The DangerRuss Files, Installment 1

If you live in Lincoln’s Near South neighborhood, there’s only one acceptable place to buy your groceries: the Russ’s Market at 17th and Washington. Also known as “Ghetto Russ’s” or “DangerRuss’s,” this 24-hour wonderland combines a wide selection of food products with the thrill of possibly being the site of a terrible, terrible crime. Yes, the bearded residents of the tent city located in the juice aisle will demand a toll for safe passage, but it’s a small price to pay. And if you happen to have a young goat on hand, they’ll offer you a lifetime of protection. It’s a decision you won’t regret.

Within the confines of this particular Russ’s, the curious visitor will find a glorious inner sanctum: the dollar section. Things in the dollar section cost a dollar, which is a small amount of money to pay for a thing. The dollar section is stocked with products that exist outside the bounds of time and space. In all likelihood, you have never heard of them. You have never seen them. You have never tasted them.

But I will. Because they cost a dollar, and I need something to write about.

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Dollar Item #1: Daddy Ray’s Blueberry Cereal Bars

I have a soft spot for Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Bars. Although it may be a completely fabricated memory, I’m pretty sure I ate them on several childhood road trips. In any case, blueberry Nutri-Grain Bars always conjure up the feeling of driving through rural Pennsylvania at dawn. So, I was super excited to try a $1.00 alternative: Daddy Ray’s Blueberry Cereal Bars. Would their flavor transport me to rural Pennsylvania, or a cigarette-butt-littered shoulder of the New Jersey turnpike?

Packaging:

The use of beveled text is a nice touch, recalling the graphic design stylings of your mother, circa 1997. However, the highlight of the package is Daddy Ray himself.


Daddy Ray appears to be of strong Amish stock, with an appropriately stache-less beard and fedora combo. Daddy Ray’s beaming countenance provides the shopper with a sense of serenity, perhaps representing the elusive approval of his or her own father. It’s okay to buy these “naturally and artificially flavored” cereal bars. Daddy Ray thoroughly approves.

FlavorTaste:

These little guys didn’t disappoint. At first, I was a tad hesitant about their texture. Compared to their Nutri-Grain cousins, their outer-layer was dry and crumbly, rather than chewy and tender. But instead of giving the impression that they were stale, the crumbly outer layer seemed fresh and biscuit-like. Their filling was the perfect counterpoint to the hearty cereal exterior -- bursting with blueberry flavor, and just the right amount of sweetness. Each individual bar is on the small side, so I immediately ate two. There are only six bars in a box. In theory, it would be easy to scarf down all of them in one sitting. I can neither confirm nor deny that this definitely happened.

Final Score:

3.5 / 5 Narwhals

At The Very Least, I Think We Can Agree That Jon Hodgman Is Far More Awesome/Hilarious Than The Relatively Obnoxious Justin Long.

For the first time in 7 years, I’m a PC user.

I don’t think this is a big deal.

Don’t get me wrong -- I like Apple. A few quirks aside, Mac OS is by far the most polished operating system currently in existence. And design-wise, Apple hardware is the best you can get. If money is not an object, and you don’t care about playing games, an Apple computer is the best choice out there. If an Apple computer was a car, it would be a Rolls-Royce.

But in the computer world, as in the car world, most people can get along just fine in a Toyota.

On the other side of the equation, Windows isn’t terrible. In fact, it’s kind of cool. Some Windows 7 features, like the window snapping that lets you automatically split your screen between two programs, are delightful. The inevitable bloatware that gets slapped on top of Microsoft’s vanilla Windows distribution is annoying, but most of it can be swept away. Hardware-wise, PCs have the same stuff under the hood as Macs, a fact that makes treating Macs and PCs as two completely different platforms rather dubious. And you can get PCs with some things (Blu-Ray drives, card readers, etc.) that you simply can’t get on a Mac.

Are some PCs crappy and defective? Yes. But no one has a monopoly on glitchy hardware.

