Things I was supposed to learn in kindergarden but didn't because I was out sick that day.
When a moving company tells you to trust them after they bust off a fire sprinkler and destroy your furniture, don't. That's the secret signal to call your lawyer.
Never speed past an off duty police officer because he loves to bust people more than he wants to take his wife to dinner. And yes, he'll be armed.
Keep in mind, the kid in the polo shirt and khaki pants is only working at Best Buy to avoid flipping burgers for six dollars an hour. Take heed when listening to his pimply expert advice.
Creativity in Hollywood is far from dead, it's just being terrorized and held hostage by corporate lawyers who almost always prefer the safe bet to the big gamble that could result in shock-and-awe.
No one reads past the first few sentences. After that, they scan the text and formulate their opinion while scurrying to find a text area and submit button. I could have written about tater-tots here and no one will know.
No matter how much longer you outlive everyone you know, Star Wars toys from the first three episodes will never be worth anything to a collector, not even mint-on-card.
A mathematical formula can be used to determine the potential success of a television sitcom. Math teaches us that the British know how to make a damn good comedy.
Don't kid yourself, neither Statefarm or any other insurance company is ever "there". And they won't be "there" until you pay a large deductible.
Winning a game of Warcraft III against a 14 year old is so improbable it's likely to induce a violent nuclear explosion. Don't even think about reaching for that copy of Starcraft.
An ever growing percentage of parents will continue to blame everyone but themselves for being a bad parent and will continue to push their children into lives they could never fulfill.
If you look like Uncle-Buck-John-Candy then do not dress up like Tour-de-France-Lance-Armstrong while riding with your cycling group around Newport Beach. It will turn ugly when Greenpeace arrives.
Nobody from a small populated area will trust that you know what you're talking about. Instead they will hire a consultant from another state because anyone smart enough to live elsewhere must be a freaking genius.
You can't fail if you don't try. And when you do fail, blame it on the leaders of the opposite political party you are most closely affiliated with — start a blog about it.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Sometimes things are just meant to look like that...
Well, I suppose I know you never talked about tater tots any more than mentioning that you weren't talking about them.
What are tater-tots?
you gonna eat your tots...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tater_tots
I think we call them hash browns in the UK.
No.
Can I have em?
Freaked out by some of those truth-full statements .. and then, someone pointed out a wikipedia entry on tater-tots! Man! Oh Man! The internet is evil!!
Wow, I'm a little sad I didn't get to post the first witty tater-tots joke. I'm glad EVERYONE got a chance to take a stab at it though. Hooray for bandwagons!
The best day at college was always Chicken Nuggets and Tater Tots day at the cafeteria. We would skip down the mezzanine chanting "nuggets and tots, nuggets and tots". *sniff* good old days.
A few of those truths look like some great stories waiting to be told... Tell us about the moving company and Uncle-Buck-John-Candy. Pretty please? :)
Hash browns and tater tots belong to the same species but are two very different creatures.
Hash browns normally have more mass and are prepared in various ways according to the local culture, from cooked until very crispy brown to merely seared in the pan (note: the author prefers them cooked and mostly crunchy). Good hash browns come straight from freshly grated potatoes.
Tater tots are tiny processed bite sized versions of their larger, crispy brother. These little barrels of potatoes used to be a staple in school lunches and continue to crown many o' casserole in rural homes all over America and parts of Western Canada. If prepared right (which involves an oven, not a skillet) they will come out tasting like small samples of hash browns.
On the matter of fat bottom people (see: Queen) and sherpas in need of a career change, those stories will be told soon enough.
Santa Maria....
that's funny... nuggets and tots.... i think that is also something michael jackson chants :)
Actually, "scurrying to find a text area and a submit button" made me stop reading and look to see what comments had been posted in reaction.
When I was a pimply 16 year old my very first job was at McDonalds. Oh, I didn't work in the glamour section of the fast food joint: at the cash register taking orders for Big Macs with a chocolate shake. And no one ever suggested I might be good at flipping burgers. I was responsible for two things: cleaning up everybody's mess and making fries.
It was a time when fries meant REAL potatoes, not those fry-shaped tator-tots they serve you these days. And I have the scars to prove it. I was the fry man.
One of my jobs was to lug 100 lb. sacks of Idaho spuds from the basement to the mechanized potato peeler. This was a stainless steel contraption that looked like a clothes dryer. But if you looked inside you could see big "dimples" strategically placed throughout the drum. Dump a sack of potatoes in, turn it on, and as the potatoes bopped around the dimples tore the skin off. Out came the perfectly peeled potato.
Next step was to actually make fries out of these skinless veggies. I took one potato at a time and pushed it through on a "fry press." Push the lever down and out came those tasty Mickey D fries.
Handling hundreds of potatoes a day in that appliance I always came home with tiny little potato shards stuck underneath my fingernails. It was very painful. Many decades later you can still see the vestiges of my manual labor.
