Dear Friends,
The Hard Taco song for December is called, "Call Guinness." It turns out, Guinness World Records has an online application, not a phone number.
Some years ago, Lauren and I spent an afternoon with friends making a short, mostly improvised movie called "Record Breaker." It was about a young man training to set the Guinness record for breaking the most LPs over his own head in one minute. The driving force behind this storyline was that I owned some old Supertramp albums that I was never going to listen to, and it seemed like a funny idea to smash them on camera.
We had nearly completed filming, when Lauren, in the role of a sports announcer, said, "And will he do it? Will he break the record for... breaking records?"
It was not until that very moment that we realized our entire plot line was based on a Dad joke. I promise you that we did not set out to create a story revolving around a pun, but we managed to do so anyway, and only by complete happenstance. I haven't figured out a way to to describe that moment to people in a way that expresses the gravity of that coincidence. Such improbable flukes should not exist, and when they do, they should be put into the record books.
One of my daughter's favorite books is a kid-friendly version of the Guinness Book of World Records. We were reading through it together, and I realized that it was basically like reading a book of MadLibs that someone had already filled out. Every page just said:
"The
(Adjective ending in -est)
(Noun)
is
(Number)
(Units of measurement)."
The largest diamond is 3100 carats. The heaviest rutabaga is 85 pounds. The longest year is 1 leap year.
And we love it. Our brains are capable of being astounded by these strings of seemingly random words. Perhaps, using this format, we could write a best-seller that was nothing but randomly generated numbers, nouns, and adjectives. Of course, the units and the noun would have to make sense with each other. You can't just write, "the sturdiest stepfather is 20 degrees Fahrenheit," or, "the damnedest diaphragm is 16 nautical miles." That book would set the record for fewest sales.
In the medical field, we are capable of being amazed, even in the absence of units. Try this. Walk up to a doctor or nurse and take take a close-up video of his or her face. Then say, "I saw a patient with a (laboratory study) of (number)."
I saw a patient with a creatinine of 14. I saw a patient with a haptoglobin of 0. I saw a patient with a sedimentation rate of 1000.
And you don't have to bother using units, because none of us know them, anyway.
Now play back the video in slo-mo. You will see the eyes bulging, the brows lifting, the lips parting slightly. The head will tilt backwards, and the medical professional will let out an astonished and satisfied gasp. This will sound like a sexy demon in slo-mo. Analysis of these facial expressions will reveal that the subject is deeply impressed by you and wants to be closer to you, no matter what it takes.
Okay, but what if you don't know any doctors, and you don't have a slo-mo video app on your phone? It's still possible to impress someone with a MadLib made from randomly generated numbers, but that someone has to be a 1st grader. Just crouch down next to that 6-year-old and say, "(number) (animals) in a row."Because the only thing that fascinates little kids more than animals is well-organized animals.
With warmest* regards,
Zach
* And I do mean the WARMEST. I will be submitting an application to Guinness online.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
The Bear Cub Tilted Rectangle of 3rd Grade Achievement
Dear Friends,
The Hard Taco song for November is called, "Not That Kind of Boy." This song is too short for radio, and you're too short for modeling. We'll both get over it.
Malcolm is now in his third year of Cub Scouts, and is working towards earning the Bear Cub Tilted Rectangle of 3rd Grade Achievement. So far, he has fulfilled several of the requirements, including: Meet a Fireman, Whittle Something, and Make a Skit About Meeting a Fireman. I've been flipping through the Bear Handbook, and it looks like he's on pace to earn the following badges by the end of the school year:
Badge of High Merit - Formerly called "Badge of Participation." Granted to any scout who shows up for the Awards Ceremony. The name change reflects Boy Scouts of American's deep commitment to fostering dignity and self-esteem in all dues-paying humans.
Leave No Trace - Protect the delicate ecosystem of the forest by burying the hitchhiker at least 200 feet from natural water sources, campsites, and trails.
Outdoor Ethics Awareness - Draft a Living Will for a loved one while sitting around a campfire.
Herbalism - Rub leaves between your fingers until you find one that smells vaguely like cinnamon.
Rich Grandparents - Sell over $500 of popcorn without going door-to-door.
Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints - Promote responsible use of outdoor recreational spaces.
Take Pictures and Footprints - Investigate a crime scene.
Take My Picture and Leave With My Footprint - Kick the ass of a paparazzo.
Cub Whisperer - Trap a real tiger, wolf, or bear cub and train it to sit still during the flag ceremony
Pocketknife Safety - Use the white plastic cafeteria knife to cut your pepperoni Hot Pocket and let some of the steam out so you don't burn your tongue when you bite into it.