I’ve used two Apple laptops over the past 7 years. Both had major hardware issues, including defective graphic cards, ridiculously defective batteries, chronic overheating, and dead pixels. Since both of the computers were purchased by the company I worked for, I didn’t lose much sleep over those problems. But if I had been the one dropping $2500 for a laptop, I think it would have been a different story. This isn’t to say Apple makes crappy computers. Consumer reliability surveys indicate that Apple generally makes pretty decent computers. However, I am saying that Apple isn’t magical. Apple's computers are assembled by sweatshop workers in China, just like that hideous HP box your cousin has. The biggest difference: once Apple’s computers exit the sweatshop, they cost a grand more.

And thus, I purchased a PC.

On the most basic level, a computer is something you use to do things. When I was young, and just wanted to mess around with stuff, my DIY Linux box was ideal. When my job provided me with a Mac to do digital media work, I couldn't have been happier. And now, as a recent graduate who doesn't have an obscene amount of money, a PC laptop fits the bill.

Everyone wants you to chose a side in the computer wars, and defend it with your life. But in computers, as in politics, partisanship just makes you look silly. I’m a techno-pluralist to the core. I love Apple’s ruthless focus on design and minimalism. I love the .conf-editing and command-line-hacking craziness of Linux. And I love Microsoft’s hit-and-miss, and often endearingly nerdy, approach to innovation. Once you stop treating your platform of choice as an article of faith, you can start to appreciate that they all bring something to the table.

In other words: chill, people.

All The Ugly People

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For the sake of your name, LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.

Psalm 25:11

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I don’t like ugly people.

I’m not trying to be senselessly provocative, and I’m certainly not making a moral statement. But it is a true statement.

If you live in a normal, American, middle-class neighborhood, with normal, American, middle-class neighbors, you may not know any ugly people. What’s more, the magic of suburbia is such that it’s likely that you never have to encounter ugly people in your day-to-day life. Except, perhaps, at Wal-Mart.

In a poor, high-density neighborhood, you don’t get that luxury. Where I live, a lot of people are impoverished. Many of them are ugly. They wear ugly clothing. They have terrible hygiene. They speak with slurred, ugly voices. They didn’t finish college, or high school. They aren’t the kind of people I want to be friends with, or spend time on.

Sometimes, they ask for help. Or money. I don’t give it to them. They’ll probably just buy drugs anyway, right?

The doctrine that all men are image-bearers of Christ can be repeated to the point of cliché. I know it by heart. But even so, my heart doesn’t really know it. When I walk past a vagrant, I’m much more likely to think white trash than eternal, glorious reflection of the Creator.

In the evangelical world, it’s popular to focus on big-ticket sins you can write books on conquering. Addictions like pornography and alcohol. Social problems like marital unfaithfulness and divorce. But beneath the surface of my life, I know there’s a world of deep, rooted sin that I can’t even begin to comprehend. There’s so much pride and hatred stored up that I could spend a lifetime fighting it, and never achieve victory.

Wishing that someone would cease to exist is the highest level of hatred I can think of. But as I avoid eye-contact with the undesirables smoking on the porch of my apartment building while littering the yard with Corona cans, this unspoken wish passes through my mind. When I take an honest look at my heart, I see more Hitler than Jesus.

Even when my mind tries to mask the hate in nice little thoughts.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this neighborhood were a little more... gentrified?
Full of quirky young people who listen to Grizzly Bear and repair bikes?
What if that charming Victorian could be restored to a single-family home, with a responsible, middle-class family inside?
Perhaps there wouldn’t be so many of THOSE people here...

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I don’t like ugly people. My heart’s reaction to them reveals my true self. It shows that despite the fact that I’ve gone to church every Sunday since I was born, I’m more inclined to hatred than love. I’d rather lock myself inside and read a book about God’s grace than show grace to anyone who doesn’t reach my standard of personhood.

It turns out that I’m ugly too. Fortunately, there’s someone else who doesn’t just like ugly people, but loves them. And better yet, forgives them.