[un]fun size

i have had this thought on my mind for quite awhile, but halloween seems like a fitting time to share my thoughts on this particular topic. why in the world is the itty-bitty, miniature sized candy called 'fun size'?! it is anything but fun, in my opinion, more like laughable size, or tantalize size, or disappointment size, or maybe even evil size because it either torments you when you only get to eat one, or you end up eating half a bag of them because you only get a bite at a time and it's so unsatisfying that you must have another, thereby inadvertently gorging yourself on evil size candy bars. they are anything but fun, they make me want to pout.

even as a kid i realized the absurdity and irony of the name! i remember thinking to myself that if i was to make a fun size candy bar that actually lived up to it's name, it would be gigantic, like a loaf of bread or something! now that sounds like fun. and i still think along those lines. i would love to need a dolly to carry my fun size twix from the car to my house, then have a separate table dedicated to holding the thing because there wouldn't be room anywhere else.

of course, i guess in the end, my stomach would still hate me just as much whether i ate half a bag of bite-sized candies or a few servings of my body pillow-sized whatchamacallit. but this has never been about my stomach. obviously. i mean, it's candy we're talking about here, and if the stomach had anything to say about it, i imagine i wouldn't eat any of it. nay, this is about the psychological victory and excitement of having fun with candy. you can't deny that you yourself was excited over the prospect of having a piece of candy so large that you needed to wheel it in, but when you think of it, logistically, it's no different than having bags of little candies. there is just an emotional/psychological enthusiasm that accompanies the prospect of having a ridiculously large candy that, in all actuality, you probably would never even be able to finish. the whole 'your eyes are bigger than your stomach' dilemma that so plagues us whenever we walk into a grocery store hungry, or to a buffet that we end up being rolled out of by a large group of oompa-loompas.

i have come to the conclusion that perhaps there is more here than meets the eye. possibly the makers of these devious little candies know me better than i think, and they understand my love of legos and putting little pieces together to make bigger structures. perhaps they are suggesting i have some fun with their little blocks of delicious and stack them atop each other, let them sit in the sun a bit and get a little on the melty-drippy-gooey side, then gently place the whole mess into the fridge to solidify into one monster candy bar that is shaped and truly fun size!

i guess, since i hold little hope of seeing the name changed to something more realistic of its face value, i will have to content myself with this absurdly unlikely truth, and gain what joy i can from it. and now that i think of it, that actually does sound really fun.

traffic dooms the earth

i utterly hate commuting and driving in traffic (as if anyone enjoys it). i think the worst thing about it is that it makes me not want to drive at all afterwords. not even for something important, like getting food. i can just waste away on the couch, listening to the amplified fish tank in my stomach, but no amount of complaining will force me to get back in the car and get food. (this is all assuming, of course, that i am not at my own house, or that i have no food in the house, both scenarios are not uncommon.) that may seem somewhat minor, not willing to eat, but i love eating and tasty food. for something to dismay me so much as to dissuade me from even eating carries some real weight and is extremely influential. its almost kind of scary. if it could impact me so heavily as to steal the power of my raging appetite, what else could it accomplish? or not accomplish for that matter.

of course, this seeming dilemma really only impacts me, so far, and presents very little, if any, concern for anyone other than myself. or those unfortunate souls who happen to be within voice distance that i am nagging to get food for me. suppose there was some scenario in which my complete reluctance to drive would drastically impact the lives of others? and not just a few others, but all others, the entirety of mankind. what if there was a scenario that held global repercussions that hinged upon me dragging my half-dead brain back into my car and driving? perhaps some rift in the time-space continuum threatened to unravel the laws of physics at an exponential rate and the only thing that could stop it was for me to drive my car to the next city to re-balance our plane of existence. what then?! i guess that in such a situation, more than a handful of people would pay acute attention to my apathy and utter dismay. maybe then people would understand just how dangerous it is to live in a society and culture that is ok with allowing this system of transportation that constantly saps the soul from a large percentage of its denizens. the underpinnings upon which such a system is based will surely result in its own miserable demise if something doesn't change with urgency! any experience that drives a man to such extremes of indifference should gain the attention of any politician that has even the most minute truth behind his or her claims of caring for his or her constituency.

or maybe someone can just get me some in-n-out next time i'm re-sensitizing after an hour of 3 mph.