#123 - breaking news!

breaking news! california's on fire again! over 100K acres! it happens every year like clockwork. nature shows its destructive side or some jackass starts a fire & next thing you know, the california hills are ablaze & firefighters & helicopters are all over the place & people end up losing their houses. that has to suck, especially since if you're living in the hills, you probably have a sweet ass house, the kind that hurts extra bad when it burns up. the entourage house from the first couple seasons is totally on fire! that actually started in the kitchen, but there are probably some sweet houses getting torched right now. breaking hearts!

breaking news! disney bought marvel! i know, right? i'm not even a comic book fanatic & i know that's a big deal. the most powerful, happy, family friendly entertainment company on the planet is now in charge of a roster that includes more brooding characters than a paramore show. it only cost disney $4 billion, but it's money well spent. think of the possibilities! just as they did with beauty & the beast, the little mermaid, mary poppins, they could take spiderman & put him in a broadway musical, providing another cheesy outlet for tourists. oh wait. they're already doing that...with u2. maybe a thor musical with music by led zeppelin then? breaking boundaries!

breaking news! millions of people cried "hot yahoo! my mail is down!" on tuesday afternoon when gmail stopped working for them for almost two hours. whatever, right? if your friend doesn't get back to you about plans for friday, it's all good. you wait. here's why it was so awful: apparently some businesses depend on gmail as their primary source of email. seems like sort of a cheap way to run a business. i mean, even i have a dedicated email address for this stupid blog. it's sad but true & so it affected their workflow or something. breaking bad!

i have to level with you. technically, none of that stuff is breaking news any more. cali's been on fire for a week now & the disney/marvel thing happened on monday. the gmail breaking catastrophe isn't even breaking news any more since i decided to pass out last night before finishing writing this.

breaking news! shawn watched mad men & played games on his ipod for way too long & watched the season finale of f/x's rescue me & consumed a goat's worth of goat cheese (it's back in the house today) & fell asleep around 2am listening to the sounds of talk of the nation's neal conan. it was a segment called "a day in the life of a forest firefighter." i'll probably have to listen to it again to make sure i caught the whole thing. surprisingly, there was more talk of fire on npr than the rescue me finale. thanks for those dreams about pretty much everything bursting into flames, mr conan.

#123 - breaking news!
snack: lärabar cinnamon roll bar
drink: joe tea half & half



...earlier yesterday, whilst still at work, i had deemed it "snack time." my office sharing co-worker was working from home after going to the doctor earlier in the day for what started as insect bites but what we're now pretty confident is a colony of spider babies lodged inside his arm. we've convinced him as such. with the office to myself, i had to make things interesting. along with "snack time," i also had "spreadsheet hell hour," "guns n roses rock block" & a "system reboot anger management challenge." the official snack time snack was a lärabar cinnamon roll bar. can i get an umlaut up in this piece? lärabar's got an umlaut & that shizz is over the "a," which is hip. they also have a blog, which is hip & useful. for instance, emma, yesterday's fan of the day...i don't mean to objectify her, but she's pretty durn pretty & hopefully old enough for me saying that to not be creepy. i find that useful.

this lärabar shit's good...or at least the cinnamon roll one is. it's a solid but chewy bar & somehow through only using dates, walnuts, almonds, raisins, cashews & cinnamon, they've created a seriously flavorful snack bar. unfortunately, i ate the whole thing in under a minute, so i'm not exactly able to comment on particular flavor nuances, but i have faith in your imagination skills. pretty much everyone can eat this thing. it's vegan. it's raw. it's kosher. it's gluten, dairy & soy free. it's like the u.n. of snack bars & according to the packaging, they're "the original fruit & nut bar," so i guess that also makes them the elder statesman of fruit & nut bars.

since i'm just a regular ol joe, i chose a joe tea half & half to wash down my tasty bar. joe tea's just a regular ol tea company out of regular ol upper montclair, nj. they're apparently "the original off road tea." it's a title that's not as cool as "original fruit & nut bar," but does ensure a higher probability of a 4x4 ride. i'm a fan of the labeling. the photo above only gives you half of the half & half picture. on the back of the label there's an almost identical image with the lemonade section on the top & lemon tea section on the bottom. it's a nice simple design with a classy use of a red pickup truck.

joe makes a good tea/lemonade hybrid. two for two for snack time!...& all natural! one of my major beefs with the varied lemonade/tea hybrids (snapple & arnold palmer, i'm looking in your direction) is too much emphasis on the lemonade side. it gets all sour & occasionally pulpy & i don't stand for that crap. joe apparently can't either, so his half & half is balanced nicely & with the cane sugar is sweet but not disgustingly so. well done joe bro.

breaking news! blog insider exclusive! i bought those sunglasses you see in the forefront of the above photo for $12 well over a year ago. about a week after getting them, one of the nosepieces broke & fell off. for some reason, i haven't replaced them. that's just the sort of guy i am...slow on the breaking.