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Chewing the fat

Nov1

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | No Comments

I’ve been trying to bring my lunch to work a little more often in an effort to save some money and eat more healthfully. With that in mind, I spent extra time staring at the pre-made lunchy stuff at Trader Joe’s recently. Their salads are good, but I was getting a little tired of them. I had previously bought a Thai chicken noodle thing with peanut dressing that was spicy and tasty, so I grabbed another one of those. Then I saw something new (to me at least): “Cajun Style Blackened Chicken Breast with Fettuccine.” That sounded awesome, so I tossed it into the cart and moved on to the rest of the market.

When I got home, I looked again at the Cajun meal and heaved a disappointed sigh. “Honey, I missed one important word when I got this chicken thing.” “What’s that, ‘mustard?'” she asked (fully knowing how that would ruin an otherwise tasty-sounding dish to me). “Nope: alfredo,” I said. “Ah, yeah, that’s an important word.” I asked if she wanted to split it with me since it was probably going to be heavier and a lot less healthy than I had planned. She picked up the package, looked at the back, and said, “You’re on your own. It’s 100% of your daily saturated fat.” Technically, it was listed as two servings each constituting 50% of my recommended daily allowance, but it only looked like enough food for one person.

I took it to work and told myself I wouldn’t eat the whole thing, because if I did, I would likely be a little disgusted with myself. As it was warming in the microwave, it smelled delicious. I brought it over to my desk and took my first bite. Not only was it very good, but it was also wonderfully nostalgic for me. Immediately, I pictured myself sitting outside a place called “Cafe Orleans” in Santa Barbara, eating my favorite dish there, “Creamy Penne Pasta Pontalba.” (It wasn’t just the alliteration that made me enjoy ordering it, though I’m sure that part helped a bit.) I got that dish every time I went there, and I also ordered it to go more times than I can remember. Oh yeah, and it was twice the size of the TJ’s meal in front of me. I felt retroactively disgusted by how much fat I must have eaten back then. Even though it came with a little side salad and raspberry vinaigrette, I don’t think that canceled out the “more fat than two people need” aspect of the pasta and cream sauce. In any case, I managed to eat the chicken out of my TJ’s lunch and just a little of the pasta (the part with the least amount of cream sauce on it) before making myself toss the rest. My mission of non-gluttony was accomplished.

So what’s the big deal, right? It was one meal and it tasted good, so what’s the real harm as long as I don’t make a habit out of it? Well, that’s exactly the same rationale I’m using right now as I strongly consider getting a McRib sandwich for lunch sometime this week. I don’t know what the recommended daily allowance is for random pieces of meat forced into an unsightly shape and slathered with barbecue sauce, but I think I might exceed that.

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Limited options

Oct20

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I was sitting in my car with my lovely wife when another vehicle drove by us. It was a very pretty and new-looking Mercedes wagon with a woman in her 50s or 60s behind the wheel. As is often the case, I managed to read the license plate before it was out of sight. Ahem: “L8 4POLO.” If you ask me, there are really only two possible reactions to seeing that plate:
1. “My word, Beatrice, you are simply hilarious. It’s no wonder that your social calendar is the talk of the club.”
2. “Are you fucking serious?”

I’ll let you guess which one my wife said.

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The impossible dream

Oct8

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I’m going to write a statement that will make total sense to a third of you while the remaining folks say, “What the fuck does that mean?”  (There was no need for that filthy language – shame on you.)  Here goes: I wish I had a ghost like in Mario Kart.

Fine, I’ll explain.  Back in college, my friends and I played Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64 system roughly…all the time.  We each had our preferred characters to play as (mine was the princess named Peach, naturally), an array of verbal assaults, and a ton of nonsense to spout during the races.  (If the sentence, “Shtoop Shtoop hit a surprise box on the Mooms before he could fie-ay the red on his butt” means something to you, then you probably lived with me during my senior year.)  In any case, the game had a few modes, one of which was called Time Trials.

