The pistachios and the clams and convergent evolution

This has always been a great time of year for exotic food.

By "exotic" I'm talking about shit that doesn't show up in your grocery cart every week.

It also used to be the time of year when otherwise ordinary folks would get many sheets to the wind and then drive home.

Shrimp used to be considered exotic. That used to be special occasion stuff. Now a shrimp platter is what, $3.99?

The driving-home-fully-loaded deal more or less died out once they got serious about drunk driving and brought in the road-side breathalyser business.

So then you just hung out and waited four hours for a cab, all the while munching away at whatever was left on the snack table.

If you weren't stuffed at snack time, you surely were by the time the cab pulled up!

I think I've read somewhere that the rise of cheap shrimp in your supermarket is directly correlated with declining incomes for shrimp farmers in South-East Asia. Don't know how true that is, but I have to say when I run into a shrimp ring on New Years Eve I don't ask a lot of questions.

So while I was waiting patiently for that cab, it struck me that the pistachios and the clams could have come from the same blueprint.

But does that mean anything?

That's something to think about while you're waiting for your cab on New Year's Eve.

The other thing you're probably already thinking about while you're waiting four hours for a cab was downloading the Uber app.

I've expressed my thoughts on that topic before, and I suppose if Uber keeps a few drunks off the road, that's all to the good. At the same time, there's something fundamentally perverse about a business model that puts thousands of legit cabbies out of work while enriching a handful of Wall Street douche-bags.

Be that as it may, I was pretty astounded by that clam-pistachio thing. Here was proof of a master plan!

GOD LIVES!

Then I tell Junior about my intellectual breakthrough, the kid who pulls down 90+ in his advanced biology class, and he says nah, that's just convergent evolution.

Alrighty then, I guess...

But he has no idea how much I want to believe in God.