Joy is a self-cleaning oven
Ether St. Vying
RBB:
> >Humans do enjoy activities that give joy doing and when it comes to
> >joy result doesn't count anymore.
Jeremy:
> Yeah.... and .... spending one's time exploring and supporting
> misleading nonsense brings "joy" to a lot of people? Does it
> really?? Well okay... it happens. Then again, maybe their "joy" is
> a little watered-down or something.
RBB:
Not to them it isn't.Joy is something very personal. I mean people get
joy out of collecting stamps. That is really beyond me.
Then this will baffle you.
I experienced true joy and awe over the workings of my self-cleaning
oven. It hadn't been cleaned since I got it new a year and a half ago,
and I'd used it A LOT. The insides were caked with the spatter and
drippings of at least 100 baking/roasting/broiling sessions.
I've never had a self-cleaning oven, so I read the manual carefully, and
followed the protocol in every detail. Then I pushed the correct
sequence of buttons to activate a 4 hour purge of hellish heat. I can
bake in that oven indefinitely, and it doesn't heat the kitchen, or even
its own ceran top ... but in this mode, it was like a firey furnace.
Thick blue smoke curled out of the oven vent, spiralling upward toward
the chromeplated 50's ceiling fan, on the way to particulate heaven. The
thickening clouds of incinerating carbon and fat proved to be too much
for the geriatric fan, and the fumes began to snake slowly through the
rest of the house.
I opened a west window to release the smoke into the wild, but the wind
was from the west, so it just wafted the smoke into the east end of the
house, and diluted the burning stench. Within a few hours, the smoky
part of the self-cleaning process was over, and when I glanced through
the window on the door, I could see the walls glistening and shimmering
with the intense heat.
It was about 95 degrees in the kitchen when the cycle ended at 5:45 am
... and I went to bed wondering ... wondering what I'd find when I
unlocked and opened the door to the oven the next day. With my almost
complete lack of faith in manufacturing integrity, I half expected to
find a surface as scarred as the face of Jupiter's moon, Europa.
When I finally did open the oven door the next day ... I was stunned.
All that was left of the burnt on spatter were two little dots of white
ash on the bottom of the oven. It looked, and smelled, brand new. Elbow
grease would have taken at least the same length of time and a whole lot
of rubber gloves, scrubbers, cleansers, and mess ... but even then, the
results could never have been this exquisite.
I found myself joyful that whole day, in awe of the self-cleaning
process. No matter how much of a mess food makes in the oven, at my
command, my oven purges itself to unparalled levels of cleanliness ...
and that's as close to kitchen godliness as it gets.
Ether
|3iff //ullins
me with wounds of paranoia and desire on Wed, 25 Feb 2004 01:37:19
-0500:
can i borrow it? you can email it to me...
--
"Here in Sunnyvale, you can have a full Asian meal by
just stepping outside your apartment and breathing."
-Bill Cleere
Ether St. Vying
I've never emailed a stove before. It might make for a very heavy
attachment.
Ether
Jeremy Donovan
I experienced joy just reading about it. And while I personally have
never initiated the cleaning process in an actual self-cleaning oven,
I believe you; I believe this really happened!
Hearing about the amazing technology associated with ovens has also
healed me of a traumatic childhood experience. On my 10th birthday,
my mother had a 'nervous breakdown' and was taken to the hospital. I
discovered one of her last acts had been to attempt to bake a birthday
cake for me. This made me feel guilty. Here's this woman going out
of her mind, and she's still trying to do things for me. Two pans of
cake were left in the oven, burned. I told my father "we should eat
some of it," feeling this would somehow express appreciation for her
efforts, but luckily he didn't care for that idea.
I've had uneasy feelings about ovens ever since, especially ovens with
burned food inside. But hearing of your experience immediately made
me feel a LOT better. Soon after reading it, I realized that I really
don't need to recapitulate my experiences with ovens again. Instead,
I can just visualize my own inner self-cleaning oven burning those old
experiences squeaky clean in no time! So all morning I've been using
this method to heal every past trauma. In my visualizations, I simply
place any difficult experience I can recall into my own inner
self-cleaning oven -- mine's a Kenmore from Sears 'where America
shops' -- and turn that sucker on. Soon all bad feelings are gone!
