TATTOPITW
there are two types of people in the world – sometimes updated weekdaily

• Home
• about the author
• have an idea?
• RSS

Established 1776

With your help, we can raise $1,000,000 of awareness.

• Recently Written

  • My PT Cruiser Can Do 0-60. Period.
  • Here’s to the weirdos, in general
  • Where emails go to die
  • Supersize me
  • Does anyone seriously need that much wintery chill?
  • Its rediculous when you’re spelling get’s in the way
  • Have you ever been stall-ked?
  • How a clarinet can destroy a life
  • I’m sure your zero friends are impressed by your income
  • Great email signatures

• Highest Rated

  • Metaphors are better than butterflies on a pickup truck full of beets (5.00 out of 5)
  • Rain melts brains (5.00 out of 5)
  • People Who Drive In The Left Lane (5.00 out of 5)
  • My PT Cruiser Can Do 0-60. Period. (5.00 out of 5)
  • Here’s to the weirdos, in general (4.92 out of 5)
  • The airport bathroom is not a good place for speakerphone (4.89 out of 5)
  • Why is mommy dressed like your secret friend, daddy? (4.86 out of 5)
  • Must. Fight. Plaque. (4.75 out of 5)
  • “2″ is code for “make everyone hate me” (4.71 out of 5)
  • Its rediculous when you’re spelling get’s in the way (4.70 out of 5)

• Categories

  • at work (17)
  • food and eating (16)
  • health (5)
  • in cars (10)
  • in general (31)
  • my life (9)
  • politics (1)
  • sports (3)
  • technology (3)
  • travel (7)
  • Uncategorized (2)

• Archives

  • May 2010 (1)
  • August 2009 (3)
  • July 2009 (12)
  • April 2009 (2)
  • March 2009 (4)
  • February 2009 (2)
  • January 2009 (7)
  • December 2008 (7)
  • November 2008 (12)
  • October 2008 (21)
  • September 2008 (17)

Does anyone seriously need that much wintery chill?

People who eat the small peppermint patties

People who eat the huge peppermint patties

You know when you go to a gas station and they have the huge, cheeseburger-sized peppermint patties?  Who in the hell can eat one of those things?  It’s like a little mint pizza, and I get a wintery-fresh gag reflex just thinking about mint pizza.  Sorry.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll pop a little peppermint patty like a gorilla pops ants off a stick. They’re delicious little guys, but I’m definitely going to max out at 1.5 to 2 of them.  I could never deal with the peppermint frisbee: it’s just over the top.

After you finish your candy, you can tear the package open and have one of those shiny post-marathon blankets to keep your shoulders warm.

I just think that part of the magic of candy is proper sizing.  Candy makers have to size the candy just right so when you finish it, you’re either satisfied or you exercise poor judgment in buying another bar / bag.  Once you’ve started on that second bar, you realize your mistake, but you blame yourself, not the candy.  When you eat a large peppermint patty, you say, “Good Messiah, I’m not eating another one of these for at least 6 months.”  Candy’s fault.  Candy suffers.  Snickers has sold 2 bars in one day to one person, and York is going to sell 2 mint moon pies in a year.

Deathmatch: Hot Fudge vs. Caramel Sundae

People who eat the hot fudge variety of sundae

People who eat the caramel variety of sundae

There are times that I look at people and classify them in odd ways (if you can imagine that).  For example, sometimes I’ll look at a person and say, “Hey, I bet he’s a tater tots person or she’s a french fries girl.”  To my credit, I’m right 97% of the time (although I have no data to support that).

So here’s the rub: I find myself classifying people as “caramel sundae” people only when there’s something a little “off” about that person.  You know what I mean.  The kind of person who eats a caramel sundae just because it’s the type of sundae that other people don’t eat.  The nonconformists who have incidentally become conformists of a different kind, because there are so many of them.  They’re the long-haired dudes, the computer programmers into naked raves, the mixed-media artists who glue a pack of frozen turkey bacon to a canvas and call it a political statement and who have 7 fans / family members who acknowledge the brilliance of their work years after they die from snorting Pixie Stix.

