Rainbow Farting Unicorns - Part 1

The actual source of all rainbows

It's been brought to my attention that, more often than not, I tend to make things which have drawn my ire the subject of blog posts.  I can't argue with that point as I agree that I've developed a particular pattern of subject matter when it comes to what I choose to write about. (At least I can't be criticized for being inconsistent, I guess.) I also realize that this isn't healthy when it comes to trying to maintain the interest of readers - even though I'm certain there's a group of people who actually like entries wherein I complain and rant about things incessantly, this silent majority has been more than appeased thus far during the lifetime of my blog.  That being the case, I'm introducing this entry as the first in a recurring series wherein I talk about nothing but things I like or that have otherwise made me happy, hence the title "Rainbow-Farting Unicorns" (because you're in a deeper, darker place than I'd ever hope to consider being if the image of a rainbow-farting unicorn can't put a smile on your face).

"WORLD WAR Z" IS REALLY GOOD

It's no secret that zombies have become the flavor of the week when it comes to monsters being used in movies and television productions.  There's some kind of rotation that Hollywood uses which we mere mortals aren't privy to, I'm sure of it - how else can you explain that there are years where a bunch of alien invasion movies get made then the next a slew of vampire-centric films are rolled out?  They tap popular trends (striking while the iron is hot, as it were) and at this point zombies are about as popular as they ever have been.

A piece of literature that was on the forefront of the current zombie movement is Max Brooks' (yes, as in Mel Brooks' son) "World War Z", which is currently being adapted into a movie (which, allegedly, isn't going to be that close to its source material - shocker) starring Brad Pitt.  Originally released in 2006, WWZ is a very unique book in that it makes use of anecdotal stories gathered from first-hand interviews to chronicle the struggles of humanity attempting to overcome a world-wide plague of the undead.

Let me say first that it took some doing for me to get into this book.  I started reading it earlier this year and was challenged immediately by how it is written.  I think most avid readers are accustomed to stories being presented in a narrative format, which makes them relatively easy to navigate and absorb.  WWZ is different in that the story is pieced together through individual and seemingly scattered elements, making the scope of it incredibly vast.  It wasn't until after I'd forced myself to dedicate time to reading it that I began to appreciate how these pieces come to form an intricate tale ripe with details.  I enjoy using my imagination to assemble mental images of scenes and characters from books I'm reading as I'm reading them; if you share this trait, I can confirm that WWZ presents many opportunities to stretch your grey matter.  From epic battles with legions of zombies staged on familiar sites (Yonkers, New York for example was the site of the first large-scale encounter between the US military and the living dead) to harrowing survival stories involving perilous situations at every turn, the scenery in WWZ is truly epic.  I highly recommend this book for fans of horror, suspense, or science fiction - and documentaries, for that matter.

I'VE LOST WEIGHT

My wife and I have been members of our local YMCA for about 18 months now and she's been actively participating in Weight Watchers since February of this year.  Jill (who updates her blog a whole lot more frequently than I do - check her out at The Truesdale Times) has lost just shy of 75 pounds while on the Weight Watchers program and I could not be more proud of her!  She's done a tremendous job of subscribing to their guidelines and the proof is in the fact that she's in arguably the best shape of her life - I always thought she was beautiful but when I refer to her as my hot, young trophy wife now people actually get a sense of what I've been talking about.

Her efforts have rubbed off on me a bit because I've seen the fruits of her labor.  By watching her and paying attention to how she's been able to have such great success with the program, I've developed an understanding that the great thing about Weight Watchers is how it promotes effective decision making when it comes to choosing what to eat.  You can eat what you want while keeping in mind the consequences of your decisions (good or bad) instead of being forced into a diet where you're eating foods that will sustain you but will also make your taste buds want to rip themselves free of your tongue. (What's more, I think I'd go crazy if I had to switch out meals with shakes or some kind of beverage.) I feel like that's what most people use as an excuse to not maintain a diet, the fact that they can't have the foods they enjoy.  So instead of a regimen they can endure they wind up suffering through what's more akin to a form of penance than anything and can't help but hate the experience.  Weight Watchers is the exact opposite of that.

