Readers Ask

I got a series of excellent questions from alert reader Bee Repartee. So here they are!!

•A good cell provider (I have tmob and they have been good but $$$ so I'm trying to find cheaper. Cricket?)

There are no "good" cell providers. They all suck in some way. Now I have ATT. I can tell you what I like about ATT. And that is.......uhhhh.....rollover minutes? Oh yea and the 3G network. That is cool. Sort of.

And now for what sucks about ATT. I seem to get dropped calls. The thing is I do not know which end the drop is coming from. I also get spotty coverage offshore. Of course most normal people stay on land with their phones. Cell networks are designed to cover land, not really water. So I can not really fault ATT here.

Anyhow I would recommend Sprint or ATT. These two providers seem to have the best mobile data services. ATT does have a nifty family plan however. I suppose they all do. For what it is worth, I think T-Mobile and Nextel are the worst. I have known many people who had problems with these two providers.

There is ONE exception to this. Work phones. If your boss is thinking of getting you a phone really try to sell the boss on Nextel. This way you can turn off the phone when you are "on call" and then claim later that you never got the calls. Or voice mails. Nextel is just shitty enough that this is believable.

•How much apple sucks for making a new and improved iPhone when you just bought one less than a year ago.

A WHOLE LOT!! Apple hyped that phone to no end. And then almost right away they lower the price for the "good" version and stop making the lower memory version. And now they are releasing an improved version less than a year later? What bullshit. The FIRST i-phone should have worked on the 3G network, not the older slower Edge network. And did you know that the i-phone will not work with stereo bluetooth headphones? What the hell is up with that? They bill it up as an i-pod phone thing, so you can make calls AND use it as an MP3 player - and then they do not allow it to work with stereo bluetooth??? What bullshit. This is why I did not buy one.

•Why Julian Mcmahon continues to wax his eyebrows like a chick.

Maybe he IS a chick? A really ugly one. Either that or he is into Scientology and thinks that L Ron Hubbard demands that his followers to wax their eyebrows in order to please the evil lord xenu?? Who knows.

•What McDonald means by 'chicken pieces and parts' for their chicken nugget ingredients (in English, I'm sure this means beaks and bird sphincters.)

You do not want to know. Just eat the nuggets and try to not think about what pieces and parts of chickens they use.

By the way, have you noticed there are exactly THREE shapes that chicken nuggets come in? Really. Check it out next time you get some. These three shapes just happen to be the perfect shapes to get all the sauce out of the little containers that come with the nuggets.

I notice shit like that.

Ask The Iguana

I hope everyone had a good three day weekend.

I am still not sure it is proper to say "happy Memorial Day", because the day is not exactly as festive as say....Labor Day. It is a day of remembrance for those who fought, and died, for the Nation. Kind of heavy subject matter there.

Anyway, Sunday was a success. The floating party was an excellent idea. And since the idea was ALL MINE I can take full credit for it.

But it was a long day. I was not done until 11:30 PM. The day started at 7 AM. That is a long day.

And for some reason, there are green olives and other stuff stuck in my live well drain. The boat has five configurations. Party configuration, diving / snorkeling configuration, camping configuration, working configuration, and fishing configuration. Only one of these configuration involves t he use of the live well as a live well. All other configurations use the live well as a garbage hatch.

Anyhow, there were many bottle caps, plastic and metal, that got tossed in there. Also, grapes and olives managed to get tossed in there. Now one would think that objects like grapes and olives would have been consumed. But not so. Grapes and olives also do not count as "garbage" and may be tossed overboard. Why not.

Anyhow, I have to find a wet/dry vac and clear the live well drain. There could be a bottle cap or something stuck in there.

And now, time for another installment of ASK THE IGUANA!!!

Todays question involves the boor of choice for the massive floating party. I went with Sam Adams Light.

Now there were some good reason for this choice. The first being that Sam Adams Light is just plain good. It is not like other "light" beers. It has a decent color, and tastes good. Like a real beer. Not a full bodied real beer, but I would classify it as real.

The second reason is I could not find any Summer Ale. When it becomes available, Sam Adams Summer Ale is the official boat beer of the summer. It is crisp and refreshing and has a little lemon flavor in it and is just plain good. Perfect for a hot summer day.

The regular Sam Adams is just a bit "much" for a day on the boat. Yea I like the stuff, but out on the boat it can get to you. Forget about Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It is way too much beer for the boat in the summer. It makes a better winter boat beer. Or a camping configuration boat beer - if consumed at the camp site or at night while at anchor if the boat is the camp site.

So I went with Sam Adams Light. And I found out it is a light beer. I had something like 9 of the things. They must be light to drink that many on the boat.