Bear Necessities - Learn how to read a thermometer (temperature), a barometer (atmospheric pressure), a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure), a mass spectrometer (miscellaneous science) and an infernometer (Hell.)
Gender Dysphoria - Earn any three of the Girl Scout badges discussed in this previous HT Digest.
Bear's Courage - Spend a night in that spooky abandoned condo where the nursing student's Homeowner's Association dues mysteriously vanished in the 1970s.
I Think They Have a Kid About Your Age - Go with your mother to visit some old college friends of hers who she hasn't seen in twenty years.
Duty to God - Cub scouts is for everyone! You certainly don't have to be Christian to pitch a tent! Many of us know a Jewish or Muslim person because we are tolerant! As long as those people exercise their faith according to the traditions of their ancestors and develop a close personal relationship with Jesus or the equivalent, they are welcome in BSA! No atheists or agnostics, please.
Baden-Powell Emblem - Named for Boy Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell, a Lieutenant-General in the 2nd Boer War, this coveted distinction goes to any Cub Scout who suppresses a Zulu uprising.
With warmest regards,
Zach
Know someone who would like to receive the Hard Taco Digest? Too bad, this email list hasn't been updated for five years and I'm very set in my ways.
The Hard Taco song for November is called, "Not That Kind of Boy." This song is too short for radio, and you're too short for modeling. We'll both get over it.
Malcolm is now in his third year of Cub Scouts, and is working towards earning the Bear Cub Tilted Rectangle of 3rd Grade Achievement. So far, he has fulfilled several of the requirements, including: Meet a Fireman, Whittle Something, and Make a Skit About Meeting a Fireman. I've been flipping through the Bear Handbook, and it looks like he's on pace to earn the following badges by the end of the school year:
Badge of High Merit - Formerly called "Badge of Participation." Granted to any scout who shows up for the Awards Ceremony. The name change reflects Boy Scouts of American's deep commitment to fostering dignity and self-esteem in all dues-paying humans.
Leave No Trace - Protect the delicate ecosystem of the forest by burying the hitchhiker at least 200 feet from natural water sources, campsites, and trails.
Outdoor Ethics Awareness - Draft a Living Will for a loved one while sitting around a campfire.
Herbalism - Rub leaves between your fingers until you find one that smells vaguely like cinnamon.
Rich Grandparents - Sell over $500 of popcorn without going door-to-door.
Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints - Promote responsible use of outdoor recreational spaces.
Take Pictures and Footprints - Investigate a crime scene.
Take My Picture and Leave With My Footprint - Kick the ass of a paparazzo.
Cub Whisperer - Trap a real tiger, wolf, or bear cub and train it to sit still during the flag ceremony
Pocketknife Safety - Use the white plastic cafeteria knife to cut your pepperoni Hot Pocket and let some of the steam out so you don't burn your tongue when you bite into it.
Bear Necessities - Learn how to read a thermometer (temperature), a barometer (atmospheric pressure), a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure), a mass spectrometer (miscellaneous science) and an infernometer (Hell.)
Gender Dysphoria - Earn any three of the Girl Scout badges discussed in this previous HT Digest.
Bear's Courage - Spend a night in that spooky abandoned condo where the nursing student's Homeowner's Association dues mysteriously vanished in the 1970s.
I Think They Have a Kid About Your Age - Go with your mother to visit some old college friends of hers who she hasn't seen in twenty years.
Duty to God - Cub scouts is for everyone! You certainly don't have to be Christian to pitch a tent! Many of us know a Jewish or Muslim person because we are tolerant! As long as those people exercise their faith according to the traditions of their ancestors and develop a close personal relationship with Jesus or the equivalent, they are welcome in BSA! No atheists or agnostics, please.
Baden-Powell Emblem - Named for Boy Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell, a Lieutenant-General in the 2nd Boer War, this coveted distinction goes to any Cub Scout who suppresses a Zulu uprising.
With warmest regards,
Zach
Know someone who would like to receive the Hard Taco Digest? Too bad, this email list hasn't been updated for five years and I'm very set in my ways.
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Colonial Life
Dear Friends,
Led Zeppelin, Don McLean, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead. What's the common thread of these folk rock legends?
They all wrote songs about The Levee.
Oh, The Levee. It holds a singular role in American lore. It's obviously a physical thing, I think. But maybe it's also a metaphor, or perhaps a doctrine of some kind. We don't actually know what The Levee looks like or where to find it, but it clearly represents something we need very deeply. Apparently, we are disappointed when it's not wet, but we fear something bad will happen to it if it gets too wet, right?
For the last 40 years, no one has broached this important subject. The Hard Taco song for October, "Breakwater," reminds us why we so desperately need The Levee, whatever it is, to be strong for us.
