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I was watching 30 Rock the other day (fantastic show, by the way) and a speech practice that was used that made a character purposefully look like a douche bag for comedic effect. Now, I'm all for laughing at douche bags, but even this practice makes me leery because a friend did this very same thing "ironically" recently. As far as I know, he is not otherwise a douche bag, (I have never seen him use a Bluetooth headset or cheer for a Boston sports team, for instance).

I have previously discussed shortening phrases and I think we can all agree that I was totally right: shortening phrases is an affront to God. Now, looking a little bit further, like we saw on 30 Rock, there is a practice of shortening words, too. The character on the shjow asked his personal assistant to make room on his "schedj" for a date with Liz Lemon. Good for him, but his assistant's proper response should have been, "If you ever say 'schedj' again, I will walk out of here in two shakes of the lammie's tail." He later does, and she does not quit. At least, not on camera. (I sometimes like to fill in what happens in other scenes not shown for the ancillary characters during commercials, and in my version of the episode she quits by peeing on his shoes.)

Other words that follow this patter are sitch (situation), natch (naturally), offish (official[ly]), delish (delicious), and so on. My mom has always had a problem with poli(tical) sci(ence), but my brother deicded to major in it. College class names are trickier, too, because they have long and absurd names that probably need to be shortened. My college classes all had nicknames (the most delicious of which was Meatballs), beyond the ordinary things like calc, chem and freshman comp. For whatever reason, these were never particularly offensive to me. Although, differential equations was a battleground between two factions: those enlightened scholars who favored "D.E." and the rampaging and uncouth barbarians who pushed for Diffey Q. Clearly the latter are fools and deserve no more of our attention.

This could have also probably been filed under dealbreakers. I don't quite know how you justify a pronunciation as an invention, or you better believe this would be in the terrorists' aresenal. Feel free to add any shortened words that deserve to be punishable by waterboarding in the comments and watch 30 Rock this week.

Moments of truth

The thing that I had scheduled to accomplish for the day in the lab turned out to be a dead end, so I took care of a few really exciting things: getting a haircut and another gallon of milk. There was another twist to this food gathering trip, though. Cereal. I have decided, after a lot of soul searching, that I enjoy shopping for cereal. I don't really like paying for it; I'm still convinced it's a bit of a ripoff. Bananas or eggs are for more cost effective, breakfastwise. However, eggs take a bit of effort in the morning and you can't relive your childhood with bananas. Unless you're from Costa Rica.

So, as I stroll through the breakfast aisle at the grocery store, I survey the dry goods before me: the bags of generic filth on the left (with names like Jolly-Os and Cocoa Bits), Pop Tarts on the right, and the premium breakfast foods all in between, I had to decide where on that spectrum my early morning desires lie. It was a tough choice, I did look at the bakery for cinnamon rolls as well, but I decided that there were only six of them and I'd either eat two a day and feel like a cow as I try to engineer things, or the last couple would taste like cinnamon flavored rocks. Although they sound like they have potential, that's not really for me. I had to pass, sadly. The Pop Tarts lost me immediately as they were out of the brown sugar cinnamon flavor. There are a few others that would suffice as a secondary, but it would have to be in conjunction with the BSC. No dice.

As I mentioned, cereals are a gigantic ripoff if they are not on sale. Honey Nut Cheerios, which may be my favorite cereal, cost like $18 a box. Unless I can dive into said box, Scrooge McDuck style, I'm just not willing to pay what that cereal costs. There were a few possibilities on sale, though, which would test my mettle. You see, there are healthy cereals which do taste good, and there are sugary sweet cereals which taste amazing. There's an upper ceiling for oats, while the deliciousness of marshmallows in milk knows no bounds. So, I was presented with a dilemma: get something good for you, like Special K or Smart Start, or something just good, like Lucky Charms or Cookie Crisp.

(Also, did you know that they have a chocolate Lucky Charms? I can only imagine what went on in the lab where they made that cereal. "Sir, our experiments to make sugar coated sugar have failed." "Blast, we need to figure out a way to add sweetness to our cereals. Think about the children! All those kids, missing out on all that potential tastiness." "Sir! We've done it! Chocolate Lucky Charms?" "You mean making the marshmallows chocolate?" "No, the healthy parts." "BRILLIANT!")

I toyed with the idea of being responsible and getting Smart Start. But they came in varieties which I don't think apply to me -- should I have gotten the antioxidants or healthy heart kind? I was paralyzed at that point. So I looked over at Special K, which has red berries and also a chocolate variety. I have red berries now, and I have been pretty happy with it. I'll keep it in mind. Then, on sale for the same price, were the 'Charms and the 'Crisp. I caved. I got the Lucky Charms. I had to, really. It had Spiderman on the cover and I've kind of been wanting Lucky Charms for a long time. And besides, they're magically delicious.

I didn't get the chocolate ones. I don't think I could have handled it, I'm not 6 anymore. But tomorrow morning, while I'm eating them, I can pretend!