Biff's Story -- Rise 'n Shine

 Part 1 of 30

Self-Abuse September

I suppose all of us know there’s something inexorable about the passing of time and how it relates to our lives. We live in a huge system that itself is a singularity of which we’re also from. The sun appears to wander through its daily course, rising and shining, sinking and vanishing. The mountains are happy or sad. The cattle get a four-way mechanical rub and tug, so we have the opportunistic milk man pulling down a living at their expense. The birds desperately sing for a mate instead of just crawling in the nest and taking care of the problem themselves and getting on with their day. Life is a vast conspiracy that keeps you guessing, “What will today bring?”

Then you add up enough of those days -- at this point constituting the past -- and you and your history are the consummation, the conclusion, the happy or sad verdict of what those days and years meant. A tale told by an idiot? The arc of life skewing toward good? Or just another day, another whack at self-abuse, much more likely and a truth ever at hand. Is there a meaning to life? You wonder as you drink your coffee, maybe the coffee itself is the meaning! A few horny people in South America got together, grew some coffee (like the milkman did his thing), sold it, etc., etc. And they’d be flat broke if your own parents had self-abused you out of existence. Is there anything to learn from this?

One thing you can learn is that no matter how beautiful it is out the picture window, everyday life is at your mercy. You and millions of selfish bastards like you. Will there be workers to till the soil? Will there be farmers to raise the cattle? Will there be milkmen to gather the milk, disinfect it, put it in containers -- thus enriching the container industry -- and stores to profit by selling it? Will there even be birds and bees learning about themselves and thereby having the knowledge to do it? Giving trees the joy of life when they sit on their branches and sing a beautiful good morning song? By your example would you yourself even be here? No, of course not, but you also wouldn’t have known about it. Everyone’s potentially a sad mistake or the next self-abused emission without a trace of rugrats, no regrets.

Biff, Jr. -- this isn’t Biff but his son -- has arisen and shone. Happy to face another day. Being alone isn’t so sad. No one should feel sorry for him. He potentially could’ve put down roots and found someone to love -- it wasn’t in the cards. But no matter, as long as he lasts there’s still one way to go. Exactly what he forgot as he got up to look on this beautiful different day. It’s Self-Abuse month again, at long last. How long can he be, how long can he last? The longer the better, within reason. Every great musician respects his instrument, and this gets mussier than that.

Louis Pasteur -- The Enemy of Kids

Today I am speaking up for all the kids in the world -- past and present -- who hate milk, and who are therefore sorry Louis Pasteur was ever born. I myself wouldn't go that far. I refuse to believe our lives are set in advance, and so I believe Pasteur could have actually done something useful with his life. The fact that he became the one to work out a way to "pasteurize" milk, thereby drastically reducing bacteria and making it safe to drink, is unfortunate, but still not enough for me to rue his existence.

I know how kids feel, though, and so I won't say much more, not wanting them to turn against me and feel sorry that I myself was ever born. As you know, kids have always been mean little bastards -- even fighting among themselves! -- and are not known to appreciate the nuance of any argument. Either you're for them or against them, and they easily see through any facade, any kind of kissing up or trying to pull the wool over their eyes. In this case, however, I said what I said, and I hope that they will somehow, by some miracle, be able to understand my benign intent. Pasteur was evil, yes, but his life had the potential for good.

The weird irony in this whole matter, as I understand it, is that Pasteur as a kid himself wasn't a milk-drinker. I'm more or less pulling this from thin air, but think about it... If the milk wasn't pasteurized and therefore rife with bacteria, it stands to reason that his parents wouldn't have wanted him drinking it. Of course they knew he was Louis Pasteur, but because he hadn't as yet made any stirrings toward discovering his process, they are forgiven for not knowing he ever would. We're very forgiving because they were blissfully ignorant the entire time.

And "pasteurization" might not even have applied to milk! When I was young I heard it bandied about that all Pasteur wanted was to become famous for something. He wanted the word "pasteurization" to mean something, to be descriptive of some process, any process that he might come up with. For that reason, he was often at his drawing board.

