It's hot

Summer is here I guess? It's some date, possibly after the 21st. The days are getting shorter, and warmer. It's a good thing I don't live in a humid place.

Oh wait, it's the eastern seaboard. Everything is humid! Probably even Maine. On the plus side, October is right around the corner, and thus I am excited.

If I get scooped in Omaha 8 or better by KKJ2 one more time I'm gonna break my time machine.

Fruits and Vegetables

The matter of preference and distinction among all the fruits and vegetables I am aware of (as most Americans know, you don't need exposure to something to have an opinion about it) is a topic I don't think about that often. Part of the reasoning, I believe, relies on the idea that I don't eat a whole lot of either fruits or vegetables, certainly not too many fruit, whether it's variety or an amount of a particular one or two. In addition, I probably subconsciously think of myself as someone who does eat a decent amount of both, or would like to. Here are some fruits I don't care for, ranked appropriately:

1. Fresh Cherries- Get them out of here! That's just going to have to suffice. Anything that makes the number one spot of a subjective "most disgusting this thing" list is obviously just completely unappealing to the person polled.

2. Plum- I'm pretty sure I haven't had one since I was five, but I remembering it providing little in the way of awesomeness, in sharp contrast to fruits like mango, blueberry, peach and even banana. Honestly, the latter garners so much of it's popularity from its useful form and the practical ease associated with eating one in real life. I haven't heard much support for the plum during my life, and certainly none from anyone my age. That may have to with the fact that I can't remembering ever seeing a young person eating a plum.

3. Olive- Man, these things are gross! Green or black, they are both very unappetiziing to me. I am capable of tasting some difference between the two, but it just doesn't matter to me. I will avoid every single one if I'm eating a salad with them in it, and if olives are baked into something, I'll probably just skip it. This is one of the foods where I'm fairly certain that if I was able to taste some of the best or most famous olives in the world, I would try them, but still refuse to eat them later. I could easily see olives and plums switching places at some point.

4. Grapefruit- I used to think that this was an age-dependant fruit, but I'm not sure I still believe this. Surely, there are many people of all ages who dislike grapefruit. Recently, I've come to ponder whether some young people like it, and frankly, why couldn't they? If you ingore that grapefruit is bitter, harsh, and less tasty and usbale than its counterparts the orange, lemon, and lime, or like those reasons, then the grapefruit is for you. All it takes is one eye squirting experience to disuade most of the on the fencers, and if that's not enough, the second is probably not that far off.

5. Apple- See, here's where things get interesting. Or boring, depending on how much you enjoy marginalized topics. I don't find the apple gross, or bizarre, I don't have a terrible life experoence connected with the apple, and the taste isn't horrible (I wouldn't have apple in my 10 least favorite foods). Nevertheless, it's not that good, particuarly refreshing, nearly all other fruits taste better, it has some seeds get in the way, and the apple is way too hard. It's also a little too difficult to eat the middle, and the whole process is messier than it's given credit for. I really believe ideally you might desire one napkin per apple eating experience, so it's instantly in that category.

I truly didn't intend for this to be either a top or bottom 5 list, but that's honestly that's all the fruit I can think of not liking right now. The rest all range from decent to amazing. I can't say that I've ever had raw beet though. And I also haven't figured out if beet is classified as fruit or vegetable or both, but I believe the vegetable part may only inculde the root and leaves. Whether that encompasses all of a beet, I am unsure.

Apparently, by botanical definition, a strawberry is a vegetable. It'd be good to know of there are layers or distinctions within "botanical definition", whether some are more of vegetables than others, if that's even possible. For instance, tomato is by botanical definition, a fruit, but the word "strict" didn't precede "botanical definition" in the text I read, so what's the deal with that? It seems like a fair number of people consider tomato a fruit, but certainly not strawberry. Perhaps it's irrelevant, because the Supreme Court did in fact rule that tomato is legally a vegetable.

