2022 Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide!

Introduction

I reckon you’ve arrived here after googling “last-minute Christmas gifts free overnight shipping” or perhaps after crying out, “Oh shit, Alexa, I forgot to shop for Christmas!” (In my household we’d be saying this to our older daughter Alexa by way of apology, as opposed to addressing an Amazon Echo.) Or perhaps your shopping is done and you just want to gloat, and see what acts of desperation the less-organized are resorting to. Either way, you’ll get a candid review of various products that, if nothing else, would be more exciting than another sweater or book.

Cooling weighted blanket - $30

Wait, what? A blanket that cools you? Does it have water running through it like a radiator or something? No, it’s just full of glass beads, to make it heavy. This apparently helps a person sleep. I guess it would be less warm than 15 pounds of blankets. If the concept is good, this could be the perfect gift: that is, the thing your recipient didn’t even know exists, and which solves a problem she didn’t even know she had. The manufacturer claims it “offers a natural way to calm your body for a restful night of sleep, feels like a hug and perfect for people who are under deep pressure that need a relaxing and good sleep. It will a be a best Halloween gift for your family.” Gosh, lots to unpack here. If I understand this correctly, if you’re under deep pressure, metaphorically speaking, the solution is to put yourself under deep pressure literally? As for it being a best Halloween gift, I wasn’t even aware I was supposed to give gifts for that. Maybe the scary costumes stress people out?

So does this thing work? The ratings are generally favorable, and one five-star reviewer wrote, “The material is soft and the heat transfer is on par with some of the golf shirts I own.” I’m not sure what that even means, having never worn a golf shirt. I looked at the Q&A and one respondent wrote, “There is NO cooling aspect with this blanket. If anything it makes me hotter.” That person liked the weight, though, and took care of the heat issue with a $2200 WiFi-connected mattress cover.

Let’s not forget that “the gift of giving” shouldn’t be neglected—in other words, let’s consider what benefit might accrue to you, the giver. Well, have you ever spent $11.45 to ship a $10 mug that weighs less than a pound? So annoying. This bad boy weighs over 15 pounds and ships for free.

Y2K Chill Pillow - $27

Is this pill-shaped pillow timeless? Perhaps. On the one hand, it’s touted as a “Y2K Fashion Room Décor Aesthetic” which would make it very retro, but it’s also “As Seen on TikTok.” One thing is for sure: it’s “perfect size & shape for soft for cuddles people.”

Insofar as “cool girls will love” it, and “you can use it as a way to relax, hug it when you cool down,” I might want this thing for myself, but it’s really touted mainly as a gift, for your “girlfriend, wife, nurses, med or law student, pharmacy techs, icu, therapist, or anyone in a stressful job.” You know what I’m thinking? This would pair really well with the cooling weighted blanket!

Be aware, though, that you will be sending your recipient a message: that you can tell she is really high-strung and really needs to chill out. “Take a chill pill” is often considered kind of a put-down. So be careful or you may take this pillow to the face.

Novelty candle - $20

I’m really not sure what the point of this candle is. I mean, in my experience, guys aren’t really into fancy candles, but women aren’t really into celebrating the nexus of illicit drugs and prostitution. So whom is this really for?

Meanwhile, I have to wonder, what scent is this candle supposed to imply? Does anybody know what cocaine actually smells like? I’ve never heard this smell described or even mentioned, which is kind of funny, considering that coke is snorted up the nose. When I google “the smell of,” Autocomplete suggests rain, money, rebellion, other people’s houses, and death … but not cocaine. As for the smell of a hooker, I would rather not think about it. I suspect it’s nothing like White Sage & Lavender, or Black Currant & Jasmine.

More wholesome novelty candles - $26

Let’s face it, the Cocaine & Hookers candle is a bit racy, but that doesn’t mean candles in general aren’t a great idea. Some people just can’t wait to light a new candle and appreciate its therapeutic benefits, while others will dig it out during a power outage and say, “Thank God I actually held on to this thing!” So here are a few safer options for a nice gift candle:

The aroma of these is helpfully provided on the manufacturer’s website, and each candle has its own. This creates an opportunity for a fun game: a houseguest can say, “Mmmmmm, I’m smelling sea air, rum, and wood … what could that be? A candle celebrating Admiral Vernon ofthe Royal Navy?” The host could giggle, “No, but you’re close: it’s Alexander Hamilton, and this candle recalls his ocean voyage to NYC!” Yay!

Escape reality interactive paperweight - $100

Is it just me, or do a lot of this season’s gifts reflect the need to cool down and relax? Well, insofar as I selected them, maybe it is just me. In any case, this paperweight purports to help you “escape into a magical realm of wonder,” like a little break from reality.

Feeling calmer already, eh? Naw, I’m just messing with you. The real magic starts when you download the free companion app and point your phone at the gemstone. Suddenly, it’s a magical holographic experience:

So, perhaps you’re wondering, why not just look at other magical, mystical videos etc. right on your phone? Oh, come on, be a sport. This is interactive. At least, for you. Others seeing you pointing your phone at this inert disk may think you’ve lost it completely.

