Currently, Indianapolis has about 70,000 spaces around downtown, including spaces built to accommodate the oft-stressed IUPUI area, which has 16,781 spaces between lots and garages. All of IUPUI’s spaces are publicly-owned and constructed at a cost to Indiana taxpayers. 8,337 of those spaces are designed just for students, meaning faculty and staff take up almost half of the available spaces at IUPUI. There are over 30,000 students enrolled at IUPUI.

Figures based on the average cost of constructing a new parking garage indicate that in 2008, U.S. garages cost about $15,000 per space, or $44 per square foot. That’s a lot of money just to hold a car. Parking lots cost anywhere from $250 to $500 per space, depending on their location.

All that car storage takes up a lot of valuable real estate, too, causing city centers to be consumed by largely useless, ugly, concrete walls so people can walk a few short feet to their destination.

Considering the cost to the public to build large roads, parking garages either entirely publicly funded or abated with public tax grants, parking fees people pay, meter attendants, and other public infrastructure for car storage like signage and meter maintenance (now partially covered by a private operator in Indianapolis), that’s a huge sum of money. Even one garage that, on average, costs millions to build, is somehow seen as “okay”, despite it costing the average US city just under $6 million to do so.

The average student at IUPUI pays over $250 an academic year to park on campus, or about $25 a month. Similar rates apply to people who work downtown and have to pay their own parking costs. Dennison Parking operates a facility that charges $40 a month for non-guaranteed daily parking at their facility on South Meridian Street.

The entire IndyConnect plan would cost a person earning $50,000 just $10 a month to build and maintain a system. The average household in Marion and Hamilton County would pay about $120 a year for a system that would allow us to stop building ugly blocks for car storage, and instead allow people to get to the business of actually getting around town quickly and efficiently. The cost of three parking garages would roughly cover the cost of operating IndyConnect for one year.

Which means that the amount of money that Indianapolis is going to spend, without much of a peep from the public, is enough to operate an entire transit system that would catapult Indianapolis into the echelon of “cities with great mass transit” for a year. That’s just in public money that the city somehow “doesn’t have”. Outside of the public coffers, the plan would have to be funded largely by tax dollars on a recurring basis in a way that garages presumably don’t (beyond maintenance).

So, for the average schmuck who’s married with a kid or two, where both parents work, they’re willing to spend, on average a third of their income each year based on US Transportation Bureau statistics on cars and “car stuff”, like maintenance, gas, insurance, and parking fees. Or, $25,000 a year for an income of $75,000. As opposed to spending $120 a year in taxes, plus bus/train fees of $60 a month for a total of $1,560 a year (for two people).

Tens of thousands of people willingly pay $25,000 a year when they could just pay $1,560. Talk about an economic opportunity. Wouldn’t you like a third of your income back?

Most people in Indianapolis are one person in a car going to work, then going home. If you’re married, even losing one car to allow mom the use of the transit system while Dad takes the car to run a bunch of errands and then pick up and drop off the kids somewhere would still be a savings of $12,500 a year. If you’re a single parent with a kid or two, you can still enjoy the savings by using the car less in instances where the kids take the bus to school and you take the bus or train to work. Imagine saving just half the money you spend now per year on gas and oil changes. That would also extend the life of your car, or allow you to purchase and maintain a cheaper used car that you use less. For virtually everyone except elderly old quadriplegics in Indianapolis, everyone stands to save thousands of dollars a year.

For all those students going to IUPUI who spend untold amounts of car expense, they could instead invest that money in their education. Even not paying for a parking permit could cover the cost of several textbooks (or one big one if you’re in med school).

Cars are, for most people, a drain. They are not an asset, as an asset should retain or grow in value. They’re generally used for only transporting one person around, they pollute, they’re expensive, very few people like their car or their commute, and they’re an antiquated way of thinking about transit that we’re seemingly stuck with because of years of city building and construction that centered around the highway and the suburbs.

The City of Indianapolis is about to construct big boxes useful for nothing else but cars, while everyone sits around and wonders where all the money went, why they’re out of money themselves, and why they have to sit on the highway for so long every morning and night just to get to work. And not one public figure has drawn the connection that maybe it’s time we start diverting the money we do have to smarter ways of getting around. A reduction in waistlines, pollution, ugly and expensive lots and garages, and the convenience of knowing that even if you kept your car and one morning it doesn’t start, you still have a clean, safe, secure way of getting to work is not a bad thing.

