What Were They Thinking? — My Snacks Are Better Than Yours!

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

The mind boggles.  Who the Hell tested marketed the name for these?

If you don’t know the meaning of the word “jingoism”, start reading.

Something new for SOSAD (Strangely Orange Snack Appreciation Day / June 21), I guess.  But I don’t think I could stomach (ha!) paying for something with this sort of a name.

What Were They Thinking? — Mmm, Crunchy!

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Could there be a worse name for a brand of cereal?

(Maybe something implying you are eating body parts or insects, I guess.   “Mmm, more Choco Slugs, please!  Just add milk and they make their own slime!”)

Bait & Switch: Allergy Meds

Here are the bottles of generic Zyrtec allergy pills at my local Safeway pharmacy.

Notice that the packaging is identical except for a red oval and the small print about the number of pills — identical bottle, identical package design.  (In fact, I’ve seen the display several times and never noticed the red oval until now.)  The only difference is the number of pills — 45 vs. 120 — and the $2 difference in the price.  What an ugly bait &s; switch.  (Which I fell for the last time I bought a refill.  45 pills lasts me less than a month.  The pills hold back my allergies for about 6 hours, not 24.)

(What does that tell you about how overpriced the 45 pill option is, when they can almost triple the number of pills while increasing the price less than 10%?  Makes me wish for a 300 pill option, would probably only cost $30.)

(I’m too dumb to go to Costco or Amazon, I guess.  365 pills for $22.  Sigh.)

Things Not To Do While Traveling (#1 in a series)

When traveling on modern airplanes, don't watch episodes of the TV show Pan Am.

(Pan Am glamorizes old school plane travel.  Current travel pales in comparison.)

 

No Means No, Yes? Maybe…

Following up on this post about country songs that annoy the fuck out of me, we have the Lori Morgan hit from 1993 (her biggest hit ever, according to Wikipedia), “What Part of No”.  The song starts with her telling some guy she’s there to unwind, that she’s not interested in a dance or in romance, but then it hits the second verse with these lyrics:

I appreciate the drink, and the rose was nice of you
I don’t mean to be so mean
But I don’t think I’m getting through
I don’t need company, no, I don’t wanna dance
So what part of “No” don’t you understand

While I don’t have sympathy for guys who can’t take a hint (especially with the implied threat of stalking and rape embedded in the song), you took the drink he bought you and you accepted the rose he gave you.  Is it any wonder the guy thinks he has a shot with you?  What part of “No” don’t you understand?
 

This Is Why I Use FlashBlock

I wrote in detail about the sins of Flash in a previous post.

You can learn more about the FlashBlock extension here.

Today, I chanced upon the website for The Inn at False Creek hotel in Vancouver, BC.  Check out the three pics below.

The first is how the website appears with FlashBlock on, with seven instances of Flash (or other blocked items) showing.  Wow, that's a lot.  What sorts of nifty stuff could they be putting on this page?

The second is how it looks with the Flash items loaded.  Wow, that is nifty! Text! They are using it to load up styled text, with an overhead for loading and launching whatever technology seven times on the page.  They could have embedded graphics with alt text, or other mechanisms, but they chose this.

And for comparison the third image is how the page looks on an iPad.  Wow is that bad.  The only thing I really regret about Apple’s refusal to deal with Flash on the iPad is things like this which show lousy programming practices in action.

 

The Anti-Jackson

I had an organization board meeting on Wednesday night, and in the dark, my right-hand riding glove went AWOL and we couldn’t find it after the meeting.  So I had to ride the short bit home with just my left glove.  No big deal.

On Thursday, I went back by the meeting location and saw that someone had found my glove and set it on a brick retaining wall.  Of course, it had rained over night, so the glove was wet and maybe dirty from wherever it had fallen the night before.  So getting home, I added it to a load of laundry, and since I was doing such, added my super lightweight secondary gloves and my Turtle Fur neck wrap; they could all use an occasional wash.

Thursday night came and a committee meeting… and oh crud, all three gloves and the neck wrap was in the washing machine, not yet in the dryer.  Well, in a pinch, get a garden glove!

But, um…

• Somewhere along the line, I lost one glove from each of two pairs of garden gloves, and it was the right-hand glove missing.
• The more recent pair of garden gloves, when I got them back from the store, they had bound two matching gloves into the package instead of a pair… two left-hand gloves!

So now I had my choice of five different gloves to wear to ride to the meeting, all of them left-hand gloves.  As noted, I felt like an anti-Michael Jackson: white guy with one black glove on the opposite hand.
 

Dream Journal: January 22, 2012

Okay, Moses, interpret this sucker!

I took off on my hang glider from the Marin headlands, across the water, parallel to the Golden Gate Bridge.  As I sailed across the water, I saw thrashing in the water below, a shark feeding frenzy.  At first I thought they were megalodons, but then I realized that they were black on top and white on the bottom, black scorpion sharks.

After I landed in the Presidio, I finished off my pint glass of beer and set it on the grass.  Looking into the water of the bay near the shore, I saw a severed arm moving along the bottom, almost like it was crawling by its fingers.  The arm had been in the water a long time; I could tell by what was either algae on it or bits of flesh peeling off.

I went and got the park police, but the arm was gone when we got back.  They quizzed me at length about it, especially interested in what type of sleeve was on the arm.  (It had a dark band at the wrist, so I thought maybe it was a sailor shirt.)  They sent divers into the bay looking for it, but they couldn’t find it.  But they did find the severed head of an albino alligator, which they showed me on a turkey platter, sitting on top of a ring of lettuce greens.

Megalodons are giant prehistoric sharks, long extinct.  There is no such thing as a “black scorpion shark”.

I guess I slept in a weird position with my arm crooked up, and it fell (ahem) asleep.
 

Limerick

There was a drag queen named Melinda
Whose favorite singer was Carlisle (Belinda)
But as a Go Go
She did a no no
And sang something from the Pretendas