Burned to little white cinders of ash! And the 'energy' is magically
recycled to my luminous shell (which is already getting enormous and
shiny). I may give workshops on this method!
('The Self-Cleaning Oven of the Spirit')
Joy is truly everywhere. Your experience proves it.
-Jer
Bill Cleere
news:403C6E9F...@whereeveryoufind.it...
Now you're just being silly, as if he asked you for a whole stove.
Just e-mail him the self-cleaning part as a .zip file.
I used the self-cleaning feature for the first time not
long ago, and it was amazing. I never really expected
it to work.
-- Bill Cleere
Bill Cleere
news:m9lp30drlfr9h6p0e...@4ax.com...
That was *so* Philip K. Dick.
Dolores~
"Ether St. Vying" <jo...@whereeveryoufind.it> wrote in message
news:403C4299...@whereeveryoufind.it...
Mine always sets the smoke alarms off during the "smoking process". And
since I have a 150 year old fame house, I always wonder if the intense heat
emanating from the oven will make the old wooden walls burst into flames.
Other than that...it's great :)
slider
Ether St. Vying wrote
I found myself joyful that whole day, in awe of the self-cleaning
process. No matter how much of a mess food makes in the oven, at my
command, my oven purges itself to unparalled levels of cleanliness ...
and that's as close to kitchen godliness as it gets.
### - lol perhaps then that's what 'hell' is all about...
i.e. only a roasting can get certain people to part with their crap:))
|3iff //ullins
wounds of paranoia and desire on Wed, 25 Feb 2004 22:29:40 GMT:
wow. thats pretty cool. is it victorian?
>I always wonder if the intense heat
>emanating from the oven will make the old wooden walls burst into flames.
>
i've seen the remains of an old house after a fire. the house was
"insulated" with two layers of old newsprint from the year 1889. and
the answer, in *that house's case, was yes. there wasn't much left but
the roof (pretty much intact) sitting on top of the
newspaper-insulated walls which was itself mostly well-incinerated
ash.
>Other than that...it's great :)
>
--
"wo sind die landers Schwestern?"
-david letterman
Dolores~
"|3iff //ullins" <biff_mu...@SPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ufaq30hjupbs1248m...@4ax.com...
Yes. I had a typo in there last time. I meant farm not fame. It's
150-year-old Victorian Farmhouse. I would say it's in pretty damn good
shape for something 150-years-old. The main beams in the cellar are rounded
on the bottom, as if
they just shaved down tree limbs for beams, which they very well could have.
And the beams are nailed together with these nails that are kind of squared
off, not round. To be able to see the construction of that era is kind of
neat. And it's also neat to think about what was going on 150 years ago. To
know that my house was standing here already during the Civil War, things
like that.
The area of Long Island that I live in is on the north shore, and there are
many many old Victorians around here. A lot of them were sea captain's
homes.
SongSmith
"Ether St. Vying"
> I found myself joyful that whole day, in awe of the self-cleaning
> process.
The Muffin Man
First Verse:
Oh, do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Oh, do you know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane?
Second Verse:
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane.
|3iff //ullins
i LOVE victorians. hope to have one of my own someday. and yours sonds
really awesome! have any pics of those rounded beams to offer? i'd
love to see that...
Bill Cleere
Ditto!
Dolores~
"Bill Cleere" <bcl...@philipkdick.com> wrote in message
news:UDe%b.8483$yZ1....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
TWO men excited to see pictures of my rounded beams?
Maybe I misunderstood the question.
sorry...I just had to :)
RLW
|3iff //ullins
its moments like this that i wonder why the heck i even bother trying
to be a gentleman.
lol!
--
jesus christ superstore:
http://www.jesuschristsuperstore.net
chris rodgers
> They're thinking "high beams". You know what men are like.
Tis better to know what women like. :)
Bill Cleere
"|3iff //ullins" <biff_mu...@SPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message
Isn't that just the truth, though?
> lol!
Me too, but there's still a hint of justifiable resentment contained within.
The double standard thing, you know.
-- Bill Cleere
georg
I try to behave with a semblance of propriety along those lines here in
this newsgroup because I likes ye being gentlemen. Respect is a good
thing. I'm not always good at it, mind, but I try.
