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Here’s hoping The Four Of You enjoyed your Fourth, and that everyone still has all of their fingers and toes.
I was rescued from a day of sitting at home and watching the wall when some friends invited me to a Fourth Of July block party their culdesac holds every year. Quite the impressive setup…two grills were rolling, and there was a host of salads and chips and desserts and whatnot, but the Real Show was that one of their neighbors is apparently a licensed pyrotechnecian, and another was on the City Council or something and therefore able to ramrod through the necessary permits, and so the Blowing Shit Up portion of the evening was truly spectacular by neighborhood standards. We’re talking commercial quality shells (including some homemade mortars by said pyro guy), and a two-foot-across coil of firecrackers.
The firecracker thing is still kinda new to me. They have been most illegal in CA for as long as I can remember, so when my dad was able to score some down on the Wharf, they were both treasured and carefully rationed. One at a time. Always.
Well, here in Washington we have Indian reservations, which means illicit fireworks are readily available. One such place on the I-think-it’s-the-Tulalip reservation is a ginormous flea market of gunpowder and accellerants known colloqially as “Boom City”. And apparently you can get it ALL there. So blowing off firecrackers by the pack (or the bandolier, or the brick) is SOP here.
So they dropped this huge spool of exploding death, and lit it. And it went, steady at first, and then picking up an incredible amount of steam. And when the smoke cleared, there was a pile of debris fully a foot high that had to be swept to the side. Never have I seen such an example of combustible largesse.
Anyhow, it being unincorporated King County, apparently the standard Safe And Sane fare is okay. And in addition to the Main Event, many of the neighbors had the usual assortment of fountains and sparkers and otherwise.
Which brings me to the most ridiculous of all fireworks, the Piccolo Pete.
You remember these? About six inches tall, half an inch across, standing on a little base. Light the top, and it emits an angry little flame and an ear-piercing shriek for about fifteen seconds. Whee. That’s a peach, hon. Fire another one.
Piccolo Petes are the leftovers, the table scraps. They remind me of the bin of chocolate Ice Cubes by the register at the convenience store – you only buy them when you’ve already bought the good stuff and you still have a few bucks worth of your fireworks budget left over, and it’s not enough to actually buy something, you know, good.
“Hmm. Three bucks left. Aw, hell, gimme a box of Piccolo Petes.”
They are, in fact, the Ceramic Dalmatians of fireworks.
I’m watching Millionaire on GSN right now, and I just saw an ad for this.
If you don’t feel like following the link or are reading me via RSS or something, it’s an omelette pan that has a switch in the handle that makes the sides flip over and fold the thing. Valued at $70, yours today on Sale Of The Century for the low low price of just $19.99.
I have something like this in a kitchen drawer. It’s called a SPATULA.
Really, folks, is it that hard to fold a freakin’ omelette? Put in your filling, fold over the right third (with your handy-dandy $3 heat-proofed spatula), cook a little more (if you’re melting cheese or something), then slide the folded half out onto your serving plate and use the pan to fold in the other third. I just did it last night.
Plus, I can just imagine what fun it will be to clean all of the egg that oozes down into the crevices formed by the folding bits.
Going back to the previous post about People Being (Freakin’) Stupid, there must be a market for this crap or else they wouldn’t advertise it.
In a bout of semi-random Web surfing, I came across this thread about DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), which if you’ve been under a rock for the last seven years or so is a video game where you are challenged to step on pads in time to music. It requires fast feet and a damned lot of memory and dexterity, and good DDR players are truly a sight to see.
Anyhow, this is one of your standard bitch threads about what annoys you when playing the game. And a lot of it is typical elitism (“OMG! I can’t stand it when someone plays Song X on EASY! Like, they’re wasting time I could be using to get an AAA rating on Song X+42!!!!111!!! LOL!!”), but some of them were generic arcade complaints that surprised the hell out of me, because it was stuff that simply WOULD NOT HAPPEN when I was an arcade rat in my teens. To wit:
- Stealing tokens: A common bit of video game etiquette is to (ideally unobtrusively) place a quarter/token/whatever up on the lip of the marquee of the machine to indicate that you would like to play the next game. If several people are waiting their turn, you place your token in the line, and when your token is at the front of the line, you get to go. Apparently there are idiots now who think they can get away with attempting to pocket someone else’s token. Unbelievable.
