Title: Goody goody gumdrops
Music du jour: Robert Miles, Dreamland

Welp, Penguin Dust has had a bad week -- the box that snerk.net is sitting on has been up and down like a White House intern all week long. If you've been trying to hit the site and have been getting a connection time-out or connection refused, that's probably why. We ended up replacing a hard disk and doing a fresh installation of Debian. The web server daemon was down earlier today too... that required a little tweaking. Those of you with shell accounts on the system: please notify me if you find stuff that's broken or missing. I think we got everything, but you never know.

So we (Ian and I) were driving back from Colorado Springs last week, after replacing one of the hard disks, and we stopped in at a gas station to fill up on fuel, car and geek alike. Ian ended up with a big fat bag of gumdrops and a large cup of hot chocolate. (I'm not sure how these two go together, but whatever.) Ian has a passion for all thing sugary and bad for you. So do I, but even I have my limits. Ian, on the other hand, contends that there's no such thing as too much of a good thing. And these were BIG gumdrops. Huge, hulking, sugary mutant beasts, such as you can only find in obscure gas stations and roadside Stuckey's everywhere. They almost scared me. But I guess a sugar rush is what you need when you're on a late-night road trip.

Anyway. We were discussing the philosophical implications of gumdrops.

Ian was making me nervous, because he would rummage around in the gumdrop bag, draw one out, peer at it, switch the light on, peer at it again, switch the light back off, and pop it into his mouth. While driving. Yeek. I asked him, rather irritably I'm afraid, if it was entirely necessary to turn the light on every time he ate a gumdrop.

"Well, of course it is. How else can I see what color it is?"

If I could have seen my own face, I'm sure it would have held a look of total confusion. "What difference does it make? Just eat the damn thing."

"But if I don't know what color it is, it ruins the gumdrop-eating experience. For example, if I'm expecting it to taste red and it tastes green, that would be very disconcerting."

I paused and pondered this. "You know, I think you may have something there. It's like when you order a Coke and they bring you a Dr. Pepper by mistake. There's just something inherently icky and nasty about it. It jolts you."

Ian nodded sagely. "That's why I like to know the color before I eat the gumdrop. It heightens the experience if I know what to expect... I can have that anticipation. Plus," he added as he rummaged in the bag again and squinted at his find, "some flavors just don't go well together, like purple and red. You have to clear your palate. Kind of like when you're sampling beers and you eat crackers in between samples. You don't want to eat a red gumdrop and a purple gumdrop back to back... it's nasty. You want to be able to pick something that tastes good."

I thought about that for a moment. Then I asked, "But wouldn't not knowing be exciting as well? You could be adventurous... not knowing what you're getting until the gumdrop is in your mouth. That way you wouldn't have any expectations and they wouldn't be shattered if you got a green one instead of a red one."

Ian blinked. "I never thought about that. You could be right. But could I take the suspense? I don't know."

"Try it," I advised. "Reach in the bag, pull one out and just pop it in your mouth. Don't think about what you're expecting. Can you tell what flavor it's supposed to be without knowing ahead of time?"

He looked askance at the bag sitting between the seats... almost nervous. I started chanting, "Do it, do it!" (peer pressure, peer pressure). I could see his fingers twitching as he looked fearfully at the open bag sitting there, taunting him. Finally he worked up his courage and grabbed a random gumdrop out of the bag, throwing it back before he could lose his nerve. He chewed thoughtfully for a minute, while I held my breath in anticipation.

"It tastes... yellow," he finally announced.

I broke into spontaneous applause. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Ian shrugged, then went for another piece. "Hmmm... this isn't so bad. This one tastes red. Maybe I could get used to this."

I beamed. "I'm so proud of you for being adventurous." I paused. "God, this is a Penguin Dust entry right here. The philosophy of eating gumdrops. Damn, do I need a life."

Ian just laughed.

-- marcie.

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