ThunderWeb V1.0
Monday 28th February 2005
Snow 3PM - 10PM
I've been in the USA a little over 48 hours and I've been searched for stashed comestibles, been pulled over for taking photographs, and I now have to leave work early on my first day because it's snowing like a bastard and there is a danger that I wouldn't get back to the hotel if I left any later than 2PM. Eight inches had fallen, in a matter of an hour or so but, remarkably, it had little, or no, effect on the way things work. In the UK, even if it only looks like snowing, there are no trains, a water shortage, the public utility companies double the price of everything, there’s panic-buying in stores and riots in the streets. Here, it was a case of: ‘Yeah, s’only about eight inches. I’ll get my truck and clear the parking lot!’ The roads had been pre-treated and were clear, and that was that. There was about a ten minute delay when it first started snowing, then it was business as usual.
For my part, I’ve never seen so much snow. I don’t like it much either. It’s cold, wet and, well, cold and wet...
I've been in the USA a little over 48 hours and I've been searched for stashed comestibles, been pulled over for taking photographs, and I now have to leave work early on my first day because it's snowing like a bastard and there is a danger that I wouldn't get back to the hotel if I left any later than 2PM. Eight inches had fallen, in a matter of an hour or so but, remarkably, it had little, or no, effect on the way things work. In the UK, even if it only looks like snowing, there are no trains, a water shortage, the public utility companies double the price of everything, there’s panic-buying in stores and riots in the streets. Here, it was a case of: ‘Yeah, s’only about eight inches. I’ll get my truck and clear the parking lot!’ The roads had been pre-treated and were clear, and that was that. There was about a ten minute delay when it first started snowing, then it was business as usual.
For my part, I’ve never seen so much snow. I don’t like it much either. It’s cold, wet and, well, cold and wet...
My home for the month of March 2005 was a long-stay hotel in Malvern, about 30 minutes drive from Philly, and about 15 minutes from Wayne PA, where I was based for the next few weeks. At least I have a high speed internet connection and Everybody Loves Raymond!
Dancing Nylon Shirt Pt I
The rest of the week rolled-by in a haze of work-related tasks and nothing much interesting to most people with lives. No-one wants to read about my job, so I won’t mention it again, unless of specific interest. You, just assume that Mon through Fri, during the day I’m at work. Monday evening, I did embark on my first trip to Wal*Mart though. A short trip down the 202 to Exton and another shopping mall.
It still amazes me how big the packets of stuff are in these places. I bought a bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lays (crisps), figuring it would last me a couple of days. This bag would end up lasting me a week and a half. The bag of Cheeto’s I bought would end up lasting two weeks!
Everything is in big packs. You can buy Advil (that’s Ibuprofen to you) in packs so big, you could render Birmingham unconscious – not an entirely bad thing. I got a good deal on Advil; buy 50, get 50 free, for $5. Paracetemol? You can buy packs the size of Antarctica! No tossy little packs of 16 like we are limited to in Blighty, in case we OD on them. I don’t like Paracetemol though, they do nothing for me except destroy my liver, which I am perfectly happy to leave to alcohol. No, the big tubs of Acetaminophen are my over-the-counter painkiller of choice. 500 of ‘em for a few dollars and they are the good stuff. A couple of those and it’s time for a nap.
I bought the usual stuff a bloke on his own would buy. Pants, peanut butter, grape jelly, milk, bread, cans of soup, boxers, tuna, boneless chicken breasts, pasta sauce, pasta, and mint/choc Oreos.
I figured that being here for a month, I’d better buy some shower gel, shampoo, and stuff like that too. Washing powder-tablets-gel-liquid, or whatever the hell it is these days. There was a time when you bought a box of Persil, whacked a couple of handfuls in the little drawer thingy and set the washing machine off. Now you have little plastic balls, tablets (which I can’t swallow no matter how hard I try) and little drawstring bags; there’s stuff for colours, whites; fabric conditioner that you put in a separate little drawer... STOP!
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Dancing Nylon Shirt Pt II
Hey, hey, hey... detergent manufacturers, here’s a heads up for you. Make a clothes cleaning product for Blokes. Call it Soap Powder for Blokes. Inside should be individual, measured sachets of soap powder: one per load of clothes. The little sachets must dissolve in the wash and release the cleaning agent into the clothes once the go button has been pressed. If you want to bang some nice-smelling conditioner gunk in the mix, that’s up to you; we don’t mind, we’re not animals, we just don’t want to have to deal with any of that shit. OK?
