Brandon Notices

The Taco Time in Mukilteo started requiring customers to request the bathroom key, which is attached to a huge metal spoon. It's kinda gross to think that some people have carried that spoon who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom. I actually thought about this, and after I washed my hands, I carried the big metal spoon back to the front counter by holding on to it with clean paper towels. But then there was nobody at the front counter, so I just left it there on the counter. Hmmm, I wonder if I should start going to a different Taco Time restaurant...

A while ago, I wrote about the Mukilteo Walgreens' absurd thirty-minute parking limit. My local Lynnwood Walgreens has taken this parking time limit to a maddening extreme!

Last night, I was a bit restless from doing homework, so I went to Fred Meyer with my cousin Kevin. While we were there, we looked at Halloween stuff. They had a bunch of Halloween books at 25% off, including this one.


It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a hardback novelization of the popular Halloween special of the same name. It's not a very large book—it's about as large as my palm—but it has over a hundred pages, many of which are just text. However, there are cute illustrations from the cartoon sprinkled throughout the book. I haven't read through it yet, but it looks like they tried to include every event in the cartoon. Even at 25% off, $3.75 seemed like a bit much for this tiny little book, but it was what was on pages 108 and 109 that convinced me to buy the book:



These might be the two greatest pages in all of English literature. So, of course I bought the book. After seeing those pages, I couldn't resist. During the Halloween season every year, it'll probably exist on the coffee table, maybe picked up and skimmed through on occasion.

When you're writing to compare two things, it can be a little confusing to decide whether to use a subject or object pronoun. For example, should it be, "He likes candy more than I," or, "He likes candy more than me"? Actually, each sentence means something different.

The trick is to flesh out the sentences. Be wordy and duplicate the verb. Looking at the first sentence, we can see that "He likes candy" is the first part. The second part involves "I," a subject pronoun, so when you flesh it out to match the first part, you get, "I like candy." Putting it together, you have "He likes candy more than I like candy." So I like candy, but he loves it.

Let's flesh out the second sentence. The first part is "He likes candy" again; the second part has "me," an object pronoun, so this part becomes "he likes me." So the whole sentence means, "He likes candy more than he likes me." So I guess he'd rather eat candy than be with me. Oh well.

Regardless, if somebody gets upset with you for some reason and asks, "You think you're smarter than me?" it's probably not a good idea to correct him and say, " 'smarter than I.' "

A recent wind storm has tipped this no parking sign over. We had the government install it because people were parking their cars in front of the mailboxes. They still do park in front of the mailboxes and in the cul-de-sac, despite the sign. It'd be really funny if the sign blew over and damaged a car.

Earlier this month, the search engine Cuil (which I've never heard of before) released Cpedia, the Internet's first "automated encyclopedia." When I told my friend about this, he asked, "I'm sorry, what's an automated encyclopedia?"

According to the website, you give it a search, and "For each query, Cpedia algorithmically summarizes and clusters the ideas on the web and uses this to generate a report." I summarized this to my friend: "It apparently finds information online about a topic, then mashes together questionably relevant content." Right now, the site is in its alpha phase, but perhaps they were a little hasty in releasing it to the public, because hardly anything on this site makes sense.

For example, check out Cpedia's article about mowing the lawn (archived). The first paragraph starts out reasonably encyclopedic, if not a bit too conversational, but quickly falls into criticism of lazy people who don't like mowing the lawn. Then, a later paragraph reads, "When outside, especially when doing yardwork (like mowing the lawn), use a dust mask and close-fitting goggles to keep allergens out of your nose and eyes. So I did things like mow other people's lawns, shoveled snow and even had a lemonade stand from time to time." I don't see how these two concepts even follow! It just seems like random sentences somewhat related to mowing the lawn are put together haphazardly.

What made me laugh the most was a quick read-through of the article's table of contents: Physical Activity, Cinderfella, Memphis in January 2008, Chore. The Cinderfella section says, in its entirety, "Cinderfella did not like living with his family because they made him do all of the work around the house like washing the car and mowing the lawn." The Memphis in January 2008 section is an apparently irrelevant diversion: "When the company relocated to Memphis in January 2008, Mr. Hudson, 52, decided not to move." What company? No context is given in the article, but at least the site provides a link to the article it pulled the sentence from.

The article about microwaves (archived) says absolutely nothing about electromagnetic waves, or how microwave ovens work. Actually, it reads more like a sales pitch for luxury hotel rooms and appliance shops.

You'd think that there would be an article for everything, since an automatic encyclopedia could theoretically create an article upon request. However, while there is an article for running red lights for fun (archived) (which contains information only about blondes being the life of the party), there exists no article for tickling porcupines.

Cpedia's about page says that the purpose of the site is so that users don't have to look through search result links; they can instead go to Cpedia and get "a summary of the topic." I feel that an automated encyclopedia is an interesting idea, but the articles it comes up with are often so confusing and meaningless that it just doesn't work.

My friend and her husband hosted a party this afternoon, and I was surprised to find that there weren't really many people there. This party was an opportunity for them to teach us about the new website they're starting. On the website, they'll be offering a variety of health and beauty products, and an old couple demonstrated a few of these Amway products to us.

One of the products was Perfect Water, which is a product with some pretty amazing claims. They purify water to zero parts per million, then they ionize it (to my knowledge, though, purified water can be broken down into ions, but it would quickly reverse to more stable neutral water molecules). Then, they add minerals back in, which makes me wonder what was wrong with the minerals they took out in the first place.

The man presenting the products singled me out, and poured me a small cup of bottled water he picked up at Starbucks. I said it tasted okay. (I've never fallen in love with water before, but the stuff that comes out of my kitchen tap is pretty great stuff.) Then, he asked if I would stand up, and cup my hand at my side. I was instantly reminded of this video, in which James Randi hosts an experiment to see if crystals have special healing-type powers:



I expected a very similar experiment would happen with me in the next minute. He pushed his fist down on my hand, and I didn't feel much like falling over, so I stood firmly.

Then, he gave me a cup of the Perfect Water. I drank some of it. It had a funky aftertaste. He wanted to perform the same test again. I wondered what I ought to do. I was expected to stand more rigidly—to be stronger, and have better balance. Of course, I didn't believe that this water would grant me this power. I wondered if it would be funnier to collapse on the floor in a heap, and perhaps vomit on his shoes.

It turns out that I tried to duplicate the results from the first test, by standing firmly. But at one moment, he pushed a little harder than he probably meant to, so I let myself slip a little and lean toward him. He commented that it doesn't always work, or that it can be hard to tell sometimes.

If he really wanted to impress me, he would have performed a blinded test, like in the video of the crystal testing. Actually, from the start, I was hoping he'd give me a blind taste test—but the Perfect Water would have lost.

I didn't buy anything at the party, but I had a great time playing Frisbee after the salespeople left.

These Purex Laundry Sheets (forgive me for not typing out the full name listed) on Amazon.com appear to be an unbelievable deal: 90% off! This is pure madness! You would be stupid not to buy these at such a bargain!

But seriously, they're $6.99, marked down from the list price of $71.92. Come on... Really? I can't imagine anyone buying this product at that price. Are they just jacking up the list price to make this sound like an unbelievable deal? This doesn't make sense otherwise.