The McRib

Wow, it's been 10 days already? That went by really quick. This entry will be pretty quick too, but not lacking in the "Awww" factor.

The other day, I was really lazy and hungry so I decided to go to McDonalds to get something to eat. As I pulled up to the order board, I noticed the familiar red, form pressed slab of pork (that's doubtful, but I'm being generous here), that is the McRib. I was grossed out, but just before that, I got a smile on my face.

Whenever I think about that disgusting sandwich, I'm reminded of my Grandpa. How such a brilliant mind could be swayed by subpar barbecue sauce and what is essentially the equivalent of particle board in the meat world is beyond me, but he loved him some McRib.

I think it's nice of McDonalds to keep the sandwich around just to remind me of my Grandpa when I least expect it. So does unadhered to dress codes, but that's for another time.

Amen Rowlf... Amen

I'm having a heck of a time finding an mp3 of this song to put on my Zune. This song has always resonated with me, and it's doing so now more than ever. I love this song.

Randomness

Back when I worked for Amazon.com, I asked one of my buddies from my training class and group to give me a word, any word, and I'd make a story out of it. She e-mailed me back one word: Randomness. From that one word spawned my longest running and most often returned to story of one Arthur Barker dealing with a world filled with absolutely random events. We're talking crazy stuff here. Candy raining from the skies, lawns turned into large cities (scaled down of course), a lifeguard hovering over the Pacific ocean enforcing adult swim hours, and pretty much anything you can imagine.

There's a story proper of course, but to appease my friend Brandi I'll write little snippets that take place in the world of Randomness, but have no effect on the story as a whole. They're not canon I guess you can say. Anyway, there are some I'm quite proud of and I think Brandi's exclusivity deal has gone long enough, so I'm posting some of my favorites here.

Waking Up
Arthur turned over in his sleep, but happened to slip one eye part way open just in time to see his alarm clock (suddenly with legs) doing stretches. Both eyes popped open despite being halfway asleep.
"What are you doing?"
"It's 5AM, time for my morning run."
"Right. How silly of me... wait, I need to be up in two hours!"
"Can't say I'll be back by then, so sorry."

With that the alarm clock took off running, leaving Arthur behind in his bed.

"Little bastard's lucky my cell phone has an alarm." Arthur reached to where his cell phone was on the window sill, and saw it taking provocative pictures of itself. "Screw it, I'll get another job."

Much Too Loud
For Arthur, rubbing his temples had long been a necessity if he didn't want his head to explode. He had done it so long however, that now that he had a plain old headache, it just wasn't working. Even worse, his headache seemed to be directly tied to the volume... of everything.

Arthur never wanted to hear what it sounded like when a grasshopper was eating a smaller, less fortunate bug, but there it was (outside on his porch), snacking away. It didn't help that the smaller bug was still alive and screaming it's little insect scream that sounded as if a horrific murder was taking place in the next room.

"I will blow my brains out if this keeps going." The buggy scream got louder. "Finish getting eaten already!"
"Screw you, mammal! AAAAH-" The screaming ended abruptly.
"Thank God. Now where did that aspirin bottle go-"
"AHH! Now I'M getting eaten by a grasshopper!"
"Oh, come on!"

Arthur flung open his sliding glass door, located the piggish grasshopper and stomped on it as hard as he could. A choice he immediately regretted as the resounding STOMP sound practically bombed his eardrum out of existence. Literally. Thankfully, it immediately grew back, but it also kept ringing.

"Where the hell is the aspirin?"
"You killed me! You jerk!"
"AAAHH!!!" Arthur didn't care anymore, he stomped the grasshopper until it was only a greyish green spot on the concrete of his porch.

Note: The volume reset in his head when his seventh set of eardrums broke and the eighth set was normal.

Singularity
Arthur paused, his attention being dragged inexplicably to the right where he saw a small tear in the air. He walked around it once, seeing no change in its shape whatsoever. He reached out his index finger gingerly, as if he was five again and suddenly found a scab to pick at.

