Undone

So I made cookies yesterday.

They’re almost gone now, obviously.  I’d like to take all of the credit, but there are several other fervent cookie-eaters living in my midst.  Even if I were to blame someone else, I’m not angry at them, as on the day I made the cookies, I gorged myself with sweet, sweet cookie dough.  I ate so much cookie dough that, technically, I may have made more cookies by pooping than by baking.

Now that you all feel unclean, I have a question for you: is there anything besides cookie dough that is arguably better in its incomplete state than it is when it’s supposed to be “finished?”  Food-wise, I don’t think there’s anything that can compare.  Other desserts have tasty batter, to be sure, but nobody makes cake batter and thinks “yeah, I’ll stop here.  No need for delicious, warm cake with frosting, I’ll take this cold, water liquid.”  The closest I can think of is sushi, if you far prefer sushi to cooked fish, but that’s debatable at best, and varies greatly on the type of fish.  Plus, if you were to count sushi in and of itself instead of as an “incomplete” form of cooked fish, you’d have to eat bigger chunks of fish with uncooked rice and dry wasabi powder, and nobody wants that.

Outside of food, there aren’t many more good answers.  Everything from entertainment to workouts to oral sex are just way, way better completed than stopped halfway through.  There’s only one thing, other than cookie dough, that I can think of that’s best when stopped prior to completion, and it’s going to make me sound super pretentious.  Just read back the part where I talked about making poop-cookies to dispel that impression before you continue.

It’s life.

Not any given stage of life, mind you.  Babies need to stop being babies because all they do is cry, poop, and throw up, usually simultaneously.  Kids need to stop being kids because they’re smart enough that you need to start having awkward conversations about facts of life with them, but dumb enough that every single gift shop in the world will hold a plethora of treasures that you have to buy for them immediately or they’ll cry.  Teens need to stop being teens because unless you’re a teen, they’ll think you’re a fogey.  And us fogies need to stop being fogies because, hey, they have a point.  I don’t know what’s what anymore.  I don’t know about the popular music.  There’s a guy named Pitbull in music now? I thought that was a dog! How can a dog make music! Hogwash!

But as a whole, life is way better in the middle parts than it is at its unavoidable endpoint, death.  For one thing, if you die you lose your chance to do all of the things you loved in various other parts of your life.  You can’t go to gift shops, you can’t judge people, you’ll never learn if Marky-Mark is still a cool musician or not, and you can’t cry or vomit on people.  All of these other activities are a pain in the ass, yes, but they’re better than death.  There are a lot of theories about what happens to the mind or the soul or whatever after you die, but we know what happens to the body after you die.  Nobody likes rotting and bloating with disgusting gasses.  Sure, you shit yourself, which is something babies like to do, but if you’re not a baby that idea loses much of its allure.  I don’t want to divulge exactly how long I have managed to go without pooping my pants—a gentleman does not not shit himself and tell—but suffice to say, it’s been long enough that I feel committed to the lifestyle.  In the end, life and cookie dough are the only things wonderful enough to exceed the worth of their final products.  They stand above the rest of the world, giving each other meaning and value—cookie dough cannot exist without life, and life is truly worthless without cookie dough.  It’s a beautiful cycle, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

Wait, wait, hold on.  Murder.  Murder is way better if you stop partway through and don’t kill anybody.  Most forms of crimes and physical harm, in fact.  Dang.  There’s that narrative shot to shit.