If you want a double-bacon cheeseburger, go ahead - but you have to realize that because you had the cheeseburger you shouldn't have other similar items that aren't exactly good choices.  On top of that, exercise helps!  No one is going to confuse me for an Olympic athlete, but I have to say that the changes I've been able to make by way of regular exercise are noticeable.  I have more endurance, greater strength, and more energy.  It used to be that I had to push myself just to keep up with Jill while we were walking (I'm still convinced she was trying to lose me while we were on the strip in Las Vegas), but that isn't the case anymore!  Little things like that (as well as the fact that I'm down a shirt size) start to add up in your mind and give you a sense of confidence to keep going.

The point is to say that I've been made aware of things I was eating previously and now realize the impact they can have in an overall sense of well being.  I know I've lost at least 20 pounds since some point this summer as that was when we purchased a scale and have been regularly tracking our weight.  Not to sound too cocky but I've thought of the idea of re-taking our wedding pictures because of the fact that we both look better now than we did then!

WE'RE (going to be) ON A BOAT!

When my then soon-to-be wife and I were going over options for our honeymoon more than a year ago, my ideas were Disney World or Hawaii.  Hawaii was out of the running fairly quickly, mainly because I didn't want to have to take out a personal loan just to finance the trip.  Disney is a personal favorite of mine as I've always loved the theme parks.  My family and I used to go there almost every year when I was growing up, so it goes without saying that I have plenty of fond memories of those experiences.

Jill's idea, on the other hand, was to take a cruise.  I'd never been on one (whereas she'd already been on several) and, truth be told, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea initially.  I was concerned about being sick the whole time, if we'd be comfortable living out of a cramped cabin for several days, and most of all whether or not it would be worth the money.  I only plan on getting married once, so of course I wanted the experience to be as memorable as possible (and of course I have to live up to my promise to Jill that our life together will be an adventure).  I eventually agreed to the cruise and so we booked a trip to the Bahamas aboard the Carnival Sensation.

To put my thoughts on the cruise quite succinctly, I loved every moment of it!  I have recommended the cruising experience to literally everyone who so much as mentions the possibility of being slightly interested in the chance they might take one at some point in their life.  I'm not necessarily a travel expert, but be that as it may I do not think that you can get a vacation with such great value by any other means.  Between the food, the shows, the picturesque ports of call, and everything else in between, it was a phenomenal trip and we were almost immediately looking forward to our next outing.

We're now within two weeks of being on the water again as we'll be setting sail to the western Caribbean for a 7 day voyage on board the Carnival Dream.  Saying "I CAN'T WAIT!" would be a slight understatement at this point as it feels like we've been looking forward to this trip for more than a year (which isn't far from the truth; we booked far in advance to get a lesser rate).  I wanted to take a longer trip on a bigger boat, and that's exactly what this itinerary allows for as the Dream is one of the largest vessels in Carnival's fleet.  We'll be making stops in Cozumel, Belize, Costa Maya, and Isla Roatan - on top of that we've booked several shore excursions, which we didn't try at all on our honeymoon.  This is one more example of an activity that as little as a few years ago I never thought I'd ever do, but I am and I'm sure we'll enjoy this trek just as much (or hopefully more so) as we did our previous adventure.

I ORDERED MY IPOD CLASSIC (Related Topic: Amazon.com is effing-incredible)

For several months now I've been agonizing over the decision as to whether or not I wanted to purchase a new iPod.  I have a significant amount of music in my collection and my older iPod Nano wasn't cutting it anymore.  The Nano I have only carries around 2 gigabytes of memory, which is a terribly small amount of storage space when you consider I have upwards of 60 gigs of music.  It's a pain for me to have to constantly unload and load music as my tastes change or as I acquire new tunes.  I wanted a device that would allow me to sync it up with my library every so often and carry all my music with me, not only for ease of maintenance but also because I now have a head unit in my truck that can interface with a USB device.  Suffice it to say that it's a whole lot more convenient to have my media contained on a box the size of a deck of cards instead of a huge case of CDs.