“Don’t pick at that!” A shrieking voice howled. Unfortunately, the voice made Arthur jump and poke his finger through the tear.
“Hmm, it feels a bit… Velcro-y… AAH!” The tear gripped onto his finger and pulled it in up to the second knuckle.
“I told you not to-“
“I wasn’t gonna pick at it!”
“Well don’t poke at it either.”
“Does it look like that matters now!?”
“Well I don’t know. I’m just here to tell people not to touch it.”
“Well, what is it?”
“That’s a very good question. Ooh!” The tear sucked Arthur’s finger all the way in, leaving him in a very awkward position. “Well, I’m going to go now. Good luck.”
“Wait! Hello?” Arthur looked around in futility as his finger started to go numb. “I hate disembodied voices.”

Now, when I eventually become a famous and successful writer, you can thank Brandi for giving me one of my cornerstone titles :)

Chances are you won't find these funny...

A deadly standoff between a Soviet KGB agent and an American spy!
"Daspitanya, comrade."
"Eww, don't spit on me!"
"That's, that's not what that-"
"I know that's not what it means, but you spit on me dude. Jeez, no wonder Soviet and American relations are in the crapper, you guys can't aspirate your P's!"

A lovely conversation with Dan McCafferty (lead singer of Nazareth... yes, I know they just did a cover)
"Love is like a flame that burns when it's hot."
"Wow. You have a lot of similes for love don't you?"
"Love is like a toaster pastry that burns when it's hot."
"That get progressively worse, apparently."
"Love is like a pogo stick when you can't hop."
"My point exactly."
"Love is like evidence planted by a cop."
"Okay, I'm leaving now.
"Love is like a flu-"
"I am walking away!"

We're not quite sure what it was the cup loved, but it's certainly dead.
























(But my friends and I think they're hilarious :)

To hobo, or not hobo

Whenever it's been a few days since I last shaved, I always consider growing a beard. Then of course I remember how my goatees would itch sometimes, and I don't like the idea of that itching being all over my face.

So all of your collective gasps and screaming "NO!" at your computer screen (Yes, KaTrina. I can hear you from here.) can stop. I'm not growing a beard.

These are just the things that go through my head.

Oops

I did actually write an entry titled Creative Dish Stacking Sub-Fields, I just accidentally posted it before I'd written anything. The real thing has been up for over a day now but not many people seem to have read it not that it's up. So, if you thought it wasn't there, it is. You can read it now.

Well, go on then.

Creative Dish Stacking Sub Fields

In my previous post I mentioned that there were four sub-fields in Creative Dish Stacking... so far.

There are now FIVE sub-fields. I know, exciting right? Saturday, my boss Brandon built a structure out of dirty dishes with the intent of moving them from one place to another: thus the fifth sub-field 'Utilitarian' was created. But what of the other four? Oh don't worry, we'll be getting to a break down of each one riiiiiiiight... now!

Utilitarian
As the name implies, this sub-field contains all dish structures that are made for purpose over style. There isn't really anything special about this category, but it can produce somewhat impressive structures. They're incredibly unlikely to fall or fail, look very bland, and serve a purpose. There is potential to make Utilitarian structures more aesthetically pleasing, but going too far in that direction can invalidate this label. Which leads us into the next and arguably most important sub-field...

Applied Artistic
This is the sub-field that pretty much all of the structures I posted earlier fit under. To be honest, this was all Creative Dish Stacking was before the introduction of separate sub-fields. The goal of Applied Artistic is to make a structure that serves absolutely no purpose but to make something cool to look at and wonder how it was even put together. I'm considering making Applied Artistic and Utilitarian their own fields, and moving the next three sub-fields under Applied Artistic, but I'm not quite sure on that. I really enjoy having this kind of decision making power.

Potentially Disastrous
This sub-field shares some similarities with Applied Artistic, but what sets it apart is the potential for the structure's catastrophic failure. Structures with smaller bases, weak points for aesthetic/functional purposes, and containing some unproven/flimsy building materials fall into this category. This is where you'll find most amateur structures and some professional structures made out of sheer vanity that are doomed to fail.

