Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine: My Experience

**I am not a doctor and the following is not medical advice. All accounts and opinions below are strictly my own as a civilian. Consult with your doctor for any true concerns. Your necessities may vary.**

Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has overtaken the globe in ways unimaginable. We all know this. Throughout 2020 we all watched and waited with baited breath for the hope of a mythical vaccine to manifest and rise up, quashing this pandemic and returning us to a more recognizable life. And here we are now, with vaccines created from multiple companies, yet skepticism has not been higher. Many are simply fearful of the unknown: the potential side-effects and whether their effectiveness is worth the trouble. I’m here to say that I’ve been fully vaccinated with absolutely no regrets, and I will tell you *exactly* what the experience was like. No impersonal list of side-effects, no vague jargon, just truth.

Some patient history first to shape my experience: I am a male in my early 30s, 6’ tall, 140lb. I have no underlying conditions and do not take a daily medication. I am a medical employee for a major healthcare network in New York City, and my department was offered one of the first main batches of the Pfizer vaccine. My vaccine acquisition was simple and completely legit, which makes the messy general rollout even more heartbreaking to me. I received two doses: first on 12/23/20 at 2PM and the second exactly three weeks later (right down to the hour!) on 1/13/21 at 2PM. 

The Injection Itself

I was honestly surprised at how small the vaccine itself was. Don’t quote my specifics but it looked to only be a 1mL syringe with a 30g needle, which translates into ‘really darn small.’ Absolutely nothing like getting general bloodwork done, and smaller than any other shot I’ve ever received. It was probably similar to getting a botox injection as it used the same kind of delivery, only this was one shot in the shoulder rather than multiple shots across the face. The first dose I felt very briefly, but I’m not kidding when I say I didn’t feel the second shot whatsoever. I used to be awful with needles: I was the kid that would run through the pediatrician’s office petrified of the doctor. My tolerance increased significantly with age and maturity, but still the Covid-19 vaccine has been the most painless shot(s) I’ve ever taken.

It’s important to note that both doses of the vaccine are the same exact thing. I was personally mistaken to think the first shot was the protein spikes and the second shot was more ‘lively’ but that is not the case. You cannot get Covid-19 from the vaccine, because there is no coronavirus in the vaccine. It is simply the mRNA (recipe) for the virus’ spikes, which they use to latch onto healthy cells to infect. By giving your body the alert to destroy anything that has these spikes, the coronavirus doesn’t have a chance to cause trouble. The coronavirus will still be around but it will be neutralized, and this is how the pandemic will end.

After the First Dose

If the first dose is like installing a sprinkler system in a building, the second dose is like testing the system to make sure it works. Ergo, the first dose is not designed to really cause any side-effects, it’s just the installation. For the remainder of the first day I had no fever, no body aches, no fatigue. Nothing. On the 24th and 25th however, the injection site was significantly sore. Nothing debilitating but very noticeable, even more than from the flu shot. But by the 26th on it eventually subsided.

After the Second Dose

Oh boy. This is where you hear all the horror stories about the vaccine. The second dose is a full-on test of the sprinkler system, so naturally the effects will be more significant. These effects are basically your autoimmune response at work, so it’s important to remember that. These are not symptoms brought on by Covid. After receiving the second shot the day went on like normal, but that evening I felt the oddest joint pain sensations that I never felt before.

It was almost like my body was ‘testing’ random joints to make sure they could feel pain. For a few minutes, a joint would ache. Then the pain would subside and for a few minutes a different joint would ache. This went on for the evening and into the next day. It was such a strange phenomenon: my left wrist would ache, then the second toe joint on my right foot. Then my right shoulder, followed by my left hip. The ache was tolerable but noticeable, just enough to feel uncomfortable but nothing requiring aspirin or even an ‘ow!’

The following day, 1/14, along with the random joint tests, I overall felt like I got hit by a car. And I say car because it wasn’t as bad as getting hit by a truck. I had a slight fogginess and never fully woke up. However, it was not enough to keep me from going into work (including its grueling 2-hour mass transit commute) and performing my job satisfactorily. I just felt ‘off’ in a way I couldn’t quite describe. I did go to bed earlier than usual that night, which was unlike my night owl tendancies.

Interestingly, injection site soreness returned after the second dose but wasn’t nearly as bad as from the first dose.

Two days after the second shot, 1/15, I woke up feeling 100% with no lingering effects from the previous day. Nothing. It was as if nothing from the previous days had ever happened.

My Additonal Thoughts

It’s very interesting that the vaccine’s effects mimic those of Covid, because it shows that the disease’s symptoms are not brought on by the virus itself, but by the body’s response to it. Hopefully this helps us understand the virus better, as it seems that it’s our immune response that does more damage than the actual virus inflicts.

Despite fever being the most common reported side-effect, I never developed one after either dose. Neat, huh?

