Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

The Art of Washing Forks

Washing a fork is a special skill, often requiring an extensive apprenticeship—usually at the hands of your mother, father, or skilled caregiver—and years of practical application.

If you don’t get it right, food will remain stuck between the tines. If there is food between the tines, the threat level is elevated to disgusting (aka “green”).

Many people leave food between the tines when they “wash” their forks. Many people also find a sink full of dishes disgusting. The difference between these groups, in my experience, looks something like this:

I leave my sink full for weeks at a time. But when I wash my dishes, they are spotless, right down to the space between the tines.

This behavior illustrates how my brain functions: Extreme procrastination, with perverse attention to detail at the time of execution.

This may also be the best way to understand the lack of love and affection this blog site has received over the last year (or more). Blogging has become my sink: ideas pile up for days weeks months on end, while I spend time thinking about redesigning, refocusing, and cleaning things up in general. As the site continues to be ignored, strange things begin to grow between the tines creep into the existing site design, or simply break outright.

A site can only lie dormant for so long before people write it off, much like a fork can only sit in a glass of water for a certain period of time before it starts to rust and corrode. However, an author must also be inspired by his environment, and sometimes, when that environment ceases to inspire, the process of creating a new one can take a lot of scrubbing and elbow grease.

Trust me: when I’m ready, the tines will be spotless.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 1:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.