Mug Shots

Scary stuff, Nation. The other day, we walked by a colleague's workspace. She wasn't there, but we saw on her desk a mug on which was printed "World's Greatest Mom." Wow. Who knew?

At first, we were upset, thinking MOS should have received the honor, but we reasoned that she probably just didn't know about the contest; after all, we didn't even know about it, and we're far more culturally in-tune than MOS. We figured we would just apologize to MOS for our failure to enter her into the competition.

But would MOS even have won? After all, our absent colleague obviously had some tremendous skills in the motherhood arena. She had always seemed mild-mannered to us, but away from work, at home, she must have mothered the holy hell out of her family. The contest officials obviously saw this. We resolved to come back and find out hr secrets as soon as we could.

But that night, things got freaky. We were watching TV--the show doesn't matter. What's significant is that, on this show, one of the female characters fixed herself a cup of coffee. And as she raised the mug to her lips, what did we see printed on the side? WORLD'S GREATEST MOM!

Obviously, the show was fictional, but the similarity of the character's mug to our colleague's was disconcerting. We had to investigate. We jumped in the car and sped to the nearest mug store. It being 2:30 in the morning, the place was closed, but we resolved to come back as soon as it was open. Later that morning, we called in sick to work, cancelled the appendectomy we had scheduled for later that day, and headed out to the store.

What we saw shattered us.

Nation, an entire section of a shelf was filled with about a dozen of these "World's Greatest Mom" mugs! The merchants weren't even trying to hide their skullduggery!

In short, and we hate to be the one to tell you this, if you have ever given or received a mug with "World's Greatest Mom" printed on it--and unless the recipient has actually participated in and won the Mother's Invitational Thunderdome Elimination Tournament held every two years in Calgary--you have been hoodwinked! Those "World's Greatest Mom" mugs are nothing but a cheap, transparent marketing ploy!

Sorry about that. We need a cup of coffee ourselves, now. . . Ah, "World's Greatest Blogger." Now you're talking.

(Image from Amazon.com)

Discomfort Mugs

Times are tough these days, and the Solipsist wants you all to know that he feels your pain.  Literally.  It's a sort of burning sensation.  Allow him to explain.

In an effort to save a little pocket money and to work off a bit of excess stomach, the Solipsist has resolved to start walking to work.  It's not an overly strenuous walk: About a mile each way, and on the way THERE, it's mostly downhill.  But this alternate mode of transportation does mean that YNSHC must forego his morning trip to Starbucks.

(Digression: The Solipsist is not actually encouraging you to click to Starbucks' homepage.  (Of course, he's not DIScouraging you either.  Knock yourself out.)  Consider this more of an experiment to see if by adding corporate links he can attract sponsors.   Shameless self-promotion?  You bet! It's all about the Benjamins, people.  End of digression.)

See, Starbucks is a little out of the way, plus it's more of a drive-through experience.  We hope that our local baristas will not miss us too much.

(Digression: What does it say about our society that "barista" does not trip the spell check, but "Barack" (and for that matter, "Obama") does?  End of digression.)

Where were we?  Ah, yes.

So the Solipsist isn't going to Starbucks, but he still needs his morning coffee.  So, he went to his local Lucky's  and purchased one of those travel mugs: red and shiny; screw-top lid; latch that can be set open or closed.

But here's the thing and the motivation behind today's rant: Do these mugs EVER work right?  The Solipsist has owned this kind of accoutrement in the past.  He swore them off, though, because invariably the lid wouldn't screw on right or--as is the case with this latest purchase--no matter how the latch is set--open or closed or somewhere in between--one can simply not get a proper flow of coffee to one's lips.  First the coffee comes out in a trickle like an old man's urine (sorry for that image, but, y'know, it's apt).  But then when you tilt the cup further and further back, of course, a big splash of coffee ultimately comes gushing out and over your chin and down your chest like. . . well, OK, like a diarrhea sufferers poop.

(Again, we apologize for the imagery, but you can see that this experience has put YNSHC in a firmly scatological mood.)

It's really one of those, "If they can put a man on the moon" type quandaries: Seriously, how hard can it be to perfect a travel mug out of which one can actually drink?  

'Cause, really, the Solipsist doesn't WANT to feel your pain!  Especially when it also messes up his shirt!