Zinch

This website is a perfect website at first exploration. It's scope is succinct enough they complete exactly what they wanna do with a minimum of page usage. The visual presentation reflects the scope. blah blah blah...

But the most amazing thing is their weekly scholarship competition. Every week (Monday - Monday) Zinch.com gives away $1K for a 280 character essay. They provide prompt. You provide three sentences. Boom.

Here is my entry for today:

If you were to create a time capsule to be opened in the year 2099, what three items would you include to represent contemporary culture? Explain your selections.

Self-respecting time capsules are compact and cover the full scope of culture:  A can of Coca-Cola (food, chemicals, advertising and the #1 understood word in the world). iPhone – still in the box with its accoutrements. Obama bumper sticker: politics, self-expression, transportation & the year in one tiny package!

I worry I'm not hitting total culture here, but these three things are pervasive enough in every country that no matter what yurt you live in, you're going to encounter at least one of them. 

You'll now be viewing my hyper-speed thoughts every week, and when I finally win one of these things, we shall rejoice. 

I'm reading the terms and conditions now so I can see if they count spaces as characters. Also, it appears you have to already be enrolled to get the dough. So, I'll limber up with the blogging and hit hard core in a couple months. 

My Last Meal: Ikea

I'm more glad that you can know that this photo exists. 

Over the years, you've heard me love on Ikea. Ikea is so great I'll have my wedding (should such a crazy thing happen) will take place there. Then I can get sponsorship to pay for it. And it will be beautiful. And everyone will be comfy. And catering will be ideal and tasty. 

Those days are gone. 

And Hunter may call me an Absolutist from time to time, and perhaps he is right, but some things are just inherently great. Ikea was. 

My last trip there, however, was less than. 

As I have told Awesome Boss Who's Awesome (ABWA), there are few things in life I have faith in. Here is the list: 

1. ABWA

2. IKEA

3. Disney Corp.

These three things have always had the potential to let me down, to give up their integrity, to stop what makes them unique in a world of mediocrity. But they don't. Every time I feel the little Kiddo phloem break down, and the photosynthesis not quite keep up with where my leaves have reached, I shelter under the greenhouse of these three wonder-full entities. 

Well, that's all folks. 

Ikea 

a. no longer offers children sized meals to whomever

b. no longer adheres to their own aisle/bin organization

Though these may seem slight offences, they are only so because you, dear reader, live in a world used to such mediocrity. Such corner cutting in process and integrity is the reason we lay lack lustre in our stinkbug-filled homes. 

So we have to wander a bit more, gather a bit more, ask a bit more. It's only an hour or two on any weekend of our whole stinkbug-filled lives. Well, dear reader, the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots, and I will no longer be shopping at Ikea. I now have faith in only two things in this greater world. Maybe whiskey will fill that gap. 

But the dispute of such a precedent is for another rant on another day. 

All my Friends are Waiters

This was a title for a blog I dreamed in July last year. My oldest friends were stale and gone, and my current friends were so vital and wholly unaware of the world they exuded with every frustrated breath it hurt my little ribs to look at them, they were agitating in their neighborhoods amongst each other and throwing punches when one tottered too close to another.

Now even those friends are gone, and their agitations no longer worry me. The ripples they cause are spaced. The chop isn't all around. Life is their ocean, and never their oyster, small and never up to even under-statured expectations.

I love them, and you can too: http://travelwhateveretc.blogspot.com/2013/04/41013-erikas-apartment-447-am.html#comment-form