Black Friday vs Hugel

Hugel IM'd me on Black Friday telling me that he had seen an external hard drive on sale for $89 on Amazon, but it didn't appear to still be on sale, and if I knew why this would be. He had a link to the hard drive, which I followed, and found that the drive was priced at $119. For the rest of this story, we will call this The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was.

I looked at the product page closely, as well as the Black Friday page, and found that not only was The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was, not on sale, but there was no indication that it was part of the Black Friday deals at all. Hugel insisted that The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was, was definitely on sale that day as part of Black Friday.

Then I found, under the Black Friday page, an external hard drive that was very similar, and was on sale for $89. It was made by the same company, had almost the exact same model name, and had all the same specs. Pretty much identical except this one was actually on sale. For the rest of this story, we will call this The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive.

I sent Hugel a link to The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive. He claimed that he was "no dummy", and that this was definitely not the hard drive he had seen on sale. I explained that it would be odd for Amazon to lower the cost of The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was down to $89, but then re-raise it to $119 as a part of the same deal. Furthermore, it seemed very much in the realm of possibilities that The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive, which was extremely similar and made by the same company, was the one he had seen.

I then asked what the difference between the two drives was, as they seemed almost identical, except for different model names. Hugel said that he didn't want to buy The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive, because the model name said 'Expansion Drive' in it. He also admitted he had no idea what that actually meant.

Seagate has stumbled upon a real marketing opportunity here. Hugel is willing to pay $30 more for an external hard drive, if it means not having the word 'Expansion' in its model name. Maybe if they took out the word 'External', he'd shell out an additional $50. In fact, they could market their exact same hard drives, but just not give them names at all, and who knows what Hugel would be willing to pay!

Hugel Asks Ben a Question

(via Instant Messenger)

H: is it worth it to take Jetblue whenerver possible?
H: like Im going up to NYC for halloween, and JetBlue service ends while I'm there.
H: so do I buy a 1 way ticket with them and one with someone else?

...

B: personally i would drive. but thats cus i hate flying, and i like the evening nyc drive

H: ok, glad I asked
H: why do I bother





(ed note: Hugel's final question is not an unreasonable one)

The Day Off Debacle

Like I frequently do, I invited Ben to lunch the other afternoon (a weekday). For someone who works from home, he certainly has a lot of excuses to not meet. Monday I was greeted with the following respons "I can't. I'm going to the Y, taking the afternoon off to take a nap, and I THINK the eye doctor. " Now I'm used to dealing with odd responses from Ben, but this one I had to clarify further.

"So you're taking the entire afternoon off for a nap? Why not meet me for lunch and then you can waste your afternoon however you want" His response "I can't eat tacos before the Y". Rather than waste MY day arguing with him, I made plans with my roommate and went to lunch. It wasn't until later that I realized the full absurdity of his day.

When you have steady jobs like we do, you typically have decent health insurance. This health insurance typically allows you to have doctors with whom you make appointments, not walk in like commoners. After some digging I found even more gold in this situation. So Ben doesn't have an optomitrist and was planning on showing up at Lens Crafters and waiting for an opening (someone who can never wait for me for anything). On top of this, he apparently hated talking on the phone so much that he had Kelsey (also at work at HER job, which is not her house) call three Lens Crafters to find him an appointment. WTF is with this guy?

Who does he think he is?

I just realized that I am participating in four different events for Hugel's birthday. And they are all in the same week. And Hugel, for the most part, was responsible in setting them all up. But then again we all know that excessive self-promotion is Hugel's bread and butter.

Buried Treasure

While perusing through the internals of this blog, a function granted to me as an administrator, I came across an old draft post that Hugel had written but never published, where he makes fun of my pronunciations of words. The best part: its from 2006! So Hugel, you are on notice: publish this piece or I will, as is.

Typical Hugel Lunch

Just had lunch with Hugel and Briefcase Dave.

Hugel showed up 15 minutes late and left 15 minutes early. It's almost as if he didn't show up at all.

Backseat Driver

Images and flashes from the moment are still coursing through my head.

It's almost as if Hugel planned the left-turn perfectly to ensure that if the car coming from our left didn't hit us, the car coming from our right certainly would.

Fortunately both other drivers had a heightened sense of awareness and slammed on their brakes, avoiding catastrophe. Hugel never stopped or flinched for a second.

I live to see another day, yet with the nagging thought that I will inevitably die at Hugel's hand.

Ben AND Hugel???

You may have noticed the blog has gone quiet. Sadly enough, Ben and I haven't really seen each other enough lately to have any real disagreements. We're getting dinner together on Thursday so something may come of that. In the meantime here's some exchanges that show that we can team up from time to time.

Hugel: I never told you Ive become friends through Twitter with one of the leads in the web series L33t.
Ben: which one? the one who actually said "pwned"? invite him to MZ on thursday


Hugel: Theres a healthcare debate in my building right now. Cantor is here. You shoulda come down. You coulda heckled, and then we coulda had Edos.
Ben: i was on a plane. oh well, i dont heckle jews anyway.

Hugel: Are you familiar with Positive Vibe cafe? Its staffed by disabled people (mentally and physically). They have a program where they bring in guest chefs for a night. Who do you think would be the worst person to be ordering them around??? @PositiveVibecafe : Guest Chef Series Resumes this Sunday, September 20, 2009 featuring Ed Vasaio of Mamma Zu..
Ben: yeah i remember that place. thats awesome. you realize that you have to go to this.
Hugel: "Hey, retard, you burnt the cheesy bread"
Ben: hahahahahaha. that is so awful yet i cant stop laughing.

