#22 - somebody's watching me/you.

over the first three months of eat! drink! snack!, i've kept an eye on the traffic to the blog, mainly to see if any strangers made their way to my blog & if possible, whether they stuck around or not. it also gives me a rough idea of who's reading out of the people i do know, which will come in really handy come xmas card time.

in monitoring the blog activity, i've come across one distinct fact...people really want to know about caliente corn nuts. over the past three months, i've had countless folks who have come to my blog because of a google search for the term. turns out my blog entry about them, corn nuts & the american dream, has made me the #2 entry on google for that search term. in my book, this makes me the official caliente corn nuts spokesgod. in numbers, 9 of the last 40 visits to the blog are from that alone. yesterday i had three separate caliente corn nut visitors, one who was from anchorage, ak & one who was from delaware & more specifically, a "STATE OF DELAWARE" ip address. i assume these are the two vice presidential candidates...and now i've likely made it worse by blogging about it a second time.

somebody from procter and gamble checked out an entry on their TOTALLY EXTREME product, screamin' pickle pringles.

i'm international. folks from israel, maldives, algeria, canada & new zealand have stumbled across the snack-related diatribes of a manboy in brooklyn.

crazy internet.

#22 - somebody's watching me/you.

snack: immaculate baking co. sweet georgia brownie triple chocolate chunk cookies
drink: cream-o-land dairy 1% milk

tonight's snack comes direct from hendersonville, nc's immaculate baking co. last night, on my way home from a focus group about public radio, i was at the local grocery store & must have felt "i've listened to way too much despairing public radio" bad about something...probably world peace or hunger or the "bridge to nowhere" lie and as a result, was no match for a box of cookies emblazoned with the words "cookies with a cause," "soul-cially responsible" and "chocolatey."

from what i can tell, these cookies' cause is creativity & more specifically the folk arts. as far as causes go, it's no rwanda, but can't everybody be paying attention to rwanda, which works out for folks (& their arts). the cookies themselves are organic, yummy & full of chips both white & black, an obvious nod to racial harmony.

milk. what more can i say about you? you do a body good. you can be found on the upper lips of celebrities. you might be really, really bad for me. you might not need to be pasteurized after all. you are only in my fridge because of coffee. you make these cookies better. you came from a third-generation company in new jersey. thanks for helping out with making other stuff better sometimes. 'preciate it.

#21 - x = _.

i listen to a lot of npr. you might call the amount of npr that i listen to in a given week "disgusting" or "irrational" or "humanly impossible," but i do it. it's just that, by nature, i'm curious about everything that's going on at all times everywhere. a typical week by my calculations:

all things considered (weekday) - 135 minutes x 5 days = 675 minutes
all things considered (weekend) - 50 minutes x 2 days = 100 minutes
all songs considered - 30 minutes x 1 day = 30 minutes
morning edition - 105 minutes x 5 days = 525 minutes
day to day - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
fresh air - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
news & notes - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
talk of the nation - 110 minutes x 5 days = 550 minutes
tell me more - 50 minutes x 5 days = 250 minutes
weekend edition (saturday) - 105 minutes x 1 day = 105 minutes
weekend edition (sunday) - 105 minutes x 1 day = 105 minutes
car talk call of the week - 5 minutes x 1 day = 5 minutes
this american life - 60 minutes x 1 day = 60 minutes
studio 360 - 52 minutes x 1 day = 52 minutes

TOTAL - 3,217 minutes (53 hours) = 32% of my time

it's really not as hard as you might think to listen to this much npr. i have the ability to slap on a pair of headphones whilst at work, so i usually end up spending half my time there listening to npr. between walking, subway & whatnot, i usually get in another two hours of listening a day. then, the rest of my listening is done whilst at home, which comes out to...

3,217 minutes per week
work listening - 240 minutes x 5 days = 1,200 minutes
travel listening - 120 minutes x 7 days = 840 minutes
home listening - 1,177 minutes (19.6 hours per week/2.8 per day)

two facts you may have gathered about me:
1. i love math
2. i am slightly o.c.d.

