let’s eat some babies

At what point did some product manager or marketer in a conference room say “Guys! GUYS! Check this out–you know how the boys in the lab have come up with some kind of soft confectionary candy type thing? Well, I know most of you are leaning toward making them in the shape of a platypus. Or maybe something amorphous. But let me run THIS up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes it–BABIES! That’s right, not just candy, but edible CANDY babies. Little ones, maybe with a coating of some kind of gross powdery sugar stuff.”

Well, I’ll tell you at what point. It was some guy at Bassetts’ headquarters in Sheffield, England, in 1919, and Bassett’s introduced the Jelly Baby as a way to commemorate the end of World War 1.

That’s right. Everybody does what they can, and produces according to their comparative advantage. Bassett’s, of course, made candy. So they commemorated the end of the worst war in human history by creating and marketing edible candy babies.

Thanks, Nick (a friend from, and I can never remember which, but from Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. Ha! People from those places LOVE jokes that get them all confused (okay, fine, he’s from Australia. I think.)), for sending me a bag and bringing this paean to ingenuity and humanity to my attention.

Last April I talked about E.L. Fudges, and how that seemed a bit like friendly cannibalism.

This just seems weird. The babies have NAMES. They have personalities. And they are BABIES. HUMAN babies. James Cameron will be making a movie about them someday, I feel sure.

Happy Armistice Day!

The verdict? Kind of icky. And by the way, they contain some gelatin–so you’ll be glad to know they are off limits to vegetarians.

The Jelly Babies Wikipedia page says that a popular science class experiment is to put them in a strong oxidizing agent, and see the resulting spectacular reaction. The experiment is commonly referred to as: “Screaming jelly babies.”

Guess what I’ll be doing this week? That’s right, I’ll be shopping for a strong oxidizing agent.

I’m all a flutter.

fixing jeopardy

It feels like forever since I ranted about something. Doesn’t it feel like forever?

So here goes–I hate Alex Trebek.

When Kim and I were first married, had little to no furniture, no money for movies, no kids, we used to eat dinner on our little TV trays and watch Jeopardy. I was more forgiving then, and just concentrated on getting the answers right.

Recently, I’ve taken to Tivoing Jeopardy and watching an episode when I have a minute, or I feel like seeing how dumb I am. And I’ve discovered that what I really need isn’t a mute button, but a zonal mute button. That is, I want to point the remote specifically at Alex’s smug little mug and mute just him.

Him and his “I can’t believe you didn’t know that, I so disapprove of you and your ignorance” smugness. (Does he think he’s fooling anybody? Are we supposed to think he actually knows the answers?) Him and his hyper correct pronunciation of foreign language words, which, you just know, are spelled out phonetically on his archaic little 3X5 cards he has in his hand.

In short, I don’t like him.

But he’s not the worst part. I hate the way he walks out at the start of the show, acts like he’s in a hurry to get going, starts the first round, then, when we come back from our “break” he decides to get to know the players.

Well you know what? I don’t give a rat’s ass WHO is playing. I don’t want to get to know them unless they win like a month in a row and become a minor celebrity. THEN I’m interested. For now, they’re just puppets who magically make the questions appear on the board.

And, finally, speaking of puppets making the questions appear, what the hell is up with those clickers? Instead of stopping the game to let me know that Gwendolyn of Tulsa is an aspiring arborist, how about you explain the magic of the clicker? Every question I see each the contestants pounding furiously on their clickers like laboratory rats banging on the cocaine button, and when they fail to ring in successfully, they stare at their clickers like I look at my tennis racket after smashing a forehand 50 feet over the fence.

I know. Wikipedia explains the way the clicker works. Something about lock-outs, waiting, blinking lights, all that.

So all I’m asking is, instead of finding out that Contestant Number Three is a philatelist from Nome, Alaska, how about we take a look at the clickers? Practice with them for a minute, maybe let a player ask for a replacement if they feel like theirs is defective. I’d even like to see them bring their OWN clickers, like a pro tennis player with a bag of rackets.

“Whoops, Alex, I’m gonna need a minute, I just splintered my clicker with my thumb. No worries, I’ve got six more right here.”

