Conspiracy Theory

The hardest part of forming a conspiracy theory, as it turns out, it identifying motive.  But I am certain there is something being Ruffles hoarding, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.

It’s a 2-part question, really – neither of which is listed on the Frito-Lay page as one of the “most common questions.” 

1 – why aren’t plain original Ruffles in the vending machine?

2 – why aren’t they included in the lunch-box package?

After those 2, the questions involve Masonry, the Opus Dei, and other general rantings from my tin hat.  But here’s what I want you to know, Frito-Lay:  I am much more likely to buy a big bag of 12 individually bagged Ruffles than I am the $3.99 family size back.  But you won’t make it.  whyyyyyy?  

“With a lot of people, it’s Ruffles or nothing.”  I am not one of those people.  But I do prefer it to other chips, and leaps-and-bounds over heinous Ruffles flavors like Molten Buffalo Wing, or Salt & Vinegar, or that weird Canadian flavor “All-Dressed.”  I haven’t tried any of those, but I come from a time when we invented dip specifically because our food had no flava.

Vending machine stockers (not stalkers – that’s me, apparently) prefer the Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles in the rack.  This is just Kraft Dinner powder sprinkled over the original.  The variety pack will sometimes have (1) Ruffles bag just to give you something to make a teachable sibling rivalry moment out of.  And you will never find a full bag of only Ruffles 1 oz’rs.  EXCEPT.. it seems… at Sam’s.

aHA!  How could I have left the Walton family out of my list of conspirators?!? 

Two more searches later, and I can report that you can also score the box of 50 through Amazon, and (oddly) Sears.  Not Walmart.  They seem to be specializing in the other flavors.  See them all in one view here.  It’s mind boggling.

I also enjoyed knowing that Ruffles have an outstanding No Taboos rating, which really out to be a thing. 

Dream a little dream of mii

 

You never really see yourself until you see yourself in a friend’s Wii Plaza

You never really see your friends until you watch them make your Mii (which really ought to be your Yuu).  But let’s get past it.

In a short span of time, I got to witness this in 2 very different households, and was surprised to discover how similar this process could be in both – and how identically creepy it made me feel.

I should add that in one of these households, I was being re-added, after having been removed.  re… MOVED.  This is like coming off the Christmas card list, surely, since you don’t need to actually be playing for your Mii to show up driving the speed boat or cheering on the beach Frisbee. (registered trademark of the Wham-o company).  You are part of the action!  So be removed from the Wii plaza is to no longer c-o-u-n-t.  It might have hurt my feelings if I had known it was going on.

One’s plaza can also include “celebrity Miis,” representations of stars, sports figures, fictional characters with whom your Mii can partner or compete.  People with a lot of Internet time post instructions for how to make them.  They are surprisingly accurate, considering the limited number of variables you have at your control. 

(Jodii)

Mii creation requires the use of the remote, and any home has a remote holder and a not-the-remote holder.  But just like when watching TV, the not-the-remote holder is much more vocal about their wishes than the one who holds it.  (They would have to be.)  Imagine this as Vermeer’s wife:  “Less BLUE!  And hurry up.”  They will shout instructions that are mostly unheeded by the portraitist.  You will just sit there and watch your closest friends argue over your caricature.

We have covered in this space before how you can put glasses on any cartoon and make it look like me.  Where it goes from there depends on your portraitist.  But I can tell you based on my 2 Mii-sessions in a week, that this is what you can expect:

A lot of back-and-forth staring at you.  When they glance back at you, you will do a goofy smile.  Or you will jut your chin out as if it makes you somehow more 3-D.

Discussion of your eye-color.  You will discover that your friends do not know what color your eyes are, and neither do you (even the 2nd time you are asked).  In any case, Wii only has a few options, like Mendel’s chart.

Height is subjective.  Miis are essentially bobble-head dolls.  You would have to make one the size of the TV screen for the head to make sense.  People seem to like their plaza in a pleasing symmetrical array, so expect to be unrealistically the same size as other people you know – in this digital Noah’s Ark, Tom Cruise finally gets to stand tall beside Nicole Kidman.  

Your hands are little balls.  That’s not your hosts’ fault.  It’s just weird.

Body “morphia” is also in the hands of the designer.  They will not look at you as they make this choice, so you can let out your breath.

Facial hair is funny.  They will put some on you even though you are a girl. 

“whatever.”  They will ask what color you want to wear.  They all look like Up with People costumes.  Say any color.  The artist will indulge your choice for a second, say “whatever” and choose something else.

You will still suck at Wii.

Yes, I want to be writing

Yes, I have a list of topics I have been thinking about (LISTS!).  It's right over there.  I can only reach this far.

