You know what phrase inexplicably pisses me off? To take something “to the next level.” What the hell does it even mean? It might refer to a relationship. Or business negotiations. Or anything, really. Can’t we find more precise and accurate ways of expressing things that are supposedly being taken to the next level? If a man and woman take their relationship “to the next level,” does that mean sex? Moving in together? Making it Facebook official? Getting engaged? (Which order are those things supposed to come in, anyway?) Why not just directly state which of those items are involved?
One problem I have with “next level” is the fact that it implies that progress in whatever field is being discussed is quantized and split into discrete steps. This may very well be the case in certain circumstances, but in many, it’s nonsense.
So please, don’t ever use this phrase again.
Let’s say you’re eating a bag of M&M’s. You’ve munched your way through almost the entire bag, and you figure that there are probably one or two more in the bag, tucked away in one of the bottom corners, ready to give you one last bite of chocolatey goodness. You turn the bag upside down to get at the last candies, only to find that you were wrong. There are no more M&M’s in the bag. When you know you’re eating the last M&M in the bag, you take the time to savor it. But when you don’t realize you’re eating the last one, you gluttonously chomp away without an appropriate regard for the sweet deliciousness that is milk chocolate. And once you realize your mistake, you feel as though you’ve squandered a wonderful opportunity to enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures.
Then you die a little on the inside.
You stop in for a meal at a restaurant. You’re thirsty. The waitress asks for your drink order.
“I’ll have a Coke.”
“Is Pepsi okay?”
GAH! Well, it’s okay. I don’t really even dislike Pepsi. If I open up the fridge and see a Pepsi, I don’t mind drinking it. But wanting a Coke and having to settle for a Pepsi is an incredibly frustrating feeling. Some may say that the drinks don’t taste all that different. Trust me, they do. And when I’m really, really thirsty, a fountain Coke is quite possibly the best thing in the world. But to seek that thirst-quenching goodness and then have it ripped away from you by a restaurant’s exclusive contract with Pepsi can be a terrible, terrible feeling.
I admit I don’t know what the economic factors are involved in whether a restaurant decides to serve Coke or Pepsi. Obviously, some national chains have deals with one beverage company or the other. And I’m guessing Pepsi must be cheaper because why the hell would anyone choose Pepsi if it weren’t cheaper? I’ll admit that most people probably don’t scratch a restaurant off their list just because it serves Pepsi—I don’t—but sometimes I really find myself wondering why a restaurant skips out on Coke to serve Pepsi.
And no Coke means no Barq’s Root Beer either. I love Barq’s with a roast beef po-boy or fried shrimp or some other New Orleans-style food—given the regional connection, it just feels right. And Barq’s is so much different from other root beers that there’s really no comparison. I’m not saying that other kinds of root beer are worse; but nothing is really all that much like Barq’s.
So restaurant owners, I realize you’ve got a bottom line to consider, but please give us Coke, okay?
The homeless guy at I-10 and Elysian Fields. The can-shaking sports teams at Carrollton and Claiborne. The Salvation Army bell-ringers. Your alma mater calling and asking for a donation. Your 8-year-son who wants a snowball. What do they have in common? They’re all people asking for money. Maybe you give them money, maybe you don’t, but surely, it’s annoying. (Okay, if you have an 8-year-old son, his asking for snowball money would probably be one of the least annoying things he does. I’m just guessing here, but I imagine I was pretty damn annoying at 8.)
But people need money. It makes the world go round. And in some cases, the best way to get money is to ask for it. The homeless guy doesn’t have a job but needs money for beer.* Universities have billion dollar endowments but still need more. And so on. For example, bloggers who can’t make any money with Internet advertising sometimes resort to begging for money. It’s annoying, and you probably would never give any money to them. But I figured hey, I’ll put a little “Donate” button in the sidebar and see what happens. Do I need the money? No—I’m an unemployed Latin teacher, but I’m in no danger of going broke anytime soon. Am I going to stop blogging? No. Do I have more money than the starving college students who make up most of my readership? Probably. To avoid being annoying, I’m only going to bring this up once, and I won’t mention it again. If you feel that you have a surplus of money and would like to direct some to me in appreciation of my brilliant blogging, that’d be great. Or just buy me a drink next time you see. Or let me crash on your couch during my month-long vacation binge.** Continue reading ‘people who beg for money’
Not too long ago I complained about TV commercials. What form of advertising am I going to complain about today? Internet advertising. Except this time I’m not just the embittered consumer sick of ads ruining his television-viewing experience. This time I’m also the greedy capitalist looking for a few dollars.
When I first moved this blog from wordpress.com to its own domain, I thought, hey, there’s a chance I could make some money on this. Maybe not a lot of money, but hopefully enough to cover the $20 a year I pay for the domain name. (Fortunately, the hosting is free; thanks again to Rob Heath for the help.) And who knows, maybe it’ll be like the lottery, except with a lot more work involved.
But that’s not how it works. The Internet is made for niches. Find a niche, cover it in detail: obsessively catalog everything about your favorite TV show or sports team or video game. Then watch the search engines direct the traffic to you. I get a fair amount of search traffic (compared to what I get from direct traffic and links from facebook, twitter, and other blogs), but it’s an interesting, very scattered mix. Continue reading ‘internet advertising’
On Friday I was walking down the sidewalk of Freret Street in shoes that were already completely soaked thanks to walking through the puddles. That’s bad enough. Then, as I’m on the sidewalk minding my own business, some asshole driving 30 mph makes no effort to avoid the puddles on the side of the road and splashes me with water. I ran down the street shouting profanities and making obscene gestures at the car, but to no avail. To you, asshole driver, I say: what the fuck is your problem? First of all, you shouldn’t have been driving that fast in the rain. Second of all, there was no oncoming traffic, so you could have moved to the middle of the street to avoid the puddle. Third, you could have slowed down to avoid splashing so much water around. Fourth, you could have at least stopped to apologize. I’d have been upset, true, but I’d have calmed down to accept an apology if you were sincere about it—I’m sure it’s possible that I might do something like that not realizing how big a splash was likely to be caused. And if I did that and realized what I’d done, I’d feel pretty bad about it and would hope that an apology would be accepted. But you were completely oblivious, you asshole. Or perhaps you’re not an asshole, you’re just an idiot. Either way, you suck.