My problem, being the epic tight-wad that I am when it comes to spending money, was that I didn't want to incur the expense of upgrading.  I kid you not when I say that I agonized for what seemed like several months over making the purchase.  I knew what I wanted but I wasn't sure how to pay for it.  "Do I use my credit card or try to save up the cash?", I repeatedly asked myself.  Apparently I suffered a moment of weakness at some point within the past week because I ordered a 160 gigabyte iPod Classic with an accessory bundle from Amazon and the lovely thing was delivered to me early this morning!

Now I get to look forward to spending time setting it up - I sincerely hope there's never a stage of my life where I don't anticipate playtime with a new gadget with the kind of glee typically reserved for a 9 year old boy on Christmas morning.

RING OF HONOR RETURNS TO THE CAROLINAS 

When it comes to professional wrestling in the United States, there really are only two major companies in existence right now (even though a whole bunch of small indy promotions would have you believe they're the closest equivalent), those being World Wrestling Entertainment and iMPACT (aka, TNA) Wrestling.  Most observers, myself included, feel that the gap between WWE and TNA is ever widening with WWE having a huge advantage both in popularity and (more importantly) profitability.  They're the largest sports entertainment company in the world and their domination of the global market grows every year.  That's all well and good (especially if you're a little boy or a woman who delights in the fact that John Cena is the second coming of Hulk Hogan, that being a wrestler who's physique and charisma are unrivaled but who also happens to be an iffy at best when it comes to his grappling ability) except for the fact that the lack of any legitimate competition seems to make the creative forces behind the scenes feel like they don't necessarily have to work as hard as they would otherwise.  Point being, on some level WWE has realized that they're now at the top of the food chain and that the nearest threat is still wet behind the ears which has caused their product to become quite stale as of late.

There was a moment in the history of professional wrestling where there were three companies - WWE, World Championship Wrestling, and Extreme Championship Wrestling - competing in the United States.  ECW was always third in the pecking order, although to some felt they (despite being a much smaller company with nowhere near the financial backing of WWE) were better than WCW and even WWE.  Interestingly enough, nowadays there is once again a third company attempting to climb the mountain, as it were, in an attempt to open the eyes of fans to an alternative to the norm.  Enter Ring of Honor.

ROH has been around for nearly a decade and has enjoyed a significant amount of critical success as their unique brand of action takes a cue from what's referred to as strong-style wrestling more frequently seen in Japan.  Strong-style involves much more legitimate strikes and kicks than what's typically a part of wrestling matches, thereby heightening the audience's perception of genuine violence taking place.  This has been a great selling point for their brand as they're capable of reaching fans of both professional wrestling and mixed martial arts fighting without alienating either sub-culture.

I've been a fan of theirs for several years but, unfortunately for me, the only way I could ever see ROH material was by way of DVDs or ultra-low quality video of matches on YouTube or some other streaming site.  ROH is based in the northeast, Philadelphia specifically, and a majority of their live events take place in that region.  However, as my luck would have it they've now begun touring more extensively and have added several cities in the Carolinas to their list of regular haunts.  They've already held a handful of events in Charlotte, North Carolina and in December they'll be making two stops in the Carolinas: December 3 - Spartanburg, SC, and December 4 - Greensboro, NC.  With any luck, I'll be able to make it to at least one of these events (more than likely won't get to both but that would be fantastic).

I'd strongly encourage any wrestling fans in the area to check them out as theirs are some of the best shows I've been to in quite some time.  Take a chance on something new by seeing what else exists in the world of professional wrestling!

A Rant about Paying for Parking

I get some flack from associates of mine about my apparent stinginess when it comes to spending money.  They seem to be under the assumption that because I only recently got married and have no children that I wipe my rear end with $100 bills.  I wish that were the case - the being comfortably wealthy part, not the using money for toilet paper part.  I imagine that would do terrible things to my septic system, not to mention more than likely being incredibly rough on my posterior.

