The Thoughts of Cory LaViska

A craving for chocolate milk last night ended up with a trip to the store to pick up milk and chocolate syrup. Little did I know that this trip would forever change the way I feel about Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup…

[In the store]

As I reached for a bottle of syrup, I paused. Something wasn’t right. Something about these bottles was significantly different from the ones that I was used to. You know the kind — the ones with the push up cap that gets all gooey when you push it back down; the all-American Hershey’s Syrup bottle that is virtually impossible to squeeze chocolate out of when it gets too cold. Yeah, that’s the one. But the bottles on the shelf were…different.

A small, transparent piece of plastic with red lettering was affixed to the cap of each bottle. It advertised a ‘new & improved’, ‘no mess cap’ — probably another marketing scheme to encourage you to buy Hershey’s Syrup (but seriously, who doesn’t buy Hershey’s Syrup?). With no other options, except second-rate generic chocolate sauce, I chose the alien bottle. I carried it all the way to the milk cooler, all the way to the register, and all the way back home. It was an awkward drive, but I was determined to experience some good ol’ fashioned chocolate milk when I got home.

[At home, post-chocolate milk]

Now, to be honest, I don’t know how to feel about this. I am both heart-broken and ecstatic. Life is so much easier now with my new & improved, no-mess bottle of Hershey’s Syrup, and it’s much easier to squeeze the chocolate out…even when it’s cold! But I feel like a part of my childhood has been taken from me. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, change is good. I just hope that, one day, Hershey will come out with a retro-bottle of their world-famous syrup so my children’s children can see just how messy and hard it was for me to make chocolate milk back in the day.

Hey, it’s the small things that count.

So I got home from work a little after 5pm and ended up falling asleep around 6pm. When I woke up, it was dark outside. Not like a midnight dark, more like an early morning dark right before the sun comes up. I rolled over and grabbed my cell phone, opened it up and looked at the time. At this point, my eyes were still heavy and it was hard to see exactly what the numbers read. It looked like 7:30. Shit! I have to be to work at 8:00am!

(nearly falls out of bed)

But wait a minute, something didn’t seem right. I was almost to the point of getting dressed when I realized it was actually 7:30pm, not 7:30am.

(crawls back into bed)

I must be missing too much sleep lately. I think it’s time to re-evaluate my daily schedule again :(

This is my formal explanation as to why I now have a MySpace account, even though I already have MY SPACE right here at laviska.com (and plenty of it). The truth being, I fell victim to peer pressure and was finally convinced to sign up last night. I created an account, made a few changes to the theme (because plain is just boring), and started searching for some people I know.

Within minutes I found a number of people I currently know and some that I’ve known since kindergarten. The idea of finding one of my very first friends after 15 years of no contact has started to change my view of MySpace as a service. On the other hand, I still have rather mixed feelings about random people I don’t know trying to become my friend.

So, here’s what I currently like about MySpace:

• Easy to find people you haven’t seen in a long time
• Easy to send messages and communicate with people
• Email notifications so you’re not forced to login and check it everyday

And, of course, what I don’t like:

• Creepy people you don’t know trying to be your friend
• Difficult to customize (you have to hack it or find an external tool to do it for you)
• Advertisements all over My Space
• Errors everytime I try to update my profile

So, there you have it. I’m keeping an open mind and being honest about everything. We’ll see how it goes…