First off, welcome back. Or something. I finally got off
my duff
and did most of the site redesign like I'd wanted to for a
while.
Being newly-unemployed means you have a lot more freedom
to do
that which you like, and I discovered "that which you
like"
included a great deal of playing Black & White
and
downloading old Super Nintendo games. Go fig!
The new template is still being transitioned in, so if
you see
any sections without the new letterhead-style look, don't
worry.
They'll go in eventually. If you spot any completely
glaringly
obviously incorrect things, let
me know. I mean, on the site. Not elsewhere in the
world.
I wouldn't have the time nor the patience to put up with
all that
bitching.
Anyway, once again, I offer a hearty welcome to
spatch.net, where
we talk about nothing but cereal and cats. At least, it
seems
that way often, don't it? First order of business: Sonny
the Cuckoo
Bird did indeed win the election, and there were little
packets
of gelt with Sonny's picture on them in the very next box
of Cocoa
Puffs I bought. True to form, it was chocolaty and it was
all
right. I just needed to bring a little closure to that
chapter
in American politics. Of course, when one realizes that
Sonny's
already visited 18 states in his first three months of
office,
you gotta wonder where in heck he finds the time to stamp
out
all these chocolate coins.
Second, I hopped on the Insane Bandwagon and ordered
seven packets
of 'customized' cereal from mycereal.com
during their opening promotional salvo, using a
promotional code
that rendered such cereal transactions free (no pay!) Now
you
can bitch all you want about the "demise of the dot
coms",
but frankly, if online customizable cereal ordering is the
latest
evolutionary step in e-commerce, I'm not exactly going to
start
calling it the End Times just yet. Not even when I'm
currently
looking for work because Corporate at $JOB decided to
start axing
all contractors. Not that I'm bitter.
Anyway, the customizable cereal thing is sheer genius, as
far
as I'm concerned. If I had a zillion pounds of cereal
parts hanging
around, I too would want to give you the fun opportunity
to make
your own custom mixes, ready to be downloaded and burned
onto
CD. A long time ago (1997) there was a feature of the
M&Ms
website that let you create custom color combinations for
your
own happy consuming, so if you wanted your Goth M&Ms
(all
black, or maybe some grey) then you could. But you had to
buy
in bulk back then as you
still must do now. I don't know if buying $200 worth
of all-green
M&Ms and marketing it as "chocolate Viagra"
is worth
it -- they probably have a big fat NO RESALE clause
somewhere
there, anyway. But hey! It's fun to dream.
General Mills has taken the concept and scaled it down,
ripe
for consumers who adore a novelty or five. Of course, it's
all
in the name of "creating nutritious cereal blends in
accordance
with your dietary needs" or whatnot, but really -- if
that's
what they had wanted all along, they wouldn't have
included the
marshmallows. You get a list of a few dozen cereal staples
--
flakes, puffs, rings, that kind of stuff -- and a few
goodies
to add as well, such as dehydrated fruit and crunchewy
marshmallow
bits. You're warned that components in green won't go with
components
in red (something about making things a soggy mess) and
there's
also obstensibly a level of nutritiousness that your
mixture must
approximate, or else you'll have to go back and pick
healthier
options. I guess this is to keep you from buying nothing
but marshmallow
bits, but, see, I went straight for all the chocolaty
pieces and
the site happily made me my cereal.
You see, even when faced with numerous healthy choices
with which
to construct the Ultimate Cereal For My Dietary Needs, I
created
Chocolate Sugar Bombs. I was able to pick all of the
chocolate
staples (chocolate rice puffs, chocolate corn flakes,
chocolate
rice flakes) and all the marshmallow options (chocolate
marshmallows
and regular marshmallows). The result was 7 'pouches' (1
1/2 bowls
per pouch) of incredible sugary goodness. And oy. The
chocolate.
This cereal didn't just turn the milk chocolate, it
orchestrated
a chocolate coup upon the denizens of Milkville. We're
talking
heavy-duty chocolate overload here.
And, unfortunately, it was the overload that did the
cereal in.
You could only really eat one bowl a day without risking
serious
diabetic shock. The marshmallow-to-cereal ratio was
incredibly
high, giving every bite a hint of overly-chalky
marshmallow goodness
one usually only gets by picking out all the marshmallows
from
the Lucky Charms and eating them separately. And, frankly,
the
rush was great but it wasn't completely and utterly worth
$8 a
fix. No, that's not $8 a bowl, that's $8 a supply. I can
have
more fun for $8 than that. Er. I'm pretty sure I can. So,
I guess,
while I support the technology wholeheartedly, the final
experience
left me a bit, well, strung out and twitchy. Kinda like
life,
if you think about it too long.
On a bittersweet note, it appears that Whalom Park in
Lunenburg
might not open for the season. It was supposed to on
Easter, as
is its tradition, but it didn't. Now we're hearing
possibly May,
but possibly never -- the park hasn't been hiring and
there's
still maintenance to be done on the Flyer Comet that
should've
been finished at the close of last season. It doesn't look
good.
One of the last old trolley parks (built on the end of a
trolley
line to attract fares), Whalom's an endearing old
amusement park.
There's no theming, no multimillion-dollar coaster, no
extravagant
stunt spectacular -- one of the park's bigger
entertainment draws
was the host of a local children's radio show -- but
Whalom persevered
over a century with a wonderfully old wooden roller
coaster (the
Flyer Comet) and a grand selection of flat amusement
rides, like
one of the last three Tumble Bugs remaining in the United
States,
and a Flying Scooters (from Mountain Park) that you can
snap pretty
well on a good day.
But Lunenburg is in Central Mass, off Rt 2, and deemed
"hard
to get to" by jaded metropolitan wanks. Riverside
Park, 50
miles away, went Six Flags last year, and while Six Flags
doesn't
see Whalom as competition (they're mainly concerned with
Lake
Compounce in Connecticut) the attendance at Whalom has
dropped
considerably and you can most likely attribute that to the
lure
of the Flags. Add to this numerous (mis)management changes
and
a general feeling of malaise in the air and suddenly I'm
really
worried that the park won't open. The carousel will,
however.
It was auctioned off last year, sold by the piece, and now
a group
of concerned locals are buying the pieces back as much as
they
can. The carousel works, it runs, and has some animals
back on
it. It's lovely.
But as far as I know, I took the last ride on the Flyer
Comet
on Labor Day 2000. The park announced it was closing early
that
season (usually Whalom stays open through Halloween for a
"Pumpkin
Park" event) and so Greg Reid and I hurried over to
Lunenburg
and met up with the ACErs already there. We had a few
minutes
of Extra Ride Time after the park closed at 4, and after a
particularly
nice ride on the Comet, the platform guy just stopped and
said
"Ok, we're done." There were ACErs waiting to
ride still.
Nobody complained, because, really, you respect the
platform crews
like that. Or something.
I'm glad I didn't have that ride knowing it was the Last
One.
I might've put a lot more nostalgic melancholy on the
memory than
I did. The Comet was fun, as it always was -- and how it
always
should be. If it goes, I'll sorely miss it. But at least
we were
able to say goodbye.
Take care, and don't eat anything you
shouldn't.