One, from the Salem Leader:

What the extreme muslims have in store for America? Is it cookies? Because I love cookies. Or is something more sinister, like tuna casserole surprise? Because I don’t like surprise casseroles.

Two, from the Salem Democrat:

From the photo: Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2011 – 1,667 logged at the shelter, 230 were adopted, 19 died in kennel, 1,003 were euthanized, 148 were returned to owner, 266 were transferred to rescues, and 1 pigeon turned loose.

Dang it, people, spay and neuter your pigeons!

Third, this was a sign I made for my telephone stand when I was 16 or 17 years old. It’s still there, along with my awesome caller ID and wired land line telephone. Just thought I’d share:

A research team led by University of Arkansas psychologist Scott Eidelman argues that conservatism — which the researchers identify as “an emphasis on personal responsibility, acceptance of hierarchy, and a preference for the status quo” — may be our default ideology. If we don’t have the time or energy to give a matter sufficient thought, we tend to accept the conservative argument.

“When effortful, deliberate responding is disrupted or disengaged, thought processes become quick and efficient,” the researchers write in thePersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “These conditions promote conservative ideology.”

Eidelman and his colleagues’ paper will surely outrage many on the left (who will resist the notion of conservatism as somehow natural) and the right (who will take offense to the idea that their ideology is linked to low brainpower). The researchers do their best to preemptively answer such criticism.

“We do not assert that conservatives fail to engage in effortful, deliberate thought,” they insist. “We find that when effortful thought is disengaged, the first step people take tends to be in a conservative direction.”

And in the comments, there it was:

The best way to reduce property taxes is to eliminate public education altogether. Let people keep their money and provide for their own children. Vouchers are no good either. That’s like begging a thief to give back some of the money he just stole from you. Government has no business being involved in education at all with the exception of the prison system.

I don’t know why I ever read comments on news articles. They really do make one lost faith in humanity. This guy, going by “FreedomRinger”, flies against the one thing this country has willingly provided almost since our creation.

It comes from far-right conservative types, like Rick Santorum, vilifying education, even higher education, as “snobbish”, and instead making people think that home schooling is the only way to go. There are so many complete and obvious problems with that I won’t even bother mentioning them, only to say that homeschooling is often done by two types of people: paranoid anti-government types that are afraid of “indoctrination” (of what, no one knows) and religious people angry that little Jimmy can’t pray at school, despite the fact that he could if he wanted. Students pray in school all the time, just not at the direction of an adult faculty or staff member.

All of this is really great marketing from the far right. They do it so remarkably: taking something big and complicated and scary, like educating the public, and boiling it down to “important people you don’t know can decide to tell your kids things that run contrary to the other scary things we’ve been telling you. You’re not going to let that happen, are you?”

Other factions of political persuasions really should try some marketing. I suggest Democrats “claim Rick Santorum’s mom is so fat, she Googled “Santorum” and was still hungry.”

‘Cause this is thriller, thriller night!

I ordered a pizza a year or so ago and the delivery driver was old enough to be my grandfather. I wilted at the door. “Why is that man working. Lord know’s he old enough to have probably fought in a war. Or two. Maybe.” Whatever his reason, he was working for the paltry handouts of a couple bucks a pizza for something. I’m sure it wasn’t the desire to drive his crummy car around town slinging pizzas to people. That guy was totally fucked.

The other day I decided to do something I hadn’t done before: I rode the bus. An IndyGo bus, no doubt. I keep a 10-trip pass in my wallet in case my bike crumbles to pieces and I’m royally stuck somewhere. I hadn’t used it for months, so I decided to check it out. My experience with the bus was fine — it was more technically advanced than I expected, announcing locations and the like. The driver seemed nice enough and it didn’t take that long to get where I was going (once it showed up), bike and all.

But that’s not what I want to write about. No, the problem I saw was the people that were riding the bus.

I hopped on the route 14 bus Downtown after I ate lunch Saturday. The folks waiting around for the bus were generally pleasant and friendly. One lady asked me what I thought of the bike trails around town as she saw my bike and helmet, one guy commented that the wind was the worst this season.

When I got on the bus, we approached a stop near Fountain Square where a woman almost missed it. She was walking around a corner and waving her hands at the driver, who just so happened to catch a glimpse in his mirror and stopped a few feet past the stop just as he was about to roll away. The woman was unnaturally short, struggled to walk and was probably in her upper 50′s or in her 60′s.

