Thursday, November 30, 2006

Remodeled Cafeteria

The company I work for (which I will affectionately refer to as "my company" from here on out when I see that my roommate and I have received our electric and gas bills. I will say out loud, "Roomie, we've received the pleasure of my company," at which point he will likely look at me with disdain and a little bit of confusion, and consider locking his door when he sleeps at night) has just remodeled its cafeteria. One of the main bonuses now is that it features a salad bar.

At first, I was excited at the prospect of a salad bar, because I thought that opting for salad would be a healthier alternative to whatever greasy food I would normally have chosen, until I remembered how much salad dressing I put on my salad. After quickly doing the math (all right, I didn't really do the math, but I understand that English has these things called "subordinate clauses" that give your readers "clues" as to "where your writing is going to go next" because they "help form coherent thoughts", so I thought that I would include one, even if it was/were [subjunctive case, anyone?] fictitious. Unfortunately, I believe my grammar textbook also said that an "excessive wordiness" in parentheses will quickly "lose your reader's attention" and make them "consider suicide" because you've effectively changed the topic in your writing for something frequently tangential, oftentimes just dropping them back into what they call your "independent clause" without so much as a heads up), I realized that the number of calories likely exceeds the caloric quantity of a delicious honey baked ham.

My conclusion? I will write a book called Honey Baked Ham and You: How I Found Happiness and New Clothes by not Eating Salad, and market it to people who are looking to lose weight. I know that many of you will object and say that what I've done is just effectively re-invented the Atkins Diet, but if you tell me that in person, I'll claim that I've never heard of this "At-kuns?" diet you speak of.

Wow. Two million dollar ideas in one week. I'll just have to be sure not to use so many parentheses in the book, and it's sure to be a success (unless the Atkins people break my knee-caps with their bony fists, but that's a risk that I'm willing to let future AC take).

UPDATE: In my salad today, I added something that I thought was cheese but most certainly is not cheese. I am offended that this death-tasting-like, cheese-impostering substance is offered at the salad bar. OFFENDED!

3 comments:

JulieGong said...

I had an amazing salad bar in my cafeteria in college and I'm pretty sure it was the downfall to my eating. It had so many topings that I rarely had an actual salad ingredietes.

Laura McLain said...

I am so glad that I'm not the only one that thinks about grammatical phrases and clauses while writing!

Anonymous said...

Where you at, AC?