- Messing with the controls: There were more than a few complaints of people standing around and then stepping on the pads while you are playing to intentionally screw up your game. I would never DREAM of pushing a button on a machine someone else was playing. Ever.
- Generally getting underfoot: There is a practice known as “shadowing”, which is when someone jumps up on the other unused pad (a DDR machine has two pads side by side, one for each player) while someone who is playing solo, and doing the steps for the song alongside. I would find this TERRIBLY distracting. There were also several complaints about parents with their rugrats letting said rugrats stumble around the feet of the active player instead of keeping them the hell out of the way, and then yelling at the player when the kid inevitably gets themselves hurt.
There were quite a few other complaints, some reasonable, some asinine, but these were the ones that jumped out at me. And all I can say is: What. The. HELL. When I play arcade games, anyone who gets so close to the screen that I can see their nostrils better than what I’m playing quickly receives repeated elbows to the ribs until they get the picture. Working the controls causes arms to flail, you know. Terribly sorry there. And, yeah, we had quarter-moochers, but anyone who tried to outright STEAL quarters in the coin line would be dealt with quickly, harshly, and often physically. And DO NOT TOUCH my control panel. You shouldn’t even be that close to me anyhow, but I’m paying for this game, and if I come up a smart bomb short because you thought you were being cute, I know who I’m taking out my frustration on.
Bottom line, if anyone pulled crap like this back in the day, they would be on the receiving end of a Grade-A asskicking. It didn’t happen. These were the biggest faux pas you could make in the scene. In 25 years of gaming, someone has touched my controls uninvited ONCE (costing me a man in a game of Tapper, by the way), and the only reason that guy didn’t get thrashed is because he was known for being mentally unstable anyhow, and I frankly didn’t wanna be entwined with him anymore than I already was by virtue of being regulars at the same arcade.
So the following question occurred to me: Have people just gotten ruder over the last ten-fifteen years or so? It’s not like the stuff above is some super-secret behavior that only arcaders know, it’s COMMON SENSE. Don’t steal. Don’t get in someone’s way if you can help it. Don’t screw someone else up if they’re doing something. Do you reach over and punch buttons on the checker’s cash register at the grocery store?
I’ve said many times: People Are (Freakin’) Stupid. Are they really THIS stupid? Even OUTSIDE of the red states?
If you’d told me fifteen years ago that Bravo would be one of the cable channels I watched the most, I would have laughed at you. In my defense, fifteen years ago nobody had a clue that Bravo would abandon their schedule of shitty opera performances in favor of shows like Celebrity Poker Showdown, the Queer Eye’s, and Blow Out.
That said, whoever writes the ad copy there needs to be beaten with a hammer.
In running an ad for the execrable Chris Farley / David Spade vehicle “Tommy Boy”, they referred to the insult-to-celluloid as “The Caddyshack of the ’90’s!”
Huh?
It’s a) not about golf, b) not particularly funny, and c) not particularly beloved.
Rodney must be spinning in his grave right now.
So here’s a neat site that I’m surprised I hadn’t come across sooner: how to brew your own root beer, using simple household equipment.
I’ve always thought the idea of brewing your own beer was really cool, but I don’t drink. I do love root beer, though, so when I saw this, my interest was piqued, and a short trip to the grocery later (alas, I had to make do with McCormick’s root beer extract), I was good to go.
And it worked out pretty much as advertised. Sat on the counter for three days, then I put it in the fridge overnight, and poured some today. It’s…interesting. It tastes a LOT more like regular beer (at least, what I remember beer to taste like), which prolly has to do with the fermenation of the sugar by the yeast. Definitely an acquired taste, but it was pretty easy to acquire, if you get my meaning. It’s not nearly as sweet as the stuff you get at the store, either, enough so that I might increase the sugar by 1/4 cup for the next batch just to see what happens.
