Yesterday we got two things in the mail. One was from the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and across the front it had the slogan “Seize the Play!”. Uh huh.
The second was from New York & Company and it had the words “Cheap Frills” with a woman on the cover wearing a blouse with frills on it. Got it.
Listen advertisers, I know you’re just trying to be clever. Really. But shit like this makes me want to get into advertising just so I can crash some meeting (probably a brainstorming session for Kraft where some jackass in a paisley tie is pitching an ad campaign based around the slogan “You can’t cheese all of the people all of the time!”) and then yell at people, “I get it! You like puns! But honestly, how can you put out crap like this and then look at your families when you go home at night?”
And then they’ll all break down crying and say that they’re actually married to a bottle of Tuaca.
Josh saves advertising again. True story.

The other day Rion was looking at the box for my new home theater system.
“See that,” he said, pointing at the picture. “That’s so millennium. That reflection below the products. Everyone is doing that now. Ten years ago you didn’t see that and ten years from now you’re not going to see that. It’s very now”

“That is all the craze,” I said. “Except they messed up the reflection on the knob. See how everything else is reversed but that isn’t?”
We then had a 10 minute conversation about reflections and bad Photoshopping, which let to this joke:
Q: “How many graphic designers does it take to Photoshop a design package with a reflection?”
A: “Two. One to create the reflection and one to tell him the reflection is backwards!”
Zing!

Over the weekend the Metallurgist and I went to a zombie pub crawl. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of people dress up like zombies and do a little day drinking. What’s not to like, yes?


Only there was a lot not to like. First off, the other zombies? We didn’t care for them. Everyone was a little too excited and “Rah! Rah! We’re zombies! Let’s eat some brains!” and it felt a bit like we were surrounded by people who used to be the drama theater kids in high school. Add the fact that we were packed in, decomposing elbow to decomposing elbow with them, and we decided it wasn’t for us. Less than halfway into our first beer, after giving each other the stink eye across the table for a few minutes, we decided to leave, secure that we’d probably be happier people because of it.
So we left, spending the afternoon walking home. Which is when it started to pour. “We don’t so much look like zombies anymore,” I said to the Metallurgist just before I took this picture, “as sad, old clowns who are down on their luck.”

By the time we got home most of our makeup had washed off from the rain, so we each took a nice hot shower, put on some clothes that a living person would wear, and headed out to Friendship Chinese Restaurant for some food that wasn’t brains.
The moral here? Keep day drinking the way it was intended: Low key.

Ever wonder how I ended up with such a green thumb? Well, this video explains it all. Like Clarissa, but with plants.

The other day, a block from my house, I saw this billboard:

“Digital TV and internet. Less than $2.34 a day”? Really, RCN?
So then I’d guess that the actual price of your package is, what, $2.33 a day?
Next time you should round to at least a 50 cent integer, weirdos.

The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop, doing whatever it is I do. Up at the counter a guy with a beard was trying (painfully!) to hit on the barista behind the counter by telling her the synopsis of the movie Zodiac.
My favorite part of his retelling: “There were a lot of newspaper office scenes, so…”
How the barista managed to resist becoming putty in this man’s hands, I’ll never know.
UPDATE: In case you’re wondering, the barista’s response to “There were a lot of newspaper office scenes, so…” was “That sounds good.”
So in retrospect they may have made a good couple.

Earlier today I twittered about a photo blog that only displays photos of empty Cheetos bags found on the ground here in Chicago. That’s all the blog does. No stories about them. No jokes about them. Just photos. Of empty Cheetos bags found on the ground here in Chicago (more specifically, in the neighborhood of Rogers Park).
Talk about a niche.
“I guess that’s kinda cool,” I thought to myself. “But I don’t know he keeps finding this many empty Cheetos bags on the ground. Only in Rogers Park.”
Then, about an hour later, while walking from one coffee shop to another (what can I say, I like a little variety in my day), I saw an empty Cheetos bag on the ground (the Flamin’ Hot variety). Needless to say, I felt compelled to take a photo of it.

I guess it’s not as rare as I thought. Too bad I’m not in Rogers Park.

Yesterday the Metallurgist discovered that the cat had been peeing on some bubble wrap we left lying on the floor. “Stupid cat,” she said.
“Maybe she just thought it was a space-age kitty litter,” I guessed.
The future is looking up for cats.

As a Mac owner I’m occasionally painted as a cooler-than-thou person by the media (or, as the Metallurgist would say, “too cool for school,” followed by an eye roll). I don’t think I’m smarter or hipper and better-off than a PC person. I just happen to love my Mac. And if you love your PC, god bless you too.
But one place where I’ve always felt like I had a slight leg up was when it comes to viruses. Macs don’t get them. And no, it’s not even because we have amazingly secure software, it’s because the Mac share of the market is so tiny that the scum who make viruses turn up their noses at us.
Though just because we’re not at risk to get, say, conflicker (or whatever it was called), we’re not as safe as we used to be.
Last week the NYTimes posted two pieces (part one and part two) going over where the Mac falls short as far as safety, what you as a user can do to be safer and when, if ever, we’ll have to start fearing for our hard drives like the rest of you savage bastards. If you’re nerdy like me then it’s a pretty good read.
On a similar-but-not note, I have a bone to pick with those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads.

I understand that the Mac is supposed to be hip and printing out photos (or whatever it does) and that the PC is supposed to be lame and working on spreadsheets. But here’s the issue: Justin Long, the actor who plays the Mac? He’s kind of a tool. And John Hodgeman, the actor who plays the PC? I think it’s kind of an indisputable fact that he’s pretty rad. So while I’m naturally inclined to root for the Mac, I’d rather not root for that floppy haired actor whose best work to date is playing a high schooler in that show about the bowling alley lawyer. On the other hand have no issue whatsoever giving it up for a guy who has written two best-selling books, is a regular contributor on The Daily Show, and whose Twitter I follow (because it can actually be pretty amusing).
What’s a Mac to do?

There are these new Citibank commercials. Maybe you’ve seen them. They have a lot of quick cuts between different people talking about their lives and their spending. Example:
Man at the park: Oh yeah, we do lots of things. My family loves -
Woman at work: Dog food. We buy huge bags of it. I just wish we had more -
Old woman power walking: Time to travel. But I don’t.
You get the idea. Anyway, at the end of one commercial it cuts to a black woman and a white woman sitting on a bench. The black woman says: “-Funky, Monkey and Crunky. But now I’ve stopped using my pets names as my passwords.”
“Wow that’s racist,” I say to the Metallugist. She scrunches up her face at me. “You’re the racist,” she tells me.
I turn to her. “Hey, I’m not the ad man who cast a black woman and then gave her dogs the names Funky, Monkey and Crunky.”
The Metallurgist shrugs. “Fair enough.”