I had the antique version of this experience, back in the ‘90s, by the way … which is also available as a gift:

On one occasion back then, my wife and I had a friend over who stared at our little lamp with a dumbfounded expression, trying to understand the point. Finally she said, “Oh, I get it … it’s because you guys don’t have a TV!”

Luxury grooming tool kit - $75

Women, are you tired of your man having gross nails and a poor complexion? It’s time to do something about it—but in a loving and supportive way. This grooming kit comes with 16 tools to help make that man less gross.

This thing’s got it all: two fingernail clippers (I guess one’s for backup), toenail clippers, an ear pick, a dead skin fork (yum!), an acne needle (ouch!) and, among other things, a beautiful vegan leather man-purse to keep it all in. If he gives a perfunctory thank-you and then shelves it with the fancy lotion you bought him last year, well, he’s within spec even for a modern man. But if he actually uses this stuff, marry him—quick!

Boyfriend’s Mom Necklace - $35

This lovely necklace comes with a heartfelt card dedicating the gift: “To My Boyfriend’s Mom.” So it’s not a universal gift, but if you’re trying to suck up to the woman you hope might end being your mother-in-law, this should be just the thing.

In case you can’t read the fine print there, it includes this: “Your gentle smiles is a reminder to love more deeply and your accomplishments is a motivation to chase after my own dreams. And this card inspires me to go back to school and learn some grammar.” Okay, I made up that last bit.

Now, what if you’re actually kind of tired of your boyfriend, and/or his fingernails are gross and he’s got too many blackheads? Or if you’ve only been dating for like a month? Give the gift anyway! He and his mom will be so freaked out, they’ll run for the nearest exit! Mission accomplished!

There’s one more purpose for this necklace: if you swing both ways and you’d like to get with your boyfriend’s mom. She’s probably more mature and surely has prettier nails. Give it a whirl!

Crystal ball nightlight - $21

Suppose you’re an aunt or uncle, and your poor niece or nephew has those kind of modern permissive parents who never set boundaries. It’s time to scare this kid straight, and this incarceration-themed nightlight is just the way to do it.

That is just so creepy the way this poor little rabbit is clearly trapped in this strange torture dome. Look how stressed he is. And what is that, some kind of lightning bolt stabbing him in the back? I asked my daughter and she said no, that’s Pikachu, the Pokémon character! She showed me some pictures but no way, Pikachu is always smiling! He looks joyful! This little Pikachu is miserable because he knows he’s so screwed! And look at the effect this strange nightlight has on kids:

At first blush, the little girl looks to be smiling, but check out the clenched jaw and the look in her eye: she’s about to cry. And the boy looks really tense too. This toy teaches these kids a lesson: it’s not all rainbows and unicorns in this world! This could happen to you! (My own daughter said of this nightlight, “God, that thing would give me nightmares.”)

Gucci stuffed lion - $735

Of this item in their “Gifts for Women” catalog, Gucci declares, “Green mane and tail detailing complete the style for an authentic portrayal.”

I have no words.

Gucci wristwatch - $1850

Why should women have all the fun, getting incredibly expensive gifts? Look at this fancy wristwatch:

Never before has a gift so strongly inspired the words, “You shouldn’t have.” I mean, what the hell is this thing? Is Gucci just trying to be annoying? Imagine squinting at that watch face, trying to sort out what time it is.

I have racked my brain trying to understand this watch. At least there’s no way you’d scratch it, right? Maybe this is, like, an armored watch for the man with an incredibly rough-and-tumble lifestyle, like a stuntman? But the fine print suggests otherwise: “When possible avoid any impact that might damage your watch.” So maybe there is no point to this timepiece . Or, more likely, I’m just too pedestrian and vulgar to appreciate the finer things.

Something for the blogger?

With all this talk of gifts, I’ll bet you’re already thinking about what to get me, the tireless blogger who has tried all year to amuse and enlighten you. Well, I really don’t need anything, seriously. But if you must, how about performing an interpretive dance on TikTok that will make this blog go viral? Either that, or mail me a rubber spatula. I can never have too many of those.

Other albertnet holiday posts

• 2021 albertnet Online Holiday Gift Guide
• 2020 albertnet Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide
• The 2019 albertnet Online Holiday Gift Guide
• Interview With Santa Claus
• The 2018 albertnet Christmas Guide
• The Christmas Eve Doldrums
• A Cure for Holiday Consumerist Bloat
• The Black Friday That Wasn’t
• Santa Denial, and How Lance Armstrong Taught Me to Lie
• Fiction – The Happiest Christmas Story I Know
• My 2012 Holiday Newsletter: the Cat’s POV
• My 2011 Holiday Newsletter – Head Lice!
• My 2010 Holiday Newsletter – Importance of Santa Mythology
• Holiday Mall Report: the Lotion Sniper
• My 2009 Holiday Newsletter – Retail in the UK
• The Suppressed 2008 Holiday Newsletter
• Descent Into Chaos: My 2005 Holiday Newsletter

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Consumer Reviews: Videoconferencing Platform

Introduction

Companies like to measure the quality of “customer experience,” or CX, that they’re providing, but gaining feedback can be difficult. I hate it when I’m asked to submit a “very brief” survey and then several minutes in I have to bail because it’s obviously not brief. I prefer the happy/neutral/frowny, green/yellow/red buttons in airport restrooms for reporting the cleanliness level.