Be that as it may, I've never been one to spend money on a whim as I prefer to be more precise in budgeting my funds than most other folk seem to be. (That's an admittedly bold assumption on my part seeing as how I don't make a point to talk up personal financial strategies during casual conversation.) I like to know how much of the money in pot A is going to be taken away from me by services X, Y, and Z, thereby giving me a pretty firm understanding of what I have to work with at all times.  I have a fairly well-structured monthly budget and I do a better than decent job of staying within those parameters by spending money that is actually mine instead of making use of credit, however temptation is always afoot.  Case in point, I've had a handful of what some might call high-dollar items in my Amazon checkout for several weeks now.  I log into my account occasionally and am almost always immediately antagonized by financing offers.  Could I afford to take on the extra expense?  Sure I could, but I haven't pulled the trigger on making that purchase (yet) mainly because my fragile sense of stability might be irreparably damaged were I to do so.

On top of this is the fact that I tend to suffer from buyer's remorse.  Essentially whenever I make a purchase - even if it's for something I actually want or otherwise need - I tend to focus on the "What if?" of the scenario, namely what else could I have bought with the money I just handed over.  This being the case, you probably won't be surprised to find out that I don't much care to pay for services which I don't interpret as being genuinely beneficial to me in some way, shape, or form.

An example of this would be the fees associated with purchasing event tickets online via Ticket Master.  If you've never done business with them (good for you), you may not be aware that when purchasing event tickets in addition to the cost of admittance you're also charged with facility and convenience fees.  Ticket Master doesn't divulge what these fees cover (shocker), a fact which has lead me to make my own conclusions.  By my estimation, the convenience fee is supposed to make customers feel good about not having had to stand in line or deal with a person face-to-face during the purchase process. (The fact that mine is the last generation who will have known the excitement of camping overnight to be near the front of a line to buy tickets is rather disheartening to me.  Gone are the days of the truly dedicated being rewarded for their being opportunistically unemployed!) The facility fee must then be the cut of money that goes to the venue.  Some cohorts of mine and I have taken to referring to it as the "take a dump" fee, the joke being that these monies go towards covering the costs the venue incurs by way of patrons making use of the facilities.

That's two poop references thus far in this entry, friends - if you aren't impressed with the high-brow nature of this publication by now I don't know what else I can do to sway you into my favor.

Are these fees entirely pointless?  Probably not (I'd more than likely feel better about paying them if there was full disclosure as to their purpose or if they were lumped into the price of admission) but I think you can understand my frustration when the price of a ticket goes from $30 to $45 because of fees.  We're already paying through the nose for our stubs, more often than not, but we'll have to pay even more for a set of phantom services just to get in the door.  That's not good business, however it is how you potentially price your audience out of being able to attend an event.

Another scenario that exemplifies my displeasure with being forced to pay for a service which ultimately yields no tangible product is the concept of paying for parking.  My wife and I went to the South Carolina State Fair this past Sunday evening.  The parking lot attached to the fairgrounds is humongous and freely accessible to fair-goers, but with Sunday being the last day of the fair and the weather being particularly agreeable conditions were such that untold thousands descended upon the festivities for rides, games, entertainment, and one final taste of all-things deep fried (there was a vendor selling deep fried Kool Aid this year, proving yet again that there's no end in sight to the potential for food items to be dipped in batter, cooked in hot grease and served with a side of ranch dressing) before bidding the carnies farewell for another year.  The lot was filled to capacity when we arrived which meant we had to seek out parking elsewhere in one the auxiliary lots, meaning we would have to pay to park.

It cost us $5 to leave my wife's car sitting perilously close to a set of railroad tracks in a field being supervised (at the time we entered) by two little old ladies and a guy with a flag who was attempting to direct customers into empty spaces.  The fact that we weren't given any kind of validation ticket let me know that this wasn't exactly a professional operation we were dealing with. (Shriners were running this particular lot; I know they do good work for kids but I can't take anyone wearing a fez seriously.) When we returned several hours later, the little old ladies and the flagman were nowhere to be found.

My problem with this is two-fold: 1) Our car could've been damaged, looted, or stolen outright and 2) that $5 could've gone towards something of actual use, like an order of fried mushrooms or a refill on our souvenir lemonade.

That's what this is ultimately about, you see - I had to pay for something which I perceive as being completely pointless which, in turn, denied me the ability to buy something I actually wanted. (The vendors at the fair don't accept debit cards and I only had so much cash on hand.  Sure, there are ATMs at the fair but do you really think I'm going to fork over $3 for the privilege of withdrawing my own money?) I don't mind paying for services, even parking.  My wife and I visit Charleston's historic district a few times a year and we always have to pay for parking but I don't mind doing so there because the lots have attendants on site so long as there are cars parked in their domain.  Sure our car could get damaged whilst parked therein, but at least there would be someone nearby to take note of the matter in our stead.

