Saturday, September 20th. I'm officially supposed to sing at this Red Cross fundraiser festival thing. Thingy.

It's going on from noon until mid-night (I think), it's for a good cause, and it's going to rock… and I'm going to be there singing. It's going on just south of Whitewater, WI - about 20 minutes from where I'm currently living (actually, it might be considered part of Whitewater, it's surrounded by cornfields and I forget what the official township name is).

I might be able to house a few people for the night, and I'm probably going to be hosting (or at least co-hosting) an after party, so I encourage everyone to mark it off on their calendar and make the drive.

Did I mention that I'm singing? I know a few of you have expressed an interest in witnessing that - this is your chance.

Photo: Leo Reynolds

Oh, poor letter "G". It doesn't even get pronounced with it's own sound. It's entire existence depends on the cooperation of the cruel and uncaring letter "J".

We should all show "G" a bit of respect and pronounce it as "gee" (like "geek" without the "k") instead of "jee".

Every morning for the last week or so, I've been greeted by an amazing display of talent and architecture.. on my car door.. in the form of a spider-web. The first morning the web was about 6 inches in diameter, a decent sized web, especially considering that it was made in one night - I'm not sure how fast spiders can build webs, but I was impressed by this one. It wasn't just the size, but the spacing between the strands was almost perfect. The web spanned from the outer corner of my mirror to the door. I left the web alone, assuming that the drive to work would displace it, I clearly underestimated the strength of spider webs - it was completely unscathed.

I think it's important to mention at this point that I absolutely hate spiders, they give me the creeps.

The next morning I removed the web. After work there was no sign of an attempt to rebuild the web, so I figured maybe he had found a new home since the last morning. But no, he was just waiting until nightfall to retaliate. The next morning the web was probably just over 10 inches in diameter, and was an absolute mess. The web could not have effectively caught any insects, it was clearly meant as a warning for me. It was quickly removed.

This trend has continued - me clearing the web off in the morning, him rebuilding at night, and me finding a bigger, and more precisely formed web the next morning. This morning he had picked different points on the door to put the corners of the web, making the web over a foot wide, and once again with the perfectly spaced precision between the strands. He's getting stronger, faster and more accurate. And on the way to work, he peaked out from my mirror to taunt me. I was picturing a little spider doing this amazing feat, but this guy was enormous.

Did I mention that spiders absolutely creep me out?

It's my determination that this spider has given up on insects and decided that I am not only his new enemy, but also his new prey. He is taunting me, his methods and skills are improving allowing him to create massive webs in short amounts of time.. he's training. And that is why tonight he must be removed. I'm not big on the idea of killing him, out of respect *cough* fear *cough*, so I have to come up with a way to out him from the mirror that he is now calling home. It's either him or me.

My new apartment is right next to a small pond. This pond is large enough to be home to what sounds like 10 billion bullfrogs. It's probably just 3, but 10 billion sounds a lot more impressive. My apartment is also on the 3rd floor and tends to get pretty warm. To compensate for the heat, we need to keep the windows open and the fans going to maximize the airflow.

Keeping the window in my room open presents a problem - it forces me to try to sleep through the bullfrog's not-so-glorious symphony of disturbing croaking sounds. I can do it, but I really haven't had many decent nights of sleep for the almost 2 months that I've been there.

The only consolation in all of this is the shadow from the street lights. Usually lights are very good at keeping me up, so much so that when I needed to get some really good sleepage going on I would black out my windows with whatever blankets/garbage bags/etc that I could find. The street lights are shining through a tree though, so it blocks out a bit of it, but it also casts a really neat shadow on my wall. I've thought about taking a picture of it, but at that point I'm too tired to get out of bed, and I have a feeling that it doesn't look nearly as cool when my eyes aren't half closed and I'm not about to pass out.

Twix candy bars were originally sold under the brand name "Raider" in many countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway). The Raider name was ditched in many countries in 1991, and in 2000 was completely replaced by the Twix brand.

