Happy Meal

January 5, 2010

So I was just making my dinner, some steak and fries, when I had a thought. The fries I was making were some of those McCain “Smiles”, fries shaped like smilie faces. And then I thought to myself “I’m having a happy meal!”

And then I wondered… why the hell aren’t the McDonald’s fries, or at least the Happy Meal ones, shaped like smilie faces? Wouldn’t that make more sense? The things clearly exist. Or would that be a bit too much happy? Is there a such thing as too much happy? 🙂

I Built That

December 29, 2009

Construction and architecture must be a rewarding field. I mean, you wouldn’t think so at first, at least not for the construction workers, as architects are considered a “respectable” career. But this goes for them both. They are involved with, obviously enough, putting up buildings, big and small, homes and offices, churches and schools. And those buildings will stand there proudly for most likely a very long time, all time that all the hard workers that contributed to it, whether designing the plan or doing the actual construction, can point to it and say that they built this, that this building and all its purposes are here because of their hard work.

It was eight years ago today that my family took a little 2-day trip to New York City, our first time there after the September 11th attacks, only about three and a half months after. And we saw with our own eyes that it was all true, that those enormous Twin Towers were in fact gone. 🙁

We all heard a lot about the impact the attack had on, well, everyone. Especially the friends and families of the victims, and of course the people who were in the buildings and managed to escape with their lives.
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Frosty the… Puddle

December 20, 2009

So on Friday night, Frosty the Snowman was on TV. The hat is put on him, he comes to life and says “Happy Birthday” for some reason, they dance around and have fun, but then they realize he’ll be gone once the snow melts.

So they figure the best way to remedy this is to stow away on a train that’s heading for the North Pole for some reason. Stuff happens and they end up off the train short of reaching the point where every direction is south, so Frosty and the little girl Karen are lost in the woods and Karen is freezing to death, so they somehow end up finding a greenhouse full of poinsettias. What luck!
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Semitic Cousins

December 12, 2009

I hereby decree…

Arabs and Jews are the same people!

I might want to throw Greeks and Italians into that mix, too, for a lot of this.

Last night was the first night of Chanukah, and I can guarantee all our Jewish friends were up late and stuffed themselves with lots of delicious food. And they’ll do the same tonight. And tomorrow night. Eating and celebrating, running late into the night, with lots and lots of people.
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Water Levels

December 6, 2009

Is there some rule that when you’re playing any video game, water levels just always suck? Maybe it’s that for the first while in the game, you get used to the regular dry land controls of the character, only to fall into the lake or ocean to have everything change on you. Not to mention you often lose some abilities that aren’t made up for in any way.

In the early Mario games, you obviously lose the jumping attack and can’t attack anything underwater unless you’ve got the Fire Flower. In SMB 3, you can’t even use your raccoon tail, but at least in SMB World they corrected that with the cape. SMB 3 has the Frog Suit, which enables you to swim against the current and more easily in general, except it has absolutely no offensive qualities whatsoever.

In some games, the controls for underwater maneuvering are just so odd that you can barely move your character around, and in cases where you need to move quickly, you’re in for near-homicidal levels of frustration. The Crash Bandicoot games are particularly bad with this.

Then there are water levels where you aren’t really underwater, but rather the water keeps rising and falling as you progress through it, and you need to stay the hell out of the water at all costs, whether because there’s something that thinks you’re delicious (SMB 3) or because you’ll drown (Bubsy). Those levels can go to hell.

So can all water levels.

So can you, for that matter.

Inaction of Grace

December 2, 2009

So last week on Thanksgiving, I was at my family’s house and we were sitting down for our turkey dinner, which was late because Thanksgiving dinner really shouldn’t be served when it’s dark outside unless it’s the second one of the day. My mom is the type of person who doesn’t know shit about religion but clings to certain aspects for no other reason than “you’re supposed to”, which I suppose fits her right in with a good 95% of the world’s population. So when all of us are sitting at the table, she starts to say a prayer of thanks, and my dad puts his head down, too. My brother and I, on the other hand, are having no part of it. I just went ahead and kept eating, and he didn’t join in since he saw I wasn’t. My mom noticed he didn’t and was all like “why didn’t you pray?” and he’s like “Katrina didn’t either!”
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Wicked Sweet

April 30, 2009

Apparently, people who are “sweet” should stay out of the rain. They’re so sweet because they must be made of sugar. Water melts sugar. So sweet people melt in the rain or when otherwise wet.

But then how come the Wicked Witch of the West melted when water got sprinkled on her? She wasn’t sweet… or was she?

Now that I think about it, maybe the Wizard, Munchkins, and Witch of the North weren’t as “good” as we might believe. Maybe the Wicked Witches of East and West were actually the good ones. Is it out of prejudice for green-skinned women that they are dubbed evil?

Or is it because the Witch of the West kept trying to kill Dorothy?

Then again, that’s not a mystery. If you crushed my sister with a house, I’d want to beat you to a pulp, too!

Frosty’s Acceptance

December 10, 2008

So this snowman just comes to life once some magic hat gets put on his head. Pretty cool. He’s all happy and laughing and dancing around.

But then comes a day that is a bit warmer. Alive and ambulatory and sentient though he may be, he is still somehow made entirely of snow, and his very existence is threatened by the gradual rising of the mercury.

How does Frosty the Snowman cope with this inevitability?

So he said let’s run, let’s have some fun, before I melt away.

You’re going to die, and soon, so what do you do? Shrug it off and just keep having fun! Good advice.

This Is Christmas

December 16, 2007

It’s nice to have moments throughout the holiday season when you can truly feel the spirit of it. I had one of those today. I went to see my friend from college, and her husband and infant son, and a couple of their friends, for the usual monthly game day.

There I was standing with them in their kitchen. She was baking cookies along with her housemate. We randomly started singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and then “Let It Snow”.

In their living room, the Christmas tree was up (and they had a rather interesting ornament on it, of a half-naked Santa Claus with a ball in his mouth and strapped to a couple of giant candy canes, LOL!), and they had a string of lights long their ceiling edges.

And we sat their playing games and listening to twisted Christmas carols.

Mmmm. ‘Tis the season. Christmas time with nice people. Love such moments.

Made it even nicer when I saw on their table they had received the NYRA holiday card I’d sent them. Hehehe.

Behind Every Bag of Chips…

June 15, 2006

So I was at Safeway early this morning right before going into work, and I walk by this big promotional display they had just erected (huh huh huh, erected, huh huh huh). Beside it stood about half a dozen important-looking men in suits. Walking by, I saw they wore name badges indicating they were from Frito-Lay, and that this big promotional, uh, whatever the hell it was carried a bunch of cardboard cutouts of that Chester the cheetah and other mascots of theirs. Cute.

And then a realization hit me.
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