Do Dips Instead

I was watching the tele yesterday and I found myself curiously amused about a commercial I had just watched. Imagine:

Open on a man and woman sitting on a bench with a grassy area behind them.
The man is eating a soft pretzel.
The woman is eating something unidentifiable out of an orange box.
Eventually, their silence is broken by the man who looks at his pretzel and is pissed off he doesn't have these "Dips" that she is eating.
He thows his soft pretzel to the side and eats one of her "Dips."
Cut to title card and tag which says "Try Dips instead."
There is a nice product shot and a soft pretzel faded in the background.

After the commercial was over I didn't really think much of it until it struck me, were Dips the anti-pretzel? Did all the research show Dips consumers eat soft pretzels but would rather be eating Dips? How large exactly is the soft pretzel eating community?

How did they sell this idea in the pitch? "Well, we really need to go after the 'soft-pretzeler.' Market research shows 89.23% of the potential Dips market is currently eating only soft pretzels. So what we are going to do is let those 'soft-pretzelers' know to put down the pretzel and try dips instead. This lead to our wonderful creative."

I had left this Dips/soft pretzel strangeness to rest assuming, yes of course all the research showed Dips consumers are currently eating soft pretzels and all the advertising needs to do is show them there is something out there was better to eat, Dips of course.

But then I decided to blog about them.

I did a brief search of youtube hoping someone had posted this strange pretzel eating population targeted commercial, but I couldn't find anything. I wasn't surprised. But I was surprised when I did a google search to have at least a picture to show you of these treats but I couldn't find those either. I kept getting special recipes for strawberry yummy dip or Spiderman fun dip, neither of which lead me any closer to answers regarding this strange product.

Maybe the soft pretzel eating community overthrew these Dips, which are invading upon their turf: Renaissance Festivals and ball parks. Perhaps, it was French's mustard. Dips and mustard, I don't think so.

In lieu of no Dips photography I give you:

When you don't know what to say, just remember the memories.

forever.

Look, I Can Quote People Too.

I feared Caitlin will lose our beautiful quote page from our well crafted HTML site we made freshman year so I'll store a copy here too. I just hope Al Gore doesn't take his internet back.

"I have a positive body image. I am positive that my butt is large."
-Rachel

"I will take 8 million advil. Or maybe I will take dayquil. I'll take one dayquil and one nyquil. Will I stay awake or fall asleep?!? Who knows!"
- Caitlin, after being reduced to the mindset of a mentally challenged 2nd grader, due to capa

"You know me, I just want to bang bang bang"
- Caitlin

"Bamboo (pronounced Bam-Bo) chicken? What's that?"
-Rachel examining the Bennigan's Menu

"You're my zoloft"
-Tor to Rachel

"If I was someone I'd want to wear me"
-Rachel

"I dont want to go to prison... I like the dick"
-Caitlin

"I dont want to live with some Euro ass trash"
-Rachel to Tor

"Clearly my fingers are obese"
-Caitlin

"We're the devil"
-Tor and Caitlin when we convinced Jonathan that Tor broke her toe

"I need a first aid kit for my mind"
-Tor

"I want to be a mountain lion when I grow up"
-Tor (when drunk?)

"I dont want to play any sports that include balls"
-Rachel

"I want some enjoyment"
-Tor to Rachel

Kerfuffle=disturbance or fuss
-Caitlin's word calendar

"BIG MISTAKE"
-Willie about Tor

"Yum Yerky"
-Yerky is yam jerky

"Poop on the world"
-Caitlin

"There's a touch in your hand saying you're really creepy"
-Farrah

Richmond Made Me Love My Dad Even More

I realized how much I love my dad when i stumbled across bleeding hearts in my neighborhood today.

All week I'd been planning to take a walk around my neighborhood to see all the beautiful spring flowers up close. I made time for that walk today.

Maybe it the cloudy sky or rain droplets making their way to the ground below, but Church Hill had never looked finer to me until today. The fresh rainwater on the houses, resembled the roads used in car ads, all watered down and glowing. Maybe it wasn't even how the neighborhood looked, but the smell of rain not yet a few hours old.

I felt like a tourist in my neighborhood as i fumbled my camera from arm to arm to get the photographs I wanted. It started with wisteria, perhaps my favorite flower of all time. They form purplish water droplet-like blossoms that flow in the shape of grapes. That's probably why I love them; they are the grapes of flowers. There were pansies, tulips, dogwood, more pansies, and those weeds with pea pod like seeds, which I used as magic beans when I would play Willow as a child.

I walked in circles taking in the architecture of the yards and the beauty of the day. Then I stumbled upon a yard filled with bleeding hearts. I thought almost immediately, I love my dad.

Who the hell knows what bleeding hearts are in the first place? My father.

From rides with him on our lawnmower under the plum and apple trees at my first home to spending countless $5 reward coupons at the hardware store's garden section, he taught me everything I know, mostly, how to identify any living plant.

My father is a quiet man, but even still, I can look out my window and see him everywhere reciting back to me each and every plant, most especially, the bleeding heart and the day I remembered one of the many reasons I love my dad so much.


the bleeding heart: named for obvious reasons.

Forts!

click on the photo to read this delightful post.
a thanks to sir william weston for giving me all the content for this post.
oh wait i did do some research:
if you liked this post you may love this
best of craigslist

Dreams of Ponies

I once had this dream when I was in 5th or 6th grade that a pack of wild horses was running through my neighborhood and we caught them. In the dream we ended up keeping all the horses and it was pretty much the greatest day of my life, but then I woke up.



Strange though, the dream started over. As soon as I woke up I heard my mom and dad talking to my neighbors about how they were going to wrangle the horses. Could my dream be coming to life?! Yes, yes it was. We wrangled the 4 horses into our fenced in yard and they roamed the yard. I kept waiting to hear that we were keeping all the horses just like my dream. When it was time to leave for school we still didn't know who the horses belonged to so I waited patiently throughout the day to come home to my four new pet horses.

When I came home the horses were gone and I was pony-less and heartbroken.

That One Time I Fell In The Mud

Let's rewind to seventh grade shall we. Samuel Enoka Kalama Intermediate School. Qualification for passing 7th grade are as follows:


And so the story begins:

I can't exactly remember what time of day it was but I know it was sometime in the morning. So let's just say it morning recess. I was probably thinking about what was on the lunch menu. I came to notice today the options haven't really changed from those of yesteryear:



So let's say it was chili and rice day. Anyway, back to the mud. It wasn't a giant puddle of mud I should have avoided. It was like black ice (wiki: Black ice, also known as "glare ice" or "clear ice", typically refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface, often a roadway. It also is unusually slick compared to other forms of ice on roadways).

I'll call this type of mud Brown slip goop (dictornary: Brown slip goop, also known as "you idiot" or "hahaha", typically refers to a thin coating of slippery goo on a surface, often dirt.
Because it is only a thin layer of water over the dirt it is unusually slick compared to other forms of dirt on the ground.)

As the title of this blog indicates I fell in the mud. It was all over my leg and I got all cut up because the brown slip goop was only a thin layer which exposed the rocks underneath. But it gets better.

After I realized I fell all I could hear was laughter from people all around. "Hahahaha. The haole girl fell. HAHAHAHAHAHA." As I rushed to the girl's bathroom to escape, the 8th grade boys who had been laughing at me decided to follow me. They followed me straight into the bathroom.

Naturally, I started crying. I was expecting the bathroom to be my safe haven but no. The boys followed me into the bathroom to laugh at me more. They finally left my muddy, brown slip goop self when the bell for classes rang.

I can't wait until my next fall. I'm going to make a brown slip goop angel.