Best book title ever: Jihad Vs. McWorld

Can you say: “All publicity is good publicity?” Anything controversial results in more people hearing about the book and the more people who hear about the book, the greater the likelihood that someone will actually buy it. And the way it was explained to me, every time an author sells a book, an angel gets its wings, and somewhere, one of his wives gets a child support check to spend on the latest offering from Fendi.

In that vein, I’m renaming my blog; Red/Brian shall now be known as Jesus Wore Lipstick.

After watching the hilarious Super Size Me and reading the mind-bending Fast Food Nation I’ve temporarily sworn off fast food for life, with the exception of IN-N-OUT, whose diamond-tipped ethics have proved it a bastion of the fast food industry, staving off frozen food in favor of fresh, and paying it’s employees well, with starting positions at $9/hour and managers starting at $80,000/year.

With such a personal touch, it’s not a huge surprise to discover that the business is not owned by an anonymous corporation, but is family owned and run by one Esther Snyder, and it shouldn’t be a huge surprise to discover bible verses on most of the packaging for your burgers and fries.

Though similarly intentioned, the guy with the sign at your favorite sporting event was never quite intriguing enough to arouse my curiousity, I was too busy feeling bad for the guy; But when information is presented on the side of my double double (sans lettuce) and my half chocolate, half strawberry shake, I become ravenous for knowledge.

The guy with the sign at your favorite sporting event.

So, for the lazy, here we have the piecemeal biblical lesson that is being quite literally fed to us every time we choose to sit down at an IN-N-OUT. These verses are coming from the New International Version de la biblia, as dispensed by BibleGateway.com.

If you’re eating a burger, you will find Nahum 1:7 on the wrapper:

“The LORD is good,
a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him…”

If one finds himself consuming a soda, John 3:16 is written on the inside lip on the bottom of the cup:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

And if you’re shakin’ it like I so enjoy doing, you’ll find Proverbs 3:5 :

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding…”

As could be expected, it’s more of a “greatest hits” of bible verses, though I admit I was hoping for more topical verses, maybe a burger would give me Genesis 9:4:

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.”

A nifty way to let the customers know that IN-N-OUT cares about well done meat.

As I’ve been suffering from what the Doctor referred to as “Not much pneumonia,” I’ve had the opportunity to be in the Cal Poly Health Center on quite a number of occasions this past month and I’ve read and re-read every bit of propaganda frequently enough that their meaning has begun to evolve as my mind creates alternative interpretations out of sheer boredom.

To me, the most intriguing of the propaganda mixed among the cross sections of the human ear and the 5 signs of rubella was an entire wall that had been placed under the banner: “Love Your Bodies and Your Memories This Spring Break.” Upon my first reading, this was a fairly innocent and bland attempt at getting everyone to sport a raincoat on their week of debauchery, but on my fourth viewing in less than a month, the author’s original meaning was made clear.

“Talk safe sex first, have safe sex later.”

Interpretation: While some would read this as “Be prepared,” it is obviously a recommendation of verbal foreplay.

“Use the buddy system.”

Interpretation: When it comes to sex, two is better than one…

…and three is better than two.

“Remember that ‘No’ means ‘No’ and passed out never means ‘Yes.'”

I swear I learn something new every single day.

“Any man who can dance in high heels is awesome.”

-Desiree, in reference to her main man, Prince

Whilst shopping for textbooks online:

Me: $108.25 new at the bookstore, $73 used at Aida’s, $25.95 from some guy on ebay.
Lauren: some guy is the best
Me: with 100% feedback I might add
Me: holy christmas
Me: Product Type: Teacher’s Edition
Lauren: haha
Lauren: I think I’m developing calluses from knitting.

For me this past week has been steeped in thick, repugnant academia and an equally annoying case of bronchitis. But this last weekend did not foretell of the disastrous week ahead. I was on an up-swing health-wise and more importantly I was at Lauren’s sister’s wedding having an absolute blast.

Friday I was to be in Newport Beach with Lauren at 4pm, but due to traffic, we got there a lot closer to 4:45pm. Not too bad. I was a little slap happy as I’d not gotten much sleep the night before which resulted in me being a little slow to censor myself when I probably should have. For example: I said “they should push their boobs closer to together” in a church within earshot of Lauren’s parents. The context is irrelevant, the fact is that it happened and that’s enough; I’m gonna go ahead and call that one strike two. Then we all left the church together on our way to the Spaghetti Factory, also located in Newport Beach. Ended up in Hunington Beach. Fantastic. I’m outta there.