Colonial Life
Led Zeppelin, Don McLean, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead. What's the common thread of these folk rock legends?
They all wrote songs about The Levee.
Oh, The Levee. It holds a singular role in American lore. It's obviously a physical thing, I think. But maybe it's also a metaphor, or perhaps a doctrine of some kind. We don't actually know what The Levee looks like or where to find it, but it clearly represents something we need very deeply. Apparently, we are disappointed when it's not wet, but we fear something bad will happen to it if it gets too wet, right?
For the last 40 years, no one has broached this important subject. The Hard Taco song for October, "Breakwater," reminds us why we so desperately need The Levee, whatever it is, to be strong for us.
Colonial Life
For decades, scientists have known that the Earth has a catastrophic overpopulation problem. To be more precise, they have known that there are too many scientists for all of them to get tenure-track positions.
This has bred renewed interest in relocating humans to space. Elon Musk recently announced a proposal to colonize Mars by 2024. This is great news for people who have job interviews lined up at SpaceX or Tesla, because they will know what to say when the interviewer asks, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?"
But why Mars? The fastest spaceship would take six months to get to the Red Planet. The Moon, on the other hand, is only 3 days away. That's close enough that colonists might still get decent cellphone reception. Plus, if they start to feel lonely or nostalgic, they can squint and convince themselves that they see the Great Wall of China. That wall always makes me feel less homesick!
The Moon has other advantages over Mars. Lower gravity means that lunar colonists will be able to travel by putting on roller skates and peeing. (Their gender will determine whether they travel backwards or upwards.)
The fatal hitch is that The Moon has almost no water. Lunar rovers have spent years digging around in craters and sampling soil, looking for signs that water had once been there, like an empty riverbed or the hoof-prints of a water buffalo. After 50 years of squeezing moon rocks, they've expressed about enough H2O to put a tabletop water feature in the NASA office lobby. As quaint as that is, it is not enough to support a colony of Earth's most reclusive billionaires or Earth's most dangerous criminals, whichever we send up there first.
One solution would be for lunar pilgrims to bring bottled water with them, but everyone knows the TSA agents will just make them throw it all out at security.
Mars, as it turns out, may have as much water as one of our smaller oceans. Not only would all that water slake thirst and satisfy crops, but it would also allow our settlers to do things like run through sprinklers, go tubing, and cheat at Marco Polo.
They will even be able to have sleepovers, and put a Martian's hand in warm water overnight to make it pee in its sleeping bag.*
So if you've got a hankering to colonize a celestial body, Mars is the clear choice. Eight years should be long enough to get your lifeguard training. Just remember to pack a dehumidifier and waterproof camera.
With warmest regards,
Zach
* The poor Martian would never live that kind of humiliation down, especially once the kids started calling it Martian van Urine.
This has bred renewed interest in relocating humans to space. Elon Musk recently announced a proposal to colonize Mars by 2024. This is great news for people who have job interviews lined up at SpaceX or Tesla, because they will know what to say when the interviewer asks, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?"
But why Mars? The fastest spaceship would take six months to get to the Red Planet. The Moon, on the other hand, is only 3 days away. That's close enough that colonists might still get decent cellphone reception. Plus, if they start to feel lonely or nostalgic, they can squint and convince themselves that they see the Great Wall of China. That wall always makes me feel less homesick!
The Moon has other advantages over Mars. Lower gravity means that lunar colonists will be able to travel by putting on roller skates and peeing. (Their gender will determine whether they travel backwards or upwards.)
The fatal hitch is that The Moon has almost no water. Lunar rovers have spent years digging around in craters and sampling soil, looking for signs that water had once been there, like an empty riverbed or the hoof-prints of a water buffalo. After 50 years of squeezing moon rocks, they've expressed about enough H2O to put a tabletop water feature in the NASA office lobby. As quaint as that is, it is not enough to support a colony of Earth's most reclusive billionaires or Earth's most dangerous criminals, whichever we send up there first.
One solution would be for lunar pilgrims to bring bottled water with them, but everyone knows the TSA agents will just make them throw it all out at security.
Mars, as it turns out, may have as much water as one of our smaller oceans. Not only would all that water slake thirst and satisfy crops, but it would also allow our settlers to do things like run through sprinklers, go tubing, and cheat at Marco Polo.
They will even be able to have sleepovers, and put a Martian's hand in warm water overnight to make it pee in its sleeping bag.*
So if you've got a hankering to colonize a celestial body, Mars is the clear choice. Eight years should be long enough to get your lifeguard training. Just remember to pack a dehumidifier and waterproof camera.