A videoconferencing platform that I use a lot, at the end of every meeting, prompts me to “rate the overall experience of [my] meeting,” from 1 to 5 stars. What if they also had a notes field to type in, since their query is so incredibly general? Here’s what that might look like. (What follows is a blend of fact and fiction.)

The good

BEST. MEETING. EVER. We had one of those guys who turns on his camera even though everyone else’s is turned off, and based on your platform’s default settings, he ended up being on my screen the whole time (and everyone else’s too, I’ll bet). I actually got kind of tired of looking at him, but then he abruptly got up and left the room. So now we were all just looking at his empty chair, and people started talking shit about him! Freakin’ glorious. Nice bit of comic relief during a long, boring day of online meetings.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

OMG, I will never forget the “overall experience” of this meeting. It was our All-Hands Call with like 60 or 70 people, and we all assumed we’d be muted by default but we weren’t. Most of us figured this out (I mean, it’s been like three years since we all started working from home, right?) but a few didn’t, so there was a bit of background chatter as people were joining. And then we all hear, clear as a bell, “Do you need to go potty outside?” I was already laughing and then, a second later, some other guy comes off mute and says, “Nah, I’m good.” I almost cried.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

I really love the half-assed way your platform handles audio buffering when somebody’s Internet connection is bad. I mean, yeah, perfect buffering would make it easier to understand people, but who cares? Some motivational speaker once said, “Nobody will remember what you said but everyone will remember how you made them feel.” As cheesy as that is, it’s pretty much true. The highlight of my workday is usually when something goes wrong, so I love love love it when somebody’s speech slows down to this incredibly low-pitched crawl, like when something terrible happens on a stupid TV action show and they show a super-slo-mo of, like, somebody striking out with a knife and another guy throwing himself in the way yelling, “N-O-O-O-O-O-O” in the super-slow, low voice. And even better, when your buffering then catches up it overcorrects and the second half of the person’s sentence is like Alvin and the Chipmunks! I have to scramble for the mute button because I’m totally cracking up. Keep up the “good” work!

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

This meeting made my day. It started off with the usual BS, with people talking over each other and a lot of mansplaining going on, and then this blowhard named Bruce takes over the screen and starts sharing some dumb slide and blathering about it, and then someone else takes the discussion way off track but without taking over the screen share. So Bruce is still screen-sharing when he totally zones out and starts multitasking. He’s typing up some email on a totally unrelated topic and we all stop talking and just watch him for a bit. He’s so checked out he doesn’t notice how quiet it’s gotten until somebody tells him, “Uh, Bruce, you made a typo.” Bust-ed! Everyone starts laughing and I’ll bet he pretty much died of embarrassment. Which is good, because he’s such a tool. He got what he deserved!

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

The bad

Look, I really like your platform, but since you asked, my overall experience was not good. There’s this douchebag Carl who always commandeers our meetings to go off about animal rights. He refers to animal husbandry as “rape,” etc. and once he gets revved up it’s almost impossible to stop him, even when the professor cuts in and says, “We’re trying to learn Photoshop here.” I’m tempted to say, “Carl, whenever you open your mouth about animals, I add ‘veal’ to my shopping list. And I make good.” So anyway, couldn’t you install a feature where participants could vote to expel someone from the meeting? Like, you could have some AI widget monitoring the chat and if enough people type in “Eject Carl” it’ll just do it? I would be the biggest evangelist for your product if you built that feature…

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

I’ve just about had it. I work for a tech company in Silicon Valley and yet in this meeting that just ended, I could only understand about half the people because the other half had crappy Internet connections. I like how your software shows little green or red bars, so we at least know what the problem is, but couldn’t you take that a little further and speed-shame these people? Like, change their title banner to “TOTAL LOSER” if their throughput sucks? It’s 2022, people. Get a real Internet connection. I’d understand if this were some little school district in Cat Butt, Wyoming, but come on. This is Silicon Valley.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Overall a good audio/video experience, but I can’t give you more stars because I totally lost my focus during the meeting. Why? Because some guy was presented with this big award, and in his little impromptu acceptance speed he said, “I’m truly humbled to win this award.” In what universe is that true? Winning an award doesn’t humble anybody. It goes right to their heads, and then they probably feel all sanctimonious when they graciously say, “I’m humbled.” What a bunch of shit.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

