Tag Archives: jokes

May 29 2014
23 Comments
Dear gluten

Dear Gluten: Find Your Own Dating Website!

Stumbling across someone you know on OkCupid is so awkward. Worst of all is when it’s an ex. Your cursor hovers over the profile image until curiosity takes over and you have to click, even though you know you’ll show up in his visitors list, and therefore he’ll know you looked. (Then, you check in every hour to see if he peeked at yours, and, if not, wonder why. Did he not check in? Did he resist temptation? Does he just not care?)

Anyway. Here I am, minding my own love life, and who should I come across but our old friend gluten? Naturally, I looked—and now you can, too. (Click for the full-size version.)

OkCupid dating website profile for gluten

I don’t know what I ever saw in him. I valiantly resisted sending a message, but I did rate his profile 1 star, just to be vindictive. And no, he hasn’t viewed mine.

If you’re baffled, you might want to read my previous letters to gluten here and here. If you’ve read them and are still baffled, I can neither blame nor help you.

Savvy OkCupid users will notice I left out the section on gluten’s favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, and food. I did that on purpose so you can help fill it in! Whaddaya say? Is gluten a rhythm & blues kind of guy?

* “Bready for love” profile photo © Oyvind Solstad | Flickr

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Nov 04 2013
15 Comments
Fun & Games

What gluten means to me…mathematically

Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to be a teacher. Though I wound up in publishing instead (less public speaking), I hung onto some shreds of the dream. Most recently I’m turning them to—possibly—good use as a volunteer SAT tutor.

If you’ve ever wondered whether anything is harder than going gluten-free, teaching is. Apart from being confronted with your lack of any sort of coolness recognized by a high school junior, you also become intimately aware of every gap and shortcoming in your own training and memory. It’s humbling to flip through the tutor manual and realize you’ll need to reteach yourself the math before you can teach it to anyone else.

The manual, donated to the tutoring program by Kaplan, tells me to present the material in a way the kids can relate to. The same tactic comes in handy when reeducating myself. There’s a surprising amount of parallels between the SATs and gluten-free life. For example, “If you don’t know, skip it, because you’re only penalized for getting it wrong” is true of both unfamiliar food and unfamiliar SAT questions.

This also works for understanding specific concepts. Here, for example, is a thorough reintroduction to “systems of equations,” using gluten. If high school is a ways behind you, and your math score, like mine, was <800, you too may appreciate the refresher.

The problem: Solve the system of equations for gluten.

math2

To start, pick either equation, like this one:

math3

Next, subtract gluten from all sides (you got this) in order to isolate celiac (aww).

math4

So a celiac is an unhappy person without gluten. Sounds about right. Plug this definition into the other equation in place of celiac, like so:

math5

Clean it up…

math6

…and isolate gluten. Subtract the unhappiness from both sides…

math7

…and divide by –2 for the answer.

math8

Looks like gluten equals divided feelings, mostly negative. True enough, but we’re not quite through. Since the opposite of happy is unhappy, we can change the negative smiley into a frown…

math9

…add them up…

math9a

…and cancel the twos for the final answer:

math9b

There you have it. Gluten equals unhappiness. I’d say we don’t even have to check that answer.

Don’t worry, I’m not teaching the kids using gluten metaphors (talk about uncool!). Have you ever tried teaching or tutoring? Did/do you like it? How’s my math? And do you agree with the equations’ conclusion?

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