With warmest regards,
Zach
* The poor Martian would never live that kind of humiliation down, especially once the kids started calling it Martian van Urine.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
The Damnation of the Spine'd
Dear Friends,
There are over 100 million songs published online. In the face of this complete market saturation, it is reckless to bring new songs into the world. To combat overpopulation, China enforces a one-song-per-household limit. Not so in Ireland, where young couples are always getting drunk and recording unwanted duets, with no thought of how they're going to mix or master them later. Obviously, the only surefire way to prevent songs is to not sing at all, but if you have to sing, at least cover the microphone until you're emotionally ready to record a full album.
But hey, I am a grown man. A married homeowner with a stable income. There is nothing morally irresponsible about my wife and I recording a song or two.
And I admit it, Lauren and I probably talk about our songs way too much. But who wouldn't? Our songs are the best. Still, I bet it's really annoying for my brother and sister-in-law, who haven't yet decided if they want to record songs of their own.
The Hard Taco song for September is called, "Hide." Everyone tells me that this song has my wife's voice, but I think I hear a little of myself in it. Don't you think it's beautiful and unique as a snowflake? It's so special, I just know it could be a hit single someday, if it wants to.
But maybe I'm just projecting. Maybe I should stop telling the song what I want it to be and just listen to it.
Backmastering
A few seconds ago, I learned this word. Guess which definition of "Backmastering" is correct:
A. The second subtitle of the Jillian Michaels DVD, "Jillian Michaels: Total Body Toning Crush."
B. The German term for wielding a riding crop.
C. Inserting backwards Satanic messages into Classic Rock songs.
It's C. Subliminal devil worship has long typified the genre of Classic Rock, though the musicians rarely acknowledged it. Robert "The Seeds of Deceit and Corruption Must We" Plant famously told interviewers that the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven were "complete nonsense, and certainly not about my everlasting alliance with the Antichrist whose name is to be exalted/extolled." Then he looked at the interviewer, his long hair covering the Mark of the Beast on his forehead, and whispered in slow motion, "nataS teews ym to s'ereH."
And I'm sure you've noticed that The Beatles: Revolver unscrambles to "Vertebrates Love: Hel." That last word is gibberish, but try saying it aloud, and the message will become clear. The Liverpudlians sought to levy perdition upon not only mankind, but all 64,000 backbone-having species. Not fab, Fab Four. Not fab at all.
My father has an old medical textbook that refers to Occultist's Elbow, a condition that afflicted burnout teenagers in the 1970s. It was basically a repetitive stress injury caused by rotating records counter-clockwise. This is a very unnatural movement for any elbow, and many of these young miscreants had to ice their forearms for hours every time they wanted to hear their next command from the Prince of Darkness.
By time I was in high school, it was no longer practical for entertainers to mandate unspeakable acts of heresy and black magic. Most of us couldn't figure out how to play a CD backwards. And so some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
But now there are apps that play music files in reverse, which makes it remarkably easy to record new versions of Classic Rock songs. Try this at home. Record yourself saying the following:
His Satanic Majesty, the Great Deceiver, shall flay the skin of the innocent and scorch the Earth in hellfire. O harbinger of wickedness and fomenter of devilment, Father of Avarice, Underminer of Virtue, bid the streets of Gomorrah run red with the blood products of the righteous. Lo.
Now run it through a reversing app. Go on, I'll wait.
See? It sounds exactly like the 1981 Stevie Nicks hit, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around."
With warmest moral outrage,
Zach
There are over 100 million songs published online. In the face of this complete market saturation, it is reckless to bring new songs into the world. To combat overpopulation, China enforces a one-song-per-household limit. Not so in Ireland, where young couples are always getting drunk and recording unwanted duets, with no thought of how they're going to mix or master them later. Obviously, the only surefire way to prevent songs is to not sing at all, but if you have to sing, at least cover the microphone until you're emotionally ready to record a full album.
But hey, I am a grown man. A married homeowner with a stable income. There is nothing morally irresponsible about my wife and I recording a song or two.
And I admit it, Lauren and I probably talk about our songs way too much. But who wouldn't? Our songs are the best. Still, I bet it's really annoying for my brother and sister-in-law, who haven't yet decided if they want to record songs of their own.
The Hard Taco song for September is called, "Hide." Everyone tells me that this song has my wife's voice, but I think I hear a little of myself in it. Don't you think it's beautiful and unique as a snowflake? It's so special, I just know it could be a hit single someday, if it wants to.
But maybe I'm just projecting. Maybe I should stop telling the song what I want it to be and just listen to it.