The main presenter in this meeting actually had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but I could barely understand him because a) the audio wasn’t that great to begin with, and b) he was wearing a frickin’ COVID mask! I mean, WTF? Does he really think he can spread an actual, non-metaphorical, living virus over the Internet? I never realized how much I rely on lip-reading when the sound is bad. Maybe this guy just wanted to make sure we couldn’t understand him? Whatever, dude.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Every meeting I’m on, we get people showing up late or not at all, and then apologizing because their PC rebooted  or their home Internet went down. It’s like the modern day equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” I guess it’s not enough that you have a great conferencing app that runs on a smartphone so they don’t need their PC or WiFi. Could you offer a deluxe conferencing package with shock ring collars to remind people to use their fricking phones when their PCs are down? I’d totally pay extra for that.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

How do I lock out late arrivals? I cannot find this in your help menu. Today some guy showed up 26 minutes late for a 25-minute meeting and then proceeded to hold the floor for the next ten minutes and I really had to pee.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Could you make the audio mute and video mute buttons farther apart, and/or more distinctive? Today I had both my audio and video muted, and then someone asked me a question, and I scrambled to un-mute and accidently un-muted my video but not my audio. So then I suddenly appeared onscreen, with my disheveled hair and 3-day beard, my mouth going 90 mph but no sound, and five people all saying at once, “You’re muted!” So embarrassing.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Can you improve the noise-canceling? So many of my colleagues work from home, the virtual meeting room sounds like a fricking day care. Just a suggestion since apparently some teleworking parents don’t believe in telling their kids to shut the hell up.

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The ugly

Your video conference experience is mostly great. I like how I can tile all the participants, because with that other mode where it keeps switching to whoever is talking, I start to get dizzy. But could you add a feature where I can selectively mute someone’s video feed from my end? God forgive me, but some of these people are pretty homely.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Mostly great platform but man, you guys have got to do something about the fake background. It’s not just that I get sick of looking at a cheesy backdrop like the beach (though I do), but the way your software figures out the outline of the person just isn’t effective enough. Sometimes it looks like a person’s head is cut out of construction paper, or rendered with really bad VR like that “Money for Nothing” video from the ‘80s. There’s this one guy in my meetings who gestures a lot with his hands, and when he gets animated his hands keep vanishing and then reappearing on the screen and it’s totally distracting.

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I want to start by saying your videoconferencing is amazing! I’m one of those people who can remember the very early days of this technology when the resolution was terrible, all grainy and pixilated with stops and starts and gaps and everything, and now it’s so smooth and hi-res. In fact, it’s actually a bit too hi-res. Which brings me to my request. You know how you can blur the background, so nobody can tell your home office is a mess? Well, could you maybe have a feature to blur the foreground, as in me? My HD camera is mercilessly clear and I’m ashamed of my eyebrow dandruff.

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Ode on a Belly: Mine

Introduction

As I’ve commented before in these pages, I find vanity distasteful in a male.  That being said, shamelessness is probably worse.  In this spirit of shame I must now fall on my sword.  (As you shall learn, it’ll have to be a pretty long sword.)  Can self-loathing actually take the form of an ode?  Decide for yourself.

The Poem

Ode on a Belly:  Mine

So, “Eat to ride and ride to eat” is said

By almost any biker you might meet.                       2

A pile of pasta bigger than your head?

That’s just the kind of thing we like to eat.

But age, in time, makes fools of us all

(Except your oddball masters racing geek).            6

Our training programs finally start to stall;

Our bodies falter when our will is weak.

So now, alas, my belly’s on a roll.

It’s now convex that always was concave.             10

Instead of being thin, I’m Moomintroll.

By gluttony I find myself enslaved.

For years I faked it, sucking in my gut.

The camera and the mirror were deceived!          14

But now my belly’s found a way to jut

Out sideways, all the time—hard to believe!

     I’ve never actually thought about a diet

     But now I think I’ll finally have to try it.           18

Footnotes  & Commentary

Title

As I’ve explained in a previous post, “ode on” sounds a lot more sophisticated than “ode to.”  But I couldn’t title this “Ode on My Belly” because that might summon the image of somebody lying on his stomach (i.e., prone).  And “Ode On a Belly” is misleading.  I have never cared about anybody else’s belly, certainly not enough to write poetry about it.  I want to be very clear that this is my belly we’re talking about.  A belly that never before existed.

Line 2:  biker

You might think I wrote “biker” instead of cyclist because I needed to conform to the iambic pentameter of the sonnet form.  But actually, being a veteran of this sport, I prefer the term “biker,” as it teases the relative newcomers who insist on being called cyclists.  (If you don’t believe me, check out this biking glossary I wrote all the way back in 2008.)

Line 3:  bigger than your head

This is of course an allusion to the excellent book Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head by B. Kliban.

By the way, you might think I’m exaggerating about how much I eat.  And while I can’t say with certainty that I ever ate a pile of pasta bigger than my head, I did once eat a giant hunk of tri-tip that was.  And that’s not all:  I ate it as tacos.  Like thirty of them.  The giant hunk of meat just got smaller and smaller until it was gone.  Years later, wishing I’d somehow verified this past feat of grilled excess, I had the great idea to weigh myself before and after a barbecue, with spectators.  The half dozen people present witnessed that I gained more than ten pounds in one sitting.

