Muffins, She Wrote...

On Fridays, I get the opportunity to stock one of the convenience stores on the campus of the university that I attend.  A C-Store is what they call it.  Each week, I arrive with cartfuls of food and beverages, balancing and in bulk.  Trays of Wild Cherry Pepsi.  Crates of chocolate milk.  5 tons of Chex Mix.

But one of the most-purchased items in the store are the muffins.  Moist, and the size of a Big Mac, these muffins are the best that $2 can buy.  But wait, there’s more! With the added bonus of— (sorry, I’ve been studying non-stop for my advertising final tomorrow).

Because the muffins are so popular, they run out very quickly and I frequently have to restock the entire shelf.  But a few Fridays ago, I interacted with a man who shook my very foundations of what I thought sanity was.  He only spoke one sentence to me.  Well, I may have been two, but I sensed a semicolon in there, joining two related clauses together, so I’ll just say it was one.  Maybe this isn’t even the proper use of a semicolon, but the guy didn’t exactly appear "punctuation literate" so I let it go.  I mean, maybe he found the semicolon to be aesthetically pleasing and was like, "Hey, use that!"

Anyways, this was what he said:  He was standing by the empty muffin rack, and upon my approach carrying a box of muffins, he said:

"Thank God you have muffins; I thought I’d have to kill someone."

And at first, I chuckled.  What a ridiculous thing to say to a complete stranger.  "Kill someone…"  What a joke.  Oh, the humors of hyperbole…

But as I handed him the muffin out of my cardboard box, something in me began to raise doubts.  What if he wasn’t kidding?

And I stood there, pondering, while the guy purchased his item and walked out the door.  He didn’t seem like a bad guy, yet I still toyed with the notion.  What if he killed someone because he didn’t get a muffin?

The thought ate at me all day, and I asked myself some very serious questions:

1. Would it have mattered what kind of muffin?  He seemed pretty adamant about reaching for the blueberry one I had.  If I had just brought over banana nut, would that have sent him over the edge?
2. Did he have a specific target in mind?  This question would have been cleared up if he had just said, “Thank God you have muffins; I thought I was going to have to kill Derek.”
3. He seemed eager when I walked in the door.  Did he know that I was the muffin man?
4. What is the ‘murder’ to ‘muffin’ ratio?  Is it one person per muffin?  What if he wanted two muffins?  Or, God forbid, a dozen?
5. Seriously, WHY THE HELL WAS IT A MUFFIN?

I began to think of the guy talking to his pointer finger, croaking, "Niffum.  Niffum!"

I think it’s because his quote is not the same thing as saying, "I’d kill for a muffin right now."  It’s a common expression, which everyone understands as an exaggeration.  And even if it’s not, there’s no specificity—it could be a reference to killing anything: "I’d kill this butterfly," "I’d kill this zebra," or even "I’d kill this six-pack in 20 minutes."

Somehow, inferring a single person, one individual, makes the situation all too real.

"I thought I might have to kill someone."  Was this guy psychotic or was I just overreacting?  I mean, it seems silly to assume that Otis Spunkmeyer just prevented a small-scale genocide.

I think it was the extremism of the statement.  There was no lesser punishment for the lack of muffin.  He wouldn’t have beaten anyone up or threatened them verbally.  No muffin?  Homicide.  Assault is for pussies.

Or perhaps he assigns different levels of violence to different low-fat grain food products?  Popcorn is a hit-and-run.  Nurtigrain Bars constitute rape.  But fortunately, Sun Chips only count as indecent exposure.

I want to keep the store stocked full, just in case.  The last thing I want to do is inspire the latest "ripped-from-the-headlines" episode of Law & Order: Special Muffins Unit.  So now, I make sure I bring extra cases of muffins.  The store clerk always gives me confused looks, as if I’m demented for overcompensating our supply of muffins.  It would be too much work to explain to her that I am her knight in plastic wrapping, so I just tell her:

"You may never fully understand, but you’re welcome."

Then I disappear, someone’s secret muffin savior.  I don’t expect to receive any thanks.  It’s just better this way.

The Pinkest Eye

Last Thursday was a long day.  I was getting railed by my Spanish class, and I occasionally lost vision in my right eye.  Y’know, a typical Thursday.

On top of everything, “The Office” was a rerun!  (And it wasn’t even good enough of an episode for me to want to see it twice.)

You see, Thursdays are my typical social night, when my friends come over to watch TV, consume beverages, and see what other mayhem we can get ourselves into (which generally consists of breaking something in my apartment).  During this week’s process, I became worried about the loss of 50% of my eyesight and did what any well-educated college student would do—I flicked my eyelid repeatedly, using a method that I had learned from “fixing” poorly-wired headphones.

I flicked and rubbed at my eye and began to pick out large specks of crust until silently excusing myself from the festivities, where I checked my face in the bathroom mirror.  Not only was my eye inflamed and pink, but my lashes were coated with a gooey yellow syrup that I was certain no one would find attractive.

I had the virus.

The world seems to have a problem with pink eye.  A real problem.  And while my biggest beef has to do with the name—really, “pink eye”?  Are you coming down with a case of “pansy nose,” too?”—society has decided it pertinent to make people suffering from pink eye feel as ostracized as possible.

