No, not the mayonnaise. I’m talking about actual food - like, the best foods out there.

I’m a simple person when it comes to food. I’m not big on most of the “gourmet,” over-spiced stuff. If I want a burger, I want someone to chuck some ground beef on the grill and call it a day; if it takes you longer to season the beef and make the patty than it does to cook it, you’re overdoing it.

It occurred to me the other day that Big Kat might be one of the top 10 candy bars of all time. I’m a big fan of the regular Kit Kat, but super-sizing the thing is brilliance. Now if they’d only sell a super-sized full Kit Kat (rather than just one Kit Kat stick). I may go to the store after work and get a bunch of Big Kats just to put them together into one big Kit Kat.

With that thought in mind, I started thinking about what my favorite foods are. Like, is there any food that I would be really sad if someone said I could never eat it again? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

Shrimp. I love shrimp. Not trying to sound like Private Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue, I love pretty much anything with shrimp in it. My favorite has to be the coconut shrimp, though. Very tasty.

Cheesecake. Plain or flavored, doesn’t matter. Any kind of cheesecake. More is better. I am partial to strawberries, so if you have some, throw ‘em on.

Bread, particularly sourdough. I can eat a loaf of sourdough bread just by itself as a meal. Nothing on it, just the bread. I’m also partial to King’s Hawaiian.

Cheetos. Oh, yeah. The crunchy ones are better than the puffy ones.

Hawaiian Punch. Way better than any old Kool-Aid.

Pizza. I’m a meat-lover’s fan, but I’d go with your standard pepperoni or Hawaiian style any day. Hawaiian on white sauce is my latest favorite.

Frappuccino. Venti mocha Frappuccino == ambrosia.

Tapioca pudding. Lots of folks don’t like this because of the texture, but I think that’s one of the primary reasons I do like it. I can sit down with a giant tub of this and finish it before you blink.

I’m sure there are others, but those are what I’m thinking of right now. What did I miss?

Last Friday I bought a brand new blender because our old blender was leaking and pretty much weak (good luck crushing ice or even making milkshakes). The new blender rules. After making some piña coladas, though, I finished up a batch, rinsed out the jar, and while drying it I stabbed my right index finger on the blade. That sucked, and hurt quite a bit.

Minor detour: Our dishwasher sucks. Ever since we moved in it hasn’t washed dishes for crap. Okay, now we continue.

Last night, Jenn and I got so fed up with the stupid dishwasher that we were considering just using it like a drying rack until we had money to get a new one, when I reached down in and pushed the turning-spray-thing in the bottom an dit barely turned. On further investigation, I saw a rubber band wrapped around it, causing it to not move too well. I reached in and started untangling the rubber band, scraped my finger a little, and pulled out the rubber band.

By the time I got the rubber band out, I noticed there was this berry red juice all over in the bottom of the dishwasher and all over my hands… and it was coming out of my right index finger. That was when I noticed the gigantic hunk of broken glass in the bottom of the dishwasher that I had cut myself on - not scraped, cut.

Now it’s today, and I’m typing (barely) with four fingers on my right hand as I avoid touching anything with my (now throbbing painfully) index finger.

Now that Angel’s over, I just might have to sneak some time on the company plotter.

Last night I watched the series finale of Angel.

I’m not an avid TV watcher. I have certain shows I watch - CSI, Survivor, Alias - but I don’t usually get sucked in to a show. I mean, if last season of Survivor was it, I’d just move on with life. I was a fan of the whole Buffy thing ever since the original movie, though, and I watched the Buffy TV show from beginning to end, all seven seasons. There’s a certain sci-fi soap opera need that’s filled in me by Buffy. Long about the time the writing in Buffy started to wane, they brought in the Angel spin-off series, and I was an avid watcher of that for its entire five-year run. Angel was a little edgier, and while some of the stories weren’t as cool as others, they tended towards the sci-fi (while Buffy seemed to veer off towards the soap opera).

