Three students went to their master and asked, “Master, what shall we do to become enlightened?”

The master pondered this for a moment, and then said, “Bring four milkshakes. One of each of us.”

So they did bring four milkshakes, and they sat down to drink them. The master finished his quickly, and then, when one of the students wasn’t looking, stole his milkshake and drank it, too.

The student was indignant. “Master,” he cried, “That was my milkshake!”

“Oh, was it?” replied the Master. “Was it indeed?”

The students were taken aback and amazed at the Master’s level of enlightenment. The student whose milkshake had been stolen muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Dick.”

***

One day a carpet salesman visited the monastery. All the students gathered in the dining hall that evening, and the carpet salesman gave a demonstration of his amazing carpet that practially cleaned itself.

“It’s the fibers,” the carpet salesman said as he poured wine all over a sample. “The fibers are liquid and stain repellant!” he said as he cleaned off the carpet with only a paper towel. The students were amazed, and turned to the Master for inspiration.

“This is amazing carpet, indeed.” said the Master to the salesman. “How much for this whole hall, including installation?”

The salesman smiled. “Only $15.99 a square foot!” Suddenly, the Master jumped up and threw the salesman’s things to the floor. He grabbed the salesman’s bag, threw it at him, and commanded him to leave the monastery immediately, and never again return.

The next day one of the students saw the Master meditating at the waterfall. He approached the Master gingerly, and carefully asked the Master why he had thrown the salesman out.

“My brother knows a guy,” said the Master. “He’ll do it for half that. He owes me a favor.” The student boggled at the Master’s enlightenment.

***

The students were very excited, because Friday was Zoo Day. They couldn’t sleep all Thursday night, and got up very early on Friday morning. They dressed and went over to the Master’s bedroom to wake him for the trip.

When they got there, they knocked on the door. “What the–” they heard the Master say from inside. “It’s freaking six o’clock in the morning,” cried the Master from his bed. “What are you all, insane?”

“But Master,” one brave student answered, “Today is Friday.”

“Yeah, and it was freaking Friday last week, and next week it will be Friday again. So freaking what?” said the Master, and the students agreed this was very zen. But they did really want to go to the Zoo, so one of them answered, saying, “But Master, today is Zoo Day.”

“Listen, idiots, if you all don’t go back to bed right now, I’m coming out there, and then you’ll see what zen is!” The students didn’t completely understand, but before one of them could answer, a sigh was heard within the bedroom, and then the Master opened the door half dressed and said very placidly: “This afternoon, the Zoo will still be there, but this morning will be gone.”

All the students thought this was stupendous and went back to their beds to meditate. The Master closed the door, stepped over a few empty beer bottles, laid back down on the bed, and slept until noon.

I would have reviewed the whole Super Bowl again this year, but I actually went to someone else’s house and didn’t want to sit there taking notes the whole time. Also, I was doing shots every time there was a sack, and there were quite a few, if you know what I mean. Instead, here’s this:

Best:
Honorable Mentions: DirectTV ad with the kid growing up watching TV, Ameriquest Surprise with the cat, the knife, and the spilled red sauce
5. Godaddy.com’s scantily dressed Congressional hearing
4. CareerBuilder’s working with monkeys
3. NFL Network’s “Tomorrow, we’re all undefeated… again.”
2. Jumping out of an airplane with Bud Light
1. FedEx’s 10 best things includes Burt Reynolds and a bear

Worst:
Honorable Mentions: MC Hammer’s useless cameo, Mastercard’s food icons all get together to eat dinner, Brad Pitt’s Heiniken seemed to have promise, but ending up being nothing
5. Diet Pepsi Truck with P. Diddy. Actually, this made me chuckle at first, but it will be shown millions of times, and it features Carson Daly, so it goes on the bad list. Also on this list, Pepsi iTunes with the musical bottles.
4. Verizon’s phone means celebs (including Kid Rock, ugh) are miniturizing
3. I think it was Ford, with the convertible that couldn’t be released in winter– Look, here’s a guy who loves our cars so much he freezes to death for them! HA! Buy a Ford!
2. Budweiser’s troops applauded as they walk through the airport. Yay troops! Go kill some people! Kill them until they’re dead! Yes, I know what they meant, but the ad itself, run by a beer company, was just sickening to me. A complex and horrible issue, completely whitewashed by patriotism and commercialism.
1. Muppets selling Pizza Hut dipping things. What a waste. Even the old Muppet men weren’t funny, and you have to get up pretty early in the morning to make Statler and Waldorf not funny.