Line 5:  Age, in time, makes fools of us

This alludes to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle’s compass come.”  Literary references like this showcase the kind of highbrow literary aspiration you can expect here at albertnet, even when I’m just grousing.

Line 6:  oddball masters racing geek

In case you’re not a cyclist, this refers to the “Masters” categories (35+, 45+, and even 55+ age groups) in American road racing.  As lamented here, there are some really fast old guys whom I assume made a killing in tech and then retired early, and have all the time and energy in the world to train.  These guys set the bar really high when it comes to physique.  It’s hard to cut myself slack with them strutting around (or more to the point, riding around) being all lean, reminding us what Lycra is supposed to be showcasing.

Line 7:  training programs

This line may be a bit misleading.  Most of the older guys I ride with—accomplished racers in their day—don’t follow a formal training program.  (As detailed here, only 4% keep up such a program year-round.)  Most of us follow the very general program of riding fairly often and jolly hard.  Based on this rather sloppy regimen, we feel entitled to eat whatever we want whenever we want, in whatever quantities we want.  The slop in the program works great until it doesn’t, which in my experience seems to be the second half of my forties—i.e., now.

Line 8:  bodies falter when our will is weak

This flips around the old ditty about “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (originally from the New Testament) that has been celebrated in an anecdote about artificial intelligence:  a computer attempted to translate the line into Russian and then back to English, with the comic result,  “The vodka was good but the meat was rotten.”

Line 9:  belly’s on a roll

Any suggestion of rolls of fat, and/or a jelly roll, is of course entirely intentional.

Line 10:  now convex that always was concave

If you have a hard time keeping straight convex vs. concave, try out this brain teaser.  That’s how I keep these terms straight.

Line 11:  Moomintroll

In case you’ve never heard of Moomintrolls, get thee to a library!  I didn’t want to steal a picture from the Internet because these books are still in print, so I asked my younger daughter to draw me a Moomintroll. 

To be completely honest, Moomintroll wears his belly a lot better than I do.  Not all weight is created equal.  Henry VIII was a huge man, but his size gave him an air of gravitas.  Falstaff was also very large but this just added to his bonhomie.  With wiry slow-twitch endurance athletes, though, the belly is just this isolated bulge attached to narrow limbs, which conveys neither gravitas nor bonhomie ... just a fit body going to seed.  Instead of Moomintroll, I perhaps should have compared myself to E.T., the extraterrestrial ... but I’m trying to be compassionate with myself.

Imagine a big belly on this guy...

Line 12:  gluttony ... enslaved

This line may seem so obvious as to be meaningless, but it’s not.  I think in many if not most cases, overweight people aren’t actually gluttons, but just have bad habits like drinking sodas or juice, resulting from lack of information.  But cyclists tend to know a lot about nutrition; we blather on about complex carbs and glycemic index, and know to drink sugary beverages only during exercise.  We’re just so used to indulging in gluttony without consequence that it’s hard to stop when the intensity of our riding naturally declines.  We know it’s wrong to keep up our gastronomic abandon, but we can’t help it.  See?  Slaves to gluttony.

I say “we” and “our” here because I’m trying to convince myself I’m not alone in my weight gain.  But actually, my biking teammates are holding up really well, and it’s wrong for me to try to drag down this community.  I could fix this, but I’m going to let it stand, as part of my shame.

Line 13:  sucking in my gut

As I alluded to a bit ago, when a cyclist does put on weight, it’s often extremely localized.  Some have theorized that we have oversized livers, to store all that glycogen.  Or maybe it’s the position we ride in that gives gravity a clean shot at our bellies.  Whatever the case, the thick midsection can even be seen in some professional racers, such as the German star Jan Ullrich:

The difference, in Ullrich’s case, is that he was thick through the belly while in top racing form.  So, despite his reputation for gaining more weight in the off-season than other pro racers, he could reasonably shrug and say, “I’ve just got a big liver or something.”  But since my own belly is obviously the result of slacking off at my exercise regimen, I have nowhere to hide.  And it’s not just my new physique that’s on display:  the extra weight slows me down on the bike, to the point where I’m reluctant to ride with my pals for fear of slowing them down inordinately.

Line 14:  the camera and the mirror

I discovered years ago that when a bunch of bikers line up for a group photo, a great way to invoke candid, genuine smiles is to call out, “Everybody suck in your gut!”  This invariably gets a laugh simply because it’s so absurd to think we’d actually need to do this.  In my own case, though, I hereby confess that I have actually been sucking in my gut in photos for at least a couple of years, to compensate for my gradual weight gain.  Case in point:  in this picture (from early 2016) I appear as flat-bellied as the rest!  (In case you’re an albertnet newcomer, I’m the guy third from the left.)