-georg
RLW
"Women think of men as big dogs that talk.
"If women knew what men thought of them, they would never stop slapping us."
georg
> I agree. Yet and still, Larry Miller has a point:
>
> "Women think of men as big dogs that talk.
> "If women knew what men thought of them, they would never stop slapping us."
Actually, most women know exactly what you are thinking. Men are
interested in 5 things. Bathroom function, eating, sleeping, sex, and
playing with toys. Sometimes they transcend this. Sometimes they just
are using their brains to get to one of those 5 things.
Women only think about what men are thinking about 10% of the time. You
can decide for yourself whether that's caring about what men think
about- or thinking about the same things. :)
-georg
Bill Cleere
news:D6w%b.50876$um1....@twister.nyroc.rr.com...
I agree that women don't care what men are thinking about.
Since we're taking the gloves off here, allow me to observe that,
so far as I've been able to determine, women spend some 95%
of their time thinking of ways to get men to think about things that
men don't want to think about.
-- Bill Cleere
RLW
But we actually use our brains for only two out of five. Sleeping, eating and
evacuation are pretty much habitual, at least once one passes age 30 or so.
And of the remaining two, how much thought do toys require? Guys get 'em out,
play with 'em, and put 'em down wherever they happen to be.
What's more, at the age of 45 I no longer think about sex every six seconds.
I can go as long as a minute, if I really, really try.
So, you posed the question: What do women think about? I mean, aside from
men's role as housepets with opposable thumbs?
(Don't get me wrong. I like having opposable thumbs, and I like being
scratched behind the ears. What else is there?)
georg
I can agree with that. Only, it's closer to 75%. We have to think about
other things too. ;)
-georg
georg
> Well, OK. You're right.
>
> But we actually use our brains for only two out of five. Sleeping, eating and
> evacuation are pretty much habitual, at least once one passes age 30 or so.
>
> And of the remaining two, how much thought do toys require? Guys get 'em out,
> play with 'em, and put 'em down wherever they happen to be.
>
> What's more, at the age of 45 I no longer think about sex every six seconds.
> I can go as long as a minute, if I really, really try.
>
> So, you posed the question: What do women think about? I mean, aside from
> men's role as housepets with opposable thumbs?
>
> (Don't get me wrong. I like having opposable thumbs, and I like being
> scratched behind the ears. What else is there?)
>
If you loosen your definition of "toy" to include playing dressup and
playing house, women also play with toys. To a certain extent, men were
raised to play with toys- women were raised to imagine themselves in the
place of their toys. We grow up playing with dolls and then we replace
the dolls with kids or become the "adult dolls" like Barbie. So we think
about toys too, but in a different way. This should not be seen as a
reason to tolerate or invite abuse, however. But it explains our
obsession with collecting things, makeup and fashion.
We also think about sex, eating, and evacuation, but sex has a LOT more
edges than just the elation of orgasm- it's got strings on it because of
the consequences, and we worry about them. We're used to thinking about
consequences, and tend to want to think about other things than just the
objective as a result. Men can be very simple... women think complicated
and layered. A man can look at a cheesecake and just think "yum!" Women
will look at the cheesecake and think about what that catty other woman
is going to say next Tuesday at the thing where they have to squeeze
into the dress that's too small or start complaining about how much
their feet hurt. Convoluted patterns of logic are the norm.
And the hormones mess with our moods big time. It's not just PMS. It's
not a phase, and throwing any of that in our face is going to get you an
unpleasant reaction. I think the only times females aren't affected by
hormones is prepubescent and perhaps 20 years after menopause or ending
of hormone therapy. Menopause is perhaps the worse time- and I salute
any man who can stand by his woman during that difficult time. The
hormones can make me depressed for no apparent reason, or happy. And I
really can't describe how awful I feel at that time of the month. I can
think some pretty violent thoughts about then, and hey, I'm already
seeing lots of blood so maybe more wouldn't bug me. It just hurts enough
to where I don't want to move.
The women I know well are self-absorbed with worry on at least one
level. Reassurance and comfort go a long a way to help, and we need
these things. Even if you think there's no reason to offer it- offer it
anyway. We'll love you for it.