#21 - x = _.
snack: e. frutti x-ray fish
drink: snapple goji punch

with my math, i've decided to break out the gummy x-ray fish that i got when i was up in boston weeks ago for the radiohead show. check out this (hastily photoshopped) bad boy:

obviously, everything gummy is good, so we don't even have to go there. the best part about gummy things is that they contain gelatin, which means that i'm getting my daily fill of connective tissue! yay! as you can tell, the skin comes off to reveal the best parts of the fish--the head, spine & tail. mmm. fish spine.

to wash this fishy down, i'm having a snapple goji punch. apparently a goji is basically a wolfberry & according to the back of the label, this fruit "just might be the world's most powerful food." why is it so powerful? according to the front of the label, the beverage offers immunity to the drinker. this excites me to no end. if i am ever attacked by infection, caught in a foreign land with contraband, or on a reality show, i am so going to drink another one of these. the bonus? it's tasty too.

#20 - ol' smoky.

i've smoked a lot of cigarettes in my life. that's a fact.

it all started when a few times in my early teens, pat cody & i snuck mores from his mom & walked down the dirt bike trail near his house to smoke butts & play with wd-40 & a lighter. cigarettes never caught on for me a that point in my life though. i didn't know anyone old enough who would buy them for me anyhow.

...& then along came college, where there were people from outside nh, people who knew actual lesbians & had friends who had gone to rehab & so cigarettes were around more & i found myself smoking cigarettes a lot more regularly during that time, although the habit gained the most strength from the summers between college, when i was back in nh with all my high school friends sitting on porches running through packs of camel lights. i blame you, martin.

the simple scientific fact is that in 90% of situations you look much cooler with a cigarette. without fail, a cigarette enhances your presence (for better or worse). a cigarette can help you strike up a conversation with that girl who "only smokes when she drinks." when you're in a conversation & don't know what to say, you can take a long drag off your cigarette & stare up slightly up towards the heavens. people will think that you're really deep when you're actually quite clueless. when you're attempting to get information from a perp, if you're smoking a cigarette, he will be much more intimidated if you're smoking & if he isn't, you just put out your cigarette on his forehead to remind him who's in charge (unless you are on network television & aren't allowed to smoke on your show).

...so i smoked constantly & thirteen years later, i finally stopped smoking at least 15 cigarettes a day & blowing tons of money supporting the routine. my decision was partly for my health, partly for my finances & partly for the smell. i still like cigarettes though. they're sweet...& smoky...segue...just like...

#20 - ol' smoky.
snack: t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken
drink: schweppes dry grape ginger ale

this sunday, i was in the mood for some snackin' & went for the recently purchased box of t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken. normally, i wouldn't bother with such an item. i'm not really one of those "go to t.g.i.friday's" types & given the choice between the t.g.i.friday's in times square and the approximately 73,000 other restaurants in nyc, t.g.i.friday's probably falls in around 53,476th place in my choices to eat...but, if t.g.i.friday's boxes up their dishes, puts them in the freezer section of my local grocery store & slaps a sale tag in front of them, who am i to deny them?

...so i went with the sweet & smoky popcorn chicken & it's pretty dang good. at first, it's weird to be faced with a plateful of what look partly like mini falafel balls & partly like chunks of clif bar, but the chicken is solidly sweet & smoky and the right color. for me, it's always best when chicken is a nice, whitish color. it tells me that the meat isn't actually pigeon or from the ass of the chicken & most importantly, that the chicken didn't have scurvy or something. throughout the course of my sunday, i finished off the entire box. here's to fulfilling 92% of my rda for sodium.

i had a few glasses of schweppes dry grape ginger ale along with the chicken balls. i love this stuff. whenever i'm feeling guilty about the amount of caffeine i inhale on a daily basis, i switch over to a two-liter of the schweppes. any time i can lessen the impact of my caffeine intake, it's a victory in my book. without the guilt from smoking hanging over my head, i have to worry about something...why not caffeine?

#19 - feeling blue never felt so good.

you know what food i'm (sort of) crazy about (today)? i'll give you a hint...a certain stoned-looking non-casper cartoon ghost loves them so much that he became the mascot for a cereal bearing their flavor. give up? too convoluted of a clue for ya?

if you guessed the blueberry, you win the food guessing game. bonus points if you identified the ghost...boo berry. a hearty virtual pat on the back to you, reader. please note that by inserting the word "virtual," i am denoting that this pat on the back is not in any way real.