I don’t know what that woman did for a living, but her clothes were visibly in poor quality with tears and patches (not the stylish kind, mind you). She may not even have a living. And then it hit me: that woman is totally fucked.

She’s not “old”, but she’s far enough along. She can barely walk, who knows why. She obviously can’t afford clothes, let alone a car. When she got on the bus, she thanked the driver for waiting. She was out of breath, stuttering, shy and embarrassed, and had an audible speech difficulty. She may have other mental problems, too. So when people say, “What we need is jobs!” No, we don’t. I don’t believe that anymore.

That woman is emphatically fucked. “She should go back to school and get a desk job!” You say. Really? How’s she supposed to do that? You think she has the mental capacity anymore to handle school? How on earth is she even supposed to pay for it — no bank is going to give her a student loan at her age. Ask yourself this: “Would you hire her?”

No. No you would not. She can’t speak well, so even operating a phone is probably an issue. She can barely move, she’s not “smart”, she can’t get around town easily and is tied to the whims of a deplorable bus system that’s barely scraping by, which puts her at risk of being constantly late. She is, without a doubt, 100% royally fucked. Her life is, and probably has been for a long time, shitty. She exists in this world and struggles from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed. If she even has a bed.

Then tonight, after meeting with a friend to discuss some business at the Starbucks on Indiana Ave., I was biking back through Downtown near the Statehouse on Capitol. A slew of busses stop along there. As I biked along, a bus had just parked up the street. A guy was sitting on the bench and got up the moment the bus pulled around the corner. He was older, probably in his 50′s. He had a white beard and thinning gray hair on his head. He wasn’t totally out of shape, but he wasn’t able to move too quickly. The bus driver, assuming all the passengers were on and off, started to roll away. This man, now “running” as fast as he could, was yelling at the top of his lungs, “Stop! Stop! Wait! Wait!” The driver, obviously, couldn’t hear him, and he was too far away for him to be visible in the dark in the driver’s mirror. The bus rolled on and the man became physically irate. He was stomping, cursing and screaming at the bus. He kept yelling until he almost sounded like he was about to cry.

That bus wasn’t coming back for another hour at least. He had just been robbed of an hour of his life. What’s worse is that as I stopped at a light, I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sure the driver just simply couldn’t see you.” He turned to me and said, “All I wanted to do was get to my daughter’s play.” When I asked further, he said his daughter was performing in a play this evening about St. Valentine. He wanted to be there to watch her and that bus was his only hope to get there. He was robbed of a moment that any good parent would absolutely be there for. His daughter was subsequently robbed of having her dad (or maybe step dad, who knows), there, too. Who knows why that guy doesn’t have a license or a car. Maybe he got a DUI and did some terrible thing that you can point at to say, “See! It’s his own fault!” Or maybe the guy has a bum eye either from birth or a work accident and can’t pass a vision test. Maybe he has a sincere mental inability to read or ever learn to read and he can’t take the driver’s exam (there is no oral exam, by the way. You must be able to read to pass. Otherwise, you’re just blindly filling in bubbles.)

Whatever the reason, that guy is totally fucked. His daughter is, too, in no doubt many cases.

That’s just two random people I’ve encountered over the last few days. It occurs to me that most people are royally fucked from the get-go.

A kid goes to a shitty school because the school can’t afford to pay teachers a competitive salary, so the best and brightest go elsewhere. A guy gets hurt at his job and can’t walk or move his arms much afterwards, limiting his abilities and covering him with medical debt. A woman is born and raised with a mind that just doesn’t function as well as yours or most of the population. They’re all fucked.

So, it occurs to me now, that saying “Get a job”, “Go back to school”, or “Work harder” isn’t just wrong, it’s downright insulting.

I wrote a story at another site a while back that I’m semi-starting, about the homeless people that sit Downtown. It’s well worth a read if you haven’t seen it. It changed my opinion on a lot of things about them.

Are there people that could go to school, but don’t? Are there people that screwed up in their life in a way that was completely within their control? Are there people who are just lazy and want a free ride? Absolutely. But I sincerely believe those people are in the minority — a very small minority of probably 1-2%, if the drug test results of Florida’s unemployment program is any indication. Which means that the vast majority of this country is just fucked and they keep getting it handed to them every day by people who were lucky enough in the evolutionary chain to get just the right genes, just the right kind of brain power, just the right kind of body. They had just the right kind of situation that they found a way to get through school and/or get a really good job.

