Musings Of A Nut

Thoughts on Food

2009-05-26T20:39:00.005-04:00

Honestly, as yummy as peanut butter is, it is strange. We eat it with jelly or jam, in the form of sandwiches. Some consume it with chocolate in the form of a Reese's peanut butter cup. I am among that group.
What I find strange about it is where did anyone get the idea for it? Who first came up with the idea to roast and grind peanuts until they made a smooth creamy substance?

Seems a lot of foods are like that. Milk, for example. Who first decided to drink the liquid that came out of a cow's utters?

And back to creamy stuff. Chocolate. Who decided to put together the stuff that goes into chocolate?

And of course, baked goods. Who came up with the idea to put the ingredients together, blend 'em until they're a goo, pour 'em into a pan, and heat it at 400-something degrees until it's this moist, spongy substance that tastes so yummy?

And of course, according to George Carlin, there's the matter of blue food...

Grr! Argh!

2009-03-20T12:27:00.002-04:00

Incidently, this has nothing to do with Mutant Enemy.
This is about something that really just burns my bacon. And it burns the bacon of several other "Avatar: The Last Airbender" fans.

It's about the casting of the upcoming live-action movie.

As much as I love the story of "Avatar," it's not worth my time and money if it's going to be completely white-washed, when the story itself and many of the characters are of Asian influence.

Tan =/= ethnicity, Paramount.

Read more about it, here: http://racebending.com/petition/index.php

And sign the petition, plz.

Gah. Why do all the good animated shows get screwed in one way or another?

More grocery store grievances

2009-03-12T10:59:00.004-04:00

I was reminded last night of a fairly recent incident during my shift at the grocery store.

Before I start, let me explain something.

Now, when a check-out lane is about to close, the light with the lane number is shut off (not to be confused with a blinking light, which means that the cashier needs help from the supervisor or the shift leader). We call it shutting down or closing.

The cashier for whom I'm bagging has shut his light off for the night, and a guy comes and tries to get in line to check out. This is not an unusual occurrence, really, people NEVER pay attention to what lanes are still open and what lanes are closing or closed. The cashier politely tells the man that he's closing and can't take any more customers... and the guy snaps, "I need this lane to be open, it's important!"

He ended up leaving without a fuss, but seriously, dude, PAY ATTENTION. If a lane is closed, it is closed. There's nothing we can do about that, you just have to go to a different lane, and it's usually not that far of a walk.

Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, WE'RE NOT FLIPPIN' MINDREADERS. We don't really know how important your purchase is to you, we just try to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as we can.

On the subject of people trying to go through closed lanes, there have been a LOT of people lately trying to go through express WHEN NO ONE IS EVEN THERE. What part of "Pay attention," is no one getting?

Sequels are usually a bad idea

2009-03-12T10:48:00.007-04:00

I read somewhere on TVTropes a rumour about the possibility of a sequel to a certain movie.

Now, as much as I like the movie in question, the idea of a sequel is just... No. A sequel to this movie is all kinds of wrong.

And if it's true, I will want to know whose idea it was for a sequel, because they will be receiving a LOT of hate mail from me. Well, it's either that or me hunting them down and smacking them upside the head with a hot frying pan and demanding to know WTF they were thinking.

What makes it worse is that the movie in question was originally a musical. A musical on freakin' Broadway. You just do NOT make sequels to musicals. You just don't.

(of course, it's even more of a problem when you consider the fact that the musical was based on a book written back in the early 1900s, AND the author never wrote a freakin' sequel)

Automated Phone Messages are Made of Fail

2009-03-05T10:58:00.005-05:00

Honestly, you'd think that if we have the technology for automated phone callers, we'd have the technology for leaving an automated message on an answering machine.

Earlier, while I was in the shower, a message was left on my family's answering machine, from Bank of America. The automated caller asked for the person called to select whether the call would be in English or Spanish... by pressing a number on the phone. After a moment, the automated caller says something to the effect of, "I'm sorry, I did not get your answer let me repeat the question." And does the whole English-or-Spanish spiel again. And again. And again.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..?

Does BoA lack the means of simply leaving a message, instead of automatically assuming the person they're calling actually picked up the phone? 'Cause I know most other businesses with automated callers that call here are actually capable of leaving a message instead of asking the same question twenty times as if there's actually a person giving input.

I don't think my parents even USE Bank of America, why the fuck are the getting calls from them?

I just plain hate automated callers to begin with. They show that businesses don't give a crap about their customers anymore, by forcing us to talk to a machine instead of a person.

Grocery Store rant

2009-02-26T11:03:00.004-05:00

I've been working part time at a grocery store for almost a year and a half, now, as a bagger and as a cart-pusher. Obviously, not a great job, but it's my first job, and first jobs are always crappy.

Anyway, this entry is dedicated to some things that really piss me off about working in this position.