One of his interests was magic; he wanted to become a famous magician, doing all the usual feats: card tricks, levitation, escapes, and invisibility. He thought his invisibility process in particular might be called "pasteurization." He worked out a great process by which he could vanish. But since he could only get his body to disappear, his head remained and appeared to float around town for weeks after performances, an embarrassing failure.

Back to the drawing board, he developed a system for communicating with aliens in space. This is true. And this was also something he was going to call "pasteurization." But this was a terrible failure as well, because aliens love milk. See where this is going? Millions of aliens came to earth, drank our bacteria-ridden milk and died. Hence the world suffered Intergalactic War I, II, and III, and we almost strapped Pasteur to a rocket and shot him into space, á la Jonah. The upside of these disastrous wars, in addition to corporate profits, was Pasteur's pursuit of a way to purify milk ... and redeem himself.

This, then, is how he was finally able to use the word "pasteurization" in at least a semi-productive way. But everything comes with a downside -- milk wasn't restricted to aliens -- and so we're back where we began: Louis Pasteur became the sworn enemy of children everywhere, making their lives a miserable experience, a living hell, by having to drink milk.

It's still true: Milk is for aliens and babies, not big kids.

Nature's Most Perfect Food - 2014

In previous years, I have summarily pronounced Tabasco as "Nature's Most Perfect Food." This year, with the possibility of shaking things up, I'm putting it in a head to head competition with a couple other great contenders. We'll see how it fares.

According to Wikipedia, "Food is that stuff we eat." If that's true, and I believe it is, we have to reason that some of it's likely to be better. That's what we're wanting nail down today, not only which is better but so good it deserves the sterling appellation of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014."

This year, I have three finalists, which I will list in alphabetical order, double-checked for complete impartiality: Bacon, Milk, and Tabasco. The competition will be fair, but I must insist, my decision will be final, certainly through the rest of the year, and until such time, if ever, that my taste buds and/or the inscrutable criterion "Extreme Unction" change.

Milk is a weird one, the beverage of mammals, produced right straight from bodies of the female variety. I'm given to understand that milk was my first meal, and was what I subsisted on through much of my first couple years. That's awesome to me, that I was so stuck on one thing. All I wanted was more milk, apparently. I still love it.

Bacon is a food we hear a lot about these days. At the current time, there seems to be a huge bacon kick with the public. Of our three foods, bacon is the one that fluctuates the most wildly in price. Cows regularly put out milk and it goes to market, but hog farmers know they've got food-gold, like oil, so the prices are always up and down. And Tabasco is regular as rain -- regular as rain used to be, before global warming. We'll just say now it's regular as Antarctic ice calving.

I want to underscore one other thing about bacon, that my love for it has nothing to do with jumping on today's wild bacon bandwagon; I've always had it. I love opening a pack of bacon. It's in there like the pages of a book, and you know it's going to be a taste adventure. Plus, hogs have always been a personal favorite.

I've known lots of people who raised hogs, and they depended on people like me for their income. I've seen freshly slaughtered hogs, not a good sight. I've heard hogs being castrated, not a good sound. But I figure any animal that's willing to go through all that, I'm not going to turn away their meat. One of the weirdest hog sights I've ever seen was something like 1,000 baby pigs all together in one room. Just a writhing, seething, heaving, disgusting mass of pig. I remember saying, "Get me the hell out of here!"

Milk and bacon, coming from animals, don't sound immediately desirable. But I focus on the finished product, a big glass of cold milk and a plate of nicely cooked bacon. Milk poured well before its spoil date, and bacon not fried to death, but not undercooked. So chewy, so flavorful, so nutritious, so much enjoyable fat that you can't help loving it. Washed down with cold milk. I always loved getting the little milk cartons in school. They only gave us white back in those days, unlike the current more-pampered generation. 

Then there's my old friend Tabasco. I've made it well known over the years, in real life and on this blog, that I love Tabasco. I've slathered so much Tabasco on things over the years, they really should make me an honorary citizen of Avery Island, my own little cottage, etc. Once I sneezed and had Tabasco way up my sinuses, nearly burning out my system. At the time I thought I would die, but I lived to laugh about it later.