Jobs are not the answer. We have plenty of jobs. When employers say, “I can’t find people to do this job.” They’re right. They can’t. Because the pool of people who would ever be capable of such a job isn’t just “the whole country”. It’s a very small chunk of people.

I think we have to recognize that some people are just handed a steaming pile of crap at birth and they are never going anywhere. And most people don’t even recognize it. In a lot of cases, people flat refuse to accept even the notion that some people are just not very good at anything, and they never will be. So, society says, “Work harder, waitress at Cracker Barrel! Enjoy your job, now bring me my coffee!”

The safety net serves a purpose — welfare, food stamps, etc. They absolutely serve a purpose, especially for children, to at least give them some fighting chance. But I think there’s another net, a “cushiony net”, if you will, that exists around other services: like clean air and water, food regulations that don’t call pizza a vegetable, transit options that work better than a “bus an hour that if missed through nearly no fault of your own robs you of important moments in your own daughter’s life.” It includes schools with an army of tutors (which, by the way, would be my #1 recommendation for schools based on my own observations teaching and tutoring. Why education schools don’t send an army of upcoming grads into schools to tutor day and night is beyond me).

It includes the ability to not perpetually be one paycheck away from default because a system is in place to help the banks help you, or being one slip on the ice or a trip down the stairs away from a medical bill that sends you into financial oblivion. I don’t care who you are, you can’t make $20,000 a year and afford to simultaneously pay rent that’s never lower than $500 a month, water/electric/gas at $200 a month, afford decent food that’s not Velveeta cheese and Ramen, and still manage to save for a rainy day, health insurance and your retirement years. You can’t even begin to do that well unless you make at least $40,000 a year and you know it. And that’s $40,000 Indiana dollars. God forbid you have the audacity to be born someplace like California or New York or Boston, you lazy bastard, being born where you were at the age of 0.

Most people in this world are completely fucked. And we’re all turning against each other, bickering about birth control for women of all things, while the whole place goes to hell.

It’s time to stop fucking people over.

AKRON, Ohio — The man from Germany sent a credit card to Donna Simpson with specific instructions: Buy pizzas, Chinese food and other takeout.

He wanted Simpson to use his money to become as large as possible, and he got excited knowing he helped feed the 600-pound woman, she said.

“He didn’t even need to see me,” she said. “Just the fact that he was feeding me was enough of a thrill for him.”

For years, the 44-year-old mother of two was a star in the fantasy fetish community that worshiped the overweight and the feeding that led to it. Simpson had a website where men paid $19 a month to watch her eat. She flew around the world for various events. And she became famous in the British papers.

…

She has turned away from the fantasy world, replacing her pre-recorded videos of her with a blog about her journey to health. She already has lost about 85 pounds, and she hopes to join a gym soon to begin walking in a pool. She has modified her eating, as well.

“I realized that I was their fantasy,” she said. “Here I was getting bigger and bigger, and they had their thin wives, with 2½ kids and a picket fence.”

…

But Simpson said she earned at one point $1,000 a month from the pay-per-view eating.

“That’s pretty good for eating Ho-Ho’s,” she said.

See also, this image from The Huffington Post.

I’ve been there, too, and I’ve gone pretty far in my frugal ways over the years. If you haven’t already noticed, I really hate spending money.

It’s obvious to me through all this that there is a strong difference between having a high standard of living and having a high quality of life, and very few people ever think about how each fits into their life and whether they’re achieving it or not.

Ideally, we’d all have both, but very few of us do, or at least not the extent we think we deserve.

For most Americans, having a high standard of living means you have good food and water available to you and at your disposal. It means you have a spacious and furnished house in the “good part” of town with cable TV and high speed Internet. It means that when you want or need something, you go get in your car in the garage and go out and buy it and you don’t just look at the lowest priced item. This usually means you buy a nice car, “nice” meaning “late model year”. You probably have entertainment at your disposal, like movies, books and TV shows. There’s gray area here for sure; things like yachts and butlers may factor in at the high end, but I’m talking about the average here. And we know what that means: your car doesn’t make funny noises all the time or have big rust spots, you don’t eat Ramen noodles or boxed dinners, etc.

Having a high standard of living usually comes attached with some strings, though. For most people, this means you pay for things on credit, you have a car loan, you might have a mortgage, etc. In other words, you have lots of stuff and very little of it is actually yours. You’re only ever one medical problem away from losing it all.