I dunno if it’s gonna displace Henry Weinhard’s as the best root beer on the planet, but I finally have my own microbrewery! :)
A little while back I made one of my occasional trips to Costco to get things you normally get at Costco. One of my purchases was one of those large boxes that contain an Assortment ‘O’ Chips, for to enjoy with lunch. This particular one apparently contains every product Frito-Lay has ever made: Fritos, Lays, Ruffles, Cheetos, Doritos (in not one but two flavors), the whole deal.
Which brings us to today: I prepared lunch, and selected a bag of Nacho Cheesier! (their words, not mine) Doritos to accompany my meal. And emblazoned boldly on the bag was the phrase “Now Better Tasting!”
And it occurred to me: I’ve seen this claim on bags of Doritos at least five separate times over the course of my life. The R&D department at Frito-Lay must be the busiest in the nation. I fully expect to see a bag in a year or two that says “We Swear, We Got It Right This Time.”
I am forced to conclude that Doritos must have tasted like complete ass in the 70’s.
Here’s some dumbassery for The Four Of You: Snoop Dogg was in town over the weekend, and some asshat jumped up on stage and promptly got a beating from Snoop’s posse.
In and of itself, pretty damn funny, if not completely uncommon. But here’s the kicker, the last line of the linked article:
“They beat me like a slave,” he said, holding an ice bag to his face.
A little free advice to Mr. Monroe, when he can see out of that eye again: Playing the race card at a rap concert isn’t going to get you any sympathy. Dumbass.
There’s a new building going in at my end of Lake City Way, next to the Walgreen’s. I was curious as to what it was, ‘cuz it looked like it could be a new restaurant of some kind, and it would be nifty to have new dining options close to home.
Well, I drove by today, and the building now has Coming Real Soon Now signs on it. It’s two businesses, apparently. One is a Quizno’s, which totally works for me, as I think they are vastly superior to Subway, and the other is a Starbucks.
Which means, now, within a five minute drive from my home, I can reach no less than FOUR discrete Starbucks stores.
Yep. I live in Seattle.
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while…I had a nasty cold that kicked in hard RIGHT after my birthday, and then I apparently pulled my left hamstring (I have NO idea how this happened…one afternoon I noticed a little ache in my calf, and then a day later I was limping) just as the cold was getting better. So I’ve been laid up for a while, which does not make for entertaining blogging experiences, unless you enjoy reading stuff like:
Monday, May 16, 2005: Sat at home. Kept leg up. Watched Tivo.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005: Sat at home. Kept leg up. Watched Tivo.
You get the idea. Anyhow, today was the first day the leg was feeling well enough to brave the grocery store, and the cupboards were getting sparse (thank you again, Jenn & Abby, for the stay of execution over the weekend), so off to Albertson’s I go. And as I passed by the medicinal teas, I spotted this out of the corner of my eye:
I swear to GOD this isn’t Photoshopped. This was an actual product. Perhaps we can look forward to Hershey’s Highway Bathroom Tissue next….
(Which I suppose you would need after a nice steaming cup of Smooth Move, wouldn’t you?)
Later this morning, 3:41 AM to be exact, marks my 34th successful circumvention of the sun. I’d like to take a moment to thank the planet for not killing me yet.
Today also marks the one-year anniversary of one of the greatest moments in San Jose Sharks history: the Game Six victory over the Colorado Avalanche which clinched the series and punched San Jose’s ticket to their first Conference Finals. (Yeah, they had their asses handed to them by Calgary, but we had no idea that was going to happen at the time. So we were pretty stoked.)
Tomorrow, there will be baseball, and the NBA playoffs. There will be no NHL hockey.
So if you’re the type to pour one out (and if you are, fer God’s sake, yer wasting perfectly good alcohol), do me a favor and pour one out for the demise of the NHL season, with hopes that the idjits in charge of negotioations give themselves a rectal craniectomy and get this impasse settled, so that next October we can once again enjoy the greatest game on the planet played at its highest level.
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