What, you wouldn’t watch this? Ratings wouldn’t go up?

switch

Let me paint you a picture–me, at the top of a short run in my brother’s backyard in the mountains behind The Canyons. Me n the boys have just built a kicker, and I’ve just tried and failed to land switch a half dozen times already (today, I’ve tried and failed dozens of times in other locales). It’s now getting quite dark, I can barely make out the kicker below me, and I can’t see much of the backyard and the landing.

But I don’t care. It’s been my dream to land switch off a kicker, even if it’s a weanie backyard kicker. I’ve landed switch off little humps on ski runs and cat tracks many times, which is no big deal, since I’ve never gotten more than a foot or two off the ground.

Kim, who has been telling me it’s time to get in the car and go for about 20 minutes, is standing to the side with Maddy and Holden and the others, and watches me go by in a rush.

I follow Ian’s advice, crouching low, not beginning my spin until I’m clear of the jump, and I POP off the lip and start looking over my shoulder.

And, I land, leaning forward a bit, since my tails are now my tips. I take stock of my situation.

I’m still up and moving! Yay me! I’m king of the world!

I can barely see my family shouting and waving at me in triumph as I start to raise my arms to celebrate.

Unfortunately, they were waving and shouting about the gigantic tree toward which I was hurtling, but, you know, backwards, so I couldn’t see it.

I don’t care. Didn’t even hurt (and there was very little bruising). Because I landed SWITCH.

and, we’re back

Okay, so it’s not much, but I thought it important to tell you that the Dawn Patrols have started. And even though it’s only pretty good instead of epic so far, it’s still one or two more days a week I don’t have to feel guilty for not getting on the trainer.

Yay.

imagine my relief

I think I’ve mentioned that I live at Suncrest. And I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve mentioned that I live at Suncrest. But I’ve only got so many clever openings, sometimes I have to make do.

Suncrest is awesome. It’s kind of like a high class township. Like District 9.

Anyway.

Suncrest, as I think I’ve mentioned, sits at about 6,000 feet astride the ridge that divides Salt Lake County from Utah County. A 4 mile road drops down each side, north and south.

Our winters can be a bit harsher than the average winter for the average valley dweller.

I think that’s the last of the staccato descriptive sentences I’ll use for a while.

For example (an example of our winters, not of staccato sentences), this is a typical scene at my house during winter:

I think it’s safe to say we Suncrestians know how to deal.

So how grateful were we when the city decided to put a fancy electronic sign at the bottom of our hill to “advise” us on road and snow conditions?

So grateful.

Um. Thanks for the tip.

Seriously. We LIVE up there. We are the only people who live up there. Who do they think that “advisory” is for? It’s winter. It’s snowing. And, now we’ve got a big sign to remind us that the snow falling on our windshields is real.

Imagine my relief.

the grinch is not jesus

I love the holidays, I love Christmas, all that.

Yada yada yada.

But I was watching How The Grinch Stole Christmas the other day. Not the bloated live action Jim Carrey version. The cartoon.

And you know when the Grinch comes down the chimney, and he sets up his big cloth sacks and starts chucking presents and logs and stuff in them from across the room?

That drives me CRAZY. Anybody who has ever raked the yard and tried to bag leaves alone knows that’s impossible. Bags just won’t sit there like that, even if you don’t have a green freak chucking presents into them from 10 feet away. To get the leaves into a lawn bag, you need someone who stands/crouches over the bag, jams their fists inside the lip, wedges their elbows into the other “corner” of the square opening, and shuts their eyes and tries not the breathe while you shovel in leaves and grass clippings.

(Really, it just kills Fall for me.)

Anyway. The Grinch just starts tossing stuff into the bags. And the bags don’t even move. I hate that.

Now before you start rolling your eyes, shaking your head sadly, and ask me, right through your computer screen, “Really? REALLY? THAT’S the part of How The Grinch Stole Christmas that you find unrealistic? THAT’S the ONE part that bothers you?”

Well, no, of course not. It’s not the ONE part that bothers me.

Because the part that REALLY bothers me is when the Grinch cuts the roast beast. That measly half ham he lays into doesn’t get any smaller! He is feeding the entire population of Whoville with that canned ham, and by the time the credits roll, he has cut about a dozen giant slices, and the ham never gets smaller.