The classic sundae is, of course, hot fudge.  If you’re a hot fudge sundae eater, you are a gathered person with good taste who doesn’t pair the bright orange cummerbund with your tuxedo, but who realizes it’s better to be sharp and blend in than to get cute with it and have people point at you from across the room.  The caramel sundae eater, in essence, is a caramel person because they do not want to be a hot fudge person, which is just ridiculous and puerile, like a suburban teenager buying clothes from Hot Topic just to piss her parents off, when she’d rather just get J Crew in the first place.

I have tasted both, and here is what I have concluded:

• Hot fudge is the vastly superior flavor, and is immensely classy
• Caramel’s first bite has a lot of promise, but by bite 5, you want to throw it at someone.  It’s like a sugar lick
• If you eat a caramel sundae slowly, it will start to harden back into the horse hoof from whence it was made
• Hot fudge retains its structure as it cools, and can even be put in the freezer overnight for later enjoyment
• If you leave a spoon in a caramel sundae and store it in the freezer overnight, that spoon will become Excalibur, extricable only by a natural-born king

Now I have to clarify: I do like caramel.  I’ll pop Rolos like you wouldn’t believe.  But when it comes to what goes on my soft serve, Caramel has to know its role and disappear back into the purses and pockets of retirees.

You are what you eat . . . with

High-class socialites who use utensils that look like they are made for torture

Regular old folks who are comfortable with sporks

Have you ever really thought about how deep and wide the class struggle really is? You can see the differences everywhere: your clothing, your shoes, your home, your pets (we all know you have a dingy-ass dog that you traded for a bicycle tire or something), and yes, even your utensils.

Escargot tongs: let them know that you’re so rich, you’ll eat stuff that would make them want to puke.

I honestly have no idea what this is for, and I don’t want it in my house.

If you’re not born into wealth, you might never crack a nut or a crab claw.  You might never put ice into a glass with something other than your hand. You’ll probably never understand the concept of a napkin made of a material finer than any of your suits, or why a plate that measures 18″ across is used to serve half of a cherry tomato with a blade of grass as a side.

If you are born into wealth, you’ll probably never eat off a plate with ridges that keep your food separated, especially if that plate was what your food was just cooked in.  You probably don’t realize that cups can have tops or that your fork can come in a handy plastic bag with a one-ply napkin and some salt & pepper.  It doesn’t make perfect sense to you to unplug the crock pot and put it in the middle of the dinner table, if you even know what a crock pot is.

There are several well-known sayings that aim to unite the classes; messages usually including: everyone is born, everyone dies, and everyone eats.  But some are born with a silver spoon, some die and are buried inside silver caskets, and some eat off of silver escargot tongs.

Everyone does, however, put their pants on one leg at a time.  It’s just that my legs are tanner than yours from laying out on the bow of my yacht.

I hate your fancy pizzas

People who like pizza

People who like a pizza-like meal that has barbeque chicken, pineapple, and/or gyro meat on it

Last night, I joined a handful of fellow Atlanta bloggers at a pizza joint.  It was an interesting experience.  Most of the people were pretty nice, some of the people were pretty normal, and at least one person was pretty cool.  Some of the time.

But aside from that, I learned an interesting lesson: you can learn a lot about a person by the type of pizza they order.

What happens when a Whole Foods yoga treehugger gets a hold of a pizza.  New rule: if you can no longer see the cheese, it is not a pizza.  Unless it’s a meat lovers and the cheese is being covered by our tasty animal friends.

I blame California Pizza Kitchen for this nonsense:  Thai pizza.  Gyro pizza.  BBQ chicken pizza (which is actually okay).  White pizza (WTF!?!).  Broccoli on pizza.  None of these are good situations.

I’m a believer that pizza comes with cheese (if you’re on a diet), pepperoni (if you’re know what stairs are), and maybe some sausage, mushroom, or garlic can be thrown on if you’re on a date that’s going badly.  This experimentation is uncalled for.  If I want a gyro, I’ll eat a gyro.  If I want a salad, I’ll order a salad.  But when I’m hungry for pizza, I don’t want a gyro salad pizza.

