Life Saving Food

Nutritional information labels on the backs of processed food packaging is confusing. A can of soda will be 2.5 servings, forcing you to do math including decimals if you want to find out just how fat you'll get from drinking the stuff all day. Then other food comes with nutritional information, but you add on a bunch of condiments, and you really have no idea what you end up with. I like oatmeal, but only after it's been covered in brown sugar. It's been explained to me that eating oatmeal is very healthy, but I'm sure there's a tipping point in there somewhere when you add too much sugar. The same could likely be said for other healthy foods. You can only put so much blue cheese salad dressing on your Romaine before it starts killing you instead of extending your life. This tipping point would (save vs kill) could be applied to the backs of food with nutritional information to make things more clear. Walking into a fast food store would be like going into a mortuary.

The 3rd Shift Bar

I've only opened one 3rd shift bar. A 3rd shift bar is a spot that opens at 6 or 7 in the morning so that all the guys working the 3rd shift at the mill or plant can go in and get a drink at the end of their work day. I guess this kind of early-morning bar opening is fairly common in Chicago where bars operate on 23-hour liquor licenses, so people will go eat breakfast when the bar closes at 4am, then they'll go back for a post-breakfast bloody mary at 5am. In Minneapolis, the only bar I knew that opened early near my house was the C.C. Club. My roommate was working the 3rd shift and I'd stayed up all night playing video games, so my roommate and I gave our friend a ride to the airport at about 5:00am. After fighting traffic to get back home, we decided to visit the C.C. Club for some breakfast and bloody marys, but we arrived about 10 minutes before they opened. I'm not sure what was worse: the bitter cold, or standing in front of a bar at 6am waiting for it to open. There was a bus stop right across the street that pointed towards downtown, so it was loaded with people on their way to work. If there'd been one on our side, we at least could have pretended to be waiting for the bus.

The Barqs Root Beer Challenge

During high school I worked at a shop that sold bikes in the summer and skis in the winter. We were located about a block away from a monstrous gas station with an enormous convenience store. I'd bike over there to buy pitcher-sized sodas for everyone and end up spending my day's wages on a Zippo with a clipper ship embossed on the side, plus backup wicks and naphtha to fuel it. I didn't have a lot to spend my money on back then. One day they were running a sale on Barqs root bear, which may now actually be defunct since I haven't seen it since. It came in a nearly all silver can that looks exactly like Coors Light, which I think is why it was so popular with the Wisconsin high school crowd. In my thriftiness, I picked up two 12-packs of Barqs for $4 and put them in the shop bike basket. I pedaled back and drank three or four cans in the next hour. My boss told me to slow down, and I suggested that I might have to break into the second 12-pack by the end of my shift. So he suggested that he'd give me the $2 to pay for the 12-pack if I could actually drink the entire thing. Now $2 12-packs is a great deal, but effectively getting a case of Barqs for $2 was a real steal. About a half-hour before the end of my shift, and on the verge of throwing up, I went back into the break room and hid all the root beers I'd been unable to finish. I don't remember collecting on the bet, but I'm pretty sure there's still a few root beers hidden in the vents back there.

The Mystery Surrounding My Stolen Bike

So far I've only had one bicycle stolen. It was back in 5th grade, and I'm not sure it was technically stolen. It was either taken out of my parents' garage by a local hooligan, or I left it at school. If the former scenario is the case, then it was definitely stolen. The second scenario is where things get foggy. The only certainty in this story is that one day on the weekend I went out to the garage to get my bike and it wasn't there. I puzzled over its disappearance for awhile and asked my parents if they knew anything about it. We talked the problem back to the last time I rode it, and we arrived at the point where we were pretty sure that I rode it to school on Friday. The problem is that I'm not sure I rode it home. In this scenario, I forgot that I'd ridden my bike to school by the day's end, and I simply walked home leaving my bike in the rack. I walked back to school that weekend and my bike was no longer in the rack, which really isn't surprising since I'd never owned a lock back then. I've never really been sure what happened to that Columbia Big Boss with the white mags and neon detailing. Maybe I'll fill out a police report next time I'm back visiting my parents.