As for the mirror, that’s where things really get ridiculous.  I’ve long taken to being embarrassed by my own reflection unless I suck my belly in.  I’ve even dabbled in the delusion that all that sucking in would develop my stomach muscles and actually fix the problem. 

Line 15:  found a way to jut

Line 15?  WTF??  Since when does a sonnet have more than 14 lines?  Well, first of all, I never said this was a traditional Shakespearean sonnet.  Meanwhile, I decided that, excess being the major theme of my poem, I’d throw in a whole extra stanza, like that side of fries I didn’t really need.

I really do feel as though my belly were its own thing, not just a section of my flesh.  It’s like it’s got a mind of its own, like octopus arms or sea star limbs do.  I wonder if my belly dreams of escaping and heading for the door, dragging a trail behind it like a slug.

Line 16:  out sideways, all the time

When sucking in wasn’t enough, I found that by also raising my arms over my head I could look exactly like the weedy guy I used to be.  Now, even when I try this desperate measure, the fat sticks out sideways like little ears (or “love handles,” as they say).  I suppose I can still fake thinness while wearing Lycra, but not while also breathing (i.e., certainly not while riding).  My dad was visiting recently and while I was shoving stuff in my jersey pockets before a ride he remarked, “You still have a flat stomach.”  Two things instantly crossed my mind:  1) this flat stomach is an illusion caused by the fact that I literally suck, and 2) he might have been saying one thing to imply the opposite, whether consciously or not.  His remark could not have been made if the issue of my having a big tummy were not already on the table.  It’s not like he could reasonably say, for example, “Both of your ears are still intact.”

Line 17:  diet

The astute reader will notice the extra foot at the end of this line and the next (i.e., instead of 5 two-syllable metrical feet, each line in this couplet has 5½).  For extra credit, I challenge you to explain why I chose to do this.  (Answer:  like my extra stanza, this extra foot is symbolic of my tacked-on, interloping appendage.)

While I truly never have considered dieting before, my paranoia about a fat belly (or “aero-belly” as a teammate affectionately calls it) is nothing new.  Click here for an albeit slippery, quasi-fictional account of my past weight issues.

Line 18:  try it

In fact, I am three days into deliberately following the South Beach diet.  This isn’t my first time being on the diet; it’s my first time wanting to be.  As described here, I was involuntarily immersed in this diet years ago, when my wife did it and cooked our family meals accordingly.  This time I won’t be gorging at lunchtime to compensate.  So far, South Beach is working okay:  I’m down eight pounds.  (That may seem like a lot, but remember that ten-pound barbecue I wrote about.  For me, eight pounds is a rounding error.)

Stay tuned, because in the coming weeks I may blog about a) an epic road ride I’m unwisely planning; b) how the diet is going, or c) both.

Epilogue - July 24, 2017

You know how in the comment to Line 11, above, I asked you to imagine a big belly on Chris Froome?  Well, I was just looking at coverage of the final Tour de France stage, and caught a gander of this:

I wouldn’t say Froomie’s belly is huge or anything, but given how skinny the rest of him is, his thickness there is not insignificant.  Maybe a cyclist’s gut really isn’t fat ... maybe it is an oversized liver or just extra guts or something, or maybe the way we’re bent over creates a true illusion (since our bellies do tend to vanish when we stand up straight).

Or maybe, just maybe, all cyclists are extraterrestrials.

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Beck’sting: Frexting for Men?

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mature themes, alcohol references, and mild strong language.

Introduction

Dang it!  Tonight is the only night I have free to write, but half my research cannot be done.  There’s something wrong with the Google.  I think their server is down.  So I’ll have to go mainly from memory when I talk about Beck’sting.

What?  You haven’t heard of Beck’sting?  Well, I’m a little hazy on its origin, but have tons of first-hand knowledge myself.  That’s right … I’ve been Beck’sting for years and didn’t even know it was a thing.

What is Beck’sting?

Beck’sting is an empowering way for men to allow their appreciation of fine beer to manifest in a way that will never come back to haunt you.  When you Beck’st a friend, his response is always positive and always confidence-boosting.  It presents you with a really non-dangerous platform to intercept or allocate affirmation and the visual essence of thirst-quenching, pure drinking satisfaction.

Okay, I cheated a little bit there.  I was trying to be expansive and touchy-feely so I could capture some of the excitement and zeitgeist-y-ness of a bunch of articles I read online about frexting.  But unlike girls sending sexy pictures of themselves to their girlfriends, Beck’sting just isn’t all that titillating, probably because it’s a guy thing.  So I borrowed some verbiage.  (You didn’t think “intercept or allocate affirmation” was mine, did you?) 

Beck’s is not one of my favorite beers, and thus not the subject of many of my Beck’sts; fortunately for me, the term applies generically to texting photos of any beer.  I’m hazy on the origin of this term, but one theory holds that Beck’s, the American beer that used to be German, “anonymously” coined the term as an Internet “guerilla marketing” thing.  The more common explanation is that the obvious term, “brexting” (brew + texting) was already taken (it means breast feeding + texting.)