The Grinch is NOT Jesus, and that oversized can of Spam is NOT the fishes and the loaves.

There, I feel better. Thanks for listening.

take this back

The reason I hear more than any other for shopping at Costco is “They will take anything back, anytime, for any reason.”

At least that’s what my brother tells me.

We let our Costco membership expire a few months ago because it was costing us too much money. Not the membership, that paid for itself. I just got tired of going in for the yummy uncooked tortillas and coming home with a car jack and a generator. That stuff adds up.

But I snuck into Costco with a friend the other day, and while he piddled around at the membership counter, I noticed a nice young lady trying to take advantage of the Costco reputation for accepting all returns for any reason.

After the woman grew first agitated with the answer she got from the customer service rep, then irate, and finally stomped out of the store, her package under her arm, I caught the eye of the woman who had been helping her.

“Um, was that woman trying to return a bag of nuts that she bought here over a YEAR ago?”

“Yeah. She said she never opened them, so we should take them back. I pointed out the long past expiration date, but that just made her madder.”

Like teachers, customer service reps are waaay underpaid. Way.

real effects

You know how I said the special effects in 2012 were so bad that when the water started pouring over the top of the Himalayas (uh huh, the water in 2012 reached the TOP of the Himalayas) I felt like I was watching the Red Sea part in The Ten Commandments?

Well, truth is stranger than fiction. The view from near my house this morning:

I work about halfway out there in that.

This is what it’s like UNDER the water:

I feel like Rick Deckard in Bladerunner. I’m sitting at my desk waiting for Edward James Olmos to tap me on the shoulder and tell me the replicants are loose.

official memo

I’m sure this happens at all places of employment, and even some fairly rigid home environments, like maybe at the Von Trapps in the early days. By “this” I mean official memos. Some with cover sheets, some without. I’m not going get into a cover sheet argument with you.

For example, here at Dunder Mifflin everybody got an official memo that went something like this:

“Hey! Anderson. No more shorts, flip flops, or beanies!”

Or something to that effect. The actual memo went on at some length.

Anyway, it’s time for me to send an official memo to the world. Or at least the portion of the world that uses public, or even semi-private, restrooms. Including outhouses.

Memo To The World:

In no event shall anyone using this or any public restroom make loud, or even audible, noises expressing desperation, relief, or celebration.

This includes the following noises, which are now proscribed:

1. Grateful Sighing

2. Crying

3. Whimpering

4. Grunting

5. Laughing

6. High Fiving

7. Pep Talks

8. Whooping

9. Polynesian War Cries

10. Absolutely No Rebel Yells

Thank you for your cooperation.

the sacred snooze

Let me just lay some some snooze ground rules.

Rule Number One: The snooze button exists so you can get an extra 7 minutes (or 10 minutes, or whatever your snooze is set to) of sleep. Don’t try to explain to me that I could just set the alarm for 7 (or 10) minutes later and just sleep straight through. If you try to do that, you clearly don’t understand the Tao of the snooze.

Rule Number Two: Rule number one shall only be excepted for one other thing. I shall not name that other thing here, except to say, the snooze could conceivably and righteously be used as a time limit for that one other thing. Some people perform better under pressure.

An egregious violation of “The Snooze,” a violation which should generally result in loss of snooze privileges, would be this–The alarm goes off, you hit (or someone hits) snooze, and rather than going directly back to sleep, you begin talking. TALKING!

There is no crying in baseball, and there is NO TALKING during the sacred snooze.

Glad I could help.

radio tivo

You know how awesome Tivo is, right? Or any DVR I guess, but since Tivo is what I have, Tivo is what I love.

But what I need, now is Tivo for my radio. I’ll be listening to NPR, some story about anything, really, but since I’m in my car, I’m staring out the window, I get distracted, I start thinking about my 6th birthday party that happened in the middle of a family vacation road trip in a motel in North Dakota when I got a baseball bat and a flashlight, and suddenly I hear a phrase on the radio that catches my attention, like maybe ” . . . and THAT’S how I managed to to bump up the appraisal on my house and get it refinanced.”

