Magnets (a prank)

The thing about the phrase "true story" is, the two words next to each other, it's kind of a contradiction. By definition, a story cannot be "true" and something true cannot, at that same time, be a story. I'm not sure if the true part taints the story or the story part taints the truth, but taint has occurred one way or the other.

That being said, here's a true story.

A few years back, there was a great debate in this country, and it while it concerned the war, it certainly wasn't about the war itself or our country's reasons for going. By this point in recent history, a lot of people (or so it seemed at the time) had resigned themselves to fact that the war was going to happen, no way around, no dissenting opinion would be articulated well enough on the floors of Congress to change the course of that dark vessel, the dark ship of our country. No, the debate was merely a matter of whether or not you, as a citizen, were willing to support our troops.

Rhetorically, our collective answer was (more or less) a unanimous one. Clearly the soldiers doing the fighting and dying, the brave men and women who took an oath to defend this country with their very lives, they are brothers and sons, mothers and daughters, fathers put into harm's way and they needed us to believe in them and their purpose (whether or not they were actually defending the country or merely extended the birth of the this country's influence in that region of the world is a line of distinction better left to another blog, or at least, a future post) so support them we did. Thoughts and prayers, and a general population wide silence coming from those who would oppose these actions (with a few peace loving, patchouli reeking, protest marching exceptions). Even if the war was wrong (as future history texts may point out someday) the troops are American lives and we wanted them to come home quickly and safely.

But it wasn't enough to conquer hearts and minds in this battle. Like it's not enough to support a political candidate with your vote and it's not enough to have a student on the honor roll and it's not enough to have accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior (or, on the flip side, it's not enough consider Jesus and his teachings a complete work of fiction) thus have the car magnets permeating the commuter culture. Oh, there was a time long ago when anything stuck to the back of your car or truck or SUV had to be literally stuck there, as in, for life, as in, in trying to remove said decoration would require a body shop or a whole new tail section. But magnets lack that kind of permanence, and even if you supported our troops from the get-go, you could now advertise your support for as long as the electrons were being shared between your car, or truck, or SUV and the support our troops yellow ribbon magnet affixed to it.

Enter a man, who we'll call "Frank" for the sake of anonymity, and his ingenious prank to circumvent your intentions. Frank goes to the nearest print shop and orders 1000 yellow ribbon magnets, he applies the same font size, style and placement as "Support Our Troops" and has the magnet makers print all his magnets with the phrase "Support Gay Marriage." (Frank is not gay, but he likes rainbows and is generally supportive of any rights movement.)

A "Support Our Troops" magnet generally runs $1.25 per, minus shipping and handling, at a markup from the cost of production of about 75% for orders over 10,000, meaning the creation of the initial sticker was only $0.38 per unit. Frank did not get such a deal, as he only printed 1000 "Support Gay Marriage" yellow ribbon magnets. He ended up paying $0.63 per ribbon magnet, for a total price of $630 dollars, less the cost of shipping and handling (where he did manage a deal, at only $5 per pound, the cost of shipping rang up to $133.34 for a total price, out of pocket of $763.34.

Frank then ventured out into the city, armed with at least 25 stickers a day, and found cars with yellow ribbon magnets which bore the instruction "Support Our Troops" with his own creation. He made it a point to select only the "Support Our Troops" logos which matched the font he selected, and would use the left over residue in the negative space to place his own magnets. Some days, Frank only found a few that could be replaced without raising suspicion, but others, like days when he wandered parking ramps in downtown or the lots outside a mall, he would need to go home and get more magnets. This process took him months, and he ended up enlisting friends and cohorts, myself included.

As a crowning achievement for his project, he turned around and sold the "Support Our Troops" magnets on eBay, marking them up to $2.50 per unit, minus shipping and handling, including the slogan, "more genuine then you'll ever know." After selling the last of the stolen ribbons, Frank possessed a net profit of $1,736.66, almost three times the amount of his initial investment in the product. Altruist that he is, Frank donated that money to a local gay rights lobby (which recouped by the tax write off.)

