Friday, March 25, 2011

cherry, cherry, quite contrary

Spring in the Pacific Northwest means one thing: drizzly rain. Wait: it also means the blossoming of cherry trees. Two things.

Right now there's cherry trees blossoming all over my neighborhood. Looks great, smells great. Who can complain, right? Well, I've got my hand in the air. I'm not complaining exactly, but I want to ask you all how things are going to look in another week or two. All those blossoms will be gone, and we'll be stuck with a bunch of skinny old nothing-special trees.

Now don't get me wrong: I love trees. So much, in fact, that I question why we can't have other trees besides these cherry trees everywhere. How about some macadamia trees? It would be so cool to be just walking along and find a whole bunch of macadamia nuts under some tree. I love macadamias! Or maybe some banana trees. I actually don't like eating bananas, but I've seen lush banana trees in real life, and they look so damn bountiful! I'd just like to see some of that in my neighborhood. And we've got palm trees here - there's a couple right around the corner, as a matter of fact - so don't tell me banana trees won't grow in Tacoma.

Hell, I'd even take some apple trees. I love apples. Maybe a nice Jonamac tree, or even a basic old Macintosh tree. I don't care! I just want to be walking down the street, and see an apple tree over there, and just go over and gorge to my heart's content. Can you do that with a cherry tree? No. At least, not the ones around here. You're not gonna eat anything off of them. I'm not even sure if they all ARE cherry trees - maybe there's some other kind of blossoming tree that people cultivate - but let's call them cherry trees for convenience's sake. I want something to eat.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

happy family

Who the F#*%!! came up with the idea for Happy Family??? You know what I'm talking about: that Chinese restaurant dish with chicken, beef, shrimp, pork, lobster, and just about every other meaty item on the menu, tossed together with some lo mein-type noodles and maybe a little bit of broccoli. Whoever it was, I bet they congratulated themselves afterward. You know, something like, "Yes, I did pretty good here. This is a groundbreaking innovation."

Hey, I've got a new idea for a breakfast cereal! It's got Grape Nuts, and Wheaties, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cocoa Puffs, and those little marshmallows from Lucky Charms. And while I'm at it, I've got a new baked good as well: part pie, part cake, and part donut, it's glued to the back of a petits four and will surely revolutionize the culinary world. And here's one more for you: a container of ice cream with THREE FLAVORS inside. That's right - vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry sitting right next to each other, just waiting to be devoured.

But what's that you say? Tripartite ice cream already exists; or at least, it used to, but they stopped making it because no one gave a damn??? Wait, wha - how can that be? Isn't it 3 times as good as ordinary uniflavor ice cream? Just like Happy Family is 8 times as good as regular lo mein? These are crazy times we're living in, I tell ya ...