After giving the second dose another week to ‘cook,’ Pfizer’s vaccine boasts an immunity rate well into the 90s. No vaccine is ever 100% effective, and the other Covid vaccines follow suit with similar very high rates. This is as good as we could’ve hoped for if not more, so don’t wait for something better to come along. This is it, and anyone who says otherwise simply doesn’t understand the ethos of vaccines, so don’t listen to them, regardless of their credentials if any.

When you get your first dose, do not ignore getting the second. What’s the good of installing a sprinkler system if you never test it?

Anyone that claims they came down with Covid from the vaccine was simply infected organically before the dose was administered. The disease has a latent period of a few days before showing itself and this is just a situation of unfortunate coincidental timing. Nothing more. That is why it is imperative to stay vigilant before receiving your first dose and giving yourself a week or so after your second dose. By then you're as immune as you'll ever be.

There’s a lot of chatter about Covid variants, and the vaccine losing its effectiveness over time. These are not faults of Pfizer but simply a truth about the nature of viruses and vaccines. Many diseases require boosters (tetanus, etc.) and we get the flu shot annually anyway without batting an eye, knowing full well their effectiveness rates fluctuate wildly. Covid will just be another ingredient they add into the cocktail and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Anyone ‘concerned about what’s being but into their bodies’ never seemed to care before it was trendy to do so and still don’t care about the other unhealthy/toxic substances they eat or use. Yes, ingredient awareness is nice, but attacking vaccines, especially this one which is the key to the resumption of life, is definitely barking up the wrong tree. Where’s all this outrage regarding the unpronounceable ingredients used in shampoos, for example? How do you know you’re not massaging poisons into your scalp? That’s because you (and social media) don’t know and don’t care, because it gives your hair that nice shine. You also trust the companies that make it, regardless of their ratings, and given the global recognition of Pfizer, Moderna and others, they would not put their reputation on the line and intentionally harm users with such a vaccine. What’s in it for them to do that? And if you think they ‘oh well they just don’t know yet what could happen, it’s too early,’ keep in mind they’ve been focus testing for months prior to announcing their vaccine to the world. They knew then, and we were the ones that didn’t. That’s how this all works, and that’s really okay. As they continue to do their part for the good of the world, you continue to do yours whatever that may be. Eventually it all comes together.

Another fact that many seem to overlook is that the vaccine will theoretically protect us from all coronaviruses by its inherent nature. A coronavirus is simply a virus that uses those protein spikes to latch onto its host, and the vaccine is strictly of those spikes alone. This should in theory not only protect us from the ‘novel coronavirus’ (aka this new virus that causes the disease SARS-CoV-2, aka Covid-19) but from other coronaviruses as well, including those that infect us with the common cold. Any virus using spikes is targeted by this vaccine, including basic cold viruses. So yes, there’s a solid chance that by trying to eradicate Covid-19 we stumbled upon the actual cure for the common cold. And honestly, who wouldn’t want a vaccine for that?! Perhaps you’d see a lot less tepidation surrounding this if it were marketed in this way.

If vaccines may have scared you before, they should not anymore. Times have changed, and medicine has changed. Think of all the advancements made in things like cancer treatment, HIV management, medical imaging, joint replacements and so much more… many drugs and therapies have only come around in the past few years and have been accepted by all with open arms. Vaccines have gotten better right along with them, yet many have a problem with them due to vocal minorities making odd and indirect correlations. And by following along with these connections, people feel somehow empowered when really this energy is better spent elsewhere. The truth is that no one is out to get *you* by giving you a bad vaccine.

The Covid-19 vaccine is safe and one of the most effective vaccines ever created. It is a staggering medical triumph and I would do it all again in a heartbeat if I needed to. Any fears you have about it, especially if they’re amplified by self-affirming social media, are unfounded. Get both doses and just take the day off after the second dose, that’s all. Just take a break. You might have a better day after than I did, or maybe a little worse. Or the exact same. By the following day, it’ll be fine. And you’ll be fine. We’ll be back to normal one person at a time.

The Bottom Line

All we wanted a year ago from now was a safe and effective vaccine to this global terror, and that's exactly what we have here today. After the hell that was this past year, now isn’t the time for misguided pride. Or wanting to feel like you think you somehow ‘know better.’ Take solace in the fact that you don’t, and that all we in our little microcosms want to do is go back to a life of recreation and no masks. The Covid-19 vaccine will let us do that. 

If we let it.

The Fourth Hour

We observe 24 hours in one day, and as a human collective we tend to stereotype certain hours toward certain activities. Work starts at 9AM, ends at 5PM. We eat dinner around 6PM, stay at the clubs until 2AM, enjoy a spot of tea at 4PM. Some of us enjoy certain times of day over others. For example, larks enjoy 5AM to energize their day with a power walk. The aforementioned English may look most forward to 4PM for their tea break. Ghost hunters favor the devil’s hour of 3AM for their investigations. On the contrary, commuters will dread the hours of 6-8AM (and 5-7PM) due to the crowds and congestion of rush hour. And as a general human collective we devote the hours of 2-5AM to sleep and nothing more.