On the flip side, there’s having a high quality of life. This is the emotional touchy-feely stuff that actually matters, but no one seems to have a handle on. It means you feel loved, you’re able to go to bed at night feeling like you accomplished something and you can wake up knowing what you need to do and you do it. It means enjoying your work, it means not feeling tired or grouchy or sloth-like all the time for no good reason. It means you’re in good health mentally, physically and financially. It means when a bill comes, you pay it and move on like it was just part of the day. It means when the water heater explodes, you can get it replaced and not feel anxiety. It means you have hobbies you enjoy and you take pride in what you do. It means you feel content and in control.

They’re rarely any strings attached to having a high quality of life. For the most part, with exception of companionship and love, all of that is very much in a person’s control. You can look for hobbies, you can change jobs, you can get your health in order assuming you’re not battling a cancer, etc.

What’s overlooked is that you can’t have a high quality of life until you get your standard of living under control first.

Most people go through life and say to themselves, “Once I have X, I will be ok.” No, no you will not. It’s the new American Rat Race. You won’t win. The only way to win is to not play that game. How many people go to work and do a job they hate, all so they can afford the car and the stuff they say they need and want? How much sense does it make to drive to work to pay for a car, for instance, just so you can have a car to get to work? Do people realize what this means? “I have to have a nice car so I can get to work to earn the money to pay for the car I use to get to work.” Or, “I have to go to work to make money to pay for the hobbies I like, but never have time for because I’m always at work and too tired to do anything when I get home.”

For a long time I thought I had to have a new car, the best clothes, all the latest gadgets. I don’t anymore and I’m better off for it. I think I’ve hit a level of maturity, that at the risk of sounding like a pompous ass, that most people much older than me have not.

If I could go back in time to talk to my 15 year old self with what I know now, I’d tell me:

• Don’t ever worry about your credit score, because it’s just a number assigned by banks to help them make money off you.
• Don’t ever spend a dime on school you can’t pay out of pocket unless you’re going into a highly specialized field, like law or medicine.
• Don’t ever take out student loans; the payoff isn’t always that great and isn’t guaranteed.
• Academic inflation will keep happening, whether you have a degree or not. For most subjects, learn to teach yourself and then do good work that gets noticed.
• Don’t ever buy a new car; they depreciate too quickly and you lose too much money.
• Don’t ever buy a car that costs more than $10,000 — and pay for at least half of it in cash at the time you buy it.
• If you can, don’t even buy a car. For most college students, urban dwellers and single people, you probably don’t need one anyway.
• Make time for exercise, and find a sport or activity you love, because it’ll make you feel a lot better about yourself.
• Don’t ever eat processed food; have you ever seen someone eating a Big Mac that said, “I’m really glad I ate that.”? You’ll feel and be better off if you eat well.
• Always do just the things you’re comfortable with. I know people say you should “break out of your shell”, but you don’t have to try everything to know whether you’ll like it or not. I’ve never been hit by a train, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it if I were.
• Be very careful about who you lose your virginity to; you’ll only ever lose it once and you’ll remember that moment forever.
• If you think you can’t handle a credit card, don’t get a credit card.
• Never take a job just because it’s a job. No one ever had a good time working at a fast food joint. If you’re young and don’t have anything to lose anyway, share space with friends and do what your heart really wants to do. Think and figure out a way to make a living out of that.
• Don’t feel guilty about pushing people out of your life; sometimes it’s for the best.
• Stop being so naive and dumb; read the news and read as many books as you can. It’s the only way to develop a sharp mind, and you don’t have to get a degree in everything just to learn about something.
• Writing is a more important skill than math, so devote your efforts accordingly. Sorry math people, but most people just plain write and communicate more than they do general math.
• Don’t be swayed by marketing and what other people do “just because”. Remove yourself from a situation and make a decision based on what’s best for you in the long run.
• Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you have to get something pierced, tattooed or dyed. Ask that 70 year old guy with an ugly ink blot on his arm what he thinks of that 50 year old tattoo today.

When you start doing what actually makes sense, and realizing that sometimes it’s okay to work harder or devote time to one thing and not another, you can actually achieve a high quality of life without having a necessarily high standard of living. Luckily for me, I’ve done most of the things I mentioned above, either by sheer will or just plain dumb luck.

An unhelpful guide to Washington County

I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Transparent government is good.” The ability for a unit of government to act as open as possible is healthy and necessary for a democratic society.

