on losing my faith in human kind

usually i am too creeped out by that plastic faced monster who represents burger king to actually sit through one of their commercials, but the other day i managed to calm my fears long enough to watch the unfolding of their latest contribution to humanity: the apple slice shaped like a french fry. have you seen this? they even serve these things in french fry containers. i don't know if the board of directors at burger king are all a bunch of childless freaks, but i would like to know what possesed them to think that you could dress a fruit up like a french fry and pass it off on children. ha ha, unsuspecting and naive child, you think you are eating crispy fried potatos, but no, NO ha HA! you are eating apples and you didn't even know it! what has the world come to? WHAT??? in order to promote healthy eating amongst already fatty hamburger patty kids, burger king comes up with this ingenious idea to say, hey, why don't you eat something good for you that is made to look like something bad for you?? brilliant. marketing genius. generations of children will grow into adults and have burger king to thank for helping them make smart and healthy food choices. no doubt by then we will be consuming pizza-shaped pears and steak and cheese-shaped salads. THIS MAKES SENSE. i realise that this is the BK's attempt at keeping up with the joneses (or in this case, the McDonald's and the Subways) by offering healthier options than chicken nugets and french fries, but for real, kids aren't stupid. if you want them to eat apples, let them eat apples. tell them to eat apples. shaping it like a french fry or a piece of cake isn't going to change the fact that IT'S AN APPLE. besides, we are insulting a child's intelligence by trying to fool them into believe that an apple is actually a french fry. most of them are smarter than we are. so. i give up. i throw my hands in the air. if this is what it's come to, i do not want to be a part of this. i'm off to live in my cabin in the woods. between french fry apples and a video game that simulates exercise, i'm officially done with human kind. god forbid we should go outside to get some exercise anymore. and try doing it with a real, apple-shaped apple in your hand. you'll be labeled as a freak in no time. then you and the burger king man can live happily ever after.

life is a bowl of cheerios

i think it is a fair statement to say that i think i owe about 3/4ths of the happiness of my childhood to sugary cereals. i mean, yeah yeah playing outside and climbing trees and chewing the feet of my barbie dolls was all in good fun, but really when i think back to being a kid, i repeatedly picture that beautiful bright yellow cheerios box. wait. cheerios? YES. cheerios. maybe not your typical tooth-rotting breakfast selection (i'll get to those momentarily), but when you combine the cheerios with sugar and raisins (in that order), the glucose-y goodness that forms at the bottom of that bowl is enough to make a rock bounce off the walls. hmmmm...mother, perhaps it was not wise to let me scoop my OWN sugar into the bowl, but that's water under the bridge at this point. even now, there is (almost) nothing i love more than cheerios and raisins, although the sugar has been replaced with one packet of splenda (hey, we have to grow up sometime, huh?). my other all time favorite is hands down lucky charms. on the rare occasion that my mom would bring one of those sweet red boxes home with the dancing leprechaun on it, man on man...i would pretty much go through the whole box in one sitting. because clearly, when you get to the bottom of the bowl and there is still milk in it, you have to pour in a little more cereal so you don't waste the milk. then, oops, there is too much cereal and it needs more milk, so just a liiiiiitle bit more and whaddya know, there is leftover milk in that bowl, too. it's an endless cycle, so i never blamed myself for eating 5 or 6 bowls at a time. i can't help it if general mills wasn't working with the bowl manufacturing industry on perfectly perportionate breakfastwares. they should have seen that coming. and of course, lucky charms have to be eaten a certain way to maximize the pleasure of all that sugary coated deliciousness. one must eat all the "luckys" out first, leaving a beautiful rainbow of slowly dissolving marshmallow charms floating in a grey/green pool of milk. WHAT COULD TASTE BETTER THAN THAT??? i ask you. go ahead and try. you won't come up with a good answer. lindsey, what do you want for breakfast? lucky charms. what do you want for lunch? lucky charms. what do you want for dinner? LUCKY CHARMS. ohhh ohhhh or frosted flakes. who would think that if you put sugar on your frosted flakes, they taste even BETTER. now that i think about it, i'm quite sure i spent the majority of my youth in sugar overload which i may be confusing with happiness. i was probably a miserable kid but i just couldn't tell through the artifically flavored haze i was in. and who wants to remember the bad parts about being a kid? not being able to reach the cabinets without climbing up onto the counter (wait, i still have to do that)?? only getting to eat dessert if you eat all your dinner first (i STILL remember that time i didn't get a doughnut and everyone else did, mom!!!)? who needs memories like that? i rather like the sugar-coated spin on my kidhood. although my sister will say i'm glorifying my life. because we DID have a pretty sweet childhood. no pun intended.

