The Ice Cream Cup Heresy

Friends,

My grandfather was an awesome man. (Come to think of it, both my grandfathers were cool guys; but at the moment I'm speaking of my mom's dad.)  He taught so many things to my mom that she's passed on to me.  Someday, when I'm in a more serious mood, maybe I'll share with you some of these great and wise life lessons.

But for now, we turn to one specific (and vitally important) piece of his legacy: the love of ice cream.

Grandpap had three passionate loves: God, people, and ice cream.  You might think that loving ice cream is common and thus trivial; I assure you, his was an uncanny zeal.  On a spectrum of bowl sizes, his ice cream bowl would be somewhere between a cereal bowl and one of those huge crystal punch bowls.  And probably closer to the punch bowl.

He not only enjoyed ice cream often and in large quantities, but he also employed a method that has been passed down to me and which I've maintained with fierce and joyful regularity.  That is, he would always put milk in his ice cream and enjoy it in a near-milkshake consistency.

And so, I don't just like ice cream.  It's not just a delicious treat or a dessert option.  It is something bordering on the sacrosanct [SAT word alert].  Thus, the cry I raise today is not a light one.


I scream, you scream...
"WAIT, WHAT IS THIS CRAP?"

I'm glad that people can enjoy ice cream in many forms-- milkshakes, sundaes, parfaits, cones, etc., all have their place in this world.  Even mass-produced items like Drumsticks are good; sure, they sacrifice a little quality, but they put ice cream in the hands of the masses, and for that I'm thankful.

But certain lines should never be crossed.  When ice cream becomes profaned to the point of not being good for the sake of distribution or cost-effectiveness, something inside me dies.  I'm speaking, of course, of the pre-packaged ice cream cup with wooden spoon.  I'm sorry to subject you to this, but for the sake of clarity, here are some pictures:

Mmm, enjoy all 3 ounces.

Now featuring our patented Splinter Spoon™

There are three main reasons this anathema needs to be removed from the planet:


1. The amount of ice cream

"You know what I could really go for?  Three bites of ice cream!" -no one, ever


2. The taste of the ice cream

Ice cream from these things is consistently the most boring and fake-tasting ice cream in the world.


3. The wooden "spoon"

The design is incredibly stupid (see below) and the taste of wood isn't as good with ice cream as you'd... um..



The completely flat design makes retrieving ice cream impossible.
The symmetric shape is merely perplexing.

Join the revolution!
To be clear, it's a pretend revolution against an unsavory ice cream option


What's your favorite flavor or type of ice cream?

Have you been traumatized by these phony ice cream cups?

Jon

Bob's Three Tangents

Friends,

As you know, there are two things I literally beg for on this site-- comments and ideas for future posts.  I incentivize comments by devoting an entire page to the people who comment most on the blog.  But my only reward for topic ideas is that when I blog about your idea, I'll give you credit for it.  And if "credit" on a not-famous blog doesn't motivate people, I don't know what does.

So here are three short and funny ideas my friend Bob has given me...



Bob's Top 3 Rants
If you know him, please don't use these to torture him.


1. People who eat only M&Ms out of public trail mix

This is, at its heart, a matter of being considerate of others and their feelings and needs.  The whole point of trail mix, I'm told, is the combining of sweet and salty (though I don't know why you'd mess around with trail mix when chocolate-covered pretzels exist).  If you go ahead and eat all the sweet out of the mix, you're leaving behind a salt-only mixture, also called "Chex mix".  If the person who put out the trail mix had wanted Chex mix... you see what I'm saying. 

To put it another way, this is like a less weird version of someone saying, "Let's share these chips & salsa," then someone drinking all the salsa.


2. The pseudo-courteous door-hold

You know what this is.  You're still, like, 30 feet away from the door in question.  Someone up ahead has decided to hold it for you for some reason.  But because you're so far away, they become impatient and try to scoot further into the building while still marginally holding the door.  When you finally arrive, they use nonverbals to make you feel guilty for taking your sweet time.  Hey man, I didn't ask you to hold that door.


3. The 1.5-person public restroom

Hopefully from the above blueprint, you can already understand why this sort of men's restroom is completely unacceptable.  Totally unnecessary risk, awkwardness, and confusion.  I'm not sure if there's an analog for this in the world of women's restrooms, because, ever since we were kids, girls' bathrooms have been uncharted lands of mystery, intrigue, and speculated luxury and cleanliness.


Join Bob on his tangent(s)
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that he's single, ladies

Have you experienced any of the above tragedies?

What rants would you like to have immortalized on this blog? (I need to rethink my understanding of immortality...)

Jon

A Bachelor's Guide to Home Decorating

Friends,

It has been so long.  I have only my busyness and laziness to blame.  But for the next 7 weeks, you can expect 7-14 blog entries.  If we were in a fantasy novel, this would be the beginning of the Silver Age of Tangentland.  Thankfully we aren't in a fantasy novel, and even more thankfully, it's only on semi-rare occasions that I make comments like that.

When it's time to break a blogging hiatus, the natural question for me to ask is, "What do I have to offer the world?"  I then take the thing that least answers that question, and give you my take on it in an attempt to be funny and subtly make fun of the many blogs that inevitably are devoted to that subject.  Hence I give you...



My top 3 tips for bachelor home decorating
If I haven't made this clear enough above, don't follow any of this


1. Less is More

Look, as a bachelor, you probably don't know how to decorate.  Chances are, if you put too many decorations up, you're going to seriously fail on one or two of them.  So I say find one or two things that work (or don't) and stick with that.  For instance, I have contributed two decorations to my apartment.  One in the living room and one in my bedroom.  (Pictures below.)  Some may call this style "sparse", "bare", "parsimonious" (some people use big words), or "meager", but... um.. what do they know?


2. Throwbacks to childhood = WIN

If you're reading this blog, you either grew up in the 90s, or you're my parent.  Either way, your basement is probably rife with awesome memorabilia from 1988-1995.  This was basically the Golden Age (had to return to our fantasy novel) of awesome characters, shows, cartoons, movies, and action figures.  So by rummaging through a few old cardboard boxes, you can find a **free** nostalgic decoration.  Here's what's on my bedroom dresser:

Alf, an alien from Melmac (left), and Donatello, a
bow-wielding mutant ninja turtle

3. You can make Bizarre work

The main failure in decorating, I would imagine, is wanting something to look really good when it in fact looks terrible.  You can completely eliminate the risk of this by decorating with things that aren't meant to look good in the first place.  How is this possible?  With a piece that is purely thought-provoking or that makes no sense at all.  Here's the wall above our living room TV:

A tiny sweatshirt featuring my birthname and a dinosaur. My grandma
gave it to me again last year, after a two-decade hiatus.

You can take this stuff to the bank
Note: the bank will be decorated better than my apartment.

What are your favorite decorations that you use?

Any fun tips for anyone out there who might not be as awesomely gifted as I?


Jon