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My other trip to Mobil
From the Archives – Originally posted 10/14/2010
On Friday I stopped at a different Mobil and had one of the more bizarre gas station experiences in my life.
Now, this one may not translate well, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. I was driving down from Syracuse and 
went past Cortland and stopped at a Mobil station on I-81. I pulled up to one pump and on the other side there was a silver Mercedes.
After I had started pumping an elderly gentleman walked up behind me and shouted “FORTY-THREE SEVENTEEN.” At that exact moment I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or not, but I could tell he was behind me and it seemed like he was speaking in my direction. As I tried to assess exactly what was happening he shouted again, “FORTY THREE SEVENTEEN,” and this time there was no mistaking that he was yelling at me.
I would normally be worried in a situation like this, but I knew from when I first pulled up that he was elderly and I was confident that if he touched me I could easily take him in a street fight. I didn’t really know what the rest of his crew looked like, or if they even existed, but if anyone got out of the Mercedes I was pretty sure I could take them too.
As all these thoughts are going through my mind he yells a third time, “FORTY THREE SEVENTEEN.” At this point I’m trying to recall if I ever told anyone my name was 43-17 because I have a lot of aliases, but before coming to a conclusion he shouts, “Oh, forty-three seventeen.”
He was now obviously refocused in another direction and talking to someone else, and I was pretty impressed with how dedicated he was to the number forty-three seventeen because it’s so completely random.
Cinco de Mayo!
Happy Cinco de Mayo to all my readers!
Fun facts about Cinco de Mayo:
1. Cinco de Mayo translates into English as “Mexican Independence Day“
2. Corona typically quadruples its sales leading up to Cinco de Mayo; Dos Equis typically sells all their beer for the year in the week leading up to Cinco de Mayo
3. Number 1 isn’t really true – it pretty much just means May 5th
4. Yesterday was May 4th. Which the person at Family Video informed me is some big Star Wars holiday and then proudly declared “May the fourth be with you!!” Very clever. Very, very clever. Sort of.
5. Okay, back to number one for a second. It’s not really Mexican Independence Day – that’s September 16th.
So, how was my weekend? Well, my fantasy baseball team pulled off a last second victory making me 4-0 on the season. This would be super-impressive, except it’s fantasy baseball so nobody really should care – I don’t!
I also watchd two films. Killing Them Softly, which was pretty good, and Sinister which taught me the invaluable lesson that buying your home based solely on the fact that people were murdered there is a BAD idea. Ethan Hawke – the gift that keeps on giving!
(more) Beeeeeeeeeees!
Okay, lots of big things going on over the past ten days, so I’m going to start by touching on a few important topics.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is claiming they have “cooks” prepare your food in a commercial I saw earlier today. This may be an even more dubious claim than Subway calling their specialists “sandwich artists.” Pretty sure there aren’t many food “artists” that prepare chicken in a microwave right in front of your eyes, even KFC wouldn’t do that, but I guess Subway is hoping you don’t notice or something. Either way, good for you KFC employees, I hope they get a raise at KFC with this new title. Maybe they were already called cooks, who knows – but it sounded a bit odd to me.
Beeeeees continue to try to impress upon me just how dangerous they are, and sadly seem to be targeting just about anyone or anything they can to show off how increasingly angry they are becoming. In Hollywood, CA they took down their second dog in a month – proving yet again that they live solely to do bad things. Message received bees.
A new pope was sworn in, or elected, or chosen by god – whatever it is that happens. My entire office has been talking nonstop about the big event, so it’s nice to see it come to a close so order can be restored at work.
The NY Times had this little blurb followed by a test:
Only 12 percent of the nation’s high school seniors demonstrated proficiency in history last year, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Can you do better?
Well, since I’m always up for a challenge I decided to take the test – and I think I finally erased all of your doubts that I am in fact NOT as smart as a high school senior.
Here is the link if you want to take the ridiculous quiz: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/19/weekinreview/19quiz.html?ref=weekinreview
I did get one wrong…..Ooops. I’m still a winner though because I get the inside dirt on clean laundry – it’s really quite a film. If you get the same link (advertisement), definitely take advantage.
