Sunday, July 18, 2010

Couch Potato Brain

I have been struggling since my last post to come up with something worth talking about. I just haven't had much on my mind lately, I guess. Well, that's not actually true. I actually have a lot on my mind but just because you have something on your mind doesn't mean you need to blog about it.

I started to write a post earlier in the week about all the things I had on my mind but as I struggled to gather my thoughts into something coherent, well, quite frankly, nothing happened. This is a rarity for me. I rarely have a hard time expressing myself, which I'm sure many people wish would happen more often than it does. My brain has gone on a bit of a vacation, it appears. If my brain were a person rather than a brain, I would say it's become a couch potato.

Have you ever wondered why a potato is used in this context? Why is a person who is slumming it called a couch potato? Oh, sure Wikipedia has a definition of couch potato but it's boring and uninstructional (that's probably not a real word but I don't care). This link here gives you what it claims is the origin of this idiom. And just for the fun of it, you can go to Will's Word Origins, which, while not actually giving the origin of couch potato (and therefore seems a bit useless), does give the origin of several words in a couch potato's vocabulary. And this site claims that a person can also be a mouse potato, which is essentially the same thing as a couch potato but the person is settled in front of a computer all the time instead of a tv. According to that definition, I would say Moon Unit is a mouse potato. But none of this explains why the potato is denigrated in such a fashion. If I were going to use a vegetable in such a negative way, I would choose something less appetizing, like maybe okra or eggplant or brussel sprout.

How many other vegetables out there are as versatile as the potato? And before you tell me something inane like a potato is actually a tuber, don't. Okay? Save us the trouble.

I think that I shall never see a veggie as lovely as a potato. I know it doesn't rhyme, so sue me.

Besides all the incredibly delicious ways you can cook a potato (fried, boiled, baked, roasted, scalloped, au gratin, mashed, stuffed, in stews and soups, potato salad, hash browns, tater tots, potato chips, pancakes, and some scary ways that I find incredibly insulting to the poor potato), the potato has many other uses as well. Oh yes, it does!

This here website lists 12 ways to use a potato, such as medicine for burns and headaches, removing glue on hands, as a shoe polish (!), and a few other odd ways that I would never in a million years have thought of. And this glorious website lists 60, count them, 60!, ways to use a potato. Some of it is a bit redunant with the first website, but it also lists foods and even beverages (!!) that can be made with potatoes, lists home and garden usage, crafts, games and school projects, as well as some unusual uses for the humble potato, such as an aphrodisiac, a battery (!!!) and, AAAAND, using a potato to make a fire!!!! (It doesn't actually list instructions for starting a fire with a potato although, since Google is your friend, instructions were really easy to find.)

Well. Seems to me, this has to be the most versatile veggie in the world. In our solar system. I would even dare to say, it is the most versatile veggie in the whole universe! Oh yes, I went there! And when you think about what this hard-working but humble veggie can do, I ask you again, why is a lazy person a couch potato? That is an insult to potatoes everywhere! I vote to change this idiom from couch potato to couch okra. Who's with me?

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