The Chris Cardé Experience

A quote from the mainstream media's seemingly daily coverage of -- oh my gosh! -- gas prices;

Really? Does this circular logic really pass for critical journalistic thinking these days? The price of gas will come down due to... the price of gas? Thanks, CNN! I'm going to go back to watching The Daily Show for news now.

<sarcasm>In other news, somebody sent me a forward telling me about this awesome plan where nobody's going to buy gas on a single day, and we're totally going to stick it to the oil company man. It's totally awesome because you don't even have to drive less. Just buy the same amount of gas the next day! Brilliant!</sarcasm>

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one to call horseshit on Moletech. Still, the number of people who blindly repeat what they're told is a wee bit depressing! Critical thought, people! Learn it. Live it. Love it!

Fresh from the orgy of consumption and consumerism that is Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show, I'm a little deflated. The show no longer holds the same cachet in my mind. Maybe I'm a little olderwiser and a wee bit more cynicalskeptical. Indeed, I was once a country bumpkin kid plucked straight from the backwoods of rural Western Massachusetts. Maybe it shouldn't surprise that such a kid was wowed by some blinking lights on a casino sign and the latest 50" rear projection TVs (remember, these were the years of yesterlore).

Those vague feelings of discontent need no longer simmer below the surface. Finally, the unbidden answer to my yearnings has appeared -- a lightening-rod, if you will, allowing me to focus my CES-related frustrations on a single entity. Enter Moletech.

In my own humble estimation, I’m a decently savvy traveler. I thought I knew my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to wake-up calls. It turns out I was wrong.

Having been here for just over two months -- and for the most part loving it -- a few things still stand out to me as being foreign. Of course, the irony is that I'm the foreigner, observing the country while living within it. I must point out that this list is in no way comprehensive... Rather the opposite, in fact: it's totally off the top of my head. I'll probably spend the next two weeks adding to it.

You'll have to forgive my use of SAT analogy notation in this post's title, but the culinary tragedy I just witnessed knocked me straight back into high school. I just paid my friendly neighborhood Peet's a visit, as I'm out of milk for homemade coffee and I'm leaving on another trip so soon that I can't justify buying more -- but I digress! As I'm waiting -- all bleary-eyed and caffeine-withdrawal-tripping -- for my drink to be up, I see a guy sipping a hot coffee while eating to-go Sushi.

I'm sure he's not the first person in the world to drink coffee while eating sushi, but a Peet's coffee struck me as a strange place to enjoy a fine plate of sushi. I mean, the aroma of coffee in that joint is so strong that it sometimes seems like one is treading water in a latte while waiting for their drink... I love sushi, but I could never eat it in that environment!

Really? REALLY? Are you freakin' KIDDING ME? Let's play a childhood favorite game called one-of-these-highlights-is-not-like-the-others-in-that-it's-not-news-at-all. Sound fun? Hey CNN, wanna play?

If Jon Stewart doesn't show this screenshot on tonight's show, I'm going to lose some serious faith in his writers.

It seems that I do nothing but rant here lately... A new reader might conceivably be led to believe that I'm a bitter person, whereas I actually just have a very dry sense of humor. But I digress...

The plan was for me to be somewhere over the midwest right now, two thirds of the way to Detroit. Instead, I'm sitting here on my couch waiting for Northwest to find an airplane (or a chariot, a rickshaw, or really anything -- I'm not picky!) to get me (and 179 of my closest friends) to Detroit.

I just fired up my trusty rusty TV for a bit of entertainment during dinner... Now, I'm not exactly the world's biggest optimist when it comes to expecting awesomeness from our nation's esteemed broadcast networks, but the following lineup of me-too shows (copying a show I can't even stand, nonetheless) is off-the-charts-stupid:

[this observed at 8:44pm, Pacific Daylight Savings Time, on this, the nineteenth day of July, in the year 2006]: