297. Grimace Exploded, Covering 70,000 People

Lords: * Erica * Judy * https://www.tiktok.com/@diluftmensch * https://www.tumblr.com/diluftmensch * https://bsky.app/profile/diluftmensch.bsky.social Topics: * The Pantone college experience * Why is everyone with superpowers a crime fighter or a criminal * Sell me on metal utensils * Grand Avenue, by Ron Koertge * https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2014%252F10%252F19.html * Abridged version: https://allpoetry.com/poem/14373111-Grand-Avenue-by-Ronald-Koertge * Toothpaste is traditionally spicy Microtopics: * Just Judy. * Telling your friends you love them. * Taking a break from the Internet and staring at the ceiling. * Realizing you need to take a break and then trying to figure out what you need to take a break from. * Doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes. * People who enjoy meditation explaining that you just need to meditate harder. * Taking a depressing game and remaking it, reframing it as relaxing. * Tetromino Chill. * Asking "do I have the flu?" in French. * Clicking on a wav file of Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny and thinking "computer music is cool" * Your college's particular shade of purple. * The proliferation of this exact shade of purple now that Pantone has made it possible to exactly reproduce a color. * The reason why can't we tell who's buff and sexy any more. * Going to college to get sick of a particular color. * Whether any place is as intensely branded as a college campus. * What the founding fathers would think of this college campus' branding. * James Madison inventing the signature duplicator. * James Madison insisting that his entire family sleep sitting up. * Colors that you can't use until you really mean it. * Colors that are not allowed in the bathroom. * Pantone inventing a way to pee any known color. * Boom Box Guy. * The professor with the glasses with two different color lenses who is constantly complaining about JMU Purple. * Having jaws strong enough to eat bones and eating way more bones than you used to. * Topics that have been in the bucket since the inception of the bucket. * Unlimited energy. (Not limited energy.) * Why isn't Superman using his x-ray vision to watch TV better than anyone? * Lois Lane wearing superman's shirt. * Using your x-ray vision to make sure ant colonies aren't siphoning money out of bank vaults. * Advising strangers on the street that they have an untreated medical condition and they're like "go away creep" * The spoon doing a catapult move because the handle is too heavy, and flinging chili everywhere. * Plastic utensils for adults. * Hitting the age when doctors start saying things like "let's see if we can get a couple more good years out of you" * Whether the fork ever touches your tongue. * Ceramic spoons. * Melamine, the plastic material manufactured on Alf's home planet. * Handsome Korean wooden spoons. * Just slurping down a whole bowl of guacamole. * Everyday Carry Forks. * Metal utensils: so good, you carry them around. * Trying to eat a leaf of lettuce with an extremely heavy fork. * Eating a meal with a pickaxe and a pronged shovel. * Turning the corner by Señor Fish. * Different ways to kil for somebody. * A punch-line that was not set up in the descriptive part of the poem. * A poem that is a subset of another poem. * Where is the wacky misunderstanding that I was promised? * A bumper sticker reading "you just got passed by a bad driver (AI)" * Slapping the "artificial intelligence" label on everything you write so people blame AI. * Cinnamon toothpaste and ginger toothpaste. * Conventionally spicy toothpaste. * Toothpaste that doesn't taste like anything. (You know, for cats!) * Spicy tuna toothpaste and black pepper toothpaste. * Rinsing your mouth with lemon cleanser so your mouth can feel lemon fresh. * Pure Piperin. * Tubes: they're for squeezing. * Phosphoric acid toothpaste.