Finally, the NCAA tournament is starting up this week and the brackets have been released so my extensive coverage will be starting shortly!
Beeeees!
It’s a well-known fact that Bees and me just do not get along – they had the upper hand through most of my childhood, however, after their third all-out attack on my life I turned the tables for a bit before moving out of my boyhood home and to an area where bees were less readily available to attack me (and me them). Not that they didn’t try, but due to a larger population I was able to blend in and they had trouble finding me.
Sure, occasionally one of them would fly in my car window while I was driving to sting me, but they never were able to do a full-fledged hive attack on me again.
As a result of my struggles with these pests, I spend hours each day scouring the internet for stories about where the bees are and what they’re up to. Typically they’re not doing much, or at least they’re doing it out of the prying eyes of the mainstream media, but every now and again I find out that they are still very much alive and thriving as they rebuild their numbers in their never-ending quest to make my life miserable.
In a sad turn of events a man in Florida was recently attacked by a swarm of as many as 100,000 bees!
Jason Deeringer of Insect I-Q told WFLA that the bees are most likely “Africanized” bees — colloquially called “killer bees” — which are much more aggressive than other types of honey bees.
“[Africanized bees] have a horrible attitude. Highly defensive,” Deeringer told the station.
I do not know who Jason Deeringer is, but I would like to congratulate him on mastering the obvious. I wonder if I could get a part-time job with Insect I-Q – clever name!
Bees have a horrible attitude? Is this news to anyone? All they do is fly around looking to attack people – they land on flowers, and then pretend to pollinate them just to keep how completely useless they are under wraps, and then look for someone to sting. That’s pretty much what they do all day – every day. Oh, and they build hives to house their armies – they do that as well. And eat apples.
Except for Bumblebees – Bumblebees are fine. I actually believe they pollinate – in my experiences encountering them they tend not to attack without reason – they’re just all around good insects. The kind you don’t mind showing up at picnic – the rest of them are filthy little creatures that want nothing more than to ruin your life.
Apple Picking (FROM THE ARCHIVES)
(Since I haven’t posted in a bit I’m going to pull a post out of the archives – this one is from September 7, 2008……apparently I went apple picking!!!)
I was forced to go to an apple orchard yesterday and pick some apples. I was driving so I guess I could have refused, but I was out-voted 3-1 so I never really stood much of a chance.
The odd part about the whole experience is that the orchard already had picked apples for you and bagged them. This seems to have made the whole act of
entering the field and picking them yourself unnecessary, but we bravely made our way into the field anyway so we could see what it was like in the old’en days when people harvested their own fruits and vegetables.
It was actually a nice diversion, but they only had three little sections of the orchard open for business so the pickings were a little slim. Plus, they were all green apples, which made it incredibly difficult to tell if they were ripe or not. Fruit really needs to change color, that’s how it tells me it’s ready to go in my belly, without cues like that I just don’t know what to do. It’s like the green apple is somehow smarter than me, and that makes me hate it. I’m still going to eat them, but I’m not happy about it.
The orchard also had some unhappy looking ponies with kids riding them around in circles, a chicken, and some goats. The goats seemed to love the attention, but they also seemed to be having some trouble getting their heads back through the fence. In retrospect, maybe they were just stuck, and not really starving for attention as it initially appeared. (the adults had horns, which may have been why they were stuck – they may also have been unicorns…..my memory is fuzzy)
All things considered the orchard was pretty fun, and if you have one in your area I say go ahead and make the trip. Worst thing that can happen is you come home with some stupid apples.
The New Year!
Happy New Year!
Yes, a new year is upon us and although I haven’t had a post recently I wanted to assure everyone that I am okay. I was too busy opening presents and celebrating my two four-day weekends to write a post!
So, what’s new:
I am addicted to DrawSomething – If you want a chance to challenge RonnieDigital, feel free to add me: ronniedigital1
I delete anyone that doesn’t complement my drawings or move within 48 hours though, so if you add me, expect to get deleted sooner or later. I also will delete you if you incorrectly guess any of my drawings.