It is Friday and I have the day off today.  You would think it would be a grand opportunity to catch up on the list -- on this the first cold day of the season (too early by a mile) and the house (fairly) clean for a moment -- not because of anything I've done, but because I haven't done anything.  Including hand up the unmentionables drying on the landing.

The neighbor just came by, all full of home-owner zeal about putting gutters on the back roof to stop the cascading that is growing mushrooms on her deck, but not mine --- and frankly, she would like to know why.  But I agreed that I would partner with her on mold if she will partner with me on mice, and damned if she didn't get the maintenance team to agree they could occlude the foundation.

So that might have been worth getting out of bed for, where I was lying like Amanda K Plummer (look it up) and wondering how long I could linger there before I need to leave for the annual visit to a fully lab-coated medical professional whose best advice tends to be "you need to fu**in' relax."  I have missed another opportunity to lose 30 pounds before this appointment.

It is a to be a gorgeous fall weekend; unfortunately, I have summer events planned.  But a day in Fenway is a day in Fenway, and that's why baseball players wear 2 shirts.

These diversions should keep me from working, but be advised that the next 30 days will bury me Parents' Weekend style after being stabbed in the back by 2 co-shirkers (which I can't write about either) and I have to pick up their mess of Legos and make a theme park out of it.

If you have come here looking for my rant about why  plain Ruffles are never in the vending machine, a pondering of why I bother to own plants, a retrospective of the 1970s Margarine Wars, or an expose on the game Heroica -- which a 7 year old can play, but not me... you'll have to come back.  Something may happen in this space; something may not.  But I think I can't use my few off hours to sit in front of another computer.

Wingman

 

The trouble with working in the suburban office park is that there is no watering hole you can reasonably count on for after-work bitching, unwinding… performing of “numbers…”

That’s probably for the best.

The place across the street from where we work is very much a chain, and very much a family spot after hours (the very poor pre-op Tranz at the bar last night aside) and in fact the whole town is a mass of post-shopping mall watered down drinks, faux antiques on the walls and “death by…” on the dessert menu.

I said, “where do the locals go?”  And we went in search of a bar bar.

Well, not a noir bar, but somewhere nobody would know our names, and the drinks would have drink in them.

I was not expecting to wingman – we weren’t even paying attention to our surroundings, more mesmerized by Reba McIntyre on the “CMT Pure” video screen, and the mystery of her lost upper lip.

Study that here.  Weird, right?

We flirt with the hardest-workin’ waitress in Bill’rica, ask her how her week is and throw on some accent – because she’s our age and looks like our moms.  She calls us “dee-ah;” we call her “hun.” 

So when my friend excuses herself to the ladies, and Joe Bag ‘o Donuts crosses the room to our table, I honestly expected him to be borrowing the ketchup.  We were suddenly Hot in Cleveland.

“How ya doin’ – I gotta ast ya.  Is yaw friend single?”

This is not insulting at all, by the way.  I know my role in bars.  I’ve been wingman to lovelier catches since my first boyfriend used to flirt with the shoe salesmen.  Always a Pink lady, never Stephanie.  (Notice how I picked Grease 2.  Also never the A team, me)

  I wasn’t prepared with my best lines, and not enough Pabsts-es in to be creative.  I said, “I don’t… really know…”

This he did not believe, by the Larry David face he gave me.  I tried to recover: “It’s an off-again, on-again thing.”

“Well, she’s very attractive,” he says, as if I grew her.  As if she is a #9 Pocket.  As if we bought her off the Seattle Mariners.  He is a big guy, workin’ man size, with a sox cap over his certainly bald head and a sox jersey over his pocket T.  Which is weird because what we are watching is pre-season Patriots.

“I’ll let her know you said so.”  I say, and he goes back to his place behind the bar where he can see and not be seen from behind the tap-pulls.  He never does come back over and make his move, because I never leave the table.  Lisa has promised (she never threatens) to tell him that I am into him so she’s going to back off if I leave her alone in his sights.  Instead he checks his phone for several hours, then picks another hunting spot.

We move outside after the DJ gets too loud (and anachronistic).  Outside you have to transfer your drink to plastic because the road is right in front of the deck, with a view of the local packy, which we decide is selling drugs after a number of pick-ups pull up and little bad-asses run in and out without anything in their hands.

At the end of the deck some good old girls smoke loudly and disagree “No SUH!” on something of no importance.  And a guy named Mike (because they are all named Mike) “asts” us if we are from around here.  Lisa, in corporate fleece, cops to “we work down the road,” which I think is actually Raytheon but does give us some cred.  He is a thousand.  Or 50.  Who can tell.

We stay until the mosquitos and the threat of karaoke drive us out (because Lisa really  doesn’t “threaten”) and admit that we got what we were looking for (down to the great burger), but we should probably not become too regular.  We might be in over our heads.