The Earl of Hugel

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too tough on Hugel. If I don't really give him a fair shake. Maybe his multitude of problems aren't really his problems, they're my problems and point to some sort of deep-rooted insecurity which causes me to overreact and lash out at him.

But then I'm validated by the scorn of others for Hugel, and I realize that it really is him who is flawed. Check it out here.

A little background: the comment is in reference to a similar shot taken by the commenter, on which Hugel left a comment claiming to have the superior photo. The commenter, noting the contempt for the English language that Hugel displays at all times, as well as in the title of his own photo, proceeded to destroy him with her own comment.

Apparently his spelling of the word sandwich - a word which I am pretty sure I knew how to spell right around the first time I ever ate one - is not limited to just this case. See here.

Only in the world of Hugel could you search his photo library for the word "sandwhich" and find TWO occurrences.

Hugel's Blog

Q: When is a blog not really a blog but just a series of YouTube clips that the author thinks are humorous?

A: When it's Hugel's blog.

Q: So couldn't Hugel have saved himself the hosting fees, and just started a YouTube channel for free?

A: Yes.

More Typical Hugel

Sorry (to our one reader) that it has been awhile since the last post. I feel like I'm doing all the heavy lifting here, having written every single post to occur in the last year. Hugel must be busy over at his personal blog, "Distractions" (if there was ever a word to describe Hugel, it truly is distracted).

Speaking of personal writing, I'm going to post about Hugel's screenplay. Yes, Hugel wrote a screenplay. Yes, I have read it. And yes, it is surprisingly entertaining, and much better than I thought it would be (such a low bar though, really!). But I'm not here to post a critical analysis of his work, I would rather focus on another aspect of his writing. Before receiving said screenplay, many people would have wondered if the writing was good, and if the characters were well developed, and if there was a clear beginning, middle, climax, and end. But not me. You see, knowing Hugel, I was more curious to see how many spelling mistakes there would be, how bad they would be, and how long it would be until I encountered one (for a primer on Hugel's atrocious spelling, just read any of his posts on this blog). Well it turns out, it didn't take very long for me to come across the first mistake. In fact I didn't have to start reading the screenplay at all: there was a misspelling in the filename. His screenplay which I'm pretty sure is titled "STARSTRUCK", was according to the filename, called "STARSTUCK", which sounds like a bad sci-fi novel. I proceeded to open the file and was then presented with the title page, and the true name of his screenplay, "STARSTRUCL." OK. At this point, I don't even know the name of what I'm reading. Before receiving it, I thought he had told me the title was "STARSTRUCK" but at no point anywhere in what he provided me did I see that word. The icing on the cake: two lines below this Hugel had spelled his own name incorrectly as "JONH D. HUGEL."

To recap, I haven't even made it to page one, and there are already three spelling mistakes. This is a spelling failure rate of 100% as far as I'm concerned. But this of course is nothing new for Hugel.

Typical Hugel

I was just thinking about how one of the last times I went to visit Richmond, Hugel kept insisting that we go to get brunch at Comfort. He talked about it incessantly, so being a nice guy, I said sure. I even invited several other people to meet us there. Of course when we arrived, we discovered that Comfort doesn't do brunch.

Typical Hugel.

How the tables have turned

As a refresher because it's been a while, Ben has always accused me of breaking everything I ever touch. I think maybe once I borrowed a cd of his and the case got scratched or something, but he has applied this stigma to everything in my life since. Whether my roof developed a leak, or my iPod temporarily stopped, of my computer operating system became corrupted, it was all because I broke everything.

Ben however must have inherited my curse. When he called me around Christmas and asked me to fix his iPod which had recently begun displaying the same symptoms as mine I let him off easy, mainly due to the holiday season. However, after calling me last night and asking me if my Powerbook DVD player has suddenly stopped working (it hadn't before then) and then having him proceed to have me follow directions that result in mine becoming nonfunctional as well, he has truly crossed the line.

The Two Lives Of Ben Kohler

The Ben Kohler that I know and love is the cooler than though type. Whenever something becomes too popular he abandons it and pretends to never liked it; This applies to music, movies, tv shows, etc. It doesn't really apply to Politics or Restaurants, yet.

Anyway, I've heard Bens thoughts on clubs and bars in Richmond, and to the best of my knowledge he was very anti the popular Richmond spots, such as Godfreys, Mars Bar, and more recently The New York Deli. He once told me "That place sucks" when I invited him to the New York Deli.

Needless to say I was pretty surprised when I discovered the article below this, a feature in Richmond Magazine on Carytown hot spots, which seems to show another side to the Ben Kohler many of us didn't know existed. So maybe this shows that somewhere buried deep inside Ben Kohler there is another side of him who still listens to The Strokes and Interpol and still refuses to pick people up on Thursdays because The OC is on.

Slow day

On slow days Ben likes to accuse me of having fictional arguments with him. He accused me today of arguing about whether they would ever make a Bruno movie as a follow-up to the Borat movie. Apparently he didn't believe me when I said "I don't know what you're talking about" so he pushed the issue, insisting that we had this discussion, and today's news that a Bruno movie had been greenlit proved him right.

Although I convinced him it was not me, I am surprised that he didn't make a Blog post about it already.