CI #50 -- Kodak's New Marketing Scheme

I was watching CNBC this afternoon. No, I have no plans of changing my name to Preston and moving to Connecticut.

It's simply/sadly the thing that interests me the most during the mid-afternoon TV wastelands. At the very least you're going to get people yelling at each other. That's nothing to shake a stick at.

And amidst their coverage of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, whom did I find? I'll give you a hint. She's superfab and pictured below.

(Lady Gaga in what is my favorite frame of TV ever)

Curious question: WTF?!

CI #49 -- The Taco Bell Diet

That's right. From the people who brought you Fourth Meal, it's the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet. This isn't a joke.

Well, it is. But it's more tragicomedy than straight comedy. (I see Paul Giamatti in the movie version.)

In case you haven't been lucky enough to see these commercials, allow me: Internet Friends, Christine. Female Jared, I mean Christine, Internet Friends.

She lost 54 pounds by eating 1,250 calories per day, choosing from 7 incredible Tacotastic choices with only 9 grams of fat or less!

Now those are results you can sink your teeth into!

What can we say about this? There aren't enough hours in the day, so let's simply play find the clues to a bad diet.

CI #48 -- Bad Grocery Stores

I was lucky enough to grow up in the utterly vanilla suburbs. Yeah, I was boring, but I didn't know it. I didn't know there was anything wrong with strip malls designed to eliminate walking between Wendy's and Krispy Kreme until I saw that there were other options.

On the flip side, it wasn't until I moved to New York that I realized just how bad, truly bad grocery stores can be.

Sure, NC's perennial budget grocer Food Lion bleached their cauliflower to make it seem fresh, but I didn't know that until the news told me. And besides, cauliflower is gross and bleach kills germs.

There is a bad grocery store near me in Brooklyn, though it's not as bad as the one near my first NY apartment, where I was introduced to chicken feet. One sure sign of a bad grocery store is a high ratio of chicken feet to edible produce.

I've got nothing against chicken feet. I'm sure some delicious soups can be made from them. And prepared correctly (is this possible?), I might even try one, or them, er... however they come.

But if there's an overabundance of chicken feet at a grocery store, you're sure not to find good spinach, and you can forget about mesclun (you might as well take your froufrou, tri-color salad self back to France!). And spinach is basically the only healthy thing I eat.

You can't really know what a terrible grocery store is like until you've been in one. So for those who may be asking What are some signs of a bad grocery store? Heregoes...

- 1. Well for one, they sell this...

CI #47 -- 2009

I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a way to examine 2009, a crazy ass year to put it scientifically. Then I realized, the year could easily be summed up by CI #22.

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As the economy is starting to recover (or isn't, depending on who you're talking to), we're hearing things like "green shoots," "consumer discretionary spending," "housing starts," and a lot of other jargon. So I was wondering, Is there some kind of "economic indicator" we all can easily understand?

Turns out, yes.

(Taken at the NYC public gym at Metropolitan Ave and Grand St.)

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Let's make it a Happy New Year.