Blocked from Chat

I recently started a job where I go into an office. At this new office, instant messenger is blocked. This has never been the case at any of the interactive or online companies I've worked with. On my first day, I'm used to firing off an e-mail with my Gchat name and then getting dozens of replies with my co-workers' Gchats. And if a new guy starts and sends around a Yahoo! Messenger name, we'd all wonder how he got the job. The office where I work now has all chat blocked, and I realized today that I must be among the oldest people alive who has worked in an office environment for years without ever conducting business face-to-face. I actually got up and walked over to a woman's desk today to ask her a question in person. I felt like I was interrupting, but really you're interrupting every time you IM someone anyway--you just don't have to do it in person. I have yet to decide what time of business conducting I prefer.

First Tape

The first tape I owned was the soundtrack to Top Gun. The second tape I owned was Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet. The Bon Jovi album was gifted to me during an inter-cousin Christmas gift exchange. All the cousins had to buy each other gifts, but we had a $10 limit so there were a lot tapes, markers, and Crayons given out. I'd asked my cousin Tara for the Bon Jovi album with "Living on a Prayer," and she delivered. I'm not sure how I planned on listening to the tape since I didn't have a tape player, which makes it all the more weird that this was my second tape. I must have brought them over to friends' houses so that we could listen to all that rock together.

Screech From Saved by the Bell becomes a Writer

I picked up Dustin Diamond's autobiography a couple months ago. Dustin Diamond played Screech in the 1990's hit Saved by the Bell. When I say I 'picked up' his autobiography, I mean that literally. The book's dust jacket says it sells for $25, but it came into my ownership after a friend plucked the book from a discount rack and stuck it in his pinata. No one took the book home after the pinata was broken open, so my friends wrapped the book and gave it to me at brunch the next afternoon. At the end of our meal I had to peel the book off the diner floor. I've read about 20 pages of the book. So far two paragraphs have been repeated twice in the text. Diamond also refers to 'craft food service' as "Kraft Food Service" when talking about food on the show's set. Basically, I'm afraid that I overpaid to get my hands on this book.

Lightning Strikes and Bob Dylan

I've heard two people say that they don't like Bob Dylan. One was my friend Ryan, and when he mentioned it casually in conversation, my friend Peter said, "Man, he wrote 'Lay Lady Lay.'" That's among the most concise and convincing arguments I've ever heard. It didn't sway Ryan, but I'm convinced that Ryan was exhibiting some attention-seeking behavior. He was just trying to be a contrarian to get us going. This is the same guy who told me he's been struck by lightning seven times, and once he came into the office on a bluebird day and said that he just saw a plane flying overhead get struck by lightning. None of his lightning stories really got me going. If he'd come in and said, "Bob Dylan just flew by," I'd be more likely to get into it with him.

Getting a White Couch is Pretty Much the Worst Idea Ever

The only thing worse than buying a white couch is buying a couch that's too short for you to lie down on. So I guess the worst thing, really, would be buying a white couch that's too small for you to lie down on. I never really considered myself a couch person until I spent a year without one. There's something to be said for the state of mind that comes with stretching out on a comfortable piece of furniture that's not your bed. Couches are meant for relaxing, and there's nothing relaxing about lying on a white couch. One spill and it's over. You'd have to eat sitting on an enormous napkin and have Tide pens stashed all over your house in case guests stopped by with a bottle of red wine. You choose couch colors like you choose suit colors. You want something that you can spill booze all over at the wake and then still wear to the funeral. There's a reason black is a traditional color at funerals. Sure, white is more angelic, but black covers up stains.

Winter vs. Summer Games

The Winter Olympics are much better than the summer variety. I think it's because anyone can at least attempt most of the sports in the summer games. I could run a mile on a track or hurl a bowling ball 15 feet after spinning around several times. I might not be any good at it, but I it's easy to imagine myself participating in those summer sports. The winter games are stacked with things you never get to do. Going to a waterslide is as close as most of us will get to the luge or bobsled, and accidentally getting air in your car over railroad tracks is the nearest most of us come to the ski jump. I also like that they introduce shooting guns to cross country skiing in the biathlon, and if you want an everyman sport, there's always curling. When I watch curling, I feel like the losing team should have to take a shot for every point the other team wins by.

