Things I Like: Charlie Brown and Snoopy

Not too long ago, I went to see a high school perform the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". It was a fantastic production, but I think it's also the first time I saw the Peanuts gang since I grew up to be able to understand abstract thought. Now I finally understand what makes Charles Schultz a genius - he created Charlie Brown!

Now, this may not sound like an amazing revelation to you, but it is to me after I got to understand Charlie Brown's character. I never noticed that Charlie Brown is bad at everything. That's the charm of his character - he's always searching for some way to prove to himself (and his friends) that he's good at something. The genius of Charles Schultz is that he never lets Charlie Brown succeed at anything! Why? To teach a lesson.

Charlie Brown is always looking for a way to be successful in a worldly sense. As a stark contrast, Snoopy is a dog. As he says: "Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. " The sort-of depressing thing is, Snoopy's awesome at everything! He's Joe Cool! Any time he tries anything, he does exactly what Charlie Brown wants to do.

But Snoopy doesn't care, because he understands he has nothing to prove, and nothing to advance to. He's just a dog, and therefore his status is about as high as it will ever be. Charlie Brown, on the other hand, wants to be amazing at sports, a good student, or smooth with the ladies. These desires of his and Snoopy's successes completely overshadow one fact: that Snoopy is entirely dependent of Charlie Brown for food! And if there's one thing Snoopy wants more than all the fame he already has, it's supper! Snoopy has learned to enjoy the little things, while Charlie Brown is still searching for that little thing to succeed at.

In the end, though, Charlie Brown is finally told that there is one thing he's good at. In fact, it's something he's probably the best at out of all of his friends: he's a good man. Charles Schultz lets us all know that no matter how successful in this world you are, true success is somewhere a lot less noticeable.

Badgers Are Not Beavers.

I found myself in the mall yesterday with my mom and sister. I was looking for a new pair of jeans, and given that I'm awful at scouring shelves for clothes myself, I invited them along. As part of the deal, I allowed them to drag me around the mall as they shopped as well.

It wasn't long after I had found myself a nice pair of jeans that we exited a store involving a lot scented liquids with keywords like "Age defying" and "Revitalizing" and my mom saw a store called The Art of Shaving. She had been doing some research about shaving for Father's Day, when she got my dad a nice shaving brush. Piqued by her new interested in male grooming rituals, she led me into the store to show me all she had learned.

I was fascinated by the complexity of the shaving-cream applicators (also known as "brushes"). It turns out they're quite expensive and made out of the very unique hair of the badger. Long story short, I gave in and bought a set to give it a go, but then I realized something: I have no clue what a badger is. I've seen cartoon badgers (along with mushrooms and snakes), and I understand that their name is a euphemism for annoyance, but I've never actually seen a badger. My sister seemed to confuse them with beavers, but after a brief conversation with my her, we also came to the conclusion that badgers are not, in fact, beavers.


Badgers and beavers are actually quite different. They're not even in the same biological Order as each other.While beavers live in rivers and streams, building dams, badgers live along the plains, digging holes and hunting prairie dogs alongside coyotes. Badgers are weasels. Beavers are rodents.

Badgers have many different styles of hair on them, so more expensive brushes come from different parts of a badger. Apparently badger hair is so fine it can penetrate the pores of one's skin in order to coax up unruly facial hair trying to escape the wrath of the blade. This allows a much closer, less irritating shave.

Anyway, I look forward to using my new shaving cream brush. And now, for your entertainment, a picture of a real badger:



And finally, for another pointless comparison, complete with a yodeling introduction, I bring you Danny Elfman and his cult 80's band, Oingo Boingo:

What's Your Dream 4th of July?

I feel like things are a lot cooler in rural areas of the country. I've have this romantic concept of shooting cans in my backyard that butts up to a forest/lake, and then going "fishing" in traditional American style - with dynamite.




I feel like growing up in the suburbs has severely stunted my growth. I never had the opportunities to hurt myself and my fellow Americans in spectacular ways the way kids from, say, Ohio could (side-note, apparently it is illegal to arrest someone on the 4th of July in Ohio, or on a Sunday for that matter.)

I'm wondering what I can do to finally get those experiences I missed as a child, even though I'm still living in the 'burbs (I feel like I'm having a much less-creepy Michael Jackson moment right now). So, here are some things I'd do on the 4th of July if I could:

• Find a beaten up pickup truck and a semiautomatic weapon. Tie the steering wheel so it's constantly turning right, and put a brick on the gas pedal. Then proceed to take potshots at the truck until it a) blows up, or b) stops running.
• Go fishing, with dynamite.
• Have a BBQ involving "unconventional" methods of cooking meat.
• Shoot stuff.

