Stuff to See!

Since Sliced Bread?

So it's official: I'm really going back into the saddle.
It took about four hours for my new and former employer to raise the question of whether I'd go back into a supervisory role. For need of the money I'd do it even if I didn't want to, but I actually find myself wanting to straighten out a few things in my new setting, so this may be a good way to do it, plus it may even be a better way for me to see whether I really want to stick it out the second time around, or if I would rather try a far different tack. Time will tell, as it does in all things.
Spring training has begun. My buddy Carly is actually going to Ft Lauderdale to check it out, despite the fact that she only became interested in baseball a year or so ago under circumstances I am not at liberty to relate. I don't think she'd care, but I'd rather not spread other people's business out on the slice of bread that is the human experience.
Speaking of which, who came up with the idea of sliced bread? Many people like to use the phrase 'best idea since sliced bread'. True, I can't apply that to many of my decisions, but by the time I die I'll have this life thing figured out, maybe. Sliced bread does come in handy, but I'm not too sure that it's in the class of something like the wheel/axle or pulley, or something of that nature.
Other things come randomly to mind, as often they do in my life. Fertilizer, for one. How does prehistoric man (or more likely woman) figure out that leaving a steaming pile of animal dung on top of some haphazardly scattered seeds make the plants grow more quickly and successfully? I'd think that animal dung would be used better for covering ones own tracks more so than just being left in a steaming pile on a random patch of field, but then again I've grown up millions of years after the fact and I have no idea how these paleolithic homos actually thought, so what do I know?
And clothing. Granted, I can see the sense in wrapping yourself in the skin of another animal in order to mitigate against inclement weather, but who actually started that trend? And with what animal? A sheep? A pack of wolves? A bear?? I'd like to kill a bear with my bare hands, but I can't imagine that would be a very good way to obtain warm covering, unless you drove a sharp rock or stick through the skull of a bear while it was hibernating, and that wouldn't be using only your hands, would it? Besides, is bear meat tasty? I'd guess that if I was in a survival/nonsurvival situation I'd eat whatever was close to hand, but I probably wouldn't start by taking on a bear. The first man who killed a bear was likely insane, and only good luck (which favors the insane) allowed this degenerate to pass his inheritance on to the rest of the species. No wonder we can't get along!
Then there's shelter. Sure, lots of people have this strange images of prehistoric man living in caves, but it's not too easy to get a fire going in a cave without suffocating yourself. After some of our precursors doubtlessly died in just that way, word, or whatever passed for it back in the day, must have gone around. Whoever constructed the first artificial cave (complete with a hole in the ceiling to let the smoke out) should be held in esteem as high as the truly great of more recent mankind. True, I'm sure that this artificial cave didn't have a door in the modern sense, and as such allowed prowlers of the night like sabertooth tigers to come in and wantonly kill the occupants, but that's just one or three logs away.
The harnessing of fire has to be one of the events, if not the main one, that separated our precursor homos from the rest of the animal kingdom. Fire for warmth, fire to cook the flesh of other animals (and maybe even homo meat, for all I know), fire to ward off predators, the uses for fire are relatively few, but of surpassing importance. Everyone who comes here often knows how much I like fire, even when it's not just a metaphor for lust, so the protoman who harnessed fire, or more likely the tribe and legion of protomen, belong in the highest circles of honor one can imagine.
What about alcohol and bread, two things that go relatively well together? Sure, most modern types think it's foolish to drink grape juice that's been sitting in the fridge for a year or so, but our ancient friends didn't have refrigerators. I can just see it now...homo X finds a curiously bloated and neglected skin full of...something...from a season or three before. Being fairly curious and immensely fearless of death, he drinks the sour stuff from this skin. For some reason, the taste of it oddly appeals to him and he finishes the skin off, perhaps to go fill it with some muddy river water. An hour or two later, he pukes his guts up and passes out in the woods. Strangely, he isn't killed by marauding fauna. Even more strangely, despite the headache and intestinal discomfort, he decides that the feeling of being a bit knocked out of his skull is worth repeating the experiment. Millions of years later, we end up with this, or one of its variants.
Wait, beer is a different animal. Being untutored in many things, mama homo decides to make a broth out of some water, barley, hops, and miscellaneous other stuff she has around in the winter. She cooks the broth over a well-tended fire (I love fire), sips of it, decides that it's pretty bland, but keeps it anyway in case papa homo can't bring home any other food (like a wandering boar or something). She draws the broth into a convenient skin and forgets about it for a few months, or a year, then later, mama and papa find themselves in dire straits, having overhunted the local game, or maybe just having shitty luck. Then find the skin, open it, drink it, get krunked up, puke their guts up, and decide to try it again.
Bread seems stranger to me than alcohol. How exactly does one accidentally grind various cereal seeds into a fine powder, then thrown in some water and stuff, then cook it. Sure, our ancient homo precursors were curious, or insane, but apparently someone did it, perhaps someone with a mental problem that made him want to crush stuff. Hey, I'd probably do it given the chance. They like it, spread the ancient homo word, and bam!!! You've got bread. Some other insane homo, one too fond of sharp objects, decides to cut the bread instead of tearing it apart, and we end up where we started: sliced bread. Sadly, this insane but canonized homo ends up playing too closely with sharp objects and lacerates himself to death, but the damage, or the benefit, is done.
Which brings me to customer service, oddly enough. I'm now on a first name basis with the local liquor store owner, on account of my strange love of that marvelous malt liquor known as Private Stock. He gives me the red carpet treatment whenever he sees me come in and purchase what others in the world have called the Green Death, perhaps thinking that my apparent (and nonexistent) professionalism will bring more money to the store. He may be right, since I actually approve of the treatment and trade small talk with him when I see him. I'd be happy to give his store some free publicity, but I'll talk to him about that another time. As a liquor store owner, he speaks street lingo, straight English, Spanish, and Lithuanian (WTF?). I asked him at random if he had this obscure sweet mash whiskey known as Jeremiah Weed anywhere. The stuff doesn't sell anywhere I've ever seen it, with the same bottle sitting on the shelf for years at a time, accruing a layer of dust that's truly absurd to see. He offered to order a bottle for me, but I demurred, not wishing to push my recreational enjoyment of malt liquor into the realm of potential alcoholism. Perhaps I'll take him up on it one day, perhaps not. Maybe I'll even try to engage him in some conversational Spanish, although my skills there are sorely lacking, aside from the bare extent I can tell people to opprima this or say the other es aqui, but who knows? Truly old-school, I'm not sure that his commendable approach to customer service can survive in these time-starved days, but we'll see.