Food snacks for post-millennials?

I always thought it was strange that some movie theaters in Utah sold dill pickles at the concession stand, but here's something even weirder: pickle-juice popsicles.

Sure, pickle juice isn't new. Throughout history it played a major role in the childhood game of "I Dare You to Drink Whatever I Find in the Fridge and Mix Up in a Cup," from suburban homes of middle America to ramshackle yurts on the windswept plains of outer Mongolia.

But popsicles? For a yummy treat? I don't get it. Okay, okay, I know there're people out there who love pickles and who might even drink pickle juice from time to time. But let's face it, there are people out there who eat paste or dirt—or other non-edibles—but we smack it out of their hands (if they're kids) or treat them for a mental condition instead of capitalizing on their unfortunate predilection with a new line of Paste-a-roonies® or Tastee Mudd (now 98% Pesticide Free!).

I'd write this idea off as going the way of the tequila lollipop with the worm in it—you know, where people buy them as joke gifts or eat them on a dare—but the website says they're marketing pickle-sicles to schools. For kids.

Apparently pickle juice is good for you. And, according to the website, "almost sugar free." Huh.

I guess, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe pickle-juice popsicles aren't that odd. I mean, we live in a nation where Clamato is a real product.

Chuck hoped his fresh new 'do would help him with the ladies.

It didn't.

Feliz Cumpleanos, Glee klee ker Kaburtstag, Gratchu layday mayday hoggen

In my random wandering through blogland, I came upon the coolest entry about childhood birthday cakes. It made me remember some of the highlights and not-so-highlights of birthday celebrations past, which are presented below for your entertainment:

Highlight: The best birthday cake I ever had was my Leslie cake. I think it was my fifth birthday (you know, the party where I got to invite friends), and Leslie Lindgren was my on-again-off-again boytoy. He was a blond Adonis, overly affectionate and unashamed of our love. The cake was a masterpiece, a two-layer pile of frosting emblazoned with a big pink head with blond hair and blue eyes. It was a perfect likeness. Of course he was at the party, and I can't remember his reaction at seeing himself on the cake, but I can't think he minded. I mean, seriously, we used to play "marriage" in front of the house, walking somberly down the sidewalk to the corner where we would exchange vows and, sometimes, a hasty smooch.

Not-so-highlight: The most ghetto cake I ever had was on my 12th or 13th birthday. It was a simple family affair, and I had requested an angel food cake. Because we were going to put strawberry topping on it after it was cut, it was unfrosted and looked a little naked on the plate. We had run out of birthday candles—not surprising with everyone having birthdays willy-nilly around there—so we McGyvered a solution by spearing the cake with a foot-long fireplace match. "Sing fast, everyone, this baby's burnin like a mutha."

Most of my cakes were the typical frosted cake mix in a 9x13 pan. For some unknown reason, my parents were fond of taking the birthday picture at the very peak of the candle blow, so we have many, many photographs of us kids with bulging cheeks and eyes like crazed fanatics at a balloon factory.

Somewhere along the way, I think it was my mom who banned pictures of the candle blow. "Please, Jer, let me have one photo of my child looking normal." It's a wonder we didn't all end up at the Sevick Center.*

* The Sevick Center was a school for children with developmental disabilities. We used to sneak over the fence after hours because they had all the coolest playground equipment on spongy black mats instead of sand.

My eyebrow may say, "No, no, no," but my 'stache is saying, "Yes, yes, yes!"

Brain Games Keep You Young

In his 1893 treatise entitled Formative Yataghans of Optomaetria, the eminent scholar Ubaadah Czismadia posited that Athalassian cretacea were an integral canon in the diametrical philology of early “Naïve Realism,” so called because of its tenuous use of E.A. von Diltenschmiel’s Taenioidea Hypothesis. In later epochs, oligarchs such as Sangilak contravened in defence of the oft-cited Cillecroix-Ortule paradox, in which Dravidian expert Ermenegildo Smelah asserts that Albrecht Yohjalian’s whole context is irrevocably intangible. However, the 16th-century scroll has long been considered an atavistic subrepresentation of antilapsarianism. In terms of today’s redactionist thinking, do you agree?

When Question Mark was young, he wanted to be a period.

Tell Me What You Want to Hear

It's hard for me to be myself sometimes, because I'm not sure what that even means. I don't consciously pretend to be someone else or anything, it's more like I censor my words or my actions based on who I'm with at the time, or how well I know them.

I smile and say, "No problem," when inside my head I'm shooting imaginary darts tipped with green poison from my eyes while using every obscene gesture possible until my imaginary hands are paralyzed with exhaustion.

Here's me, being real. For just a few minutes.

* Today at lunch we played "If You Decided to Go Postal and Shoot Up the Office, Name the Three People You'd Kill." I had no problem coming up with my first target. At all. I'd pull the trigger with no qualms. The other two on my list were a little harder. You have to really hate someone to want to kill them, so my remaining choices ended up being the kind of people where I wouldn't hunt them down specifically, but if I saw them at the back of the pack running away from me down the hall, I'd definitely take a potshot or two.

* I don't like super-strong old-lady perfume. Someone here wears it. My nose is assaulted every time I walk to the restroom. My cube neighbor feels the same, and today he came back to his desk and said, "It doesn't smell like old-lady in here. It's funeral home. Like, dead people's makeup." I'm keeping that. DPM. A perfect description for so many things.

* I thought I was going to win today. But I didn't, and I was mad. When I said, "Good game everyone," I was really thinking, "Maybe I want to change my list of three people."

* In Spanish, the word Sudan means "they sweat." I think that's funny. It's really hot in Africa.

* Last night, while watching How it's Made, I kept giggling like a fourth grader every time the narrator said, "P.U. leather" (when describing the special materials they use in making goalie pads).

* I often do surveys online and I lie a lot, especially when my answers are making me seem lazy/unmotivated/loser-ish—or when I want to feel more successful in life than I really am.

Whew. Sometimes honesty feels good, even when it's bad.

Muskrat Susie's gone downhill since she started hitting the pipe.