I only bring this up because I worry about the implications.  I think we’re on a slippery slope here: pizza is a gateway food and we’re seeing this experimentation take hold in tacos, too.  We have fried chicken tacos, asian tacos, desert tacos, and more.  Will our children be eating buffalo chicken Golden Grahams? This is a future I don’t want to see.

~ Other stuff ~

This group has a pretty fun activity of passing a napkin around where you write the answer to a single question.  The question last night was, “What is your biggest pet peeve?”  When I found out this was the question, I was about half a PSI from total skull explosion.  Seriously?  Someone asking me what my biggest pet peeve is?  Um, can I answer infinity times?

A new year, a new diet, a new failure

People who start the new year with a ridiculous diet and/or exercise regimen

People who are still sticking to their diet and/or exercise on January 9th

I owe many, many people credit for this idea (through their actions, not conscious recommendations), but just one person lit the fuse a few days ago.  In fact, I’m meeting this person for lunch today, so we had to plan accordingly.  I would usually embellish this part, saying that we have to go to a restaurant that serves raw chicken meat and slices of american cheese with a nice glass of fiber-max colon blaster, but we’re actually going to a normal restaurant where, doubtlessly, a somewhat awkward and uncomfortable order will be placed.  Or, it would be awkward, but the waiters probably get special training at the end of December for this sort of thing.

I’ll have one ham and cheese sandwich, hold the bread, cut the cheese into 1/4″ cubes, and trim the edges off the ham, wrapped in a whole-wheat pita pocket dipped in water.  No, wait, Oprah said soy paper.  And a side salad with a 1/64th teaspoon of no-fat ranch dressing, seeds removed from the tomatoes, and croutons made from compressed prunes.  And a 64 oz. diet coke.  Oh, and can I go ahead and pre-order the key lime pie now?

I’ve been long confused (and once drawn in) by diets that are dreamed up by people whose brains produce the same output as the south end of a northbound elephant.  I tried the no-carb thing for about 32 minutes last year.  It didn’t work out for me.

But there are so many people who give these zero-something diets a shot each January.  Zero carbs, zero fat, or zero protein.  Considering that there are three nutritional things that your body needs to survive, and these just happen to be the three, it strikes me as a little strange that we try this stuff out, but we do. I honestly have never met a single person who stuck to one of these zero-diets and didn’t end up in the doctor’s office with fragile bones, sleepless nights, or a major toilet issue.  I’m not prepared, personally, to trade food for any of those three things.

But I suppose I should wish you all good luck.  Good luck with your zero diets.  Good luck with your Tae-Bo, volume 23.  Good luck with your office-chair kegel exercises and your 7-minute abs.  Good luck with Tony Little, Susan Powder, Richard Simmons, Chuck Norris, or whoever becomes the next celebrity home fitness guru with absurd hair.  You’re going to need it.

Filet-O-Fish is one of the top-5 foods on earth

People who have eaten a filet-o-fish

People who are yet to experience communion at the Church of Ronald

Most people like food.  Most of those people like good food, even great food, but so few people have eaten one of the finest items served on any menu in this great nation of ours.  Yes, I am speaking of the Filet-O-Fish.

A first-timer’s face says “expectations are low”, but this is the dawn of a lifelong relationship

Now, I don’t normally eat anything that has an “O”-modifier, which pretty much knocks half of any chincy Irish pub’s menu off of my list, but I have always been more than willing to make an exception for this hallmark of American achievement.

The ingredients involved in the filet-o-fish are simple and gag reflex inducing: a square fish patty, a square piece of american cheese, a dollop of tartar sauce, sandwiched between a bun so perfectly made from indigestible white flour it makes Wonderbread look like whole wheat.  For most people, that slice of american cheese is the outlier in the group, but I promise it is the secret ingredient in this handful of success so elegantly presented to you in its own sandwich coffin.  Nobody puts baby in a wrapper.

Everyone get out there and celebrate this great nation of excess by grabbing yourself a f-o-f this week.  You’ll thank me.

