Monthly Archive for August, 2008

There’s nothing wrong with loving sci-fi… right?

Published
by
ashley
on August 31, 2008
in life and television
. 0 Comments

I don’t understand the social stigma attached to sci-fi nerds.

Before I go any further, let me state the following:

1. I do not attend any sort of convention unless it’s about books, journalism, or food. As much as I enjoy the idea of ComicCon, I can get my comic jollies on the Internet.

2. I have only seen one episode of Star Trek - I think that I would probably like Star Trek, but unfortunately, it seems much too complicated for me with the multiple forms and backstories and I just don’t have the time to start at the beginning. I might go see the Star Trek movie though, if only because of my slight (giant) crush on Zachary Quinto.

3. I have never dressed up in any sort of costume (except for Halloween). I can never picture myself doing something like this. Aside from the whole writing-about-my-life-on-the-internet thing, I am actually a pretty shy and modest person who would much rather play a few rounds of Contra over dressing up. Jeans and t-shirts ftw.

4. I’ve never been really “into” sci-fi as a genre. My favorite type of movies are the global disaster/post-apocalyptic ones, but I never really considered those movies to be sci-fi. Apparently they are. I love really cheesy sci-fi, too, especially the ones they show on the Sci-Fi channel (I realize I’m not helping my case here) about giant snakes or spiders or sea monsters or alien biowarfare.

Aside from the random delving into Neil Gaiman or Lost, I was never really into sci-fi as a whole. I did kind of view it as something super nerdy, something that would catapult my already questionable lack of social skills into utter nerdiness.

Enter Battlestar Galactica.

We Netflixed Battlestar Galactica solely on the recommendation of Kevin Smith.  His blog said that BSG was one of the best tv shows on tv right now, so hey, what did we have to lose?

The first disk came and we set it aside.  I think both of us were nervous to watch it - nervous that someone would find out that we had actually contemplated watching such a nerdy television show.

The night that we started watching it, I put the DVD in and crawled into bed next to Marques.

“Are you sure we want to do this?” I asked.  “Once we start watching it, there’s no turning back.  If people ask us ‘Have you guys seen Battlestar Galactica?’, we can no longer maintain our cool cred and say that we haven’t.”

We both voted to go ahead to losing our cool.

Battlestar Galactica singlehandedly revitalized my interest in science fiction.  Robots.  Spaceships.  Outer space.  Time travel.  The Future.  Bring. It. On.  I don’t care what it is.  Giant snakes?  Okay.  Cryogenics?  Sure.  A bleak outlook of future society?  I’m there.

Yet I rarely divulge my sci-fi love to friends or family (uh, apparently until now).  Mainly because I’m pretty sure they would make fun of me.  Is it so wrong to love this genre?  Does watching sci-fi make me a nerd, or was I already a nerd before I started watching sci-fi and now I’m just an even bigger nerd?

I bet 400 years into the future, sci-fi nerds rule the world.  Until then, I suppose we’ll have to content ourselves with watching our preferred television shows in the dark.

My boyfriend is starting a smear campaign

Published
by
ashley
on August 31, 2008
in apartment, i am ridiculous and marques
. 2 Comments

Here are some lies about me that my boyfriend may be spreading around the universe:

1. I do not know where the dumpster is in our apartment complex.

That is not true. I do know where the dumpster is in our apartment complex. It is over there somewhere, far from our apartment. Today as were unloading the car, we saw a couple with a bag of trash walk toward the general vicinity of the dumpster and I remarked, “What a sweet girlfriend, walking with her boyfriend to the dumpster” to which I received a 5 minute rant about how I don’t even know where the dumpster is. Marques, enough with this lie. It is OVER THERE.

2. I sleep with too many pillows, a shameful, decadent amount.

This is also not true. I am simply a very particular person, and I have a difficult time sleeping on less than three pillows. I don’t think it’s a hindrance to have a PREFERENCE.

3. I watch too much Food Network.

Again, LIES. Every single time Marques gets near a remote control, the channel is immediately switched to ESPN or MASN. It is mind-numbing. When we’re watching a television show together and a commercial comes on, not three seconds pass before BLAM - SportsCenter or Baseball Tonight or the Orioles game. I do not switch the channel to Iron Chef every time I get a chance. Yes, I do watch my daily dose of Good Eats and I’ve been known on occasion to watch a few episodes of Unwrapped or some kind of baking challenge, but it is nowhere near his ESPN intake.