It sucks big time because I don’t own a pair of sunglasses, so my eye acts like a scarlet letter on my face (“I”), notifying everyone around me that I have been infected… and I am contagious as hell.

Conjunctivitis is one of the worst infections to have, because no one ever has any pity for you.  Obviously, the symptoms themselves are not pity-worthy (a slight itching sensation and a bloodshot eye spewing tablespoon after tablespoon of sludge), but people get downright frustrated when a pink eye sufferer comes near.  At least with cancer, people get sympathy (sometimes even empathy), but with pink eye, you get treated like a leper, or even a communist.  Every person you encounter interrogates you from a considerable distance: “Are you, or have you ever, touched any of my things with your bare hands?”

It’s an ocular infection, people; not exactly the red scare you should be worried about.

My biggest problem was my work schedule required me to go into the store the next day after self-diagnosing my ailment.  While I didn’t want to spread my bacteria to the entire GVSU campus, I also felt hesitant about calling my boss in the morning to tell him that I couldn’t stock today because my eye was a tad itchy.  All I wanted to do was fly away to somewhere where no one would judge me, but I was worried that taking the red eye anywhere at this point was too ironic.

I did my duties with my gaze cast at the floor the entire time, which likely gave off the impression that I had been crying all morning, rather than picking out eyeball grit with my fingernails.

It suddenly hit me today that it has almost been an entire week that I’ve been consistently denying that I’ve been smoking pot or that I haven’t been getting a decent amount of sleep.  These are ridiculous accusations, as I have been sleeping like a (stoned) baby.

So even though my conjunctiva are still shot with blood and I still have yet to look anyone in the eye through fear of infecting them via my sense of sight, I keep my spirits up.  Because now, all of my friends have pink eye, as well.  We have a lot to talk about.

Shark Week 2011 (Day 6)

On the seventh day, God rested.  And so did I last year, so this is the final entry in Shark Week 2011.  Try not to cry yourself to sleep.

Speaking of crying:

SHARK FACT: Sharks do, in fact, sleep.  It seems weird, I know, because sharks would like you to think they are awake 24/7 eating shit and being awesome.  But even the fiercest creatures on the planet have to take a lil' snooze from time to time.  This isn't to say that they are entirely unconscious, though.  It's believed that sharks sleep one cerebral hemisphere at a time, so they can still think about... whatever sharks think about.

Spiny dogfish actually coordinate their swimming with their spinal cord, meaning that it can still swim while sleeping.  And contrary to popular belief, some sharks do not even need to continue swimming when they sleep.  So far, though, there has not been a recorded sighting of any shark sleep-talking.

And, for the record, a shark's favorite bedtime story is Hansel & Gretel.  It just is.

Shark Week 2011 (Day 5)

SHARK FACT: Bull sharks can swim in fresh water.  I have no jokes for this, because this is fucking terrifying.

We are all fucked.

Shark Week 2011 (Day 4)

SHARK FACT: Female sharks can get pregnant without a male shark.  It seems that the feminists sharks have finally gotten what they wanted, because they don't need men for anything anymore: food, financial stability, and now reproduction.

The implications of this rare phenomenon, also called parthenogenesis, are huge:

1. Accidental shark rape convictions happen every day.

This week: a story ripped straight from the headlines.  Only on "Law & Order: Shark Rape Unit."

2. There are some depressed, demasculated shark bros swimming around the ocean, feeling worthless.

3. Two words: Shark Jesus.

Photo taken just moments before his miracle of walking on water.  Tragic.

I mean, let's think about that last one for a second.  If virgin shark births are possible, could we have some great white Christs under the surface of the Pacific?  Let's hope so, because that whole water-to-wine miracle would make Deadliest Catch at least three times as entertaining.

Shark Week 2011 (Day 3)

SHARK FACT: Great whites roll their eyes into the back of their head when they attack.  Something about tearing a seal apart makes great whites feel soooo cliché.

Really, this tactic protects a shark's eyes while the last drops of life are chewed out of its prey.  It also protects the shark's social status, because it's, like, totally uncool to feed on meat.

It seems odd that great whites don't protect their dead, lifeless eyes by closing their eyelids.  Eyes seem like they would be pretty crucial for any underwater mass-murderer, but I can also see it from the shark's perspective (looking at the back of my skull); I much prefer thrashing my food around with my eyes open, as well.

Shark Week 2011 (Day 2)

SHARK FACT: Spiny dogfish have two spines.  Of course, it makes sense for a "spiny" anything to have one spine, but two?  That's whack!  ...in the back.

What might be the purpose of these two spines?  Science has it's own opinions, but I suspect it has something to do with carrying two backpacks to school.  One thing I do know is that underwater chiropractors love spiny dogfish.

Supposedly, these backs are used defensively, and not just in the "show a little backbone" sense.  The spines end in the dorsal fins, which, when arched, secrete a poison.

If Poisoned Spine isn't a metal band name yet, I call dibs.

These poisonous spines must be super-effective, because they allow for spiny dogsharks to live over 100 years.  No, that's not in dogshark years--that's in normal time.  This means that we have spiny dogsharks all over the coasts who are living history!  They can tell us what kind of garbage they ate during The Great Depression or if fish had a Civil Rights Movement themselves.

It really makes you think about life: its longevity and its preciousness...

Also, spiny dogfish don't have anal fins, and that fact always makes me laugh.