check yourself

it's pretty hot outside today, so i thought i would venture down to one of the twelve starbucks within walking distance of my office for an iced coffee. normally i'm not a big coffee drinker, but those frappacino things are good, and if you put enough splenda in them, you can hardly even tell you're drinking coffee. $5.50 later (this may be why i have about 6 of these things a year), i was on my way out the door when i practically stepped right into someone's venti triple skilm three pump decaf frap (complete with whipped cream and chocolate sauce topping), which had apparently launched itself out of it's owner's hands and onto the sidewalk. the owner, no doubt a bitter and jaded dc resident, left the whole kit and caboodle right were it fell and was probably already back in line at starbucks to tell those defenseless baristas that his cup was defective and he wanted a new one before he drafted up a lawsuit. i mean, this person left the whole thing right where it fell. what kind of a JACKHOLE drops something on the ground and doesn't have the decency to at least pick up the cup, lid and straw and put it 3 feet away into the garbage can that it is plain sight? what kind of SLOB drops something and says, well, it's not my responsibility to pick this up, because clearly, this is starbucks' fault and they hire people to clean up messes like this, anyway. do not assume that the rest of us want to walk through your clumsiness, or that there are people just lying in wait to fall out of the sky and pick up after you. if you're going to be a big enough jerk to order a stupid drink like that, own up to your other mistakes. garbage cans are there for a reason, and this may come as a surprise, but it's not to hold the sidewalk down so you can throw trash all over it.

semi-nomadic yak herding

i took a long lunch break today and walked down to the national mall to see what i could see at the smithsonian folklife festival (http://folklife.si.edu/festival/2008/) - i've never been to it before and spending thirty minutes in the sun sounded way better than spending it under the halogen lights in my office. it was really pretty interesting, they have little "villages" set up from cultures all over the world, and my work buddy and i spent most of our time in bhutan, which i don't even think i knew existed before today. so apparently, this little country bordered by china and india (hey, no pressure) is about the size of west virginia, and the government controls foreign influences and tourism in order to maintain the country's national heritage. imagine that. i bet they don't even have coke there, or starbucks or even a single KFC. what a wonderful, wonderful place this must be! they had performers doing native dances (fascinating!) and demonstrations of architectural styles, crafts, food...all kinds of stuff that is way more interesting than anything we eat, build or make here in the US (this obviously excludes circus peanuts, because those are the greatest things on earth and i'm pretty sure only some sugar-sucking american slob could have come up with something so horrifying and so delicious). but get this: most of the population that lives in bhutan lives off of the land, many of them in tents (not luxury RVs the way we do when we are "roughing it"), working as semi-nomadic yak herders. huh? i don't think i've ever even SEEN a yak, nor could i imagine working as a herder of this mystical creature. and i'm also wondering if semi-nomadic means something along the lines of like part time, like they yak herd monday, wednesday, friday and every other saturday, and if that's the case, i'd really like to know what they do with the rest of their time. i think i would like being a semi-nomadic yak herder. for about a day. then my spoiled US senses would start kicking in and i'd be whining about needing to charge my ipod, check my email, wash my clothes in something other than a river, or have my meal delivered to me in 30 minutes or less, and i'd probably get fired. i bet, though, that actual real yak herders don't have to deal with too much stress, other than stuff like, hey, where'd that yak go? i wonder if life without diet coke and gps systems is worth that...

i can see for aisles and aisles and aisles...

so, last night i tackled that household chore that i hate more than mopping the floor (and trust me, if your dog was as big and messy as mine is, you'd hate it too)...and that is grocery shopping. for some unknown reason, i would rather go to the grocery store every single night after work and pick up ingredients for whatever's on the menu for dinner than go once every two weeks and get everything at once. i do not know why, i really don't. so yesterday i made myself a list of what we would have for dinner every night through sunday, including what i'd need to buy for each dinner. i have to say that having a very detailed list cuts down on the anxiety for me, and while i spent a lot, i didn't spend a fortune, and i also didn't end up wandering the aisles aimlessly, trying to remember what it was that i was looking for. novel idea, right? a grocery list. i am a genius. for some reason i've been laboring under the impression that i could go to the store, get what i needed and get out in 5 minutes, no lists needed. of course, after the fifteenth time i went to put dinner together and find out that i'm missing at least three things, i figured it was time to try out this whole "list" thing. you know what is the best thing about it, though, is that it keeps me from putting stuff i don't need into the cart. you know, like bon bons and cheez-its, and the sugary kids cereals that are on sale, 2 for $5. i think i put two things in my cart last night that weren't on my list, neither of which was covered, dipped, or drizzled with sugar. so i was rather pleased with myself by the end of it all. i was also starving, since it was 8 o'clock by the time i got there - which is also a bad idea in and of itself. hunger will cause you to buy the weirdest things when you're in a grocery store, like, i swear, i really do need some fried potato sticks (those things are good, though, starving or not) and mac and cheese-flavored chips. everything sounds pretty tasty when your stomach is making more noise than the squeaky wheel of your grocery cart. i just wish you could go to the store once and be done with it, forever. the return trips every couple of weeks just seem so unecessary...hello, i just did this 2 weeks ago!!! plus i know i'm going to have to go back sooner than i think because food in my house means we eat about an extra 2-3 times a day. since there is never food in our fridge, it's so shocking to look in there and see sustinance, that we usually end up eating our entire week's worth of food in about 4 days. which means i'm back to going to the store once a day until i can build up the energy to make my way around those aisles once again.