And I frantically start pushing buttons on the radio to rewind, as if I’m watching an episode of So You Think You Can Dance and Elenor and Legacy just did flips over the table and landed on their spinning heads. Rewind. REWIND!

Doesn’t work.

But why not? I ask you, WHY NOT?

monkey trap

Caught myself in a monkey trap today.

You know how the best place for sunglasses is on the little ledge between the steering wheel and the instrument panel? Come on, you know it is.

Except, sometimes, when you get in the car, the sun isn’t in your eyes. Maybe you parked in the shade or something.

So you start driving, turn a corner, and suddenly WHAM! The sun hits you full in the face. Panicked, you reach for your sunglasses. But remember, you’re TURNING. Now your arm is caught between steering wheel levers and the arms of the steering wheel.

But don’t forget, you’re also DRIVING.

So just let go of the sunglasses, pull your arm out, and turn the damn wheel, right?

Well sure. Except it’s a monkey trap. And I’m a monkey.

it’s not that hard

I was in Sunday School a while back, and while I don’t pay attention to much, Sunday School included, this perked me right up.

We were talking (and by we, I mean everybody else, I was paying more attention to whatever was on my Kindle at the time) about genealogy and what people call “The Spirit of Elijah” which means, I guess, whatever makes people even WANT to do genealogy. A spirit I don’t have, by the way. So clearly I’m no expert.

Anyway. Someone announced that they knew someone who had traced their ancestry all the way back to Adam. Seriously. To ADAM.

Now, let’s leave aside all the obvious stuff. Let’s not talk about the historicity of the Bible, or the obviously symbolic and remarkably symmetric genealogy listed in Mathew and Luke, or even whether Adam was an actual person or whether there was death before the Fall.

Forget all that.

Let’s just focus on the idea that before about 150 years ago, record keeping wasn’t exactly, shall we say, stellar. Let’s just say that tying your “line” into royalty is about as reliable as using records from some blogger posting his family tree on the Internet.

Let’s just say that the idea of actually tracing your family tree to “Adam” is about as fun as the idea of God playing cards with the Devil for a man’s soul. It’s a terrific story.

But,  back to my point in saying all this.

Because the punch line is this: Three others in the room immediately offered that they, too, had traced their family tree back to Adam.

One even shrugged and said “It’s not that hard.”

fat suit

Kim and I spent Saturday evening at Mark’s house for a little holiday get together. Many nice people were there. The food was awesome. When we have get-togethers, we tell the guests that “the chips are in the cupboard, the salsa is in the fridge.” You know the food will be good when the hosts spend five minutes explaining each dish. Rachel had help with the grunt work, but she was clearly the maestro behind the food.

Speaking of food, you know you’re fat when someone singles you out in the white elephant gift exchange to give you a fat suit. Thanks Jonnie.

What, you think I’m kidding?

When Jonnie’s turn came, he waded into the pile of gifts, grabbed the one HE brought, and walked directly over to me and said “I’ve been thinking you need this.”

Yup. It’s a Gold’s Gym reflective slimming suit. Not as in, it has a slimming effect if you wear it. Well, maybe that. I mean, you don’t look thinner if you wear it–no, you GET thinner if you wear it. And not because it’s reflective. I assume it’s reflective so that drivers won’t run me over if I wear this outside in the dark.

If ANYBODY ever wore this suit outside, dark or not, drivers would actively seek them out for vehicular manslaughter. And they’d probably beat the rap.

In case you can’t read the text at the bottom, it says this: “Sweat away the pounds as you exercise.”

Really? I need a fat suit and a fancy box to tell me that? “If your exercise makes you sweat, that’s a good thing.”

And the back:

Let me recap the message:

Sweat away the pounds as you exercise with this attractive looking suit.

Covering your arms, torso, and legs, it can help you slim  your entire body fast.

Gold’s Gym goes on to say that their 40 plus years of experience and expertise helped them come up with a suit that covers the arms, torso, and legs. If only it covered my feet.

At least it’s slimming. Right?

big brown

I played in more than a few turkey bowl games over Thanksgiving weekend.

Okay, I played in exactly a few turkey bowl games. As long as you agree that a few equals 3. I’ve always said a couple is 2 and a few is 3. Anything more than that is just Hrair.