Did I forget some? Let me know.

I’m going to try to rush over to the Dollar Store tonight at the Hideout. If you’re in Chicago, be there.

Parents loved this feature so much last time that I decided to bring it back.

Q: Dear Real-Life Scientist, my name is Kaitlyn and I am in the second grade at Harrison Elementary School. My teacher says that on the moon, we would only weigh half as much, so we could jump really high. That sounds like fun! Is it true?
-Kaitlyn S., Toledo, OH

Dr. Robert Pohler, Assistant Director of Aeronautics at NASA: Kaitlyn, your teacher is only half right. Gravity is a pull of force between two different objects. When you’re on Earth, the pull is big because Earth is very, very big. But the moon is smaller, so there is less pull between you and the moon– less gravity, and that means that you weigh less. In fact, you only weigh 1/6 as much as you do on Earth! You’re right, this would make for some pretty big jumps!
At least it would, if the astronauts had time to jump around. Instead, their time is used up doing all sorts of boring experiments on moon rocks. The rest of their time is taken up by fearfully reflecting on the horrible trip they have to make back to Earth, through fire and friction in the Earth’s atmosphere. Faced with a terrible ordeal which could very likely result a painful death and complete vaporization, they really don’t have much time to go bounding around, 1/6 weight or not.

Q: Dear Real-Life Scientist: I saw on TV that the nearest star to the Sun is 4 light years away. That seems like a long way! Do you think we’ll ever get there?
-Tommy P., Minneapolis, MN

Dr. Pohler: Yes, Tommy, four light years is a very, very long ways away. It means that it would take light (which is very, very fast) four years to get from here to there. We can’t move anywhere near the speed of light, and probably won’t be able to for the foreseeable future, so it would take us a very, very long time to travel from Earth to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun.
There are theories being put forth about how we could make such a trip, however. Most of the plans involve huge living spaces, so that it would take one or more generations for a group to travel great distances. Because it takes so long, some scientists are thinking that we could send a Daddy and Mommy on a trip, and then their grandchildren or greatgrandchildren would arrive at the destination. Imagine, living your life trapped inside a spaceship in the inky blackness of space, never knowing anything besides metal and plastic in front of dark windows from birth until death! Horrifying prospect, indeed! Want to go to Proxima Centauri? Maybe we should send you, Tommy!

Q: Dear Real-Life Scientist: Last week I saw this scary movie that had a bunch of aliens in it. They shot a bunch of laser guns and killed lots and lots of people. I didn’t like it at all. Are there really aliens in space?
-Sarah R., San Diego, CA

Dr. Pohler: Sarah, you can rest easy. We at NASA have never found any evidence whatsoever of any extraterrestrial intelligence– aliens, in non-scientist speak. We’ve been to the moon plenty of times, we’ve been to Mars now twice, and we’ve sent probes into the farthest reaches of space, and we’ve never see any signs of any other beings anywhere. There are no aliens in the space that we’ve explored.
On the other hand, space is an infinite place, so it’s very likely that there could be millions and millions of civilizations and galaxies out there that we haven’t yet discovered. It’s very unlikely that humanity would be the only intelligent being in the entire universe, a place of such infinite possibility. And, considering humanity’s actions so far, and the seemingly inherent violence of the universe, any existing extraterrestrial intelligence would probably not be very benevolent at all. And of course, if their technology has advanced as much as we might suspect, it would be very hard for us to detect their advance, much less come up with any method of repelling it. In short, Sarah, if there are aliens out there (and, in all likelihood, there are), they probably hate you, and you won’t see them coming until it’s too late.

That’s all for today’s edition of A Real-Life Scientist Answers Your Questions! Have a good weekend, kids! Sleep tight!

So I bought a PDA the other day. For me, this is a big thing. Sure, everybody likes getting new toys, but I really, really love getting new toys. I studied up and searched, and priced and compared. I thought about what I’d need and what I’d want, and then what I’d want some more, and then I remember that I should probably think about what I need. And then I went out, spend the exact right amount of money, and painfully waited for it to come in the mail. And it did, and now I’m totally thrilled. The thing is awesome.

So today is for me. I promise this will be the only day I’ll crow and brag about the thing. After this I probably won’t even mention it (although you can see pictures from it down below in my brand spankin’ new photoblog!).

BILLY CRYSTAL: Wow, I remember the first time I ever saw Mike’s new PDA. We were in LA, at the Ha-Ha Hole, this dump of a club over on Sunset, and that thing got up on stage, and people just… they went nuts! I mean, it was so small, and so powerful. I think it did some calculating tasks or kept contacts or something, but no one even cared, because they loved it so much. That little PDA. And we knew, I mean we knew that this thing was going to be great.

MARTIN SCORSESE: Well obviously it’s talented. I mean, Mike’s new PDA can do all kinds of stuff, pretty much everything you’d need it to do. It’s got a calendar system, so you can organize all your time. There’s a Todo list, so instead of writing on little piece of paper, Mike can just put something on there and then he knows to do it later! But you can find that in any PDA– this thing has a mic on it! You can take voice memos! I remember, we worked together on Raging Bull, and Mike’s new PDA– you know what it said to me? It said “Don’t forget to move the laundry to the dryer.” It was a voice memo! That’s what it said. I’ll never forget that.

RACHEL WEISZ: It’s really sexy. Really small and sexy, like metallic. The screen is big, but the whole thing is just very, very sexy. Wow.

TOM HANKS: And I know Mike put all kinds of games on it, you know. There’s, like, text adventures– remember text adventures? He can play Zork on it! And of course he got Bejeweled. Everybody has that one. He’s got 3D Pong, and this thing called Space Trader that’s like a spaceship trading simulation, lots of fun. iRogue is a version of Nethack for the Palm, very cool. But my favorite, and I know Mike loves this one, is Fish Tycoon. You can breed and sell fish! In real time! Very neat, just very neat.

GWENYTH PALTROW: Wow, that thing is sexy. It kind of reminds me of Mike, really.

KEVIN SPACEY: Did you know there’s a camera on there? Yeah, Mike’s new PDA has a digital camera built right into it. He can just take pictures, and then transfer them to his computer, or post them to the Internet. I think he’s got a photoblog now, I saw it the other day somewhere. And, listen to this, if you’re in his contacts list, he can take a picture of you, and bam, it’s right up onto that contacts list. I haven’t seen anything that cool since, well, ever!

KATE HUDSON: Mike’s new PDA and I had a fling once. We were on the set of Almost Famous. I would say that his PDA probably doesn’t remember it, but with 32MB of built in memory and a Secure Digital card slot that can hold up to an extra gigabyte, it probably does.

GEORGE LUCAS: It’s going to change his life, really. There’s a thing on Mike’s new PDA that keeps track of his car, like when you need to do oil changes and stuff. That’s great. He put a map of Chicago on it, so he knows exactly how to get around the city! There’s a program on there that keeps track of his D&D characters, and one that can control his television– he programmed it to work as a remote control! And the darn thing is wireless, so Mike can connect up to the internet without any cables or anything! That technology, it’s just awesome. It’s really incredible. Yes, Mike’s new PDA is really going to be amazing. Unlike my movies lately.

See that? Down in the corner? That’s right, mikeschramm.com has got a photoblog, because mikeschramm.com bought himself a PDA! With a camera! Now, instead of just experiencing mikeschramm.com through imagination, you can experience it through pictures! And flickr! Bold new era indeed. Because I’m so thrilled about it, more on this tomorrow.