To date, I often let my leer linger on yellow ribbon magnets, wondering if they were victims of Frank's prank. I wonder how many days the "Support Gay Marriage" sticker supported gay marriage without the driver's authority or consent. I wonder about those owners, who no doubt eventually saw they'd been had. I wonder what they did with the sticker when they noticed it circumventing their intentions.

I also wonder what Frank's next prank will be, and if I'll be participant or victim.

Fries (French and American)

If what they say is true, if it is easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven, just imagine if that rich man brought enough french fries for everyone. Logic denotes, if we cannot bring earthly possessions along to the afterlife (such a premise is likely, so we'll run with it for now) why not sell your gold, your cars and property, and invest (moments before dying, of course) in a large pile of potatoes, an industry deep fryer, and lots of salt. One does not buy their way into heaven, but armed with greasy, salty, deep fried starch wedges, if you are denied entry, odds are that's not an afterlife you'd wanna be a part of. Not to mention the fact that all the ketchup is in hell. (Ketchup is evil, pure and simple. Which is why I love it.)

What does 1000 french fries look like? How many potatoes meet their demise in hot oil to arrive at that total, and what would be the cost, commercially or in the privacy of your own home? And if I were to eat 1000 fries a day, how long before I explode, smile intact?

The number of fries contained in a single potato varies, the end figure dependent upon a number of variables, including the size of the initial potato, the size of the wedges the potato is diced into, and the prevalence of chiggers infecting said potato (most discerning adults would simply throw out the complete potato, chiggers and all, but there aren't as many discerning adults currently employed by four of the top five fast food franchises currently operating in this country). A brief study was done, combining the results of ten anonymous households operating on the condition of anonymity, and the average was fifteen (15) individual fries per potato (if cut in the French style, long and slender) and twenty-seven (27) potato cubes if cut in the American style.

If making french fries, you need approximately 67 potatoes to make quota. At the cost of approximately $4.90 per sack of potatoes, at approximately 13 potatoes per sack, you would need about 15 sacks, or $73.50. On the other hand, American fries would only require about 37 potatoes, or about 3 and 1/2 sacks, rounded up, for a cost of $19.60.

A typical deep fryer, like the one you have in the kitchen, next to the George Foreman grill, behind the blend, and in front of the rice cooker you never use, can hold approximately 65 fries at a single time (per volume.) 1000 French fries would ready to serve in between 15 to 16 individual turnovers. Given that it takes 4-5 minutes to cook the potatoes to the golden brown we're accustomed to seeing, it would take about an hour and fifteen minutes to cook the entire lot. If we were using an industrial size deep fryer, productivity would increase exponentially. Those can hold 500 fries per turnover, cooking them in about a minute and half. That's 1000 fries in only three minutes, and every last one is piping hot to the touch. It would be unlikely to think that all 1000 fries could be eaten by one person while all 1000 are piping hot, mostly because we let the first few handfuls cool in our hands. by the time those are edible, the rest are cold as a heart of pure darkness.

American fries are prepared slightly different, and through the following examples, it works as a parable for the inefficiency of American culture. Instead of deep frying, these are grilled in a skillet, taking up more time, space and energy. It takes about 10 minutes to fry 50 potato cubes, meaning 20 total turnovers, at the staggering time expenditure of three hours and twenty minutes for 1000 American fries. Even at the industrial level, where 150 cubes can be grilled at the same time, it adds to time, space and energy. These cubes would take 25 minutes to approach the color and temperature we're used to, and while it only takes about 6 and 1/2 turnovers, this is a time cost of nearly two hours and forty-five minutes.

If we're pursuing all 1000 fries commercially, the cost of the individual potatoes, the oil to place them in or the heated stove surface upon which to cook them, all vanishes. It should be common knowledge amongst most of you that a small order of fries off the local dollar menu contains approximately 32 fries, meaning on would only need to purchase about 32 orders and one would easily exceed the 1000 fry requirement. That cost of which would be, pre-tax, only $32. There are other sizes of fries, but beyond the small order, the number of fries per order tends to be less a rational number, more its drug-fiending, knife-wielding, street-preaching irrational counterpart. And, with inflation, the cost of the larger orders of fries is inversely proportionate to the number of additional fries in the purchase.