Arby’s is one of the best restaurants in Atlanta

People who are professional food critics

People who think they are professional food critics

Culinary genius at work.  Let’s put chocolate chips on pancakes.  How do people come up with this stuff?

Yelp thought they were helping us.  It is a great idea: put the power back in the hands of the people rather than the manipulated and arrogant professionals.  The only problem is that most of the people are idiots.

My wife and I were trying to figure out a good place to eat a few weeks ago, so we fired up the trusty MacBook and sailed on over to yelp, a site that lets amateurs rate restaurants (among other things) on a 5-point scale.

One of the first things you’ll notice on yelp is that every single restaurant in the world has 3.64 stars.  Part of the problem is that people don’t know how to rate restaurants.  Here is a 5-star review of one of the worst restaurants I have ever eaten at in Atlanta:

The dishes are garnished with hand-carved carrots and other vegetables that are stunning and just too pretty to eat.

Clearly, the food was too pretty for you to eat: if you had overcome the beauty of the carrots, you would have put the food in your mouth and puked in your Thai tea.  And here is a negative review of the place:

The utensils tell the story.  No “Thai Spoon,” just a fairly heavy and ornate bronze colored fork sat lonely atop a napkin.

Thank you, sage food guru Dickens.  ”As the dark curry clouds rolled over my rice noodles, the visages of patrons were overcome with duck sauce tears.”  Give me a fucking break.

Between these two reviews, and many others, this restaurant ends up getting almost the same score as one of my favorites in town, Watershed.  The chef at this place won the James Beard Award, which is sort of like an Oscar for these guys.  Here’s an excerpt from Krystal W’s in-depth review:

But honestly speaking when it comes to southern cuisine, the decor and the food (at least for me) go hand-in-hand. In other words, they kind of have to match to create the true ambiance of the south.

I couldn’t agree more.  I only eat southern food served by barefoot, shirtless men in overalls and straw hats.  If I ever get another taco not served in a place where chickens roam the floors, I’ll leave immediately.  If I’m allowed to discuss the government in a Chinese restaurant, the food simply CANNOT be good.  And don’t get me started on traditional Israeli food: the last time I went for some, not a SINGLE person tried to suicide bomb the place.  Unacceptable.

So as we perused the ratings, we strongly considered #22 in Atlanta: IHOP (no, I am not kidding); before deciding on one of our favorites, Tacqueria Del Sol, which was rated lower than the Chick Fil A down the street.

People Who Buy Groceries On Sale

People who buy on-sale groceries, particularly meat

People don’t want to poison their family

My wife and I had lunch over the weekend with one of those couples you get along with exactly 51% of the time.  They’re nice people, but we disagree on SO many things that having a conversation about anything but the safest of topics will turn into some sort of a debate.  This time around, we did pretty well, but they reminded me of one of our legendary debates: that of buying discounted food.

Looking at this issue in a strictly economical sense, what we see is called a “demand shift”

Demand shifts commonly happen when forces outside the normal marketplace are at work.  For example, a demand shift might happen if a shopper was “fucked in the head”.  In this case, a shopper would have a lower demand for quality because they are price conscious.  In other words, this person is willing to send themselves to the hospital to save $0.11 on ground beef that fell on the floor no less than 13 times and has now been mixed with food dye to give it less of that gray, dead meat look.

I drove by the Fresh Market the other day – a pretty good store – and saw a sign that said $5.99/lb. filet.  Now, I didn’t go in to investigate because I’m horribly allergic to grocery shopping, but I wondered: #1 how many people did this sign attract, and #2 filet of what?

I think that if you buy meat on sale and have a family, you should go to prison.  If you buy meat on sale and live alone, well, you can do the math there.

Must. Fight. Plaque.