Backmastering
A few seconds ago, I learned this word. Guess which definition of "Backmastering" is correct:
A. The second subtitle of the Jillian Michaels DVD, "Jillian Michaels: Total Body Toning Crush."
B. The German term for wielding a riding crop.
C. Inserting backwards Satanic messages into Classic Rock songs.
It's C. Subliminal devil worship has long typified the genre of Classic Rock, though the musicians rarely acknowledged it. Robert "The Seeds of Deceit and Corruption Must We" Plant famously told interviewers that the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven were "complete nonsense, and certainly not about my everlasting alliance with the Antichrist whose name is to be exalted/extolled." Then he looked at the interviewer, his long hair covering the Mark of the Beast on his forehead, and whispered in slow motion, "nataS teews ym to s'ereH."
And I'm sure you've noticed that The Beatles: Revolver unscrambles to "Vertebrates Love: Hel." That last word is gibberish, but try saying it aloud, and the message will become clear. The Liverpudlians sought to levy perdition upon not only mankind, but all 64,000 backbone-having species. Not fab, Fab Four. Not fab at all.
My father has an old medical textbook that refers to Occultist's Elbow, a condition that afflicted burnout teenagers in the 1970s. It was basically a repetitive stress injury caused by rotating records counter-clockwise. This is a very unnatural movement for any elbow, and many of these young miscreants had to ice their forearms for hours every time they wanted to hear their next command from the Prince of Darkness.
By time I was in high school, it was no longer practical for entertainers to mandate unspeakable acts of heresy and black magic. Most of us couldn't figure out how to play a CD backwards. And so some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
But now there are apps that play music files in reverse, which makes it remarkably easy to record new versions of Classic Rock songs. Try this at home. Record yourself saying the following:
His Satanic Majesty, the Great Deceiver, shall flay the skin of the innocent and scorch the Earth in hellfire. O harbinger of wickedness and fomenter of devilment, Father of Avarice, Underminer of Virtue, bid the streets of Gomorrah run red with the blood products of the righteous. Lo.
Now run it through a reversing app. Go on, I'll wait.
See? It sounds exactly like the 1981 Stevie Nicks hit, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around."
With warmest moral outrage,
Zach
Monday, August 1, 2016
NASCAR's Tiny Advertising Flotilla
Dear Friends,
The Hard Taco song for August is called, "Wrap the Babe in Damask." I hope you like it, even if the subject material (trading your infant to a River Witch in exchange for a bountiful harvest) feels a bit old hat.
My Nissan Murano is over 10 years old now. It's still comfortable and reliable, and the tape deck still works like a champ. Plus, it gets 16 miles a gallon. Think your car can do better? Maybe, but 16 m.p.g. is still pretty amazing. If I put my car in neutral, a high school crew team might be able to push it 100 feet on a flat surface before needing to hit the showers. But one little gallon of gasoline can carry this 4000-pound object 16 miles in any direction. That's enough to drive my whole family to downtown Ann Arbor and back two times, and still have enough gas leftover to blow up your car that gets better mileage.
The maintenance costs have been rising every year, though. To defray some of these expenses costs, I was hoping to cover the car with ads, like a NASCAR vehicle.
If you look closely at this picture, you will see familiar logos like Coca-Cola, Target, Sunoco, Clorox, 3M, Mobil, Cottonelle, McDonald's, Goodyear, and a dozen others I haven't heard of. One of them is a company that makes lubricant for ball bearings, and I've never heard of them because I am smart enough to realize that ball bearings are plenty damn slippery without lubrication. That's like making banana peel lubricant.
So if you're that unknown company, what do you hope to get in return for the thousands of dollars you budgeted to put a sticker under one headlight of a high performance stock car? (See location E above.)
First, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the people who attend NASCAR races are your target demographic. I realize it's a stretch, but let's just say all 140,000 of them desperately need their ball bearings lubed up for some reason. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt a second time and say only 50% of these potential customers too drunk to read the word "NASCAR" on their own T-Shirts. That leaves 70,000 mostly-sober clients with pathologically dry ball bearings. They only need to gaze upon your logo to be overtaken with a fierce sense of consumer inspiration.
As you know, your company is not the only NASCAR patron that went for the lowest price point. Your logo is the size of an instant oatmeal packet and it's a tiny shareholder in that busy little advertising flotilla by the front wheel well. The average person in the crowd is about 30 rows back, but some of them have binoculars, and your logo is really distinctive. Oh wait, now the car is moving at 190 MILES PER HOUR. This is starting to look like maybe it wasn't the greatest investment.
Oh, and one more little detail. The driver's side of the car, the side with your logo on it, always faces the inside of the track. So, everything I wrote in the last two paragraphs doesn't matter, because the people in the stands will NEVER be able to see your logo.