Becoming a Lawyer

I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer just long enough to register to take the LSAT. All the other English majors in my class were either becoming teachers or going to law school, so I chose the one where I thought I'd make the most money. I took a few practice tests and studied for about ten minutes a day out of a book I borrowed from the library. By the time the test rolled around, I'd given up studying and went into the exam hoping for the best. The test is unique in that you get points for correct answers, but there's no extra penalty for answering incorrectly. An incorrect answer is scored the same as an unanswered question, so when time is running out, you simply rush through the multiple choice questions and guess. It was in those last few minutes of the test that I knew I should never become a lawyer. Guessing the answers of the difficult questions turned about to be the only mildly engaging part of the entire LSAT experience.

How Was Your Flight?

When people ask, "How was your flight?" I used to always answer, "Good." My assessment of the flight took into account only one thing: Did the plane crash? If the answer was no, then I'd classify the flight as, "good." Eventually, I got over my anxiety about planes crashing, and I began finding things that bothered me beyond the looming possibility that my plane could fall out of the sky at any moment. My friend Beth, who has a very deep well of sympathy and a knack for finding redeeming qualities in humans, once said her flight was terrible because of a guy she was sitting next to. I'm not sure that they spoke at all, but Beth is scared of spiders and the man seated next to hear had a big tattoo of a tarantula on his neck. A few of my recent flight have even been so bad with crying kids, loud talkers, and spilled drinks in my lap, that I've come to think that the plane crashing wouldn't actually be that bad.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I generally dislike the modern, internet-connected jukeboxes that are popping up in bars all over the country. I think that a bar owner's jukebox music selection sets the tone of a bar, and giving people all the options in the world makes it feel more like you're knocking back beers in a Cheesecake Factory than a small town bar. People can't decide what to listen to when you give them that many options. The only redeeming quality of these jukeboxes is that all of them contain the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot. While I think most dive bar owners would agree that The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a timeless and wonderful song, few of them consider Gordon Lightfoot when choosing albums to stock their traditional jukeboxes.

The Remote Start

Eric picked up a remote-start add-on for his Ford Taurus at the local department store. It came with a VHS video that taught you how to install it. Once properly installed, Eric would be able to start his car by pushing a button on his keychain. This is valuable if you live in Minnesota and want to let your car warm up for a minute before you climb into it. I didn't own a car, and after dropping Eric at the airport one weekend, he told me to feel free to drive his Ford Taurus around town. I began wheeling around immediately, and my first stop was the liquor store. I pulled in, turned off the ignition, and pulled out the key, but the engine did not stop running. So I went into the store and bought a dirty 30 of Milwaukee's Best, then went back to the car and drove it home. Again, the engine did not turn off when I parked the vehicle at my house. It seems that this is common with aftermarket remote starters, but considering the alternative, it's a reasonable price to pay considering all the convenience.

All-in-One

I hate all-in-ones, but I buy them all the time. Those all-in-one knives that let you cut lumber to build a log home or skin a moose that you shot with the very same knife. Sure, I'll probably never need to saw logs for a house or skin a wild animal, but it's comforting knowing that I have that option if I need it. Instead of buying a longboard and a thruster surfboard, I'll get a middle-of-the-road funboard that can do everything but doesn't work very well for anything. It's this mentality that drove so many sales of sports utility vehicles during the late 90s. You might never have to take your car off-road, but isn't it nice having that option? I can sympathize with the siren song of multi-use, and I see it in every jacked-up SUV in the grocery store parking lot. In fact, it's these vehicles that I'm going to cover with flyers marketing the sale of all the all-in-ones I've purchased over the years.

The First and Last Show

I was in Utah and a friend's band was playing a local venue. It had been a long day of standing around a tradeshow, and I was looking forward to doing a lot of nothing. But my friend Mike dropped some wisdom on me. I'm paraphrasing, but he said, "If you have a friend in a band, you have to go to their first show and their last show. The rest are optional." I've since lived by this credo, and it's served me well. It's in this spirit that I pass the wisdom along to you. I've told friends over and over that I supported their band and was dying to see them, but something always came up and I missed their show. Maybe it's too early, too far away, or I just fall asleep watching The Golden Girls on TV. If you wholly dedicate yourself to at least catching their first show, then you actually believe that you might go to another somewhere along their career. And the last show, well, there's really no excuse for missing that one, unless you'd never seen any of their shows.

