Who still uses the bottles of ketchup where you have to hit the bottom of the bottle to get it out? What is the point of them? If you need a large quantity of ketchup just sell it in jars. This design has never made sense to me. It either doesn’t come out or it comes out in a rush. The squeeze is just so much smarter.
I know that everything in this world is different strokes for different folks, there are still people who love smarties for some unknown reason(It’s certainly not the taste or texture of them). But it just feels so inefficient in general.
Is this what it’s like being a tech bro? Where you constantly look at everything and wonder about how you could improve it without having any actual ideas? Is that what I’ve become?
I just know whenever I see one of these fuckers I’m just like, this is going to be a bad time. I’m going to waste food which is terrible.
While I’m on the subject those fucking influencers who are like I feel like making a bowl of cereal and then empty like two boxes of cereal into a bowl with some milk only to waste it all are even worse than this bottle. I have an exact example of someone doing this but I’d like not to focus that much on people’s pasts if they’re trying to make an effort to change and grow. He did and here’s the proof:
I love the Pokemon franchise greatly. But I have always had a problem with the fact that they send ten year olds out to catch these little monsters. I’ve gone on at length that I doubt many of these kids come back. In fact, the lore says that many of them don’t come back.
Just imagine that pikachu is a child
But then I was thinking that you don’t even need to leave your home to get killed by your pokemon. They don’t even have to mean it. I mean that mostly through friendship evolutions and not the terrible murderer that is Bewear.
Lifeless eyes, like a doll’s eyes, the ruthless killing machine
Before I get to my point about friendship evolutions let me show you the pokedex entries about Bewear.
Read those entries. You catch one of these soulless monsters and it comes in to give you a hug. You’re feeling pressure on your arms and back and suddenly snap. You can’t move anymore and you feel your soul leaving your body. If you’re lucky, it won’t eat you though at that moment it won’t matter because you’ve been crushed by this monstrous bear. Gotta catch ’em all.
The thing about friendship evolution is unlike other forms of evolution, it can happen at any time. So, say you take a nap with your friend like I would with my cats on the bed. In fact, that’s where we’ll start. You take a nap with your lovable meowth.
Maybe he looks at you as you fall asleep and thinks about how much he loves you and friendship evolves into Persian.
And gains sixty pounds. That would make sleeping so uncomfortable. But it’s not deadly. For that, you would need to fall asleep with Munchlax.
Very cute, a bit heavier at 231 pounds. That’s just the size of a person. Now say the same thing happens and he friendship evolves into Snorlax.
You’re not coming back from that because he weighs over 1000 pounds. He would crush you without skipping a beat. It would at least be peaceful. You would go quietly into that good night. Possibly unless you woke up as you feel his body crushing you.
I might make this a series about all the ways you can die in the Pokemon world. There are so many.
Over the course of this week, I realized I’m at my best when I have my tasks on a list. I started a daily checklist of things that I need to do that include such scintillating entries as “Scoop cat boxes”, “drink beet juice” and “continue my work into establishing a dimensional space tunnel that will bring me back to my true love on ixion-6. Wait for me *(&^(^(& I will come back to you. I know that we don’t speak the same language and that you communicate through a series of tonal harmonies but some things go beyond that. Truly yours is a butt that just won’t quit. I’m pretty sure that part of you is a butt”. You know, normal stuff like that.
There’s something satisfying about going down a list and seeing things being done. I do it for my shopping, my cleaning and just about everything else. Maybe I have some undiagnosed issue that no therapist has been able to nail down in me yet. Or maybe I just have a mind that’s more structured for organization. Either way, this revelation helped me realize what’s at the heart of my love for the long running Bethesda RPG, Skyrim. Given its full flowers, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Skyrim breaks up every quest into a to-do list. It’s go here, do this thing and go home. It’s nice and simple. Sometimes I like to figure out where I’m going next. Most of the time, I just want to be told. In between quests, wander around and fuck up some dragons. It’s a perfect game.
It also has me using mods so that my character can hang out with Sonic and Jesus. Living my best life.
Heather didn’t need to look through the menu. She had come here enough to know what she wanted. The bartender knew her, giving her a nod as she sat down in a booth. The waitress brought her drink over and Heather started waiting. The bar was mostly empty. It was early and would probably get rowdy later. She was a parent though so she liked to get things done and get home to her daughter as soon as possible.
“I knew that you’d be early,” a voice said she was running her finger along the ring of her cosmopolitan.
She looked up and saw her ex-husband standing in front of her. She was reminded as she always was, how handsome he was and had been. He was wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of nice jeans. His hair was neat and beard trim. He wasn’t sure to sit down yet or not. She slid out of the booth and hugged him. He noted that she had lost weight. Maybe that was him, the dead weight, the albatross around her neck.
The hug lasted a bit longer than friends. She squeezed him tight and then let him go. She sat down and he did as well. The waitress came in and he ordered a beer. She was looking at him from across the table. Her wide, protuberant eyes were drilling into him. Her hair was shorter than when they were together, coming to about her chin. She looked good.
“Thank you for offering to meet,” he said to her. “And thank you for what you said to Krissy.”
“She didn’t mean any of that, John,” Heather replied. “She just… she’s having a hard time understanding this.”
“I know.”
He hung his head. He tapped his finger on the table.
