If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, first, you have my thanks and, second, you have my pity. But you also have the knowledge that I have no love for small children in restaurants, unless they’re actually being offered on the menu. Normally, it’s the screaming, the wailing, the shrieking, the constant drilling cicada-like screeching small children seem to be legally required to create when surrounded by food. But last night, the SBM and I went out for a quick dinner and I found something that might almost be worse: giggling.

The table next to us had three children, ranging in age from maybe four to eight. I’m no good at guessing children’s ages, generally just lumping them all in the “too stupid to know any better” age group. Well, these three were definitely that stupid and all had apparently just ingested about fourteen Cokes apiece, because they spent the next forty minutes giggling non-stop. They’d knock a coat on the floor and giggle. They’d tell each other jokes and giggle. They’d sing off-key Christmas carols and giggle. They’d play hide and seek around the table and giggle. Giggle giggle giggle giggle giggle.

The parents, of course, were blissfully unaware of any of this, tuning it out with their built-in parental defenses and calmly enjoying their dinners and chatting quietly. In fact, the only time they acknowledged the over-excited and hyperactive trio was when they ordered each one an ice-cream dessert, thereby ensuring their sugar levels would reach stratospheric heights and the giggling would reach Biblical proportions. We paid the bill in a hurry and fled for the safety of the night.

 I know some people say that the laughter of children is like music, but that’s only because they’ve never sat next to it for the better part of an hour.

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So I’m pouring myself a glass of milk for breakfast this morning and notice there’s a sticker on the side of the milk jug advertising General Mills cereals. I take a look, wondering what’s so damned important about their cereals that they just have to tell me about it before I’ve even had a shower. The ad shows several boxes of cereal and, screaming in large, bold type, the message: “Whole Grains GUARANTEED!”

So?

I figure there’s got to be more to it than that, so I read the fine print and, no, there isn’t. They simply guarantee that every serving of their cereal will contain at least a certain percentage of whole grains. Well, gee. Whoopee. I find it hard to get all excited that your product, made entirely from grain to begin with, is going to contain a certain amount of grain that’s whole. That’s kind of like bottled water hyping that it “Contains Over 50% Hydrogen!”

And then I think, how would I even call them on this? They’re guaranteeing a certain percentage of whole grains; how do I know? What, am I supposed to pop into the lab on the way to work? Have them run a chemical spectroanalysis or however the hell you check for the presence of whole grain goodness? Five grand in lab fees so I can maybe get back my three bucks if they don’t live up to their claim?

You want to guarantee something useful? How about “Cereal box guaranteed to be at least nine-tenths full when you open it instead of having a full six inches of empty space on top”? I’d buy your cereal then, whole grains or not.

I guarantee it.

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Okay, new rule: If you bring your small child to a restaurant where I’m dining, and the kid starts squalling, and you do nothing to silence or remove it, when the waiter brings me my plate and warns me that it’s really hot, I’m going to bring the plate to your table and set it on your kid’s head.

Seriously. I am done messing around with you people.

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The SBM (that’s Soon-to-Be Mrs.) and I went grocery shopping the other night and there, between the bread aisle and the canned vegetables, I came face to face with utter horror.

There was a cardboard display stocked full of various lunchbag snackables. The display’s endcaps were shaped to look like the front and back of a school bus. Back-to-school savings, good and fine as far as it goes. Trouble is, the artwork for the school bus looks like something out of Lovecraft.

I mean, look at this bus driver. Sloped shoulders, vacant stare, cretin hat, fish lips, right hand that appears to float in mid-air which I guess allows for the bizarre thumb-in-the-back grip on the door lever. Is this the guy you want transporting your little treasures to the schoolhouse?

And this… kid, I guess. What the hell is this thing? Arms appear to be jutting out of his rib cage. Hands don’t even appear to be attached to his arms. Freaky, mutant head resting on top of some abomination of a neck, as he makes the face of the eternally damned and causes untold nightmares for generations to come.