The Time Trials mode is pretty straightforward.  You race by yourself and try to get the best time on record.  Here’s where the cool part comes in: the second time you race, there’s a transparent version of your character doing a reply of your first race.  You don’t have to wonder if you’re on pace to beat your other time, because you can see that other version of you either ahead of or behind you.  From that point on, every time you race, your fastest time is riding along with you in “ghost” form.

So why do I want one of these in real life?  There are a couple of reasons, naturally.  The first has to do with going to the bathroom.  I literally mean “traveling to the bathroom,” rather than anything more graphic.  At work, I go to the bathroom a handful of times each day.  Being who I am, it was only a matter of time before I started counting the number of steps I took to get there.  My standard pace is about 57 steps, but depending on the urgency, I can get there in far fewer than that.  In fact, I ran once with the longest, most loping strides I could manage (at the request of my boss) and made it in 29.  I would love – LOVE – to have a transparent version of myself replaying an old trip to the bathroom accompanying me as I walked there.  I currently don’t time my trips there and back, so the ghost would add a whole new level to my self-entertainment.   The only catch is that the ghost would have to be invisible to everyone but me, lest they freak the fuck out.

The other reason I’d like to have a ghost involves driving.  This isn’t exactly the same thing, so it’s a modified version of the one in Mario Kart.  When I leave work, I typically go one of two ways (though there is a lesser-used third option).  It’s always a last-second decision for me.  If the on-ramp looks busier than normal and the street is moving, I may stay the course and meet up with the freeway a couple of miles down the road.  If both are backed up, I have to guess which might be the lesser of two evils.  (Speaking of which, if you’re thinking, “Why not check Sigalert or traffic on Google Maps to make your decision?” you might not be from L.A.  Every option is shitty, just one might be a little less shitty.)  What I would like the ability to do is simple: at the moment of truth in which I either turn onto the freeway or stay on the city street, I’d like to have a ghost version of my car take the other route.  Maybe I’d see it later on the freeway and realize that there wouldn’t have been any difference, but most likely, I’d wait until I pulled into my driveway to see if the ghost had arrived yet or not.  If I took the all-freeway route for a week and was consistently getting home after my ghost, then I would change the way I go home (unless it looked especially bad).  It would give me important data plus a missing extra level of fun.  It’s kinda like the Gwyneth Paltrow movie “Sliding Doors,” except not nearly as crappy.

So there you go – I’m pining for something that is impossible according to everything we know about time, space, and matter.  One thing’s for certain though: I just spent way too much time watching recordings of other people playing Mario Kart on YouTube.  One friend still has the old Nintendo 64, and I think it might be time Peach to come out of retirement. Shtoop shtoop, everyone, shtoop shtoop.

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Him and her

Sep22

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

I was talking to my mom on the phone while driving into work when something occurred to me and struck me as odd. We may refer to the “cleaning lady” or even the “nail lady,” but it’s always the “pool man” and “alarm guy.” Why do the women get the lofty and noble title of “lady” but it would sound absurd to mention the “pool lord”?

I ask this somewhat facetiously because I think I know the answer. The problem lies with my geographical region. I’ll explain: in other parts of the country, the male/female pairings are pretty easy. Boys and girls go together, as do men and women, and…guys and gals. We don’t use “gals” in Los Angeles, but we still need something that goes with “guys.” More often than not, people use “guys and girls,” opting for the lower age group (and probably giving plenty of Sociology majors something to write their theses about). “Guys and women” sounds pretty odd, but I think that’s just as off as using “girls” where “gals” rightfully belongs.

So when it comes to naming people who do jobs for others, we get confused by the missing female option. “Cleaning girl” or “cleaning boy” has a distinct air of child labor mixed with a bit of plantation owner.   “Woman” may have sounded odd when the person it was describing was more in “gal” range.  Somehow “lady” was an alternative that got added to the mix and stuck.  That’s my theory at least, based on nothing but my own west-coastian ruminations.  But for all I know, in rural Alabama a couple might refer to their “alarm viceroy.”

