#32 - boobs.

tonight was a night of chillin' at home & catching up on a few of my fave tv shows--true blood, mad men, dexter and the life & times of tim. these shows occupy various pleasure zones in my brain for varied reasons--crazy twists, social commentaries, crude humor--and all of them share one dominant trait, a favorite of heterosexual males worldwide...boobs.

i've been pleasantly surprised by true blood. other than the unarguably awesometacular film that was lost boys, i've never been the biggest fan of stories about the undead. i never watched buffy, read anne rice or cared for bram stoker, but i enjoy true blood so far. one of the reasons is anna paquin's boobs & her sun dresses/louisiana wardrobe (apparently designed by a friend of a friend!). she's just amazingly cute is all...and as both last sunday & this sunday's episodes clearly show, she is comfortable with nudity. boobs...oh & lizzy caplan (of cloverfield fame) joined the cast during this week's episode & is apparently also comfortable with, well...boobs.

i've also started watching hbo's new show the life & times of tim, brought to you by the same guy who brought you the budweiser lizards. remember how much we all loved those lizards & their hilariously dry wit? after a while, we didn't even remember the budweiser frogs. well, the life & times of tim is soaking in the same hilariously dry wit as those commercials. how witty is it? let's just say that last sunday's episode featured a scenario where tim ends up squeezing his girlfriend's grandmother's boobs...boobs.

mad men features many conical 1960s boobs & perhaps the largest boobs in television today, owned by actress christina hendricks, who is quite the sassy badass as the character of joan holloway, the ad agency's office manager...boobs.

i hate all the female characters on dexter. boobs unimportant. the end.

#32 - boobs.

snack: ghirardelli dark chocolate with raspberry
drink: canada dry sparkling green tea ginger ale

as i watched these shows & thoughts of boobs floated through my head, i snacked on a few pieces of ghirardelli dark chocolate with raspberry. after living through a childhood that included the wonders of tidal wave gum & gushers & and adulthood that has brought both jalapeno poppers & salmon roe to my pallette, i've always been a sucker for foods that squirt junk when you bite into them. the ghirardelli don't exactly squirt junk, but they have an inner mushiness that is accented by what i hope are raspberry seeds.

at the atlantic center target earlier today, i was determined to find a good sized bottle of some unique beverage to enjoy over the next few days. for those who know this place, it often resembles a soviet-era grocery store, with its long lines & empty shelves. today, the soda aisle was stripped fairly bare on one side, but when i looked up, the top shelf featured a bottle of pepsi & some relatively clear foreign soda whose label was facing away from me. i reached for it & to my surprise, discovered a new soda invention...canada dry sparkling green tea ginger ale. this soda has antioxidants & is yummy. the green tea flavor goes well with the ginger ale & they both work nicely with the chocolate & raspberry. well done, canada...for once.

in conclusion...boobs.

#20 - ol' smoky.

i've smoked a lot of cigarettes in my life. that's a fact.

it all started when a few times in my early teens, pat cody & i snuck mores from his mom & walked down the dirt bike trail near his house to smoke butts & play with wd-40 & a lighter. cigarettes never caught on for me a that point in my life though. i didn't know anyone old enough who would buy them for me anyhow.

...& then along came college, where there were people from outside nh, people who knew actual lesbians & had friends who had gone to rehab & so cigarettes were around more & i found myself smoking cigarettes a lot more regularly during that time, although the habit gained the most strength from the summers between college, when i was back in nh with all my high school friends sitting on porches running through packs of camel lights. i blame you, martin.

the simple scientific fact is that in 90% of situations you look much cooler with a cigarette. without fail, a cigarette enhances your presence (for better or worse). a cigarette can help you strike up a conversation with that girl who "only smokes when she drinks." when you're in a conversation & don't know what to say, you can take a long drag off your cigarette & stare up slightly up towards the heavens. people will think that you're really deep when you're actually quite clueless. when you're attempting to get information from a perp, if you're smoking a cigarette, he will be much more intimidated if you're smoking & if he isn't, you just put out your cigarette on his forehead to remind him who's in charge (unless you are on network television & aren't allowed to smoke on your show).

...so i smoked constantly & thirteen years later, i finally stopped smoking at least 15 cigarettes a day & blowing tons of money supporting the routine. my decision was partly for my health, partly for my finances & partly for the smell. i still like cigarettes though. they're sweet...& smoky...segue...just like...

#20 - ol' smoky.
snack: t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken
drink: schweppes dry grape ginger ale

this sunday, i was in the mood for some snackin' & went for the recently purchased box of t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken. normally, i wouldn't bother with such an item. i'm not really one of those "go to t.g.i.friday's" types & given the choice between the t.g.i.friday's in times square and the approximately 73,000 other restaurants in nyc, t.g.i.friday's probably falls in around 53,476th place in my choices to eat...but, if t.g.i.friday's boxes up their dishes, puts them in the freezer section of my local grocery store & slaps a sale tag in front of them, who am i to deny them?