But… "Raider" has to be one of the coolest names you could give a food product. The only way you could really improve on that is to tack "Twix" on to the front of it. The Twix brand has spawned many variants (Peanut Butter Twix, Fudge Twix, Twix Java, etc.) so why not a "Twix Raider"? I'm imagining a hazelnut flavored caramel. Someone from Mars/Twix needs to read this and completely rip off the idea.

"Twix Raider" would also give the guys in the advertising and design departments a lot of room to play. Imagine if someone had thought of this earlier - there could have been a product tie-in with the latest Indiana Jones movie. The logo could have used a really cool "archeological adventure" font (not Helvetica), and maybe even included a fedora or a whip. Theatres could have run ads for Twix candy bars - Twix Raider candy bars - before the previews, instead of those annoying Pepsi Max "advertainment" commercials. George Lucas and Mars, Inc. missed out on this one I guess.

I'm not sure what caused it, but on Tuesday I had a strange compulsion to answer the question "where are twix bars made?" Some quick googling turned up absolutely nothing useful. But rather than get discouraged and give up, I instead turned to Twix.com's contact form. Then, with my amazing attention span, I quickly (and completely) forgot about it. But the helpful people at Twix didn't forget, and on Thursday I got the following reply:

In response to your email regarding TWIX COOKIE BARS.

Thank you for your email.

Mars Snackfood US operates manufacturing facilities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, Nevada, and Texas.

Have a great day!

Your Friends at Mars Snackfood US

Which, at first glance, was a bit exciting - I had my answer. But then I thought about it.. "manufacturing facilities in…" does not mean "Twix Cookie Bars are made in facilities in…"..

Armed with this new information, I revised my searching and found the answer:
Where are twix bars made? Cleveland, TN.
Twix are made in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Here's a bit more candy for you information junkies - the U.S. manufacturing facilities and the products that they make:

Albany, GA manufactures
Kudos(R), Combos(R) and SNICKERS(R) Marathon.

Burr Ridge, IL produces
all of the frozen confectionery products.

Chicago, IL produces
MILKY WAY(R), 3 MUSKETEERS(R), SNICKERS(R) in the Fun Size and Minis format, Dove Promises and MUNCH Bar.

Cleveland, TN produces
all varieties of M&M'S(R) Chocolate Candies, and TWIX(R) Cookie Bars.

Elizabethtown, PA produces
MILKY WAY(R) Bar, MILKY WAY MIDNIGHT(R) Bar, 3 MUSKETEERS(R) Bar, and DOVE(R) Chocolate.

Hackettstown, NJ
M&M'S(R) Milk Chocolate Candies, M&M'S(R) Peanut Chocolate Candies, M&M'S(R) MINIS(R) Milk Chocolate Candies and MY M&M'S Custom Candies.

Henderson, NV produces
all the ethel chocolate lounge confections.

Waco, TX produces
SKITTLES(R) Bite Size Candy, STARBURST(R) Fruit Chews, and SNICKERS(R) Bars.

Maybe you remember my boycott against Frito-Lay due to their claims of "0 Grams Trans Fat!" even though they still use partially hydrogenated oil (trans fat) in Doritos. Maybe you don't.

During my last grocery shopping adventure I had a wicked craving for Cool Ranch Doritos. I had to turn my cart around and seek out the chip aisle, knowing that I couldn't buy them, but hoping I could find some product from some other brand that would quench my hunger. And that's when I found out that Roundy's makes ranch tortilla chips.

Roundy's.. the brand I'm always afraid to buy. The cheapest of the cheap. But Roundy's doesn't use trans fats in their tortilla chips (that I could tell). Roundy's Ranch Tortilla Chips are also less than half the price per ounce as Cool Ranch Doritos.

Reluctantly.. I finally opened the bag this morning when making my lunch and nom'd on a few.

The result? I think I've got a keeper. The flavor isn't as strong or quite the same as the boycotted Doritos, but they're half the price and have more than half the flavor… my taste buds will adjust.