Me? I’ve been around the blogosphere once or twice. As I scour food and diet sites, one thing has become extraordinarily clear: oatmeal is important. I don’t know why (and I’m not sure I want to know) but the fact remains: eat oatmeal or risk mortal peril.

I figured I must be missing out on something so I decided to give it a shot last night. Not knowing which of several thousand blogs and recipes was the correct one, I decided to just head to the pantry and wing it.

This is my story.

The first tidbit uncovered by my research is that there are two basic kinds of oatmeal. Kind #1 is what’s known as “Regular”:

Kind #2 is what’s known as “Variety”:

Being new at this, I wasn’t sure which one to choose. So I inspected the packages more closely. As you can tell, the Variety Kind is blurry, so that turned me off a bit. But then I looked at the Regular Kind and noticed something alarming. Regular oatmeal is freakin’ old:

I don’t know how you people eat that stuff. So, having missed the cutoff date by a mere two months and twelve years (or who knows, maybe that’s the year 296), I decided to go with the other box, the blurry oatmeal. I removed two packets since one packet alone seemed insufficient for my hunger needs. The packets themselves are awesome. They are so chock full of fun facts and information, it probably makes Wikipedia jealous:

Next I checked the instructions. Apparently you need to add some form of liquid to turn the dried oats into a bowl of delicious mush. You have many choices, such as milk, water, or beer:

I opted for milk. Until I smelled it.

Luckily there was a fresh gallon in the fridge. Yay. I poured it over the sawdust and was ready to roll:

Into the microwave it went. I’ve heard you can do this on the stove top, but if I had that much time on my hands, I’d start a blog. After two minutes, the scalding hot container was enough to give me second degree burns. If this had been a McDonald’s, I would have written a strongly worded letter complaining that no one warned me the oatmeal I was about to enjoy was extremely hot.

The second thing I learned on my tour of the blogosphere was: never eat oatmeal plain! Never, never, never. All I could gather from this is that plain oatmeal is poisonous. Not wanting to risk a few days of illness, I looked around to find some stir-in ideas. Here’s what I came up with:

I was torn between the Flintstones vitamins, the garlic, and the barbecue sauce. In the end, however, I settled on two of my favorites: blue food coloring and cookie sprinkles:

Yum! Now the last thing I learned on my tour of the blogosphere was this: make sure you put the finished bowl in a pretty table setting, adorned with lots of oatmeal accessories, such as bananas and real cloth napkins. Then take a photo and upload it for the world to marvel at. Now that’s kickin’ it old school. Unfortunately, this wasn’t in the cards last night:

I thought perhaps the meal wouldn’t be a total loss if the dog ate it, but she took one sniff and ran the other direction.

Oh well. I tried. Maybe next week I’ll give it another shot. Either that, or just go back to talking about really disgusting cheeseburgers. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they?

Way back in my own early days of e-mail, now nigh on two decades ago, I remember receiving an unsolicited, obviously bulk-sent, electronic mail message. I have no idea what it was for but I do know it just made me mad. “How unfair!” I thought. “Someone . . . anyone . . . can simply take my email address and send me as much crap as they feel like and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Except in those days we actually believed there was something we could do about. We were so young and naive: “We’ll just track that guy down and have his ISP shut off his account. Ha ha! That’ll teach ‘em. They’ll never send spam again!”

Well, two decades and eighteen quadrillion spam messages later, I don’t think the ISPs shut down those email accounts like we asked. It’s just a fact of life: spammers will continue to spam and our spam filters will continue to send it right into the trash. How efficient.

What bugged me first about it was indeed the invasion of privacy. What bugs me now about it is I find it embarrassing. Embarrassing, that is, for our species. If some advanced alien civilization looked down upon us, searching for any signs of intelligence, I sure as heck hope it doesn’t see this:

I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s humanity’s intellect at its finest. How’s that for someone trying to entice me (or my blog readers) to visit his web site? I’m sold! Or how about this one:

Four comments, right in a row, posted to the exact same blog post. Riveting. It’s pretty obvious what they’re selling, isn’t it? Oh, you mean you can’t tell from that gripping sales pitch? Here’s a hint: they’re small, blue, and for some insane reason, can be covered by insurance.

My next favorite breed of spam is the one with two completely different directions. How does this make sense, again?

This next one actually is a pretty good technique. The body of the spam is a compliment. Its sole purpose is to make you feel so happy that someone posted a comment that you’ll click on the link to see who it was. Then you’re left scratching your head at why Bad Credit No Problem is so enamored with your daily ramblings.

Lastly in the “Thanks, I think” category are comments like this:

And I blame you for this wonderful post. Please visit my site again soon. It just wouldn’t be the same without you, Mr. Spammy Robot.

When the newspaper showed up on the porch last Friday emblazoned with the date January 1, 2010, I have to admit I felt like I’d just emerged from a time machine. 2010? Is that even possible? That can’t be a real date. Real dates, as we all know, start with the number “19″. I might be inclined to include a few dates that start with “200″. But 2010? Not possible.