These days, though, I've had a harder time with Tabasco. So I'm using less. I seem to be getting more sensitive to it as my aging molecules wither and die. With my mind I love it the same, but my molecules counsel restraint. I don't know what to do. I've always bulldozed ahead with my mind, but it's foolish to cross molecules. If they say they're tearing, straining, and dying, I need to listen, don't I? Or I could simply deny that bad things can happen, like with global warming, and press on full speed ahead. Who's ever heard of negative consequences from anything?

The way I'll decide the contest this year is according to the principle of Extreme Unction. Which of the three foods puts the most (and best) unction in my extremities? Right away, it's a contest. Milk, being my earliest (and only) food, obviously kept my extremities nice and rosy. It had no competition and did it alone. But having no competition also suggests an unfair advantage. As far as serving up unction today, yes, I will say milk still does. However, the old advantage is gone. Milk supplements, it's not the main thing.

Bacon has tons of unction. And my extremities find it satisfying in virtually every way. The one downside of bacon is that it often overloads my system with guilt. I'm always worrying, Have I cooked too much? Will I get fatter than I want? Should I eat it every meal? Is it bad for me? Still, just thinking of bacon there on the paper towel, the grease being quickly wicked away, leaving those lean strips in a seductive spread eagle pose, I'm always pleased and, even now, feel a tingling in my extremities.

Tabasco also carries a lot of unction, up the ying yang unction. Tabasco even makes me feel proud. I know Grandpa would love to see his boy eating a ton of Tabasco. He used to put it on my plate, a drop, and laugh himself to tears watching me trying to get it past my teeth. Then, after his passing, somehow his tolerance of it was transferred to me. So I'm no longer the boy but the man! Like Leonardo's man, my extremities are totally stretched out, and Tabasco hits them all, a bulls-eye every time. But Tabasco, fantastic as it is, is like milk in this one way, supplementary. Yes, occasionally I put it on a plate and lick it up, but not very often anymore. Because of age, the molecules, etc.

All three of the great foods have amazing unction, and each one's unction touches the extremities in ways hard to believe, or they wouldn't even be in the running. I tip my hat to all three. But the one food this year that puts the most Extreme Unction in my extremities, and therefore will hold the title forever of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014" is going to be  .... Bacon!

From Milk Bottles to Hawaii

I'm totally surprised I didn't think of this before. Even I could save money with this system! With the added bonus that I would get back more than I put in, interest, a dividend!

I want to get this written as fast as possible, since I'm already dreaming of the possibilities. Then I'll have another glass of milk and get my bags packed. I'm just wondering, When you get to Hawaii, do they literally have a lei for everyone who gets off the plane?

OK, I'm looking at my milk bottles, and, let's see, 8 x $2.75 deposit = Over 20 bucks! And a couple of these I got when the deposit was $2.50, so I've already made 50 cents interest. If I keep drinking milk, and never take my old bottles back, and the deposit goes up to, say, 3 or 4 dollars, that's a lot of interest. I could probably drink a bottle a day -- a half gallon -- it's that good. In a week, with the current $2.75 deposit, that'll be $19.25 saved, and I've never seen the deposit go down. The stock market, yes.

This is so great I need to clear off shelves in the garage. It's glass gold! Finally, a collection with a payoff. With the old records I sold, the guy talked me so far down I was paying him to take them. But when you get to the store with a milk bottle, it's always the going rate. They never look at you funny.

If I keep going at this rate -- thank God for calculators and human intelligence -- a bottle of milk a day for a year, I'm saving over 1,000 bucks! OK, for three years, that's close to 1,100 bottles. If I put $2.75 in each one, and the deposit suddenly spikes to $3.25, not out of the realm of possibility, that's around $550 more. I couldn't get that at the bank. In fact, the bank's like the record guy: I'm paying them to use my money.

Oh boy, as long as the storage space holds out, and I have other collectibles I can throw out to make room -- including Grandma's old Dionne Quintuplets crap that no one remembers. There's some memorabilia that took a nosedive! She should've collected plates and knick knacks from the Titanic -- the market's unsinkable.

There could be, however, one rub, maybe two. First, there's the store. They're definitely OK with bringing in one or two bottles. Or a few more. But what are they going to do if I show up with over a thousand? I can picture the look on their face: confusion, anger. Suddenly there's a conference of managers over by the wall, out of earshot. One of them has a dirty apron. He's wiping his hands and shaking his head, glaring at me.