Here’s the bottom line: we agree go to the trouble of washing our clothes but, you have to agree not burden us with the details. If we can’t hit it with a hammer, take it apart and leave it spread out on the kitchen table, or watch it on tv, it ain’t gonna happen. So, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, and the rest of you multiglomerates, the ball’s in your court; clean up in the bloke-on-his-own market place. Fnargh, fnargh!
Wow. I really went off on one there. Maybe, I should switch to decaf? Nah! I want my caf! Let’s just not get into the whole American coffee thing, just yet... No, don’t worry, as sure as eggs is eggs, a coffee rant will be coming your way.
Where was I? Ah yes, shopping. I wanted some gloop to wash my clothes with. I am here for a month. Even with the amount of stuff I brought with me, I would have to wash something, sooner or later. I figured that if I could get a small packet of soap powder, that would maybe do a four or five washes, that would see me through nicely. I had a look in my local Wawa food market and the smallest I could find was enough to wash 20 loads, for $4.29. Noooooooo.
Wal*Mart had nothing smaller. In fact, what I ended up buying could have scrubbed New Jersey up like a bright, shiny penny. $2.99 bought me a bottle of something-or-other that would do 32 loads. I used two capfuls. I shall just leave the thing behind when I leave. It is just too cheap to worry about.
And it’s not just Wal*Mart. It’s Target, K-Mart, and just about every store you go in. It seems so cheap to us because the prices are in $$$ and look the same, cause that’s what we pay in pounds. Then again, I got $1.84 for my £1, so stuff is really cheap. Not only is the stuff more expensive in the UK to start off with, the exchange rate is so damned good at the moment.
Gassed Up
Gas prices here are as expensive as they’ve ever been; it’s about $2 a gallon, but it varies from place to place, and state to state. I filled up the car with so much gas that I got cramp in my hand from holding the trigger on the nozzle. Something like 20 gallons of gas for $40. No-one told me that the US fuel nozzles have a lock on them that saves you having to hold the damn thing for hours! The natives are apoplectic at the cost of filling up their gas guzzlers at the moment; it dominates news bulletins every second of every day. When I tell them to shut the hell up and quit their whining yap, explaining how much it costs to fill up my Ford Focus at home, there is a collective sharp intake of breath. It costs $70 to fill up a Ford Focus? They almost go postal on my behalf. They quieten down for a few seconds and then the cost of gas comes up again, and they become enraged once more at the cost.
Mind you, I would probably have used quite a bit less gas over the last couple of weeks, had I realised that the button with the ‘snowflake’ on, is the AC (which drinks gas like it’s a dwindling resource) rather than a heater setting for cold weather! How very considerate of the manufacturers, I thought, to provide a snow setting. I’ve had it switched on since the first flakes fell...
Come on?! What would you have me do? Read the manual? Getouttatown!
Could things get any stranger? Well, I'll sign off this page with the words of Dr Hunter S. Thompson:
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
It wasn't a question of whether things could get more bizarre, it was just a question of magnitude and timing. If you've got a strong stomach, see for yourself. Otherwise, run like the wind!
* Yes, as evidenced by the amount of effort you expend in creating this unnecessarily huge website. Ed**
**Er, bite me, I'm performing a public service! GoT ***
*** You do realise that, as 'Ed' and 'GoT' are the same person, ie you, you are having a pointless argument with yourself?! Ed****
**** Yes... and your point would be? GoT*****
***** Oh, nothing... Ed
Click here for the next bit
The rest of the week rolled-by in a haze of work-related tasks and nothing much interesting to most people with lives. No-one wants to read about my job, so I won’t mention it again, unless of specific interest. You, just assume that Mon through Fri, during the day I’m at work. Monday evening, I did embark on my first trip to Wal*Mart though. A short trip down the 202 to Exton and another shopping mall.
It still amazes me how big the packets of stuff are in these places. I bought a bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lays (crisps), figuring it would last me a couple of days. This bag would end up lasting me a week and a half. The bag of Cheeto’s I bought would end up lasting two weeks!
Everything is in big packs. You can buy Advil (that’s Ibuprofen to you) in packs so big, you could render Birmingham unconscious – not an entirely bad thing. I got a good deal on Advil; buy 50, get 50 free, for $5. Paracetemol? You can buy packs the size of Antarctica! No tossy little packs of 16 like we are limited to in Blighty, in case we OD on them. I don’t like Paracetemol though, they do nothing for me except destroy my liver, which I am perfectly happy to leave to alcohol. No, the big tubs of Acetaminophen are my over-the-counter painkiller of choice. 500 of ‘em for a few dollars and they are the good stuff. A couple of those and it’s time for a nap.