Unfortunately, it’s not only possible, it also actually happened. I didn’t emerge from a time machine or wake up from a dream. It is indeed 2010 and that can only mean one thing: it’s time to make some New Decade Resolutions. Forget about what you’re going to do this year. This year will be gone in a blink. No, let’s focus on the next ten years, which will last much, much longer. (Only ten blinks, by my calculations.)

I’ve thought long and hard about what I’d like to accomplish before December 31, 2019 and I’ve decided to share some of this with you now, primarily because I can’t think of anything else to write about at the moment.

• Finish the first draft of the next book.
• Read it.
• Delete it.
• Write it again, but more better.
• Submit it to a literary agent.
• Get a thank-you letter from a literary agent who tells me it’s the greatest thing he or she has ever seen and will be retiring immediately after selling it to a publisher because, obviously, his or her career as an agent has just peaked.
• Get a big fat check from a publisher who decides to cancel all other books currently in process in order to properly focus on this masterpiece.
• Go on a book tour and sign at least three copies per stop, hopefully to people who aren’t relatives or book store employees.
• Write the second book in the series.
• Repeat many of the previous steps.
• Get approached by many representatives of the film industry to make the movie version.
• Offer that Terry Gilliam is probably the best choice to direct.
• Cry a little that the studio picked Michael Bay instead.
• Go to the premiere of the movie. But in disguise, of course. (Damn paparazzi.)
• Return home from the movie to stare at my IMDb entry.
• Leave a comment on how they left out all the best parts of the book, completely misrepresented the villain, but overall it was still pretty good, much as I hate to admit.
• Finish the book series.
• Finish making all the movies.
• Make two brazillion dollars.
• Give 99% of it to charitable organizations.
• Take a well-deserved nap.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot. I’m going to eat right, exercise, and lose weight. And I’m also going to go back to Jupiter to find out once and for all what happened to David Bowman.

So there you have it. How about you? Anything you’d like to accomplish over the next 3,647 days?

I remember way back in the day hopping in the car, flipping on the radio, and hearing a Christmas song. It was early December and I thought, “Hey cool, something to get me in the mood.” After the song finished another one came on. Then another and another and another. Now, some dozen or so years later, they’re still playing.

While it was kind of charming at first, I really hate to say it but it’s getting really old now. Yes, yes, I know. “Just don’t listen to it. If you don’t like it, Charlie, just turn on the All Britney Spears station in stead and quit wasted precious blog space on a pointless rant.” And I agree with you. When I first set out on this whole blogging thing, I promised myself I wouldn’t just randomly rant about stuff. So prepare yourself for the most controversial post in Back to the Fridge history.

My peeve? The fact that over the last seventy years or so of quality audio recording technology, the Christmas Radio Industry has selected just sixteen some odd songs. Sixteen songs which they play over and over and over and over. And then, when they’re done, they do it again.

I probably tune in for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes on the drive home. Tops. That’s one forty-eighth of the day, what some might consider a small sample size. Yet in that tiny, tiny slice of time, I’ve heard “Feliz Navidad” about one hundred and seventy-two times. I’ve heard “Here Comes Santa Clause” almost twice that many times. What gives? Is it that hard to find a few rare gems out there? You know, something we’ve never heard before and might appreciate? Or is playing the “classics” just that much in demand that we have to hear WHAM!’s “Last Christmas” every twenty-two minutes for a solid month?

I guess I don’t get it.

So now, for your holiday pleasure, here’s the list of Christmas Radio Songs I don’t ever need to hear again ever (not counting the ones already listed above). In no particular order:

• All I Want For Christmas Is — Mariah Carey
• Do They Know It’s Christmas — Band Aid
• Anything with chipmunks singing
• Jingle Bell Rock -or- Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
• Home For the Holidays — The Carpenters
• The Christmas Shoes
• I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas
• Same Old Lang Syne — Dan Fogelberg (come on! It’s not even a Christmas song for Pete’s sake!)
• Wonderful Christmastime — Paul McCartney & Wings
• Blue Christmas — Elvis Presley

And just so you know two things: 1) I’m not a hater, and 2) I am a complete hypocrite, here’s a list of songs I don’t mind hearing over and over and over.

• It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year — Andy Williams
• Christmas Eve (Sarajevo) — Trans Siberian Orchestra
• Wizards in Winter — Trans Siberian Orchestra
• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town — Bruce Springsteen
• White Christmas — Bing Crosby
• Sleigh Ride — Johnny Mathis
• Jingle Bells? — Barbra Streisand
• The Twelve Pains of Christmas — Bob Rivers

Of course, neither list is exhaustive, but in an effort to not exhaust you, I’ll just go ahead and stop here. Whew! And just to leave things on a happy note, here’s a re-run from last year. Rachel and I playing Carol of the Bells:

And with that, I bid you a Happy End of 2009! I shall be taking the rest of the year off, blogging-wise, and will see you back here on January 5, 2010 where hopefully my weight won’t be 2,010. Take care everyone!