On to the news:
Apparently in Chicago the authorities have re-opened the investigation into the death of a man that won one million dollars in the lottery and dropped dead the following day. They originally ruled the death was from natural causes.
Now, here’s the baffling part. After reopening the investigation (he died in July) they concluded he died from cyanide poisoning. I’m no detective, but when some man in his 40’s dies the day after hitting the lottery for a million dollars I might just check to see if they were poisoned.
“No autopsy was done because, at the time, the Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t generally perform them on people 45 and older unless the death was suspicious…”
The death wasn’t suspicious? I’m not sure a death can get more suspicious to be honest. Maybe if he had also been shot as well, but otherwise, I would think that kind of coincidence might just count.
Take a second and think about poisoning someone – what options did you come up? Like everyone else in the world that has never seriously considered poisoning someone you probably drifted back to all those detective shows you watched and came up with rat poison or cyanide. You would think they would at least test for a couple of the more obvious options.
(Note: If you came up with something else you probably think about these things too often).
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas!! To be honest in case you do not know, tomorrow is actually Christmas, but since I will not be doing a post tomorrow I figured now is a good time to wish everyone happy holidays!
And, in other news, I found my future wife:
Apparently all I have to do is convince Cecil Chao’s daughter, Gigi, to stop being a lesbian, get divorced from her wife, marry me, and I will collect somewhere in the vicinity of sixty-five million dollars!
In other, other news Syracuse lost:
Saturday marked the first loss of the year for Syracuse as they came up short against Temple. Temple is a school best known for having it’s school appear on sweatshirts Bill Cosby is wearing, and for being repeatedly overrated in the 1990’s and screwing up my bracket during March Madness. The officiating was questionable at the end, but missed free throws ultimately did in Syracuse as they repeatedly missed on their trips to the charity stripe.
In other, other, other news I still have lots of merchandise available for all your post-Christmas apology gift needs:
So, if you get in a fight with your family at Christmas, or steal some presents that were meant for your brother, or forget to buy a gift for one of your parents nothing says SORRY better than a mug from Human See, Human Do!!!!
Hostess no more
In one of the sadder news stories to hit the wire in a while, apparently Hostess is shutting its doors and forever locking behind them their delicious snackcakes. I can’t recall the last time I indulged in one of their treats (maybe yesterday at lunch….maybe not….I really don’t remember……it was coffee cakes), but entering a gas station and not seeing the Hostess display will mark a sad end to our relationship.
In lieu of the Hostess display the remaining choices will be sorely lacking in fun. Sun Chips, Candy bars, potato chips – the junk food choices took a serious blow if this continues to play out and Hostess is truly finished. The only person this truly works out for is Little 
Debbie. And Little Debbie is perhaps best known for making imitation Hostess products that just kind of always leave you wishing you had bought Hostess in the first place.
Except of course for the Christmas Tree Cakes (or when it’s not the holiday season – Zebra Cakes), which have been known to bring out the worst in some people.
Speaking of Little Debbie, if you get a moment stop over to their site and view the thousands upon thousands of snack related offerings they provide (Banana Pudding Rolls?). As a child I was pretty much aware of the fudge brownies, which I hated to be honest. Instead of being able to tear into the package and begin eating I always had to waste most of my lunch hour trying to scrape off the stupid walnuts. I eventually graduated to swiss cake rolls (they were ho-hos if ho-hos weren’t very good), and finally zebra cakes – those being the one item Little Debbie makes that actually is worth purchasing on very rare, very special occasions (like Tuesday nights). Anyway, if you flip through their site they have about 800 different kinds of cakes, brownies, cookies, and cereal bars. I’m not sure where they sell of this nonsense, but I would guess somewhere down south. Hi Alabama!
While ninety-percent of Americans are clamoring for the same type of bailout that saved the auto-industry (citation intentionally omitted) I think Hostess will probably survive regardless of governement intervention. It seems almost unfathomable that Little Debbie isn’t siting around just waiting for a chance to buy up the recipes and finally start baking edible treats.
human see, human do 