4. I watch “Independence Day” or “Armageddon” every time it comes on television.

….. This is… not… true. Not EVERY time.

5. I do not care about identity theft.

This is not true. I am very concerned about identity theft. However, I am not so concerned that I tear up direct mail advertisements into tiny little pieces because my address and name is on it. I am not so concerned that I will be asking for a paper shredder for Christmas. I am not so concerned that I tear up every piece of paper that has entered our house, including any kind of receipt, coupon, letter, bill, carry out menus, work papers, etc. I am not OBSESSED with identity theft. But I do care. A little.

Everything good about mornings includes cereal

Published
by
ashley
on August 28, 2008
in cooking, i am ridiculous, life and marques
. 3 Comments

There’s been a cereal renaissance in our household as of late.

I had forgotten how much I honestly, truly love cereal. I never had cereal when I was living by myself or with roommates because I don’t really drink milk, and it just seemed silly to have milk when I didn’t use it. After the third or fourth unused quart I poured down the drain, I traded milk for Viactiv chews and yogurt and never looked back.

Last summer, about this time, I was at my desk at my previous job. It wasn’t a print day, so we were bored. It was hot. We were laying around the newsroom, being hungry and hot. All of a sudden, I thought to myself, “How good would a bowl of Golden Crisp be right now?” I kept thinking of the malty sweetness of the sugar glaze, the soft, yielding puffed wheat kernels, the ice cold milk subtly flavored from the glaze. I had to have a bowl of Golden Crisp right then and there.

I talked about it for a good two hours until finally, someone told me to shut up and buy some. I drove down to the corner store and bought a half-gallon of milk and a box of Golden Crisp and went back to the newsroom and ate Golden Crisp like a champ.

After that point, cereal became a staple in my life.

I got Marques hooked onto cereal too, after reminding him of the wonder of Frosted Flakes. Don’t you remember the crunchy corn flakes, baby? Covered in sweetness? He did, and now we keep a box of Frosted Flakes in our pantry at all times. This morning I woke up and tottered into the kitchen to make a bowl of Frosted Flakes and unfortunately, Marques had eaten all but like 4 bites of flakes and I was forced to eat Rice Krispies.

Here are my top five favorite cereals of ALL TIME:

1. Life Cinnamon

I could write a sonnet devoted to this cereal. It’s cinnamony, it’s slightly sweet, it stays crunchy in milk, it’s actually healthy, and it’s delicious. Also, you can actually see the sugar crystals embedded in each little square, which shows that it’s, you know, actual sugar and not some sort of chemical byproduct. The cinnamon and sugar leach out into the milk and make your milk slightly sweet and spicy, which is important. Hands down, number one favorite cereal. I rarely buy it because if I do buy it, I would eat nothing but Life cereal until the box is gone.

2. Frosted Flakes

They’re grrrrrr-eat! No, seriously, they are. You forget about Frosted Flakes with all of the other flashy sugar cereals out there, cereals like Lucky Charms and Cookie Crisp - inferior cereals. Frosted Flakes is a simple cereal - cornflakes covered in a crystalline sugar glaze that slightly melts into your milk but still sticks to the flake so when you take a bite of cereal, it’s sweet milk mixed with sweet flakes. Probably not dentist-recommended, but who listens to him anyway?

3. Frosted Mini-Wheats

Any flavor, though I prefer the classic regular frosted one.  They have such a great texture, even though sometimes you bite into a big chunk of the frosting and it makes your teeth hurt.  Also, whenever I eat them, I constantly feel like I have pieces of wheat in my mouth for the rest of the day.  But they’re full of fiber, so that’s good!

4.  Grape-Nuts

I have always loved Grape-Nuts, even as a kid.  Although to eat them, I had to pour on like 4 spoonfuls of sugar.  Nowadays, I’ve dropped down to 2 spoonfuls, and I love that sugar-milk sludge at the bottom of the bowl mixed in with the crunchy nuts.  Yum.

5.  Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Sweet, cinnamony, crunchy, delicious.  Also receives a high milk-taste rating.  Pretty much all of the cinnamon sugar dissipates into the milk, so when you drink the milk later, you get cinnamon milk.  Worth it for that.