Finally we come to the most disturbing figure of today's experiment, the toll on my health if I actually ate all 1000 fries each day. A single order of fries can contain 400 to 500 calories, so we'll split the difference and say 450 calories for every 32 fries. 1000 fries would be 14,062.5 calories as my daily bread. This is approximately the minimum amount of calories needed in week to maintain one's body mass. If I'm ingesting a week's worth of calories a day, that means every four days I have experienced enough caloric intake to cover the entire month, and every month and a half, I've eaten the same number of calories a normal person with a healthy diet eats in a year.

This last figure is speculative at best, as after 12 days on the 1000 fries a day diet, I would explode and be sent to the afterlife neither rich, nor a camel.

Pennies

Before we break down the penny, first let us look at its position in our culture. Pennies do not work in vending machines, toll booths* or ticket counters. Any time you're paying a non-human entity, it seems, you cannot use the penny. (It also does not come into play when you're paying with a check card, but that goes without saying.) But for all the complaints against it, the penny is invaluable to human interaction, the payment of cash and the receiving of change. And this applies to anyone who has every worked or shopped retail (which, one imagines, should be everyone, give or take. I make no assumptions about the demographics of my readership, if, that is, I have any...)

*The one exception to this rule, needless to say, is Illinois (or so I've heard tell.) And the reason why Illinois still accepts pennies in their toll booths to this very day? Lincoln was born there.

So today's experiment, what does 1000 pennies look like? If I were to stack 1000 pennies everyday instead of writing 1000 words, how high would that stack be? How much money would be represented by that stack, and how much would it weigh? Most importantly, what could I do with it?

1000 pennies would weigh approximately 6.5 pounds and stack up, one on top of the other, to be about 1.9 meters in height (or slightly taller than your humble moderator.) This would be trickier than any of us could fathom, as the law of Jenga averages assures us, anything whose height exceeds a foot and half is prone to timely and hilarious collapse (this is why network hubs are recommended to rest at a relatively low position. If hung from the ceiling, ensure the connective device is made of screws and brackets and not velcroed Jenga pieces.) 1000 pennies net worth would be approximately $10.00, but that figure hasn't been confirmed by the accounting staff yet. We're working with highly improbable and abstract numeric values.

Here's a few things $10 (or 1000 pennies) would get you in today's rocky economic climate:

• one pack of cigarettes (but only in New York City)
  
• one pair of nice argyle socks
• one adult movie ticket (but only in the antiquated 2D format)
  
• one tub of bland movie theater popcorn (butter costs extra these days and I'm not made of money)
• two pairs of decent wool socks
• two tickets to the bargain matinee (which are now held Monday-Thursday nights and no one knows why)
• two packs of cigarettes (everywhere that's not New York City)
• three burgers, with or without cheese, or two with bacon, or one at a nightspot deemed too hoity-toity to earn my patronage.
• four pounds of Skittles, hopefully the original fruit (red bag) edition, but a sour (green bag) would also qualify.
  
• five pairs of dirt cheap cotton socks
• five ride tickets at the local zoo's amusement park (though, as bit of marketing savvy, each ride costs three tickets, so you can ride the full ride but your date has to get off have 2/3's of the ride has completed... which is further complicated by the fact that they don't slow that thing down when it's time for them to get off.)
• six bars of chocolate from the nearest school's fundraiser, though the amount of actually cocoa, sugar and milk in these bars is only 75% what Hershey's uses. The rest, I'm lead to believe, is sawdust and carob.
• seven one time use local bus tickets
  
• eight packets of "fun dip" which, it should be noted, is neither fun nor an actual "dip" in its modern colloquial definition.
  