Except me.

I am the very definition of a night owl. I see midnight the way most people see 8PM, the time when the night is just getting started. There is a magic to the dead of night, a mystere if you will. It is a time when very few are out and about. Roads that are usually congested beyond hope are conveniently clear. Bees and other pests are nowhere to be found, replaced by harmless crickets and fireflies. Establishments open 24 hours are much more peaceful, lines nonexistent. Artificial light does its best to illuminate the world that we usually see by sunlight, sometimes exposing things that are otherwise overlooked. And for all you tech junkies out there, the lack of demand during the overnight hours give you the most optimal Wi-Fi speeds you’ll see all day.

Every night hour tells a story. Midnight is the celebration, the start of the night and the start of a new day. 1AM continues the party and is the prime of the night. By 2AM things begin to slow down, as the so-called ‘night owls’ give up and turn in. Through the course of the hour the world becomes emptier, until 3AM when only the true owls remain. The 3AM hour is when we rule our roost, enjoying the world we’ve inherited. There is no turning back at this point, we have truly embraced the night.

Then comes the fourth hour.

Few people make it this far. By 4AM, things start to glaze over. As ultimately diurnal beings, even we owls know when things have gone further than probably intended. The sky is as dark as it will ever be. Whatever spurts of energy we may have felt the past few hours are now starting to wind down, and things start to take on a different sight and sound. The specter of sleep starts to slowly take over, but the magic of the night keeps us conscious. It’s almost a high. Dare I go as far to say it’s a naturally psychotic experience. 

This is my favorite hour of the day, the hour when reality seems the least real. Anything seems possible, somehow. Rules start to lose their meaning, because at this point there’s no one and not much to govern. It is a lonely hour, but a time when you can get in touch deeply with yourself. And yet as alien as the hour makes life, that same life still exists. You don’t actually go anywhere, but at 4AM you feel as far as you can be. Again, few people experience the fourth hour, but for us that do, it’s almost better that way.

Depending on the time of year, the fourth hour ends in different ways. In the summer, the hour is quickly ushered out by the start of dawn, an abrupt end to the night that brought you such dark solace. In the winter the night does continue, but society begins to resume as well. Roads repopulate, businesses reopen, and suddenly the night is no longer yours alone. Even if it’s still dark out, by 5AM the magic of the night has fully faded away. There’s not much left to do, except perhaps succumb to the specter.

Pick a time of the day that you understand the most, be it 4AM for me or noon for you. Feel it, question it, but most importantly enjoy it. It’s the one thing you will always have, without fail, every single day. Claim that moment for your own. Do something special at that time, or reserve that time for inner peace. Though our expiration is a definite, the time we have left is a constant. But blink and you miss it. Don’t lose your personal moments in the shuffle, and don’t ignore the value and emotions our favorite hours can bring. Enjoy them every day you have.

Little Debbie Donut Sticks - A Lament

Let’s discuss donut sticks, and how they’re the most disappointing snack cake on the market.

Several months have passed since the painful death of Hostess, and we no longer have the sweet comforts of Twinkies and Devil Dogs to turn to in our times of need. With the top dog now euthanized, all of the second-rate bakery brands have been thrust into the spotlight, forcing us to settle with Tastykake, Blue Bird, and Little Debbie, to name a few.  Though they’ve expanded and advertised their versions of Hostess favorites (under some truly terrible names, seriously who thinks Bingles sound appetizing?) they all still have their own relatively exclusive snack cakes. In Little Debbie’s case, she has a little something called the donut stick, something I’ve never seen imitated by another brand… and for good reason.

On paper, donut sticks sound like a perfect snack cake: a glazed donut with the perfect shape for dunking into coffee, individually wrapped for freshness. Who wouldn’t want a couple of those, and what could possibly go wrong?

Let’s start with the donut itself. For me, a glazed donut is meant to be light and airy. Krispy Kreme absolutely nails it and Dunkin Donuts is very average. But these donut sticks are dense, almost downright hard. I don’t want my donut to be that dry and concentrated unless its a Munchkin. Little Debbie is basically dressing up a slice of stale pound cake and calling it a donut. Strike one.

Then there’s the glaze. Glaze is supposed to be soft and supple, but the glaze on donut sticks is dry, crunchy mess. It looks, feels and tastes like they glazed these pound cakes about 10 years ago and flash froze them, only to thaw them last month and ‘pack them fresh’. Also, whatever sugar (substitute) they’re using is just a little too fake for my tastes. I completely understand that it’s no small effort to mass-produce a glazed donut with a long shelf life, and probably impossible to do with fresh, true ingredients. But when you attempt it regardless and this is the final product you’re presenting me, I’m not impressed. Strike two.

