Let us now speak of Jamba Juice. First, the Jamba Juice menu:

Acai Supercharger ™, Matcha Green Tea Blast ™, Turbo Tropic ™ Strawberry Nirvana ™, Mango Mantra ™, Berry Fulfilling ™, Tropical Awakening ™, Protein Berry Pizzazz ™, Orange Dream Machine ™, Jamba Powerboost ®, Coldbuster! ®, Kiwi Berry Burner ®, Banana Berry ™, Strawberries Wild ®, Razzmatazz ®, Berry Lime Sublime ™, Cranberry Craze ®, Orange Berry Blitz ™, Citrus Squeeze ®, Orange-A-Peel ™, Caribbean Passion ®, Aloha Pineapple ™, Mango-A-Go-Go ™, Peenya Kowlada ®, Peach Pleasure ®, Chocolate Moo’d ®, Peanut Butter Moo’d ™.

Please note that the name of every single item is some kind of trademark. Why? Because it’s stupid. Especially note the purposeful misspelling of Pina Colada to allow for this trademarking.

Now, these things are all commonly known as smoothies. Are any of them named “smoothie”? No. Are any named “freeze”, “shake”, “blend” or “frappe”? No. They all have stupid names that it pains me to even consider saying. Is this for legal reasons, so that they can be trademarked? Is the very word “smoothie” owned by some other corporation? Has some consultant advised Jamba Juice that in addition to having a company name that people with any amount of self respect have trouble speaking aloud, they need to give each of their drinks a soul-crushing name?

God forbid you walk in there and shuddering at the sight of the menu, try to order a “Kiwi-Strawberry Smoothie”. You’ll get such a blank, cow-like stare from the brainwashed drone at the register, you’ll wonder if you can ever be happy again. Of course you’ve already guessed that small, medium, and large are not options at Jamba Juice. Here, they’re Sixteen, Original, and Power. POWER!

Internet, I ask you: where have all the sane, sober people in the world gone? Why does everything have to be silly?

J. Sanchez waxes rhapsodic about his new Grado SR-60 headphones, and I have to agree with him — I bought a set in the fall, and they’re just amazing.

And they’re stylish! (Picture of me wearing said headphones available upon demand)

Hi again. You may have noticed a slight change in the looks of the site — I’ve moved from running this site with a heavily-kludged version of blosxom to a stock installation of wordpress.

It’s not a big change, but it was overdue, since I usually can’t go six months without completely replacing whatever I’m using to build this site. So nearly a year — that’s unprecedented.

I like the icon on downhillbattle.org’s “Home Taping is Killing the Music Industry” t-shirt, but I don’t have a machine that can play audio cassettes (or any other kind of cassettes) anymore. So I made this graphic. Here’s the Illustrator 10 file (205k), licensed under a Creative Commons License.

No safety deposit box could be called self respecting if it does not contain at least three of the following five items:

1. 9mm handgun (extra clips of ammo are optional).
2. bound stacks of uncirculated currency, foreign and domestic (non-sequential serial numbers a must).
3. five to ten polaroids or other black-and-white photographs with criminal, sexual, or other deviant content.
4. forged papers (passport, drivers license, SSID card), in envelopes or folders labeled by false identity.
5. key to rented locker in bus/train terminal or garage/warehouse on outskirts of city.

In Chicago, I recommend the North Side Federal Savings and Loan Association.