Resignation and Tofu

I left my last job the 24th of November - Friday. It has been quite a run for me in the company – in my year and a half stay, I’ve attended over a hundred meetings, composed over 400 status reports, took on more White Papers, help files, data sheets, and technical marketing collateral than I really care to think about, and heard the phrase “action items” approximately 1,657,342 times. I’ve picked up a host of useless brain clutter - blog administration, site traffic monitoring, search engine optimization, forum management, deodorant use, etc. - and they’re now residing in brain mass I typically reserve for weighty issues, like graphic novels, short stories, and counting to twelve.

Looking back almost a month after, it feels like I’ve been there longer. Feels like the past year and a half had been more protracted, at least where work was concerned. Not in the I’ve-learned-more-in-the-past-blah-blah-than-in-the-rest-of-the-history-of-time way; it feels protracted the same way eating tofu feels protracted, in the can’t-stand-eating-shipping-material way, except security work doesn’t kill testicular tissue. At least I think it doesn’t.

But the point is, very serious researchers are saying that – gymmers, surprise! – soy kills testicular tissue. Okay, sort of serious researchers. You know, the kind of people who would get up in the morning and, for no apparent reason, say stuff like this:

“Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the [something that rhymes with Tennis], sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.”

Or this:

“This (soy) increases the probability of estrogen dominance in men with its(soy’s) hair loss, swollen and cancerous prostates. Male children fed soy formulas and soy products may not ever get to like girls.”

Yep, yep, yep. Ground-breaking research, including proof of nigh-guaranteed extinction due to soy and beans walking around with, for starters, swollen legume prostates. That is the conundrum that is tofu.

However, those guys are competing with another group of dudes who’re saying soy is healthy for men, preventing a bunch of hormone-related cancers. These dudes argue that soy is healthy for the prostates, and in no way kills testicular tissue of any variety, going so far as to say that Isoflavones (soy-based stuff), quote, “had no effect on [something that rhymes with Ramen] quality.”

So in sum, researchers generally tend to believe that soy is good for prostates, unless they don’t, in which case they generally tend to think your prostates are beyond saving. That is a lot to think about, especially for prostates.

So looking back, the point is that tofu tastes like rubberized mulch, and consuming it feels protracted in a way that work can feel protracted, in that both may or may not kill testicular tissue, and may seem longer than they actually take, hence the protracted bit, which may or may not be related to prostates. I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that while it may be too early to tell, since I’ve left my last job, it feels like I’ve been consuming far less tofu, which, for all I know, could be a small step in preserving humans, depending on who among the testicular tissue guys you believe.