Russian Spoons and Other Things

Here's what I wonder about Russian spoons: do people actually ever eat with them?

You know the ones I mean. They're made of wood. They're painted really pretty colors and swirly patterns. They're too large to be practical for anything but borscht or maybe kasha. You can't eat ice-cream with them. You can't eat yogurt with them. You can't dive into a grapefruit with them.

Of course, back then, Russia did not really have ice-cream or yogurt or grapefruit - well, they probably had yogurt but I think they drank it as kafir rather than eating it with a spoon the way we usually do - so it was probably a moot point.

But I can't help thinking that the spoons are really entirely for decoration, like those giant bottles of pickled vegetables that they sell in some stores Does anyone ever actually buy one of those giant bottles of beautiful colorful pickled vegetables in order to consume them? I mean, the layers are so carefully arranged, first yellow peppers, then red squashed tomatoes, then light brown mushrooms, then green asparagus... and the bottle-neck is far too impractical to allow you to easily fish out the pickled vegetables, should you want to eat them. I've seen them decorating various shelves and refrigerators, particularly those of my Russian piano teacher back in the day when I took piano lessons, and I've seen them in marketplaces that cater to immigrants... I've never seen one actually opened, though, so I think they are entirely there for decor. It's very odd... I wonder how they would look at me if I suddenly bought one and then began to eat its contents.

Maybe it would be the expression that waiters give me in buffets when I take one of the radishes carved as a rose and begin munching on it. Or when I tried chipping off the nose of an ice sculpture so I could have some ice for my drink... Hm. Maybe I'm the reason why my family stopped going to buffets...

I wonder who came up with the idea to fuck around with metal and put together this conical thing with a mouth piece and then tried making farting noises into it and realized HEY I INVENTED THE TRUMPET! I mean, I'm sure there's some logical historical precedent that make it quite sane to create this metal thing that requires a strangely specialized method of performance - I mean, it's not like a reed flute where you just blow into it and sound comes out, you need to squish your lips into some special shape I think... though I could also be totally wrong because I am not a trumpet player and might have totally misunderstood how brass players function. For example, I am under the impression you need to sort of fart into the brass instrument with your lips to get a proper sound. Maybe I am wrong about this.

I also always wondered who the hell invented the idea of bread, though, because it's such a complex process, FIRST grinding the grain into a flour, THEN mixing it with water and yeast, THEN baking it until it rises and is all yummy on the inside and crusty on the outside... It does not seem an intuitive process at all but apparently it is because I think practically every culture I can think of has some version of bread.

Another odd thing that we take for granted but that is actually somewhat odd is brushing our teeth. I mean, we do not think about it because for all our lives, we have been taking tiny brushes and squeezing out minty paste onto them and then scrubbing our teeth with the brush and apparently this somehow keeps our teeth healthy and cavity-free.

I mean, I suppose I can see some intuitive thinking here. Baking soda cleans stains on pots and plates and things, after all - if you drink too much black tea out of one cup and it's just stained all over with these black tea marks, you can just scrub them away with some baking soda and a brush and maybe a dab of water. It works like a charm. And teeth sort of resemble porcelain in texture so it kind of makes sense to use the same method to clean them, rather than, say, trying to clean them with soap and water like how we clean everything else.

Ok. Wait a fucking minute. SOAP. How the hell did THAT get invented? Such a bizarre invention. Somehow it magically kills bacteria and gets rid of dirt! I mean, people were making it and using it before they knew what bacteria were, they just used it to get rid of dirt. But they MADE it, in really big pots over really big fires, and it smelled vile and was made out of these poisonous awful substances - that somehow combined to create something that got RID of vile awful substances on your body and your clothes. How the hell did that get invented?

Man. It's too bad I don't care enough to actually look all this shit up and discovered the logical processes behind the invention of most of these things, because now I'm actually curious. But I'm too lazy to go to the library and look all this up, especially because it snowed like crazy a couple of hours ago and there's about three feet outside, and also, I'm at college again so I have classes and shit to worry about instead of looking up the answers to my silly questions.

But in the meantime: why are hearts supposed to be the organs with which we feel emotion and love? And why, for logic's sake, is the stylized rendition of a heart this weird symmetrical woogly shape that does not at ALL resemble what a real heart looks like?

Also I will never understand ties. Perhaps the antecedents to ties made some sort of functional sense, but now ties are pretty much the most useless article of clothing I can think of - what befuddles me and actually even angers me, though, is that they are required articles of clothing for men who want to work in an office or attend a wedding or something. I mean, I guess they can be thought of as an ornamental scarf or something cos they can look kinda nice when done right - but what really boggles my mind is that people do NOT think of them as weird ornamental scarfs and instead actually seem to regard them as vital parts of a dapper gentleman's attire, as necessary as, say, pants. Then again, classy women seem to be expected to wear makeup too, which is another thing I find ridiculous - am I the only person who looks at someone wearing make-up and cannot get over the fact that there is pretty much paint smeared all over their face and we are pretending that this is totally normal and not at all silly and funny?

Ok. Okay. I'm done. I'm going to go drink some calming tea now. I'm done.