Category: laffs

What is this strange ritualistic dance?

This morning, driving to work, I saw many of my fellow Californians doing something odd…strange…weird….and yet, it felt vaguely familiar.

Yes, I passed the residential roads of my neighborhood and saw my fellow citizens by their cars…behaving oddly.

Some were using credit cards.

Others slapping with a newspaper.

One using just his bare hands.

All looked out of place.

Seems we had some low temps last night and these poor Californians were having to actually scrape the frost off their windshields.

I was never so happy for being able to park my car in the garage!

Oh I have scraped many a windshield in my day. Oh yes indeed.

I *hate* it.

Living in mile high Albuquerque, it was even worse when it snowed. So you’d brush off the snow, and THEN have to tackle the frost. Usually in my nice work clothes and high heels…in the wet and the mud. Boo!

Here, I don’t even own an ice scraper. I threw it away somewhere around year 2 post move. Don’t need it.

Clearly, no one else around here owns one either. The guy slapping his window with a newspaper gave me the most giggles. Beating the ice into submission? That is SO not going to work.

Thankfully it was a light frost and really, just starting up the car and getting the defroster going for several minutes would probably clear it up.

But the perplexed looks and utter consternation. That was good comedy as I sailed by in my warm, garage parked Jeep.

The yawning generation gap

I remember as a kid, and especially a teenager, being really, really into music. I still am, but it was something most vital to me back then. An escape, a place to speak emotions and thoughts I didn’t have the words or maturity to say. It spoke to my soul.

And I remember my grandmother or mother or some adult making a comment about the music that mattered to me, and thinking, “they just don’t get it.”

I recall swearing to myself, SWEARING that I wouldn’t let there be that generation gap as I got older.

And I’ve fought it. Hard. I listen to current music. I do my best to stay up to date, so I’m at least conversant.

Yesterday, I was listening to my iPod on the way home from work, and the shuffle landed on a Rihanna song.

I like Rihanna. I like her a lot, actually. I think she’s not only stunningly beautiful, but she’s talented.

The song that came on is entitled “Unfaithful.”

In the song, the story goes that the woman is with a guy, and that it’s more than love, he is “The reason that the sky is blue.”

But gosh darn it all, she just can’t seem to stay true to him.

She cries out, “And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful/And it kills him inside/To know that I am happy with some other guy/I can see him dying.”

She then wraps up the chorus with, “I don’t wanna be…/A murderer.”

Ok, ok, this is all very emotional. Her cheating is “killing” him. He’s “dying inside” and she is the “murderer” for doing this to him.

And this is when the yawning chasm that is the generational gap became oh so apparent and the years of my experience in this thing called life kicked in.

I found myself, listening closely to the words, and then *yelling* at my stereo:

“THEN LEAVE HIM! IF THERE IS NO WAY YOU WON’T CHEAT AND IT PAINS YOU TO SEE HIM ‘DYING INSIDE’ THEN BE A GROWN UP AND WALK AWAY!!!”

Ahem.

Yeah.

Sure, I know that, “He’s a nice guy but I just can’t be true to him and so I did the mature thing and broke up with him so I could go sow my wild oats, knocking boots with everything that walks so that one day I can be a sad, bitter old hag wondering whatever happened to my life and why I never found a nice guy,” doesn’t really make for fun, emo deep pop songs.

And I’m fairly certain that the young twentysomethings that work for me would roll their eyes and think, “she just doesn’t get it.”

I think I just grew a new gray hair.

“Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!!”

That which is taboo

Yup, I’m in love again. Painful, lustful, forbidden love with a steely, powerful object.

My new employer is a lot behind the times when it comes to IT expertise, but they are hip as hip can be with the portable crowd.

When I started work, I was asked “Would you like a PC or a Mac?”

Why, the answer was simple. Mac, please!

In fact, that was one of the go-no go requirements of changing jobs. Having used nothing but a Mac for the past twelve years, I would say I was reluctant to slip back to the Windows based environment.

So, my previous employer provided Macs, but they were refurb and a step or two behind the technology curve.

Not so with fascinating new employer.