...so i went with the sweet & smoky popcorn chicken & it's pretty dang good. at first, it's weird to be faced with a plateful of what look partly like mini falafel balls & partly like chunks of clif bar, but the chicken is solidly sweet & smoky and the right color. for me, it's always best when chicken is a nice, whitish color. it tells me that the meat isn't actually pigeon or from the ass of the chicken & most importantly, that the chicken didn't have scurvy or something. throughout the course of my sunday, i finished off the entire box. here's to fulfilling 92% of my rda for sodium.

i had a few glasses of schweppes dry grape ginger ale along with the chicken balls. i love this stuff. whenever i'm feeling guilty about the amount of caffeine i inhale on a daily basis, i switch over to a two-liter of the schweppes. any time i can lessen the impact of my caffeine intake, it's a victory in my book. without the guilt from smoking hanging over my head, i have to worry about something...why not caffeine?

#14 - get wild!

for those of us who are lovers of scrabble & its various derivatives, these last few days have seen the game really grab a hold of the headlines, pretty much entirely because of the hasbro/electronic arts/scrabble vs scrabulous copyright lawsuit that has resulted in the removal of the scrabulous application from facebook...& the big deal is what now?

the scrabulous application is still available on their website. in fact, i'm on my fifth game of the night right now. sure, you may have lost the results of games you were playing on facebook, but last time i checked, those results aren't redeemable like ski-ball tickets or anything. it just means that you lose some computer memories & that there is one less reason to go onto facebook, people. in fact, by playing scrabulous, i've avoided facebook for the last two hours or so.

as for scrabble protecting their copyright, that makes sense & it's great that cnn & msnbc will discuss copyright law for a few days, but after listening to a story on npr earlier, there's some eyebrow-raising precise timing behind hasbro's recent actions towards scrabulous.

#1 - tuesday was the final day of the 2008 national scrabble championship down in orlando, a tournament, which according to npr, featured players such as 11-year old bradley robbins, from WINDHAM, NH BIZZNITCHES!!!...he won 24 out of 28 games against adults.

#2 - scrabble/electronic arts launched their beta application on facebook...& it is currently unavailable due to maintenance.

#3 - electronic arts announced that it had missed analyst estimates.

it's probably just pure coincidence that scrabble ordered scrabulous to shut down their facebook app at the same time ea missed estimates & launched their beta app & at the same time as the national scrabble championships. clearly, the real loser in all of this is hasbro, whose game has been negatively impacted by the publicity as a result of the existence of scrabulous & the fact that 13-year old girls across the country now know the rules of scrabble & enjoy words more.

#14 - get wild!

snack: limited edition wildly cherry m&ms
drink: coca-cola classic

...so & i'm on my sixth game of scrabulous now & while i've been playing, i've cracked open a bag of limited edition wildly cherry m&ms to snack on. as a rule, whenever i see the words "limited edition" on a candy item, said candy eventually ends up in my mouth. i tried these cherry m&ms for the first time a few days ago & went in with no great expectations. over the years, m&m has done a lot of good beyond the early peanut or plain-only days of the m&m. from the reincarnation of the red m&m to the inventions of the mint and mega m&ms, mars has done a lot to keep me interested over the years, but i've still remained skeptical of new types of m&ms. i don't know why i just don't give them the benefit of the doubt & let it be done with. these cherry ones are friggin' amazing. they're the same size as the peanut butter m&ms & each one is like eating a chocolate covered cherry sans gooey stickiness.

the front of the package urges me to "get wild!" & believe me, i am. it is 1am & i'm sitting in my boxers blogging, covering my teeth with coca-cola classic and watching an eight-year old japanese prodigy play "crossroads" on conan. believe me, i don't dare get any wilder than this. i'd hate to wake the neighborhood & attract the wrath of the nypd. they do not tolerate wildness.