Also, in case you’d like to know, I’ve created archives for the bloggin’ sidebar. They are here. Thrill to the various links that have appeared on the right side of this very page, all the way back to the beginning!

When I was maybe 10 or 11, my father, brother, uncle, and I took a trip down to the Florida Keys. I remember seeing the swamps, checking out an alligator farm, and seeing the manatees. We spend about a week down there, and I remember that we were late getting back, so late that my father had to drive overnight to make it back to Missouri (in time for what I don’t remember). I remember lying in the back of my father’s van, spread out with my brother (we were small) on a back seat made up to be a bed, sleeping on and off in a moving car while my dad drove through Georgia, Kentucky, Tennesse, through the night.

Another thing I remember from that trip was that both my father and uncle were steadfast in their belief that we could not leave the Florida Keys without a Key Lime Pie. I think we had some trouble finding one– I have some memories of us fumbling through a grocery store, trying desperately to find that local delicacy. I think we eventually gave up, and then stopped at a restaurant, only to find a pile of whipped cream in a graham cracker crust under the glass dessert case. My father bought three, and there was one sitting on the carseat in front of me the whole way back from Florida.

Unfortunately, key limes don’t seem to be available in the middle of winter Chicago, either, so to make this pie, I had to settle for regular old limes. If you want to play along, you’ll need:

1/2 cup lime juice (3 to 4 limes)
4 teaspoons grated lime zest
4 egg yolks
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
whipped cream
graham cracker crust (If you’re really hardcore you can make your own. I didn’t.)

First up, you’ve got to combine the egg yolks and lime zest. Both of these compose two of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in these little cooking fests. Usually, cooking isn’t that hard– you put some stuff in a bowl, stir, pour it out, and cook it for a while. Seperating egg yolks and white, however, takes some skill. Well, if not skill, at least it takes some technique. You’ve got to crack the egg down the center, and then transfer the yolk back and forth, letting the white fall away until you’re left with a little round ball of yellow. Ok, so it’s not that hard, but it did make me feel like a cook.

Zest is another technique kind of thing. To get zest from a lime or lemon (I guess it’s only citrus), you have to grate off the coloring on the skin. Not the white part– that part is apparently bitter, but the actual colored part of the skin is supposed to be very flavorful and oily. If I was a professional cook, I would have used a zester, and quickly turned out tons of zest from the four limes that I bought. Of course, I’m not, so I used a cheese grater. It worked. Kind of. Well, good enough, anyway.

Beat those two together until they’re tinted light green. Beat in the milk (I’ve never used condensed milk before– it’s strange stuff, very gooey), and then beat in the juice. Again, if I was a professional cook, I would have a juicer to use, but I’m not, so I had to cut the limes and then squeeze the juice out by hand. I’m pretty sure my hands are going to smell like lime for the rest of my life. Not that I’m complaining.

With milk and juice beaten in, set that whole thing aside until it thickens up (shouldn’t take too long). Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

After it’s thickened up a bit, pour the mix into the crust, spread out so it’s even, and bake the whole thing for 15 minutes. Pull it out, let it cool to room temperature, and then let the whole thing sit in the fridge for three hours.

I have to say that it’s not as good as the original Key Lime Pie that I had when I was a kid, but it tastes great anyway. I made a little mistake and put the whipped cream on early (you should probably wait to put it on individual pieces), but it was still good enough to eat.

I Require Sustenance runs every Wednesday on mikeschramm.com. I almost forgot! HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY!

Hey folks. Keep your eyes peeled to this site, because new things will be showing up in the next twenty four hours. You could keep it open all day, and refresh every five minutes if you like, or, if you happened to be, oh, say, Maud Newton, or Wendy McClure blogging for Maud Newton, you could put a link on your blog to us, and share mikeschramm.com with the world. Over and over again.

Sorry, got a little off track there. Today’s mikeschramm.com is made possible with assistance from Lobsterharmonica.