Chipotle Fail

Chipotle is great because the burritos taste delicious and they're big enough to split.  

Chipotle is not great because the burrito engineers are sometimes unreliable and prepare pathetic, half-sized wannabe burritos that make you sad.

"SF" normally stands for Steak Fajita, but today it stood for Size Fail.

Cameras are for animals!

We got a new camera last weekend.  I wanted a DSLR and my wife wanted something that wouldn't weigh twenty pounds and end up costing thousands of dollars after my obsession with zoom lenses took over.  We came to a very nice compromise and ended up with a really nice point-and-shoot with the craziest zoom I've ever seen.  We took it to the Safari Park yesterday to try it out and had a lovely time.  The results aren't necessarily award-winning photographs, but for casual day at the zoo pictures, I think they're pretty cool.  And, really, I'm more excited about the potential than anything.  

On the Insufficient Naming of Colors, or, Why Is Pink So Special?

     I realized the other day that for all the colors in the world there aren't very many that actually have names.  You have your primaries and your secondaries, your black and white and brown, and after that there are very few hues that have an actual name associated with them.  This wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for one sneaky little color: pink.  Why does pink get a name?  What makes light red so special that it gets its own title?  Light blue doesn't have a name.  Light green doesn't have a name.  But light red?  It's Pink.

     Now, maybe you're thinking, "Yeah, light green has a name, it's Light Green."  No.  That's not a name, that's a description.  It's a noun (green) and an adjective (light).  This is assuming that "green" is not itself an adjective, but that's a different story.  Or there's "Lime Green" or "Olive Green", which is also taking an existing noun and turning it into an adjective to describe another existing noun.  This is assuming the fruit was named first.  (Yes, Orange, we'll get to you later...) 

     I'll add that Gray and Tan were also lucky enough to get nomenclature, but since black and brown are kind of exceptional colors anyway I don't count those as much.  Then there's Lavender, which I'd say is pretty much accepted as a specific color, but it's also the name of a flower.  So lime could be a fruit, lavender could be a flower, but pink is pretty much a color and that's it.

     So where did pink come from?  If you add white to red you get pink.  So why can't your add white to blue and get schmink?  Or blite or whue or snoodleplatz?  I don't care what its actual name could have been, I'm just disappointed that you have to call it "light blue" or "sky blue" or "pale blue" and not "flinsk".  Just sayin.

A Book For Children and Grownup Children

It's been a dream/goal of mine for a while now to make a children's book and it turned out that this was the year to do it. I've spent the last few months writing and designing, and I'm excited with the progress so far. I completed the rough draft last week and am now working on tieing down the designs and working out the colors. After that I'll have to figure out how to get the thing published and out into the world, but let's take things one step at a time.

The story deals with self esteem and bullying, and involves animals flying around in hot air balloons learning that it's better to be nice than be a jerk. My hope for the book is that it would be a kid-friendly product that also appeals to adults. My fear is that it will miss both audiences- too grownup for kids, too childish for adults. But at the same time, I'm trying hard not to make a "product" to please people, but just do what I do and create a piece of art that I'm proud of. So far I'm pretty pleased. It's just hard when you know that if you create art that's ALSO a successful product, your art can actually buy you groceries (and pay for art school. Ah, irony.)

So, speaking of art- here's a sneak peek. The first is a page of character designs that I finished yesterday. My thought is that they're cute. Maybe too cute. I was hoping for illustrations that weren't quite so cutesy in order to be a little more appealing for the grownup types. The second is a rough page layout. I'm particularly fond of Fox in this one, not sure why. So my aim right now is to make the final product fit somewhere in between these two examples- a little less Nick Jr and a little more Riccardo Guasco. Hopefully by just cleaning up the lines in the rough, and adding some color and a LITTLE more shading, it will pull together into something worth looking at.

25 More Root Beers

A few years ago I started documenting my opinions on various gourmet root beers. In retrospect, I kind of wish I would have used a more practical rating system (or ANY rating system for that matter) but I guess the purpose was more artistic than scientific. So if you're wondering what the "best" root beer is, this won't really help. But if you're wondering which ones taste more like vegetables and which ones taste more like cleaning supplies, I've got you covered. And if you haven't seen the original post, please start here.

TOWER: Nice mild spice. Tastes like licorice and moonlight.

THOMAS KEMPER: Distinguished, but slightly off; like a leather couch in a dorm room. Definitely on the spicy end of the root beer spectrum, versus the sweet end.

BEDFORD'S: Black Cherry & Pistachio. Unique and delicious.

THE POP SHOPPE: Sugar, Spearmint, Windex, Ham.

DANG! THAT'S GOOD: Actually, I'd call it "Dang, that's root beer." It was good, but it wasn't extraordinary in anyway. Definitely not impressive enough to name it after an exclamation.

OOGAVE: Oh, Green Tea, you shouldn't be ashamed of what you are. There's nothing wrong with- What? You're not Green Tea, you're Root Beer? Oh. Um. So... Hey, did you see The Office last week?

STEWART'S: Sugar, mixed with brown sugar, mixed with caramel. Opposite Thomas Kemper on the sweet/spicy flavor spectrum.

VIRGIL'S SPECIAL EDITION BAVARIAN NUTMEG: Really good flavor, but not as special as I was expecting. "I'm searching for the nutmeg..." -Jenette Cementina

BAWS GUARANA G33K B33R: Nice brown sugar taste but also slightly watery. And there's something slightly... mediciny about it. Maybe that's the G33K.

A&W: "Clear", with a faint scent of fireworks.

TRADER JOE'S VINTAGE: Sugary opening, leading to the mellow butteryness of a Ritz cracker.

ZUBERFIZ: A Necco Wafer dreaming about lemons.

PITHY LITTLE SODA WORKS: A handsome man in a plum colored suit sits alone in the corner booth of a darkened bar eating a steak.

APPLE FARM: Molasses, Brown Sugar... and Beer. This one might require a second taste with the assurance that it hasn't fermented...

CENTRAL COAST BREWING: "Old" + "Dry" + "Soap" + "Chai".

MYERS AVENUE: Tastes like a cinnamon roll dipped in cough medicine. But not soaked or anything. Just dipped. Briefly.

CHICO SHINE: Smooth and Honey-y

RED ARROW: This root beer makes me want a hamburger.

MARGO'S BARK: Sharp black licorice with a hint of ash tray.

JOE'S: Smooth and sweet, reminds me of the Toasted Marshmallow Jelly Belly.

ITHICA: Rosemary and Cola.

SQUAMSCOT: Cream Soda in disguise.

SO DUH ROCKIN' ROOT BEER: Tastes like a spice rack. Is that numeg? Cloves? Oregano? Bonus points for uniqueness, except I can't tell if I want to drink it or sprinkle it on pizza...

FOXON PARK: Cotton candy and lemon. And kinda... woodsy? But less like fern covered forest and more like potpourri meant to smell like a fern covered forest.

RED RIBBON: Black licorice dipped in blood, wrapped in iceberg lettuce.