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Carl's Jr. diet
Wednesday, August 9 2000
Early this afternoon, the guy waiting in front of me in the Santa Monica Avenue Carl's Jr. looked exactly like one of those guys one sees in the latest Carl's Jr. ad campaign, the one which I refer to as "...some guys would starve." Ads in this series typically show a hapless early-middle-aged guy experiencing complete bewilderment in a supermarket. The guy usually stands still for a long, awkward moment, looking slowly back and forth. Then he finally picks up a package of ground beef, pokes it, watches the plastic wrap slowly rebound, and then puts it back on the shelf. As we again see him staring blankly off into space, a voiceover announces, "Carl's Jr.: if it weren't for us, some guys would starve." I think it's a much better ad campaign than the earlier series featuring dripping sandwiches, which, if anything, could only be credited for their revolting honesty. While Carls Jr. burgers are neither the most skillfully made nor the most nutritionally balanced in the industry, they definitely do drip. I had a 99 cent Famous Star today, and I had to be careful how I sat as I devoured it, especially since I'm the guy who has to do my laundry these days. I have a feeling I'll be eating a lot of Carls Jr. over the upcoming months. Given that I have essentially zero discretionary income and almost no cooking utensils (or, for that matter, desire to cook), the local fast food establishments will probably be the chief benefactors of my food budget.
Last night and this morning, Kim was blaming the movers for taking too many things from the house. So today she brought a box of essentials, including a telephone, some cups, a bowl and a single fork. Unfortunately, though, she snatched up the big cooking pot she'd left me, replacing it with a burnt reject frying pan. As for the crappy old ghetto blaster stereo she'd left for me, she'd neglected to leave a suitable power cord. So today she seemed to think she was making good on the situation by bringing over a crappy old extension cord. Evidently she's loath to leave me anything of any real value. If anything, I'm only entitled to the rejects. This is in sharp contrast to my magnanimous declaration to her yesterday that she pick whichever of my painting she wanted (excepting one). You know, back when we were going out, she was always telling me how unbecoming and self-defeating it is to be stingy. But it's clear to me that this is exactly what she is being now. This alone is doing much to qualify whatever good memories I have of our relationship. I remember when I finally got around to doing the math and pointing out the financial imbalance of our lifestyle in San Diego, she justified it all by saying that she "bought stuff for both of us." But how could it have been "for both of us" when she gets to have it all when we break up? I guess there's really not much I can do about it except perhaps not pay her all of the $13,000 I owe her for her investment in the condo. I'd just prefer not to have to deal with this issue if it means that I have to interact with her in the process.
With Kim gone from my life, there are almost no demands on me verbally. Nearly all the dialogue at work takes place via email or AOL Instant Messenger (for want of a version of ICQ that can burrow effectively through firewalls).
But today I had to go to a meeting, which meant I might have to say something using my mouth. This particular meeting concerned the mailbag system, which is basically a modified messageboard rooted in the same Gus-developed technology you experience in my forum. The meeting was with a particularly bitch editor chick, and she was all fired up about the placement of the link to the mailbag, having spammed my boss Linda with something like seven emails on the subject, some of them expressing ignorance of the fact that a completely redesigned community (aka "Interact") section had even been released. I'd seen this editorial girl a lot back when I worked in the Pennsylvania Avenue office. She looked really cool; she had a combination of bleached and dyed black hair and her cubicle was all decorated with nick nacks and bumperstickers from obscure and presumable cool bands. But boy, when she started talking, it was clear that there was a little bit of Joseph Stalin, complete with mustache and cruelly shrunken arm, wadded up within her soul. Lucky for me, though, it soon became clear that she didn't have any problem with the Mailbag as I'd developed it. Indeed, she seemed favorably impressed with the administrative tools I had built. And she even got an obscure paleontological references I made in the sample mailbag I built: "Will rock die? Or will it, like the Coelacanth, somehow survive?" In the sample dialogue on this mailbag, the question "Does Aerosmith rock?" was answered by "They sag more than they rock."
In the evening, though, I was in full-on mental mode, able to explore concepts abstractly for hour after hour completely uninterrupted in a way that had been impossible. On a whim, though, I decided to be responsible, so I actually went shopping at the nearby Brentwood Ralph's. It's a very complete store and I'm left to wonder why the fuck it was beneath Kim to shop there. And the only thing I had to say on the whole excursion was "plastic." I looked like such a slacker, but there I was wielding my prestigious MasterCard Platinum Select just like the rest of the Brentwood folks.
Back at home, I watched Big Brother for the second time since the show began. It was interesting only for the fact that here were these complete nobodies, infuriatingly inane, who had been arbitrarily made into utterly unremarkable celebrities. (Of course, I've been following the sardonic synopses of the show in Salon as well.) That faux redheaded Brittany chick seriously needs a punch in the nose. If she was my girlfriend (and given my track record, this is not beyond possibility), I'd have to publicly beat her several times a day just to keep my friends from laughing at me.
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