I asked Marques what his top five favorite cereals are.  Here’s his list:

1.  Captain Crunch with Crunchberries
2.  Fruity Pebbles
3.  Frosted Flakes
4.  Honey Nut Cheerios
5.  Cocoa Puffs

My top five LEAST favorite cereals are as follows:

1.  Apple Jacks.  I hated Apple Jacks.
2.  Corn Pops.  This was like chunks of nothing.
3.  Honeycomb.  It reminded me of Styrofoam
4.  Trix.  If you’re going with a fruit cereal, Fruity Pebbles is the way to go.
5.  Raisin Bran.  I hate raisins.  I call them devil-boogers.

What are your top five cereals?

I do not understand my body at all

Published
by
ashley
on August 27, 2008
in i am ridiculous and work
. 0 Comments

So for the past three days/evenings, I’ve been cooped up in the newsroom for 12 hours a day.  It’s not too bad, but seeing that I’m pretty much glued to my chair, I haven’t been eating the best foods I could eat.  Here’s a rundown of all of the food I’ve eaten in the past 72 hours:

2 orders of pad see ew, 1 Chipotle burrito, 3 bottles of vitamin water (am getting sick, but hate orange juice.  need vitamin C), about 20 mini Snickers bites, 2 Lean Pockets, 1 Lipton pasta side thing, 1 tuna sandwich, handful of Sun Chips, 2 honey-wheat pretzel sticks, 1 bowl of Frosted Flakes.

So yeah.  A giant intake of calories.  And since I haven’t gotten to move (aside from walking to the office from the metro) much, you would think that I would’ve ballooned up and gained like 10 pounds.

However, when I woke up this morning, I weighed myself and realized that I had actually LOST 2 pounds.

Apparently the Michael Phelps diet actually works.  Food for thought.

Jack Bauer = MacGyver 2.0

Published
by
ashley
on August 27, 2008
in television
. 0 Comments

I found this list of problems solved by MacGyver very interesting.

Is Jack Bauer just MacGyver 2.0?  With, you know, actual weapons and problem-solving apparatii?  And torture skills?

I wonder who would win in a fight between Jack Bauer and MacGyver?

Chipotle’s online ordering system

Published
by
ashley
on August 26, 2008
in yes please
. 0 Comments

Today for food, we all decided to go to Chipotle.  The closest one to our office is on M Street, which just happens to always be crowded.  Like out-the-door crowded.  I remembered you could fax your order in and just pick it up which I thought would save tons of much-needed time.  When I logged on to chipotle.com, I saw that you can actually send your order online, which is super awesome and high-tech.  Plus, you can click on the little containers of beans/meat/salsas to choose them!  It’s like you’re actually making your own burrito… online!  Clearly, America, we have entered the future.  Forget flying cars.  The future is here.

I hate the new Giant logo

Published
by
ashley
on August 26, 2008
in design and i am ridiculous
. 5 Comments

So listen.  I know that I am not an expert on things like corporate identity (though I did create a rocking corporate identity package for one of my graphic design classes in college) or marketing (though I did take Marketing 341 one semester in a misguided attempt to explore other moneymaking opportunities considering journalism majors make like 4 dollars a year).

(I am, however, clearly an expert on using parentheses)

But I hate the new Giant logo.  See below.

It looks like a sailboat to me.  A big colorful sailboat.  It does not say “bowls a’plenty” to me, nor does it say “Hey, come shop with us, we’re fresh and clean, look at our updated logo!”

It also screams of unoriginality.  Every major company these days is getting a logo similar to this - the old “image on the side, san-serifed font on the other side” treatment.  See examples:

See what I’m saying?  I love a clean white background more than anything, but this has got to stop at some point.

And you know, I’m not sure that purple, red, yellow and green are really the best color palette choices.  It’s almost like they tried to go with straight color wheel pairings but then messed up on the orange-purple option (though that yellow is more like an orange-yellow, I suppose).  I think they really nailed the coffin down with their typeface color being purple.  Why would you do that?

I had a brief 20 minutes of clear time this evening, which is why I wrote this post to begin with, but then I spent a good five minutes redesigning the new Giant logo.  It’s not perfect, but I like to think it’s an improvement at least:

You still get the “bowls a’plenty” ideal, but with a more modern and tied-together color palette.  Instead of the text on the side, you get it on the top, which is different (and it would also look more balanced on a plastic grocery bag).

Note - I am a newspaper and web designer, not an actual graphic designer (in spirit, maybe).  I took seven graphic design courses in college and averaged a C in all of them (mainly due to my lack of natural drawing ability).  No matter how stupid I am with drawing, at the very least, I know not to make my typeface purple.