If the look and feel of these donut sticks didn’t already turn you off, try eating one. These pastries fall victim to the same demon Drake’s Coffee Cakes did, in that they instinctively fall apart once you take a bite. How could a dense, dry cake with a papery glaze completely collapse like that? And they want you to dunk them in coffee?! Yeah that’ll help keep these things structurally sound! Strike three, Little Debbie.

The current, 'modern' packaging. But could you really tell?

It’d be one thing if they just invented these and were piloting them in test markets, because then they’d immediately be deemed a fail and sent back to the drawing board. However, donut sticks have been around for decades. As you could also tell from the virtually unchanged box artwork, these guys have probably been around since the Nixon Administration. I’m sure there’s some perverse cult following around these odd things, but that alone couldn’t have possibly kept the donut stick conveyors in motion. Something else must be fueling their popularity, and I think I know what it is:

Even though my description of them makes them seem repulsive, you cannot deny there is an allure around the concept of an on-demand glazed donut that pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee. And since no other snack cake bakery even makes a donut stick (at least not like this), when we come across these Little Debbie boxes in the supermarket we think we’ve struck gold. Cue the mental debate: “I mean, that cup of coffee does look delicious, and these donut sticks can’t be that bad… these pastries have been around forever, there’s gotta be a reason… And they’re what? Only $1.90 for a whole box? Wow, I gotta give these a try!” And we get all excited, thinking we’ve come across the holy grail of snack cakes… even though this same exact event happened about a year or two ago… and we didn’t like them back then… so why would we like them now… “Oh well maybe they changed the recipe,” you reason, “maybe they weren’t as bad as I remember. I mean, how could they mess up a glazed donut? Not to mention it’ll fit perfectly in my coffee cup!”

Behold, in all their, uh, glory...

So you get home and eagerly await that 9 o’clock hour. You make a small pot of coffee and break out your donut sticks so you can wash down and redeem the horribleness of the day. You pop open the box and slide out a stick, noticing it doesn’t look quite as good as it looks on the box (and let’s be honest, they don’t even look that good in the picture in the first place). You take a deep breath, gear yourself up to believe the hype and take your first bite… <crunch>… “Crunch? wtf?!” you think…  chew for a bit… … swallow… and the look of sheer disappointment on your face becomes enough to make a grown man cry. Every synapse of your brain is trying to rationalize why this supposed taste sensation instead became a giant dud, and suddenly it all makes sense. It makes sense why no other bakery has tried something like this, why you can regularly find a whole box for under 2 bucks, and why the world can be a cruel, cruel place sometimes.

Now you’re stuck with a half-eaten donut stick and several others still in the box. Then they’re sent to the back corner of the kitchen cabinet to remain and taunt you while you pray that one day they just disappear. But they stay, and especially since they’re individually wrapped they stay much longer than you anticipate. With every passing glance you might try another one, hoping to high heaven that this time they’ll taste better. They don’t, and another tear gets choked back until the day you can’t take anymore and unceremoniously throw them out.

Time passes, and life slowly returns to normal.

About a year and a half later you’ll go grocery shopping and once again the siren we call Little Debbie calls you to the perfect theory of the donut stick. All of your past experiences are rendered invalid and another box of donut sticks is added to your cart. The cycle repeats.

This is how donut sticks have remained in production all these years, and why no one’s ever called for a recipe revision. It’s because we’re constantly giving them ‘last chances’ and getting disappointed every time. Stop being fooled and get off the ride. The truth needs to be told about these things, and it looks like I've been nominated to do the honors. Please don't fall for donut sticks again, and keep your heads held high. One day we’ll have the perfect pre-made glazed donut that fits in a coffee cup... but that day is not today.

Tuna vs Tuna Fish

So for some reason Logo decided to skip airing Drag Race last week, so don’t hound me saying that I’m a week behind AGAIN. The latest episode instead aired today, and tomorrow the episode should be available online, which means I can screenshot it and I promise I’ll get my recap up on the blog in a timely fashion. But for the time being, let’s talk tuna.

Yes, tuna.

Where most balanced people consider breakfast as their most important meal, I skip it completely. I also usually skip lunch, which makes my biggest meal dinner, which in turn is followed by an overnight meal. Kinda like a midnight snack but it’s about 3x bigger and well past midnight. Taco Bell dubbed this as ‘fourthmeal’ in a late-2000s ad campaign, but I invented it first. Too bad I never took them to court =P. So I just finished my overnight meal for today, er… tonight with a can of tuna. I personally eat it straight out of the can, by straining the water and drenching it in lemon juice. It sounds schvomega and sometimes it can be if you happen to get a bad can, but tonight it was an absolutely lovely end to my eclectic overnight meal, which tonight also included cinnamon waffles, beef barley soup and a beer. (And would you believe I weigh under 140lbs? I love it!)

