Blogging forecast

Late to nonexistent, with a chance of tomorrowness. Mother is having cataract surgery, so how that goes will determine if/when I get to blog today.

Koogle, we hardly knew ye

The late Mitch Hedberg said, "Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny."

Such is my life, kinda. I had no sooner turned off the BlackBerry last night when several items that would fit in a post I'd planned began coming to mind. I couldn't convince myself that what I'd thought of wasn't funny, or interesting, although something being unfunny or uninteresting has certainly never stopped me from blogging on it before. (Like I need to tell you people that.) So I fired the BB up again, and commenced thumbing up some notes. I use the 'Berry and not pen and paper because I've been known to scribble notes that were incomprehensible while fully awake, much less groggy-headed. Didn't want my own Flaming Globes of Sigmund episode.

What I'd been planning on blogging on for a while was the products, things, or concepts I've used at some point that are no longer extant. At least, they're no longer extant if you go by my memory and a cursory googling. If I'm wrong, email me and I'll make the corrections, and in many cases will also try to track down some of these products and order up a passle.

Let's start with the eponymous product, Koogle. According to the Wikipedia article (and I think it's high-larious that this article doesn't meet Wikipedia's "standards"), Kraft manufactured the flavored peanut butter from 1971 until discontinuing it later in the seventies. I'm sure the flexible nature of memory has inflated the actual taste of the stuff from good to incredible in my mind, but I do remember it as being quite tasty. I don't think I ever tried the cinnamon or vanilla flavors, but I have happy childhood memories of the banana and chocolate flavors. Kraft people, let's make with the retro foodstuffs, okay?

I was prepared to mention Pearl Drops toothpaste, but the aforementioned cursory googling turned up a website for the stuff. It doesn't look the way I remember it, so it's possible it's a reincarnated product, like Pop Rocks.

Other than recipes for a DIY version, there were no results for Oatmeal Jumbles, which was a product by Kraft or General Foods, or at least one of the major conglomerates, that allowed you to bake a mixture of oatmeal cookies with brownies into a gooey mixture that would send your taste buds into spasms of ecstasy. I remember eating them in the early eighties, but I also remember them disappearing a short while later, and I think I know why. I know it's folly to base your research on one statistical sample, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Because, according to my tests, not only did the stuff send your taste buds into spasms of ecstasy, but it also sent your GI tract into spasms of a food-ridding frenzy. I think the combination of fat and fiber was the culprit. Whatever the reason, it resembled the effects of the weapons-grade laxative they give you when you're scheduled for a colonoscopy. I ate some and then went in for my shift at the Piggly-Wiggly, and got into trouble for disappearing into the bathroom for long periods. I assure you I'm not making up that anecdote.

Next on our tour of the product graveyard is the headstone for Chipos. The link goes to the only result I could find, a mere Flickr image of a coupon for the product, which came in a box like a cereal box. As you can see in the image, they were a "new fashioned" product, "fashioned from dried potato granules." I can't see how that kind of marketing failed, but I guess it did. To me, nothing says "tasty" like "potato granules." (They were actually pretty tasty.)

While I appear to be somewhat of a loner in my recollection of the preceding products, there are evidently hordes of people who fondly recall Funny Face drink mixes. I'm not going to recap it here, because that'd be repetitive. Just make with the clickies.

Freakies cereal is also fondly remembered by a lot of people. I think one of my relatives still has a Freakies magnet on her refrigerator, now that I mention it. Extensive love posted at the link.

I don't actually remember the taste of Sour Bites candy, but I sure remember that striped lion mascot. (Hit the link and scroll down a little for the image.)

I have no personal recollection of using Underalls, but I do remember that they once sponsored a racecar in NASCAR. How'd you like to finally earn a ride in NASCAR's top division, only to be told that your sponsor would be something called Underalls? And, since the teams coach drivers to mention the sponsors as much as possible (there's even a company, Joyce Julius and Associates, that tallies each "impression" of a brand during a race), some poor guy had to get out of his car and tell a reporter, "Well, the Underalls Chevy run good today." I imagine he prayed that Massengill or Kotex would sponsor a car, just so he'd have somebody to laugh at. Too bad the Boudreaux's Butt Paste car was still years from sponsorship.

Underalls disappeared for a while, perhaps because they were rumored to be yeast-infection factories, but they've been brought back by a Canadian company. (Warning: PDF link.) Maybe there have been great strides in yeast-infection-prevention technology in the intervening years.

