Saturday, August 20, 2005
The Problem With Dogs
Don't try this at home.
Consider...the hot dog. The *wiener* if you prefer. Tube steak. It’s a nasty food made of ground-up bits of things you wouldn’t feed your dog (no pun intended here) mixed with other things that aren’t normally considered food—like, say, sawdust and insect parts.
Still, you have to admit that when you hear the call of Oscar Mayer nothing else will satisfy. I put down maybe five dogs in an average year. There just aren’t many foods that can really do justice to being cooked on a stick. The other day I notice that summer is almost over (sob) and I haven’t enjoyed even a single frank, and I get this craving. So off to the store I go.
Now you can’t just buy one lone hot dog, right? You have to by a pack. So I pick out two year’s worth of Ballpark specials (Now...with extra Ear & Snout!) and head to the bread area, which is conveniently located in a distant zip code somewhere beyond the pharmacy. I pick up a package of buns and head for home. I fire up the grill and get down to business. I don’t want to waste food, so I cook all ten dogs.
I’m sure you’ve seen those infomercials where the lady holds up the dirty little girl by one ankle while the baritone voice-over drones, “Little Mary drinks from this filthy sewage-polluted stream that runs through the landfill behind that hollow log where she and her 11 brothers and sisters live.” Ever since then I vowed...no more wasting food.
So I tuck each of my dogs into a delicious fresh bun...except for two. Since buns only come in packages of eight to my ten hot dogs, I’m left with a remainder of two--like some kind of meaty division problem. Chalk up one quick stop at the store for another pack of buns. Now my dogs are bedded down, but I have six buns left. Back to the grocery for more dogs. Now I’m long by four wieners (ok, that pun was intended). Here’s how the story goes from here:
+ 8 buns = 4 buns left
+ 10 dogs = 6 dogs left
+ 8 more buns = 2 buns left
+ 10 dogs = 8 dogs left
+ 8 buns = urp!
All told, I’m into this little project to the tune of 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 rolls. Total cost $24.95. So here’s a riddle—what the @#$%! gives? Is this a long-standing feud between butchers and bakers? Is it the Republicans? Are crooked CEOs siphoning off two buns from each pack to pad their retirement funds with extra dough? Are they being shipped off to our brave boys in Eye-raq?
Then I discovered the solution just where you’d expect it—on the internet.
“It's an obvious conspiracy. The bun company is in cahoots with the hot dog company. They want you to buy one pack of hot dogs and one pack of buns. Then, to use up the other two hot dog buns, you have to buy more hot dogs. You would have more hot dog buns left over, so you, once again, are forced to buy more hot dogs. Eventually, this would zero out (8 packs of hot dogs, 80 hot dogs, and 10 packs of buns, 80 buns), but no one wants to eat that many hot dogs.”
People are bad at story problems.
Next week we’ll explore why, even though you purchase them at the same time, you’ll always run out of shampoo before conditioner.
Bon Appetit...
Consider...the hot dog. The *wiener* if you prefer. Tube steak. It’s a nasty food made of ground-up bits of things you wouldn’t feed your dog (no pun intended here) mixed with other things that aren’t normally considered food—like, say, sawdust and insect parts.
Still, you have to admit that when you hear the call of Oscar Mayer nothing else will satisfy. I put down maybe five dogs in an average year. There just aren’t many foods that can really do justice to being cooked on a stick. The other day I notice that summer is almost over (sob) and I haven’t enjoyed even a single frank, and I get this craving. So off to the store I go.
Now you can’t just buy one lone hot dog, right? You have to by a pack. So I pick out two year’s worth of Ballpark specials (Now...with extra Ear & Snout!) and head to the bread area, which is conveniently located in a distant zip code somewhere beyond the pharmacy. I pick up a package of buns and head for home. I fire up the grill and get down to business. I don’t want to waste food, so I cook all ten dogs.
I’m sure you’ve seen those infomercials where the lady holds up the dirty little girl by one ankle while the baritone voice-over drones, “Little Mary drinks from this filthy sewage-polluted stream that runs through the landfill behind that hollow log where she and her 11 brothers and sisters live.” Ever since then I vowed...no more wasting food.
So I tuck each of my dogs into a delicious fresh bun...except for two. Since buns only come in packages of eight to my ten hot dogs, I’m left with a remainder of two--like some kind of meaty division problem. Chalk up one quick stop at the store for another pack of buns. Now my dogs are bedded down, but I have six buns left. Back to the grocery for more dogs. Now I’m long by four wieners (ok, that pun was intended). Here’s how the story goes from here:
+ 8 buns = 4 buns left
+ 10 dogs = 6 dogs left
+ 8 more buns = 2 buns left
+ 10 dogs = 8 dogs left
+ 8 buns = urp!
All told, I’m into this little project to the tune of 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 rolls. Total cost $24.95. So here’s a riddle—what the @#$%! gives? Is this a long-standing feud between butchers and bakers? Is it the Republicans? Are crooked CEOs siphoning off two buns from each pack to pad their retirement funds with extra dough? Are they being shipped off to our brave boys in Eye-raq?
Then I discovered the solution just where you’d expect it—on the internet.
“It's an obvious conspiracy. The bun company is in cahoots with the hot dog company. They want you to buy one pack of hot dogs and one pack of buns. Then, to use up the other two hot dog buns, you have to buy more hot dogs. You would have more hot dog buns left over, so you, once again, are forced to buy more hot dogs. Eventually, this would zero out (8 packs of hot dogs, 80 hot dogs, and 10 packs of buns, 80 buns), but no one wants to eat that many hot dogs.”
People are bad at story problems.
Next week we’ll explore why, even though you purchase them at the same time, you’ll always run out of shampoo before conditioner.
Bon Appetit...
