Hello, and happy Friday!
It’s a beautiful, sunny day outside, we just got signed up for Damon’s company health insurance at his new job, and I’m feeling GREAT! Can’t wait to get every damn penny’s worth of the appointments we absolutely should have been going to over the past year (oops)! I’m ready to max out that deductible, baby!!
Another happy note: we haven’t had any more mice in the apartment since last Friday evening! Sure, I miss seeing their adorable little faces in our humane traps, but next week I will be very happy to move my dry goods out of the refrigerator and back into the cute little bread basket we have on the countertop! Also, eating cold Doritos is weird.
Next week, I’ll be at the 2024 Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, which I’m super excited about. It’s the second of the two conferences I signed up to go to this year, and I’m really looking forward to this one since a) it’s all about humor and b) I’m going to get to meet some more internet friends in real life!! I’ll probably have a slightly shorter newsy from there next week, but do plan to do a Deep Dive into the experience afterward.
Oh, and — before we get into today’s internet finds — I’m going to skip this month’s second Deep Dive. Overall, things have just been too busy, life-wise. On the positive side, it’s mainly because I’m doing so much other writing!! I think I could probably put something together and squeeze it in before my self-imposed deadline, but I don’t see the point in sending out something I consider subpar. Going forward, there will be either one or two deep dives a month. That’s all!
Now, back to our regularly scheduled garbage:
Hot Diggity Dawg
The Brands™ are Branding™, babe. What else is new?
First up:
And yes, before you ask — the water is, indeed, hot dog flavored.
The Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water combines the delicious and mouthwatering experience of 7-Eleven’s iconic Big Bite Hot Dog into one refreshing beverage – ketchup and mustard included. Gone are the days of alternating bites of a hot dog with sips of a beverage, now those on the go can swap the bun for bubbles.
Yeah! Just swap out eating a hot dog for drinking water that tastes like a hot dog. Do you think someone could make Chipotle flavored water? If so, I could go on an all-water diet and turn into a skeleton. That’s healthy, right?
Also I’m incredibly thrown off by the fact that the water is sparkling. Y’all can’t just can the runoff from the hot dog rollers, you have to add carbonation, too?
There’s one remaining suspicious detail here:
More details on the availability of this flavor will be revealed on April 1 – but in the meantime, the rest of the 7-Select x Miracle Seltzer lineup including Lemon Lime, Green Apple and Sweet Orange can be found at select 7-Eleven® stores.
So is it an April Fool’s joke? Are we doing those a week in advance now? I guess I can’t believe anything anyone says for the entire last week of March going forward.
And speaking of hot dogs:
Okay now — this? Objectively hilarious.
For the uninitiated, ketchup is shunned at many Chicago restaurants because it’s not part of the Official Chicago Dog Condiments™ (which are yellow mustard, chopped white onions, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato, pickled sport peppers, and celery salt). So Heinz is just giving people an option outside the restaurants, it seems.
Love the idea, hate the execution — it’s supposed to snow next week, so are tiny ketchup ice bricks going to be shooting out of these machines and hitting people in the groin? Literally wait 2 months and we’ll all have such fun with these!
Or are we also winding up for April Fool’s here?? I don’t understand the prank, unless it’s getting hit in the groin with a tiny ketchup ice brick!
Personally, I have no need for Heinz ketchup packets because I have Whataburger ketchup in my fridge (the ONLY ketchup, I’m sorry). Either way, we’ll allow this one because I’m a sucker for Chicago-centric things.
Also Chicago-centric, but unrelated: RIP to smelling chocolate in the West Loop.
Good Reads
So much good junk to read online this week!
There’s this personal essay from The Cut (boy, they’re really killing it over there, huh?) by a woman who thinks that age gaps are beneficial in a relationship because, I guess, she married a guy who is older than her — but it seems like he is also very wealthy? I believe there might be an important distinction to make there.
This Twitter thread is an amazingly hilarious birth story including dad getting accidentally escorted out of the hospital by security. And this one covers unrealistic depictions of dinosaurs due to them appearing “shrink wrapped.”
And finally, this piece from Intelligencer covering the rise of a particular type of bot on Twitter — since Elon Musk took over the site, it’s become saturated with bots — and someone actually took the time to dig in to exactly where all their “links in bio” actually lead.
Shameless Self-Promotion Corner
This week, one of the largest pieces I’ve ever written, “All the CIV VI Leaders Ranked by How Well They’d Do in the 2024 US Presidential Election,” was published in Hard Drive!
I mentioned back in early February that I’d written nearly 10,000 words in 10 days, and this was a massive part of that total. Civ VI is one of my favorite games and I know it well, but I did a fair amount of research for this piece as well — since these are all historical figures, some of the details needed a bit more expansion. I’m super proud of this one because it’s incredibly long and was very time consuming to create but features something I adore!
Also, I’ve been brought on as a freelance editor for the site, which has been a blast so far! I’m really excited to keep writing for them and editing others’ work. 😎
Randomly Selected Animal Cutie(s)
LOOK AT THE CINCINNATI ZOO HIPPO FAMILY!!
THOSE SMILES!! I love them so much.
And also:
We love a little freak weirdo!!! I wouldn’t think the way he’s sitting is comfortable for a dog at all, except that for some reason he looks perfectly content. I’m also shocked that he can chill at the table throughout a meal without trying to steal food. He’s perfect.
That’s it from me this week! I’m off to finish up a draft I have due and get started on my laundry before I go out of town next week. Have a great weekend!!
K
Have fun at Erma!!!
My cat also sits at the table, but she definitely tries to eat what we're eating.