Food that tastes like other food

I got the iMac last week and it is spectacular. (More to come on that!) But, in the mean time...

I have this compulsion to purchase and consume food that tastes like other food.

Witness Thanksgiving 2005. I purchased the Jones Soda Thanksgiving Gift pack for consumption at my brother-in-law's in St. Louis Missouri. Stuffing and Brussell Sprouts have no business going anywhere near beverage production. It seems like common sense now, but the taste still lingers.

Last week, I had a coupon for free "Pizza Soup" from Campbell's, in a sippy cup no less. Again, you'd think common sense would prevail. If you want pizza, you make it. You don't drink it. Well, I drank it today. And it tastes like pizza. Nothing in a cup form should have any business tasting like pizza. It was like Sbarro put through liquefy on the blender.

So, in the spirit of food that tastes like other food, yet it goes horribly wrong, here is my favorite comedian (Lewis Black) pontificating on a Halloween favorite:

My New Computer

Okay... I just ordered it. My new computer...

I was never a Windows person. I've considered seven of the last ten years a Windows endurance test with a garbage system. WindowsXP is the first OS I've basically liked, since Workbench on the Amiga, so the last three years haven't been that bad, but it took an Intel-based Mac, that I can run AmigaOS, Windows95, Windows2000, and MacOS to convert me and all of my legacy stuff to my new home. I think with 2GB memory, a 250GB hard drive, and a nice spiffy 20" monitor, this will be a nice improvement over my existing setup.

But, if you know me well, you know the real reason for my upgrade. It's funny how each new computer I've purchased has basically been driven by Sid Meier's Civilization.

The first "real" computer I ever owned was an Amiga 2000 (2MB Mem, 40MB HD) with a 7Mhz 68000 processor running the show. (The Amiga was a multi-processor system, so it was quite a beast for its time!)

In 1993, after the release of Civilization, I upgraded to a Amiga 4000/030 (25Mhz 68030) with 4MB Mem and 120MB HD). That ran Civ beautifully! However, when CivII came out the Amiga was pretty much a dead platform. I needed Windows95, and a new computer to quench my Civ fix...

In 1995, I went to a HP Pentium 90, with 16MB memory and eventually upgraded to a 4GB hard drive. (Again I thought, how could I ever use that much space!) My old Amiga was that good that I was able to completely fund the P90 with the proceeds from the sale of my Amiga.

1998 breaks the Civ cycle... I got a PC as a graduation present. (A Micron Pentium II, 400Mhz. That had 64MB initially, eventually upgraded to 512MB. It started with a 9 & 4 GB hard drive, but ended up with 89GB.) That PC was a workhorse that I kept upgrading and keeping going until...

In 2003, CivIII was too much for the poor guy to handle, so in came the Dell Inspiron I'm writing this on. 2.4Ghz Pentium IV, 512MB Memory, 40GB. The first computer I really ever bought.

And now, in 2006, CivIV doesn't work too well. I've been struggling with using my wife's computer instead of my own to get my Civ fix...

Es ist ein riesiger Ohrwurm!

A giant earwig is grazing on crops in Germany, and it's headed southwest. Reports suggest that it may have escaped from somewhere in Eastern Europe...

If it stays on its current path, it may not notice Stuttgart and keep grazing on farmland out of the way of the general populace. One can only cross ones fingers and hope.

Don't believe me? Check it out.