By the way, when I first came across the word “frexting” I had no idea what it meant, and automatically thought to ask my teenage daughter, who is like a walking encyclopedia.  But as the question left my lips I realized with horror what it might mean, and hoped to God she’d never heard of it.  She hadn’t, so I immediately engaged her in a conversation about bird species or science or something so she’d be unable to commit the word to memory to look up later.  (I’m sure I failed but I’m not about to bring this up with her again to find out.)

My first Beck’st

Looking at photo metadata, I can say my first known Beck’st was all the way back in 2010 .  (It’s not like I’ve carefully filed these over the years, as I didn’t expect Beck’sting to become a worldwide phenomenon.)  One caveat:  I seldom text and actually sent the photo via e-mail, but with smartphones the difference between texting and e-mailing is largely semantic. Here’s that (possible) first Beck’st:

I sent it to my friend “Chuck” (I’m using a code name here because I don’t know how public he might want to be about his Beck’sting).  I hoped that he would appreciate my Beck’st’s artistic merit and construe it for what it is:  a fun and empowering way for men to strengthen their bonds while conveying the exciting idea that those who appreciate quality enjoy it responsibly.

I was of course taking a risk.  Frexting, I’ve read, is always consensual and girlfriends “care too much to ignore each other’s hot bods” and “will respond all, ‘GIRL, YOU ARE ::fire emojis::!’”  On the other hand, the frexting literature warns against traditional sexting because of the “critical male gaze” and the danger that “a boyfriend you send it to will do something vindictive with it later.”

How much damage could you do with a Beck’st?  I didn’t want to find out the hard way, but fortunately Chuck was very affirming.  When he wrote back, “Mmmmmmmmm,” I felt that the exchange had brought us closer together.  And not long after, he Beck’sted me back!

A word on –exting and the sexes

Is it really fair to say that only men Beck’st?  Well, I don’t really know because I haven’t known that many women.  But I think it’s fair to say that a woman is less likely to chug down some glorious IPA, pause for a pregnant moment (maybe with a subtle gesture that says “wait for it!”) and then belch, deep and loud and proud, and announce, “Wow, that felt great!”  I think women are less flamboyant about their enjoyment of beer, and thus less likely to Beck’st.

Meanwhile, nobody needs to bother making the case that frexting is a women-only thing.  Some websites—and it’s always women’s sites that have stories about frexting, and they all quote one another like they’re wound up in some tight journalistic braid—suggest that the reason men don’t frext is that they’re homophobic.  But these same sites are adamant that frexting isn’t sexual.  So if it’s not sexual, why are non-frexting men (i.e., men) homophobic?

There’s actually a very simple reason men don’t frext:  we just aren’t interested in our own looks or our friends’ looks. In fact, we’re not interested in any man’s looks.  Case in point:  my wife doesn’t like Daniel Craig as James Bond because, she complains, he’s not attractive enough.  Do I care?  Hell no.  He’s a great Bond because he’s a badass.  I don’t care what he looks like as long as he beats somebody down in a stairwell and drives an Aston Martin DBS really fast.

I’m not judging either sex; I’m just acknowledging what I think is a basic truth about humans:  the females got the looks.  It’s pretty common, throughout the animal kingdom, for one sex to be more flamboyantly good-looking than the other.  Consider the peacock:

You ever see a female peacock fan out her dirt-colored feathers?  Of course not.  I mean, why would she?  Same with men.  Why primp and preen?  We have nothing to work with! We’re not the fair sex!  We’re just crudely made lumps who grunt and scratch a lot, and I for one am glad I don’t have to try to be attracted to us.

And you can call me sexist, but I’m just going to say it:  it’s totally fine, and normal, for a woman to be vain, but vanity in a male I find deeply distasteful.  When I watch my wife (and lately—gasp—my teenage daughter) carefully applying makeup in front of the mirror, I’m as fine with it as when I watch my cat washing herself.  But a guy fussing in front of the mirror is as bizarre and wrong to me as if I saw a dog washing himself.  I spend as little time in front of the mirror as possible, because I’ve been looking at this same face for 46 years and I’m tired of it.  So I use the mirror only for shaving and occasionally making a bare-bones, half-assed effort to style what’s left of my hair.  So why should I expect a friend of mine to want to see a photo of this mug?  (And don’t even get me started on  my stick-thin body.  I’m fine with it, and it does a decent job for me on the bike, but nobody needs to look at it.)

Women might frext to get a friend’s honest opinion about this or that cute or sexy outfit, but in my experience, guys are pretty blasé about what they wear.  And if they see a friend getting too caught up in matters of fashion they’ll probably hassle him, as well they should.  Here’s an example.  In the mid-‘80s, when the original Oakley Factory Pilot sunglasses came out, I thought they were a bit much.

