Brandon Notices

Garth really likes his new grasspot. "What's a grasspot?" you ask. Well, a grasspot is a pot full of grass so that Garth can enjoy his favorite food without leaving the comfort of his porch (I often like to sit outside with Garth but don't want to watch him in the yard). So I pulled a pot out of the garage and dug up some grass and gave Garth a grasspot.

He ran right for it. He loves eating it and I have to pull him away from it. I'm concerned that Garth is going to eat all the grass in the pot, and then he won't have any more. But that's a lesson he's going to have to learn. It'll be like the lesson the Grapdelites taught Robbie in the Dinosaurs episode "Endangered Species":

Grapdelite: If you don't plan for the future, there won't be any more food. That would be the cost.
Robbie: What do you mean, no more food? There's always more. That's what "more" means.

I saw this mess of chalk after I stepped off the bus this morning. It isn't uncommon to see chalk messages on the ground at the UW. What bugged me about this one (and several I've seen before) is that it's upside-down! Sure, I guess I wasn't expected to see it from this angle, but why only advertise to people walking in one direction? It's not like I can turn around and read it because I can't walk backwards without worrying I'll bump into something and kill myself. On the other hand, it would take a lot of chalk to write the message in every conceivable direction. So I think I'll be seeing a lot of upside-down messages during my years at the university, and I don't think there's very much I can do about it. However, I've thought that it'd be a lot of fun to draw a hopscotch around these messages (especially the more serious ones).

I'm cursed. "What is the curse?" you ask. Well, I call it the FedEx Curse. Take a good look at the FedEx logo. Notice anything particularly interesting about it? Take a look at the negative space between the E and the X in the logo. Do you recognize a special shape? It's an arrow! There is an arrow hidden within the FedEx logo!


Now you too are cursed. You will never be able to look at the FedEx logo without seeing that arrow. Ha ha, made you look!

I was watching an episode of the cancelled game show Distraction not too long ago. Distraction is a funny show because the contestants have to answer questions while painful, humiliating stuff happens to them. In one of the rounds, the contestants were strapped into chairs and televisions positioned behind their chairs showed closeups of their eyes. The host explained, "Every time you blink, you will be electrocuted." Wow, I thought, that seems really harsh.

You see, a lot of people misuse the word "electrocute". Let me set the record straight: to electrocute someone is to KILL that person, using electricity. I invite you to take a look at the "-cute" part of the word, which you can also find in the word "execute".

So the host of the game show was just misusing the word, and nobody was killed, thank goodness. I bet that you've never been electrocuted, either. Sure, you may have had a big shock or two in your life, but you can't ever have been electrocuted if you can read this (unless ghosts have access to Firefox or something).

Right now, I'm in line to see the new Ninja Turtles movie. I'm excited! I already own DVDs of the other three films. But earlier, I was at Rite Aid, where I saw this book. I don't think they should have titled it Anxiety and Depression for Dummies. I dunno... it just seems to be that someone could already be depressed enough—calling the consumer a dummy is really a step backwards, isn't it?

I saw this box of butter at Safeway and it got me to think about how challenging it can be to spread butter sometimes. Especially when you've just pulled it out of the fridge and It's still very solid. I don't think I would buy Challenge Butter because regular butter is already tricky enough.

I'm at Jo-Ann with my sister and cousin and am really tempted to buy a 79-cent wooden A just so I can tell the cashier that "I'd like to buy a vowel." Is something wrong with me?

My sister and I just left Fred Meyer. In front of us in line was a woman with her two children, including her brat son. "What's taking so long?" he kept whining. I felt sorry for the cashier, who was already being burdened by another older woman whose coupons weren't scanning. The boy kept trying to open the still-unpurchased plastic toy golf club set his mother was buying him, and continually complaining about having to go to the bathroom. I hope I wasn't anything like that when I was his age!

The kid kept repeatedly looking at my sister and me in line, and it was starting to bug me, so I began telling my sister what kinds of candy I like; perhaps I subconsciously wanted the kid to bug his mother about not buying him candy as well. "I like Mounds," I recall saying, "but not Almond Joy." The kid turned to look at each candy bar as I mentioned it. "I think it's because I don't like almonds. Now Milky Way—no... what's the one with the nougat? 3 Musketeers—I like that too. I also like Twix. I don't know what my favorite candy is! Actually, wait, that's jelly beans. But I don't know what my favorite candy bar is—I guess it's Twix, but I also like Whatchamacallits, but I haven't had those in a long time." "That's because we used to get those at the gas station with Mom," Stephanie replied.

After they were finally rung up, the boy lagged behind and shouted for his mom to look. He was showing her the cool pink trike he was sitting on. I so wanted to shout, "That's a girl's bike!" but she was already pulling him out of the store.

I was waiting for the bus and noticed one of many signs that says "NO SMOKING ON CAMPUS". Right at the foot of the sign is an old cigarette butt (it might be hard to see in the picture). Just goes to show you that not everyone follows the rules (or that the rules are meant to be broken).