Jelly Bellies

I purchased approximately 1575 delicious jelly belly jelly-beans after my roadtrip to Costco this weekend. Despite the 30 minute trek to the neighboring city of Pasa Robles for the shopping opportunity, the beans were 1 of only 4 items that I bought, others being mechanical pencils, chewing gum, and a big brick of cheese. This only proves that I am a terrible shopper, much like the men featured in Carl's Juniour ads who experience paralysis in the aisles of grocery stores, but that is beside the point. As far as associating myself with Carl's Juniours commercials goes though, I would much much rather have some connection to the woman riding the mechanical bull. Please god, let me find myself trapped in a broken elevator with her before I die.

The container they came in is larger than my head, and weighs close to 4 pounds. I have Berry Blue, Blueberry, Bubble Gum, Buttered Popcorn, Cafe Latte, Cantaloupe, Cappuiccino, Caramel Apple, Caramel Corn, Chocolate Pudding, Cinnamon, Coconut, Cotton Candy, Cream Soda, Crushed Pineapple, Dr. Pepper, French Vanilla, Grape Jelly, Green Apple, Island Punch, Juicy Pear, Kiwi, Lemon, Lemon Drop, Lemon Lime, Licorice, Mango, Margarita, Orange Juice, Orange Sherbert, Peach, Peanut Butter, Pina Colada, Pink Grapefruit, Plum, Raspberry, Red Apple, Root Beer, Sizzling Cinnamon, Strawberry Cheesecake, Strawberry Daquiri, Strawberry Jam, Tangerine, Toasted Marshmallow, Top Bananna, Tuti-Frutti, Very Cherry, Watermelon, and Wild Blackberry flavors.

I'm pretty sure that my purchase will have negative effects on my health, possibly causing my kidneys fail or bringing my blood sugar levels to thresholds high enough to produce sweat that tastes like kool-aid, and to expand blood vessels in my face to the point of resemblingArnold in that one scene from "Total Recall." My mood, however, is soaring, as I continue to nibble from my endless jar of plenty. For even more fun, I get to try my hand at picking out the right number of "ingredient" beans to produce exactly the flavor I want. Two "lemons" and two "coconuts" yields lemon marangue pie, while several "Alcohol" beans and one "Porcelain Toliet" bean taste like so many of my less memorable drinking memories. One "juicy pear" and one "raspberry" produces poached pear in raspberry sauce, while one "Strawberry Jam" bean, one "Tortilla" bean, and five "United States Currency" beans tastes just like the time I prepared and ate five one-dollar bills to settle a gambling dispute. The possibilities are endless.

On a related note, Jelly Belly announced its plans last week to come out with 5 new celebrity themed flavors: a George Bush bean that tastes like a Silver-Spoon, a Philadelphia Eagles bean that tastes like defeat, a Martha Stewart bean that tastes like prison food, a Bill Gates bean that assumes total control of your body and invests in Microsoft, and finally a Michael Jackson bean that tastes like 10-year old Corey Feldman.

Seriously though, jelly bellies are like the nectar of the gods.

And Jeff said: "Let there be furniture!"

My roommate, Jeff Jones, likes to form objects from timber. You might describe him as somewhat of a “carpenter extraordinaire,” “lumber hobbyist,” or “proud owner of every tool there is.” Our garage is jam-packed with compound what-nots and thing-maker doo-dads, all of which produce and voluminous whirring sound and cause the lights to flicker when operated. If our meter man were to be caught in proximity to our house while checking our usage, it is likely that he would be electrocuted by one of many large yellow lightning bolts that must no doubt be emitted from our house during tool operation.

Daniel: “Hey, Jeff. Hey, I found the electro-charred remains of our hapless meter man in the backyard again. “

Jeff: “ Excellent! I’ve got designs for an even better coffin than last time. I’ll begin construction immediately.”

With the flick of his wrist, pieces of wood intended to be window trim are transformed into wet bars, and abandoned particleboard tables become large oval bumpers. The aroma of wood stain and shellac fills my nostrils when I come home, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.



All told, our home is improved by 1 Bar, 2 Poker Tables, 1 Deck, 1 Fence Gate, and 1 nearly complete set of new window trim.

However, (Shameless Plug) my roommate is now selling some of his quality products on eBay.com.

Check out the luxurious-homemade Poker Table, and also the Ink-Link. (Ink-Link not constructed by Jeff Jones.)

Hot Tubs, Entropy, and Art Vandelay

It is Saturday Night, 8:00 PM, and I am at home watching a VH1 documentary on Snoop Doggy Dog when my phone rings. Hoping it's Snoop, I fumble with my phone, rushing to answer it.

Hello?

It's Liz Couch, and before you can say "misdemeanor" I am invited to sneak into the Hot Tub at the Holiday Inn Express. After a quick briefing at her house and a couple of White Russians, we sneak off into the night with criminal intentions.