I used to love tator tots.
Quick poll, who eats them with katsup and who eats them with salt? I go back and forth. Anyone eat them plain or with something completly strange? Like mustard? You know, Karl Childers loved french fried potatoes with mustard. Look what happened to him.
I don't know about katsup but I like them with salt and ketchup. The Rocket Scientist on the other hand would likely dip them into a chocolate milkshake if it was available.
Where I grew up (Indiana) hashed browns were not really a lump of anything, they were shredded potato fried in oil in a skillet. They were served in what can be describes as a "heap" or "mound." I'm a salt AND ketchup man, thank you. At any rate, a pile of hashed browns tastes similar to, but is not the same thing as a Tater-Tot. The former is eaten by adults at breakfast and the latter is eaten by children (and adults who remember being child-like) with hamburgers and hotdogs.
As for your comment about reading only the first few sentences... one of the things I remember from my writing courses was that something was supposed to hook the reader within the first paragraph in order to seduce them into reading the entire article... perhaps you need stronger hooks? ;)
I will agree that the British sitcom is often very funny. On the other hand, I also think that -in general- British television is regarded as being beyond horrible. I can only imagine that there are 10 bad comedies for every great sitcom they produce.
Also, I don't think the American sitcom is dead... though it is certainly at risk of having its feeding tube removed. Fortunately I can point to "Arrested Development" and see that there's still life in network television.
In high school my friends and I referred to them as "tater tits" in reference to an old George Carlin bit.
one of the things I remember from my writing courses was that something was supposed to hook the reader within the first paragraph in order to seduce them into reading the entire article...
You are referring to the inverted pyramid used in journalism. Aibrag, like all other blogs, should not be confused with journalism and therefore that format does not apply. Neither should the reading habits of a person reading journalism (newspaper, magazine, etc.) be confused with how someone reads online — two very different experiences. It's been my experience that people doing anything online have a much shorter attention span, blogs are great for reducing it even further.
Also, I don't think the American sitcom is dead...
Who said it was?
Let's be honest, here. People read interesting posts from interesting people, word for bloody word. It's the comments everyone skims through (if that) only to rush to have their own say.
I read 3 tater-tot comments and jumped to this point, possibly ignoring an insightful one that would have finally given me a deep understanding of wormhole theory.
Actually, you read my Tater-Tot post and slipped into a wormhole that brought you to the end of the comment thread.
Credit be where credit due.
I must admit I look forward to a new Airbag post and I have yet to be disappointed.
I already have some potatoes and a grater ready to make my own tater tots UK style!
"It was a time when fries meant REAL potatoes, not those fry-shaped tator-tots they serve you these days."
Trust me, they're still from real potatoes. However, they're cut, blanched, and given a quick pre-fry before being frozen and shipped to McD's. They are not made of pressed tater shavings or anything like that.
However, I can't speak to how well they stack up taste-wise to the old days. I like 'em, but for all I know, Pre-1978 fries were manna from heaven.
Who said it was?
Well, no one. I actually meant my comment as an after-thought, though I agree that it comes off as a defensive statement.
If you want to see real french fries again go to In-N-Out and watch the guy stick a whole potatoe in a vice, slam down on the lever (they are usually big potatoes) and then put the pieces into the fryer. No bleach, no pre-fry, just potatoes and the best fries in the world.
Funny story about In-N-Out....
In Roger Ebert's review of the movie "Harold and Kumar etc..." (I think that's the correct movie, anyway) he makes a comparison between In-N-Out and Steak and Shake. Apparently the former is a coastal phenomenon and the latter is a Midwestern chain... apparently there's an old saying that In-N-Out and Steak and Shake is a reference to the love-making styles of their respective locales.
Roger Ebert is so awesome.
Heh. He said In-N-Out. Heh. Heh.
i hate your blog. every day i find you more and more inane. over the past three years, your daily drivel has caused me to start drinking...wine and beer, but also the occasional dram of whiskey. yr blog is right up there with the most useless but, but, but.... keep on truckin buddy!
Ah ha! Found it.
Hey, I was the kid in the polo shirt and khaki pants working at Best Buy. Although I guess I wasn't a kid by that point.
Favorite lesson teaches bike riding attire rules. Me likey, Greg.
Giovanni, go get your lithium prescription refilled.
Hmmm...how does Giovanni type with a straitjacket on? With his tongue?
raggazi! hmmm... my satire was too subtle ;-). i thought that the clue that i read airbag daily would have clued all in. i should have known better... it's hard to render satire over the web. so apologies. but in the meantime thx for the lithium battery reminder. i do need to order one for my g2 canon. ciao .. (ps the cat got my tongue)
'An ever growing percentage of parents will continue to blame everyone but themselves for being a bad parent and will continue to push their children into lives they could never fulfil.'
That's so true.