The first pertains to the question that is standard to say for someone like me: "paper or plastic?" Normally, I get a fairly straightforward answer, e.g., "Paper, please," "Plastic's okay," or "I brought my own [cloth bags]." On some occasions, though, I have heard this: "I'd like bags."

What kind of "bags," I wonder?

Alright, technically, you can infer that they are referring to paper bags, but what are the plastic things, then? They sure as hell aren't boxes.

Often times, I'll just be a smartass and give them plastic instead. If you aren't going to specify the kind of bags you want, I'll make the decision for you.

The second is just one isolated event, that still frustrates me to this very day. It happened almost a year ago, but still.

A middle-aged lady (who shall from this moment forward be referred to as "The Old Hag" or "The Old Bag," both descriptions fit her quite well) came in one day and asked me to bag certain things a certain way. I started to do exactly as she asked, but the second I started, she snapped at me that I was doing it wrong, and told me to do it a different way. I started doing this, and she yelled at me, again. Rinse, and repeat about four more times, me getting increasingly annoyed at The Old Hag for changing what she wanted done and for assuming I can read her mind and know exactly when she's randomly decided to have it changed. Finally, The Old Bag says in an aggravated tone, "Forget it, I'll bag it myself."

All I could say, under my breath, of course, was "About fucking time."
As soon as she was gone, the cashier and I looked at each other, and said, "What a bitch."

I'm not a mind reader, I get enough crap during my shift, I don't need some fucking old-timer, holier-than-thou, nose-twenty-feet-in-the-air twat giving me shit for doing my job. If you're going to be that fucking picky about where everything goes, do it yourself right from the start.

Another thing that pisses me off, though is probably limited to just the region I live in. Every year, just before a snow-storm, however small, is predicted, everyone and their mom comes out and panic-shops, stocking up on groceries, getting back-up generators and space heaters, shit like that.

My query: WHY??!! You live in fucking New England, and you're panicking over what? Two inches of snow?! You can live through that without having to overstock the pantry! Twenty inches of snow, freezing rain, and HAIL is cause for concern; two inches of light, powdery stuff is nothing around here.

And complaining about the massive lines in these situations isn't going to help matters, either, if you're a customer.
This one person who was just doing normal shopping came in the other day in such a circumstance (Nut-house, pre-storm busy) and bitched at my mom, a cashier, during the day shifts, about it, and about how we "should be more prepared for something like this." Mom told him that the schedule is made long before the weather report, and they have no way of knowing that it will be like that. He then said that they ought to have the supervisors and other higher-ups on register to ease the lines. Mom's response: "All of them already are." "Well, then you should be calling people in to work." "Well, everyone that's available during the day is already here. And even if they weren't, we couldn't force them to come in; they might not be able to." It continued on like that until he was finally checked out.

We're not psychics, people, we're ordinary human beings. We try to get you through the check-out lines as quickly and painlessly as possible, but we can't do anything about the lines or about how many people are in the lines in those situations. And I think I speak for all New England-based grocery store associates when I say we'd appreciate it if you didn't all freak out every time snow is predicted. Once again, you live in New England, you should know what to expect from two inches of snow.

Final item of the day, (I might be lying, I'll probably think of something else in the subject area of grocery stores to complain about, later), carts and cart corrals.

I am so sick of people not putting the carts back in the cart corrals, where they belong.

It's damn frustrating when you hike all the way over to the far end of the across-the-fucking-plaza JCPenney's parking lot to retrieve the store carts. Seriously, they don't belong over there, don't leave them over there.

It's also aggravating when you find a cart with it's front wheels up on the dividers between the road and the parking lot. It's a pain in the ass to get it down. I actually came outside and saw a guy in the act of putting a cart in exactly that position.

But the thing that's the most annoying is when a cart is left in a parking space RIGHT NEXT TO THE FUCKING CART CORRAL. What, you can't walk the FIVE STEPS it takes to put the thing back?! What the hell?
(The guy in I mentioned just now committed both offenses)

Aargh.

People are idiots.

Mario is a Druggie.

2009-02-24T15:13:00.000-05:00

Maybe you play the old games out of nostalgia. Maybe you play the newer ones because you love the series that much. Maybe you play the games in general simply for the LOL-worthy meme "Our princess is in another castle."

But whatever your reason for playing these games, you have to admit, there is something incredibly trippy about the Super Mario Bros. series.

Think about it.

He gets his power from mushrooms. Without them he is doomed.

He gets attacked by strange-looking turtles and other reptiles walking on their hind legs.
And if you've played Super Mario World, there's also the occasional cactus with a cat face.

He also gets attacked by an evil sun at one point in one game.

The stages are almost always shifting in some weird way, such as the floor rising.

The outfits on some of the characters, such as Toad, look incredibly bizarre.

And he rides around on a FREAKIN' DINOSAUR.

If that doesn't define an acid trip I don't know what does.

First entry crap

2009-02-24T14:57:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah. Just testing.