Three is a Magic Number

More delusional marketing

This year is no different. Our beaches are as pristine as ever. These are not the droids you're looking for.

Fun at the grocery store

Item the first... this variety of Gatorade was on clearance at my local grocery store last week

 

And this variety of Gatorade was on the shelf:

Do you think the good people at Gatorade are trying to tell us something? 

Item the second: No, Marie Callendar, I am not going to use a food thermometer to make sure my chicken pot pie is done. If I was interested in using actual kitchen equipment, I wouldn't be eating a frozen chicken pot pie. Also? Requiring a frozen chicken pot pie to be cooked inside its box, and then printing complicated multi-step instructions on the bottom of the box? Kind of awkward.

 

Item the third: I am so glad I'm not alone in this. Fight the good fight, mystery editor.

 

Rorschach test

At Boo's last Girl Scout meeting, her leader was wearing a t-shirt with this image:



She said she got it as a Christmas present, and when she opened it, her daughter said "Cool, mom! A Dairy Queen shirt!"

If this image makes you think of anything other than Dairy Queen, I think it means you are old.

Sent from my iPhone

DangerCar!

Received In my email recently...



Seriously, Toyota? Does your marketing department not talk to your legal department?

Sent from my iPhone

Customer service

I'm sitting here in the doctor's waiting room with J, because now he is the one who's sick (stealing my thunder, he is) and one of the front desk staff is complaining about calling some office and getting a message that says "our office opens at 8:30."

"Come on, " she said, "it's 8:29!"

Um, lady? do you want to know how many times I have called YOU at 8:05 and later, only to hear YOUR recording that says "our office opens at 8:00?" What is that bible verse about addressing the log in your eye before the mote in someone else's eye?
In other words, the prophesy of grumpiness has come to life.

Geniuses and sheep parts

I was going through old CDs recently, weeding out the ones that need to be donated, and I found a bunch of "classical music for babies" titles. Do you remember when someone decided listening to Mozart would increase your baby's intelligence? I had a half dozen of these, provided by my good friends at Enfamil and Johnson & Johnson and the like. I don't think any of them were even opened.

Today I read that Disney is offering a refund to people who bought the "Baby Einstein" videos, and it's being called "an acknowledgment that baby videos are not educational." Well, duh.

And when I say "duh," I do not mean "duh, everyone knows Baby Einstein videos are just baby Prozac, and lazy parents use them as an electronic babysitter." I mean "duh, of course a video alone is not educational for a baby." But that doesn't mean they're a bad thing.

We bought our first Baby Einstein video back in the days of VHS, believe it or not - it was Baby Mozart, the original, and probably best, of the bunch. Boo loved it. We also bought Baby Bach, but it wasn't as good, and our Baby Einsteining ended there. By the time we bought our videos, the Baby Einstein producers (this was before they were assimilated by the Disney Empire) were no longer touting the claim that listening to classical music would increase intelligence. But you know what? Boo and I had a lot of fun with that video. We always watched it together. As soon as she heard the music, she was ready to sit in my lap. I'd explain what she was seeing on the screen - "look, the train is going to go through the tunnel!" She was exposed to shapes and colors. She said "blah!" back at the puppet. She didn't sit there slack-jawed, staring at the screen - we interacted with that video together. She giggled and pointed and sang. I thought it was a wonderful resource. It bothers me to hear people dismiss it as worthless, let alone bad.

Unfortunately, I know the kid watches too much television today. We have limited her TV viewing on weekdays to either before or after dinner, which means she can still potentially watch 2 hours of television a night. And that's too much. (Also, she and I like many of the same shows, so it means I can't watch TV before dinner either, which kind of sucks.) And we are probably too permissive in her TV viewing, as we let her watch things like The Simpsons, FlashForward, and America's Most Amazing Police Videos and Stupid Crooks Caught on Tape or whatever those shows are called. Of course, they offer a lot of teachable moments. ("Wow, Homer did something stupid and now he's in a jam. "Look what happens when you try to lie to the police." Etc.) I wonder if it would be a good idea to insist Boo sit in my lap again, and we can interact with her shows together. "Ooooh, look! The fugitive in the stolen car is going to go through the plate glass window!"

Maybe not.

And on a mostly unrelated note, director Paul Haggis has left the "church" of Scientology because of their stance on gay marriage. So he doesn't have a problem with the whole aliens thing. He doesn't mind that Scientology was founded by a man who said if you want to make a lot of money, you should form a religion. No, those are fine. It's just the gay marriage thing that he has issues with. Well, as long as you have standards.

