A Curious, Welcome, Mysterious Appearance

The cookie jar, a wedding gift, has been bereft of cookies for some time now.

Or has it?

In the course of wiping counters, shifting this and that, making space to prepare what turned out to be another fabulous meal, The Beloved Wife moved the cookie jar. And discovered an unexpected heft to it.

Opening it, she discovered a rich vein of Oreo Double Stuf. When the jar was new, we quickly learned that a full bag of oreos fills it to the little ceramic lid. Such test drives are important, as you well know. And this, suddenly, was a full cookie jar...indicating a bag had been dumped in there, and somehow forgotten.

She doesn't recall buying them.

I don't recall buying them.

We have decided that one of the following options must be The Truth:

• One of us bought Oreos and forgot about them. C'mon. Who does that? You always remember Oreos. I'm dismissing possibility #1 on principle alone.
• The apartment repairman, Oscar, who came in today to look at one of the walls, noticed we had a Cookie Deficit in the midst of his work, and dashed over to the Meijer up the street to rectify the situation. Good man, that Oscar. They should name an award after him or something...
• The Oreo Gods have blessed us, for we have been good people lately, and deserve their fruits. (I've been reading too much Pratchett, perhaps...)
• The crumbs at the bottom acted as seeds, and new cookies have grown to greet the springtime.

They don't taste stale, either. But we ate a few before we tipped the kids off to them. Can't be too careful, you know. They could be dangerous or something...

1950s Advertising

http://lileks.com/oldads/50s/1.html

Interesting...or should I say Keen!

Creative Video

Doc: It would be worth it to take an hour and sit down and watch it, then discuss it. I could set it up on a laptop in the boardroom.

http://www.newstoday.com/_tpl/qbn/film_16.html

- JB

Conclusions about The Grateful Dead

A bit of research has come to a close.I have spent the better part of the last 2 weeks spending my spare music-listening time with The Grateful Dead. My lady fair at home, and my partner at work...who have to spend time with me in close proximity...can confirm this. With a sad sigh, I'm sure.

Not being a drug person, and being one who likes to wash his feet, I skipped that part of the culture and went straight to the music. I have, over a few months of buying cheap used discs and pawing through the library at work, managed a modest collection of five studio albums, and three of their infamous Live sets.

I don't think I'm remotely able to call myself a Deadhead, per se, because I've come to them far too late to truly be "on the bus". But I've been doing reasearch about the band, absorbing as much music as possible, and talking to a few friends who love them (and in one case, lost a job to follow them around). Here is what I've concluded (feel free to post a bit more education if you're a Deadhead and notice a glaring error...or think I've missed the point) :

1. Not a single man among them can sing worth a damn for more than two minutes without bending a note.
2. Despite the inability to sing...every single person in the band is a near-virtuoso on their instrument. Jazz, Blues, Country, Swing, Open-Throttle Rock...they're Money.
3. Melody = fantastic. Harmony = Not So Much. Free-Form Jazz/Blues = Masterful.
4. Best studio album? 1977's Terrapin Station (despite what the critics say) or 1970's Workingman's Dead (which just edges out 1970's American Beauty). However, I've not yet heard most of Mars Hotel or any of Wake Of The Flood)
5. Best live album? Any of them. The singing will be suspect...the song will ten minutes longer...but the playing will be superb.
6. Their What the Hell Were They Thinking Album? Probably Built To Last, which showed, if anything, that they weren't.

I used to just dismiss this band, but I think I'm starting to get it. The live stuff, in moderation, is great to unwind to.

Frogs has been absorbed

And for the record, regarding my post of a couple weeks ago...it can be Pretty Bad...