Category Archives: Wondering - Page 20

Auto Bubble

Posted by on November 4, 2008 No comments

Detroit makes me imagine a crazy person locked in a room somewhere making and churning out dozens of ugly teddy bears a day.  Each day people come to him and say "All the kids already have teddy bears and  even if they do want a new one, kids don’t want ugly teddy bears." 

But the crazy bear maker won’t stop.  He makes bigger, uglier teddy bears and pushes pile after pile of bears out the door.  The people carry heaps of grotesquery off to showrooms where the bears sit unwanted and unsold.

The bear maker is proud of himself.  His whole life has been making teddy bears and he feels he is vital to the well-being of children everywhere.  Whenever it is argued that his bears are unwanted, his response is "Look how busy I am!"  He never stops, he must be afraid to.

And sadly, after all these years of building bears in isolation, he discovers he has neither the skill nor the tools to build better bears.  He will need to be retrained or replaced.  We’ve already committed to pay for retraining and retooling.  Time will show whether he has no choice but to be replaced.

The State of Food

Posted by on August 9, 2008 No comments

It’s actually kind of pathetic, really.  My life has primarily become about food.  There was on old stand-up routine where a comic was pointing out how different people gave directions.  The religious guy would say things like "Go past the Catholic church until you get to the Methodist church.  Then turn left one block past the bible store."  The fat guy would say "Go down Main street and you’ll see a gym on your left.  You want to keep going right past that.  Don’t even slow down.  You’ll drive past a Pizza Hut, Burger King, and when you get to the Wendy’s, which has great food, slow down.  You’ll see the place on your left."  Well, that has become me.  All my reference points are restaurants.  I know where to find the food I like in every location I frequent.  I know where most Longhorns are in about a 100 mile radius.  Geez.

So, how did this happen to me?  Simple.  That’s my hobby.  If you ask, I also know where most pawn shops are in a hundred mile radius.  When eating alone, it’s usually easier and arguably cheaper to eat out.  So, I visit the same places many times, in many different places.  Like my white-collar/blue-collar post, I look for these landmarks when I am in a new locale.

I take a bit of flack for eating the same things over and over.  I can count the number of entrees I eat on my fingers; it’s pretty limited.  But my viewpoint is that it’s not the same meal.  Eating a burger at Chili’s for lunch and a burger at McD’s for dinner are different.  They taste different.  That’s my variety.  And I can identify the differences between all burgers that I eat, the fries I eat (including the texture of the salt), and the syrup/water/CO2 mixture of the Coke per location.  I’ve been on the fence for a very long time as to whether it’s a good or bad thing to have the server ask "the usual?"  It depends on my mood whether I get annoyed or not.  Also, I’m not sure about getting personal with the staff.  That makes me feel like I’m paying for attention.  Whenever money is involved, I don’t believe in sincerity.

Lately, our area has seen a compression of eating locations.  Within the last few months we lost: Roadhouse, Sam Seltzers, Lone Star, Bennigan’s, Don Pablo’s, Steak and Ale and Ruby Tuesday.  I guess the economy has hit the casual dining market hard, but then again, I never visited these places often (except Roadhouse), so maybe it’s my fault too.  I guess I can’t save the world, one restaurant at a time.

Random thoughts

Posted by on May 10, 2008 No comments

It’s a little late and I’m a little light-headed and headachy from primer fumes in the room getting painted next to mine, so I thought I’d type out a random grab bag of thoughts.

Capital One wants me to go paperless with my statements.  That would work for me since I do everything electronically in Money, but what about the people that would print out their statements each month from the online site?  That doesn’t help anything.  I think Capital One should reduce the paper ads they put in their statements and double-side their statements.  That would cut paper usage more than half right there.

I was thinking one day about a borderline neurosis I had growing up.  Thanks to my short attention span, it never really developed.  I used to anthropomorphize everything.  I used to imagine chairs clamoring to have me sit in them, and the rest would be disappointed.  Some items I owned would be proud that they have served me so well, and others would be sad that I don’t use them enough.  I’m sure some psychologist would say I had some disorder that I couldn’t accept the fact that it’s impossible to please everyone.  Then I would get drugs – that’s a given anymore.

One of the creepiest and most disturbing thoughts that I thought up in my youth and still have to force myself to not think about is:  No one really knows what happens when you die.  What if you are just trapped in your body?  Not so bad for humans – you die, you get put in a box and you rest until you decompose and you disappear.  But what about animals, specifically roadkill?  You get hit with a car and die.  Then someone else runs over you and you feel the impact again.  And again, and again.  Slowly, you start to disintegrate and the pain becomes less with each passing car.  Finally, you are not much more than a spot and you begin to decompose and disappear.  Physiologically, I guess that’s not possible since the nerves couldn’t transmit the sensations to the brain, still it’s a morbid thought.

I’m bugged by Circle K’s new ads with the line, "Gotta buck?  Get a snack."  I don’t have any problem at all with informal speech in ad copy, but if you’re going to do it, it needs to be correct.  "Gotta" is not short for "Have a", it’s short for "Have got to".  Idiots.

My previous complaint about Mercedes radio ads has been continued with a Lincoln ad.  I guess the dealerships are owned by the same person, or the marketing company got both as accounts.  More pompous people talking about how other people think their car (and I guess the owner by extension) is so great.  I really don’t think the customer testimonial idea is so great.  Maybe it is, though, and I’m just not their target market.  Thank god for that.