#19 - feeling blue never felt so good.

snack: frosted blueberry pop tarts
drink: lipton blueberry pomegranate pure leaf red tea

in celebration of the blueberry, i've decided to pair a package of frosted blueberry pop tarts with a bottle of lipton blueberry pomegranate pure leaf red tea, my own personal devil-angel combo. as we all know, some sort of canceling out will occur when the extremely manufactured nature of the pop tart comes into contact with the guarana-ginseng nature of the tea. that's just science.

also in celebration of the blueberry, i've decided to gather three blueberry related tidbits from around the interweb & present them here, in no particular order (other than alphabetical):

blueberry diapers - the blueberry diaper is one of them cloth diaper doohickies for baby mommas. probably good for the environment & your baby & self-esteem & junk. on their website, they offer up disappointment in the form of their "blueberry cloth diaper guide" section. the link to this section features a confused woman, with bubbles around her head depicting the various questions she has. one of these questions is "what about poop?" when i saw this question, i thought to myself, "yeah. what about poop?"...so i clicked on the link. i was met with a list of eight questions, none of which were "what about poop?"...so disappointing. i still really want to know about poop.

blueberry hill - ok. first off, apparently st. louis has a walk of fame and a ton of important people have stars there...we're talking william burroughs, miles davis, redd foxx, both ike & tina, michael mcdonald, harold ramis...the list goes on. i tell you this because along this walk of fame is the loop, a shopping mecca of some sort and inside this mecca is blueberry hill, a restaurant/music club. chuck berry plays here once at least once a month. dude is friggin 81 years old, which would be impressive if les paul, aged 93, didn't play a show here in nyc every single monday. give me a holler in 2020, chuck.

blueberry month - in 2003, the u.s. department of agriculture issued a proclamation that declared july "blueberry month." never one to be shown up by their neighbor to the south, the canadians issued a royal proclamation decreeing august "blueberry month." which is the true blueberry month? as the blueberry is a native north american plant, both countries can rightfully lay claim to the official blueberry month (can they even grow blueberries in mexico?). i just wish we could come together as north americans on this one & pick one month to celebrate blueberries in. it's just like with independence day. did you know that canadians celebrate their independence on july 1st? when i heard that, i was totally all "wah? you crazy canadians. c'mon get it together." seriously canada, get it together.

EDIT: this week's weeds opened with a conversation about pop tarts!

#18 - satisfied?

what do you need in life?

is it a deeper spirituality? is it a soulmate? is it financial security? is it another drink? is it adventure? is it a winning team? is it relief from back pain? is it tropical climates? is it to be thanked? is it another kid? is it another cheeseburger? is it a daily jog? is it an alibi? is it peace & quiet? is it another scratch ticket? is it a hand to hold? is it companionship? is it taller shoes? is it to get a man? is it to get away from your man? is it a ride to the mall? is it hot sauce? is it deodorant? is it a digital converter for your tv?

have you already found what you need?

i know i have.

#18 - satisfied?

snack: snickers rockin' nut road bar
drink: coffee

dude, all i need in life is a snickers...& a coffee, i guess, but mainly a snickers. they are so satisfying, especially when i'm not going anywhere for a while. i don't retain that much advertising, but i can't recall coming across an ad for the snickers rockin' nut road bar, so i've come up with one for them, based on their past ads, which i've slightly retained/looked up on the internet. mars corp...if you'd like to use my idea, please leave me a blog comment & i will get in touch with you with my price.

ext - iraqi desert - night.

the night sky is pitch black & in the distance, there are sounds of bombs falling. suddenly, the blackness is broken by a flame from a large lighter, positioned underneath a smore on a stick.

off screen, a voice shouts "put out that light right now!" the fire goes away. we see a dejected soldier giving his commanding officer the finger in the darkness.

title card: NOT GOING ANYWHERE FOR A WHILE?

the soldier breaks into a box of mres, pulls out a snickers rockin' nut road bar, tears it open & bites into it. he is clearly satisfied. he passes out snickers bars to the other soldiers & they are all satisfied. everyone in iraq gets snickers rockin' nut road bars & the satisfaction is contagious.

title card: GRAB A SNICKERS.