This comic exaggerates things, but only a little. I once interviewed for a job that required both senior mobile developer and marketing director experience in the same person.
Oddly enough, I have that experience now, but I don’t think they ever filled the position, and I don’t think it exists anymore.
I took these photos on last Sunday’s grocery shopping trip.
I had no idea that Bacon Spam existed! Clearly I’m behind on the advances in canned meat.
If you’re familiar with my cooking photo posts — that’s largely what my Instagram account is about — you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m being sarcastic about having so much Spam choice. But you’d be wrong.
I used to be teased by ignorant white friends at Crazy Go Nuts University about my love for Spam, but they didn’t believe me when I told them that it was practically a staple in the Philippines — they just thought it was a misguided attempt at being more of a banana, twinkie, or coconut (“yellow/brown on the outside, white on the inside”) because I didn’t fit their “Long Duk Dong” expectation of what an Asian was supposed to be.
In fact, Spam is the key ingredient in a lot of Asian/Pacific island dishes, including Spam musubi (sometimes mistakenly referred to as Spam sushi, but if the rice isn’t vinegared, it ain’t sushi)…
…and Spam fried rice, which treats Spam as a softer, more easily sliced version of Chinese sausage:
Korean cuisine has budae jjigae, “army base stew”, a recipe created at the end of the Korean War that used scraps of food from U.S. Army bases, which included hot dogs, instant noodles, and of course, Spam (an old Army joke describes the low-grade version of Spam they were served as “ham that couldn’t pass its physical”):
Hormel has made a special Filipino spam flavor: tocino, which is sweet cured pork that’s kind of like Chinese char siu...
…and it’s one of a number of flavors:
And yes, you can get this on Amazon!
And finally, there’s Hawaiian breakfast: eggs, rice, and Spam:
It’s so quintessentially Hawaiian that it’s offered there as a breakfast option (and as a side order, just like the fries) at McDonald’s…
…and Burger King as well:
In Korea, Spam is so beloved that you can get it in gift sets…
Click the photo to see the Spammy goodness at full size.
…and just last year, Canadian-Korean K-pop star Jeon So Mi became the Spam spokemodel:
Seen on the “impulse-buy candy” shelf in a cashier lane on Sunday…
Click the photo to see it at full size.
It appears that in toilet paper, just as in life and role-playing games, I am chaotic good.
Found via Dungeons and Dragons memes.
In honor of Juneteenth — the holiday that celebrates the liberation of people who’d been slaves in the U.S. — a Trump joke. Because we need one.
Found via Ian Bremmer.
The “Dad sweatshirt”, taken earlier today.
My move from Toronto to Florida a couple of years back forced me to really apply a rule I try to follow: if you’ve been hanging onto something and never use it, sell it or give it to someone who really needs it. I’ve had to use this rule more since moving from Toronto to Tampa, as the move required me to take only what I could fit in my old car, and because I didn’t want to treat my mother’s basement in Toronto like a free storage place forever.
In spite of this rule, I’ve hung on to one piece of clothing that I’ve had since 1999 and that I almost never wear. It’s the zippered sweatshirt pictured above. There’s nothing terribly bad about it; I like the color, but the cut’s all wrong, it’s a little too big, it has ridiculous snap-straps all over (in the photo, you can see one of them around the neck), and while it’s perfectly serviceable, I don’t like it enough to keep it and should’ve given it to Goodwill or some other charity ages ago. But I won’t because it’s a special gift from my dad.
In 1999, my former high school classmate André Fenton was doing neuroscience research at the Czech Academy of Sciences and decided that he wanted to ring in the year 2000 by throwing a big New Year’s Eve party in the nicest place that he could rent somewhere near Prague.
He found a great place — Zamek Roztěž (although these days, it’s marketed as Casa Serena Chateau and Gold Resort). It’s a “hunting castle” originally built in the late 1600s in the village of Roztěž, located in the Kutna Hora district, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Prague. I was invited to the party, and while there, had a grand old time:
Upon hearing that I would be staying at a castle somewhere in the central European woods in the dead of winter, Dad decided that he’d surprise me by buying me something to keep me warm. That thing was the zippered sweatshirt, and he gave it to me just as he dropped me off at the airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam, and then Prague.
“I got this for you. I don’t want you to be cold when you’re in that castle.”
I thanked him for the sweatshirt, gave him a big hug, wished him a happy new year in advance, and told him that I’d send photos that I’d take with my still-newish digital camera (1024 by 768 pixels in super-fine mode!) to mom via email (he never had an email address).
It’s not really what I would’ve bought, but it’s big and warm, I thought, and it served me well on the flight, in the castle (which wasn’t all that cold — they’d been doing a fair bit of renovating), and especially well on a hike around the castle grounds with some lovely company on the night of January 1st, 2000:
Because I am a big ol’ sentimental softie, not only have I kept this sweatshirt that I don’t really like all these years, but I take it with me whenever I travel far to someplace cold, as a sort of comforting tradition. I wore it walking through the streets of Prague, while shivering on the slopes at Whistler while trying to figure out how snowboarding worked, when I was conducting mobile technology assessments in the bitter cold of Athabasca’s oil sands, and as I drove through the snow-covered hills of West Virginia on those chilly days of March 2014 as I moved to Tampa to be with Anitra. It keeps me warm, not only in the physical sense, but also in the way that it reminds me of his kindness and generosity.
Dad died eleven years ago, but thanks to this sweatshirt that I’m not all that crazy about, I have a little bit of him that I can take with me when I’m cold and far from home. That’s why I’ll never part with it.