Reading this blog, I guess it's no wonder that I worry about money, a lot.  I worry about it more than anything else, truth be told.  I worry that I don't have enough of it to provide for my family and to give us what we need as well as what we want.  I'd be lying if I said I'm not envious of others for what they have and we don't, even though I have just about every creature comfort, every gadget, every "big boy toy" you could imagine that would appeal to a grown-up kid like myself.  I'd like to think that I'm not unique in my anxiety but, at the same time, I feel like there are times where I have difficulty thinking about anything else.

All that having been said, do they make Prozac pills with dollar signs on them?  I may need a specific dose for what ails me.

Snow Cones Now Being Served in Hell (A Blog about Time Warner Cable)

If I were to attempt to log the issues I've encountered with Time Warner Cable's various services since the point in time that I became a customer of theirs almost three and a half years ago (not mentioning the two years I was with them while in college during which my signal was stolen by other tenants in the apartment complex I was renting from), I'd wind up writing an entry to this here site of mine that might rival the length of your average senior thesis and be layered with so much piss & venom that it would rank high in the pantheon of all-time rage inspired blogs.  I don't want to do that, odd as it may seem given my usual rhetoric, because quite frankly I'm bored with the concept of hating them.  It's a bit like a sports team that's so persistently bad that the concept of their massive ineptitude has gone from being a resource of resentment to that of comic relief.

Just to prove my point, I'll describe a situation from roughly a year and a half ago.  I'd just purchased a beautiful Sony Bravia LCD television for our living room and was looking forward to finally enjoying HD programming.  I get my new TV home, plug it in, and almost immediately I begin noticing issues with picture quality on the digital and HD tiers (of course the problem would be with the channels that are supposed to be better with higher-end TVs like the one I'd just bought instead of the analog channels).  The images would become distorted, almost like some kind of absurd cubist artwork - apparently this symptom is referred to as "tiling" to the Time Warner folks as I heard the term used at several points during conversations I had with their technicians.  In the process of attempting to remedy the situation, I went through the following steps:

• Manually reset my receiver myself (I unplugged it, in other words)
• Had my receiver reset by customer service (just for the sake of being redundant, I guess)
• Swapped out the receiver twice
• Changed out the lines coming into the house from the routing box
• Went from an aerial drop to a buried drop

Allow me to expound on that last bullet point.  The phrase "aerial drop" refers to how the cable line feeding our home came off of a telephone pole, traveled through the air (hence the usage of the word "aerial"), and was terminated when it reached the house.  In converting to a buried drop, that aerial cable was removed and replaced with a piece of wire running down the telephone pole, underneath a road, and through the backyard, buried just beneath the surface.  Why do this?  Technically speaking, it's more idealistic because you eliminate the possibility of the line being snapped by way of environmental hazards, some idiot driving an 18-wheeler through a residential neighborhood, or from all the obese pigeons in the neighborhood converging to roost on that one line at the same time. (Fat pigeons - loveable creatures or the newest terror threat?  Film at 11...)

When it came time to perform this conversion, Time Warner (which makes use of independent contractors to handle grunt work like this) dispatched the crew that was to handle attaching the new line to the routing box on the house before they'd sent out the crew to bury the line.  This delayed the process by several days, but it was finally completed and all parties involved hoped that this would be the end of the story.

As ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso would say, "NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!"

The tiling continued despite these efforts.  I made more calls to customer support and they sent out yet another technician.  This particular technician did something the others hadn't in accessing a diagnostic screen by way of the receiver attached to my beloved TV.  He took one look at the readout and exclaimed, "Oh man, that's HUGE!", in reference to a value corresponding to something called video heap.  As I understand it, the issue was that the receiver was getting more data than it knew how to process (buffering gone bad, as it were).  He left the house, went out and checked a transponder in the area and spotted that it was malfunctioning.  It was subsequently replaced and the issue resolved, albeit nearly 2 months after the initial request for service.

