BK Stacker

You have to love Burger King's new promotional item, the BK^TM Stacker, "The burger with more of what you love...meat, cheese and bacon." They know what we don't want... any of that pesky lettuce, tomato, or onions that only gets in the way. In fact, I think some stores are offering free hypodermic needles so that you can inject the grease directly into your arteries without expending all that effort chewing. They offer the Triple Stacker, which consists of 3 beef patties, 3 slices of cheese and 4 slices of bacon. I know what you are thinking, "Are they CRAZY? Is that the largest I can get? I want more!" Calm down. For the more endeavorous meat enthusiasts there is also the Quad Stacker.

I received a coupon for the BK Stacker offering a FREE 6 pieck BK chicken fries with the purchase of a BK^TM Stacker value meal. After eating a double stacker with a large coke and large fries, the LAST thing you need is some chicken fries. In fact, I was only able to eat three of them before I felt sharp pains in my abdomen. Sigh.



That really clogs my arteries!

DVD Menu Clips are Tedious

Who is the idiot who designs the menu interface for DVDs? On very few occasions, the animated content in the menu is entertaining, or in the very least, unobtrusive. I recommend, for example, watching the menu on An Evening with Kevin Smith. It's very amusing. But more often, these menus contain short sound bites or action clips from the movie that become repetitive and downright unbearable if you happen to leave the movie in the menu mode for more than a few minutes. Recently I rented The Aristocrats and left it in menu mode as I finished some other activity before watching the movie. The menu consisted of two or three "jokes" from the movie. After listening to these clips 20 times, I almost ripped the DVD player out of my entertainment center and drop kicked it down the hall.

That really slips my disc. That really slips my disc. That really slips my disc.

Jewelry Marketing

I heard a radio commercial this morning for a jewelry store. Some big sale they are having with historic discounts. I especially enjoyed the meaningless phrase "everything in the store up to 50% off".

I guess maybe you have to sympathize a little bit with jewelry marketers. After all, they are trying to sell a product that has the highest mark-up of any retail item, has a completely arbitrary price, is always on sale everywhere, is almost impossible for most people to correctly evaluate, and has almost no practical value.

The World Cup Sucks

I can't believe that the world cup final was decided by a single missed penalty shot (it hit the crossbar) after a boring 1-1 tie through overtime. The two goals were scored in the first half of the game and none of the penalty shots were blocked by the goalies.

And they wonder why Americans don't watch soccer.

The highlight of the game was when France's Zidane headbutted Italy's Materazzi and was ejected from the game.

Rave: LaLa.com

Just a quick rave about LaLa.com. It is basically a website for exchanging CDs with other people. Each CD you get costs you a total of $1.75, including shipping. I have already received 3 relatively obscure CDs that I had wanted for several years. As a contrast, buying a particular used CD on eBay typically takes months to get the item I want for around $5.

The best thing about LaLa is the website. It is a great user interface where everything works exactly the way it should, even though it is a Beta product that has only been out for about a month. Lala is not perfect, but it is a strong example of how to make positive use of the web.