Tag Archives: pizza

Anchovy

dictionary with letter A

Anchovy: (n) a small shoaling fish of commercial importance as a food used for fish bait. It is strongly flavored and preserved with high amounts of oil and salt.

The dangerous thing about knowledge is that it rarely accentuates your pleasure, but rather, puts a pin in your balloon and leaves you with the reality instead of the misrepresentation.

There are many examples, but on this day, they seem to be embodied in the tiny anchovy.

Little did I know that they were bait.

Even though many of my friends like anchovies on their pizza (a taste, I have explained to them, which could just as easily be achieved by dumping a salt shaker on the crust) I really don’t think any of them know they’re eating fish bait.

But it should be obvious. Don’t the little things have hairy legs?

Now, I have on occasion eaten a pizza with anchovies because I was surrounded by individuals who thought it was a status symbol to prefer the little boogers on their Italian delight.

I have even pretended to enjoy it. Even though I pride myself, to some degree, in being a candid-type fellow, I am not without my pretense. And the specter of being the only person in the room objecting such a refined pizza-topping choice has left me succumbing to the mob mentality and participating in eating what I now know is fish bait.

  • I suppose I shouldn’t make the point that we wouldn’t eat night crawler pizza.
  • Anyone up for minnows and onion?

But truthfully, I have no problem with anyone who has a certain taste, unless they have selected it because they think it makes them more refined and sets them apart from the sausage servants and pepperoni paupers.

Now, if I run across one of them, I will inform them that they’re hooked on what belongs on a hook.

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Affinity

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Affinity: (n) a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something

I think it has a meter–yes, an “affinity meter.”

When I was younger I was more intolerant. My affinity for others was based on three criteria:

  1. Do I like them?
  2. Do they have enough money to contribute to a pizza?
  3. Will they be fun?

Anyone who didn’t fall into all three categories was pretty well nixed from my holy circle of friends. I felt fully justified. After all, who wants to be around someone you don’t like, has no cash flow and is a buzz kill?

I don’t know when this transition occurred, but one day it crossed my mind that people have bad days, bad seasons, bad histories, bad relationships, bad luck and bad karma. Sometimes we catch ’em during one of these “sunken” places on their journey instead of at the top of the mountain. And if you start throwing all the heavy boxes overboard, you will eventually get rid of some excellent treasure.

So as I’ve aged, I have changed my “affinity meter.”

  1. Do I like them?
  2. Do I understand why I don’t like them?
  3. Can I hang around long enough to find out if it would be possible for me to like them?

As you can see, the need for pizza money is gone.

Affinity is the awareness that because nothing is perfect and nobody has it all, we gradually take many people into our lives–to piece together the whole experience of fellowship.

 

Acalculia

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acalculia: {n.} loss of the ability to perform simple arithmetic calculations, typically resulting from disease or injury of the parietal lobe of the brain.

Bob, Frank and I decided to go out for an evening.

The four of us came to the quick conclusion that if we left at seven o’clock and closed the evening out at twelve, we could have six hours of enjoyment.

You might think it odd, but we began the excursion by picking up a dozen doughnuts and splitting them evenly among the four of us–five each.

We went out and bought a pizza, which cost twenty dollars, and split it, which remarkably, was only six dollars a person.

At the end of the night, we realized we should reimburse the gas in Bob’s car, so we bought gasoline at $3.48 a gallon, putting ten dollars in the tank, giving us seven gallons.

We had such a good time that we decided to do it every week. So it was concluded that five days from that time, we would get together again, and Bob, Frank and I–all four of us–would go out from seven to twelve (for six hours), probably buying that dozen doughnuts, granting us five each, to spend no more than ten dollars of gas, which would provide seven gallons.

Everything seemed to be going along real well until the second week, when for some inexplicable reason, we found ourselves arguing … because things just didn’t add up.