Bumble Bee brand solid white albacore is my personal favorite, as it usually finds itself on sale. Though that claim of being ‘solid white’ can be questionable from can to can… Anyway, technically it can be called canned albacore, and I don’t know why the tuna companies don’t capitalize more on the official name. ‘Albacore’ sounds so posh and upscale compared to ‘tuna,’ tell me why there haven’t been a handful of pushy ad campaigns declaring the death of tuna and the rise of albacore. It would at least give us misguided Americans clarification on what exactly to call this food, because we can’t universally decide how to casually refer to it.

Depending on who you ask, one will call it tuna, canned tuna, solid white albacore (yeah right), or tuna fish. I bet it’s a regional thing, but I personally refer to it as tuna fish as do many others. Not only that, but I consider tuna and tuna fish as two completely different preparations of the same animal.

This is tuna fish. A small, squat can with hacked up tuna pieces inside. Most people use this in recipes, notably salads and sandwiches. But like I said, just get me a can opener, lemon juice and a fork and I’m good to go. The Feast of Paupers.

This is tuna. Anytime it is not in that signature-size can, and it’s in a solid steak piece, it’s a fish just like any other. Though I can manage with the can variety, clearly this is preferable (that picture looks delicious). The downsides are the higher price and the smaller portion size. I’m not sure if the portion size is true, but I’ve always found tuna fish to last a lot longer meal-wise than a tuna steak. The Feast of Kings.

So there’s your difference. Tuna fish is cheap, convenient and iconic. Tuna is more expensive, more of a ‘meal’ than an ingredient, and indulgent. It’s like a salmon or a tilapia, only it’s tuna. You would not put tuna in a tuna salad, nor would you order tuna fish in a high-end seafood restaurant. Understand? 

It still doesn’t explain why the redundant term ‘tuna fish’ is used rather than something else for the canned variety, and I really don’t have an answer for you. It does have a nice ring to it, as it’s two four-letter, one-syllable words put together, and some people compound it into a single word itself. ‘Tuna fish’ just works, and that’s why it’s said, that’s it.

Thus ends our discussion about overnight meals and tuna fish, at least for now. This is merely a preview of where this blog will turn once the Drag Race reaches the finish line, so get prepared for some real irreverent discussion about life and the sick sad society we live with, right down to the minutia. Oh it’s gonna be fun.

Rosaries are NOT Necklaces!

Let’s all get something straight. Over the past few years I’ve seen this alarming trend of rosaries (and variations of such) being worn like necklaces. It’s usually the younger crowd (ages 16-24) and I highly doubt they even know what a rosary truly is. You may be one of these offenders. Well I’m here to tell you to STOP IT.

I get it. Rosaries look like ideal necklaces, with the long loop of beads and the small string coming off the bottom, ending with a crucifix (NOT a cross, there's a difference). But they are not jewelry: they are prayer beads. You see, each bead represents a prayer, and yes they are in that certain pattern for a reason. It’s in a circular form because you start with the crucifix, travel around the loop and double back to the crucifix to finish the rosary. I suppose they could’ve just broken the loop to go in a straight line that ends the way it starts, but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

Now I could go into major detail about the origin of the rosary, what prayers are said on each bead, the Divine Mysteries associated with the rosary, and all that good stuff, but honestly if you use a rosary properly you would already know those things. But I will tell you that to us Catholics (and especially to those of us that openly embrace the spiritualist and mystic aspects of the faith), the rosary is an incredibly hardcore and powerful instrument of prayer. Saying the rosary can supplant miracles, invoke religious ecstasy, even grant indulgences (reductions) to sentences in Purgatory! So with the rosary seen as such an important and beloved chain of beads, it is distressing to see so many people misuse them for jewelry.

Even worse are the rosary wannabes that replace the crucifix or beads with something completely different, like with pentagrams. What a rape if I ever saw one. Probably the worst thing someone can do though is wear a rosary and think it makes them look or seem religious, but then when someone asks them what it really is they draw a blank or simply don’t care. It makes me sick.

What everyone should be wearing are scapulars. “Huh? What’s that?” A scapular is a rosary’s ‘other half’, as in both are related in tandem to become very powerful religious artifacts. Scapulars are two small square pictures connected together by two pieces of string, in the basic sense. They are designed to be worn over your neck, one square on the front and back of you, but can be affixed to you in various ways (my grandmother used to string hers around her bra strap =P). It’s preferred that some part of it touches your skin. Scapulars simply bless and enhance you as you wear them (though people of little faith will just call BS on them and everything else), but the most famous reason for wearing a scapular is because if you die while wearing one you will ascend directly to Heaven. No Hell, no Purgatory, no questions asked, no kidding. And since any one of us could die at any given moment, a scapular is something you wouldn’t want to be caught dead without! Literally!

Trust me, you're better off wearing the thing on the right.

