7 Things Not To Do With Ice

Posted on August 31, 2006 by Jenna

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1. Build a rocket and fly to the sun.

The rocket is made of ice.

It will melt.

Also the fuel ignition may prove problematic.

All in all not the best idea.

2. Attach blocks of ice to pads, affix to a tiger’s feet, and slide tiger around on your hardwood floors.

This is an entertaining spectacle but tigers are an endangered species.

For example if you have stairs the tiger might slide onto the stairs, endangering them.

Or if someone ships you yappy dogs from amazon.com and you let them out because you do not rationally expect the large box from amazon.com to contain multiple yappy dogs, the dogs might gang up in primal rage and assault the relatively helpless tiger, endangering them.

Also tigers are not allowed in your house and may eat you if the floor proves insufficiently slippery.

3. Sleep buried under large piles of ice.

Regardless of what you may have read in the Enquirer this will not turn you into a yeti. Yetis are dependent on fringe characteristics of the Himalayan ecosystem to survive and it is not possible with current technology to transform into a yeti using domestic ice.

4. Pizza topping.

At first your mouth will feel pleasantly unburnt. However you cannot swallow the pizza until the ice melts, at which point it will offer no protection and the hot cheese and hotter tomato sauce will cause the usual burns. Ice in pizzas is best confined to stuffed crusts and the flavorful ice crystals that gazpacho pizza sometimes features.

5. Pens

Do not use ice as a pen. The idea that mortal works are inherently transient and pass like the winter’s snow at the coming of the spring is descriptive and not prescriptive. Also you can’t write anything with a clear pen which means using black ice which can kill unsuspecting hackers trying to download your writing.

6. Grand unified field theory

Bohr’s attempt at sticking the various field theories together with ice failed. As did his similar attempt involving tongues, field theories, and cold flagpoles. You’re not better at this than Bohr, so you need to find a new approach, like melting down various field theories in a pot or superglue.

7. Substituting for Folger’s Crystals

In general you cannot hope to win the arms race with Folger’s. Whenever I have attempted to substitute anything for Folger’s Crystals they have cleverly reversed my gambit and turned my initial sense of victory into ashes in my mouth. Sometimes, I think, they even substitute Folger’s Crystals for those ashes, although there is no time to notice any difference before I must swallow that bitterness of their revenge.

Very very tired. The canon entry slated for today will appear on Saturday or after the letters column, basically depending on whether my petition to the Vatican for two extra days in August goes through. With best wishes to all, including my friend who is awake again and still herself. Yay! (Historical note: this entry and that bit of the dedication was actually written about a week ago, which is why I’m cheering something you already know!)