lovehate: Waste Not Want Not

There's something to be said for the frivolous, the ridiculous, the plain unnecessary. A slapstick pie in the face, while absurd and useless, is often funny if timed properly and, while many may question the humor, most will not recoil in abject horror that a pie or two is being wasted while people go hungry.

I can also appreciate that at buffet restaurants around the world, on a daily basis, tons of food is left on plates and subsequently discarded while the occasional patron will lament, "what a waste!"

I am also one who will often buy DVDs that you'll find shrink-wrapped a year later on my shelf. I will take semi-annual treks to Las Vegas where the useless has become commonplace. I will waste time with the best of them. Waste is not an unknown or unwelcome concept to me on many levels. Why then am I left awestruck in amazement at the recent practices of a fast food establishment?

No more than two days after getting an email from a friend about his recent trip to Taco Bell that netted him about a dozen packets of hot sauce for his three Tacos, I made an infrequent trip to the Bell and placed a dinner order consisting of a 7-layer Burrito, a Meximelt, and a Double Decker Taco. What resulted can be seen in a quick summary of the numbers:

3 items purchased (all of which could have sauce used on them)
23 packages of "Border Sauce" dispensed (12 Hot, 11 Mild)

I'll admit I did indulge in one packet of sauce for the Taco, but, beyond that, the rest of the "Border Sauce" remained.  The practice does beg some intriguing questions including:

1) Is a single package supposed to represent a "recommended" serving for a single item? (If so, there's some real arithmetic upgrading that needs to be done by PepsiCo for their employees.)
2) If this is not a serving, why not change the package to accommodate what the suggested serving should be?
3) While they often ask if you'd like hot or mild sauce, why don't they ever ask how much if the threshold can be between 1 and at least 23?

The conspicuous number of packets also allowed me to realize that Taco Bell now incorporates witticisms onto the packets like:
"Bike tires scare me."
"I'm in good hands now."
"So many tacos so little time"
"Pick me. Pick me."
"You had me at Taco"
"Live life... Take two."

While that last example had me starting to understand the culture of waste that has not only permeated Taco Bell, but almost every other food establishment, there was a final packet that really summed up the event: "Live life one sauce packet at a time."

Now while I doubt the Taco Bell parent corporation of PepsiCo has taken to hiring existentialist philosophers for Border Sauce packet blurbs, this last jolt of wisdom did leave me with an optimistic tinge and perhaps the one redeeming quality for this condiment onslaught. I figure that my life is now good as long as I have sauce packets left to enjoy. Considering I may frequent Taco Bell twice a year and this trip I only used one out of 23, I figure I've got a guaranteed 12 years of life without fear of accidental death. If I ever am planning on doing something risky, I can just head back to the Bell and reacquire a bounty of new packets to carry me through the remainder of a long life sponsored by the Pepsi Corporation and a subsidiary that once wanted me to take my own life by forcing a precocious chihuahua on my psyche.

While I honestly hate the indifference and complacency that led to an employee dumping such a condiment cluster bomb into the trillionth plastic bag that will be hitting a landfill somewhere near you, I've gotta love the fact that, for one brief shining moment, I believed fast food guaranteed my future.

thinglets: Spiderman... the musical!

I wish I was joking about this. I wish people had the sensibility to realize that while music is lifeblood, merging it with anything doesn't end in positive results. I suppose after this I should just be writing "lovehatethings.com: the musical" with jaunty little number about being misunderstood while growing up and big finale that incorporates at least three previous themes used from Act One and Two.

$40 million for startup and $1 million a week just to produce... oh, but Bono's involved, it must be good. I'm guessing every song starts with effect-laden guitar inversions strummed quickly and repeatedly halfway up the neck... I think it will be opening where the streets have no name.

Here's an idea! Give 40 struggling talented writers $1 million each and ask them to write an original musical. I guarantee at least a dozen would be better than Spiderman will ever be. I'm going to be sick now.

green goblin

lovehate: Diplomacy

As I sit in a hotel room in my provincial capital after a few glasses of wine and few hours of socializing, I am readying myself for a night's sleep before getting up tomorrow to spend the day lobbying Members of Provincial Parliament about some of the shortfalls of public education. Now don't get me wrong, I've bemoaned professional lobbyists before as a cancer to our political system, not because of any perceived insincerity or wrongdoing, but more because of the financial influence they wield in the backrooms of parliamentary power brokers.

So, when I say I'm going to lobby, I am stopping short of calling myself a lobbyist. I prefer to think of it as an advocate, even though my anger rises when I have to think of myself as an advocate for public education because politicians are not picking up the slack. Although there is a position and a script that is expected to inform my conversations, I really hope to achieve one thing: motivation through sincerity. I hope, at least, that sincerity can win the day because I don't have any cash to spread around. And with sincerity as my only tool, and words as my only medium, I will try to move politicians to taking up a fight for something that probably rarely crosses their radar. Herein lies the problem. My message is clear, and the way I would like to express that message is without reservation, without filters, without worrying about playing a game that I do not want to even understand - the game of diplomacy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in tact and communicating a message with grace and persuasion, but considering a time span of 5, 10, or 15 minutes to engage someone in a dialectic about an issue they may not want to move on, may not want to believe in, or may not even want to hear, should demand an abandoning of the so-called rules of civilized discourse.

I want to sit down, look across a desk and say, "Surely you can see how f'ed up this process is... why won't you do anything to change it." When they respond with a shrug and an excuse I want to storm, "You idiot! Don't you get that this problem leads to that problem and the money you spend here will save you money over here!"

And when a final look of bewilderment crosses their faces with a tone of resignation that, in a perfect world, what I'm proposing might be a useful thing, but realistically it isn't going to happen. I can respond with, "Well of course it can't happen if you're not even willing to get up off you ass to try. You spazz! You stunner! You moron! How can you claim to represent the best interests of the people who voted for you, and even the people who didn't vote for you, if you're just going to sit around playing it safe, not ruffling any feathers? How can you advocate for your constituents if you're unwilling to take a stand? How can you tell me you agree with something, but in the end, give it up because your cohorts think it unpopular or radical or impolitic? How can you ignore the people you're supposed to represent?"

Of course I would like to say that, but in the end I will have to read the inside cover of the box and figure out the rules. I will collect $200 when I pass GO. I will climb up the ladders and slide down the snakes. I will only follow the colored directions in my very own Candyland. And I will shout "Yahtzee" and wave my hands frantically when rolling five of a kind.

While I believe that stark honesty can be brutal in some situations (especially between friends and loved ones), there is usually an opportunity to mitigate a message with time and gentle persuasion. Short timeframes demand short messages, and while I appreciate that some of the shortest are not appropriate for some company, they are often the most memorable. After all the catch phrase on the Diplomacy box reads: Why say in a finger gesture what you can say with years of arguments and the greasing of palms?

diplomacy