And to top it all off, he’s a ginger.

This is supposed to be enticing? This is supposed to encourage impulse buys? Are people actually supposed to look at this, find it delightful and amusing, and be drawn to it in order to select from the offered items? I have no idea what products were even for sale, so transfixed was I by the freakish horrors beckoning to me from the school bus windows.

I don’t know, maybe it’s a proven advertising fact that bad artwork makes you want to buy Twinkies.

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“Hey, Phaedrus. C’mere a sec.”
“What’s up, Heracles?”
“Got an idea to bounce off you.”
“Shoot.”
“You know all this wheat stuff we got?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we got a lot of it.”
“Like a golden sea, its waves flowing in the wind.”
“I told you, don’t say stuff like that. Anyway, tastes nasty, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Okay, well, here’s what I’m thinking. We get a couple rocks, right? And we use the rocks to grind the stuff into a powder. And we do that to a lot of wheat. Get a whole bowl full of powder.”
“Why?”
“I’m getting to it. Now, we take that big bowl of powder, and we add, let’s see, some water from the stream, and… some of the white stuff you get from squeezing a cow, and… what else we got? A couple of those things that come out of chickens’ butts.”
“Dude!”
“I know, but stick with me. We mix all that up, and then we add some of that powdery sweet stuff along with, I don’t know, some dried-out beer foam. Let that sit out in the sun and see if it gets big and puffy.”
“Why would it get big and puffy?”
“I don’t know, but it might. So if it does, we’ll have a big, gooey, puffy blob.”
“We’re gonna eat that?”
“No, no. We’re gonna punch it down and let it get puffy again.”
“What the hell for?”
“I don’t know. Just ’cause. Anyway, do that, then we get a big stick, right? And we roll the goo flat, using some of the extra wheat powder so it doesn’t adhere to the stick, then… Oh! Then fold the goo back up, put it into a container, and then cook that over a fire for several hours and then eat that.”
“… Why don’t we just cut off a section of the cow and eat that instead?”
“Yeah, that’s probably easier.”

Seriously, how did anyone figure this out?

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That’s the sound one makes upon tasting Starbucks’ new Vivanno smoothie drink thing. Let me state, right up front, that the only reason I even tried one of these things was we had a coupon for a free one and the fiancee wasn’t going to forego her Frappuccino to try it. Generally, I regard Starbucks as something to be avoided at all costs, an expensive pretentious warehouse, full of yuppies who think drinking overpriced lattes and tapping on their laptops in public makes them bohemian or something.

Anyway, the best way to describe the flavor of a chocolate-banana Vivanno smoothie drink thing is: Eating an overripe banana that’s gone mushy on the counter and has been dredged in chalk. Seriously. These things are awful. There is no chocolate taste at all. What you get is a thick, gritty, somehow slimy drink that tastes of banana and old sneaker. To make one, they throw an entire banana in a blender with some milk, blend the hell out of it, add ice, a bunch of protein powder and some squirts of what I can only assume is motor oil, blend that, and then stand back to enjoy the face you make when you take a sip.

Even the fiancee, who loves Starbucks, tried it and proclaimed it heinous. We dumped it down the sink when we got home and, while I can’t conclusively prove a connection, the next day there was an earthquake in China. I’m just saying…

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Last week I went to T.G.I. Friday’s on a Tuesday and Ruby Tuesday on a Friday. I feel like I’ve gotten away with something.

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The fiancée and I went out to dinner the other night. Nothing fancy, just hit the Olive Garden for some breadsticks and pasta. Beats cooking. So we did our wait in the lobby and finally the little buzzer thingie went off to let us know our table was ready. They took us in the back and gave us a booth. As we sat down, I noticed a couple sitting in the booth behing my fiancée. Nothing remarkable, just noted there were people there.