P.S. Thanks to the motorcyclist who shook his head in commiseration as he passed by. It almost makes me reconsider the post I made about motorcyclists.
The other day I was driving through the parking lot of a strip mall on my way to a Best Buy to pick up a mouse to replace the piece of crap excuse for a mouse that came with my new iMac. My driving task was made considerably more difficult by the vast number of speed bumps. Apparently we the drivers of the industrialized world are too stupid to moderate our speeds when driving in a dangerous, pedestrian-packed situation such as a parking lot. (Well, millions of people are stupid, horrendous drivers who should never be trusted, but maybe we should deal with the root problem—bad drivers—instead of employing the band-aid solution that is the speed bump.) Sure, the speed limit sign says “10″ and I’m probably doing 20, but I’ve never hit any pedestrians. (Knock on wood.) And why should my car’s suspension have to suffer? It deals with enough potholes (and roads buckling in the heat, too) as it is.
And on a larger scale, they create noise (cars banging over them) and waste gas (people slamming the brakes and then gunning it). They’re just a pain in the ass, and we should spend more time teaching people to be responsible drivers and less time putting in stupid speed bumps that are a pain in everyone’s ass.
P.S. As an interesting aside, in Britain they call speed bumps “sleeping policeman.” Gotta love the way with words they have across the pond.
I’ve been a Mac fanboy ever since we had a Performa 500-something of other in one of the GT classrooms at my elementary. I just bought my third Mac (not counting the one my family had when I was younger). And sure, they’re expensive, but the money is worth the smug sense of satisfaction and superiority that comes with being a Mac user. (And if there’s one thing I love in life, it’s anything that gives me a smug sense of superiority.) But I have a healthy distaste for their habit of producing crappy mice.
Up until 2005 Apple insisted on shipping single button mice with their computers. Sure, OS X (released on 2001) could support a multi-button mouse, but you wouldn’t get one with your computer. The day after I bought a Powerbook G4 back in 2003, I headed to CompUSA for a mouse. Now, I wouldn’t expect a laptop to come with a mouse, but I should point out that the trackpad had only one button. So you’d have to control-click to right-click.
It really baffles me why Apple would adopt that policy for years and years in the face of innovation from everyone else. The Performa 6116CD that my family bought when I was eight or so had a single-button mouse, and I believe multi-button mice were well established on PCs at the time. I just don’t get it. Continue reading ‘apple’s crappy mice’
Now, a good Catholic boy like me should have no objection to gambling. And for the most part, I don’t. (I mean, I do think casinos are pretty sleazy with the way they block any natural light and prey on old people, but it’s a free country, right?) After all, I grew up playing turkey bingo in the church gym and cherry bells at the church fair. But what If I told you that there’s a form of gambling where the house edge (which is usually a couple of percent at most if you’re at a casino) is 67.5%? You’d think it was an outrage, wouldn’t you? You’d never want to play a game like that, would you? But when you buy a Powerball ticket, that’s exactly what you’re doing.* It always baffles me when I hear about co-workers who get together and buy a bunch of tickets every week in the hopes that they’ll hit the big one. What the hell are they thinking? Obviously, they’re not very good at math.
Now, my point here is not to criticize the guy who goes into the convenience store maybe once or twice a year when the Powerball jackpot is $250 million. If you spend $2 a year on the lottery, you may be losing money—the odds are against you in virtually any** situation—but you’re never going to miss $2 a year. On the other hand, those millions of dollars would be really nice to have if you do luck out. SInce losing $2 a year is essentially equivalent to nothing, but winning a huge amount of money (even at odds of almost 200 million to 1) is really, really awesome, it’s not a bad deal (from a life perspective, not a strict financial perspective) if you play on very rare occasions. My point here is to criticize the people who spend $5 or $10 or $20 or more a week, every week, in the hopes of winning the big prize. Continue reading ‘state lotteries’
Television is a business. I get that. But I’m sick of commercials. I’m especially frustrated by commercials now that I have a DVR, and now that I watch so many of my favorite shows online with limited or no commercial interruption—after that, watching regular TV that you can’t fast forward through is immensely frustrating.
It’s pretty ridiculous how much of an average TV show is advertising. According to Wikipedia, commercials used to take up nine minutes of an hour-long program in the 1960s. Now they take up roughly eighteen minutes an hour. That’s almost a third of the show. Since modern TV shows are written to fit into the contours of commercial breaks, watching them isn’t usually too annoying; sure, it’s nicer to fast-forward through the commercials if you can, but I can stomach sitting through the commercials. What annoys the crap out of me is having to watch a sporting event or movie that gets interrupted every ten minutes for a commercial. Many movies feel completely disjointed when they’re edited and cut up for television. And besides, I have an extremely short attention span, so I usually change the channel, watch something else until a commercial comes on, then flip back to the movie to find I’ve missed some major plot point. Whoops. I love watching a movie on TCM or Fox Movie Channel or HBO or whatever, where I get to see the whole thing straight through. But AMC or some other commercial-laden network? Forget it. Continue reading ‘tv commercials’