#11 - corn nuts & the american dream.

in the world o' shawn, mondays have recently become a night for watching my picture stories, both those that i follow & a few that i'm checking out/catching up on. last week marked the beginning of generation kill & the fifth episode of weeds.

this week, i upped the ante by continuing with those two shows & adding in the first episode of mad men, which until fresh air shoved it in my face over the past couple weeks, i had no idea existed. i mean, it is sort of like somebody telling you about this unicorn they saw...a good tv show airing on & produced by amc. american movie classics? that amc? 13 emmy nominations? the 2nd season starts next sunday? huh...guess i better get caught up.

anyhow, come september, generation kill will be long done, weeds will be nearing the end of its season & we'll have the new season premieres of dexter and it's always sunny in philadelphia, who fx has just ordered 39 more episodes of the show from, meaning with the new season, there will be at least 52 more episodes of this lovely show, all with the same five key cast members!!! OMG!!! by my calculation, i will be nearing the tail end of my 30s by the time that this show goes off the air. LOL!!! :-/ :( :'(

i mention all these shows (& tonight's lineup of shows in particular) because they are my type of shows for one reason, really. each, to some degree, focuses on some version/aspect of the american dream. it's the same reason i was drawn in the past to shows such as six feet under, the sopranos, the office, golden girls, etc...& for viewing these shows, really, what goes better with the american dream than...

#11 - corn nuts & the american dream.

snack: corn nuts caliente mix
drink: mountain dew

have you ever tried corn nuts? i think i might have once or twice in my life, but they've always seemed a bit weird & possibly bland to me.

apparently, they have been around since friggin' 1936, which i'm pretty sure makes them an official american tradition. today the company is owned by planters/kraft, which means that corn nuts are now a subsidiary of a subsidiary (planters) of a subsidiary (kraft) of a subsidiary (altria/philip morris). that, in itself, sounds like the american dream to me...& i purchased them at a 7-11! that's like double corporate jeopardy or something.

the caliente mix features seasoned peanuts, crunchy corn snack (the nuts!), spicy sesame sticks, corn sticks & red chile crescents. red! chile! crescents! that is a band name if i've ever seen one. it works on so many levels! but seriously, tossing corn nuts in a snack mix where they can sort of just fade to the back of the mix totally cures that blandness problem i was having with them.

i figured that there was no better drink to pair the corn nuts mix with than a mountain dew, pepsico's fruity #2 beverage. i figure as far as american dreams go mountain dew is right there with them all the items on tonight's menu...

altria/philip morris made $38.5 billion in revenue in 2007
pepsico brought in $39.4 billion in 2007
the american military spent $439.3 billion in 2007
the california marijuana business takes in about $2 billion per year
it is estimated that in the u.s., advertising & marketing is a $381 billion dollar industry

billions of dollars...that's the american dream right there, folks.

#9 - jamaica mon!

sorry to leave all y'all regular shawn blog reader folks in the lurch like that with no update for the last 8 days. i know you've probably been worried sick. the shawn, for reasons we will not go into in this blog, just hasn't been snackin' that much recently.

today is a different story. i hadn't seen the inside of a non-ghetto grocery store in nigh a fortnight, so i headed down to the local pathmark to regrocerize myself & pick up an evening snack to consume whilst watching the first episode of generation kill. to clarify, by non-ghetto grocery store, i mean one that has at least two non-scary types of fruits/vegetables & one where the teenage cashiers don't get smacked on the ass by the dirty old man who oversees the place. i only say so because there are approximately 63 of that variety of grocery store in my neighborhood.

although i had yet to see a minute of generation kill, i had an inkling that it probably has a distinctly international flair, what with the americans visiting the middle east storyline & all, so when i was at pathmark selecting a fitting snack-drink combo, i went straight to the aisles with the funny foreign foods. at first, i was going to go strictly goya, but to be honest, i'm a bit afraid of the malta goya beverage & the tamarind flavored soda sounded a bit sour to me.

luckily, across the aisle was the jamaican section. the first beverage i set eyes on was a bottle of dg genuine jamaican kola champagne.

i mean, look at the cat on that bottle. he makes that newbury comics dude look like a schmo. he's all "ok, mon. you have your wicked good time, poindextah. i'll just be over here in the shade of this tree with a fat one & me three lady friends sipping on kola champagne."

to pair with it, after much searching, the perfect snack leapt out at me from the freezer section...

#9 - jamaica mon!
snack: golden krust jamaican style spicy beef patties
drink: dg genuine jamaican kola champagne

...from behind the freezer doors, the box of golden krust jamaican style spicy beef patties called my name. by examining the box, i confirmed that while these patties are good for lunch or after school, they are also acceptable as an evening snack. says so right on the front. perfect...just what i need...oh & it also says that each patty contains 490 calories of spicy beef goodness, with a lot of that providing essential sodiums & fats...perfect...just what i need. as a rule, i probably eat beef once or twice a month anyhow, so i might as well go big when i do, right?

let me tell you--spicy beef patties are delicious. heart-cloggingly delicious. the jury is still out on the kola champagne soda. i found it to be akin to a cream soda, but without as much yummy cream aftertaste. i guess when you're as high as that jamaican mascot cat probably is, you can find satisfying flavor in anything...even when it bears a striking resemblance to urine.