I Am Going to Die

Today I broke new ground and ripped more tortillas than ever before. I went to Chipotle for dinner (which turned out to be my only meal of the day, and may turn out to be my only meal for the week) and got a Chipotle 2.1 burrito (2 wraps, rice, both beans, barbacoa, plenty of hot sauce, corn, sour cream, cheese, a little lettuce... some day I will make a post and timeline the various burritos I went through and who influenced them).

I am never eating again.

The amount of rice and beans was OBSCENE, and BOTH wraps ripped while they were putting it all together, a historic event in my personal Chipotle history! They had to pull out an extra sheet of tin foil to cover the entire thing.

Of course, I rose to the occasion and slammed the entire thing, and now I am paying the price. I'm going to take a nap now and wake up with a vicious Chipotle hangover (a phenomenon that I will, unfortunately, also have to discuss in another post as I am feeling myself slipping into a food coma at this very moment).

Who Buys This Stuff?

Has anybody ever bought anything from those direct response television ads (ie infomercials)? You know what I'm talking about, the commercials that are selling some horribly practical product (that may or may not perform as well as advertised), and at the end they offer you 5 times as much of the product if you call right now, throw in free shipping, and then give you a 60 day money back guarantee. For example...

Family Guy also parodies these pretty well

I can honestly say I've never seen one of these products in real life. But people MUST be buying like crazy. These ads have been around forever, and if you "call right now" they throw a ton of product at you with free shipping for (what seems to be) a reasonable price. Clearly business is good.

So in order to curb my curiosity, if you have ever ordered from an infomercial, please post a comment here and let me know. If you live in the Chicago area, I might stop over to see the greenness of your grass/how well your vacuum works/how perfect your push-up is.

I Would Rather...

I would rather stick my hand in a blender full of hydrochloric acid than have to fight Casey Jones:





I would also rather:

• Take a shotgun blast to the crotch
  
• Eat a mixture of broken glass and gunpowder
  
• Be forced to spend the rest of my life in Detroit
  
• Get blowtorched in the eye
  
• Learn how to play the flute
  
• Have somebody smash my head into a wood chipper with a sledgehammer
  
• Bathe in a barrel of radioactive molten lava
  
• Swallow an active hand grenade
  
• Kiss Osama bin Ladin's bare ass
  
• Become a vegetarian
  

Why Thursday is My Favorite Day

I Love Daxflame

Daxflame is some kid who runs a popular video diary on youtube. There is debate surrounding the legitimacy of the videos, and if you watch a couple you'll understand why. I'm pretty sure the kid is just a really good actor... I've heard he's an improv student or something. Regardless, he's an absolute riot. If you don't think he is funny, you are wrong.



I would strongly recommend checking out a number of his videos (if not all of them). Some of my favorites include "I Pulled the Ultimate Prank at Lunch", "Trouble in PE Again" and (its a little long) "The Convenient Truth."

Be sure to click "more info" on the descriptions because they're pretty good, as are the tags he puts on each video.

Chips and Burrito Bol, You Will End Me

You learn something new every day. No matter how many times I've gone to Chipotle, no matter how many different orders I've made, I'm amazed that I can still find new things to order that I fall in love with. This tip is brought to you by my friend Chris, who turned me on to getting a Burrito Bol and chips, and then using the chips instead of a fork and treating the Burrito Bol as a 1500 calorie dip. AMAZING. I've done this for my last 7 or 8 visits and am nowhere near getting sick of it.

Of course, this 12% hike in Chipotle spending means I need to get a job 12% sooner...

How I order it:

• Extra Rice
  
• Black beans (sometimes both, that tip will come later)
  
• Chicken (usually, steak sometimes, barbacoa is too tough to eat with chips)
  
• Hot sauce (usually double what they try to give me)
  
• Corn
  
• Sour Cream
  
• Cheese

Perfection.

I can't wait until the election is over...

...so we can all be friends again

The Chipotle Dilemma

The Chipotle Dilemma, commonly experienced by unemployed males between the ages of 18 and 25, occurs when one wakes up around 11 AM. Groggy, crusty-eyed, and still half awake, should you shower first or go to Chipotle first? Here are the basic arguments...

Arguments for going to Chipotle first:

• Usually waking up at 11 AM means its been well over 12 hours since you last ate a proper meal, so by this time you're usually famished.
  
• After downing roughly 1700 calories of meat, rice, and tortilla, you usually feel like you need to shower anyways.
  
• Beating the lunch crowd is key, especially when you're starved.
  

Arguments to shower first:

• After eating Chipotle, you usually want to nap right away. If you don't shower and start your day as soon as possible, its conceivable that you won't start your day proper until 4 PM
  
• Waking up with a hot shower makes the meal feel a little less like breakfast. Even though the deep hunger hits the moment you awaken, the thought of eating something as hearty as Chipotle within 15 minutes of waking up is often unappealing.
  
• Showering is good hygiene. Showering first means you don't feel like a gritball while you're waiting in line with a bunch of cougars.
  

So there you have it. I honestly couldn't tell you what the right thing to do is. Sometimes it depends on the circumstances, and, in many cases, I would contest that there is no objective right answer. I guess that's what makes it such a timeless dilemma.

Oh, and I'm still unemployed

I wish Chipotle had a membership card

I sorely wish Chipotle would have a "Buy 9 burritos get your 10th free" card. It would save me roughly $13/mo. If you eat at Chipotle often, please call corporate and let them know that you support this idea.

Chipotle Tip: If you frequently run into the problem where your burrito is stuffed to the point where it rips the wrap, don't settle for a smaller burrito! Next time, just ask for two wraps. They'll pile everything onto both wraps and the double thick tortilla will prevent rippage. My brother claims his friend has once gotten three wraps. 870 calories is a bit much for me, but if I ever had a problem with the double-wrap its good to know that option is available.

The most intense pre-interview process ever

I recently quit my job and moved to Chicago.

I put my resume on careerbuilder.com on Friday, Sep. 5th.

A proprietary trading firm expressed interest the following Monday, which led me through the following journey:

1. Monday (9-8-08): Online intelligence test. 30 questions, 8 minutes.
   
2. Tuesday (9-9-08): Two expansive Excel projects (requiring programming Visual Basic in Excel, something entirely new to me), an employee questionnaire (16 interview questions), an official application
3. Monday (9-15-08): Phone Interview. Included 8 timed math word problems.
4. Tuesday (9-16-08): One financial risk assessment. Two involved personality tests (~80 questions each)
   
5. Thursday (9-18-08): Live interview, which included another intelligence test (50 questions, 12 minutes), a quiz on market knowledge, and "live" on the spot math word problems.
6. Thursday (9-18-08, 2 hours later): Received an offer for the salary I requested, but learned I would be working a night shift for international trading.
7. Friday (9-19-08): Politely turned down the offer.
   

After all of the effort put into the interview process, this was a tough decision to make, but I stand firm in my resolve to enjoy all Chicago has to offer.

For now this is just an amusing story. Once I land an equally great job with normal hours, the moral of this story will be "Know what you want and don't compromise."