The calorie content of the light beer had nothing to do with anything. Yea light beer has less calories than regular beer. So lets say regular Sam has 160 calories and the light version has 124 calories.

Yes, I just looked it up. Google is your friend. The difference in smart people and idiots is Google. Smart people know you can Google almost anything and get an answer. Most of the time. Smart people also know not to use the first result and can sort through the bullshit.

Anyway, lets say that I drink 6 regular Sam Adams. That is 6 x 160, so I would have drank 960 calories.

WOW! That is a lot! So let me switch to light beer. And drink 9 of them, because they are light! So that is 9 x 124 for a grand total of 1,116 calories.

See this is why so many people have issues with weight loss. It is not really what you eat, it is matter of how much you consume. A calorie is a calorie - no matter if it comes from a carrot or a slice of cheese cake. Granted, you can eat a few pounds of carrots or one small slice of cheese cake and get the same calories - but everyone knows that.

I once knew someone who was WAY over weight. Actually it was a friend of my mother. Anyway lets just call her "Fat Lady X". Now Fat Lady X was happy when they started to sell Snackwell cookies. Because they had 1/3 the fat or calories or whatever of other cookies.

So Fat Lady X reasoned that she could eat THREE BAGS of those cookies, or one bag of Chips Ahoy.

BZZZZZZ!!!! WRONG! Can everyone see the illogic here? And who the hell eats three bags of cookies in one sitting? Holy shit! Is that even possible?

So anyway, the light beer choice had nothing to do with calories. I actually consumed more calories because I could drink more of the light beer.

For the next boat mission, Ill probably load up in the snorkeling / dive configuration.

Ask The Iguana

Welcome to the first installment of "Ask The Iguana". Today's question is a two part question from Dusty and Ba Doozie.

Ba Doozie asked "Why are bars so dark? I could never figure that out, these days, the new micro brewery's etc are light and bright and full of sprite"

Excellent question! A good bar will be dark because when you are drinking, light hurts your eyes. You want there to be enough light to see where you are walking, but not any more than that. As you drink more, your eyes adjust to the darkness. So if the bar is too dark for you, then you have not drank enough. If a place is set up for drinking, it will be dark. The lights will be dim. This is just how it is. Sometimes the bartenders even have small flashlights with them. Sometimes I bring a small flashlight so I can see what the hell my tab is. But I like these places. The dim lights give the place a laid back sort of feeling. You know, what is the hurry to leave? Stay for another beer! It is so bright outside, and nice and cool and dark in here!

But dark bars have their own dangers. You need to be VERY VERY careful who you hook up with. Really extra super careful. Cause the dim lights can really mess you up. What looks like a not so bad idea may turn into a VERY bad idea in brighter light. So be careful.

Now for Dusty's question! "Who drinks in the damn dark? Nothing like tripping over shit when your drunk".

Well I drink in the dark. Not total darkness, but like I said before low ambient light is much more pleasing to a drinker than bright light. The soft dim light puts you in the right drinking mood. And when the lights go up you know that means "time to leave". How do you know it is time to leave if the lights are bright all the time? You don't. Drinkers take their cues by the brightness of a place.

The place has enough light so you do not trip over stuff. And you can even read the menu! There is just enough light for that. But no more. It is a truly great place.

If you have a question for The Iguana, put it in a comment. If I like the question and I have nothing else to post about - your question may be featured next!

And now I will leave you with this wacky story. You have to admire the commies. Really. They are trying to tap into the western tourist market. There is a lot of money there! And they try so hard. They get a gold star for trying. But they just can not get it right.

Case and point - China's newest "tourist attraction". The world's largest.......public bathroom! Yes you read that right. China wants to create a "toilet culture" where people can listen to music and watch TV while they piss on something. The giant toilet, with over 1,000 stalls, is located in an area that sees a lot of foreigners. Officials claim people will be "very, very happy" after using the toilet. There are over 1,000 stalls on three floors. Some are even in an open air area.

Here are three of the over 1,000 pissers. I do not think the Pope is going to be using them anytime soon. Is that a Virgin Mary pisser? Those wacky Chinese! The toilets under a roof are even better. They are everywhere. Along the stairs. Along the walls. All over the place.

And yes, there is a ladies room too.

The Chinese plan to build a supermarket nearby that will sell toilet related items. Toilet souvenirs? Are they serious?

To the Chinese Officials I say this. You guys have the right idea. Tourist like to go to the "world's largest __________". But you guys need to work more on the concept. Next time build the World's largest roller coaster. Or the world's largest wall. WAIT! You already have that.

Nobody really wants to go all the way to China just to piss in the world's largest public bathroom.

New Iguana Music, almost as bad as some of the toilets in China.