The need to reproduce is tied into the sex baggage. And if we have kids,
protecting them and raising them come before anything else. In that
order. You threaten my kids, I will kill you- that's what instinct says.
And once she has the kid, part of a woman will always be worried about
the kid.
I've never met a woman who wasn't worried about something. And if we
don't have a good thing to fret over, we'll invent stuff. We will live
in our mind what would happen if all sorts of worst case scenarios. You
may not know what you would do if your woman died tomorrow. But she's
got your funeral planned, down to what she's going to wear and what
she's going to say to your relative she hates the most. She also knows
what to do if the house blows up, or nuclear bombs land in the nearest
metropolitan area. We worry about making our man happy, and we worry if
we are happy "enough." We worry about doing the right thing and that
spot on the tablecloth.
Of course, these are mostly generalizations and your mileage may vary.
But it is a good bit of info for most men to have- even if you think she
doesn't need it- offer your reassurance and comfort every day. You
invest 5 minutes or so talking about what she thinks she needs to hear,
and she won't pester you for the rest of the hour.
-georg
Richard
news:WxE%b.51187$um1....@twister.nyroc.rr.com:
I thought there were rules about revealing this information.
--
Richard
Dolores~
I've always thought the male version of multi-tasking is thinking about sex
while actually doing something else.
georg
Probably. But I don't care. We should try to understand each other better.
-georg
Bill Cleere
Your honesty doesn't leave me much to say.
-- Bill Cleere
Bill Cleere
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that time frame. My experience
has been that of whoever (I think it was Proust) said:
"The way to win a woman's heart is to stay up all night listening to
her complain."
-- Bill Cleere
Richard
news:L6J%b.51298$um1....@twister.nyroc.rr.com:
All joking aside, a lot of that are things that we kind of know, or have
noticed, but not necesarilly understood. It's nice to see it being put
into words from a woman's perspective.
--
Richard
Richard
People will vary of course, but, I have to say that my experience is much
closer to what Georg described. Yes, sometimes a person does just need
someone to vent on, but that can go both ways.
--
Richard
georg
Jazz often comments on how "low-maintennance" I am. I did add a your
mileage may vary comment. But if you initiate the complaints, it's a lot
shorter.
-georg
Bill Cleere
"Richard" <Richar...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:Xns949C4EA4EF22Cri...@130.133.1.4...
georg is nothing if not a maverick. She defies the Sisterhood on a
regular basis.
Bill Cleere
"Dolores~" <dolo...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:mLI%b.1$qX...@nwrdny03.gnilink.net...
Oh, I wish you could have heard Howard and Artie this morning. There's no way
I can describe it, but that's *exactly* what they were saying.
What you need to understand, though, is that the multi-tasking is not
by choice. There's more than a little truth in the Derek and Clive
routine, "I get the horn when I see a crack in the sidewalk. ...*I* get
it when I hear the word 'and'."
Bill Cleere
OK, mileage will definitely vary. I mean no slander to the species.
Or just a little, anyway, and only in the spirit of good clean fun.
RLW
That said, yours is a most interesting and articulate post. You did good.
Kat, my partner, has said much the same at one time or another.
Grownups learn to accept some things without necessarily understanding them,
which explains the miracle of women and men getting along at all.
> If you loosen your definition of "toy" to include playing dressup and
> playing house, women also play with toys. To a certain extent, men were
> raised to play with toys- women were raised to imagine themselves in the
> place of their toys.
> . . .
georg
I was in a serious mood. =)
It's something that I do think about occassionally. I do own a book I
picked up in the Humor section called "The Owner's Manual to Men," and
I've seen at least one other similar book. I like things to be equal,
but there's no way a book will appear on today's market voicing a
similar attitude towards women- no matter how humorously written. And
frankly there are a lot of young men out there who would do better with
a glimpse into the feminine mystique.
Yes, there is a masculine mystique too, and I don't really claim to
completely understand men either. =)
-georg
Jazz
Very true. Though I spell it "maintenance".
:-p
--
jaZZ
"Don't light a match until you know which end of the dog is barking."
Dave Barry
RLW
> I was in a serious mood. =)
> . . .
> -georg