Daredevil
This is where accomplished creative dish stackers go to push the boundaries of creative dish stacking. It takes some of the key elements of the Potentially Disastrous and Applied Artistic sub-fields and makes incredible structures in incredibly stupid places. The difference between this and Potentially Disastrous, is that the stacker is well aware of the likelihood of failure. Not only that, they'll put the structure in a place where it's more likely to be knocked over or just fall apart.

Needlessly Destructive
This is pretty much the red headed step child of Creative Dish Stacking sub-fields. No offense to any red headed step children out there, but this is where all of the truly boneheaded 'structures' go. This is where you find a tall pile of plates of varying sizes stacked together on top of a small bowl on the edge of the dishpit counter. Idiots thrive in the Needlessly Destructive sub-field and they don't even know it.

Note: I totally made all of this up. Pretty cool, yeah?

Fun At Work: Building Dish Structures

Working as a dishwasher in a kitchen can be very boring. If there aren't any events going on and the restaurant is dead then there really isn't much to do if all the dishes are done, the garbages are taken out and the floors are swept and mopped.

It can also get really irritating to come into work and find piles of ill-arranged dishes taking up way too much space. The worst of these is finding a tower of plates stacked precariously on top of smaller plates, bowls, cups or creamers. I've written on here before that is taking these monstrosities down is akin to dismantling a nuclear bomb.

I started pointing these out to my friends Brandon and Mike and we all had a laugh at the laziness and stupidity that went into making them. So naturally, we took it as a challenge and started making our own beautiful dish structures.

Behold!

I call this one Silver Boxy.

It's made up of different
sized hotel pans, a metal
tong and a plate cover.

I built the main structure
and placed the metal
tong on top as a sort of
antenna. Otherwise the
structure would be some-
what bland.

When I showed it to
Brandon he completed it
by putting the plate cover
on top.



This one is all me however,
and I call it Monolith.

As you can see, it's made
of a whole lot of plate
covers and one load
bearing metal milkshake
cup.

I couldn't leave it up very
long because even though
it was structurally sound,
I didn't want to imagine
the kind of sound it would
have made if it had
fallen over.

It's simple and non-func-
tional :)


This one was made last
night and it caught me by
surprise.

I was washing plates from
a banquet when suddenly
I saw this standing there.

I had been the only one in
the kitchen for at least five
minutes, and I hadn't left
the dishpit in those five
minutes.

So, it was a stealth build.
A very impressive one at
that.

It's composed of a creamer,
a dinner plate, plastic tongs, some weird hourglass looking metal thing, a bowl, and an
empty coffee creamer cup. The bowl and the cup were added afterward, but they really
completed the piece. I dubbed it Future Modern.

And now, what I consider to be my ultimate creation in the field of creative dish stacking (though it really belongs in the sub-field of applied artistic dish stacking (there are four sub-fields so far)):

The Bloom
It consists of a caraffe, a round, dinner plates, small bowls, small metal bowls, and as is usually present in most creations, a plate cover.

It started out simple enough and with experimentation and balance it eventually morphed into what you see before you.

I showed it off to everybody in the kitchen and they all loved it.

What's funny is Mike tried to knock it over by throwing a wet towel at it.

Emphasis on the 'tried.'

No matter how many times he threw the towel he would always miss. I declared that the awesomeness of the structure had resulted in the creation of a force field. The picture really doesn't convey how cool this thing was. I'm just glad I got a picture of it before I had to take it down.

I'm really proud of the creations my friends and I come up with at work. We have some ideas in mind for future projects, such as building a bridge across the dishpit or just making something so ridiculously huge that if it were to fall over... well, it's best not to jinx it.

Pumpkin Carving Contest Results

I won.

Well, technically my pumpkin won.

The person doing the judging declared it the winner, but for some reason he decided to be fair and award every department a pizza party.

I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. Horseshit even! I seriously doubt that would be the case if catering or the front desk had won.

But the kitchen won. Not only that, it wasn't even carved by somebody who uses knives every day. It was carved by the dishwasher!

So, essentially, it was a moral victory. Which is about as close to losing as you can get while still calling it a win.

However, my boss and I decided that my pumpkin was just so awesome that it broke the contest and won every department a pizza party. I think I'll go with that one.