I'm standing there. The line stretches to the meat counter and a mile out the back door. Me, with compassion for the suffering, I'm sweating. It took me two hours to lug the bottles into the store. I've arranged every available cart into one long wagon train. The clanking glass sounds like a plague of heavy metal locusts. 

Finally, the guy with the apron -- who seems to be waving in some backup -- tells me the basic problem. I erupt in anger and end up in prison. As they're gassing up the gas chamber, I get one last meal, and one last glass of milk, unfortunately 2%, not whole.

The other potential problem is with the dairy itself. Little dairies that put out this milk with the fancy deposits aren't prepared for anomalies like 1,000 bottles from one customer. They're so small, something like three bottles is too much, but of course they can't complain. Having a 1,000 bottle spike might actually shut them down.

And then there's the interest. Their bottom line is so tight, they'd have to lay off a dozen people and forty cows to pay it. Factor in, too, because the 1,000 bottles were missing from their return cycle, they had to buy 1,000 new ones. That took money. And now they have no room for the added returns, blah blah blah...

To which I say, with full understanding of how I screwed up everyone's precious system: "Cry me a river! Oh, boo hoo. The poor employees are going to all die, aren't I a horrible person? You have to lay off cows? Let 'em work on the pig farm! They could use the change of scenery! And pigs like milk, probably. Let 'em nuzzle up against Bossie. Maybe she won't be so bossy when she finally has to give up the security of her own little barn, and all the fancy milk spigots. I say, 'Go ahead, lay 'em off, give them a gold bucket for retirement!'"

And to the store -- OK, I'm pissed; I want to go to Hawaii -- I say, "This is one hell of a way to treat a paying customer! My family's shopped here for generations. You weren't complaining when we carried you through the Depression. We could've been lined up at the courthouse, getting handouts like everyone else. But Grandpa hunted, and sold furs on the black market, giving us enough money to buy your damned groceries! Oh yes, how soon we forget! That's when milk became my family's favorite drink, because when everyone else's bones were crumbling and the streets were full of decaying skeletons, my family's bones were fortified with calcium. It was my family, then, that had the energy to clear away the dead and disinfected the whole stinking place. If it hadn't been for us, all this town would be good for is tumbleweeds, and probably most of those would be crummy."

Bottom line: Full speed ahead, I'm packing for Hawaii! I'm going for it! A half gallon today, another tomorrow, this is how I'm saving money from now on. And if they don't like it, well, I'll be ready.

I Saw a Milk Truck Today

The truck I saw was a lot newer than that, probably brand new. It was shiny and nice, the way milk trucks have to be kept. To see a dirty milk truck, that's barely imaginable.

But just to see a milk truck at all! You know how rare it is to see one. I probably see eight to ten in a year, and of course the high school's just over the way. Whether high school kids even drink milk these days, I don't know. Probably some do ... some don't ... like everything else.

I certainly don't see them pass the road right here in front of the house. That was the first one in a long time.

I probably should explain one other fact: I was right there at the road. It wasn't that I was inside and saw it through the window. The timing was such that it was freaky. I went to the road to get the newspaper just as the truck came by. Entirely different.

You can probably see where I'm going with this, the unusual nature of the truck coming by along with the fact that I was right at the road, less than 10 feet from the truck itself. I couldn't have planned it had I tried. I had no idea it was coming. Had I known, my morning would have been totally different. I would have been periodically checking the clock, etc., then hoping he wasn't early or late.

But as it was, I simply went to the road, entirely unexpecting of anything, and it came by.

The reason I like milk trucks no doubt has to do with the wholesome goodness of milk. It's one of my favorite drinks. I hate to pull rank on anyone, and my purpose in this is not to impress anyone -- far from it, why would I care? -- but I loved milk before it was cool. They started advertising it on TV 20 years ago, or something, and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. I was already there!

So couple the fact that I love milk with the fact that I love interesting trucks, especially when they're antiseptic and beautifully colored, and you'll see why this truck passing by was something of such interest. It would appeal to young and old, mostly children but many older folks, like myself.