You’ve got to save money somewhere, might as well be the veil

Fortunately after getting a good nights rest, the actual wedding was about as flawless as anyone could have hoped for. Yours truly was an usher, which is definitely fun, all the old ladies are flattered, but anybody under the age of thirty gives you a weird look and pushes your elbow out of the way as they walk past.

There was a ceremony, Isaac, Katie, and Katie’s Dad all said “I do,” though each of them said it at a different time. And they lived happily ever after.

Then there was the reception, which was by far the best party I have ever been to. This event just re-affirmed my belief that the ceremony is just a prelude to the reception, and not the primary reason for attending. Delicious food, good company, open bar, chocolate covered strawberries, the USC marching band, an open bar, dancing waiters, and an open bar all combined to make this quite possibly the most impressive wedding I will ever go to. How’s this for a finishing touch: On the way out, they had coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts. Now that’s classy.

Lauren flirts with some random guy by the bar

If you want to see more pictures from the wedding I suspect you’d want to click here

Coffee and Ibuprofen, the new breakfast of champions.

…And I’m sick, not hung-over, thanks.

The nice thing about driving a 12 year old Honda Civic in Newport Beach, where I stayed for Katie’s wedding this past weekend, is:

I could drive to any major shopping area and leave my car running with the keys in the ignition and both doors open and still be completely confident that it will still be there when I return. This is not just because of the alarmingly low crime rate, but because no self-respecting thief would want to be seen in Newport Beach with anything less than a Cadillac Escalade. In this town, they give cars like mine away as a free-after-rebate add-on when you buy any 12 pack of Energizer Max Plus AA batteries. It’s one of those things you give your five year old, because just like one of those inactive credit cards you get in the mail, it’s not of any use to anyone.

But I’ll keep it, thank you very much.

Teachers say the darnedest things, though I’m pretty sure darnedest isn’t a word, and it’s becoming more and more ridiculous every time I type it. Darnedest.

Here we have Professor Smith on Inter Process Communication, AKA two programs talking to each other:

“In this case you are communicating with another program by killing it. It’s not polite, but it works.”

My English professor, Dr. Westwood, was used as a Job reference for a former student who was applying to work in the CIA. An actual agent came to his office on campus, flashed his badge, and started asking questions about the student in question, which is where our quote begins:

SecretAgentMan: “Are you aware of any suspect organizations this person may belong to.”
Westwood: “Well, he was in my class.”

This last one is from Professor Diana Franklin on Caches. I’m not making this up, she said this with all the seriousness and gravity of a star caving in on itself and nobody even cracked a smile.

“It’s not the size of the Cache that matters, it’s what you do with it.”

Now that’s good quotin’.

At the very end of a long, dry, lab report I’ve decided to add a check to see if the professor is actually reading it:

Roadblocks and Outstanding Issues
As mentioned above, our code assumes valid data, and does not deal with overflow in the interest of speed. Also, if you give sumodd.asm a negative number SIM will physically reach out and smack you, though this issue is intermittent and we believe may be due to a peculiarity in the host architecture.

I don’t believe she’ll ever read that far, but I hope she does, because I think she’d appreciate it.

Lauren’s sister is getting married this Saturday, and they asked Lauren to set up a website for the pictures everyone takes with their digital cameras at the wedding. She asked Lauren to find hosting and a domain name. 1and1 has a deal where you get free hosting and a domain name of your choice for six months, so that was a no-brainer. Now she just needed to choose domain name, and she was silly enough to mention that fact to me.

And so began the search.

First were the cliche ones:
KatieIsaac.com
IsaacKatie.com
FloresWedding.com – Isaac’s last name concatenated with Wedding
IKWedding.com – unfortunately pronounced ich-wedding

Then for the shotgun wedding:
EightMonthsLater.com – They’ve been engaged too long for it to be a shotgun wedding

For the LOTR fans:
OneWeddingToRuleThemAll.com – OneRingToRuleHim.com was already taken

For the cyncics:
MyFirstWedding.com – Actually this is the only one on the page that was taken
idont.net – that’s gotta hurt

The USC Fans:
TrojanWedding.com – My favorite serious one
TGWITHOTU.com – The Greatest Wedding in the History of The Universe
SquirrelAndSkippy.com – Their band names

…the just plain weird:
AnniversaryZero.com – Catchy, but too close to Ground Zero.
WheresTheKids.com
MakeSomeBabies.com – Why else would you get married?
BestWeddingEver.us – Too bad the .com was already taken
BestMarriageEver.com – Comic Book Guy would be proud

In the end, they went with IsaacKatie.com. *yawn*

I lay gold at their feet and they can’t even take the time to bend over and pick it up off the floor.