Anyway.

The first bowl was early Thanksgiving day, with a largish group, and somehow, not sure how, but somehow, the teams ended up being a bunch of 17-22 year old guys on one side, and on my side, we ranged from old guys like me all the way to 11 year olds like Holden. I’m not complaining. Just explaining.

Sometime around the middle of the game, I lined up on offense, and as people were calling out their coverage assignments, one of the boys in the prime of youth on the other side of the ball called out “Hey! I’ve got brown. I’ve got BIG BROWN!”

Confused, I looked around, trying to spot whoever was big and wearing brown. Or maybe we had someone brown playing with us and I hadn’t noticed.

Until it dawned on me to look down at my shirt.

I was wearing my usual plaid Costco shorts, a long sleeve white t-shirt, and a BROWN “more cowbell” t-shirt on top.

I looked around again. Yup. I was the only one wearing brown.

Apparently, Big Brown was me. He is I, and I am him, slim with the tilted brim.

I’m thinking my quest to hit 200 lbs is over. I’ve been to the gym or on the spin bike in the basement almost every day since.

If I don’t nip this in the bud now, I’ll be Big Brown for the rest of my life. Which, in that case, would be very short. And would probably void my life insurance policy.

Big. Brown. Oh hell.

i’ll staple more often

I just used the giant stapler by the fax machine for the first time (I’ve been here for about two years).

Turns out, we don’t have some ordinary, run of the mill stapler. We have a stapler that would make Milton Waddams burn down our building to get it back.

And not because it staples really well. I don’t even know if it does.

What I do know is that I will never ever get sick from our stapler. Because it’s antimicrobial.

Imagine my relief that if I get sick from something in my office crawling with microbes (like, say, the bathroom door handle. Or the bathroom sink. Or the bathroom anything. Or my phone. Or my computer. Or my pen. Or my . . . ), it absolutely won’t be the big communal stapler.

I guess I’ll staple stuff more often.

i blame my mother

Do you like apples? How do you like them apples?

See, the truth is, I DON’T like apples.

Oh, I WANT to like apples. How awesome would it be if I loved apples? My weight problems would be over. I just failed in my attempt to crack the deuce barrier, and so I figure I’ll try to get back down into the manageable, even ideal weight zone.

So I’m sitting here staring at the apple I brought for lunch. And I’m not excited.

Here’s my beef with apples:

1. Biting into them gives me the willies. I don’t mean I’m scared, I mean I get a shiver when I bite an apple. I don’t know why. This does not happen with other fruit. Or other food, even. Not even squid.

2.  When I bite into a firm apple (really, the only kind you want to eat), the skin pushes past my teeth and gouges my gums. Admittedly, I am old, and my gums ain’t what they used to be. But still, I would expect the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to treat me better than this.

3. The skin of an apple is ready-made for wedging in between teeth. Tightly. Not the kind of wedging that casual picking will remove–you need floss. Or, in my case here at work, a straightened paper clip. Which presents its own problems.

Apples give a satisfying crunch when you bite them (good apples do–bad apples slither, they don’t crunch. Slithering is almost never good.) Apples are good for you. Apples are pretty cheap. And very portable.

What’s the key here? Volume? Do I just eat apples until I love them, or will that drive me farther into my apple antipathy? It’s a dilemma, a word which here means hunger.

And while we’re here, I feel similarly about carrots. I blame my mother.

cold butter must go

So I have a question.

Why do restaurants serve cold butter? What is cold butter good for? Other than flinging onto the ceiling?

Okay, I guess that’s three questions, technically.

I mean, I can see that getting warm butter out of those little butter packets would be a little slimier. But isn’t working with slimy butter better than trying to smear cold butter onto a roll? And let’s say we’re talking fancy restaurant here, where they would never give you butter in a little packet–why are those little butter balls cold? I don’t have time to wait for the butter to thaw. My REAL food is coming soon, and I need to get these rolls eaten NOW.

I’m telling you. No cold butter. Cold butter must go.

put in some more

We followed that most ancient of American customs for Thanksgiving, which is to go to the movies.

I don’t know why I keep going TO the movies instead of just investing in the new American tradition, namely the home theater room. I guess I just like the theater. I like the big screen, the big room, the big sound, I like seeing movies in a giant room full of people.