[SIDE NOTE: I can't not also mention the fact that at several points over the last few months our services have gone out completely - no TV, no phone, no Internet.  I would call to report an outage and TWC's customer service wouldn't be able to locate any interruptions in their system.  Then, low and behold, a day or so later we'd receive an automated call stating that an outage in our area may have interrupted our service...Really?  You don't say!  Here I'd convinced myself I'd just imagined the whole thing.]

You see what I mean now when I look back on my experiences with Time Warner and how I think of them as a horrible comedy of errors?  A company this large that spends so much effort in promoting the benefits of their wares and yet it takes 2 months and almost a dozen technicians to recognize the root of an issue like this.

I'm sure by now you may be asking, "If this guy dislikes their service so much, why does he still have it?"  Two reasons: 1) Back before I purchased my TV and things were fine I signed up for what TWC referred to as a "Price Lock Guarantee" which amounted to a two year service contract similar to what you see offered by most cellular companies in that there is a fairly high early termination fee involved, and 2) at this point I feel like I kind of have to keep it.  Think of it as if you were building a house.  You encounter issues after construction has begun that require you to go back to the drawing board and re-think parts of your design.  Do you tear down the house and start over?  No, you keep moving forward, onward, and (hopefully) upward with the project.  I'd hate to essentially undo all that's been done by going to another provider because as of this moment our services through TWC are running about as well as they ever have, quite honestly.

A couple weeks after the most recent set of service calls (2 in two weeks for the same issue; it was something relating to the wiring at the pole, and from the way the technician spoke I almost want to believe someone had attempted to steal our signal), I received a piece of mail from TWC that looked unlike any other correspondence I'd ever gotten from them.  I knew immediately it wasn't a bill because of its shape which lead me to assume it might be an advertisement or promotional gimmick.  As I opened it I realized the weight of the paper from which the envelope was made had a decent heft to it, making it feel like it had a certain level of poignancy.  Intrigued, I finished opening the envelope and could then see that the inside of the pocket had been printed purple and emblazoned with their logo, furthering the sensation that this wasn't just another mailer.  Finally, I extracted the contents of the envelope and found this.

"Well if that doesn't beat all...", I thought to myself.  The concept of TWC actually apologizing for the woes of having to deal with their ineptitude was startling.  While I appreciate the sentiment I couldn't help but add this to the pile of unfortunately amusing things they've put into my life.  For starters, a sympathy card is nice however an offer to give us service credits or (Heaven forbid) a discounted rate on our services would've been more appropriate albeit very unlikely.  I have a better chance at being chosen to play cowbell for Metallica than I do at ever seeing money back from Time Warner.

Notice the part in the text about how we'll have access to their elite service teams - they have their equivalent of Navy SEAL Team 6, apparently.  Okay, that's great, but you mean to tell me that up until now I've been dealing with the Gomer Pyle-level service teams?  You've just informed me that you've got a set of guys roaming around out there who are supposedly great at what they do, which is an inadvertent admission that there are others who - either by directive or thanks to their own stupidity, having lost out on the genetic lottery - just kind of half-ass their way through assignments.  For that matter, why doesn't everyone have access to these elite operators?  We're all paying customers, so why should certain of us get preferential treatment when it comes to maintenance issues?

What this whole thing boils down to is persistent frustration.  Not the kind you seek medical-grade pharmacology to treat, mind you - rather the kind that you almost learn to put up with because the root of the matter is something we want to appreciate but can't in some situations.  I think everyone has had a frustrating relationship here or there throughout their lifetime.  A girlfriend you love but refuses to ever see a movie you'd like to watch, a relative who's alright so long as their favorite sports team doesn't let them down in a big game, or even a dog who only ever seems to take a dump exactly where you don't want him/her to do it.  Unfortunately, putting up with fussy technology is oftentimes worse than dealing with similar issues involving carbon-based lifeforms.  For the money we pay, we expect these gadgets to work 100% of the time, and they should because ultimately it's important that we be able to watch new episodes of Big Bang Theory or play Call of Duty via XBOX Live.  What else is there to life, after all, than the content we crave so dearly?