When I was 8, I got an assignment for a science class at school which was to get some peas and lentils to sprout and bring the resulting sprouts to class.

I failed that assignment because I ate all the sprouts on my way to class. Doing so made me feel like I was a very weird person, so I stopped. And then one day I discovered sprouts at our local supermarket.

Now I feel completely justified in eating them. Sprouts are delicious and mildly addictive. I don’t know what it is they contain that makes me incapable of stopping before I devour an entire box.

I love fresh figs. Mind you, not those weird dried ones. It’s fresh figs that are my favorite snack.

Of course, they are insanely expensive. Usually, they are sold for $1.99 each which is ridiculous. Sometimes, they go on sale for $0.99 apiece. But that’s crazy, too, because it feels like eating a 1 dollar bill with every small fig.

But, oh, they are amazing. The texture is so complicated that every fig is a separate experience. Just try putting your tongue inside a freshly bitten fig and swirling it in there for a few seconds and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Today, however, they went on sale for $2.99 per box of 15 figs. So I’m happy.

In the next post, I will show you my second favorite snack.

Do you have a favorite snack?

A local church (one of a scary number) always has the best sermon titles. We pass by just to see what the pastor comes up with each week.

Today’s title was: “Some people give and forgive and some people get and forget.”

This is a very insightful description of a psychological dynamic between a happy sadist and a gleeful masochist.

We are now seriously considering going to listen to one of the sermons.

Child knows perfectly well how to manipulate others into taking care of all his/her needs. Child’s perfect partner is a deeply insecure person who needs to play the savior to feel at least marginally better about him/herself. Child’s helplessness is completely fake. S/he zeroes in on the most self-hating person in any group like a killer drone and attaches him/herself to such a person to leech off this wounded creature in perpetuity.

Child and Insecure can make a perfectly happy couple that will be unbreakable as long as Insecure remains insecure.

A dialogue with a colleague.

Colleague: I’m so stressed out, I think I’m about to have a nervous breakdown.

Clarissa: What’s happening? What’s bothering you?

Colleague: I’m up for tenure next year, but I have next to no research. This is driving me crazy. I don’t know what will happen to me.

Clarissa: What are you working on?

Colleague: Well, there is this article I’ve been working on intermittently for the past two years but I never have the time to just sit down and finish it off. I haven’t even been to any conferences since 2009 because I don’t have time to create presentations. I’m screwed.

Clarissa: Look, I’m organizing a talk by my colleague Jonathan Mathew. This guy publishes like crazy. And he has created this great method of scholarly productivity. I tried the method and it totally works. So he will come here and tell us how he does it.

Colleague: Really? This sounds exactly like something I need at this point. Is the talk limited to your department or can anybody come?

Clarissa: Of course, everybody is welcome. Do come by. Jonathan is very motivating and inspiring. I’ll send you the poster the moment I have it ready.

Colleague: I will definitely come to the talk. I just hope it isn’t one of those methods where in order to publish a lot you need to write every day. Because nobody can do that. This kind of approach just makes no sense. It isn’t like anybody really just sits there five days a week and writes for 30 minutes.

Clarissa: Erm, well. . .

Colleague: Because if you believe that such a method works you will just waste your time and never publish anything. This talk won’t be on any sort of a “write every day” method, will it?

Clarissa leaves, mumbling to herself: No, of course, it won’t be a method where you have to write to have something written. No, sir. My colleague created an approach where you never write a single line yet keep publishing all the time.