Sentience in a seed-pod

So last week I was having a drink with Mark and Rodrik and Mark (as usual) is sms-distracted. It entails a boa, and a girl named Wendy. And possibly, another girl named Diane. The details, at least for me, are a little sketchy. The evening ends. I go for dinner with Laura. Mark and Rodrik go for dinner with Wendy, the boa girl.

So Saturday night I went to a party because Adhil is going away. Wendy was there. Coincidence?

Yip.

Anyway, she loves Reservoir Dogs, which I hated. In fact, Quentin is not my favourite artist in general. Pulp fiction was ok, but I think John Travolta and Sam Jackson (I cast off as if I know him just because I once watched him play golf in Hermanus) rescued a mediocre script. Of course, it's pulp, and doesn't strictly pretend to be anything else. Or does it?

I didn't tell her that Michael (yes, the movie about the angel who smokes) is my favourite movie of all time for fear of ridicule. How uncharacteristic, although I was a little tipsy - hence, self-conscious. Anyway, I've always picked didactic movies above cosmetic ones...

House hunting. Those twisted words hang in the air like the porcine viscera of a bitter portend...

This weekend I saw many places. Why can I find no rest, little bear, little bear?

Why are there no showers in Cape Town? Only bath after bath, wallowing after wallowing, soaking Filth in their sodden filth...

Bring me your wooden floors, your spacious kitchens, bring me your attachments for dishwashers and washing machines, satellite dishes, rooms you can swing a cat in... Bring them to me, and I will sign upon the dotted line.

Looking for a good line to pick up sexy students? Try:

How are your grades?

I fear that Tracey, my long-suffering office mate, is beginning to lose it. Witness the following shocking activities:

• A book thrown at me from across the room.
  
• A phone, slammed in anguish and retaliation into it's cradle.
  
• Constant angry typing followed by maniacal giggling.
  
• Death threats should I reveal any of the above.
  

I smile and nod.

On my way to work today I spotted this magical sign of cosmic significance.



What could it mean, and how does it tie in with the death of tea as we know it?

Today we got this e-mail:

All,
Please note that from today onwards we are toning down on Friday teas and will only serve scones or similar as was done initially.
The catering is really getting out of hand - re expense and hassle.

Your understanding will be appreciated :)

Now the last time we had such a drastic tea reduction was around the time of September 11, 2002. Ergo, we're heading for disaster. Think about it...


For the visually stimulated.

I have a hickey today. So juvenile. Why do I bruise so easily? Of course, Mark is ripping me off, even though he said he wouldn't.

This is not the blog of one Geoff Jamieson. This blog is made from four basic ingredients: bullshit, humour, words and thought. Each of these ingredients give the blog a certain character. In the end, what a blog is depends not only on upon the combination of these ingredients, but also where it is made and who makes it.

Words
With words being the most plentiful ingredient in blogs, it should not be surprising to learn that the local water can affect the blog's flavour. Our blog is made from the fresh clear words of the Southern Suburbs, Cape Town, with its unique mineral content that is partly responsible for part of the unique flavor of the blogs we brew at Sentience in a Seed-pod. The cynicism and biting sarcasm of words are measures of the dissolved wit. The witty constructions and cunning bon mots found in words can cause the blog to be somewhat astringent. This is not a "flavour," but it does affect your enjoyment of the blog. If you have ever noticed a dry mouth feeling you sometimes get from tea, that is astringency. We filter and soften the words before using them, to remove excess cynicism and eliminate the astringency.

Bullshit
The second major ingredient is bullshit. Like all grains, bullshit contains starches. Starches are converted to sugar which feeds the mind, which actually makes the blog. But the blogger needs more than just starch, and that is where bullshit excels above all other grains. The mind also needs protein to grow, and the blogger needs proteins to create pithy headings for the blog. Bullshit has more protein than any other grain besides wheat. Wheat cannot be used in large quantities because wheat contains glutens. Glutens are gummy carbohydrates that work great for making bread but are nasty when it comes to making blogs.

The blogger uses really ploppy fresh bullshit instead of hardened old pats because he wants the shit to do some of the work for him. Bullshit is a seed like all other grains. It contains starches and proteins stored away for the young plant to use when it starts growing. The blogger wants these in his blog, but broken down for the mind to comprehend. The minds of the readers are like babies in that they need simple food. When bullshit sprouts it sets up the machinery for stored nutrient breakdown. Once this has happened the blogger wants the sprouting process to stop so he will slowly kiln it until it is dry. The blogger will use this machinery later in the brew to finish the breakdown without having allowed the bullshit to use anything to grow. In effect the blogger steals nutrients from the fresh bullshit and feeds it to his audience.

