“Sometimes when a man recalls the good old days, he's really thinking of his bad young days” ~Ben Stein

Speaking of The Good Old Days...

(Who says I can't segue from the subject to the body?)

So I went to Subway for lunch today. Dang, I love that place. But I got to thinking... how I miss the U-Gouge! So symmetrical. So perfectly adapted to holding in all of the generously lathered mayonnaise and oil and vinegar.

Now, it used to be (back before Quiznos came along and Subway coincidentally decided to start toasting their sandwiches) that you could go in and special-request the U-Gouge anyway. But nowadays the Sandwich Artists just look at you strangely. They don't have any idea what you're talking about. They aren't even taught the U-Gouge as a backup anymore; the Sandwich Artists are only educated in the Hinge-Cut.

Does anybody else besides me think that Subway execs are huge nerds? Do they seriously have to name everything so cheesily? And speaking of cheese, why don't they have Good Old medium cheddar? Who eats provolone? Honestly!

But anyway, apparently they switched to the Hinge-Cut cut primarily because it's faster (about which I suppose I can't complain ... much), but also because it *allegedly* holds more meat IF DONE CORRECTLY. How else could they handle their line of Double Stacked sandwiches? So neither of these enhancements is anything for me to grieve about, except for the caveat of correctitude. For some reason, I always manage to get the Sandwich Artists who are more about art, and less about sandwich.

Personally, I'd take the U-Gouge back.

"Patience is a virgin" ~Unknown

We've all done it. Every one of us has purchased something online -- like pizza or movie tickets or... something wrapped in copious amounts of opaque plastic. Or whatever. Somehow we ended up on an email mailing list that we didn't want to be on.

This rant is not about the annoyance of email spam. That topic has already been beaten to a pulp by a substantial number of annoying bloggers. Unlike me, who am not annoying. Also not really all that substantial. Substantive, maybe. But I digress.

Email spam is annoying, true, but it is also requisite. Consumers must be told about the upcoming attractive offers. This is a fundamental tradition that has been celebrated since time immemorial. Before email spam there was telemarketing. Before that was snail-mail spam. Before that was... annoying people talking to you.

No, I recognize and applaud the dutiful marketers who write these trash-bound gems. My beef is with the idiots who think it takes a full ten days to unsubscribe! When I try to opt-out and am taken to the obligatory page (where I often have to re-enter my email address -- as if they don't know it already) and click 'Remove me,' WHY ON EARTH does it take 7-10 business days to remove me from the mailing list?? All that must be done is to connect to the database, delete kninsa@gmail.com, and then close the database. What are they doing, sending a post-it note to the software department and waiting until they come back from vacation?

It was faster back when I could just hang up.

"Bagels and doughnuts... round food for every mood" ~Chandler Bing

Now I'm not one to complain about things, but honestly. Whose bright idea was it to make cake doughnuts? Can you just picture some hapless genius munching melancholily on a wonderful yeast-raised doughnut, when suddenly he thinks: "You know what would be awesome? This exact same kind of food, except for heavier and drier and sweetless-er! I'll be a millionaire!"

Then again, what do I know? For all I know, the disgusting type of doughnut was invented first, and fresh, light, melt-in-your-mouth yeast-raised doughnuts came later. But all the same, once the better technology was there, why not deprecate cake doughnuts entirely? You don't see me still using cassette tapes, do you? Or a paper & leather-bound encyclopedia? Or a non-3G-network phone?

People, it's time to grow up and move on. No more heavy doughnuts!

Of course, having said all that, there are very few things in this world better than a Krispy Kreme pumpkin-spice cake doughnut. Yummy!