to draw from even before nicknames come into play.

GJ  is hard to say because phonetically, “Gee” starts with a “j” sound (I need an IPA keyboard…). WJ is easy to explain; W has more than one syllable, making it a poor partner. IJ sounds funny because the letters are already adjacent in the alphabet.

That leaves us with FJ, HJ, and NJ. You could argue that HJ doesn’t sound that different from AJ, which is true, and that therefore we should meet HJs more often (I just realized that doesn’t quite sound right, but then, look at how many people/stores are named BJ). I would be willing to venture, though, that there’s something about the “chuh” sound at the end of pronouncing the letter H that makes it more difficult to move directly on to the juh sound of the J. FJ? I guess you could make a similar, but weaker argument about transitioning from the “ph” at the end of F to the juh.

NJ, though? Nothing, phonetically, seems to really distinguish it from MJ. So…why don’t I know more NJs? (Not that I know handfuls upon handfuls of MJs, but I know of a few).

This post is titled “Big ABCs” because initially I was thinking about which letters are most frequently paired with “Big,” as in “The Big C” (both TV show and, minus “The,” a grocery store in Bangkok) or similar. I think I came up with real-life examples for A, B, C, D, J, L, and O). Maybe they comprise, unsurprisingly, the same letters that are most often paired with J, and those are just the favored alphabet pieces for any task?

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The other day as I completed my Duolingo practice, I asked myself, Will I ever really need to know how to say “this theory describes liquids” in Russian? Or “We need to measure the size of the particle”?

(I’ve reached the “Science” section of the app; other upcoming lessons include “Politics,” “Justice,” and “Nothing,” which I assume will teach me to write about existentialism in Cyrillic. In my Mandarin course, there’s a section on “Existence,” which promises much the same.)

My answer to my rhetorical questions was “Surely not!” until I overheard the following in my apartment this morning, re: one roommate welcoming another to share his milk:

“Feel free to be communist about it”

“Go ahead and milk my udders”

Communism. Liquids. The only thing missing is the theory. OR IS IT?

Then there’s me, who has spent the morning asking roommates to come smell my room to check for cigarette and/or chemical odors. Is someone smoking in the nail salon beneath me, and is their ventilation system actually getting rid of the acrylic glue fumes? Or am I breathing in measurable carcinogens? I think we need to measure the size of the particle…

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I’ve been flossing every other day for the past month, which is probably up there with the longest stretch of time I’ve managed to floss regularly. I still have to force myself to sit through the whole cycle of the electric toothbrush, though.

My poor dental hygiene habits aside, the new flossing habit got me thinking about the differences in our responses to negative reactions associated with doing certain things. That was a number of empty phrases! Let me be more concrete. For example: if you floss and your gums bleed, I think the conventional wisdom is that they’re bleeding because you don’t floss enough, ergo sudden flossing is trauma, and ultimately this all means you should be flossing more often. If you do, your gums will get used to it and stop bleeding (true, in my empirical sample of one).

But the opposite seems to be the received idea for milk and milk products. That is, if you consume dairy and have digestive problems, no one says you should be consuming dairy more often. Typically, they would say your bad response to dairy means you should avoid it because it’s clearly causing you issues. However, I’ve found that the same holds true for milk-drinking that holds for flossing…when I drink milk consistently (as I did for, I don’t know, the first 21 years of life) I never had the slightest stomach pain from it. The first time milk/cheese/ice cream (and it was the whole trifecta in one meal) made me ill (and it was violent!) was when I had been living in Bangkok for six months, and had consumed very little dairy up until that visit to a touristy beach town, whereupon after finishing my gelato I realized that I was in serious trouble.

I think there’s probably a flaw in my logic/in my basis for comparing flossing and dairy consumption–that they aren’t a one to one comparison, there’s some other contributing factor–but I did wonder about the similarities, especially in light of the new “actually, we lied; you don’t need to floss” admission of a few months ago.

Other medical myths of my own creation, which seem logical to me but are based purely on musing and not medical knowledge:

Retinol/Retin-A: Okay, if the way it works is to turnover skin cell production, getting rid of the aged cells on the surface and bringing forth “youthful” cells…does that mean your supply of youthful cells is being artificially shortened? Surely there isn’t an *unlimited* supply…it seems like using a retinoid would just run you through your layers of “young” skin more quickly.

Resting heart rate/cardio: My heart rate varies between 72 and 80, which is on the high side. I get that higher resting heart rate = oh no, your heart is having to work harder!/you’re “using up” your lifetime supply of heartbeats! (yes, I know that’s not what doctors are literally saying, but it seems to follow). But the way to lower your resting heart rate is to do cardio regularly…i.e. raising your heart rate tremendously for periods of time. Couldn’t it be possible that athletes have low resting heart rates as COMPENSATION for how hard their hearts have had to work/how many beats have transpired during all of that peak heart-rate activity? Is this a chicken-egg situation?

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It’s day 2 of daylight savings, so of course I woke up with the Christmas song “Up on the Housetop” stuck in my head. This sent me into quite a rumination about WHY it’s up on the “housetop” instead of “rooftop”? Who says housetop?

Googling this troubling question only leads me to a “howstuffworks.com” explanation of how Santa delivers presents.

It does, additionally, clarify that the next lyric is “reindeer pause” not “reindeer paws.” HOOVES.

More housetop/rooftop conundrums via Duolingo, where I’m studying Russian and Mandarin: “An arrow hit him in the leg.”

IN the leg? (This comes from a Russian lesson titled “History and Fantasy,” so I guess this might be the fantasy part. In history, arrows just hit you on the leg.)

Then again…we do say “He was shot in the arm,” but I don’t know that I’d say “She was shot in the leg.” Shot in the thigh, yes, or the calf…am I just losing my mind due to daylight savings? I lost a whole hour that I could have spent thinking about prepositions.

The practice sentence that’s causing my possible change of heart (change OF heart, not change IN heart or change TO heart…) was “The warrior was shot in the arm.”

But I was thinking about this too much and got distracted, so I answered “The warrior was in the arm” and missed that question. That would be a sentence for fantasy, not history. The Greeks were in the horse; the warriors were in the arm!

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Student, describing one interpretation of the justice system and putting someone away for smaller but more convictable crimes: “Like when someone is a murderer but you can’t prove they killed someone, so you get them for taxidermy or something”

Student describing a marriage: “Then Lady Macbeth is like, did you kill him without me? FOMO.”

Train conductor, apropos of nothing: “People wobble but they never fall.”

My Fitbit, confusing because I was simultaneously getting a text message and thought the person texting was telling me, “One foot, two foot” or “One foot in front of the other” or “Right foot, left foot” or whatever Fitbit says when it wants you to get more steps.

I’m currently watching gymnastics (American Cup) without commentary, because I’m watching the International Feed, which seems to be available in the US but not…internationally. I have to say that while I sometimes don’t like the commentating, I much prefer watching with it. Even if it’s to disagree.

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Analog.

Overheard on the train:

One kid to another, describing a video game: “That’s the whole point. That’s the cool part about being a responsible dad.”

Overheard from my students:

High school student, reading Latin: “Delia, I only want to yoke oxen with you”

Student: —

Student: Chivalry isn’t dead!

11th-grade student, reading Sylvia Plath: “…and I eat men like air.”

Student: SENIOR QUOTE

There are deep thoughts and there are shower thoughts, but there are no deep shower thoughts. You need a bath for that.

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I thought I just heard my roommate say “Alexa, regime change,” but I’m thinking it was probably “Alexa, resume please.”

Also heard in my apartment: “Think about how much rendering must have gone into these breasts. They’re very…breasty.”

Speaking of the digital world–so, the advertising for Candy Crush has gotten a little…sinister and desperate, no?

I usually ignore The Listserve emails even though I haven’t bothered to unsubscribe, but this one entertained me. Derivative of Black Mirror, yes, but they got me with the “title” of their company…

Gravy is an afterlife social media platform that allows you to continue to connect after you cross to the other side.  By installing Gravy’s proprietary deep learning algorithms in all your current social media accounts, our app aggregates the entirety of your data into an AI replica of you that can continue to create, share, and connect with friends and family in perpetuity.

Gravy operates on a freemium model.  Once you’ve built your Gravy profile, browse the Gravy store and check out our constantly-growing of in-app content.  Choose your own skins, themes, add-ons, soundscapes, and page layouts.  We’re even offering reduced prices for our full CGI-suit VR pack, which allows users to create custom avatars that will be fully interactive once a user’s account activates.

Until now, death has meant the end of your social media presence.  You can’t engage with content if you’re not alive!  What will happen to the sum of your online activity once you cross the great divide of mortality?  Nothing will happen.  Your accounts will sit inactive like monuments to a static past in which you were alive, signposts to nowhere.  Your vibrant online life of today will stand forgotten like the ivy-festooned relics of yesterday, mere oddities on the roadside of life.  That’s why we made Gravy.

Create a free account today.  See where it takes you.  And think of the possibilities. Tomorrow might be the first day of the rest of your death.  Don’t be content for it to end there.

Gravy Corporation
The Beyond

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