I’ll admit, a scapular doesn’t look nearly as sexy as a rosary, which is probably why it’s unfairly found its way into Religious Item Purgatory (god I’m loving the wordplay in this post!) but nothing would do my heart better than to see every schlock wearing a rosary like it’s bling instead wearing a scapular. If only they knew what a scapular had to offer them. Then again, if only they knew what a rosary actually was…

Stupid Mall Names and a Sad Reality

So for all you newcomers to the blog, you must think that all I talk about is RuPaul’s Drag Race. And while that may be true while Season 5 is on the air, there’s other things I like discussing, including some really mundane crap that enters my mind that makes me question humanity. Like this:

Shopping malls. Due to the employment I’ve been finding myself in the past few years, shopping malls are a big part of my life, and I find myself in them almost daily. Add on the fact that New Jersey has the most malls of any state and probably any region of the world, and it creates a complicated love/hate relationship between us.

Malls are an interesting entity in the building world. One giant building that holds dozens of smaller buildings inside it, mostly dedicated to either shopping (mostly clothing) or food (but rarely grocery). These malls design themselves to be community centers where regional and out-of-towners come together with a common interest of consumption. Even though all malls serve the same purpose, and many include the same stores/restaurants inside them, not every mall is created equal. (Unless they’re part of the Simon Property Group, which has a notorious habit of creating McMalls.) To further expand each mall’s uniqueness they are given (usually pompous) names. Let’s discuss some of the more memorable names I’ve come across in my research.

These malls just follow what Simon Says. Makes sense, actually.

To start, not every mall is called a ‘mall’. Malls in New Jersey are generally referred to as such, and as we move into upstate New York, Pennsylvania and beyond we come across more regional adjectives. Let’s begin with ‘Galleria’, such as the Poughkeepsie Galleria (NY). What a word if I ever heard one. No, we’re not going to the mall, we’re going to the galleria! What, like it’s a gallery of stores but instead of calling that we’re going to make it sound fake-foreign? Come on, now. It doesn’t even make sense, since things in a gallery are things that are seen but not touched, experienced, and especially not walked into.

Don't mistake it for the Louvre!

A relative of the galleria is the ‘collection’, as in the Somerset Collection (MI). Now we’re not even referring to it as a building! At least a galleria implies it’s an actual place. Collection… collection of what? Usually the super-upscale wannabes that call their malls Collections also refer to their stores as boutiques, just to up the ante. I’ve even heard of stores referred to as concepts, as in they’re trying to figure out if the store is even necessary. It especially backfires if the mall is dead or dying, because then we are left with an empty collection of crap.

The only thing this is a 'collection' of is natural sunlight.

A lesser-known deviation is the ‘commons’, most popularly the Bridgewater Commons (NJ). What exactly is a commons? I mean, galleria we could figure out, and a collection is self-explanatory, but commons is one of those words where you think you know what it means until you try to define it. Oh well. I’ve come across this adjective too infrequently to consider it a true part of the mall name epidemic.

Apparently this is a 'commons'.

Then there’s the malls that call themselves ‘The Mall at ____’, as in this is the one and only. That may be true but it still ranks high on the arrogance scale. Take for example The Mall at Short Hills (NJ). It’s actually in the mall’s style guide that it is not to be referred to as the Short Hills Mall, even though that’s exactly what it is (and what everyone calls it anyway). Seriously what is the point of the wordplay? If they wanted it to stand out from the crowd, then they should have given it a badass name, like The Mall at the Source (NY) or The Mall at Millennia (FL). Thank god they didn’t cave and call it The Short Hills Galleria, or The Collection At Short Hills, because that would have rocketed the snobbery into the stratosphere.

The Mall at Short Hills. Don't you DARE call it by any other name.

So although malls go by a million different names and clarifications, it mustn’t be ignored that malls themselves are a dying breed. Year after year malls are being de-malled and turned into generic big-box plazas. What once held fountain displays, neon signage and about a hundred different stores are now gutted out and turned into a single Walmart or Best Buy. Even sadder are the malls that are held up in legal limbo and are literally rotting into the ground. Picture if you will:

Fashion Center (NJ)'s directory before it was de-malled. How did the graphic designer keep a straight face when making this?! You probably can't read it, but that's ok because no one was there to read it in the first place.

There stands a mall that everyone used to go to back in the 80s and 90s. It was *the* place to be. After years of decline it now stands with no marked entrance. The parking lot is slowly being overtaken by weeds and where the lines are is anyone’s guess. The anchors lay vacant, as the mall’s mother Macy and father Sears have long since abandoned it (along with its Aunt JC Penney and Uncle Boscov). The interior is looking as drab as the exterior, with half-lit chandeliers barely making up for the oxidized skylights. It has about 5 or 6 stores still open inside them that haven’t been evicted yet, and it’s a wonder how they stay in business. Usually they consist of a shoe store (Payless-style), a hair salon (privately owned and barely operated), a really bad pizzeria (where pizza is microwaved to order), a comic book shop (overweight owner and all), and a democratic party headquarters that still has a banner saying ‘VOTE DUKAKIS’ in the window. In between these stores are empty spaces bearing the labelscars of Caldor, Waldenbooks, KB Toys, and a dentist that was sued for malpractice. Besides the 10 total employees of the existing stores, the only other people in the mall are 80-year-old mall walkers, one-off shoppers who are in denial, dead mall enthusiasts (they do exist), and some guy sitting on a bench who can’t remember how he got there.