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The trade

Sep16

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I’ve been on this earth for a good number of years now, so when I do something new, it stands out and I like to share it with my 4-5 readers. Well, such a thing happened recently, so here I go.

With our twins nearing the 18-month mark, there are many things from their earlier months that are no longer needed. My lovely wife has taken to listing and selling many of those items on Craigslist, from Bumbo seats to a nursing pillow. (That led to a great line of mine, actually. The woman buying the pillow was nearing our place as I was directing her via cell phone, and I said, “I’ll be the guy standing in the street holding a nursing pillow.” Big laughs.)

In any case, my lovely wife had been corresponding with a woman over emails for days, and the sale of one of our carseat bases was finally about to happen. Her husband was going to come over and text me when he got there so I could meet him outside. At the last minute, she sent a text saying, “By the way, my husband’s a CHP officer and will driving there in his police car.” What an excellent heads-up!

At the designated time, I received a text message simply saying, “I’m outside.”  I grabbed the base and walked out front.  Sure enough, a cop car was parked outside.  I smiled and waved.  As he walked up to me, I noticed something besides the fact that he was a uniformed police officer: the dude was huge.  He must have been at least 6’5, and I can’t even begin to guess the weight.  As I later told my lovely wife, the only adjective that came to mind was “corn-fed.”  “I wouldn’t have been even one bit surprised if he said he played a little defensive tackle at Nebraska,” I told her.  He was that kind of big and strong.  He shook my hand, but I’m not even sure he could feel it in his giant mitt.  I handed him the base.  He took out his special police flashlight and illuminated the object.  After studying it for a second, he said, “Yep, this is the right one.  We install these down at the station, so I knew which model we needed for our seat.”  “Oh, do you have the Snugride 32?” I asked.  He said he did, and we bonded for half a second over how silly that interaction must have sounded.  He handed me some cash, thanked me, and was on his way.  I thought it would be rude to count it in front of him, ya know, since he’s the law and everything.

When I came back inside, another aspect of my meeting occurred to me: What would snooping neighbors think went down there?  They see a cop car pull up in the late evening and watch as the officer walks to meet me near our front porch.  He inspects something with his flashlight, hands me cash, and leaves.  How often do you see a cop hand cash to someone (let alone on a dark suburban street)?  I doubt I looked like a drug dealer, so maybe I could’ve been some kind of source/snitch getting paid for tipping off the cops when I heard things about to go down.  “There’s a shipment coming into Long Beach at 1am – twelve containers of these.  They look like normal carseat bases, but if you look right here, you can see where they stash the coke.  Now pay me before I change my mind, you corn-fed former defensive tackle at a prominent Midwest football school.”   But no, it was just two guys having a little chat while taking care of business.  One left with a carseat base for a new member of his family, and the other went back inside with some cash and a new experience to write about.  That, my friends, is a win-win.

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Truly frightening

Sep7

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Hello, friends. Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve last posted, but I’m sure my fellow bloggers kept you well-entertained during my absence. What’s that? Not a single post from any of them? Well then, looks like I have some serious catching up to do. I have a few ideas that (time permitting) I’ll put to e-paper and hopefully win your attention back. Here’s a quick one:

I was driving home last weekend from a trip to Home Depot when I passed a sign on the fence of a community college that read, “Fright Fair Haunt. Open Auditions for Actors.” My first thought was regarding how much I hate those things. Seriously, walking through a maze or a haunted house knowing that there are people around each corner or lurking in the shadows who are being paid to scare the shit out of me just isn’t my thing. I’d scream like a little girl if they jumped out at me, and that just wouldn’t be good for anyone. I don’t really understand my reaction; I mean, I know on a rational level that no one’s going to actually hurt me or anything while I’m there (even the guy with the hockey mask and chainsaw), but I still get tense and freaked out with those things.