• ten small fries (but only from a dollar menu, tax not included)
  

But wait, there's more! There's not a hard and fast rule that says you have to spend these 1000 pennies. It's merely an exploration of their meaning and intend. For example, if you only bought, say, one pair of decent wool socks, you could use your remaining 500 pennies to fill them up, and then you've got penny sacks which, when spun really fast, create enormous pounds of pressure per square inch, enough for breaking a window or some punk's jaw, which, in relation to the price of movie tickets, is as entertaining and only slightly against the law, which many have said the ticket prices ought to be.

Pennies also make fairly entertaining cat toys, assuming your cat (if it is not, by way of breeding and the laws of uncertainty, a dog) likes shiny things that make noises. I am on good terms with one such feline, good terms here defined as we're on a first name basis, though our conversations lately are entirely about football, a topic I am loath to bring up on my own. Point being, there's nothing this particular cat likes more than a few pennies near the edge of the counter. Not only will this cat (who shall remain nameless, lest he open yet another libel suit against me) push said pennies to the floor below, he'll watch intently as the bounce, spin and scurry to the dustiest corners of the room. He pounces on them as if they were sworn enemies (and knowing this cat and the circles he runs in, they may very well be) and carries them around, clenched between his jaws. There are few sights as priceless as a cat carrying a penny in his mouth, looking, one assumes, for a cat treat vending machine. Silly cat doesn't realize the vending machines don't accept pennies, as was previous noted above. When moving furniture or rugs or other whatnot lying around the place, one finds pennies nearly everywhere. To date, we can never be quite sure how many pennies have turned up in such locations, but in the opinion of your humble moderator, that number far exceeds 1000. It simply has to.

It's change we can all believe in.

Driving (destination one)

For the uninitiated, the long haul of the open road is both alluring and intimidating. There are many things we can do with our day, including but not limited to, watching TV, reading a book, surfing the web, socializing with friends new and old, working at our jobs, spending time with the family, walking the dog, talking on the phone, seeing a movie, having a beer, writing 1000 words, shopping online or at an actual store, the possibilities are truly endless. It's your day and you're called upon each morning upon awakening to have one. Imagine doing none of the above for 20+ hours (with the exception, perhaps, of talking on the phone) and just... driving. At the speeds we're talking about, there's not a lot of challenges aside from staying on the road and avoiding other motorists (more of a challenge to others than to your humble narrator), and signaling your lane changes. It can be dull.

You might have noticed that the driver is on the right side instead of the left. While the latter is more common in the states, the former is more typical in Europe. Many have asked of this, "Why?"

A fight occurred some eighty years ago between Henry Ford and Ulrich Audi, the two top car designers of the then burgeoning automobile industry, the fight itself having nothing to do with cars, their technical design or aesthetic features. The topic was, ironically, golf. Yes that kind of driving. You see, Ulrich Audi was an avid golfer, from his youthful days caddying for a number of Germany's more prominent golfing estates (the term "golf course" was some twenties years away, and American) and it was through the connections Audi had forged by providing the correct wedge, iron or driver (I can't make this stuff up) for his clients (der mandat, in the original spelling) that lead him to his pioneering career as car manufacturer. It was customary in Germany, it should be noted, to never favor the left in any form, regardless if the person was born left handed or not (a number of German left handed surgeons were amongst the highest in mortality rates, as a result.) There was no way for Henry Ford, a south paw in his own right, to know any of this. And many years hence, Henry Ford and Ulrich Audi agreed quite jovially to a game of golf, this some years prior to golf courses being the number one place for business meetings and deals being made. And sure enough, when Henry Ford selected his lefty driver, Audi displayed shock and insult. In modern times, diversity being more a source of joy and differences more a cause for celebration, such a conflict would have been laughed off and no impact upon history would have occurred. However, back than, tradition and conformity held a higher standard of value, and thus, a fight ensued, complete fisticuffs, and the two men pulled apart by golf course caddies and other server folk, all of whom were subsequently fired (a few of were never heard from again). Apologies were made, publicly, on behalf of both camps, and behind closed doors were secret plots of revenge and comeuppance. Thus, today, Americans (North and South) drive on the left and all of the rest of the civilized world drives on the right.

