Enough About Me ...

I walk into Fred Meyer and all I see is landfill. Stuff and packaging and crap and plastic. Big things, little stuff. Stuff that gets tossed into generic leaf bags when you’re cleaning your basement two or ten years later. I’d love to go back to the days when you bought stuff for stuff’s sake. Stuff so useful, it requires only a price. No need for extra 30% more, bigger, better, louder, faster, longer lasting, stronger extra strength words and packaging as a conviction to buy this product. I’m more than happy to read all that crap electronically and then buy it without packaging. It’s not about trees or processing or global warming, it’s about useless boxes used for transport from shelf to checkout to car to house to recycling yadda yadda yadda …

Let’s see, I’m curious and competitive, creative and driven. How about compuriativen. What? you gotta problem with that? Let's arm wrestle.

My ideal working environment is rich with passion, drive and collective force to deliver a top notch product to happy, engaged, included customers. That environment would be filled with people who trust and respect each other. They would know how to have a laugh and still make great use of each other's time. The working environment would also be thought highly of from a company perspective. We would be set up for success with budgeted funding, even modest, that would be there as we planned. Open heads would be easily cashed in when the right rock star was discovered. We could all take long walks on the beach and eat Chinese noodles. We'd all share a love of George Washington because he's the father of democracy and democracy is awesome, thank you!

In no particular order

1. Carefully partition into many smaller bricks and make a little house for a dead mole your cat brought in.
2. Using word of mouth and clever use of social networking sites, promote the brick as a "pet" and auction off on ebay.
3. Position the brick on the ground, stand on it and lift one leg a la Karate Kid style. Extra points for reenacting the pose as though you were just illegally knock in the knee by one of your opponents.
4. Wear the brick around your neck and tell your friends it's the new albatross.
5. Stare intently at the brick attempting to lift it with your superhuman mind power.
6. Stick the brick in your pants and wait to see who notices. If no one, assume they thought you were happy to see them.
7. Put the brick in a backpack and walk up and down the stairs in your office to firm up your glutes.
8. Play brick, paper, scissors.
9. Use the brick to motivate coworkers. Give it a name, say "Bricky."
10. With only a chisel and the brick, create a work of art. Take it to Chihuly and see if he will replicate in blown glass.

Ultimate fighting. Ultimately boring. I can’t decide if it’s the multiminutes spent in missionary position only to finish up with a grappling hold to the knee or the opening epic fox trot with fancy footwork sans punching. Based on my limited viewing of ultimate fighting, I’m starting to understand the appeal of WWF or I guess its WWE now. It takes the trash talking reminiscent of the early boxing days plus lots ‘n’ lots of t & a (which isn’t solely present on the men) and fast forwards all the hugging and canoodling. It’s no wonder WWE landed into a popular search engine’s top ten most searched list. Somewhere after Britney and before Paris. Yes, ultimate fighting needs a little something to worthy the title “ultimate.”

Someday I aspire to star in an infomercial. Nothing tickles me more than an hour spent listening to pretty people (or stars gone desperate) explain a problem I didn't know I had before and their scientifically tested, state of the art, easy to use solution. It turns out putting on a necklace is really, really hard. Millions of women everyday struggle to get their jewelry on. Reaching behind the neck, grabbing hold of those little, tiny clasps and finding the loop is next to impossible. It's true, many examples were provided of different, real women attempting to clasp their necklace and failing. In fact, not a single woman on the infomercial was able to get their necklace on. NOT EVEN ONE. E-Z clasp didn't even attempt to open the can that is asking others such as your significant other to help you clasp your necklace. Because as we all know, that scene begins with the frustrated husband who can't get the damn thing open and why the hell do you need to wear this necklace anyway, honey … you look FINE without it can we go now? Still ... can't ... get it ... open. And ends with divorce papers. Thanks to E-Z clasp, your marriage can be saved. It's easy, it's magnetic. A woman, provided she can actually get her hands behind her head, simple needs to approximate where the two ends meet and Presto! the necklace is on. Thank you E-Z clasp. Why hassle with silly bead stores that sell those clasps at five for a dollar. Thank you for allowing me to pay you $18.00 (plus shipping and handling) for your brilliance. My marriage will stay in tact and I will get that time spent struggling back in my day to devote to more productive things.

Finally a Wonderbra for men. Behold, the WonderJock. Now women can also endure that element of surprise in a drunken love-fest, pealing off each layer getting closer and closer to the tootsie roll center only to discover you've been Frito-Layed. This bag of chips is one third chips two thirds air. Over the years, men have developed techniques to determine the big question, "are those real?" A very straightforward decision tree that forks at "Do they jiggle?" Absence of jiggle (of the jigga-jigga or cajoink-cajoink variety) leads you to a bad boob job or falsies may be present. Thanks to AussieBum, girls are now under pressure to pioneer similar techniques. "What ever happened to a cheap pair of tube socks?", says Steve Bandow. It's true, spotting the tube sock was something even an amateur could do. Now, passing bulges will spark the inner question, "… or is he just happy to see me?"