Wal-Mart in Covina

(from the LA Times)
...
Becky Willison, 31, of Covina was one of them, standing watch over a boxed Cabbage Patch Kids doll. She hoped to nab the $9 item for her 15-month-old daughter Mackensie because “it’s smushy,” she said.

The former middle-school English teacher, who was laid off in June, saved $550 of her unemployment checks for Christmas shopping.

“You’ll never know when you go,” she said. “It’s really bad, and just really slow.”

But Willison had been out shopping for hours, starting at 4:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at K-Mart, before detouring home for dinner. She then struck out for the Coach factory outlet in Ontario at 10 p.m., where she picked up a $330 red purse. Next was the line at Toys R Us, which she abandoned at 1:30 a.m. for the Wal-Mart queue.

“No guts, no glory,” explained her partner in crime, mother-in-law Carol Garnett, 57, of Covina.

Want some bread with your pasta?

This is the new Domino's "Bread Bowl Pasta". Just in case you haven't had enough carbs today, this should do you in. John ordered a pizza (why from Dominos I haven't a clue, he says because he loves the online delivery service) so I had him order one of these so I could see it in person.
I worked at Pizza Hut many summers ago. To make a pizza, one would open a can of sauce, get the frozen crust out, pour two squirts of oil in the pan, pour two ladles of sauce in the crust, get out the frozen bag of cheeze (spelling error stays), put on X number of pepperoni slices (again, from bag) and put it into the machine-oven, that brought it cooked out of the other side. There wasn't a single fresh ingredient in the entire place. I think the healthiest option was the beer on tap served in pitchers.

This bread bowl isn't doing anyone any favors. It looks like the KFC 'Famous' bowl. Remember McRibs?

Special Diet Suggestion

I go by this store every morning.

Preferences

I just finished reading another article about how "preference engines" are brilliantly anticipating my tastes and future purchases.

I've been reading this sort of stuff for years, but I have yet to really experience it.

Amazon only recently stopped recommending Chutes and Ladders because I bought Candyland for my son back in 2001. Currently they are recommending the vinyl version of a CD I purchased as a gift, and a 2 GB memory card in a different format than the 2 GB memory card I purchased last fall.

I had higher hopes for the new iTunes Genius, just because of the name. After a few tries, a heuristic began to reveal itself:

• If the selected track is very obscure, then recommend the most popular downloads (Katy Perry, Jason Mraz, Katy Perry feat. Jason Mraz, etc.)

• Otherwise, recommend David Bowie.

Logical, but hardly Genius. Maybe they should have called it Genial.

Buy American

The Cadillac dealership near me is having a huge sale on Escalades. They're like driving your living room around (if you have a large comfortable living room with a lazy boy and every electronic device you need within reach).

Found in Closet: part two of four

This one's a messenger bag, with a little banana and an Nike swoosh (?!) below it. Can you identify the banana?



Baloney cat is being really annoying, he keeps purring wildly and laying on the bag.


That's right, it's an Arrested Development bag. How have I never noticed this bag before?
I do feel like I'm listing on ebay at this point, but perhaps this could be a prize for a contest?

Disneyland

Isa and I were invited by friends to Disneyland this week. We'd never been, so we accepted the offer. We parked, and waited in line for a tram. Then we waited in another line for a security check. Then we waited for tickets. The inside of the park:



We walked down the fabled Main Street, and rounded the corner to see Indiana Jones beating the crap out of a turbaned man, in the form of a show. After he threw the man over some barrels, Indy whispered conspiratorially to the crowd through his wireless mic, "When he wakes up, tell him I won."

We then stood in line for almost an hour to ride the Haunted Mansion.

After that, we were educated on the use of the FastPass system; where I put our tickets in a machine for the popular rides, and another ticket is spit out, telling us what times we can return to go in a faster line for the ride. We did this for Space Mountain, and were told to return at 3:00 (it was about noon). I tried another fast pass, but it wouldn't let me, saying we hadn't used the other ones yet.

I then waited twenty minutes to use the bathroom.

We ended up in line for about forty minutes for pizza. I witnessed, firsthand, the primordial soup of the degradation of line etiquette in America. People cut , stole others' orders, grabbed, and ran for tellers. People waited in line at the cash register as others brought them plate after plate of food. Mothers took this moment as a time to teach their children how to pay for food and get change. People pushed, shoved, yelled at each other, saved tables with purses, plastic bags and cups. Babies hollered and kids whined. Parents blocked entire sections with their strollers. Other wars ensued with the scooter people.

After lunch, our friends rode the kiddie rocket and we waited in line for the "Honey I Shrunk the Audience!" By this time, it was Space Mountain time. So, in five hours we'd ridden a total of two rides.

As the day grew on, the crowds grew even thicker, the lines even longer. We waited an hour for the Pirates of the Carribbean. The ride itself was minutes long. We then got another fast pass for the log flume ride (which name escapes me) for 11:00 pm. I needn't go on, it's clear how the day went. I wouldn't recommend it.

Correction

Because of an editing error, a report in the Comings & Goings column on Feb. 24 about a chain of luxury communities for RVs misstated the number of American households that own an RV. It is about 8.3 million, not 8.3 - The New York Times