Tuesdays are made for Shaq.

Tuesday nights are the biggest "what to do?" night in the city. Sometimes, on hot nights like these, it's best to just put the rotating fan out in the living room and see what kind of shit network TV is cranking out. There was a time a few years ago where I barely watched TV at all, and quite frankly, I was really missing out.

For example, have you seen the new show where Shaq hangs out with a bunch of fat kids? It's both hilarious and heartwarming, which seems to be the way that ABC rolls nowadays (Wifeswap? Extreme Makeover? You guys know what I'm talking about).
The best part was in the very first episode, where Shaquille O'Neal knocks on the fat kids' doors, and they all pretend to know who he is (really, the only time that kids these days say Shaq's name is when they make fun of the logo on the broke-ass kid's hand-me-down gym shorts). These kids didn't live through Shaq's rap career, see the richest kid in their school rocking Shaq Attacks in three different colorways, and they certainly haven't sat through Kazaam a handful of times.
p.s. I read somewhere in one of those useless movie-fact lists that the kid from Kazaam is distantly related to Francis Ford Coppola..... There must be a special kind of disappointment attached to the fact that, while you're busting your ass filming The fucking Godfather, one of your distant relatives is out there making a flick about an ex-NBA star dressed as a genie that lives in a magical boombox.


Anyway, point is: watching a bunch of fat kids sweat like it's a hot day in hell, while Shaq goes through a wide range of over-acted emotions, is a pretty entertaining way to waste a Tuesday night. If anything, Shaq has taught us that, so long as you keep pulling nutty publicity stunts (remember Officer Shaq?) and churning out sappy reality TV, you can hold onto that last glimmer of fame forever and ever and ever.

~sarah p.

More soda for your money.

I really don't know why anyone would ever buy Powerade in bottle-form. I'm not a big Powerade drinker to begin with, but in the middle of Crystal's intense moving-day, when I may or may not have gone out drinking the night before (semi-responsibly, meaning that I wasn't out until the sun came up for once, but still enough to make me feel weak and squinty), it was time to face the facts: my electrolytes needed replenishing, son.

Back to the point. If you go over to the soda machine, you will see that you can drink several litres of Powerade for the same price as a single bottle. Sure, carrying around a Big Gulp makes you look like you're about to grow your hair into a fe-mullet, pop out a few kids and name them all after cities in Texas, but in terms of value, you really can't complain. As an absolute bonus, if you save your cup and bring it back to re-fill, they give you a discount! If you think I'm above re-filling a Big Gulp cup over and over again until the logo flakes off of the side, then you obviously don't know me very well.

7-11 employees are almost always stoned as hell, just starting the job, or perhaps mildly handicapped, so they're usually not too concerned with what you're doing within the store, so long as you pay for something before you leave. Here are a few other ways to save some money at the Sever:

1. Hide things! If you're getting some nachos, be sure to put a Caramilk underneath the chips before you load on the cheese. Put a bag of penny candies in the bottom of the paper slurpee cups (the clear cups don't work), or tuck a copy of XXL inside of a Bargain Finder so you can see what's been going on in Suge Knight's life for cheap, cheap, cheap.

2. Did you know that the chili and cheese sauce are free? I used to think that it would really be worth my value to make sure to load every sandwich, hot dog, or taquito up with chili before eating it, but then I realized that the amount of pot that it would take to make 7-11 chili taste good would break the budget regardless, so I guess that wasn't such a good idea afterall.

3. Eat as you go. If you put 50 cents worth of candy into a bag, but eat $3.00 worth while you're filling up the bag, you'll be a money-saving machine!

4. Beef jerky slides into pockets very, very easily. Nuff said.

5. Slurpees cost more than soda, so if you fill up a Big Gulp with slurpee, and then top it up with some soda, you've just saved yourself a well-deserved quarter.


My month without booze has not been going very well so far. Yesterday, the first of the month, I drank an entire bottle of wine, and today, the second, I drank an entire bottle of sake. That being said, I didn't pay for either, which means that I haven't technically broken any rules. Things could get interesting around Stampede time, when you'll probably find me outside of Stampede Liquor, offering 'favors' for cans of beer. See you there!
I hope your long weekends were perfect.

~sarah p.