We have missed the focus of our original topic. To wit, if I drove, say 1000 miles in a day instead of writing 1000 words, where could I possibly go?

Previously posted entries have established cost and time expenditures, so we'll skip that and cut right down to the bare bones. If I started in Location X (here, X stands for the place my car is most likely going to be just prior to, and shortly after, my trip) and headed for Denver, Colorado, that would eat the majority of the mileage I am attempting to undertake. And Denver's not such a bad town. I was there once, for only an evening, and although it's years since, I admit freely I had a damn good time. I'll save that story for later, because I've so far only driven 936 miles, leaving me with 63 miles left on my journey. As I've already established a southernish, westernesque direction, let's keep going south and see where I end up.

My odometer would register 1000 miles traveled just outside of Fountain, Colorado, a town just small enough to fall somewhere between hamlet and village in population. The nearby Fountain Creek Regional Trail, caters to hikers, bikes, and horseback riding enthusiasts for nearly thirty years.

As an interesting bit of local history, this was also the site of a less than nationally famous gunfight. Sirs Jefferford Skeet Darren Jackman and Hughie DougaryDarren Weiss had joint business ventures in the area, and when the arranged marriage between Jackman's daughter (Rachel) and Weiss's son (Aron) were halted due to a pregnancy of Weiss's wife sired by Jackman himself, their ability to rationally divvy up the land and businesses cordially was hampered by the time's need for reputation, honor, and gunfights. Neither man was killed in the endeavor, but Weiss lost three fingers and Jackman a third of a kidney, even though neither man was hit by a bullet.

The oddest coincidence, readers, occurred some ninety-seven (97) years later when a man decided to make a movie, his only connection to these two gunfighters was that his first name, Darren, matched both of their second middle names. The odd overlaps continued, as this modern day Darren (surname, Aronofsky) cast in his movie a man with the last name Jackman and woman by the last name Weiss, whose first names were swapped from their historical counterparts, this time the Hugh (previous a Wiess) was now a Jackman and the Rachel (whose daughter-in-law's name would have been Rachel) was now a Wiess.

The name of that particular movie was, also coincidentally, "The Fountain."

The revenue did not outweigh the cost of production.

Watts (generated)

To start with, I don't think the image I included with this post has been 'shopped. I think somebody decided to run a Tesla coil in the middle of their... living room? Workspace? Kitchen? Who knows. I'm certainly not a scientist by any means, so we're well outside my comfort zone when talking about things like the laws of physics, energy and thermodynamics. That being said, shouldn't we be a little concerned about starting something on fire, as in the image above? That is pure energy, and it's tickling the stucco, for crying out loud. Maybe my understanding of lightning and raw electricity has been tainted by too many supernatural movies, television programs and graphic novels, but I'm half expecting everything to burst into flames moments after this picture was taken.

So today's challenge, or query, or topic, is if I wanted to generate 1000 watts of energy instead of writing 1000 words, how would I go about doing so? Let's get to it.

The easiest way to create something from nothing is to follow the ways of those who have come before me, and they generated watts the same way their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents generated watts, with old fashioned hard work, the proper application of elbow grease, and a gas powered generator. For a few gallons of gas (which has gone up to $1.799 per gallon) would generate 1000 watts every 15.2 hours. While I like the relative ease with which I am able to meet quota (with time to spar, nearly 8 hours) it doesn't require much on my end. Generators are kind of like the ultimate in end point delegation. I fill the dutiful little machine with gas, I throw a switch, and the generator does the rest of the work. That's not the most interesting thing I could do with my time, sitting there, 15 hours a day, watching it generate. I also don't so much like the application of fossil fuels. We're living in a greener age, with even Detroit scrambling to put together a new business model, one moving away from oil dependence and toward electric cars.