At the state level, here in Indiana, we do pretty well. You can watch Supreme Court arguments online, you can read every appellate court’s opinion, research school data and test scores, budget information, see census information, meeting information, how to setup a business, tax information and a lot more. Indiana has a really informative site compared to a lot of others. It’s also completely self-funding, meaning IN.gov runs entirely on the revenue it brings in from online license sales.

And then there’s local government. This is where most every county in Indiana falls flat. I’m a professional website designer, and I’ve been doing this with great success for many years now. I’ve organized web development conferences, met many of the leading developers in the country, I teach it and I do it daily. I say this with some level of authority.

So I’ve paid some attention to www.washingtoncounty.in.gov, the official website for the county.

First, from a transparency standpoint, they do a couple of things well. Meeting times are posted clearly and the officials for each department are listed respectively. You can easily find out the names of who runs what.

You can also view county court case records, thanks to a program funded by the Indiana Supreme Court. You can also do a land records search.

However, when you think about some other things you’d really want to know about, you can’t find it. The county’s site has very little information on tax information — just basic statutory information. The county’s budget isn’t published anywhere online, either. It’s completely void of tax rates and how the money is allocated.

Speaking of budgets, county and independent audits, contracts, and projects with open bids are not available online, either. If the county had an open bid for a project, unless you show up to every meeting, you have no way of knowing what’s going on. Plus, wouldn’t it be great to know how much a contractor got paid to pave a stretch of road?

There isn’t much information about the county commissioners or the county council online. You can see when they’re meeting and the address and phone numbers of the office holders, but it stops there. If you wanted to know what they do, where they’re from, how long they’ve been in office, other positions they hold or an electronic means of contacting them, you’re out of luck.

There’s little information on building permits and zoning. If you wanted to establish a business and knew nothing of Washington County, the county’s website directs businesses to the Chamber of Commerce site (which is very similar to the county’s in style). The Chamber’s website doesn’t have this information either. If you’re a factory owner and you wanted to relocate, zoning and tax rate information is probably at the top of the list of things you’d want to know, and it’s not there.

The county’s website doesn’t disclose if it belongs to any taxpayer-funded lobbying organizations. The county lobbying isn’t necessarily bad — this would cover regional compacts (like economic development groups) or subtle things like hosting a luncheon for state or federal legislators. Perhaps the county doesn’t do any of that, but we have no easy way of knowing without a disclosure.

Right now, someone is saying, “Well, Justin, if you want to know all that you can come into the courthouse and file a public records request.” I’d do that, except the county’s website doesn’t have information on how to make such a request. And I think I speak for everyone when I suggest that in 2011, people shouldn’t have to drive to a special building to find out information on their publicly funded governing bodies. When I hear that, I hear, “Making this difficult is a feature, not a bug.”

And the most egregious issue: the site flat doesn’t work on millions of devices. If you use a smartphone, tablet or new Macintosh computer, the site fails to load because of an archaic chunk of code on the site’s homepage.

Everything I’ve mentioned here doesn’t cost money — the county doesn’t need to spend thousands of dollars to invest in anything it hasn’t already. All it takes is the time of a few employees to compile the information in an easy to read, easy to access format and publish it. For most of this stuff, it’s just a matter of writing some additional content.

With that in mind, there’s no reason why Washington County can’t capitalize on the failings of every other county and leapfrog the competition on the most public-facing and highly visible piece of marketing the county has already invested in.

For years, the can’s looked like this:

Perfect. Big, easy to open, keeps stuff fresh and you can shove your entire face into the can. Now, because they’re thoughtless assholes, they’ve changed their package design. Probably in the name of “corporate rebranding” or “enhanced product placement” or some other bullshit. This is what the new package looks like:

Yeah, that sorry piece of crap. That’s me trying to shove my mitt down in there. What’s the first thing you wanna do when you pop off the lid? You wanna stick your grubby hands down into it and pull out a big handful of fried onions to eventually shove into your maw.

Instead, with this new god awful container, you can’t get more than four fingers down in there. If you expect to be able to move your fingers, you can stick in three and under no circumstance can you get your thumb down in there, too. Which means you can’t get any of them out of the container unless you stand on one leg, say a prayer, sacrifice a goat and pretend to tickle the bottom of this stupid container like some three-fingered sloth.

Terrible. Just terrible.

I’m switching to the store brand. I’ll never buy another can of French’s Fried Onions for as long as that can sticks around.