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:)

I laugh at very few commercials, and even fewer of those are from Quiznos, but I freaking love this one. The kid looks like a young Adam Sandler to me, plus the way the oven intones ‘say it sexy’ slays me.

Download it here.

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This afternoon, I was driving home from Hollys doctors appointment when I saw a car on the highway. It was an older car…maybe a 1990 Shadow, something like that. Paint was faded, a bit rusty and it was in the slow lane gathering speed, chugging along as if it were running on repurposed fryer oil.

But what caught my eye was the bumper sticker affixed to the left rear of the car. It was blue with white letters, and simply read “I can’t be broke, I still have checks”.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ok, yeah, I know you have. It’s been around for ages and is one of those lines that elicit a polite smile and an inner groan when you hear or see it, kind of like ‘someone has a case of the Mondays”.

But what struck me about this were a few things.

First and foremost was the fact that someone had obviously been so enamored with this joke that they had felt the need to see out a bumper sticker. Or, vice-versa, had seen the bumper sticker (presumably in a convenience store or perhaps a Gatlinburg gift shop) and been so motivated by the wit and wisdom of those eight words that they had not only decided to buy it, but had whipped their wallet off its chain, plopped down their debit card, gone out to the Shadow, rubbed off a clean spot with the sleeve of their best Dickies and by God put that sonofabitch right on the car! Oh man, I can not WAIT until the guys at work see that – not to mention all the tail I’ll get at the VFW this weekend!

But aside from the joy of the discovery, purchase and installation of the bumper sticker, there was more on my mind. The sticker was alone on the car.

There were no other stickers extolling the virtues of a specific model of truck…there were no cartoon boys micturating on the competitions logo. No tributes to Dale, no somber memorials to long lost relatives who had led such promising lives that they deserved, nay, demanded a rear windshield salute detailing their expiration date. There wasn’t even a proud declaration of the fact that little Susie had managed to make the honor roll at her school, despite having a parent with such a severe case of social ineptness they thought the aforementioned topical sticker was worthy of public display.

Which begs the question: what was so striking about this bumper sticker that it caused the person who applied it to do so? The obvious answer is that the person is renowned for their poor banking skills. In fact, I would dare say that when this individuals friends told stories about his misadventures that they frequently ended with ‘and all he got was a misdemeanor charge and had to pay back the bank’.

This person became so enamored with their own celebrity that they embraced it. They want the entire world to know that when it comes time to party – when the BP is about to close and it’s 11:30 on a Saturday night – that it doesn’t matter if the ATM is putting out or not, we’re getting that beer. Come hell or high overdraft fees, that checkbook is going to smell like a brewery by the time we head off to church tomorrow.

But then again, maybe the person was not a purveyor of rubber currency. Perhaps instead she was a pure rebel inside but bluster on the outside. She wants to be bad but can’t quite bring herself to do it, no matter how cheap that garden set is at WalMart. She just can’t make that leap and write that check. But oh, how she wants to. Instead, she sees this awesomely passive aggressive bumper sticker and smiles a Cathy like smile, “Oh dear – that is SOOOOO me“, she exclaims to her cats.

Another consideration is that the person may have gotten the bumper sticker as part of a set…it could very well have been a gift from a well meaning benefactor, perhaps a financial advisor of some sort. The sticker, a hat, a tshirt and a beer cozy with the very same credo – all in one box! Thinking about that makes me smile – in fact, I can almost see the pride in our heroes eyes as he strolls out the door of his hand built log cabin wearing the hat and shirt – his Bud draped in polyurethane glory. The triumphant moment when he applies the sticker and stands up, admiring it as he walks away, scratching his ass with the bill of the hat.

Glorious.

Finally, the question becomes “why is this sticker still there?”.

I mean, let’s face it – the car is a clunker. The sticker was faded and peeling on the corners. It’s obvious that this wasn’t a recent purchase. So what could possibly be the reasoning behind keeping it on the car? Maybe it is acting as an adhesive, keeping the bumper attached to the vehicle itself…or perhaps the super strong glue they use in bumper stickers was so damned good that they had tried to remove it at some point (presumably when they sobered up) and had found that in attempting to remove it that they were in fact creating a rip in the time-space continuum itself.

Whatever the reason, I guess I’ll never know. But it makes me happy to think that somewhere out there is a person who has it made. That no matter how bad things get, be it expensive gas, foreclosed home, lost job, no family or friends – well, they aren’t worried.

They have a motto and they’re sticking to it.

I was looking for a way to create a Search Folder tonight in Outlook, when I decided to try and treat it like a modern client instead of the crappy behemoth it actually is. I wanted to find all message sent by me that were one month old.

None of the defaults worked, however, and the documentation is spartan at best. But to my surprise, natural language worked. I can now see email sent exactly 1 month ago..perfect for quick followups.

I’ve tried several different combinations and so far, so good. This is an excellent way to parse old email and see what you may have missed or note any trends.

Hope this helps someone.
:)

[EDIT] Kind of works in Entourage also: