Thursday, September 11, 2008

On the current battle for godhood

I have remained silent as I have watched the culinary battle between PhysioProf and Isis unfold. It is all very entertaining and I will admit that I have been voting. But at the risk of some serious swearwords and smiting (I honestly prefer Drugmonkey to be the next person blown out of the sky by the goddess as opposed to my humble self), I must finally say my peace: this competition is crap.

There, I've done it. Let the chaos ensue.

Why is it crap? Isis is the domestic and laboratory goddess (it says so on her blog). I think the 'and' is a critical (and apparently neglected) word. If I had all day to work on my home, I too could be a domestic goddess. My house would be neat (maybe,...there is my inherent problem of being a chaos vortex....I might have to clean my home and then lock myself out of it) and my long-suffering husband would come home with a gourmet meal awaiting him (I will never be a chef, but I'm mighty fine at following complicated recipes...which is surprising in retrospect since my TA for organic chemistry lab passed me on the condition I never step foot in another chemistry lab). I could also be a domestic goddess if I was a full professor and could afford to hire a sous chef to make my duck confit for me. Anyway, my point is that what makes Isis a domestic goddess worth praying to is that her advice allows mere mortal women to immulate BOTH a domestic and work goddess. Those handy pieces of advice that help you balance those competing demands. I mean, the pesto recipe was fantastic, and it has saved my ass on more than one occasion when General Disarray and I came home too exhausted to cook.

Now, I understand that sometimes true gods have to fling lightning bolts at each other to establish pre-eminence. However, I would like to point out that when gods forget the little people, they tend to stop being worshipped.

image

Figure 1. Not familiar with the gods Tiamat and Assur? That's exactly my point.

So, Isis and PhysioProf, in your competition to one-up each other, please remember that many of us are struggling young scientists without much time to cook extravagant gourmet meals (or the money to hire someone else to do it). Please attempt to demonstrate to your humble worshipers not only your might, but also your benevolence and usefulness.

Hugs and Kisses,

River

6 comments:

Cath@VWXYNot? said...

My house would be neat (maybe,...there is my inherent problem of being a chaos vortex....I might have to clean my home and then lock myself out of it)

Are you my long-lost twin?

Isis the Scientist said...

River, that is exactly my point and I appreciate the little bit of link love. Among my brood, yours truly has a two year old. If I had given my two year old one of this week's salds, he would have thrown the squid on the floor, not have been allowed to eat the shellfish, and would have choked on the assorted seeds and nuts.

But, I hope to empower other women to be domestic goddesses too while they manage their extremely sucessful research programs. I am convinced that you can be a wife and mother and still hold it down at your MRU.

Sadly, Dr. Isis fears she cannot compete with the appeal of confit.

Anonymous said...

I can barely muster up the interest to even scoff at your petty concerns.

Professor Chaos said...

Okay Assur, you just keep following that path and see how many worshipers you end up with!

Isis- if your next recipe includes something handy like being able to freeze for future use, I will vote for that recipe every hour on the hour (aside from when I'm asleep) for 4 days straight. Of course, after the arrogance just displayed by PP, I might do that anyway!

Anonymous said...

I can barely muster up the interest to even scoff at your petty concerns.

watchit River, when a blogger acts all Bored and DisInterested and can BarelyBringHimself (yeah,it's always a man) to Read you may expect about four new posts on the topic.

Isis the Scientist said...

River, I can barely muster the interest to tell PhysioProf where to stick it, but I am sure I will manage to sack up.

Stick it, PhysioProf.