(BTW, I'm not mocking him for wanting to support gay marriage. I support it, wholeheartedly, myself. I'm mocking him for being willing to accept the rest of the BS and drawing the line here.)

(Also, Haggis is kind of an unfortunate name, isn't it?)

Um...

... no. Just no.

I wonder if Winnie the Poo is related to Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo?

Being Daisy, part 1

Daisy is my watchdog. If something happens to us and the girls have to make it on their own, Daisy will be the one who can get a job. Violet will have to get by on her looks. When the dog next door barks, Daisy is the one who walks up to the fence and barks back, while Violet stands on the patio and says "Yeah! You tell him!" When I hear barking outside, Daisy will be the one who noticed the frog and is telling him to get the hell out of her yard. Violet will be the one behind her going "Let me see! Let me see!"

So, when I heard barking this weekend, I assumed Daisy had discovered another frog and was giving him what for. Instead, I found this really weird bird sitting on our grill.

Seriously, what is this bird? I've never seen anything like it. Look at its eye. Doesn't it just look... wrong?

I thought the bird must be injured, since it sat there with Daisy barking her fool head off a couple of feet away, but when I tried to get a closer shot it flew off. Unfortunately, Daisy didn't see it fly away.

It's up there! Right up there! Come look!

I swear, it was right here! But I can't see it any more. Maybe if I get up there...

No, I can't see it from here... where did it go?

Having stumpy legs really sucks.

Sigh. Sometimes it's hard being Daisy.

More amusing things from the cell phone camera

You can't really read the window stickers on this car (seriously, Apple, that much money and you couldn't provide a better camera?), so I've provided some helpful callouts.

Anyway, it looks like someone has a chip on her shoulder.

"If it's too loud, you're too old." How about "If people complain it's too loud, that's because you have crappy taste in music and nobody around you wants to hear it." Also "I probably play my music louder than you do, but I'm not thoughtless enough to assume the whole damn world wants to hear it. That's what headphones are for, dumbass."

"In memory of" stickers confuse me. It used to be that you'd see "in memory of" plaques in front of a tree, or garden, or statue that was put there to honor someone's memory. But now you see them on t-shirts and cars. Does that mean you bought the entire car in memory of your friend Dave? Or that only the sticker is in Dave's memory? Either way, what are you going to do when you get a new car? Isn't permanence the whole point of a memorial?

"You've just been passed by a girl." Yeah, that's impressive. If you hadn't turned right, you would have been passed by a "too old" person. I need a sticker.

Boo and I saw this decoration (and I use the term loosely) at a Halloween store.

My immediate thought was "Holy crap. Some joker took a couple of cat decorations and decided to make one hump the other. Nice." And then Boo said "Oh, look. The cat was so scared that it jumped out of its skin." Which is a valid theory. But come on, take a look at that cat's face. I don't see fear. I see humping.

 This one amuses me because I read it as "Closed for help. Please call (phone number)." Like an SOS. I guess it's not really that funny after all. I just like it.

Genius

The iTunes Genius "can create playlists from songs in your library that go great together." So let's see the list of songs that supposedly "go great with" Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend:"

• Pump it Up - Elvis Costello (I'll give you that)
• The Impression That I Get - Mighty Mighty Bosstones (Eh, I'm into this song right now so it "goes great" with anything)
• Red Barchetta - Rush (Um, no. Just no.)
• One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head (Maybe)
• Rosanna - Toto (Meh)
• Mad World - Adam Lambert (Seriously? This goes great with fun fast-tempoed songs?)
• Africa - Toto (We're liking the Toto, aren't we, Genius?)
• Viva la Vida - Coldplay (Okay, this goes with Toto, but aren't we supposed to be going with Girlfriend?)
• Fall for You - Secondhand Serenade (see Viva la Vida)

So, I'm wondering what criteria Genius uses to pick these songs. According to iTunes, "To create Genius playlists, iTunes uses anonymous information about your library and other iTunes libraries". Is this "anonymous information" the fact that I like both "Girlfriend" and "Red Barchetta?" Is that enough to say they "go great together?" So far, the only thing some of these songs have in common is the fact that they're in my library. Oh, and they're all sung by men. And several are about women. Maybe that's it.

Anyway, let's give it another try. Let's pick Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack." What songs from my library "go great" with that?

• Pump it Up - Elvis Costello
• The Impression That I Get - Mighty Mighty Bosstones
• Red Barchetta - Rush
• One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head
• Rosanna - Toto
• Mad World - Adam Lambert
• Africa - Toto
• Viva la Vida - Coldplay
• Fall for You - Secondhand Serenade

Ooooh-kay. Those are some versatile songs, aren't they?