Quite a few products I'd thought long gone are actually still being manufactured. Take Frostie Root Beer, for example. The grape-flavored drink Grapico is not only still being manufactured, but is owned by Birmingham's own Buffalo Rock company. That most stereotypical of Southern drinks, RC Cola is still alive and well, or at least alive. Fruit Stripes gum, too, as well as L'eggs pantyhose. (The last without the distinctive egg-shaped packaging. What's the point?)

Retsyn, which is evidently a yummy mixture of copper gluconate and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, is still being piped into Certs products, althought the Certs people don't tout the fact like they used to. Time was, Retsyn was hyped like a miracle drug. It has Retsyn! Nobody really knew what it was, or what it did, but we bought the stuff, anyway. We were stupid like that.

Now, for some things that aren't products, but which seem to have disappeared. Howzabout "W" as a vowel? Back when I was a child, i.e., on the eighth day after creation, I was taught that the vowels were your basic five, "and sometimes y AND W." (My teachers spoke that last line in capitals, just like that. Always scared me.) Now, however, people will look at you like you've sprouted poison ivy from your eyebrows if you mention W as being a vowel.

But my memory hasn't gone soft. W really can be a vowel. How? Well, in the word "how," for one example. So there. Nyah, nyah, nyah, he typed, most adultly.

A few years ago, someone sent me the link to this video, which I still think is cute, although I'm sure the young lady in it regrets the day video cameras were invented.

It was then that I found out that, at least in some circles, kids no longer go to the prom, but to prom. Why is that? Is your iPod-laden, tons of text-messaging schedule too busy to pronounce a perfectly good article that has served the English language for eons? Or is this like the rassinfrassin' Flickr phenomenon, in which we just drop letters for no reason other than to appear cool? Do these kids wonder why Ralph Kramden didn't say, "To moon, Alice!"?

Also, do schools still teach the Schwa sound? And does it still frustrate kids like it did me? I was always bumfuzzled to the nth degree by that, because I never knew where their example came from. It would be like teaching the long E sound by saying, "It's the 'Flema' sound." What the heck's a flema?

But the one thing that really twists my knickers is the death, ongoing, of Haagen-Dazs Triple Brownie Overload ice cream. It was chocolate ice cream, with chocolate brownies, AND chocolate chunks in it. When I discovered it at the Winn-Dixie in Tuscaloosa, I also noticed that whenever it appeared in the freezer section, it also disappeared quicker than a federal budget surplus. According to this Newsweek article, the introduction of the company's "Extraas" line increased their market share by one-third, so the only logical thing for them to do was, of course, to kill that line.

Speak not to me of high-fat alternatives to TBO. A pox on your Ben & Jerry's. Ben & Jerry's is tofu, carob, asphalt, and gravel compared to TBO. (Plus, I prefer my ice cream to be less preachy than B&J.) TBO was, quite simply and without argument, the greatest ice cream ever to grace the appreciative tongue of man.

A few years ago, I contacted the Haagen-Dazs people about resurrecting the flavor, but they just patted me on the head like a youngster asking Santa for an Uzi, and sent me some coupons for some of their regular brands, which of course can't hold a candle to TBO.

What tepid offerings does the company have now? Well, yummy stuff like Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle! Yum! Sesame, so you get all the flavor of a Big Mac bun. Wait, there's also Caramelized Hazelnut Gianduja, which sounds like an affliction, not a confection.

Here's a suggestion, Haagen-Dazs people: Realize that your market is people who are more than happy to pay premium prices for premium fat content, stop imitating The Granola Barn when it comes to new flavors, and bring back Triple Brownie Overload!

Sorry for the rant, but when you're refusing to bring back dairy perfection, you're walking on the fighting side of me.

If you have any products, concepts, entities, etc. that you remember but which has departed this mortal coil, drop me a line and I'll post a follow-up.

Update: The folks over at Homestarrunner.com still use "the" before "prom."

Surviving "Survivor"

Go ahead and prepare your hissing, because I'm admitting once again that I love "Survivor." (I also loved Survivor, back in the 80s, but only for that one song.) It's my one reality-show vice, if you don't count "Dirty Jobs" and "Mythbusters" as reality shows. The former I'll watch over and over, because it's awesome, and because Mike Rowe just may be the most self-effacing, likable guy to ever appear on television. He makes Mr. Rogers seem like Mr. T. The latter I'm slowly falling out of love with, because it seems to me that they've been slacking off a little on their myth selection lately. ("I'll slack you off, you fuzzy little foreigner," he thought, in a superfluous and silly "Caddyshack" moment.) Plus, sometimes Jamie and Adam don't so much bust a myth as they do bend it, or maybe bruise it a little.

