Total sidebar, but the debate over “genuine” phillies always seemed silly to me. The city I grew up in didn’t do a whole lot of things right, but there was a coffee shop that served something they called the “South Philly.” It took me years to realize this was a Fresh Prince reference and not an actual regional…

Most of the prizes were pretty forgettable, but I think Lucky Charms decided to put the ingredients for a cake and frosting in a package inside the box. You’d just dump the contents into a little baking tray (provided), add water and maybe an egg, mix it until smooth, and pop it in the microwave for a minute and a…

Hell yes. I think I got a Ghostbusters 2 record off of a cereal box.

Humboldt County, CA, aka “The Emerald Triangle,” has long been known as an area whose economy is largely fueled by the marijuana industry, even before 2016 when it was legalized. For years, college students have reliably been able to find under-the-table work trimming weed. Local dating profiles often just include the…

Have presidential candidates rolled into your towns in election years past and dished up any local delicacies?

I’ve closed my Facebook and have lost contact with my last 20 years’ worth of acquaintances, so I can’t boost the signal on that message to the people who most need to hear it, but I know a few people who don’t need convincing, who would at least feel comforted reading that, so I’ll be passing this on to them.

In the absence of sound logic, all-caps is all the hot dog isolationists have.

Is Sterno still OK?

It really is nice to see so many people jumping in to say, “Not scary, just a lack of moisture.” I remember seeing a timelapse video of a McDonald’s hamburger that just wouldn’t rot around the same time that Supersize Me came out, and all my Facebook friends who belonged to Tumblr nutrition cults were going on about…

Ready for that question, with receipts.

I’m sorry, I love their spicy chicken sandwich, but Wendy’s doesn’t get to act superior on the subject of chicken nuggets. I know there’s a whole cult around their spicy nugs, but they’ve got the texture of an elementary school cafeteria nugget. Even if McDonald’s just sprinkles cayenne on their normal McNuggets,…

Yeah, and unlike summons, it’s just a very simple and quick animation, so it’s surprisingly convenient to throw the right character in. The flexibility to rotate your characters as needed is pretty key to the battle system. I just played through the game less than a year ago, but not recently enough to remember what…

Any time I tried to puncture Caprisun the intended way, the little plastic membrane would be be a dick and just stretch inward without breaking, and often blunted the little straw spear. Eventually I just learned to flip the thing over and skewer the base. The drawback was that I couldn’t set my drink down until it…

Considering FFX lets you swap characters out on the fly and immediately use the new character with no penalty to turn order, and swapping is actually mercifully quick, it’s not that big a deal if you show up to a fight with the “wrong” party. But it is a little odd how they code monsters to individual characters so…

I am playing on Zodiac Age, and I think just having a developer-ordained speedup button might be the biggest upgrade in the game. If I need to grind out rare loot on enemies I can kill in one shot to be able to trade up for better weapons, the only thing I could ever wish for is for that process to go faster.

Video Games

Next up: Frosted Flakes without the corn flakes.

At $3.79 for a 12-oz bottle, I think I’d have to hear a strong recommendation or wander into a coffee shop that just happened to have a few bottles chilled to motivate me to check it out. I’m certainly not going out of my way to try it.

I figured anyone in the East Bay would know exactly where I was talking about.

When I lived in the SF Bay Area, there was (probably still is) a place in Emeryville, CA, that served a milkshake made from chocolate ice cream, Guinness, and espresso. I really want to make a 3-day trip back to the area sometime post-pandemic, and that’s on the short list of places I need to hit up while I’m there.