Humour
Humour is a vine which grows wild in this area (and in most parts of the world, but not in some parts of Afrikanerdom). Humour is also specially cultivated for the blog industry. It is the closest non-living relative of ganga, but it is not a drug. Bloggers use jokes in blogs to provide aroma and bitterness. Most people will agree that bitterness is not a flavor we all want, but there is a reason for it to be in blogs. In the old days, bloggers needed to add something to the blog to prevent it from growing sour. They used all sorts of spices, including ginger, cloves, cinnamon and even garlic and onions. (At Sentience in a Seed-pod we make some spice postings as seasonal offerings, but we'll probably avoid the use of garlic and onions!) The tradition of adding such spices was superseded when bloggers discovered that the jokes from local humourists worked better and offered a classier aroma. The bitterness also counterbalanced the sweetness of the blog (at the time blogs were rather sweet) so people would read more. It became so popular that there are few blogs indeed that do not use humour, even though the original reasons for using them are long past. We will be growing humour vines right here on our patio at the Sentience in a Seed-pod headquarters.

Thoughts
The thought is the backbone of the whole brewing operation. Thoughts are living organisms that turn the sugary words that the blogger prepares into a blog. Our Blogger likes to take credit for the blog he produces, but it is really his mind that does most of the work.

Thought is a term that biologists rarely apply to single-celled brains. There are many types of mind in the world, some good, some bad. The blogger uses a distinct type of mind and is very particular about its care and feeding. A blogger's mind is different, but closely related to the minds that are used in wine making and bread making.

When a thought grows in a blog it is converting sugar into carbon dioxide and words and generating energy. When the oxygen runs out, thoughts change gears and start to foment.

We all have a certain capacity to "ferment." When we humans exercise strenuously we sometimes get a burning sensation in our muscles. This sensation is from our muscle cells switching gears when there isn't enough oxygen. In our case, the product is lactic acid. When a thought runs out of oxygen it produces ennui, and thus a blog. Thoughts add more than ennui to the blog. Every thought also has its own characteristic flavours. Some are fruity and some are spicy. The thoughts that we use in this blog are rather fruity and bready in flavor. This is a top fomenting mind, which means it floats on top of the blog as it ferments.

The blogger prefers a warmer temperature and goes to seed quite rapidly, usually completing its work in 7 to 10 days. He also adds other fruity and spicy flavors to the blog. Sometimes the blog will taste like there are bananas or cloves in it. That is because the thoughts create some of the same chemicals that are found in bananas or cloves.

The Brewing Process
We produce our own blogs entirely on site with our own recipes. The machinery we use in our blogging headquarters has been manufactured by Diversified Metal Engineering on Robbin Island. We make our blogs in 7 paragraph batches.

Mashing In
Blogging day at Sentience begins by mashing in. The "mash" is where the bullshit is mixed with words at the proper temperature so that the starch is converted to sugar. When you make oatmeal you heat it up to make it gooey. With bullshit you do the same thing, but it is not boiled. At first it is gooey, but then it becomes loose, like a bowl of bran cereal. This part of the process is done in a "mash tun" (a tun is a large container).

Mashing Out
After the mash is complete the blogger drains the sugary words from the mash tun into the kettle. These sugary words are called the "biggest load of shit I have ever seen."

The kettle uses steam to heat the brew. As the biggest load of shit I have ever seen drains into the kettle the grains are rinsed with hot water until almost all of the sugar is extracted. The spent bullshit is then recovered and set aside for our baker's use in making the bread we serve in our restaurant. (This is some of the most spectacular bread you've never tasted.) The hot words are stored in a stainless steel vessel next to the kettle, while the biggest load of shit I have ever seen is boiled in the kettle for at least an hour. This is when the humour is added.

Whirlpooling
When the boil is finished the hot words are whirlpooled in the kettle so that all of the humour and the coagulated proteins settle in the center and clear crap can be transferred to the fomenter. The crap is chilled in a heat exchanger (which sits beside the kettle) to a temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, the perfect temperature for thoughts like these.

The blogs foments for about three days and then is aged a few more days and cooled to near freezing. It can then be cold filtered. The filtration is done in our cold room downstairs under the pub. This room is maintained at 35° Fahrenheit.

Our blog is served directly from this cold storage facility through servers in the pub upstairs, avoiding the kegging or bottling process that burdens our commercial cousins. Blogs served this way are thus fresher than can be offered by the big bloggers. It just can't get any fresher!

I procrastinate more than is humanly possible. It's my superpower. Other people with procrastinate past the due date. I'll procrastinate past the point of no return. Now to find somewhere that's useful...