Some random dead mall. And look behind the column, a shoe store. Told you.

As much as I make fun of malls (and will continue to), a part of me has always loved them. Stories like the made-up one above are becoming all too common, and it breaks my heart when I read about how grand these gallerias, collections, commons and ‘The Mall’s used to be. Do us all a favor, shop at a mall today. Take in the climate control, dated architecture and fake plants, pick up a few knickknacks (if anything to help bolster the economy), and top it all off with a Cinnabon. For some reason, you’ll be glad you did.

The Club

Does anyone remember The Club? Not the song, not the movie, not even the Sega video game, but the anti-theft steering wheel lock. This thing was mad popular in the 90s, especially in urban areas. It was a long metal rod with hooks on each end, usually coated in a bright-colored plastic to draw attention to itself (and its patents pending no less). It would hook across a steering wheel and lock into place with a key. The idea was if it was installed correctly, its protruding length and shape would prevent the wheel from turning all the way around, rendering it unable to be stolen and effectively driven away. 

Just look at this thing.

Every time you wanted to drive your clubbed car, you would have to unlock it, retract it and throw it on the passenger-side floor. And being a giant metal rod, this thing was pretty heavy. Not to mention you would have an extra key on your keyring now that you’d have to lug around and remember you even have. If someone needed to drive your car you had better remembered to give them your Club key!

Again this was most popular in areas that required you to feel that your car could be jacked at a moment’s notice. Stopping at CVS for that toilet plunger you thought you had when you needed it? Don’t forget to install your Club! Need to change your parking spot so the metermaid doesn’t get on your ass? Unhook, drive 10 feet, park then rehook! After a while it almost becomes second nature, until you realize what the hell you’re actually doing.

What gets me the most is the pompousness of it: a large day-glo eyesore that attracted attention more than it tried to deter it. It screams, “I know you want to steal my car but I’m going to make it difficult for you to do it!” Note I said difficult and not impossible, because hacking a Club is as easy as picking a lock. And since they already picked the lock of the car door to get in, the thieves are already halfway there. Back to the pompousness though. Not only is the car owner begging to get broken into by installing that wretched thing on his wheel, but he’s actually making us believe that his car is one we want to break into. As if he’s got the most desirable car in the world, he already made the decision for us that we want to steal it, and he’s already got that circumvented via a long red stick. What an ass.

So what put this 90s relic in my head, you ask? I parked next to a car last week that had a Club in the ‘steal me!’ position and the memories flooded in. Memories of my beloved deceased grandparents who Clubbed their ’92 Mercury Grand Marquis every time they parked without fail. They were lifelong Brooklyn residents and Grandpa drove until his death in 1999. 90s era, check. Sketchy neighborhood, check. Yep, they qualified to be in the Club. And for whatever reason, while Grandma still drove into the 2000s, she stopped using it. Maybe because it was getting too heavy for her to keep bothering with. Or maybe she had one too many keys on her keyring and something had to go. Or maybe she realized just how useless it was.

Though my grandparents were (barely) justified in using it then, no one is justified in using it now. When I saw that recent Club I was in one of the richest towns in the state, with certainly no danger of theft. Oh, and that car I saw it in? A beat-up Cadillac nearly as old as I am. Who the hell would want to steal that? Half of the trouble in using a Club is you have to have a car that’s actually worth something on the black market, or at least the Kelley Blue Book. You want to Club your 2013 BMW, or your Viper or any other desired car brand (I’m not really familiar with them). But even then you shouldn’t want to do it. They are far from foolproof, they’re cumbersome, and their relevance in society died along with the VHS tape.

W:NR, Powered by Nespresso

This is an introductory post mainly to show how and what these posts will be like. Whenever things pop in my head I’ll write about them. It can be anything from a rant, a review, an appreciation, an analysis of society… probably all of those at once. But it won’t be a dumb statement like “I like food” just to add to the post count. I’ll try to post as often as possible but I really can’t commit to a schedule. As of now this blog is not paying me a dime, so I’m not under a contractual obligation to do this at any rate. I might post several times in a single day if I’m on a roll, since different topics will get their own posts (as opposed to a giant daily post). Other times a few days might go by without an update, either because I have a life, I can’t get to my MacBook or iPad (yeah I’m an Apple drone), or I’ll simply have nothing to say. Like I said these posts have to have a level of quality.