So if you stay in the reality-game-show vein, "Survivor" is the only one I watch with any regularity. "Hell's Kitchen" had its moments--you donkey!--but Gordon Ramsay is the definition of a one-trick pony, and I'm tired of risotto and beef Wellingtons. "Top Chef" has always been too pretentious for me to watch with any regularity, ever since I saw Marcel or Maurice or whatever his name was allow that he trafficked in "cutting-edge molecular gastronomy." Really? Howzabout cooking something, Chester? Because, for all the "foodie" phenomenon, what you're doing boils down to taking some food and applying spices and heat. You're not splitting the atom. And I say this as a man who's made barbecued marshmallows, for crying out loud. (They're a lot of work, but they're delicious. And you're guaranteed to be the talk of the church social with a plate of them.)

"Last Comic Standing" had its moments, too, but there's only so much of comedians' private lives you can watch without needing extensive counseling. Most of them are such swirling vortexes of need that you actually start wishing for them to stop being themselves and just let loose with a string of airline and "Men and women sure are different" jokes.

Other than those two, and maybe one or two episodes of "Big Brother," which I thought was as exciting as sitting in a dentist's office, I don't think I've watched any reality shows. I'm gonna dance with the one what brung me, and I've watched every episode of every "Survivor" season but the first. Curiously, I had no interest whatsoever in that first season.

The bad thing about "Survivor" is that, as you near the finish line (we're down to five contestants now), there aren't as many conspiracies and conflicts floating around the camps, so the interest level goes down a commensurate level. We don't watch this show for the fire-making skills.

Begin admitted digression, because this always drive me crazy: If any of you ever get on "Survivor," please note that the firestarter they supply you is like this one. And the way you make fire with the thing is to shave off some material from the BACK SIDE FIRST, then flip it around and generate a spark with a machete strike against the flint. Instead of using that weeeeeee spark to ignite coconut husks or whatever, you're using it to ignite magnesium, which will always light, even when wet. I've never seen anyone do this on the show, even though you'd think that contestants would research this a little, considering it's for a million rassinfrassin' dollars.

End admitted digression.

Not only does the decreased number of contestants lower the conflict levels, but it also gives plenty of time for the contestants to make inane comments like, "Earl Bob is really playing this game to win." Naw! Get out! You're making this up. Surely everybody is a regular humanitarian role model like you.

My other favorite thing to gripe about is when the contestants get sent to "Exile Island" (which this season isn't so much an island as it is a...spot), and they talk about how they would have died if they hadn't been able to start a fire. Yes, because the film crew, medical personnel, medevac chopper, and legal advisors just offscreen would have just sat there and watched you die. It'd be boffo ratings!

But nothing beats the family reunion shows for "This is sickening" moments. All the contestants get to reunite with their wife, or son, or assistant soccer coach, and they go on and on about how horrible it's been without them, and it's been the longest 30+ days of their life, etc. And I'm sure that the film crew is jerking their chains a little to get the best responses, too.

Here's what really bugs me about the "I've been away from my Binky for so long" moments. Number one, you volunteered for the show, and you knew full well that, if you had any shot at the money, you'd have to be away from your family for X amount of days. And even if you got voted off at the first tribal council, you still couldn't just go home to the family, because then all the spoiler sites would broadcast to the world who was booted in what order. So don't act as if Jeff Propst shanghaied you to Brazil at machete-point. You had to audition, pass tests, and sign reams of legal forms to make it on this show.

Secondly, you've been away from your family for a little over a month, and that month was spent knowing that, if something bad were to happen, you'd be helicoptered out in a heartbeat. There are men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world that are away from their families for much longer than that, as well as being in situations where there are people actively trying to literally kill them, not TV kill them. And there's not even a remote chance of there being a million-dollar prize to the people completing those tours.

Don't get me wrong. If I ever made it on the show (and I never will, because I'm what you call a wimp), and I made it to the family reunion show, I'd squawl like a new puppy when my wife or whoever came out from the bushes. And I'd miss my wife and family and friends immensely while I was out there. But I like to think that I'd also be able to keep things in perspective and realize that I'm playing a game, not making a major sacrifice.

Oh, and fellow Samsonian J.T. still rocks. He's the biggest threat to win the thing, but he's so likable that the other contestants don't even recognize that. Why, he's a regular Southern-fried Mike Rowe.