The Utility of Signatures

My signature has stayed basically the same since 8th grade. I made the decision to adopt my current style in 6th grade, but it wasn't until I landed my first job and had to sign about 10 forms in a row that my signature acquired its sloppy gait. If you didn't know my name, there is no way you'd be able to guess it from looking at my signature. Not that it's any use since no one who I submit my signature to knows what it's supposed to look like--or even knows my name for that matter. But you sign a few credit card receipts with an X and all of the sudden everyone wants to see your ID. I think I'd be better off signing my name with a little stamp that I carry around. At least then I'd definitely know whether someone had forged my name at the video store, and I bet that every sales clerk would remember me since I'd be known as the guy with the stamp.

The Bathroom Attendant

I've never understood the mentality of hiring a bathroom attendant at your bar. I'd rather walk into a bar bathroom and see two guys fighting each other with knives than see a bathroom attendant standing there. At least I wouldn't have to tip the two guys fighting. I suspect that about half of the bathroom attendants I run into are freelancing. What I mean is that they walk into the bar with a tackle box hidden in their jacket, and then they pop it open in the men's restroom and set up a tip jar next to their multi-colored bottles of cologne and soaps. I never take any mints or cigarettes from the bathroom attendant, so all I get from him is a squirt of soap on my hand and a paper towel when I'm down washing them. It's not unlike getting a regular coffee from a barista who pumps the coffee, hands it over the counter, and then looks at his tip jar. I don't think I should have to give you a dollar if you're not really doing much for me. The guy who makes my sandwich at Burger King does a lot more work than my barista, and I don't give him anything. But I feel guilty not tipping the bathroom attendant since I think his job must be so depressing, so I always give him a dollar. It's such a racket, the bathroom attendant.

May Contain Nuts

Twice I've been on flights and had the animal cracker snack option stolen from me. I was baffled the first time and asked the stewardess why they weren't serving animal crackers, and she said that there was a passenger on the flight with a severe peanut allergy. I looked around and tried to figure out who it was. I wonder if they felt any guilt at all in preventing me from getting animal crackers. And how severe could this person's allergy be? It's not like they searched everyone who got onto the plane to see if they had food that contained peanuts. My carry-on could have been overflowing with cashews. I mean, I didn't plan on grabbing this bag of animal crackers and forcing it down anyone's throat but my own.

Getting Used to the Worms

It's amazing what you can get used to. I read that people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness almost always rebound quicker than they think they will. Not that they make a recovery, but their outlook and general happiness in life swings back to levels they thought they'd never be able to reach. I was standing in the shower a few months ago and saw some tiny worms. I freaked out and bleached the hell out of everything I could find, but they came back a few days later. Turned out that they were fruit fly larvae, and my landlord had to come and tear out my whole shower and replace a bunch of moldy garbage underneath. But while I was waiting for him to fix it, I had to learn to shower with a lot of little black worms. I didn't think I'd ever get used to it, but it turned out not to be that big of a deal, so I feel like I can empathize a bit.

Biker/Driver Relations

I bike through the city and get honked at a lot. I'm not doing anything wrong, or at least anything that would encourage someone to honk at me. There a lot of short blocks and street lights, so at least half the time and without even trying I'll catch up to the person who honked while passing me. It's awkward. I usually bend down to peer into their car window to get an idea of who it is. They never look back. I try to refrain from knocking on their window just in case they keep a gun in the car to shoot potential carjackers. Unless they recklessly endanger my life, I try not to antagonize these people since that wouldn't be helpful for cyclist/driver relations. Through an open van window, I once suggested to a driver that he need not honk when passing me. I ride in the city, so I see a lot of cars that pass me. If they all honked, it would make a lot of needless racket. He turned and looked at me, his brows knitted in confusion, and he shook his head to indicate he didn't know what I was talking about. But I know he knew. Some people are a lot less comfortable when they're not driving away from you.

Running from the Police

Running from the police as a teenager is as thrilling as it gets. No one has more stamina and speed than a teen on the run from a campus security car. We used to ride our BMX bikes on campus, and occasionally one of the passing police cars would take issue with where we were riding. There was no safe place for the driver to stop at this particular spot, so if they had a problem, they'd get on the loud speaker and say, "Stop riding and stay put." The first time it happened, I stopped and stood there until my friend shouted over his shoulder while riding away from me, "I think he said move along!" Years later, another friend near campus was told to stop riding from a police loudspeaker, and he made a break for it. He pedaled his little bike as hard as he could and thought he found safe refuge. He hopped  a curb and beelined across a soccer field, aiming for a parking lot on the far side. He was disheartened to turn around and see the cops driving onto the soccer field in pursuit. You just don't think anyone will drive onto a soccer field when you're a teenager. Turns out the police don't mind. They must have thought my friend was such an idiot.

