But it's such NICE nonsense!

My thoughts on song titles a few days ago got me to thinking about something I've wondered about in the past. As a fan of surrealism, non-sequiturs, wacky fantasy, and general weirdness, I have to wonder what makes nonsense good. I mean, anyone can put words together in a way that doesn't make sense. Here: The ice cream tortoise onioned the yo-yo last Tuesday. That's not particularly clever, is it? When I took a Creative Writing course in college, I wrote a stream-of-consciousness poem one week (I don't remember it so well, but I know two of the lines were "The lure of the banana is much too strong" and "Spitting off a bridge in Calcutta"), and it was pretty roundly criticized. (Mind you, I don't agree with all of the ideas the professor had, like the one that a creative piece should tell everything, but I'm not going to pretend to be a misunderstood genius.) I think part of it has to do with talent. I'm sure putting words together in a way that sounds good (whether or not they actually make sense) is harder than you'd think. Salvador Dali painted images based on dreams, but he was also really good at drawing things. They Might Be Giants lyrics often sound pretty nonsensical (although the Johns have said their songs always have meaning to them), but they also usually have really catchy melodies. There's also the matter of being nonsensical in an evocative way, so that people can draw their own meanings. I guess it's kind of like in Through the Looking-Glass, when Alice first reads Jabberwocky, and says, "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly know what they are!"

( Hey! This survey is backwards! )

Food, Glorious Food

J. K. Rowling once wrote that she liked stories where the author would tell you what everyone was eating. In the essay by C. S. Lewis about writing for children that's reproduced in my copy of the Chronicles of Narnia, he mentions how someone who read an early draft of the part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Lucy has tea with Tumnus pointed out how he said a lot about what they ate and drank. There are several mentions in the Lewis Carroll's Alice books about how Alice was interested in what everyone lived on. I recently re-read L. Frank Baum's The Magical Monarch of Mo, which is about a country where it rains lemonade and snows popcorn, and a lot of the landscape is made up of candy. Locations in Super Mario World include the Donut Plains, Vanilla Dome, and Chocolate Island. And, of course, Candy Land has been a popular children's game for ages. So why is everyone so obsessed with food? Some critics would say that it's specifically a children's thing, but I'm not so sure. I know I have somewhat of an obsession with food, and I don't even eat that much. I just think a lot about food, even when I'm not hungry. Is it because food is such a unifying factor in human life (since, after all, everyone needs to do it)? Or is there a particular connection between food and fantasy?

While on the subject, I must say that I have pretty childish tastes in food. That's not to say that my tastes haven't matured somewhat, but I still prefer to eat the same kinds of things I did when I was a kid. I'll no longer complain if my food at a restaurant comes with a salad, but I won't go out of my way to order a salad, either. When I order a burger or a chicken sandwich, I'll ask them to leave off the lettuce, tomatoes, and such. I'll EAT lettuce and tomatoes, but I don't want them to ruin the taste of the meat. While I can't eat as much candy and cake as I used to be able to, I drink a lot of sweet beverages. I love fruit juice, lemonade, and fruit punch. I've never really developed a taste for, say, liver and onions, or cole slaw, or coffee, or wine, or really spicy foods (although I'm willing to eat a little more from this category than I was when I was younger). Perhaps none of this is all that unusual, but it often seems like most adults like fancier foods than I do.

I really do need more vegetables and other healthy things in my diet, but, in addition to the fact that I don't like them that much, there's the matter of laziness. Unless someone else is cooking, I'll often just heat up some frozen food. The only two things I can cook are spaghetti and omelettes. I'd like to learn how to cook more things, but I'm not really sure how to go about it. Anyway, is there a cheap, easy way to make my diet a little more healthy?