The laaady with the Flehmen and the stuff and the...

I'm sorry, but I can't quit saying "Flehmen response," after seeing it on Ugly Overload this morning. It sounds like something Jerry Lewis would do, but it's a real phenomenon in the animal kingdom.

Now, the neventy-flavin response, that's pure Lewis.

I'm kinda sheepish about admitting this, but I used to be a huge Lewis fan. Now, before you cross me off the cool list forever, let me explain that "used to be" refers to when I was barely in the double-digit category, age-wise. I'm talking about the era when I'd run to the TV every afternoon to catch "Gilligan's Island," people, so cut me some slack. To a young feller such as myself, Lewis was the pinnacle of funniness.

So, besotted as I was with Lewis, I was pretty much enraptured to see Jerry Lewis' name on a jukebox at a restaurant in Florala, Alabama. (It's right on the Florida-Alabama line, see, so it's Flor-Ala, which I'll admit rolls off the tongue easier than Alaflor, which sounds like a prescription antihistamine.) I can't remember what the restaurant was named, since it's gone through several incarnations over the years, most of them with Dairy in the name, like Dairy-Viscount, Day-Ree-Dreem, etc. It's still there, right near that corner. You know, that corner where that one street intersects that other street. See? Now you remember it.

Anyway, back then, my rule was "When you see Jerry's name, you don't think, you just act." And act I did, somehow begging a dime or nickel (told you it was a while back) from some adult to punch B17, then wait a few seconds while Jerry was cued up. And that's the day I figured out that Jerry Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis were two completely different people. The world is a cruel place. You want comedy, you get rockabilly.

That shock was almost as bad as when I found the hidden Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle and Van, and figured out that Santa Claus...well, you know. I still don't like to talk about it.

Moving on, the weather service has cancelled the Arkwatch for today, so perhaps we'll have some sun in the sunny South. I know Jacob would appreciate being able to cavort on the back patio/slab.

The little goob pulled off a heck of a trick yesterday afternoon. Mama Dunn was cooking supper, and I was walking through the kitchen when I noticed that he had crawled out of his diaper, while somehow remaining fully snapped into his onesie. As I Tweeted yesterday, that's a cooler trick than a woman taking off her bra without taking her top off, if you ask me. The boy's not yet one year old, and he's already a better magician than David Copperfield, not to mention looking a lot less like Robby Benson, which you can't stress enough, if you ask me.

What's that you say? I haven't posted a weird MP3 in a few days, and the world economy may shut down as a result? How about a selection by another beloved funnyman from my youth, Roger Miller? Here's a sub-two-minute slice of silliness titled "My Uncle Used to Love Me, But She Died."

Once again reporting from Seattle

That's not accurate, of course. Seattle doesn't get tornadoes like Alabama does. We are getting Seattle-level rainfall, though, with a likelihood of some heap bad weather this afternoon. Other areas of the state have already gotten it. What's that you say? Hurricane season starts June 1? Yay. I think we need to move.

I'm joking, of course. Every spot on Earth has its positives and negatives. If it's not rain and tornadoes, it's ginormous moths.

I'm not particularly an insectophobe, but I'll admit that such a creature alighting on my shoulder would probably make me spasm like a particularly girly five-year-old girl.

One insect thing that does always get me is walking into a spider web. It doesn't matter how much of my brain knows that there's a zillionth of a percent chance of such an encounter resulting in a serious spider bite, there are still a few neurons that didn't get the "Don't panic!" memo. Then, the rest of my brain gives in to peer pressure (evidently, the scared neurons are the cool kids, and the rest just want to be like them; if they jumped off a bridge...), and it's instant DefCon 1. Stand Operating Procedure for DefCon 1 is flailing around like a nuclear-powered gyroscope in an always futile attempt to free myself from the web strands. Such episodes don't last long, but they're still supremely embarrassing.

Moving on, here's what I heard in the thrift store last night from a young girl and her mother on the other side of a shelf from me.

"Those are albums."
"What are albums?"
"They're the way we used to listen to music."

And I aged a few more decades.

Technically, the woman should have explained that music is still packaged in albums, since an album is a collection of music. It's LPs that died, except for audiophiles who recognize that they're still the best option for rich, full sound. At least, that's what they've read in Condescending Music Geek Monthly. Personally, I think that the number of ear pairs capable of discerning a farthing's worth of difference between a CD and an LP is the same as the number of tongues capable of discerning the difference between a decent grocery store blend coffee and Sumatran-Algonquin Morning Glory coffee. But that's just me.