I bought the usual stuff a bloke on his own would buy. Pants, peanut butter, grape jelly, milk, bread, cans of soup, boxers, tuna, boneless chicken breasts, pasta sauce, pasta, and mint/choc Oreos.
I figured that being here for a month, I’d better buy some shower gel, shampoo, and stuff like that too. Washing powder-tablets-gel-liquid, or whatever the hell it is these days. There was a time when you bought a box of Persil, whacked a couple of handfuls in the little drawer thingy and set the washing machine off. Now you have little plastic balls, tablets (which I can’t swallow no matter how hard I try) and little drawstring bags; there’s stuff for colours, whites; fabric conditioner that you put in a separate little drawer... STOP!
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Dancing Nylon Shirt Pt II
Hey, hey, hey... detergent manufacturers, here’s a heads up for you. Make a clothes cleaning product for Blokes. Call it Soap Powder for Blokes. Inside should be individual, measured sachets of soap powder: one per load of clothes. The little sachets must dissolve in the wash and release the cleaning agent into the clothes once the go button has been pressed. If you want to bang some nice-smelling conditioner gunk in the mix, that’s up to you; we don’t mind, we’re not animals, we just don’t want to have to deal with any of that shit. OK?
Here’s the bottom line: we agree go to the trouble of washing our clothes but, you have to agree not burden us with the details. If we can’t hit it with a hammer, take it apart and leave it spread out on the kitchen table, or watch it on tv, it ain’t gonna happen. So, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, and the rest of you multiglomerates, the ball’s in your court; clean up in the bloke-on-his-own market place. Fnargh, fnargh!
Wow. I really went off on one there. Maybe, I should switch to decaf? Nah! I want my caf! Let’s just not get into the whole American coffee thing, just yet... No, don’t worry, as sure as eggs is eggs, a coffee rant will be coming your way.
Where was I? Ah yes, shopping. I wanted some gloop to wash my clothes with. I am here for a month. Even with the amount of stuff I brought with me, I would have to wash something, sooner or later. I figured that if I could get a small packet of soap powder, that would maybe do a four or five washes, that would see me through nicely. I had a look in my local Wawa food market and the smallest I could find was enough to wash 20 loads, for $4.29. Noooooooo.
Wal*Mart had nothing smaller. In fact, what I ended up buying could have scrubbed New Jersey up like a bright, shiny penny. $2.99 bought me a bottle of something-or-other that would do 32 loads. I used two capfuls. I shall just leave the thing behind when I leave. It is just too cheap to worry about.
And it’s not just Wal*Mart. It’s Target, K-Mart, and just about every store you go in. It seems so cheap to us because the prices are in $$$ and look the same, cause that’s what we pay in pounds. Then again, I got $1.84 for my £1, so stuff is really cheap. Not only is the stuff more expensive in the UK to start off with, the exchange rate is so damned good at the moment.
Gassed Up
Gas prices here are as expensive as they’ve ever been; it’s about $2 a gallon, but it varies from place to place, and state to state. I filled up the car with so much gas that I got cramp in my hand from holding the trigger on the nozzle. Something like 20 gallons of gas for $40. No-one told me that the US fuel nozzles have a lock on them that saves you having to hold the damn thing for hours! The natives are apoplectic at the cost of filling up their gas guzzlers at the moment; it dominates news bulletins every second of every day. When I tell them to shut the hell up and quit their whining yap, explaining how much it costs to fill up my Ford Focus at home, there is a collective sharp intake of breath. It costs $70 to fill up a Ford Focus? They almost go postal on my behalf. They quieten down for a few seconds and then the cost of gas comes up again, and they become enraged once more at the cost.
Mind you, I would probably have used quite a bit less gas over the last couple of weeks, had I realised that the button with the ‘snowflake’ on, is the AC (which drinks gas like it’s a dwindling resource) rather than a heater setting for cold weather! How very considerate of the manufacturers, I thought, to provide a snow setting. I’ve had it switched on since the first flakes fell...
Come on?! What would you have me do? Read the manual? Getouttatown!
Could things get any stranger? Well, I'll sign off this page with the words of Dr Hunter S. Thompson:
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
It wasn't a question of whether things could get more bizarre, it was just a question of magnitude and timing. If you've got a strong stomach, see for yourself. Otherwise, run like the wind!
* Yes, as evidenced by the amount of effort you expend in creating this unnecessarily huge website. Ed**
**Er, bite me, I'm performing a public service! GoT ***
*** You do realise that, as 'Ed' and 'GoT' are the same person, ie you, you are having a pointless argument with yourself?! Ed****
**** Yes... and your point would be? GoT*****
***** Oh, nothing... Ed
Click here for the next bit