No, I got to work and was greeted with a sleek, sexy, top of the line MacBook Pro. The 15-inch variety, 2.53GHz. Four beefy GB of memory. A roomy 300GB hard drive.

Yum!

It has this utterly awe inspiring, new crystal clear glass screen, the cool backlit black keys, and the glass trackpad with NO button. Nope, it’s all in one. You can scroll on that bad boy, click anywhere and whoa does it work nice.

The unibody design is light and compact and feels solid and well built.

This thing beats the crap out of my last work machine, an old style MacBook pro, that poor dented aluminum thing.

Then yesterday, I had occasion to work from home, and as I sat on the couch, caressing the keys of this hot young MacBook Pro, I looked at my VERY old, personally owned 17″ PowerBook (it dates back to, I believe, 2004) and then at my new work speedster and yes…I fell in love.

I mentioned later to The Good Man that I was in love, and that I may have to save our pennies (a LOT of pennies) to buy one of these. This might ensure that my writing projects are no longer in peril of going to the great bit bucket in the sky when my PowerBook fails…and it will. Soon.

He couldn’t hear me. He was too busy caressing his own brand new MacBook Air (well, new to us…he bought it refurb on a smoking good deal).

The family that computes together (on the same platform) stays together.

We’ll call this: Still life with Macsexy Beast. Taken with my company provided 3G iPhone.

_________________________________

Oh, a small bit of irony. My beautiful, glorious MacBook Pro machine……well my IT organization got a hold of it first to set it up. They also turned it over and used an old fashioned electric engraver to scratch the company name and identifying information into the unibody metal case in a shaky script.

I believe, when the tip of the engraver touched the silky nickel aluminum blend unibody, somewhere in Infinite Loop, Steve Jobs shuddered.

Who engraves stuff anymore? My *dad* used to do that!?!!?!?

Infomercial Wow

Over the holiday break, my lazy hind-end had the opportunity to watch a LOT more television than I usually do.

And since I watch sans a TiVo or similar device, I am subjected to all manner of commercials. The retail onslaught has been hard and heavy this year.

But sometimes, there is a commercial that rises above the rest.

It began with the repeated ads for a product called ShamWow.

A very enthusiastic guy with a wireless microphone headset (mildly reminiscent of Madonna in the Vogue years, image here) and an east coast New York/New Jersey blend accent extolled the virtues of this fabulous new absorbent product.

Okay. Well, good. Very spongy.

But the commercial stood out more for the oddball guy making the pitch than for the product itself. I admit, it was, as they say in the marketing world, “sticky”. I can remember the product name off the top of my head, so it’s working.

Then a couple days ago, the ShamWow guy showed up in a new ad for something called a SlapChop. This product is a new and improved version of a good ol’ kitchen chopper.

Same guy, same accent, but he’s got a schtick working now. There he is, chopping away at a variety of items, telling us that the SlapChop is going to transform our lives.

Then he said something in the ad that caused The Good Man and I to stop all activity and look at each other.

“Did he really say that,” I asked, and TGM nodded.

What my new television pal Vince Offer said was:

“You’re going to love my nuts.”

He then showed how the SlapChop can decimate the nut of your choice to tiny bits.

Then later he also said, “Stop having a boring tuna.”

Well yeah! Who wants a boring tuna!

At first I was kind of put off by this Vince guy, but the more he shows up on my television screen (which is a LOT lately), the more I’m in this guy’s corner.

A quick Wikipedia glance makes for some good reading. (you’ve made it when you have a Wiki about you…right?)

I found a Slate article, and below is the best quote that sums up exactly what I wanted to say:

“Vince…conveys a street-smart persona—with his headset microphone, rat-a-tat phrasing and fuhgeddaboutit confidence—that’s intended to get the viewer thinking, “Hey, this guy’s sharp. He knows a good deal.” (It may also get us thinking, “Hey, this guy’s a douche. He needs a better haircut.” But that’s a secondary issue.)”

Can Vince become the next Billy Mays (of OxiClean and OrangeGlo fame)?

Time will tell.

For now, let me just say this. You’re gonna love his nuts.

Image from SlapChop website.