The Oakley Blades weren’t quite as gaudy, but they were also a lot of money, and I made the mistake of asking Chuck, “What do you think of the Oakley Blades?”  He parroted this back to me endlessly, all summer, openly mocking my self-consciousness.  Thirty years later I still remember all his flak, and even though he was right to mock me, it’s really reassuring when I send him a Beck’st and he texts back affirming my choice of beer, or when out of the blue he suddenly Beck’sts me, “just because.”

Okay, I was bullshitting you about the “reassuring” and “affirming” bit, just now and throughout this essay.  I just can’t resist trying to adopt (well, mock) that of-the-moment, “this is how we live” tenor of the women’s magazines as they go on and on about female-empowerment-thru-lingerie-selfies.  But Beck’sting is not about us men—it’s just about beer.  Being a guy, I can pee standing up, I make more money for the same work, and I get to wear comfortable shoes without anybody calling them “sensible” … I don’t need empowerment.  And this toxic “male gaze” the frexters keep talking about?  It’s not pointed at me!  One journo-frext-alist writes, “[The frexter] counters the male gaze by saying ‘I THINK I LOOK GOOD, AND I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF YOU THINK I’M A NARCISSIST.’”

I don’t think the male gaze itself ever accuses women of narcissism.  In fact, the male gaze doesn’t accuse anybody of anything.  That’s like saying the male’s taste buds accuse a sandwich of not being tasty enough, or of being narcissistic. And how can we find these frexts narcissistic when they’re not even sent to us?

As for narcissism, I think men and women alike should avoid it like the plague.  Vanity is the fear that you don’t look good enough, so there’s at least humility in it.  Narcissism is self-delusion.  Nobody is that hot, except Narcissus, and look what happened to him.  (If you’re rusty on your Greek mythology, this is the guy who saw his own reflection in a pool and fell in love with himself, forgot to eat, and starved to death.)

Speaking of food, here are some pasta-themed Beck’sts:

The point of the first photo was for scale, to show Chuck the width of my hand-cut pappardelle.  The second one was Chuck stoking my envy:  that’s Café Gondolier pasta (which I don’t get any more since I moved away from Boulder), paired with a Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, one of my absolute favorite beers, which I almost can’t bear to shell out for—it’s like $12 for a 4-pack.  Chuck knows I’m cheap.

Why Beck’st at all?

Okay, so if Beck’sting isn’t self-affirming or empowering, and doesn’t bring friends closer together, why do it?

Whoa, hold on there.  I never said you should!  You must be confusing this essay with articles like “8 Reasons Why Frexting Is the Thing You and Your Friends Should Already Be Doing.”  I don’t believe that just because a trend has been identified and labeled, it should pushed on people.  Of course, some people don’t need to be pushed, because they live in fear of missing out on what everybody else is doing.  Consider the journalist who wrote, “Not having sent a frext myself, I decided it was time to see what all the buzz was about. Of all my female friends, I decided my friend Amelia would be the ideal choice.”  (How is this “automatically consensual”?  How does she know Amelia won’t be totally weirded out?  Whether she realizes it or not, this journalist is adopting the Senator Packwood ethos of “How can you know until you try?”)

That said, I do find Beck’sting fun, for a variety of reasons.  First, there’s the sheer artistry involved.  A glass of beer can look really good, based on the composition of the photo and/or the backdrop.  Check these out:

(Regarding that last photo:  no, of course I don’t smoke, and I’m not looking to learn how to roll my own cigarettes.  But I do love the original artwork on that jar of loose tobacco.  And that golden Belgian ale was as tasty as it looks.)

It’s also pretty cool, I’ll admit, how smartphones can shrink the space between us all.  When your friends are far away, it’s nice to realize they’re not completely gone.  Think of the Tom Waits song “Shoreleave,” where the Navy guy over in Hong Kong writes, in a letter home, “And I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair could look down on Illinois and find you there.”  This same world-shrinking simultaneity sometimes involves beer, as when I Beck’sted Chuck from a little coffee shop where I was getting some writing done.

Moments after I sent this, Chuck Beck’sted back with the following photo and the message, “Dude, we’re drinking together!”

Beer can fuel nostalgia, too.  There’s a seasonal Boulder beer called Upslope that’s only available for about a month a year.  Chuck socked away a six-pack of it four months in advance of an epic mountain ride we did last year, so we could enjoy it after the ride.  His will power flagged during those months and we only got to share three of them, but that’s probably for the best.  (I meant that bit about how those who appreciate quality enjoy it responsibly.)  Eight months later he sent me the following Beck’st with the comment, “Remember this stuff?  Good freeking times!”

And then there’s the very practical matter of how to remember that great beer your pal recommended to you.  Lost in the aisles of BoozeMo, you can just pull out your phone.  Here are a few beers that Chuck either turned me on to, or that I’m still intending to try:

And here’s a seasonal ale I Beck’sted Chuck about a couple years ago.  It’s back in the stores now (though with a less groovy label; that barn owl drawing, according to a friend of mine in Bend, was modeled on a real owl that hung out around downtown Bend like a community mascot).  I think I’ll have to pick up a sixer of Jubelale and send Chuck a reminder Beck’st!

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