In Brevity: #Technology
It was Sunday morning. I was sitting on the sofa with my wife. She was trying to open an “eCard” and watching a spinning animation instead. I was trying to access a website and getting a spinning animation, too.
It wasn’t the internet connection. It was that technology is shitty.
How sad is this? I thought as we sat there clicking refresh umpteen times. This is the world that technology has promised.
Futuristic togetherness. Watching. Waiting. Together. Forever.
Portland Restaurant Waiting Guide
The Screen Door restaurant on Burnside Street, Portland, Oregon. I’ve stood in that line.
Next up, on Iron Skillet Chef America our celebrity judge feels he’s entitled to share his opinions. Alloy cuisine!!! –Ed.
As a proud “native Oregonian” I’ve lived in Portland, on and off, since 1981. I’ve been to a few places to eat along the way. From food carts to neighborhood pub n’ grubs to world class cuisine, Portland has a veritable plethora of long waiting lines guaranteed to satisfy most any connoisseur of the latest trendy thing.
Voodoo Doughnut? I’ve never been. The line has always been too damn long. Who has that kind of time for a doughnut with bacon on it? My trick? Go to two different places, grab a doughnut from a regular place and a side of bacon from a diner. Voila! I call that Voodoo without the wait. When you’re downtown you’ll people toting around with their little pink boxes of Voodoo doughnuts as if to say, “Look at me! I did the wait!” Pro Tip: That pink box goes really well with plaid.
Workplace Barflies
This image, just like this post, does not cut the mustard.
There’s really no point to this post. Leave. Now. -Ed.
Feed. It’s what’s for dinner. Mmm. That sounds good. I’ll have that! Yeah, I’m a hundred and six years old, and I still make my own bread! (Prideful braggart.)
Well, what do you want to eat? Mmm. Do you have biscuit with a little bit of mustard on it? Mmm.
I don’t know about your family but in my family we have this tradition. Any time we assemble to break break together (or biscuit or whatever) there’s one thing we’ll do for sure: Discuss and speculate about the next meal a comin’.
It’s pretty much the exact opposite of being mindful and appreciative. Someone went to a lot of effort and bother to put this food before us. First, they had to have a vision and plan the damn thing, and that may be the hardest part of all. Then they went to a grocery store and spent money on stuff and brought it home. Then, using recipes and their own skills, prepared, assembled and cooked it all together while we sat on our lazy asses.
Yeah, I think they deserve more appreciation than us talking about the next meal we plan to shove in our face holes.
That said, where do you wanna go? To eat? That’s the conversation my wife and I had last night.
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Intersections
Changing gears…
Today’s goal: Communicate what it’s like to drive in Portland, Oregon.
There are many transportation options for getting around in America’s “weirdest” city. You can walk. You can ride a bike. You can use various TriMet options like the MAX light rail, the bus, and street cars.
And, if you are some kind of gigantic douchebag, you can hop in your vehicle and drive.
It’s true. “Low car households” account for 60 percent of growth since 2005.
A low car household is considered one where there are more adults than cars. My wife and I are part of this elite group as we sold my car (named The Spaceship) when we hit town. There are two of us and only one car. We be greenies.
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Second!
I don’t ever want to be first. Ever. The Abyss is decidedly a second-world country.
The other day I was surfing WordPress’ Freshly Pressed section and found a post entitled “How Long Are You Willing to Stand in Line? Are You Willing to Walk Away?” This was one of those times a headline really grabbed me and reeled me in. I was born to walk away.
The article was well written and thought provoking. I recommend you go read it. I was moved to comment and this is what I said:
Interesting. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about quite a bit since moving to the big city from a small town. We heard about an ice cream shop that was supposed to be really good. It’s called Salt and Straw and features homemade ice cream including the super trendy salted caramel and habaneros and things like that. Not just salt. “Sea salt.” And not just caramel. “Caramel ribbons.” That’s proof that it’s good! 🙂
We drove over one night and found a line of fedora-wearing-folk (also trendy) that was literally a block long just to get to the front door.
That’s when I realized my SBIGE formula. (Second Best Is Good Enough.) The hypothesis is that the difference in quality between best and second best is more than offset by not having to wait in an interminable line. Overall, that represents a huge gain in EE (Enjoyment Efficiency).
Good post and grats on being FP! 🙂
–Tom B. Taker, July 17, 2013
Ever put a comment on someone else’s blog and wish you had saved it for your own blog? Like I said, this was a topic I’d been thinking about. I decided to have my cake and eat it, too. Just as long as there’s no line to get into the bakery.
In the future I’ll be producing many graphs and pie charts and coming up with the exact formulae to support my SBIGE hypothesis.
The moral of the story is this: First is for the birds. If you aim for second (or lower) then at least someone like me has a theoretical shot. Besides, anyone who really is first is probably hopped up on drugs. We call this armstronging. And who among us wants to pee in neon colors?
Aim lower.
Surprise! You are a guest blog!
Today I shot my wife an email and asked, simply, “How did it go?”
I try to be coy in emails that pass through “company-owned email servers.” Fuck ’em! Never include more information than necessary. Ever. I also refer to people by a single letter. It’s up to my wife to grok the meaning.
And that she did just fine.
Somehow she knew that I was asking about her trip to the DMV. I loved her reply so much I decided to make it a guest post. I plan to offer a reading of this at poet’s corner down at the beatnik place one night soon. Enjoy!
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Something good happened at the grocery store
It’s only 11 a.m. and I already did my good deed for the day. Wha???
Did I mention it’s cold where I work? I think in three or four posts I may have mentioned it’s cold enough in the offices here to hang sides of beef and invite Rocky in for a training session. So I was sitting here and realized I need to bring my core temperature up or I was going to die. I went to microwave a cup of hot water then, oh no – I’m out of tea bags!
I went and got permission to take a little break early (a dicey proposition but it worked out) and hit the grocery store that is about five blocks away.
I grabbed my tea bags and went to checkout. Naturally only one line was open and there were so many people waiting that the line essentially split in three directions. It was a dragon with three heads. I got a lot of skunk eye when I approached, like people were saying, “don’t even think about it, fucker.” Good times, as always!
I got at the end of what I thought was the last person and hunkered down for what would no doubt be a long, long wait with my lonely, solitary item.
Then it happened. They opened another lane and a woman ahead of me with a heaping full cart waved me in front. I declined, saying she was clearly there first. But she was so insistent about it. She really wanted me ahead of her and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. We went back and forth a few times to the point it was starting to feel weird and awkward. I finally gave in. It took me a moment to recognize what an odd feeling it was. Sure, I do things like that for other people all the time. But no one has ever done it for me.
What an odd sensation!
So when I was done, I had a couple bucks of change. I waved the checker over and whispered in his ear, please keep it and give it to the lady behind me and then I high-tailed it the hell out of Dodge. Yippie! Today’s good deed is a done dealio. 🙂
Shouts from the Abyss 
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