I Am The Cheese

I like fireworks.

I’ve seen some amazing 2-3 hour displays: non-stop boom, boom, boom.

They must scare the crap out of animals and mess up Google Earth photos.

My sister’s dog usually likes to go for walks, but from early October to mid November it’s a homebody. It hates Halloween; more specifically firecrackers, screechers, and roman candles.

As a kid, Halloween fireworks meant a cheapie bag of pyrotechnics.

I’ve had more fun with a book of matches.

They always concluded with something called “The School House”. It was just a Little House on the Prairies‘ paper school house that burned down when lit.

I’ve done better with a cereal box in the fireplace.

Kids in South America are lucky: no age restrictions for buying fireworks, no regulations, no nothing.

Light them off anywhere, tie them to your back if you like, anything goes.

In Ecuador almost everynight there are fireworks going off in celebration of some Saint’s day or religious holy day.

I think that’s why so many people are religious in South America: it’s the fireworks!

I’m a sucker for things stacked, heaped, piled or bunched.

My eyes are naturally drawn to them: pallets, baskets, umbrella stands, store displays, fields of flowers, rolls of wire, fruit markets, old tires, …

It’s a quantity thing: one is boring; more are better.

Those “colourful ball” play areas for kids are hard to pass. All those balls, oh to be 5 again!

Maybe this is why I like recycling day: plastic bottles all heaped together, stacks of flattened cardboard boxes and newspapers, and piles of garbage bags filled with hundreds of styrofoam containers.

I wait to take my things out. If I’m too early, there isn’t enough stuff to make it visually appealing.

My favourite movie shot: all those boxes in the warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

note: I was always a good chair stacker at school, and spent a lot of time in the library too!

I have insurance: car health, home,… but I’ve never used them.

It’s nice to know I’m protected and I’m glad I’ve never had to make a claim, but I also feel like these insurance companies have screwed me somehow.

On flight insurance, I always make an ex-girlfriend the beneficiary. She always said she wished I were dead. The financial payout she’d receive if that happened, while I was flying, would just be an extra bonus for her.

I’m nice like that.

My 13 nieces and nephews are the beneficiaries in my Will.

They know this.

It’s a small insurance policy for me. I figure they’ll be nicer to me in my old age if they know there is money involved.

One nephew always asks me what his “share” is at the moment. He looks at me like I’m a “stock”: working hard - stock goes up ; travelling - stock goes down.

My nieces and nephews also know that if I die under mysterious circumstances, all my money goes to my ex-girlfriend.

That’s my true insurance policy.

I love my nieces and nephews, but I don’t trust them that much.

note: if my nieces and nephews make a deal with the ex-girlfriend, I’m in trouble.

I have a confession.

I can’t read………….. very well……………. in Japanese.

Speaking it is difficult enough for me, I gave up on acquiring decent reading skills a long time ago.

So for many things, Kanji (Chinese characters) are just symbols.

I don’t know how to write, read, or pronounce them, but I know what they mean : like a red octagonal sign usually means stop.

I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying what buttons to push on machines: elevators, bank machines, rice cookers, cameras, remote controls, VCRs, ticket machines…..   No problem.

It’s not so bad being illiterate.

Most days when confronted with buttons I feel like a little kid with the animal sound toy: press the duck - it goes “quack”, press the cow - it goes “moo”.

On a bad day the cat “oinks” though.

If I could be any kind of fish, I’d want to be a starfish.

Just lying around in the sand, surf, and sun. Getting picked up once in a while. Everyone thinking I’m cool.

It’s what I’d like to be doing most days!

I’d still have 5 appendages, if I count my head.

No big adjustment there.

No one would eat me.

That’s a definite plus.

note: Being a shooting-starfish would be even better.

I’m not a point card person, but I do have a Mister Donut card.

I’d been saving up points to get a free pencil case, or maybe a cushion the size of my hand (maybe it’s a hand cushion?), when disaster struck.

I lost all my points.

They are only good for one year. Happy anniversary loser. What a rip-off!

I’ll have to increase my doughnut consumption this year.

I love doughnuts.

Honey dips are my favourite: simple yet sugary. I don’t understand people who like those dry “old fashion” ones. They should just stick to pound cake.

But I’m not a total doughnut totalitarian.

When I bring doughnuts to work for my co-workers, I include a few old fashion ones.

I’m nice like that….

and my boss likes those crappy doughnuts as well.

note: for more on how I feel about point cards check-out: 

http://planetross.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/free-stuff/

Tommy Lee Jones is the poster boy for my favourite canned coffee in Japan.

You can buy hot coffee, tea, and corn soup from vending machines here. It’s very popular. In the winter a hot can of coffee makes a good pocket warmer as well.

I like Tommy Lee Jones as an actor. He’s usually in high quality movies and does a good job. I bet he cringes when he sees himself playing the bad guy in Steven Seagal’s Under Siege.  I cringe when I see that movie too, or any Steven Seagal movie.

but…

The picture of Tommy Lee Jones plastered all over vending machines everywhere is horrible. To put it mildly, he looks like a “bag of shit“.

What message is the coffee company trying to relay to potential buyers?

“Drink our product and look like this”.

Maybe I should switch to a different drink.

I hear Mickey Rooney just got the Coca Cola contract!

note: the picture I have isn’t the really bad one. I drove all over town trying to find the worst picture, but they’ve changed the photos to Mickey Rooney.

Before drinking Coca Cola

After drinking Coca Cola

Flashlights are handy, but why the name?

It’s a cool name, but they don’t flash anymore than other lights.

You can make any light flash if you turn it off and on again real fast.

You can piss off a lot of people doing this as well!

Portable Light Beam describes it better, and doesn’t confuse people with all this flashing business.

I remember flashing my car headlights to let other drivers know there was radar up ahead. I was a good citizen.

If you really want to mess with your head, try playing pool while a strobe light flashes.

I get sick just thinking about it.  It makes for a long game of pool as well.

My friend tried to compensate for the strobe light by blinking in unison with it, but he lost the game anyway.

I guess he just wasn’t a good “strobe light pool player”.

note: I bet flashlight battery sales went way up after the Star Wars movies started coming out.

There are a lot of good ideas about how to save money: pay yourself first, have money taken off your paycheck and deposited into another account, or use methods described in books like Rich Dad Poor Dad or Your Money or Your Life.

I keep a graph of how much money I make and spend a month. I always have. I have a table as well that I can compare various expenses on a monthly basis.

Does it help me save money?

Not really, but it keeps me aware of where my money goes.

The graph is on a piece of paper pinned on a corkboard. I know I could do it on the computer, but I like to physically write in the numbers and draw the lines.

The following is not my graph, but a reasonable interpretation of my financial status:

My van is 15 years old.

It’s a reliable beast, but cutting edge technology it ain’t.

Roll up windows, arm-strong steering, and no sounds or lights to let me know when a door is open or I’m not wearing a seatbelt.

It is also equipped with a cassette tape player.

I have about 50 cassettes, nothing more recent than 1998. I rock out to Def Leppard, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Spin Doctors, Eddie Money, …

My friends laugh at me, ask me if I watch video discs and play Atari 2600 as well.

Recently a friend loaned me an adapter that plugs into the tape player, so I can listen to my i-pod now.

It’s great!

What music is on my i-pod?

Def Leppard, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Spin Doctors, Eddie Money, …