Monday, June 9, 2008

Rickey Recommends

This is where Rickey posts recommendations of noteworthy consumables, practices, and pastimes that have been deemed invaluable for the reader’s betterment. All products and pieces of advice listed herein have been Rickey tested and approved. Again, this is in no way shape or form a complete rip off of McSweeney’s (fa-la-la-la-la, lawyers, Rickey can’t hear you). Enjoy our latest installment of

RICKEY RECOMMENDS

Dual Monitors. Get a load of this: Rickey recently had a new computer added to his office but opted to keep his old monitor and place it next to the new one at a 20 degree angle. A little creative wiring & configuring and lo—Rickey’s workspace is now displayed seamlessly across two flat screen monitors! Nifty, eh? Our apologies if Rickey’s newly discovered innovation is old hat to some of you, but having two screens makes Rickey feel like a high powered stock trader or missile command operator. Truly a worthwhile addition to Rickey’s desk ahem, we mean CENTCOM.

Microsoft Office’s Autocorrect Feature. (Bear with us, Rickey’s on roll with work related tips for you office professional types). Yes, it’s a handy feature that prevents you from sending sentences containing the word “teh” to the boss, but there’s a far more fun application for this tool. Did you know you can tweak this feature to have the autocorrect function replace words such as “and” with another word such as “pig vomit” when you type them in? Rickey recommends sneaking onto an unsuspecting coworker’s computer and giving this a shot sometime, because nothing brightens up one’s day quite like the sudden and unexpected appearance of the phrase “calamitous cocksucker” while you’re attempting to draft an interoffice memo.

P.G. Wodehouse. Hey kids, do you like Douglas Adams? Well then, Rickey suspects that you’ll also enjoy this master of the breezy comic tale. Start with his Jeeves and Wooster stories and go from there. We think you’ll find that it’s impossible to be unhappy while reading the adventures of Jeeves & Wooster (Rickey’s tried).

Holding off on making that emu-egg omelet for a little while. 52 days ought to do the trick. (Proceed to the link for your daily dose of emu-related cuteness).

The “Parking-Spot Pull-Through” Maneuver. Picture yourself on a warm sunny day circling the mall parking lot. You see a spot; you pull your car in. Then you see the pull-through opportunity: the spot in front of you, usually already occupied by someone who parked facing you, is open! It's not just sensible logistically to go right through and park facing out. It's plain old good karma: a sign of promising things to come.

Freon Conditioned Air. Rickey sat down, did the math, and came to the conclusion that being comfortable is far more important than one’s Con-Ed bill tripling during the hot summer months. So crank up the A.C., and enjoy the modern wonder of climate control, because we don’t know about you, but we prefer being broke to being miserably hot.

Civilization IV for the Mac & PC. Ok, so we’re what—two or three years late on this? Nonetheless, you need a game in your library that involves conducting diplomacy, discovering technologies, going head-to-head with some of history's greatest leaders, and building vast empires. And if you dare to venture online, Rickey will mercilessly kick your ass on Civilization IV. (Hint: Rickey’s key to winning is playing as the Roman Empire and building tons of roads …and not using those pesky lead pipes for the water supply).

Keeping a low profile if your name is Dick Dickenson. Well this pretty much cinches the deal: Rickey is never, ever taking his children to see a mall Santa.

M.I.A. Are you up to speed on your Sri Lanken hip-hop artists? A few years ago this artist came stateside, complete with hard-thwacking electronic beats and a sort of rambunctious energy that you just don’t hear in the hip-hop/electronic/reggae genre as much these days. For those looking for familiarize themselves with this quirky artist, Rickey recommends listening to her single “Paper Planes” and proceeding onwards from there.

Beets. Turns out they don't have to be gross. For example, did you know you can make borscht with ‘em? True story, you can. And on these hot summer days, is there anything better than some ice cold borscht with a dollop of sour cream in the middle? Rickey thinks not.

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11 comments:

Toasty Joe said...

Oh man, I'm going to have to tell my Mrs. about your P.G. Wodehouse proclivity. She likes him.

Anonymous said...

Hey Rickey,
I just had me some some Bortch, with sour cream, (my Russian girlfriend's mother made some) and boy are YOU right!!! Couldn't recommend it more!.

Also, civilization IV is nice, but not as cool as the original.

Mike said...

Can't beat beets.

Ugh, but you can beat me for even typing that.

Actually I like beets.

Anonymous said...

Ricky, a man who can identify Gussie Fink-Nottle, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright and Pongo Twistelton can hang out with my husband any time.

Rickey said...

Rickey's wondering: is it spelled "borscht" or "borsch"?

Flitgirl: In Rickey's book, working knowledge of who Tuppy Glossop is should be a prerequisite for any form of social interaction.

Noah said...

The “Parking-Spot Pull-Through” Maneuver.

Mrs. Smitty and I are huge fans of that maneuver, and sometimes trull the parking lots to look for such an opportunity.

We call it "parking in the 'GO' position."

Noah said...

The “Parking-Spot Pull-Through” Maneuver.

We do not recommend this maneuver, however, if you are grocery shopping. Someone will be parked behind you and you will be forced to load your gorceries into the back seat instead of the trunk, which is where groceries belong.

HC said...

I'm behind you on the whole air conditioning rec. I know this is a controversial stance, bound to cause some internal comment-sparring. But damnit, it needed to be said.

Toasty Joe said...

I wish Rickey could have seen the excitement in Flitgirl's eyes yesterday when she saw that Rickey had given a shout-out to Wodehouse. Pure glee.

George said...

Wait--people live in places where they need air conditioning?

Signed,
A Reader from Santa Barbara

Rickey said...

Smitty: normally, you'd be right about that... unless you drove an old school VW Bug (the kind with the trunk in the front).

Haley: not a controversial stance, Rickey knows. And yet it's one that Rickey fought Ms. Henderson on for a few days. Rickey can be rather miserly with the A.C. useage...

Toasty: Rickey figured he needed some British whimsy to balence out the list. It was either Wodehouse or the DVD box set, 'A Bit of Fry & Laurie".

George: You'll be happy to hear that the weather here in the Northeast has been cooling off a bit and has downgraded to from "extreme hell" to merely "hell."