Unhelpful

Here at the office, we get some strange food products from time to time. One of the companies a few doors down gives them to us. Usually what they give us is pretty good - foofoo cereal with whole grains and dried cranberries and golden raisins, A1 Steak Sauce (which is great for when we order takeout from a place that serves fries), candy, and so on.

Usually.

Sometimes, however, we get things that defy description. Rice cake snacks that think they’re Chee-tos but taste more like cardboard, those nasty peanut butter and cheese crackers, and chewy calcium supplements.

When I was a child, I would go to Grandma’s house. It got boring pretty quick, so frequently I would ask her if she had any candy. She did, all right, but it was grandma candy. Anise drops, pulled sugar candy, and perfumy-tasting pink thingies. Oddly enough, I bet I’d really like the anise drops now, but the rest was pretty horrific.

I’m sure Viactiv would have felt right at home on Grandma’s candy shelf. It combines a chocolate flavor with a chalky texture. I suppose the best word to describe the flavor would be … chalklet. I tried one with someone else who was feeling especially daring. We exchanged distasteful looks and spat them out. They weren’t immediately repulsive, they just tasted … wrong.

I wonder if Grandma still buys those anise candies…

Most of you who pay any attention to movies remember that there was a question as to whether or not Star Wars: The Phantom Meneace could outsell Titanic in the US.

It didn’t, though it outperformed Titanic during the first few weeks of its run.

Instead of acknowledging this, some people are still plugging away, spreadsheets churning out data (the URL has changed several times, this one will probably be wrong in a week).

OK folks, enough. Charting Star Wars as it reaches 19th place in the daily grosses is beyond absurd. The last day I read as I verified the link put the daily total at $33,340 on something less than 500 screens. Hell, Elmo in Grouchland is still making more than twice that much.

Folks, it’s over - I’m embarassed this is even news to anyone. Don’t even talk about re-releases and all that, because if you think Titanic made $1.8 billion worldwide just to sit on a shelf for the rest of its life, you’re nuts.

The site is interesting in several ways, and their obsessive-compulsiveness makes for a reasonable way to spend 5.6 minutes of your life - they ought to consider becoming a general “top movies” site, as their data content is updated as frequently and rigorously as several trade magazines.

SWVS, ditch the Wookie and cash in.

When I was a young child visiting Grandma, one thing you could always count on was the toilet paper. I have no idea where she bought it, but apparently in the late 70’s and early 80’s it was possible to find recto-sanitation materials of a much different variety than your typical 90’s toilet paper.

The stuff she would buy was a deep but almost pastel blue, smelled just like cheap purfume (because humans, like cats, apparently go around sniffing each others’ anuses), and it was extremely soft. Read more »

I cannot comprehend why people waste their time with Seti@home when we’re already surrounded by aliens.

Case in point:

From the Sanrio website:

Pink no Corisu came from the Pinkuru Planet to Earth to see how many flowers she could make bloom here by using the power of the little blossom she wears on her head!

On her planet, there are lots of flowers and it is very peaceful.

She loves it because her mama and papa (the king and queen of the Pinkuru Planet Squirrel Kingdom) live there and the air is always filled with the sweet smell of flowers!

I mean honestly, what better reason could you come up with for visiting our planet? She just wanted to see how many flowers she could make bloom!

Human history is filled with accounts of peoples with no common interests being forced together into nationhood; conversely, it also chronicles the sagas of a single people needlessly split into factions.

More recently, we’ve seen the breakup of several nations whose people had divergent interests, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Alternately, we’ve seen peoples reunited - Yemen, China with Macau and Hong Kong, and of course Germany.

Yet other peoples remain divided by foreign invasions and revolutions and have remain artificially divided ever since, such as the Koreas, and Ireland from English-controlled Northern Ireland.

How simple it is to forget these very same issues as they fester unattended in our own back yard.

Virginia and West Virginia: One People, One Destiny, One Virginia!

West Virginia split from Virginia over the issue of seccession. Folks, the war has been over for more than 130 years - it’s time to heal these wounds, and shape the future of a United Virginia.

SOCIETY FOR THE RE-UNIFICATION OF VIRGINIA

r33t.org re-unification council -
First: Virginia, Next: The Ottoman Empire

Beyond Grandpa

Go there. Now. Drink the tea, watch the video, lick the T-Shirt.

You’ll thank me in the morning.

Bugs Bunny
Robotech
Kimba the White Lion
Underdog
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Smurfs
Yogi Bear

I was contemplating a sushi menu earlier today. I realize that sushi does not consist exclusively of dishes that include raw fish, but odds are if that you eat a few different varieties, most likely the majority will include raw fish.

Enter the “California roll”. I’m convinced that this is some sort of in-joke among “authentic” sushi chefs; it’s a jibe at Americans (probably well deserved), but most don’t get it.

The California roll consists mostly of things that Americans are comfortable with - rice, crab meat and cucumber. Of course there’s the whole seaweed wrapper thing, but that’s pretty low on the “gross” scale, even for sheltered mid-western suburban boys.

The California roll is for people who want to say they like sushi, but can’t stomach the idea of eating a raw piece of tuna or flounder.

Hypocrisy alert: Though I savor jellyfish salad (thx Fallo), I can’t even bear to comprehend the notion of eating a sea urchin.