James Bond in Print

I'm in the generation that grew up with James Bond the movie star, not James Bond the literary action hero. I didn't even know that the movies were based on books until I was in high school. I was talking about going to see the new Bond movie, and my co-worker Rusty mentioned that they have nothing to base the new movies on since they ran out of books. Then he went on a tirade about how much better the books were. This is something you often hear people complain about. "The book was so much better than the movie." I would argue that books and movies are such different mediums that it's not fair to compare them. Everything is internalized with a book; it's all imagined. With movies there's only one way to see it. That said, I think the Bond movies were way better than the books. I expected the books to be all action, but most of it was spent describing the various hair care products used by our hero. In the case of James Bond, I think your preference is simply be based on what you grew up with.

Legality Questions for Sandwich Shop Clerks

A local bank put an ATM in the hallway between a liquor store and sandwich shop. You could see a camera on the actual ATM, and then there was another one in the hallway shooting the entrance of the liquor store. If someone was going to rob this ATM, there would be plenty of video evidence for police. This liquor store/sandwich shop near the university was a popular two-punch stop for us on Friday nights. You could pick up dinner for $4 and then get a case of Black Label for $9. On one occasion that I didn't join my friends, one noticed something strange about the ATM. There appeared to be a wad of cash sticking out of the cash-dispensing area. They argued over whether to go on camera and get the cash, and if doing so would be illegal. They couldn't decide, so they stepped into the sandwich shop to ask the clerk's advice. They posed the question to him as a hypothetical, but as soon as they explained it, the guy ran from behind the counter towards the door. They followed a step behind, but the clerk arrived first and nabbed all the cash out of the ATM. They didn't stick around to see if he got in trouble with the law, but if he did, at least it would be an easy job for the police.

Cheating at Cards

I've only been caught cheating at cards a couple times. The most humiliating was when we used to play Euchre online. Euchre is kind of like a poor man's version of Bridge. For whatever reason, it's popular in Wisconsin. Try not to draw too much from that information from those casual observations. When the internet was still young, some savvy Midwestern developer started a site that allowed you play Euchre online. We'd gather up our boxy laptops and sit on our living room couch. This was before developers figured out how to prevent users on the same IP address from sitting at the same online gambling table, so we'd all shout out our hands to each other and develop a strategy to take down whatever sucker had happened upon our table. We cleaned up, but it didn't take long for one of those suckers to notice that there was some odd play at our table. We got kicked off the site and banned. The most embarrassing part is that we weren't even doing it for money, we just wanted to win. Well, actually, the most embarrassing part is probably that we still couldn't always win.

Tasting Like Chicken

We had two refrigerators in our old apartment. The upstairs one was mostly used when the refrigerator on the main floor was full. We used the upstairs freezer more often since once the main floor freezer filled up, nothing ever came out of it. It was full of frosty bags of half-eaten fries and year-old brats. You wouldn't eat anything out of there because you weren't sure how old it was, and you wouldn't throw anything out since it wasn't yours. So the upstairs freezer would hold all our bags of frozen chicken breasts, which were pretty much the only frozen thing we'd eat anymore. Every once in awhile, I'd walk in our apartment door and my friend Chris would be standing over the stove tending four frying pans. The temperature was several degrees warmer inside, and the floor around the stove would be splattered with chicken juice. "I hope you're hungry," he'd say. "We have four bags of frozen chicken to eat." The problem with our upstairs fridge is that it would occasionally come unplugged, and everything in the freezer would thaw. When that happened, it meant we'd have an all-you-can-eat chicken meal, and then a bunch of wrapped chicken cutlets would go into the freezer never to be seen again.

Shocking Transitions

A friend of a friend came back from their honeymoon separated, and it turned out that the woman in the relationship had been having an affair with her OB/GYN. That's a shocking and difficult transition from a doctor/patient relationship to a romantic one. It's at least ten times harder than dating a girl, breaking up with her, and then dating her roommate. When I face some kind of awkward conversation or need to come up with a convincing angle in an argument, I'll occasionally think of this doctor's bizarre skill set and ingenuity and human relationships. I wonder if he still has a job.