Sooo yeah, enough housekeeping. Let’s talk about coffee. Coffee is one of the most popular drinks worldwide, has been around for centuries (millennia?), and generates billions in revenue. Some of our biggest food companies rely on it as their lifeblood: Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts I’m looking at you. (Anyone else find it odd that the flagship product of Dunkin Donuts is coffee?) So you would think that this lucrative and venerable beverage tastes delicious, right? DEAD WRONG. Coffee has to be the worst tasting drink that we willfully ingest, second only to liquid medicine (especially Biaxin). Proof of this is in coffee’s inseparable partners, cream and sugar. Without these friends, coffee wouldn’t be nearly as popular today as it is. Coffee also has a myriad of variations (mostly including cream and sugar) which are all designed to make it more palatable. None of this would be needed if coffee tasted good in the first place, and I know there are some masochists out there that enjoy coffee as black as their men, but they are a small percentage. The majority has spoken that coffee tastes like hell, so why do we drink it?!

It’s not for the caffeine, I’ll tell you that right now. If caffeine was the spark behind the coffee craze, people would have dropped the coffee itself and capitalized on the caffeine alone a long time ago. Caffeine is a readily available drug, commonly found in tablet form in any pharmacy. You can pop a caffeine pill in 5 seconds and there’s your cup of coffee, quick and easy. I take caffeine pills myself and it’s always reacted to negatively by others, saying I’m addicted or it’s unhealthy. That is not true in the slightest, if anything it’s the same thing as having a cup of coffee but without the extra sugar in my system and without the stains to brush off my teeth, not to mention all the time saved by sipping the piping hot beverage. In today’s fast-paced lifestyle, I’m surprised people still have time for coffee, even the ones who commute around with their to-go cups.

Learn to embrace it, people.

Coffee connoisseurs will tell you they drink it due to enjoyment of the complicated flavors in the various roasts. Light roast, medium roast, French roast… some roasts with flowery accents, winey aftertastes, fruity tones… I’ll tell you now they are full of it. First of all it justifies my previous statement that anything added to coffee is to not make it taste as terrible. Second of all, these additions are barely noticeable (unless it’s a hazelnut roast for some reason). Do you know of anyone who can blindly taste-test a cup of coffee and discern the roast darkness and the added tones? Of course not, and the ones that do only know because they were told (or read) beforehand what to taste for. And like any good placebo, since they had the mental picture in their head to sense for a woody tone, they will taste a tree in their coffee.

But espresso… espresso is different.

Espresso (not expresso) is basically a very concentrated coffee, made by forcing hot water through grounds at high pressure. (To compare, regular coffee is hot water that simply drips through grounds). It’s all of the flavor, caffeine, and essence of a full-sized coffee in a little over 2 ounces of liquid. To translate for the college people reading, espresso is the Everclear of the coffee world. You can sip it slowly and enjoy all 2 ounces of it, or knock it back and shudder. Espresso is a hardcore black sludge that I’m pretty certain under the right conditions can strip the paint off a car. And if it doesn’t do that, in an emergency you could dump it in the gas tank to go those extra few miles to the nearest gas station. To the uninitiated, it’s a scary drink that is immediately drowned in milk, sugar and syrup to create cappuccinos and lattés. The taste is scary, the pompousness around it is scarier, and the look and sound of a commercial espresso machine is the scariest part of it all. I used to be one of these people, a slave to Starbucks’ $4+ drinks. But not since joining the world of Nespresso.

As much as they don’t want to admit it, Nespresso is to espresso what Keurig is to coffee. A further extension of Nescafé (extended from Nestlé), Nespresso is a capsule-based espresso machine. Fill it with water, drop in your color-coded 60¢ capsule, and press the button. In less than 30 seconds you’re treated to what sounds like a jet engine taking off as well as a cup of perfectly prepared and portioned espresso. The company created its own world of espresso blends, color-coded due to intensity and flavor infusions. However unlike water-diluted coffee, since espresso is so no-bullshit these flavors are actually discernible and play with the bitterness of the drink to take over your senses. Espresso also has a slightly oily texture to it (due to its forced and pure nature) so it envelops your tongue and lingers in your throat. Espresso only lasts about a minute if you really go slowly, but it’s an impression that stays with you.

Retail Price As Shown: $7.20 (plus tax).

Espresso also successfully marries the balance between coffee and time. Coffee takes a while to make and to drink, and popping a caffeine pill takes no time at all but carries a negative stigma. Espresso (or at least Nespresso) is quick to prepare and quick to drink. I don’t believe there is more caffeine in a cup of espresso than a cup of coffee, it’s just relative to the size of the drink. This rumor probably came from ill-informed people who made espresso and scoffed at its size, then continued to make enough to fill a coffee mug. If you were to drink a few of those you would probably die.

This whole first writing session has been powered by Nespresso, and unfortunately no I was not contacted by them to write this and sing their praises (in return for them making my checking account sing). But I would love if W:NR took that direction. Remember I’m doing all of this gratis for now, out of my interest and your pleasure. But companies heed: if you want me to talk about your thing (hopefully in a positive note), come say hi and we’ll arrange something. =)

It’s amazing that we are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a machine that when it’s all said and done produces 2 ounces of black fluid. It’s kinda like that gum machine from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that goes through all that trouble to make this little nothing of a gum, and then when you taste it, whoa.