<begin beer geek moment>

It’s not like I hide my snobbery when it comes to the alchemy of water, malt, barley, hops and yeast.  Lately I’ve been more prone to use the term Beer Geek as it’s less pretentious than Beer Snob.  In the interest of full disclosu ...

Since I am prone to bring in my lunch to work most days (for cost and calorie control), I usually include a yogurt with my daily selection.  Obviously these industrial packets are vacuum sealed but for some reason there is one design flaw in almost all yogurt containers.  Unless you’re holding your hand over where you open the top, the semi-pressurized contents will splatter on your hands and clothes, making it look like you’re a President-pleasing intern with an aversion to swallowing.

What is your “trigger” for going to bed when you don’t have a set time, such as on the weekend?  For those of us employed at a regular Monday-Friday job, we usually have a set time frame when we normally retire for the night.  This can be stretched at times for certain things such as playoff games, which are a bitch if you’re a sports fan in the Eastern time zone.  When it comes to the weekend though, do you immediately retire to the bed after an evening out?  Is it when your significant other sends you a verbal or physical “Wanna play with each other’s genitals” signal?  &l ...

In this age of “I want it now and I want it even sooner than that if possible” I’ve noticed I have succumbed to an impatient trend.  I’m thankful that video-based sites like youtube.com and break.com didn’t exist when I was in college because my grades certainly would have suffered.  It was bad enough when my roommate and I ordered every cable channel one semester and I got a 2.0 GPA.  Needless to say we cut back on the premium channels the next semester. 

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While I’ve already talked about this with my friends who are Apple-philes or Mac-heads or DiscIples or whatever the Steve Jobs army calls themselves these days, I truly have to tip my cap in appreciation of yet another brilliant marketing scheme this past week involving their iPhone.

Disclosure – I have stood in line for CD releases but that was back in college.  The main one I remember was the midnight release for Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I & Use Yo ...

We are so spoiled nowadays.  Not only do satellite radios display the name and artist of a song playing, but most modern car radios also have that basic functionality.  One morning a relatively new song began playing nonstop in my head out of the blue and I had no idea who sang it or what the name of the song was.  I knew I’d have to listen to certain stations on XM knowing that I’d for sure find it faster there than on terrestrial radio.  

I waited a day in case there were people who didn’t see it Sunday night but I thought the final Sopranos episode was fantastic and a fitting end to a classic show.  Listening to radio on Monday was so predictable with people unhappy with the ending.  For those unsatisfied people I have this to say – have you not learned from the previous five seasons that David Chase does NOT provide closure for a lot of story arcs?  There was never resolution to Dr. Melfi’s rape, we never found out what happened to the Russian in the Pine Barrens episode, and now we simply don’t know if Tony survived or not.  If you haven’t figured out by now that certain plo ...

I try not to succumb to most marketing schemes but food descriptions sometimes really get to me, especially when hungry.  This is why, as a general rule, I don’t go to the grocery store on an empty stomach, otherwise I’ll come home with stuff I would normally never eat.  Sure, Rachel Ray on the cover of a rosemary-and-olive-oil Wheat Thin box might be intriguing to buy when your stomach is growling but when you actually bite into one of those salt-on-top-of-salt-deerlicks you wonder to yourself “I wouldn’t eat this even if I were drunk”.

&a ...

Let’s begin this exercise in declaring that I’m all for hygiene.  Being clean is a good thing.  Showers and baths are the cornerstone of our modern society.  Oral hygiene -- also good and absolutely necessary.  For those who have the discipline, it’s probably good to brush after meals instead of just at morning and night.  A slight kink comes into this plan when it involves the workday though.