I will lament the demise of really good LP cover art, though. It's just not the same when you buy a CD or MP3. You need all those square inches to get the full effect of, say, ELO's "Out of the Blue." Why'd I ever throw away that LP? (Side note/warning: Disparage ELO within earshot of me at your peril. The later stuff reeked, but in their prime, they were excellent.)

Moving on, Jacob is this close to walking. He's at the jump door, and he's been prepped how to react once he's in the airstream, he just can't bring himself to leave the airplane. But he'll make the jump one day. In preparation of that day, he's fortifying himself with hearty meals and fruits, which he absorbs by osmosis after they're smeared all over his face and hair. We're raising an amoeba.

The amoeba is almost one year old. May 26, he'll clock the big 1. I understand it's customary to jump-start the national economy by inviting several thousand people (a good rule of thumb is everybody in every state that abuts your home state, plus Texas) to a birthday party that'll overwhelm him so much that he's crankier than Andy Rooney before the first slice of cake is passed around, but we're such iconoclasts that we're keeping the party list down in the single digits. I'm looking forward to spoiling the little good later, when he can understand what's going on, but when he's perfectly content to pass time by gnawing on his toes or planting his face in the bathwater, I see no reason to take out a second mortgage to fund the frolic.

I'm also looking forward to taking him fishing. I don't know why that activity, of all the ones he'll get to do, has me salivating, but the thought of snagging a bluegill or catfish with him has me all agog with anticipation. A few more birthdays, and I'll get to do it. Yay for me.

Live, from Scufflegrit Road

Not really, although I did pass under Scufflegrit Road while we were coming back from Arkansas. Took a short trip to visit the Natural State family members. Here's an interesting fact: Arkansas is actually located in Seattle. At least, that's what it seemed like, since it rained from the time we got there to the time we left. We got there Friday afternoon, and by Sunday afternoon, Jacob was in full-blown cabin fever mode. He REALLY likes his neighborhood perambulations, and when he doesn't get them, well, he lets you know it. Luckily, there was a honkin' big Wal-Mart near the father-in-law's place, so he got to do some inside perambulation, if there is such a thing.

Scufflegrit Road passes over Highway 78, which will one day be I-22 but for now is just one majorly awesome stretch of four-lane without the eleventy-billion signs that populate all the other interstates. I'm a committed capitalist, so I appreciate business and all that, but I could do with a little more scenery in my scenery.

Father-in-law lives in Batesville, Arkansas, and our route there takes us through rice-growing country, which fascinates me. Where I grew up, in south Alabama, peanuts, soybeans, cotton, corn, and a few other crops are commonplace. But all those grow in dirt, whereas rice grows in water, or at least flooded dirt. And my brain can't reconcile what is essentially farming a lake. U.S. 64 through Marion, Wynne, McCrory, and Augusta is surrounded by serpentine berms and acres of flat land, some of it already flooded. Monstrous four-wheel-drive tractors with multiple tires on each axle sit idle, ready to somehow plant, cultivate, and eventually harvest rice. I had enough trouble farming dirt, where you can see what you're doing. I shudder to think of the agricultural devastation I'd cause trying to farm water.

Also, Arkansas has "Highway Police" cars. I've never seen that term before. I know that's completely superfluous knowledge, but when you're the only conscious person in a car speeding toward Bald Knob, Ar., you tend to notice things like that.

I want to work there, just so I can answer the phone. (Sorry for the lack of quality, but such is life when it's Seattle weather and you're shooting subjects with a BlackBerry camera.)

Also saw this on the way up to Batesville.


Got to be secure in your manhood to pull into that lane.

Not a lot else to say, other than to point out that, if you're looking for something to do this weekend, Allendale County, SC has a big festival weekend.

Did you hear about....

the man who had a wild pig burst through his kitchen door, run into his fireplace, and start trying to climb up the chimney?
He had swine flue.

Did you hear about the gal who laid out in the sun until she looked like a well-fried piece of bacon?
She had swine hue.

Did you hear about the church that was built by a famous sausagemaker, who specified that some of the benches had to be in the shape of a pig?
It had swine pews.

Sorry, folks, that's about all I have today, so I'm both late and lame. But you buys your ticket and you takes your chances, and that's what came up today. I might try to atone for the slowness and slackness by posting tomorrow, but I can't say that for sure. Job requirements (the paying kind) are rudely intruding once more, so I could be otherwise detained. If that doesn't work out, I'll see you Monday.