a FAKE newspaper

On fruits and their inhabitants

Recently I wrote on my Facebook wall:

Nothing beats adding fresh fruit to yogurt until you find a worm in your blueberries.

This prompted the expected chorus of yucks and grosses that you might expect from such a statement. There was also an amount of “gotcha” emphasis on the use of the word “nothing;” the implication was that my worldview is so narrow that I did not believe that any activity could possibly best the adding of fruit to yogurt. This was all lovely banter, but it fails to raise the objection that I noted upon slight reflection.

My intent was obviously to state that the experience of eating yogurt is improved by adding fresh fruit to it. Indeed, it was vanilla yogurt with honey at the bottom of the cup. Including blueberries would vastly increase the range of flavors. One flavor that was not counted on being present, however, was that of the Worm. Nothing beats adding fresh fruit to yogurt. Upon detection of worms in the berries the delight associated with the activity rapidly diminishes.

My sentence references something entirely different.

Consider this: nothing beats putting water into a bucket until it is full. “Until it is full” is the natural completion of the activity. Whether this is true or not, understand that I have identified the activity as being the filling of a bucket until full. So what is Activity #1? The adding of fruit to yogurt until finding a worm. This is probably a good time to stop adding fruit. One might argue you might be better off halting fruit addition immediately before including worms, but the question on the table concerns the actual finding of worms. You certainly wouldn’t continue adding fruit after finding a worm, would you?

In this case, I had already contributed all available fruit to the yogurt before the worm made itself known - wiggling about. Imagine this conversation:

Charles: “I love to add fresh fruit to my yogurt!”

Jon: “I would certainly agree. Such a prospect sounds very delightful.”

Charles: “I only add fruit until I find a worm though.”

Jon: “Well, naturally. Then what do you do?”

Charles: “Usually I stop eating and then throw it away.”

Jon: “Have you considered doing anything else?”

Charles: “No I have not.”

Jon: “Marvelous. Simply marvelous. I cannot imagine a better way to spend an afternoon in the merry month of May.”

Charles: “Indeed, sir. Nor can I.”

You do not have to imagine it FOR I HAVE IMAGINED IT FOR YOU ALREADY.

If I had the option to restate my affections concerning this topic, I would have said that nothing beats adding fresh fruit to yogurt - until you find a worm in your blueberries. But I did not, so we have to assume that I meant it in the tone mentioned above.

While brainstorming the title I learned of dialectical materialism. Can you conceive of such a thing taking place?