Output

I bought my first ever food processor last week. I got it on Friday. It’s been really great for speeding up making some of the staples of my diet, like keto dough and shredded cheese, among many, many others.

One of the things I did not do last week was pre-post a lot of content for this week. During a typical week, I have a bit of a surplus of posts, the better (scare quotes assumed) of which I schedule for the following week.

Because of a pretty jammin’ work and personal schedule, I didn’t get much of that done lasdt week, or over the weekend.

Oh – in a matter that may seem unrelated, but is in fact closely related to my current situation, my band, Elephant in the Room, finally got another legit bar gig, after nearly a year of mostly off-the-cuff semi-surreptitious gigs (like, two of them). More on that later this week…

…except to tie those threads – low and cursory blog output, food processor and band gig – into a narrative tapestry.

Kid you not. I was reading the safety instructions for the food processor when, naturally, I ran my right thumb along the edge of the surgical-grade vegetable chopper, slicing open a flap of skin along the inward side of the thumb, below the last joint.

It was only four stitches. No biggie.

Except that it was right in a place with key importance for two vital activities:

  • Hitting the “space” key, if you’re a touch typist. And I am.
  • Holding a guitar pick.

So with the help of a little gauze, tape and Ibuprofen, my thumb is finally up to some (clumsy, mis-key prone) typing. Hence this apologia.

And I’m doing my best to get my thumb into shape, since ho-lee frijole, it hurt to hold a pick at practice the other night.

As you were.

15 thoughts on “Output

  1. Product liability lawyers everywhere are shaking their heads. Shoulda been a warning label, or a plastic blade guard, or . . . .

  2. Ha! Yea, I think we’ve all done something stupid, even though we knew better. Like the time I was slicing a bagel with a brand new Cutco bread slicer and cut a finger open. Five stitches on that one. The dum ass part is that one of those guillotine type bagel slicers was sitting right next to the cutting board.

  3. Cutting a digit or toe (even if “accidental”) is symbolic of self-castration.
    Just sayin’

  4. Shoulda been a warning label, or a plastic blade guard, or

    I had removed the cardboard and plastic blade guard as I read the legally-impeccable safety instructions.

  5. Cutting a digit or toe (even if “accidental”) is symbolic of self-castration

    Five minute game misconduct!

  6. Like the time I was slicing a bagel with a brand new Cutco bread slicer and cut a finger open.

    I was talking with the nurse at urgentcare as I waited on the stitches, and she said those “Mandolin” kitchen slicers that are so popular these days are big for ER full employment – it’s easy to slice off most of your fingertip or the palm of your hand.

    And I had originally thought about buying one – but thought that, even with the chain mail glove you’re supposed to wear with it, it looked waaaaaay to far down the risk/benefit curve for my taste.

  7. Ha! I actually have a mandolin, but it has a plastic food holder that works pretty well, except on tomatoes. That said, I did cut my finger, although not severely, on it once when I wasn’t using the holder.

  8. When in such situations, I find voice recognition software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, to be a great aid. It cannot help your guitar playing, though.

  9. Cut a nice chunk out of my little finger with a mandolin. I blamed Satan. Had an exorcism done. The threw it out.

    I have also read, though it may be just gossip, that the leading cause of emergency room visits on the weekend is people slicing open their hand while trying to cut a bagel.

  10. Toothpicks —

    “Every year 9000 people end up in the hospital from choking on toothpicks. Most toothpick victims are children between the ages of 5 and 14. Furthermore, an average of 3 people die every year from accidentally swallowing toothpicks, puncturing their internal organs.”

    Chew on that for a while. No, wait, don’t.

  11. Sorry to hear about that. For my part, one of the hardest things I have to teach my kids is knife safety–they do it without injury a few times, they think they know how to do it, and sooner than not I see them cutting a bagel while holding it in their hand, cutting without a cutting board, cutting towards themselves, cutting with the board halfway off the counter….

    ….and don’t even get me started on some of those mechanical choppers. Yes, it’s harder to use a chef’s knife at first, but in terms of efficiency and safety, it’s huge.

  12. Bagel slicers scare me. So glad I lost mine in a boating accident (never try to canoe and slice a bagel at the same time.) Those black-handled assault-slicers, though, sure look sexy.

    Once, though, I pulled something out of the top-of-the-fridge freezer and something – we don’t know what – in the freezer sliced my thumb. It even made a nice little spray of blood that hit our white ceiling. We left the blood on the ceiling for a few years though; it made for some good stories – especially when we were faced with those “home-invasion” sales calls where the salesman wouldn’t leave.

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