When Buffy ended, the show had sort of reached its natural conclusion. They had fought all there was to fight, and the characters had come to sort of a point where they needed to move on. The way they ended was perfect - a big bang, the end of one story and the beginning of another chapter in the characters’ lives as they rode off into the sunset.

With Buffy over, I was glad to have Angel around to continue that mythos - the characters crossed over from Buffy, the universe had continuity… it was like Buffy never ended, it just had a sequel. An even better sequel, because the shows remained compelling and the characters were always changing it up. You never knew what was coming next. Kind of like when the X-Files was still good. Remember that?

After five years of Angel, they ended it last night. And while I’m not an avid TV watcher and don’t generally get sucked into shows, I was really sad to see them go. It’s like seeing an old friend leave for the last time, never to return except in the photo album you occasionally flip through. I’ve read through a few message boards and a lot of people (including Jenn) were disappointed in how the show ended, but I really wasn’t. The gang went out fighting the good fight, trying to stop evil, and while it was left open-ended as to whether they survived or not, I’d like to think they did.

From an interview with David Boreanaz:

Q: If there’s never another Angel adventure, where would you say we’re leaving this character?

A: In battle. Battle for his own self and battle for humanity, pretty much. Striving for excellence and continuing the good fight, whatever that good fight is.

On an even larger scale, the end of Angel is also sort of like closing a chapter on my own life. It’s sort of sad that people can define times of their lives with television shows, but look at all the Friends watchers out there. The TV in today’s day and age is more than just entertainment. I think we spend enough time with the characters in our favorite shows that they become like family to us - sort of indirect voyeuristic acquaintances. When they go, it’s like losing that friend. Ever have a pet fish when you were a kid? Remember what it was like when it died? Pretty terrible, right? I think it’s like that. So the end of Angel marks a sort of end of an era for me. It’s not going to hinder me from functioning or anything, but it’s still sad.

So, thanks, Joss, for the years of entertainment, for the friends you created and the universe you opened a window to, just for me. I anxiously await the next great adventure.

Just got back from Troy, the latest gigantic battle-related movie a la Lord of the Rings.

Hmmm.

Troy is a sort of historical fiction deal telling about, well, the battle of Troy. You know, that whole thing with Helen of Troy - er, Sparta - and Achilles and all that. Go read The Iliad if you don’t know that story, or maybe take some high school history.

So I don’t need to explain the story to you any more than I would need to explain the plot of something like, say, Titanic. Helen of Troy? Check. Ridiculously huge battle scenes? Check. Trojan horse? Check. Achilles heel? You got it.

All that’s left to discuss is what I thought.

Hmmm.

Brad Pitt plays a pretty good Achilles, though I couldn’t help but see Val Kilmer as Madmartigan from Willow. He was a reasonably believable fighter; I liked him. I admit I kept waiting for someone to cut his heel in every battle, though. Maybe knowing too much about the plot of a movie isn’t such a good thing.

Diane Kruger (no, I don’t know her, either) played Helen. Now, I thought Helen of Troy was supposed to be some major legendary beauty. Granted, they explore some more political reasons for the Trojan War here, but that doesn’t change the fact that, while Kruger is sort of cute, she’s no legendary beauty.

Even given all of that, I could have just settled back and watched an epic battle, but when Briseis, the cousin of the Trojan prince (played by Rose Byrne, who was just as good looking, if not better, than Helen), has a knife at Achilles’s neck, then he spouts some “wisdom-riddled” one-liner and she basically flips over onto her back and they do it. What?! Sorry, folks, you lost me there. This isn’t some Bond film, so I can’t just let that go. If I wanted cheesy sleeping with the enemy, I’d go rent that.

I’m glad I saw it, but more from the perspective of “three hours at a movie is way better than three hours at work.” I’m glad work paid for it, too. Had I put in my $8, I’d have been pissed off.

Like my coworker sitting next to me said during the film, “Hey! There are people in that horse! Don’t let them in!”

Save this one for the dollar beer-and-pizza theater. You’ll thank me later, when you’re drunk and stuffed with pizza.