Anyway, the idea of plastering vehicles with promotional materials was pioneered by the Wright Brothers. The picture below was distributed to potential advertisers after the first flight, and within a few days, every inch of the famed biplane was caked in corporate logos and slogans.
A) Coca-cola ("Share a Coke with Wilbur!")
B) Philip Morris ("We would like to remind you that smoking is permitted on the entire aircraft, including the lavatories.")
C) James Dewar's Vacuum Flask ("For when you want absolutely nothing inside your flask.")
D) The Marconi Radio ("First in in-flight entertainment!")
E) Tesla ("Nikolai Tesla's steam-powered mechanical oscillator coming in 1904. Pre-order with a $1000 down payment."*)
F) U.S. Steel ("The Best Pinkertons, Scabs, and Strikebreakers in Kitty Hawk.")
G) Crayola ("16 in a box. All of them are grey.")
* After 1904, this was replaced with "Tesla: Fasten your seatbelt... we are experiencing unexpected SERB-ulence!"
With warmest regards,
Zach
The Hard Taco song for August is called, "Wrap the Babe in Damask." I hope you like it, even if the subject material (trading your infant to a River Witch in exchange for a bountiful harvest) feels a bit old hat.
My Nissan Murano is over 10 years old now. It's still comfortable and reliable, and the tape deck still works like a champ. Plus, it gets 16 miles a gallon. Think your car can do better? Maybe, but 16 m.p.g. is still pretty amazing. If I put my car in neutral, a high school crew team might be able to push it 100 feet on a flat surface before needing to hit the showers. But one little gallon of gasoline can carry this 4000-pound object 16 miles in any direction. That's enough to drive my whole family to downtown Ann Arbor and back two times, and still have enough gas leftover to blow up your car that gets better mileage.
The maintenance costs have been rising every year, though. To defray some of these expenses costs, I was hoping to cover the car with ads, like a NASCAR vehicle.
If you look closely at this picture, you will see familiar logos like Coca-Cola, Target, Sunoco, Clorox, 3M, Mobil, Cottonelle, McDonald's, Goodyear, and a dozen others I haven't heard of. One of them is a company that makes lubricant for ball bearings, and I've never heard of them because I am smart enough to realize that ball bearings are plenty damn slippery without lubrication. That's like making banana peel lubricant.
So if you're that unknown company, what do you hope to get in return for the thousands of dollars you budgeted to put a sticker under one headlight of a high performance stock car? (See location E above.)
First, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the people who attend NASCAR races are your target demographic. I realize it's a stretch, but let's just say all 140,000 of them desperately need their ball bearings lubed up for some reason. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt a second time and say only 50% of these potential customers too drunk to read the word "NASCAR" on their own T-Shirts. That leaves 70,000 mostly-sober clients with pathologically dry ball bearings. They only need to gaze upon your logo to be overtaken with a fierce sense of consumer inspiration.
As you know, your company is not the only NASCAR patron that went for the lowest price point. Your logo is the size of an instant oatmeal packet and it's a tiny shareholder in that busy little advertising flotilla by the front wheel well. The average person in the crowd is about 30 rows back, but some of them have binoculars, and your logo is really distinctive. Oh wait, now the car is moving at 190 MILES PER HOUR. This is starting to look like maybe it wasn't the greatest investment.
Oh, and one more little detail. The driver's side of the car, the side with your logo on it, always faces the inside of the track. So, everything I wrote in the last two paragraphs doesn't matter, because the people in the stands will NEVER be able to see your logo.
Anyway, the idea of plastering vehicles with promotional materials was pioneered by the Wright Brothers. The picture below was distributed to potential advertisers after the first flight, and within a few days, every inch of the famed biplane was caked in corporate logos and slogans.
A) Coca-cola ("Share a Coke with Wilbur!")
B) Philip Morris ("We would like to remind you that smoking is permitted on the entire aircraft, including the lavatories.")
C) James Dewar's Vacuum Flask ("For when you want absolutely nothing inside your flask.")
D) The Marconi Radio ("First in in-flight entertainment!")
E) Tesla ("Nikolai Tesla's steam-powered mechanical oscillator coming in 1904. Pre-order with a $1000 down payment."*)
F) U.S. Steel ("The Best Pinkertons, Scabs, and Strikebreakers in Kitty Hawk.")
G) Crayola ("16 in a box. All of them are grey.")
H) Eli Whitney Inc. ("I misunderstood the call for advertisements, and instead of providing a logo, I made a fully functioning cotton gin to glue to the wing of the plane. My bad.)
With warmest regards,
Zach
Friday, July 1, 2016
Glass Houses
Dear Friends,
The Hard Taco song for July is called, "All Manner of Lovely Things." Do me a favor, and imagine that this second sentence increases your interest in listening to it by about 20%.
You can always tell which Ann Arbor residents exist
in harmony with themselves and their environment, because they wear Eastern
textiles. I was in Berkeley California last weekend, and I saw folks wearing
textiles from even farther east.
Clearly, they understand progressivism and self-awareness at a deep level.
I was under the misconception that my hometown was a socially-enlightened nerve
center, but compared to Berkeley, Ann Arbor is nothing more than a polluted
relic, marinating in narrow-minded orthodoxy.
In Ann Arbor, we're still preoccupied with the
Farm-to-Table Movement. In Berkeley, they recognize that lifting food three feet
off the ground to place it on a table wastes energy and transplants these
vegetables to a biologically artificial environment. Why would anyone willfully
participate in biodeviance? They
solve that problem in Berkeley by skipping the harvesting step, and composting their
vegetables directly in their garden beds.
More than anything, my trip to Berkeley showed me
positive role models for sustainable, ecosystematically-responsible living. I
know I have a long journey ahead of me, but I’m through being part of the
problem. It’s time for me to be part of the solution!
Actually, I fully intend to be all of the solution, but on my first
pass, I’ll settle for part.
Let’s start by chastising the glass beer bottle
sitting next to me on the table. Bottle, you are part of the problem. Glass can
take over 50,000 years to decompose.
Here are some strategies I plan to employ to reduce my glass footprint.
Reduce
- Whenever possible, I will use
cardboard milk cartons for my Molotov cocktails and colored construction
paper instead of stained glass windows.
- Drinking draft beer is no better
than drinking bottled beer, because it requires the use of glass cups. I
will help change this culture of waste by putting my mouth directly on the
tap.
- Not all renewable energy sources
are equal. While using a glass magnifying lens to incinerate ants utilizes
solar power, it also wastes glass. I will switch to pulverizing ants in a
windmill.
Reuse
- I will throw all of my glass
bottles into the ocean so people stranded on islands can use them for distress
messages. Obviously, I will need to throw lots of pens and paper into the
ocean, as well.
- Glass is mostly made out of sand.
A practical way to reuse old glass bottles is to smash them into tiny
shards and spread them around the sandbox at a local playground.
- Wine bottles can be repurposed as
candleholders. Unfortunately, candles are not an energy-efficient source
of light, so this should never ever be done.
Recycle
- Using only the finest imported
fossil fuels, I will heat my oven to 2800 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the
temperature necessary to melt down my 16-ounce bottle so that I can mold
it into the desired shape of a new 16 ounce bottle.
- Unlike the glass used for
beverages, window glass is not recyclable. I will therefore attack
my adversary with a smashed beer bottle rather than hurling him through
the window of the saloon.
- Separating green glass from clear
glass is required in some cities, but separating Ira Glass from Frederick
Douglass is just racist.
With warmest regards,
Zach
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Learning to Code
Dear Friends,
The Hard Taco song for June is called "The Cross-Examination of the Bee." This is the third and final song about the on-again, off-again feud between The Elephant and The Bee.
I have a challenge for you. Name Apple's all-time top competitor.
You might be thinking of Google, Microsoft, or Samsung. Maybe you'll reach back a few years and come up with Dell, Palm, or even IBM.
Nope. Many of these companies have managed to grab some of the market share, but saying they have a genuine turf war with Apple is like saying the Cleveland Browns have a rivalry with anyone. It's not a rivalry unless there's a history, and both sides are emotionally invested. As far as I am concerned, there is only one competitor that ever came close to matching Apple toe-to-toe. Commodore.
The Londons were a loyal Commodore family. We early-adopted the living hell out of the Commodore 64 in 1983. Something had to fill the ten year void between the death of Orson Welles and the birth of Miley Cyrus, and the C64 did so charmingly. As soon as I touched its sleek, tan little body, I knew that I was laying my hands on the future. When I closed my eyes and tried to picture the 21st century, all I could imagine was people with Commodore keyboards and disk drives taped to their torsos. For some reason, these people always had shiny, asymmetric hairdos and button-down shirts with triangle patterns.
We set up the C64 in the pantry; the computer room hadn't been invented yet. The first time we plugged it in, I painstakingly typed "PLAY PAC MAN" and hit return.
?SYNTAX ERROR
Okay, that was disappointing. But then I realized that this was just the Commodore's way of saying, "I love you. Keep trying. We'll get through this together."
Soon I learned to speak its exotic language. There is nothing as simple, as perfect, or as elegant as BASIC. It only utilized capital letters, so everything you typed looked like shouting. This felt very natural to my seven-year-old brain.