“How are you doing with this?” John asked.
“I mean, I was hurt when it happened but… that was a year ago at this point. I think I’m coming to terms with it,” Heather answered. “When you came out to me, I said some things that I shouldn’t have. I was not kind to what you were going through.”
“You don’t have to apologize for that,” John said. “I know it must have been hard to hear. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “Don’t you fucking dare dismiss what we had that way.”
He looked at her. The slap of her words felt almost physical.
“I don’t feel it was a waste. We had ten really good years and we got Krissy out of it. I love you, John. I still do. I know that we can’t be together but that fact isn’t going to change,” Heather continued.
“I love you too,” John said struggling to keep his voice even.
“That’s why I wanted to reach out to you. Because when I talked to her about yelling at you, saying that she hated you, it was like confronting a tiny version of the feelings that I had for you. I told her that it wasn’t your fault, that this is just what happens sometimes, people fall out of love with one another and they figure out who they are.”
Heather took a sip of her drink.
“Because even if we still have things to work out between us, I don’t want you to be sad, I don’t want you to lose your daughter who despite what she was saying, loves you more than anything in this world,” Heather said and took a deep breath. “I want us to be a family and that’s going to look a little different. You, Krissy, me and whatever handsome man you happen to be dating.”
John smiled and took a swig of his beer.
“I think I’m going to stick with Barry for a while,” John said. “I really care for him.”
“He seems like a great guy,” Heather said with a smile. “I think that he’s going to be really good to have in Krissy’s life. She told me about him helping her with her pitching.”
“I’m glad we have at least one jock to help her learn.”
“Not our thing.”
“Never was.”
They shared a laugh.
“How’re you doing?” John asked her.
“I got back on the dating apps and I have a bevy of twenty-year old men looking to blow my back out,” Heather said. “I’m going to be just fine. I just don’t care, right now. It’s fun once in a while but I’m not really looking to date seriously.”
“That’s fine. If you ever want to drop Krissy off while you go on a date, feel free. We’re always happy to see her.”
“Thanks. The thing is, you know what? I really just miss my best friend.”
Her eyes were crinkling with tears. John took a wet breath.
“Yeah, I do too,” he said.
“Do you think we can get back to that?” Heather asked him.
“I would love to.”
“Any gossip from your office?”
He let out a laugh.
“If we’re going to get into that,” he said. “We need some food and more drinks. On me, of course.”
They beckoned the waitress over and the two of them ordered. They spent the next few hours laughing and enjoying themselves. They went back to their homes feeling better about the world, about themselves and each other.
Continuing to talk about Taskmaster this week, I want to bring up one of the best moments in the show’s history. For those that don’t know about this show, it involves five comedians that are forced to do a variety of tasks to earn points. The first task of every show is called the prize task where the contestants bring in an item that fits a description and are awarded points based on how close they get it. The judge for this is Greg Davies.
Enter Rhod Gilbert who spends most of the prize tasks trying to embarrass his old friend, Greg. Usually by bringing in a picture of him looking fat or something else equally damning. For this prize task, they were told to bring in a picture of themselves wearing a fez.
Rhod presents his picture and this is what he normally looks like:
This is the picture he presented:
That is Greg Davies’ mother. These two have known each other at the time of this photo for about fifteen years. I would like you to imagine going up to your friend’s mom, asking her to take a picture of her in the bath, having her make the bath and getting settled so that all her bits are covered by bubbles and then coming in to take this picture. Maybe it was taken by her partner, I don’t know, they don’t get into it. But still the hilarity of that process is not lost on me. Other fun fact, she was in the audience when this was shown. If you watched the linked video, it’s the first bit of it.
It’s moments like this that make me fucking love Taskmaster with my whole heart.
I think that this is totally right. It makes sense because when you’re on the high seas, you need every person to fully wreck shit. Why should someone be sidelined just because something terrible happened to them? No reason at all.
The thing is that Taskmaster has taken the same path with their contestants. The only thing you have to do is be funny. Age, race, sexuality they don’t matter to the producers. Are you able to do a task in a remarkably unique and stupid way? Then come on in! And I absolutely love that about it. I hope that they keep it up forever. If you haven’t seen it before, here’s one of my favorite clips, which is the team trying to pop a balloon with a number of objects.
There’s a line from the book “Love is a Mixtape” by Rob Sheffield where he states that “The work of love will leave you bloody and it will leave you sad”. I was thinking about that as I cleaned out my cats’ litter boxes today, which seems to be such a mundane job for a quote so profound.
It originally comes from a story where the author is trying to clip his father’s toenails in the later stages of his life. Because of that context, I always thought about it in the context of helping others especially my own father when he was living with dementia.
It’s only today that I thought about it in the context of myself. I have to go to the doctor today to find out about my calcium score from my cardiologist. I’m hoping for a good score and that I can worry less about my heart health. But it might be worse and I’m going to have to change aspects of my life even further.
But I’ll know. It’ll make me sad if it’s bad but I’ll know then and I can do what needs to be done. When you get up and do the daily work of living it can be hard. But it’s a form of love that you show yourself. When you eat something healthy, clean yourself or your living area.
Self care isn’t just a spa weekend. It’s the daily maintenance to show you that you love you.
Franklin Cota, an author and podcaster 