I am perusing one of the finest selections of expensive, useless crap: The Hammacher Schlemmer Father’s Day catalog.
What I want: Human Bowling Ball
What I need: Hands-Free Hair Rejuvenator
What I will probably get, again: Nose Hair Trimmer
I am perusing one of the finest selections of expensive, useless crap: The Hammacher Schlemmer Father’s Day catalog.
What I want: Human Bowling Ball
What I need: Hands-Free Hair Rejuvenator
What I will probably get, again: Nose Hair Trimmer
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
[As if I needed them.]
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
I want to buy a product that’s for sale online. The exact product doesn’t really matter; what matters is that it’s a relatively new product that I’ve never used before, so I’m not sure if I’m going to like it and want to keep it.
Every place that sells this product charges the same price, so there’s no bargain hunting. The dilemma is that I can buy it either directly from its maker (which I generally prefer to do) and get free shipping and handling and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Or I can buy it from a high-end retailer, pay $20-25 S&H and get a lifetime money-back guarantee. This means that I’m essentially paying an extra $20+ dollars (in this case, around 10-15% of the product’s price) for an extended insurance policy and I have to decide if it’s worth it.
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
I recently learned about a restaurant named Watercress Asian Bistro. While I have not eaten there, its name alone raises warning flags.
Let’s break it down:
Word in Name | What They Want It To Mean | What It Probably Means |
Watercress | We serve light, healthy food, filled with fresh ingredients. | The food is bland because we don’t how to season it. And don’t count on it being healthy because we cook everything in oil except the salads, which are made with iceberg lettuce. |
Asian | We choose from the best of the cuisines of China, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam. | We’re not really good at cooking any one cuisine, so we pick a few well-known dishes from each and Americanize them by loading them up with salt and sweeteners. |
Bistro | A fun, casual place, suitable for a lunch with friends or a nice dinner date. | We hired our waitstaff from Applebee’s and we serve wine out of a box. |
If this seems like idle speculation, check out what today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer has to say about a similarly-named-but-probably-entirely-unrelated restaurant:
Cilantro Asian Cuisine, with the third-highest number of red violations this year, was closed in May after "cockroaches were found crawling on cooked vegetables that were stored on a shelf," according to the inspection report.
The inspector also found shrimp stored in used containers and stacked with the bottom of the containers on the shrimp in the container below, a non-functioning oven hood and a dishwasher that wasn’t sanitizing the dishes.
That was one of three inspections in which the health department found serious problems at Cilantro. Other problems included "raw fish on top of cans of soda," "dried blood on the floor" and a customer complaining of a cockroach in his or her takeout.
For contrast in both name and cuisine, consider the estimable Malay Salay Hut.
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
When did restaurant managers and waiters decide that it was a good idea to replace the question, "Is everything to your satisfaction?" with, "Is everything tasting wonderful?"
First of all, I don’t really want you asking me directly about how the food tastes. That’s way too intimate a question for our relationship; you’re figuratively prying open my mouth and inspecting my tongue. Secondly, it discounts the ten other things that affect my experience at your restaurant. (Yes, my water glass is empty again.) Finally, in all likelihood "everything" doesn’t taste "wonderful." Good, hopefully, excellent, possibly, but you set yourself up for failure when you set the bar at wonderful. Unless you’re serving me at Canlis, the Herbfarm, or a handful of less well-known restaurants, everything isn’t tasting wonderful, and the waiters in those establishments are old-school enough to ask the question appropriately.
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
Bombs, Tanks Shoot Down Roadside Avalanches
Getting paid to drive tanks and snowmobiles and set off explosives? They could charge people to do that job.
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
Posted in Petty Bourgeois
Posted in Petty Bourgeois