But. But what I’d really like is for all of the people within maybe 10 feet of me to be mannequins. And not the talking kind.

This time I’m pretty sure I was being tested, like I was on the Truman Show, and everybody but me was in on it. The entire row behind us was definitely in on it. Full theater, nowhere to run, second to last row. Trapped.

And then the Dr. Moreau style testing began.

One couple with a baby in a baby carrier. And a family behind me that might have had an outpatient pass for the day. Seriously. After the movie I actually waited for the lights to come on and I turned around to see if they were either wearing lab coats or being escorted by people IN lab coats.

The guy directly behind me had a bottomless bag of Red Vines. That’s an affront on two, well, fronts. First, Red Vines are gross. They  had to have known that I’m a Twizzler man and were just trying to get my goat. And second, the bag was BOTTOMLESS. About an hour into the movie, after the guy had dug his hand around in the loudest candy bag I had ever heard for the thousandth time, I leaned over to Kim and said “Either he’s got TEN bags, or that bag is just magic.”

And next to him someone had what must have been a big box of Sugar Babies. I don’t think I need to describe the double whammy that presents. Well, okay, I will. Number one, knowing someone by me is eating Sugar Babies makes me throw up in my mouth a little. And number two, there’s nothing that says “Shhh, the movie is starting” like shaking a box of Subar Babies like they’re maracas. Except in this case, they never stopped playing the maracas.

Next, a giant tub of popcorn. Nobody can polish off the mega barrel of popcorn, because it’s impossible, but this guy came as close as I’ve seen. And he was still hungry enough to rattle around in the kernels, shaking the barrel to get the good stuff to float to the top. And eventually he started EATING the kernels. Just to crunch them in my ear. It’s a good thing I don’t have a concealed weapons permit.

To finish off the cacophony of food, when the giant Pepsi (had to be Pepsi) was gone, you guessed it, the ice chips lasted another hour. Shaking. Crunching. Shaking. Crunching.

And, finally, all of them were guffawers. Not laughers–full on belly guffaws.

Not to be outdone, the baby family kicked in about halftime. And by kicked in, I mean the baby started slowly chirping until the happy couple noticed, and then, well, the baby started sucking. Too dark to know if it was natural or bottle sucking, but it was loud enough for the characters on screen to hear.

Satiated, the baby let all of us know how happy he was by spending the next 10 minutes belching and farting.

And yet. I passed the test. I breathed deeply. I relaxed. I enjoyed the movie.

I don’t know what Kim put in my drink, and I don’t think I care. Put in some more.

blow this up

I don’t think I need to establish my movie cred. Cuz for every Doomsday I keep as a guilty pleasure, I also love a Tarkovsky or a Bergman. On the other hand, I would watch any James Bond film again, even Never Say Never, and I loved Hudson Hawk. Don’t hold that against me, I could also watch Virgin Spring and Solaris again. I’m all over the map.

And I like a good End of the World movie as much as the next guy. While I thought Armageddon sucked, I liked Deep Impact, and I even liked, kind of, The Day After Tomorrow.

So when a guy like Roger Ebert calls a movie “The mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family)” I pay attention.

On the other hand, Ebert also hated Raising Arizona. So maybe I should have been on my guard.

I tried to get the kids to go. Do you think when your 11 year old and 14 year old boys say “I dunno Dad, it looks kind of dumb” that maybe you should listen?

But the San Francisco Chronicle said “There’s something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection. In 2012, Emmerich gives you everything you expect, but gives it to you bigger.”

I wanted to see stuff get blowed up. Real good.

So I got the brothers in law together, and we fired up a late show guys night.

When we finally left the theater, I found myself apologizing over and over, to guys, about the movie.

I shouldn’t have to do that. What would be a better guys movie than 2012? It’s the literal end of the world. It stars John Cusack. Everybody except my brother loves John Cusack. The master of disaster, Roland Emmerich, directed it.

In the words of William Hurt’s Richie Cusack, “How Could You F@#& that up?”

And yet. Roland found a way to make the end of the world boring.

We would have been better off seeing New Moon. Twice. I am not even kidding.