And when you're not expecting it! But good grief, there it is, big as life, I couldn't have conjured up a better one if I tried -- isn't life great? It's just the sheer grace of the moment that gets me. Bowls me over. I'm so delighted by life today -- milk truck or no -- that were it to fall on top of me and crush me, I'd look for the blessing in it. You ever get that kind of day?

No Milk Today

Drat, after expressing my undying love for milk yesterday, I get up today and there's no milk.

Of course I quickly remembered that I finished off the gallon yesterday, perhaps drinking too much because it was in my heart not just to love it in spirit but to love it in fact. I should be honest -- I didn't really overindulge yesterday; it was just getting down to foam anyway and I finished it off. That's good though.

It's something I think a guy needs a gold star for having done. To finish off an entire gallon of milk. I know there have been plenty of times in the past when we've opened a gallon, then drank a few glasses or used it on cereal, then it's gotten pushed toward the back of the fridge and forgotten. Next thing you know it's four or five days past the expiration date and not drinkable. At least by me.

But these days I'm living in what you might call a more systematic way. Get out the bacon, the bagel, the milk, the orange juice, the butter substitute, etc. The milk, which we're dealing with today, is poured in good form. I check the jug and see that it's ¾ full, then ½ full, then ¼ full, and think my gold star ought to be here any day. What I always hope for is that I will have a replacement jug before the old one is empty. But it just didn't happen this time. So, if there's any penalty for that, I'll clip a couple ends off the star. And I'll have an ugly star.

So what's so good about milk? I don't know. And I don't think I'll look it up. Because I might come across a site that is anti-milk or will have an array of facts against milk that I won't be able to refute. Then I'll be paranoid that I'm getting some kind of farm toxin in my system. See, the fact that I know this stuff is out there already tells me that I know something on the subject, only I'm not aware of it day to day. But it's common knowledge, probably, that there are anti-everything groups out there. Don't milk the poor cow, let it graze, let it wander off to the hills and spray its milk against a rock. That's crazy. You're not a baby cow, are you? That you would need its mother's milk? I don't want to hear that. And now I'm thinking it. It's driving me -- I was going to say insane -- but this is only my version of sanity.

Who knew that having a glass of milk could be so consternating?

So ... if all goes well, I'll have a few minutes to get a gallon of milk today. I don't even see a cow, to tell you the truth. By the time I get it, there's no cattle in sight. As far as I know it's all synthetic anyway and cows are off drinking the real thing themselves. So what do I know? Nothing about it.

UPDATE (5:31 p.m.) - I have no beef against cattle. If they want to drink their own milk, that's their business. I'll still buy whatever they have in the store, whether it's synthetic or not.

In Addition To Water

In addition to water, which is very refreshing, especially when clear, cold, and clean, there are other beverages that quench my thirst to rather good effect. These include orange juice and milk.

As to orange juice, though, let me say right up front that I'm suspicious of it. I read somewhere that it has a bad effect on your teeth if you drink too much of it. And since I get this chilly kind of painful nerve sensation in my teeth, down in the root of them, I like to restrict myself on OJ intake. I let my natural discipline maintain the restriction as a true thing. And I am successful. A little OJ in the morning is good, I think. I know in the South Beach diet book it says not to drink it. The kind I've been buying is (uhh, I'm drawing a blank), but it's the Low Acid variety of whatever brand it is.

Then I mentioned milk as a beverage that is good in addition to water. For me milk is also more of a breakfast drink, but I like it. Cold and fresh -- not cow fresh, but before the expiration date -- is best. It goes down fine for me, tastes good, and seems good for you. I hope it is. But just like OJ, there's probably lots of qualifiers, such as not getting the overly fat kind. All that.

This is not to say that OJ and milk are the only beverages I like in addition to water. Just to mention some, of course there's coffee and tea. They're both good, but I probably don't have to tell you.

UPDATE 6:12 p.m. - I had a massive glass of pink lemonade at Taco Bell today. That is not a drink I like, except maybe in very small quantities, like six to eight ounces. This had to be 36 to 40 ounces, massive. I couldn't drink that if I wanted to! I wanted iced tea but all they had was raspberry iced tea, which I don't like. Sorry to be updating all the time, but I knew you'd want to know ... some of my preferences in beverages ... in addition to water, orange juice, milk, coffee, and tea ...