People who brush their teeth after lunch

People who are not hypochondriacs with more than 35 boy scout achievement badges

There are two situations I can think of that would call for brushing your teeth after lunch:

1. Your dentist told you that your teeth are going to fall out of your head if you don’t
2. You’re having an office affair (which is in its early stages)

Maybe someone could help me out with this, but I am at a loss. When I walk into an office restroom, I’m always surprised to see someone in there brushing their teeth. For one thing, I would never brush my teeth in an office bathroom. I think that office bathrooms are disgusting, particularly the sink area, where there is always some sort of a meniscus-bound pool of water surrounding the sink, ready to attack anyone’s pants who leans toward the mirror to check out that fresh zit on their nose right before their quarterly review. Well, I can’t say I feel sorry for you and your new wet spot: that’s what you get for checking your pores and wearing pleats.

People have turned into cats, constantly cleaning, grooming, moisturizing, sanitizing, purifying, organic-izing everything we do. I was driving around yesterday with some people in the car who were talking about sharing the wine cup at church with other people. These are the same people who will hold up a bottled water, still sealed, and ask, “How old is this water?” I think that worrying about drinking out of a shared cup at church is a little too “clean”. I think we need to be a little more natural. We weren’t made to sanitize all the time. Our bodies are engineered to take the crap the world gives us.

The day Fluffy broke the silence: “Bitch, you need a man!”

A great example of a hero of mine is my cousin, who just had a baby about a year and a half ago. Every time the baby spits his pacifier out on the ground, it gets a little wipe on the shirt and it goes right back into baby’s mouth. Now, most people have a 5-stage pacifier detoxification and ionization process every time the thing makes contact with worldly air, but this baby gets a little grit every time he drops his pacifier, teaching the dual lessons of “you spit, you eat dirt”, and “tough it out, baby body”. We aint’ raisin’ no sissy. Some would want to call child services, but those are the parents with the kids who are allergic to their own eyelashes and have to pay $1,000 a month for dodgeball therapy.

I think that we need to get a little tougher here in America. The phobias of uncleanliness need to subside: my sources tell me that half of America’s health issues are related to “over cleaning”. That is a staggering statistic. Ok, it’s not technically a “statistic”, but it could be true.

If you’re brushing your teeth at lunch, I hope she’s worth it.

p.s. – water doesn’t go bad, in case you were wondering, dumbass.

Budweiser, With a Twist

People who enjoy wheat/flavored beers, Zima, etc.

People who do not drink a drink that must be “activated” by a slice of citrus or a jolly rancher

I hereby declare Friday the day that this blog talks about alcohol, Waffle House, or alcohol and Waffle House.

I owe this idea to a couple of guys who I used to work with, but I will instead retain all of the credit for the idea. The practice of taking credit for other people’s work is a staple of working in America, so I see this as a big opportunity to get ahead in this world by riding on the shoulders of others. Thanks for drowning to keep me dry.

Anyhow, I alone (with nobody else involved in the idea) was talking about people who like beers that come with accessories, or are themselves somehow gimmicky. There is definitely one segment of this world that loves the novelty in these beers, while there is another group who sees the novelty in making fun of the people who like these drinks. I fall into the latter category.

I think that the main challenge that I have to overcome with wheat beers, blueberry beer, pumpkin beer, Zima, Smirnoff Ice, and the like is the simple fact that they taste like shit. I think I would rather lick the back of a school bus on a rainy day than have a wheat beer. I also think that most of the world would agree, which is why they started putting oranges and lemons in these drinks. Congratulations, you now have an undrinkable beverage with a hint of sunny-d, and you will likely go home with a man (and there is no problem with that, if you’re into that sort of thing).

Breaking industry research conducted by me in the last 7 minutes gives us a greater view into the history and reasons behind this phenomenon. The facts reveal that this phenomenon, like the printing press, was being simultaneously developed in multiple locations around the world, with particular hot zones in San Francisco, Key West, Tallahassee, and Knoxville. Further research revealed the following, corrected for spelling mistakes in Tallahassee and Knoxville:

Further research is needed, but the initial wave of results is definitely revealing a trend.

If you would like to participate in a case study, please use the contact form above.

Next Page »

• subscribe to this blog

  
  
   Subscribe to RSS
  
  
  
  
  
  

  why you are here...

  You are here because you are awesome and you celebrate awesomeness.
  
  You are here to read a new post every weekday.
  
  You are here because there are two types of people in the world: people who are here, and people who suck.