Boil eggs

 

Hurricane Irene is not my excuse for not having posted new material since July.  And until you pay subscription fees,  I will not make excuses.  But Hurricane Irene is very much my excuse for finally posting at all, because we in the Northeast learned a valuable lesson this weekend:  your hurricane prep looks just like your blizzard prep, with fewer clothes.  And Massachusetts, may I remind you of the periodic flooding we endure that we can never prevent, but can always manage to eat through.

We are sharing Power On/Power Off news on the social media.  If your Power is Off, you are not reading this essay, but come back to it later when you need to plan for the next big outage, regardless of season or the climate in which you live.  Meals without refrigeration or cooking are not as difficult as you might imagine; people do it all over the world.

More importantly, you can avoid most of the rushed aisles in the grocery store.

Water water everywhere – you should have a stash of water in your house anyway – however much you think you need based on your plumbing situation.  But get this, America.  If you are on town water/sewer (that is, it works by gravity, not by pump), and the streets are not full of debris…. if you are not under a boil order (and can’t boil nothin’)  turn on the faucet.     

I just noticed Mrs Piggle Wiggle is drawn by Hilary Knight and might be the sister of Eloise’s nanny.  Damn, there’s always another blog elbowing in when you finally get back on the keys…

Anyway, on the water issue, the gallon jugs will do.  You are unnecessarily buying cases of individual servings.  It is cheaper and easier to buy gallons.  Drink from a glass.  It doesn’t need to be washed.  It was water.

Keep a gallon per person in a closet until you need it.  It doesn’t go bad.  And it doesn’t need to be cold.  You can freeze a pile of it in plastic bags if you like, to use first as refrigeration, and later to drink.

Which brings me to

Our obsession with refrigeration.  We haven’t had it all that long.  Some of our parents still say “ice box” because that is what it was called when they learned the word for it.  Most things we refrigerate will live as long as your power outage in your unrefrigerated fridge, even in the by-god South.  In Northern climes, we will stick food in the snow during a winter outage, but that’s mostly just a big F-You to nature.

I often think of a French ad man who marveled at the American practice of refrigerating cheese.  He said, “We would not keep our cheese in the refrigerator for the same reason you don’t keep a cat {pronounced ghaat} in the refrigerator – because it is alive! {pronounced aliiiiiive}.”  I think about this every time I take my cheese from the plastic wrapper from the plastic bag from the fridge.  I still refrigerate my cheese because sweaty cheese is sort of gross.  But cheese is already ripened milk.  There isn’t far it can go.  Kraft singles will never go bad, because unlike your cat, they are already dead.

Hard fruit-and-vedge can live on the counter – in fact, in a box of dirt, which is where your great granny kept it, “down cellar.”  Apples, pears, and stone fruits will hold up, and bananas are meant to be room temperature.  I would skip the lettuce, probably the cukes if your place is hot and humid.  But broccoli, squash, onions, carrots, radishes, peppers are counter-safe, more so if you do not buy organic.  They are loaded in preservatives, otherwise.

Your pickles, dressings, mustards… are going to be fine.  If you’re afraid of your creamy dressings, make a vinegar and oil.  Neither of those things live in your fridge.

If you know the storm is coming, here is the best advice I can give you:  boil eggs.  One or two per person per day for as long as you think the outage would last.  Boiled eggs will turn on you, as any parent knows in June, but it takes a long time.  Don’t hide them; just leave them in a bowl.  You will not starve, I promise, on what I have named so far.  Any honest bachelor who reads this page has eaten pickles for dinner before.  A meal of fruit, vedge, egg and cheese is more balanced than most days.

Now, you have kids.  “I have KIDS…” you are hollering at me.  Kids can eat whole food.  If your kids won’t, I won’t try to convince you otherwise.  They’re your problem. 

3 weeks with a broken stove convinced me I could do without it too.  But if you are anticipating a storm outage, take care of two looming problems by cooking food you think will go bad in a way that makes it “front of fridge” when the grid goes down.  Chicken is perfect for this, because cold chicken is  palatable and versatile, and left naked can survive a powered-down fridge for at least a day.  But don’t eat it until the power does go off or the all-clear sounds.  You’ll be mad. You won’t mind cold roast beef or pork on salads and sandwiches.  And canned tuna is so easy you can throw it in your evac bag when the sheriff comes in his rowboat.  Save that for last.

If you are caught unawares by a significant outage, use the stuff in your freezer as icepacks in your cooler.  Or just start eating.  I think you should worry less about losing food (which is deductible) than not having anything to go to.

Always ready / Always satisfying foods include

• PB & J (you buy that jelly off the shelf.  You could keep it on the shelf if you wanted)
• Breakfast cereal – what about milk?  You say?  Are you hungry, or are you just whining?
• Hummus – on anything, like a spoon
• Dried fruit
• Nuts
• Cheez-Its, of course
• Liquor.