Category Archives: The Petri Dish

Observations of culture

What If Your College Is ON Jupiter?

My second eldest daughter, Thing 2, graduates high-school this spring whereupon accolades for successfully making it through the simplest part of life will no doubt be generously bestowed upon her.  After that comes…well, therein lies the proverbial and axiomatic rub.  College seems to be all the rage these days for young high-school graduates so I suppose in order to avoid rocking the cultural and aphoristic boat, college is where we will probably send her.

But we are of course concerned.  Concerned that she will make good decisions.  Concerned for her safety.  But most of all concerned that once she gets out into the real world she might get her feelings hurt.  This is why we have scoured the finest of educational institutions in search of the one most likely to protect her from those nasty microagressions of self-expression that are bound to emotionally scar her and render her unable to function due to a general feeling of victimizing disagreement.

Looking around, we liked Continue reading →

The First conTIMplating Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

We have a tradition here in the conTIMplating home that every Christmas before bowing to the idol of excessive consumption, we read the story of The First Christmas and revel in all of its bell-jingling yuletide merriness.  But never before our November gluttonous ode to gratitude have we sat down and reminded ourselves of The First Thanksgiving.  So by golly, this year I am going to use the expression ‘by golly’ more often and do something about it.  And you can too!  Simply gather about the victual-laden tabletop, get out your various electronic devices that are out anyway, and read aloud to one another in your best Charlton Heston voice this,

The First conTIMplating Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

Continue reading →

How to Be an Award-Winning Blogger

I have been blogging now for exactly 18+ months or so (give or take) and I must say, I am all Baghdadified (that is, in shock and awe) that I have not received any smugly satisfactory and pretentiously praiseful honors from within my own pompous peer group such that I can properly puff myself up with conceited pride and self-important pomposity.  Nor have I even received a nomination!

But then I watched television last Sunday night and what I discovered via the Columbia Broadcasting System made me involuntarily exclaim, “Oh Lorde!  I have been doing it all wrong!”  I have been foolishly just sitting at my computer and writing, not at all using the obvious tactical strategery it takes to be an esteemed and celebrated success in one’s chosen field.  How could I have not seen it sooner?

Being the unselfish egoist I am, I will share what I learned the other night Continue reading →

Icy What You Did There

As I was herniating myself the other day while out shoveling my driveway for the 87th time this winter after a surprise un-forecasted overnight snow of seven inches, I stopped to try and remember what my lawn looked like and got to conTIMplating exactly why I live in Minnesota, being that it is so nonsensically cold here that Satan has his own line of credit at the local Burlington Coat Factory.

Why would anybody voluntarily reside where you have to watch heart-warming movies to keep your body temperature at a survivable level and the phrase ‘beating the heat’ has no meaning other than an NBA win over Miami?

Then there is the whole ‘Neighbor Challenge’ thing.  Notice our Christmas card from 2010: Continue reading →

This is it! The Diet Starts…Monday

Oh how I love New Year’s with all of its revelry in celebration of an arbitrary moment in the incessantly monotonous passage of time.  What better reason to party?  What I don’t love however, is that it is (once again) time to be pressured into taking stock of my stockiness, throw my considerable weight around in considering my considerable weight, and ask myself why I don’t look like the touched-up models and celebrities I see in photo-shopped magazines and professionally enhanced videos.  Is it because I am (ulp) normal?

Well, I’ve (once gain) had it with being normal!  I look and feel like an average human!  Ugh!  And so over the New Year I have (once again) resolved to immerse my typical averageness in the very American and very lucrative dieting and starvation industry so I can more closely resemble the media fantasies we all know and worship. Continue reading →