We make it to the Pool area and find that it is protected by a gate utilizing state of the art card key technology. A little red light on it is blinking, which clearly means it is expensive and dangerous. Ironically though, the gate the security equipment is installed on is a 4-foot tall wooden gate that is practically rotted to pieces from all the surrounding humidity. Despite my strongest urges to smash the gate into smithereens, we opted for stealth and hopped over the medium sized gate.

The Hot Tub is going well when two guys who are staying at the hotel show up. They claim to be in town for business meetings, and when asked say they involved in the Import/Export business. They also mention that they have just recently purchased a house in Newport Beach. I can't help but notice that their story is remarkably similar to George Castanza's in the episode of Seinfeld where he lies about being Art Vandelay in an idiotic attempt to prolong his welfare checks, but I tactfully choose not to say anything.

Then, a guy who had earlier been described to me as "A stoner with a heart of gold" shows up and starts talking to me with a dreamy look in his eyes about the Universe's laws of Entropy and how they apply to a rubber band.

At this point, little 14 year old voices start floating down from a hotel room above us, accompanied by lights being turned rapidly on and off and curtains being drawn back and forth. At least, I hope they were annoying pre-teens and not gorgeous sex-crazed college girls, because if they were, I screwed up the opportunity of a lifetime.

"Harder!"

"Hey Hotties!"

"Come up to our Room!"

The fact that they are excited both about a group of people calmly soaking in a Hot Tub and being up past 10 pm leads me to believe that they are, indeed, children. Misbehaving Children.

We try to be polite and ignore them, but before I can even get my toes nice and pruny, a security gaurd shows up and asks us to leave, indicating that he'd recieved a noise complaint. As we leave the premises, we see from the window above a Woman glaring down, who is obviously their mother.

WTF lady. You are on vacation in San Luis Obispo for some National Geography Bee or Quilting Pageant with your hellraiser kids, who are up past their bedtimes overdosed on chocolate bars and gumdrops, and you have the nerve to call in a noise complaint on us when they are up past their bedtimes scampering like gremlins and sexually harassing me because I have my shirt off? I wasn't blowing marijuana smoke in through the window screen or pressing my hams against the glass; I was just trying to relax and unwind. Sure I wasn't a "paying guest" or "patron of the hotel" or "legally entitled to be on the premises without trespassing," but at least I was on my best behavior. In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, your kids need "Discipline." Hell, after being kicked out of the Hot Tub, I was halfway tempted to go to their room like I was invited to in the first place and get them all drunk off their asses on Jack Daniels, giving you an actual reason make a complaint. Go spank your children and leave me alone when I am trying to discuss the more serious implications of Entropy on electron probability theory with golden-hearted stoner, you sub-average parental witch.

Brush with Death and Subsequent Inspiration to Blog

Black Widows

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday afternoon, my roommate Jeff Jones approaches me and nonchalantly informs me that he has seen a "big-ass" spider loitering in our garage. 15 minutes later, after smearing our faces with green and black camouflage and preparing Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries" to play as we entered, we stormed into our garage armed with a Maglite flashlight and a Tupperware container. After a fair bit of spider hunting, we found our target dangling maliciously from garage door rails in the corner of the room. Not only was the spider huge, black, and disgusting, but we immediately noticed the red hourglass it bore on its abdomen, identifying it as the one and only female black widow, or Latrodectus Mactan. Several extremely tense seconds of high-adrenaline spider poking later (we used a pencil) the little beast was ours. The literal translation of the Latin is "Murderous Biting Robber," and comes from the Black Widow’s ritual of killing the male after mating, thereby becoming a “widow.” Its retractable fangs hold a poison that is 15 times more powerful than rattle snake venom,awarding it the title of "Most Poisonous Spider in the U.S." This made it a little disconcerting for us to find it living cozily in our house, especially since our roommate Brian Zaharris had just the other morning awoken to find a spider bite on his eyelid. The spider bite was, however, completely hilarious, as Brian had to spend the rest of the day with a swollen eyelid, looking very much like Sloth from the movie "The Goonies". Brian is all better now though, so I can make fun of him and his once puffy eye.

Anyways, the Black Widow is presently living in a salsa jar on the coffee table in our den. To date we have held one spider fight, which was Black Widow vs. another spider I captured late at night upon discovering it was plotting to bite me. The fight was called and ended in a decision in favor of the Black Widow, since the challenger crumpled up and burst under the effects of the toxic venom after about 60 seconds. The whole venomous affair is contained in exciting digital video format on my camera. The fight took place in the salsa jar and was very similar to scenes from the Mel Gibson flick thunderdome.However, Tina Turner's hair in that movie is in fact scarier than our Black Widow.

Please leave a comment with your suggestion for what to name our new pet Widow. So far “Charlotte” is in the lead.