It is possible to construct a home made solar panel, using a George Foreman grill ($19.95 retail), a length of copper tubing ($15 per five inches, and with twenty-five inches needed, that's $75, tax not included) a sheet of aluminum foil ($3.99 for two hundred square feet, or roughly $0.02 per sheet required), a storage device made of clay and metal brackets (those aren't cheap, at least $100 per) and sunlight (priceless). Unfortunately, even on the sunniest days of summer, such a Macguyver would only collect about 67.865 watts in per day. This will not meet quota. I would need at least 15 such contraptions to come close to generate my 1000 watts in a day, and more so on the shorter day lit hours of the winter. That's a baseline price of $1,594.95, which is kind of a waste of money. At these prices, I'd have to sell each watt back to the market at $1.60 per just to break even. Granted, there's a bit of a mark up there, but we'll keep that between us. In all likelihood, I doubt I'd be able to sell any of my watts at any price since the market isn't built for that.

There are also methods of constructing one's very own wind turbine. What's nice about this one is the relative flexibility one has with the choice of materials. While steel is preferable for strength and durability, it is not required. Steel is, after all, quite an expensive aggregate metal. You do get what you pay for. However, steel, for as light as it is, doesn't respond well to wind power and the turbines would move at a fraction of the speed they would normally move if made of a different substance. If planning to do this on the super cheap, it is possible to construct wind turbines with flyswatters and spatulas. While these collect a lot of wind energy, they don't convert as nicely. For the steel windmill, you'd get one (1) watt of energy for every 36 rotations, whereas the slumdog variety (sorry, just saw that movie and the jargon has infused to my lexicon with aplomb and vigor) would only score one (1) watt of energy ever 99 rotations. The discrepancies in efficiency should be obvious, yet they are compounded by number of rotations per minute. The steel windmill only makes four (4) rotations per minute in light wind and twenty (20) rotations per minute in heavy. The slumdog windmill, on the other hand, makes eighty (80) rotations per minute in light wind and none (0) in heavy wind because it usually gets blown off its foundations. Thus, the steel homemade would generate 1000 watts ever 20 hours, give or take, if the wind keeps up. The spatula and flyswatter edition would do the same in 13 hours, if the wind doesn't pick up speed. If only I could construct a kind of transformer-style windmill, where the insides were made of crap, like flyswatters and spatulas, but which an optional steel armor that folds out during heavy winds....

No, I suppose the most efficient way for me to meet quota would be the proper application of wool socks, shag carpet, maybe a few balloons and metal door handles. Just by walking around, I can generate 120 watts of energy (enough for a spark) every forty-five (45) minutes, sufficed that I'm walking at a consistent speed, without lifting my feet, and moving in a counterclockwise direction (no one knows why clockwise never works. There was a famous study on this back in the 70s and everything.) It would take approximately 7.5 hours to generate 1000 watts of electricity, or roughly, one full shirt at the job, less my half hour (non paid) lunch and two (paid) 15 minute breaks.

Without somewhere to store it all, unfortunately, I am more likely to zap random passersby.

Coffee (beans)

Coffee! Such rich darkness and lush lightness! Where would I be today without you? The fact of the matter is, I've been a coffee fan since high school. Well, technically, before that. There were these tubs of ice cream that the local University would sell, and on alternating Wednesdays (for whatever reason) they would sell coffee flavored ice cream. Being the kid that I was, and I was a kid once, I've even seen pictures confirming this theory, I didn't like black coffee, or beer, or pretty much anything "fun." But I loved coffee ice cream. And then, in high school, I discovered (as did everybody else about that time) the fun of the coffee shop as hang out alternative to the mall (or where ever kids are hanging out that isn't a coffee shop) And then there were mochas. And lattes. And frappa-what-have-yous. In college, I remember distinctly the first time I received a check from the National Bank of Mom, during my freshmen year. Even though that money was for books and food and cost of living, all I could see was $75 worth of coffee.

