right and wrong and covered in milk

Just finished a bowl of cereal, and I'm sad. I don't often eat cereal for breakfast because it slows my coffee intake, but a bowl of Frosted Flakes, say, maybe mixed with granola or shredded wheat, makes a nice bedtime snack. I like mixing cereals -- one of my favorite meals is the one where you empty the ends of three or four boxes of cereal into one bowl. I enjoy the feeling of completeness and thrift -- it's a modern suburban version of the use the whole animal philosophy. I mean, I am using all of the cereal box, not just the easy to pour bits at the top. No flake or loop, no nugget or nut or shred of wheat is wasted. As a hunter, I salute the boxes as I stack them for recycling.

But I am not feeling very virtuous right now. In fact I feel guilty. I mixed the last handful at the bottom of a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch together in a bowl with the end of a bag of honey-almond granola. Two excellent cereal choices (CTC is one of Ed's favorites, along with ABs and FLs, and almond granola is way better than the raisin kind). The snack should have tasted wonderful, but it didn't, dammit. I chewed, swallowed, tried another bite, paused, chewed some more, and started shaking my head. The mixture tasted ... uneasy. As if the cinnamon flavour and the honey flavour didn't like each other. Did you ever have two friends who should hit it off, but for some reason don't? You introduce them to each other, and stand back with a big smile, only ... it doesn't work between them. No chemistry, or maybe negative chemistry. Well, it was like that with my snack tonight. Each of the cereals tastes better on its own than they do together.

And so I am guilty. I have taken two good things and made a bad thing, depleting the good karma in the universe. I suppose there's a precedent here, going back to Cain (if you figure that Adam and Eve were good, which is debatable) -- but it's nothing to be proud of. Two wrongs don't make a right, but how often do two rights make a wrong?