That wasn’t my point though. The more interesting thing (to me at least) was my second thought: I should totally go and audition. Not in the normal way, mind you, but with my own personal touch. Here’s how I see it playing out:

I enter a small classroom and nod hello to the people sitting in the chairs a few feet away, waiting to judge me. I had just left the waiting room, where after signing in, I sat there with people decked out in all sorts of masks, costumes, and fake injuries. Me? I’m wearing a polo shirt tucked into some khakis.

Casting Agent: Hi, thanks for joining us. So you’re…”P-Dawg” it says.

Me: That’s right. Nice to meet all of you.

Agent: Ok, so what we’re going to ask you to do is show us a few of your own scary things that you would bring to the Fright Fair Haunt.

Me: Sure, are you ready?

Agent: Fire away.

(I crack my neck and get into character before looking up. Instead of making a monstrous face or anything like that, I look respectable and kind but with a little touch of sadness behind the eyes.)

Me: I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to lay you off.

Agent: What?

Me: We’ve had a rough year and just aren’t hitting our numbers. We need to cut some costs, and management has decided to downsize the personnel.  I can offer you a month’s pay and try helping you with job placement, but we just can’t keep you on here. And…scene.

Agent: Oh, well, ok. I guess…um, what else have you got?

(I shake out my arms and look up again, this time a little more business-like but with eyebrows slightly raised and lips a bit pursed to signify concerned understanding.)

Me: Yes, that is definitely herpes. And while there’s no cure for herpes, there are ways to keep the flare-ups at bay and lead a normal, active life.

Agent: Wow, ok. Wasn’t expecting that. (nervous laughter) Anything else?

(I pop up with a quick, frenzied look)

Me: Bachmann’s poll numbers are rising!

Agent: Alright, I think-

Me: You’re being audited.

Agent: That’s more than enough for-

Me: Lindsey Lohan’s your kid’s new bus driver.

Agent: Ok-

Me: There’s a wasp on your neck.

Agent: Thank you, P-Dawg.

Me: “Mad Men” got canceled.

Agent: Please leave or I’ll call security.

Me: And…scene. Thank you all for your time and I look forward to working with you.

Agent: Whatever.

A small part of me really wants to do this.  At the very least, I’d stand out, right?  And now I turn to you, loyal readers: what other lines could I have in my arsenal?  Comment away!

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M.I.A.

Aug11

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | No Comments

I’m generally a very nice guy, but sometimes my inner asshole comes out without any notice.  That totally didn’t sound right, but what am I going to do, hit the backspace key or something?  Maybe capitalizing it would help.  My Inner Asshole made a surprise appearance this morning during my commute, in fact.  (Nope, didn’t help.) I was driving along at a moderate speed when I saw a bumper sticker on a car one lane over.  It was still a pretty good distance away, so all I could initially read was, “My Nephew.”  “What, is your nephew an honor student or something?” I thought.  Don’t get me wrong: I love my nephew to pieces, but I can’t see  myself affixing something to my car that says how proud I am of him.  My Inner Asshole kept going: “Maybe he or she doesn’t have anything to be proud of in his or her own life and is vicariously living through a sibling.  It’s like the ‘My German Shepherd is Smarter than your Honor Student’ shit people try pulling.  No it’s not; it might be smarter than a Maltese or something, but until it stops barking when you accidentally put your glass down too hard on the table, it’s really nowhere near the intelligence of even a dumb kid.”  Then I got closer to the car and took in the whole message: “NAVY. I Proudly Support My Nephew.”

Oh.  I forgot about that option.  What an asshole My Inner Asshole is.