And I'm no purest or snob. I drink McDonald's coffee. I drink gas station coffee. I'll drink the coffee at any roadside street stand brave enough to put a foul smelling brew in front of me. I know I'm not paying for quality. I know I'm paying for convenience and to some degree, experience. To say I was there, that I did that, that I lived, if only for a little while. And I cream and sugar the shit out of my coffee. Oh, I've had plenty of undiluted black cups through the years. I've tried many different concoctions, including Irish cream and whiskey, and all the various International Delight flavors. (For the uninitiated, less is more with those. They're sweeter than you'd think they'd need to be.)

So today's experiment is concerning the bean itself. What does 1000 beans look like, and what could I do with them if I was using 1000 a day instead of 1000 words a day?

A reliable source (read, the Internet) assures me that a pound of beans numbers approximately 4000 beans in total, so we're only looking at a quarter pounder (without cheese... cause coffee and cheese do not mix) of coffee. If one pound of beans produces 2.25 gallons of coffee, then 1/4 of that is 0.5625 galleons of coffee, or 72 fluid ounces. That works out to about nine cups of coffee a day, which to some might seem excessive, others outright disgusting, and others still might call me a wimp for drinking so little. I think it would work out something like this: three cups of coffee in the morning, another two around lunch time, another just before the evening meal, two while I read in the evening, and one just before bed. It's the one right before bed that's the really bad idea, because caffeine affects my physiology the way it affects everyone else's, I'm not the exception to the rule, not matter how exceptional I might be in other areas.

But there are health concerns to address. At nine cups of coffee a day, I'm running the risk of hospital visit further on down the line. Like everything else in life, excessive or even abusive use of something so pure and good and be detrimental. It was either Aristotle or Socrates who observed "Moderation in all things" and I'd like to believe that applies even to moderation, which means every now and again, we throw caution to the wind and we indulge (or if you're the addictive personality, and I am certainly one of those, or at least, I've certainly been called worse) again and again.... and again and again and again and again... you get the picture.

So let's change gears here. I have 1000 coffee beans to go through in a day, there's not a rule saying I'd need to grind, brew and drink all of them. Let's say I do that with 50%, which would only be 4.5 cups, roughly, a more realistic number to those who want to avoid the intensive care unit of the local sawbones'. Two in the morning, one before dinner, and a slightly larger cup (12 ounces instead of 8) in the evening and none before bed. What do I do with the remaining 500? Unfortunately, the bartering system in the US isn't what it used to be, and I doubt I could trade them for anything of equal size or value. I don't think it's fair to the experiment (nor to my own wallet, given that these things do cost money) to simply give them away.

I'm tempted to try incorporating them in an art project of some kind. Not the crappy macaroni art we all did in grade school (admit it, you were imagining the faces of all the US presidents interpreted by third graders through a medium of construction paper and elbow pasta when I said art project, didn't you?) but something more heady, abstract. Oh would that I could make a 3D sculpture of M. C. Escher's Belvadere! You've definitely seen that one before, it's the one with all the penrose triangles connected to look like a waterfall, a watermill and the water flowing "downhill" back to the top of the water fall. Only, in my sculpture, instead of water, it would be sweetly rolling boiling hot black coffee. You can almost... smell it, can't you?

The naysayers (how they love to say nay!) would observe here that there's no way I could create a 3D representation of an impossible 2D image. With 500 beans a day, I'd imagine, through trial and error, it might only take me 32.89 or so months to complete the project. All it takes is some glue, a bit of elbow grease, and small amount of warping the laws of three dimensioned spacial arrangements.

Lord knows I would have the excess energy.

Trees (cost, space and time)

First, a bit of personal history.