Within a year, I was programming unique interactive games, like this one:
10 PRINT "DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY WITH LOTS OF DOO-DOO";: INPUT A$
20 IF A$ = "YES" GOTO 40
30 GOTO 10
40 PRINT "YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT HOW MUCH DOO-DOO YOU PLAY WITH"
50 GOTO 10
Soon, I was writing programs that were hundreds of lines long. Interactive adventure games with complex environments, graphics and music. There were just so many creative ways to accuse the user of playing with doo-doo!
Notice that I have not used the word code. The first time I ever heard someone use that word in reference to computer programming was years later, when I was in college. My freshman roommate was a computer science major, and he found a way to use word at least once in every sentence. "We have to code a system that tells an imaginary elevator what floor to go to. I have to write 500 lines of code by Monday. If anyone calls while I'm coding, tell them I'll get back to them when I finish all my lines of code." Come on, Josh. What are you, a military cryptographer?
My son turned eight this month, and he expressed interest in learning to write computer programs, so we downloaded this amazing bit of software called Scratch. It's a kid-friendly programming platform designed by the good folks at M.I.T. Malcolm thinks it's pretty cool, but I am OBSESSED. Somehow, for nearly 30 years, I forgot how much I loved doing this. Now I can't remember ever wanting to do anything else.
Here's something I've been working on for a little over a week. I gave it the dorkiest 80s video game title I could come up with. If you want to actually play it, download Scratch and I'll email you the file.
With warmest regards,
Zach
The Hard Taco song for June is called "The Cross-Examination of the Bee." This is the third and final song about the on-again, off-again feud between The Elephant and The Bee.
I have a challenge for you. Name Apple's all-time top competitor.
You might be thinking of Google, Microsoft, or Samsung. Maybe you'll reach back a few years and come up with Dell, Palm, or even IBM.
Nope. Many of these companies have managed to grab some of the market share, but saying they have a genuine turf war with Apple is like saying the Cleveland Browns have a rivalry with anyone. It's not a rivalry unless there's a history, and both sides are emotionally invested. As far as I am concerned, there is only one competitor that ever came close to matching Apple toe-to-toe. Commodore.
The Londons were a loyal Commodore family. We early-adopted the living hell out of the Commodore 64 in 1983. Something had to fill the ten year void between the death of Orson Welles and the birth of Miley Cyrus, and the C64 did so charmingly. As soon as I touched its sleek, tan little body, I knew that I was laying my hands on the future. When I closed my eyes and tried to picture the 21st century, all I could imagine was people with Commodore keyboards and disk drives taped to their torsos. For some reason, these people always had shiny, asymmetric hairdos and button-down shirts with triangle patterns.
We set up the C64 in the pantry; the computer room hadn't been invented yet. The first time we plugged it in, I painstakingly typed "PLAY PAC MAN" and hit return.
?SYNTAX ERROR
Okay, that was disappointing. But then I realized that this was just the Commodore's way of saying, "I love you. Keep trying. We'll get through this together."
Soon I learned to speak its exotic language. There is nothing as simple, as perfect, or as elegant as BASIC. It only utilized capital letters, so everything you typed looked like shouting. This felt very natural to my seven-year-old brain.
Within a year, I was programming unique interactive games, like this one:
10 PRINT "DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY WITH LOTS OF DOO-DOO";: INPUT A$
20 IF A$ = "YES" GOTO 40
30 GOTO 10
40 PRINT "YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT HOW MUCH DOO-DOO YOU PLAY WITH"
50 GOTO 10
Soon, I was writing programs that were hundreds of lines long. Interactive adventure games with complex environments, graphics and music. There were just so many creative ways to accuse the user of playing with doo-doo!
Notice that I have not used the word code. The first time I ever heard someone use that word in reference to computer programming was years later, when I was in college. My freshman roommate was a computer science major, and he found a way to use word at least once in every sentence. "We have to code a system that tells an imaginary elevator what floor to go to. I have to write 500 lines of code by Monday. If anyone calls while I'm coding, tell them I'll get back to them when I finish all my lines of code." Come on, Josh. What are you, a military cryptographer?
My son turned eight this month, and he expressed interest in learning to write computer programs, so we downloaded this amazing bit of software called Scratch. It's a kid-friendly programming platform designed by the good folks at M.I.T. Malcolm thinks it's pretty cool, but I am OBSESSED. Somehow, for nearly 30 years, I forgot how much I loved doing this. Now I can't remember ever wanting to do anything else.
Here's something I've been working on for a little over a week. I gave it the dorkiest 80s video game title I could come up with. If you want to actually play it, download Scratch and I'll email you the file.
With warmest regards,
Zach
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