That's what I would do on the 4th of July if I had access to weaponry/explosives. What would you do?

Things I Like: Free Fruit!

It's the beginning of plum season! I've acquired free plums from not one, but two of my co-workers today! And! Because they are just ripening, I get the pleasure of running across the rare picked-yet-not-quite-ripe plum. This is quite the red-letter day for me, because I like plums like Lindsay Lohan likes getting arrested.

I've officially been at work for a year now, which is the longest I've ever held a job (granted, it's my first job out of college...), and I finally feel like I've been here long enough to enjoy the bounties of having worked with the same people 40 hours a week for an entire year. I'm enjoying the little things of work, like doughnut meetings, cake anniversaries, and other food-related reasons for celebration. My co-workers say I'm easily amused, but I prefer to just say I enjoy the little things at work. This is probably because it's really hard to enjoy the big things (It's not work if it's not, you know, work.).

I usually have doughnut meetings and cake anniversaries to look forward to, but the thing I really like about free fruit brought in by my co-workers is that it's always a surprise. I wasn't expecting anything special to happen today, yet here I am eating plums that were lovingly shared by people I didn't even know a year ago!

I love these unexpected blessings, and I keep forgetting that God continuously surprises me with bags of fruit I had no idea he had waiting for me. Fruit that has been growing for quite some time that I had forgotten was planted. Or maybe it was planted by someone else, and God just decided to give me bag so I could know about it and share in the harvest. Like an old friend coming to town wanting to hang out with me, or the opportunity to share my faith with someone, or getting a glimpse into a friend's life that I never thought I would get the opportunity to see.

Overkill

I'm not a huge fan of the coffee at work, but that's because you could call me a coffee snob. I loathe Starbucks because they've commercialized something that should have remained indie - sitting at a coffee shop with a friend chatting for hours, or as they say in Bosnia - chafing. However, the coffee at work is Keurig-brand instant coffee. I'll admit, it's probably the best instant coffee in the world, but it's still instant, and being a total snob, I abhor it. Coffee is meant to be brewed. The aroma should waft through the far reaches of the office, enticing the addictions of the workers. As Rockapella taught us:

It's the doo-wop doo-wop
In all I do
The mountain grown aroma
Always comin' through (always comin' through!)
Oh the best part of waking up
Is folgers in your cup.

Cue the falsetto.

Now, at work we have these Keurig coffee makers that use K-cups.
To brew your coffee, simply load up the coffee maker with one of these K-cups, put your mug underneath, and push the button. A high-powered hot-water nozzle will pierce the K-cup and shoot hot water through the instant coffee cup and into your mug. Somehow, water gets transformed into something resembling coffee in mere seconds, while it takes me 3-4 minutes to brew a cup in my french coffee press. Although this is pure, unadulterated coffee sacrilege, I still use it nearly every day to make it through days of making design diagrams. Last week, we had your basic, run-of-the-mill Keurig corporate coffee maker. One button. 8 oz. It worked! And then I came in Monday...

Behold! The Keurig B3000SE!
This office-monster is guaranteed to rock your morning with its ability to brew 4, 6, 8, or 10 ounces of instant joe! On top of that, check out its stylish exterior! It is fluent in 3 languages - French, Spanish, and English, and shines a blue light on your mug as coffee is blasted into your cup!

Golly gee! I'd pay top-dollar for this marvel of coffee-engineering! Do tell, good sir, how much will this Asimovian monster cost me?

Just the low, low price of
$999.99!!!

Are you kidding me?

I hope my company got a bulk discount on these. However, for now, I do enjoy changing the language every time I hit up this monstrosity.

Life-vomit

I run across a lot of randomness in my life. You probably do, too. My normal course of action when I encounter something totally (not) worth sharing is to cast it into the scurvy seas o' Ye Olde Facebook (I usually have my Facebook language set to Pirate...or Esperanto). I usually have something a bit more clever to say than the acceptable 140 character text that accompanies the average Facebook post (I know you can write more than that, but Twitter seems to have set a standard). So, that's why this blog is here. As I work, lead high school group, college group, or just careen around the Bay Area on daring adventures, I will inevitably run across (non-) share-worthy things, and this blog is where they will be immortalized!