I love camping. I love the quiet calm an uninhabited lake has during a morning paddle. I love the weight of a canoe pressing down on my neck. I love the sleep I can only get in tents, exhausted from a day's worth of physical duress from the miles through rivers, lakes, and muck. A portion of my years of camping experience has been this: The elusive and challenging one match campfire. I've heard legends of such a feat, and frankly, I disbelieve its existence on some levels. A no-match fire (aka, use a damn lighter already) sounds less stressful. But the trick we'd often use: a length of birch bark applied as kindling. I can almost smell the sickly sweet stink of the tree jacket rising from the bowels of my fire pit. That being said, it was common place to scour the entire campsite and its surrounding conifers just for downed birch (we are not in the habit of skinning the living, thank you!) because, for as often as we see the birch lining riverbank and lake shore, we never seem to camp near their graves.

Thus, when I asked myself, if I were planting 1000 trees in a day instead of writing 1000 words, my next question was, what kind of trees would I plant?

There's something eerie about the birch, the whiteness of that bark. You'd know it from miles away (depending on the size of the tree and the amount of obstacles blocking your line of sight.) There are a few things I know about it, whether its empirical knowledge or information found on the internet is the purview of a different writer. The bark always falls off in horizontal strips and no one knows why. The wood itself is the worst kind of firewood, something about the amount of moisture it retains, but the bark is highly valuable to starting a fire, as it burns even when wet and usually at high temperatures.

I did some clicking on various nurseries and the best price I was able to find for a birch sapling (or seedling, or baby tree for the uninitiated) was about £32.50 per, which translates into about $47 (USD) after adjusting conversion rates and applicable state, local and federal taxes. (One could ask, "why not find a state side horticulturist and cut out the overseas shipping costs? They're JUST TREES you dunderhead!!" I would respond to that person, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think." And while he [or she] is pondering that, I would follow up with the observation, "Who even says dunderhead anymore?")

$47,000 is a lot of money, so we'll pretend the nursery has offered a 25% discount applied prior to the conversion of pounds to dollars. So that reduces the initial price by £8,125. The total due the nursery for the purchase of 1000 birch is £24,375, which, adjusting for inflation and conversion rates and carrying the two (always carry the two) we're looking at a cost of roughly $35,319.48 (USD). What a bargain! I mean, really, in the scheme of things. That's 1000 trees you're buying (from Britain.) You're doing good work for the environment and you're being very worldly by injecting much needed capitol into another culture's economy, not to mention the fact that the British nursery industry has been in trouble since that fire back in '97.

The adult birch has a trunk diameter of about 80 centimeters, and for the sake of argument, let's say we space them out at 2 meter intervals. If we were to plant these trees in a straight line, one imagines it would be a very long line. How long, you ask? About 1 and 3/4 miles, or 9,186.35 feet. Notice, if you can, that I've switched midparagraph from the metric system to the antiquated English units of measurement. I have a few good reasons for doing this. First of all, here we are, all the way in the future, and not only are there no flying cars and no robots doing my laundry or sawing on a fiddle and playing hawt, but I'm still buying galleons of milk and liters of water. My frustrations always come out in the prose. Also, who even knows was 2.8 kilometers looks like? Don't we hear kilometers and immediately think, "those are those things that are like miles but shorter. Pfff. Wacky Brits." They came up with the mile! Come on!

Now here's an interesting turn: There are only 1440 minutes in a day, so if I were planting all these trees by myself, I would need to be planting them at a rate of 1 tree every minute and a half, that would pretty much be the only thing I'd do that day, every day, forever. No sleep. No eating. No texting or drinking beer or playing video games or anything else I usually fill my days with. It would be better if I had the manpower to assist me in my endeavor. Now let's say as far as volunteers go, let's say of the friends I have (that would be four) let's say 50% of them have enough free time in their daily schedules that they can donate some of it to a good cause. Of that 50% percent, let's say another 50% wants to spend that time on something that actually matters, like volunteering at a food shelter or helping someone run a nation campaign for the highest position in our government. That leaves (get it?) me and one friend planting all the trees. We would still be fighting against the clock. Each of us planting 500 trees, that's one tree on average every 3 minutes. No break. No rest. It's just tree after tree. And trees never say thank you.

This thin white line would be a thing to look at, but I'm thinking laws of physics, time and space, are working against us.

Or we could hire people.