So we look at the menus, pick our dishes, start devouring salad and breadsticks. I’m talking to the fiancé and, looking past her head, I notice that the man seated behind her, with his back to us, has an iPod-style earpiece in his ear. I roll my eyes, figuring he’s one of those cell-phone douches who never takes his combo earpiece and mic off in case he has an important call and can’t be bothered to stop shoveling food into his face before disrupting everyone else’s dinner. But at least he’s not talking into it now. In fact… he’s not talking at all. I realize he hasn’t said a word to his companion the entire time we’ve been here.

Now I’m intrigued. I keep an eye on the duo and, sure enough, neither of them are talking. Understand, this isn’t some elderly couple who have been married for nine hundred years, heard each other’s stories over and over, and just have nothing else to say to one another while waiting for death. This is a youngish, mid-30s couple who should still have lots to talk about. Yet here they are, at dinner, completely ignoring each other. Looking closer, I see that he’s not wearing a single cell-phone earpiece, but a pair of earphones. Is he listening to his iPod at dinner? In a restaurant? Man, his wife must be super-peeved. Wait… I can see, barely through her long hair, that she’s wearing headphones, too. These two came out to dinner just to listen to music?

Now that shows the problem with jumping to conclusions. I had the situation totally wrong. Turns out they did not come to a restaurant just to listen to personal music players. They actually came to Olive Garden to watch movies. By craning my neck a bit, I could see that they were both watching movies, he on a PSP, she on an iPod. Each person was holding their device in one hand and eating with the other. And I had to wonder: Why? Why would you go out to a semi-decent restaurant, with a loved one, and then just stare at an electronic screen the entire night? Why not just order dinner to go and eat in front of the TV if you’re so desperate to watch something? Could they just not agree on what movie to watch? Can you be so tired of someone’s company that you can’t even suffer through a single dining experience without an electronic diversion?

They left slightly before we did, having never spoken a single word to each other. The waitress even had to wave to get their attention when it came time to pay the check. I watched them walk out, no longer staring at their devices, but still wearing their headphones and not speaking. I reached across the table and took my fianceée’s hand. She smiled back at me and we were quiet for a while, too.

Somehow, that was okay.

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I have an idea for a new restaurant that is going to make me rich. My restaurant is going to become the default destination for couples everywhere. Not for the ambiance, not for the food, not for the price, but for the name.

You know the drill. It’s Friday night, you’ve both worked your eight hours, neither one of you wants to cook, there’s nothing in the fridge that looks good, so you start discussing places to go eat. And the conversation always goes like this:

“So, what do you want?”
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
“I don’t know… Italian?”
“Enh, I had Italian for lunch. Chinese?”
“Not really in the mood for Chinese. Mexican?”
“Too fatty. How about Thai?”
“Essentially Chinese. American?”

And on and on it goes, and by the time you do finally settle on a place, it’s an hour later, you’re both starved and cranky, no one enjoys their dinner that much since you both feel like you settled on the other person’s choice which is mathematically impossible, and a little more magic dies from your relationship. There may be a divorce.

But I’m here to change all that! How, you ask? With a restaurant that serves most basic genres of food and has a simple name: I Don’t Know. This is going to save so much time and more than one relationship. Now the conversation can go like this:

“So, what do you want?”
“I don’t know…”
“Perfect! Get in the car!”

And the discussion is over. The decision is made. Boom. Done. Finito. And your significant other can’t even get upset because they picked the restaurant! It’s perfect! And with my restaurant serving most nationalities of food, they should be able to find something at least edible so they don’t even feel cheated.

If this takes off, I plan to open a chain of eateries with names like What Do You Want, You Decide, and What Are You Hungry For.

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My local Kroger grocery store has, in their deli section, a large sign reading “Cheese Cutting Station.” As happy as I am that they’re asking people to limit their flatulence to a designated area, I’m not too sure that’s what I want going on behind me while I’m trying to buy some salami.

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