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Revenge of the words

Aug5

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I was walking to lunch with my co-workers a week or so ago when one of them mentioned the word “bookkeeper.” I wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation, but I jumped in nonetheless. “You know what’s cool about the word ‘bookkeeper,’ right?” I asked. “You can’t spell it without ‘Peter?'” asked my boss, knowing me far too well. “No,” I said, “but it does have three set of double letters in a row.” I got some nods and grunts, though no one seemed too impressed by that. “There’s no T in it, otherwise you could spell ‘Peter,'” I added. “I was being facetious,” my boss replied. “Ooh! Know what’s cool about the word ‘facetious?'” I asked (way too excitedly).  My co-worker Rob’s face lit up: “Oh, oh, you’ve told me this one before.  Crap…it has…all five vowels?”  “Not just that – they’re in order!” I said.  Instead of the applause or pats on the back one would naturally expect for having such knowledge, my boss simply asked, “What about Y?”  I was ready for that: “Facetiously!”  I got a better nod that time, though it’s quite possible he muttered something like “He’s so strange” under his breath.

Needless to say, I love shit like that.  Someone once told me that “stewardesses” is the longest word you can correctly type with just your left hand.  I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I certainly just had fun putting it in that last sentence.  If you have more word trivia like these, comment away and know that I’ll enjoy them. If you just feel like typing the word “stewardesses” as your comment, that’s also fine.

(By the way, I’m proud to say that my first name is all on the top line of letters on the keyboard.  You’re clearly in the presence of greatness.)

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Looking ahead

Jul25

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I was on the phone last Thursday with a woman who lives in Australia.  Near the end of the call, I said, “Ok, we’ll take a look at it and I’ll give you a call either tomorrow or Monday.  Oh, I guess it’s already tomorrow there.”  “Yes,” she said, “It’s a little after 8am on Friday.”  “So I’m talking to someone…from the future?” I asked.  She found that funnier than I anticipated, which is always a plus.  While that wasn’t technically an interaction with the future in the way we traditionally think about it, I do believe I’ve glimpsed the future of business and advertising, and I gotta say I’m a big fan.

I’ve had an Amazon Kindle for probably about three years now, and I like it quite a bit.  I love how quickly I can get almost any book I want, that books are less money than if I bought them new, that these new books don’t take up any room on a shelf, and that I can just bring that one device with me on a trip instead of however many books I may want to read while I’m away.  There are really only two things I don’t like about it.  First, I can’t share books I like without letting someone borrow the whole thing.  Second, with real books, I sometimes flip back several chapters to re-read certain interactions or descriptions that didn’t seem important at the time.  I can’t really do that with the Kindle, but it’s definitely a net positive for me.

My version of the Kindle is their first one, and they’ve made a lot of strides since then.  When I got an Amazon gift card for my birthday, I thought about maybe getting a new one and letting my lovely wife have my existing one.  I looked it up on Amazon and first noticed how much cooler it looks now.  That’s not too important, but they just really streamlined the thing and seemed to have learned what people’s favorite and least favorite aspects of the original were.  Then I saw something that really caught my eye: the 3G and Wi-Fi one I was looking at cost $189…or you can choose the one with “Special Offers” for $139.

What does that mean?  It says: “Special offers and sponsored screensavers display on the Kindle screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen—they don’t interrupt reading.”  So just by allowing them to have ads on the screen when I’m not reading, I get to spend $50 less?  That sounded like a great deal to me, especially since my screen saver has probably only come on once or twice since I’ve owned my current one.  I wanted to learn more though, and the people at Amazon obliged by telling me what some of the past “special offers” have been.

  • $10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card
  • Save up to $500 off Amazon’s already low prices on select HDTVs
  • $1 for a Kindle book, choose from thousands of books
  • Spend $10 on Kindle books and get a free $10 Amazon.com Gift Card

I’m not buying a new TV anytime soon, but the other three are offers that could really come in handy.  In other words, they’re offers that I’d actually want to read.  Hell, I’d be fine with male enhancement ads on my screensaver or other typical spam-type offers if my purchase price is significantly lowered.  That got me thinking about this whole “special offers” thing and how it might be expanded in the world of consumer products in the future.