Three and a half horsemen

If there's one thing I get excited about in June, it's the U.S. Open. For those of you who don't know, or have continued reading past the first sentence, I'm referring to the golf tournament, because apparently there's also a tennis tournament by the same name. Small world.

I write this because I expected this golf tournament to be on the same weekend as my birthday, as it was last year. Apparently this is not the case, as the U.S. Open (not to be confused with The Open, which commonly refers to the British counterpart) instead goes off next week.

So instead of watching golf I decided to blog. A fair substitute? No. I'd actually equate it to wanting to go to Las Vegas and settling for Reno, expecting to see Magnolia and watching the Santa Clause 2, or salivating over fresh crab and instead receiving fried flounder. I could go on, but I will spare you my mundane attempts at humorous analogies. Wait...

It's like getting tickets for some kind of other wordly reality bending comedy show featuring Richard Pryor, Jerry Seinfeld, young Eddie Murphy (back when he was offensive and edgy), and Mitch Hedburg and instead finding yourself front row for a three hour set by Caroline Rhea, Brad Garrett, Dennis Miller, and Joy Behar, with nothing to drink but bottles of O'Douls. Normally you'd expect to see Tom Arnold included in a joke like that, but far too many hacks have been saved at the expense of the boisterous legend from Iowa.

At any rate, I was never able to muster up much excitement for my birthday, as I always felt the expectations were just too high, and there was this constant underlying pressure all day to have fun and deal with an inappropriate amount of attention placed on me. It just always seemed sofake; why would kids make fun of me most of the year and then decide to act nice on a single day? Sympathy? I'd rather them have just let me alone. Besides, being that my brithday is June 13th, I usually was in school for the event, but it was late in the year so no one really cared and sometimes I even missed out on the free pencil. Still it was nice that it was almost exactly 6 months from Christmas, but now that I don't get worked up about presents, it seems like it pops up from the abyss. Fortunately, my last couple birthdays have been pretty sweet, thanks to a couple awesome people and the discovery of whiskey. A fair punishment for me subjecting the reader to this well intentioned presentation of continuous verbosity is that my birthday slowly wittles away, while I remain shirtless, sober, and unshowered.

The title of this post is somewhat related to a sentence or two of the nonsense I spewed early on, as I believe it my duty to tell the world of the foursome that went off at Bethpage Black (the golf course hosting the U.S. Open this year) a couple days ago. A formidable contingent of Michael Jordan, Justin Timberlake, Ben Roethlisberger, and Larry Giebelhausen each shot respective scores of 86, 88, 81, and 101, on the par 72 course in a celebrity and probably gambling filled warm up to next week's second major of the year.

I hope that the three-headed combination of iced coffee, writing, and not playing internet poker while bring some peace to my day, as I turn a very un-notorious 24 years old. Still, somewhat like the last 2 or 3 years, I am filled more than anything else by a sense of serenity, fueled solely by the fact that I have lived another year in this universe, and thus experienced that many more minutes of life, something not everyone on this planet is so lucky to do. It is not pride that makes me happy, nor a sense of achievement, nor is it true that I haven't wasted much of the time I've been alive on complete silliness. It is the simple and yet all too complex fact that I'm still here, that I still have the opportunity to attempt all the wonderous things there are to do in this world, that makes me feel good. It's a feeling that doesn't usually last very long for me, but it's pretty sweet when it's around.

With that being said, I cannot achieve true contentment without having one question unmistakeably answered.

Hottie or Nottie? This guy:

That was fun while it lasted

God damn. This sucks. So much for the whole having the best player in the world thing. At least we've got 80 million pounds to spend on... not the best player in the world. Damn.

And now for the most cliched of all blog apologies: Sorry about the recent lull of activity around these parts. Real life issues like moving and work tend to get in the way of trivial opining. Life seems to be settling down for all of us again, so you can look forward to rejuvenation #33 here at Banteranter.