The Ice Cream Koan

The other day, Sursels offered me the following:

If you have no ice cream, I will take your ice cream.
If you have ice cream, I will give you ice cream.
This is an ice cream koan.

Delivered with her bright blue eyes sparkling and wide open, the rest of her face completely dead pan--which it never is, except when she's doing stuff like this--it totally cracked me up. The secret of comedy is in the timing, and timing is very difficult to deliver in print.

I was thinking of this as I made tea for myself this morning. I have a nasty cold coming on, and although I am drugged to the gills, symptoms are sneaking through and making me both grumpy and a bit loopy. I put a large white mug of water in the microwave to heat, and when the timer beeped, I noticed for the first time that the display doesn't just show numbers at that point, but converts to a scrolling message. I noticed this as I already had my hand on the door handle and pulled it open, this preventing all the text from scrolling across the small screen. The message that did make it across was:

FOOD IS

Sometimes, having a cold makes the world seem a little surreal. It's nice to have that kind of reassurance on a day like today.