The invention of the DVR has made it more difficult for advertisers to get the number of eyeballs to which they’d grown accustomed.  That’s resulted in more blatant product placement in TV shows and movies (as mind-blowingly illustrated here and here), but I’m sure they’re still looking for additional ways to grab our attention.  The cynical part of me just expected these brands to make deals with companies like Amazon and we’d just have to put up with it.  I never expected them to lower the price for the privilege of pitching us their products.  After all, movie theaters show commercials before previews.  Nobody asked us if we wanted to see them, and they certainly didn’t lower ticket prices.  I sadly thought that was the future of advertising, but apparently there’s another option that is as win-win as I can imagine for this type of advertising.

So what’s next?  Right now, if Amazon is only pitching Amazon products/deals, it’s all self-contained and they don’t have to worry about the economics of bringing in partners.  But I have faith that they’ll figure that out, so let’s look ahead.  Let’s say that you’re interested in an HDTV that normally costs $1,200.  Would you be willing to let them have ads on the bottom of the channel guide and on the screen saver if it cost less?  Lowering it around the same percentage as my Kindle deal, that TV would sell for $888.  I can’t imagine it would be that extreme a drop-off, but what if it were $1,000 instead.  I don’t know why I wouldn’t do that.  It doesn’t interfere with my actual TV watching, and if the offers are even remotely in line with my interests, then it could actually help me save money in the future.

Let’s look farther into this future for a second.  The TV costs $2,000, but they have a “special offers” one for $1,200.  Here’s the deal with this one: every time you turn on your TV, there’s a 30-second commercial that you can’t fast-forward or skip.  Would you take that deal?  I’m pretty sure I would, because it would only be a matter of days before I altered my TV-watching routine.  I would turn on the set and then go grab a cup of water or take a leak or something before settling down on the couch.  It’s more invasive than the Kindle offers for sure, but not unavoidable and a significant enough savings to be attractive.

How do you all feel about this?  I like this new wave of advertising quite a bit.  I know people have to pay the bills and companies need to get their message out there.  I listen to a lot of Adam Carolla’s podcasts, and he starts with a live read for Legal Zoom or GoToMyPC, and I’m fine with that.  The podcast is free, so if he wants to talk about his sponsors for less than a minute before getting to the meat of it, it’s an understandable price to pay.  (And it apparently works, as I can easily rattle off a few more of his sponsors.)  I get that process; it makes sense.  But paying less for a device or service if I allow companies to pitch me their products in a fairly unobtrusive manner?  That also makes total sense to me, and I hope the “special offers” version of the Kindle does exceedingly well so that others follow suit.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.  (Or we could always call Australia and just ask them how it turned out.)

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Plan bee

Jul18

Posted by P-Dawg in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

One day way back in high school, I was talking with fellow blogger MC Squared during the lunch break.  I don’t remember the topic, but it was probably stupid and immature, because that was the manner in which we rolled.  What I do remember, however, is saying the sentence, “You have to be a stud like me.”  I recall that because the line hilariously coincided with me trying to dodge a nearby bee with a look of sheer terror on my face.  The juxtaposition of my words and my body language was something we laughed about for a long ass time, and rightfully so I believe.  I’ve never claimed to be tough, and while I’m sure I was saying that line in jest, my self-contradiction was at a spectacular level.

I thought about that story this past weekend because I witnessed something very far removed from how I react.  We were visiting my cousins in Santa Barbara when one of them pointed out a dead bee on the ground in the backyard.  A second later, and she was expertly picking it up off the ground by a wing (carefully avoiding the stinger) and dropping it in a flower bed nearby.  I would never dream of intentionally touching a bee with my hand.  I don’t have an irrational fear of them, but my survival instincts tell me that touching them is a bad idea.  I’d sweep it up with a piece of paper or something, but that’s as close as my hand would get.  Here’s the best part: that cousin of mine turns four years old in September.  Yep, my lack of bravery in the face of insects was clearly illustrated by a child 30 years younger than me.  That’s ok; I’m still better than she is at using the potty by myself, so I’ve got that going for me.

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