Today I found out that the reason why my mouse wasn't fine tuned enough to hit the links I aimed for was that my mouse pad had too many chocolate stains on it. When I removed the mouse pad, the mouse worked impeccably. These stains are just one of the many pieces of evidence from my ecstatic dissertation writing ending almost a month ago. Other pieces of evidence include the post-it note with my advisor's home phone number and an early draft of the recurring figure of the dissertation (an illustration of the context gap).
The chocolate reminded me of the other day, where the Alumni Association at my University held a 'chocolate tasting evening', with plenty of chocolate to taste and a lecture on the secrets of chocolate production. I finally got my question to why American chocolate tastes so horrible answered. Unfortunately it is in the US permitted to put vegetable oils in chocolate, making it cheaper to produce and easier to melt. This was apparently introduced by a guy named Hershey who made it common to call it chocolate even though it contains a low percentage of actual cocoa (down to 30 %) and high amounts of sugar and vegetable oil. However, some Americans have opted out of the cheapness and created this extremely wonderful 'back to the roots' chocolate that was the last treat of the evening. I will be stocking up when I get to Chicago next week.
Posted by Louise at October 29, 2004 01:52 PM