Midget vs. Chimpanzee

I was reading up on Penn & Teller a little bit and came across the Wikipedia article for Penn's old radio show.  I was just kind of browsing it, when the story of a regular segment called Monkey Tuesday caught my eye.  If I may steal and condense from Wikipedia --

"Monkey Tuesday originated when Penn told a story of a party...where he had invited Tarzan, a performing chimpanzee and Arturo, a dwarf, forgetting that chimpanzees fight for dominance with people of small stature. Penn worked out a compromise: Tarzan and Arturo could both be at the party as long as they were in separate rooms. As an added measure of security, Penn and a posse of attendees armed themselves with knives.

However, Tarzan and Arturo met poolside and predictably, Tarzan charged Arturo. Rather than jump into the swimming pool as planned as chimps hate water (Chimps, lacking buoyant body fat, sink like rocks in water), Arturo hauled ass into Penn's house. Tarzan pursued Arturo but got distracted by the other guests. The guests shuttled the chimp into various rooms to allow Arturo to move around, and later found Arturo a tall bar stool to stand on. Tarzan, confused, decided not to challenge."

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

I had NO idea about this but think this is kind of awesome!  It's like when you invite a couple to your party, and then you realize they just broke up 2 weeks ago.  You want them both to be there and you hope there won't be problems but you know there will be.  I was relating this story to The Wife and before I got too far into it, she said to me, "We are not having a party at our house where you invite both a chimpanzee and a midget."

Dammit.  She knows me way too well.

Karate Kid

Saw a trailer for the remake of The Karate Kid. WOW does this look like a steaming pile of shit.

Awk. Ward.

I got an email from my high school about a Christmas thing this past weekend. It advertised an appearance by Santa, crafts and free breakfast. In my head, I pictured stacks of pancakes and muffins, and 10-15 local artists selling homemade crafts so we could pick up some Christmas gifts. The campus is maybe 5 minutes from where we live, so The Wife and I went to check it out. Plus, I figured I could show her where I went to school.

Here's what we ended up getting: Santa Claus (as promised!), mini-bagels and donuts (well, it was free) and tables set up with craft supplies so kids could make stuff (not a local artist in sight). Crap! We felt pretty weird since we have no child of our own and I don't want to look like a molester and/or kidnapper. Quick, time for Plan B: grab a bagel and donut (respectively) and then flee! That was a fine plan, you see, until a girl from my graduating class spotted me and said hello with her husband and kid. #$*(!, we've been seen! We talked for two awkward minutes and then got the heck out of there.

Not really how I envisioned my Saturday morning going but I have to give props to my Wife for going along with my stupid crazy ideas sometimes. Perhaps I should have emailed back for more information before we drove over there.

Enchanted Water Pt. 2

I forgot to mention this in my previous posting about Kangen Water, but I found this article, written by a chemist, that completely debunks the entire thing. Enjoy the article, anonymous blog commenter from last time! :)

Enchanted Water

A family member recently gave the Wife and I one gallon of ionized water from Kangen. Kangen water claims to be filled with antioxidants which can slow aging and prevent disease. I'm not really sure how the process works, but I believe it's something along the lines of a pyramid scheme. You start drinking the water, then you get other people to buy an ionizing system by giving them a free sample.

Interestingly, if you type in the words "Kangen water" on Google, two of the top three keywords it wants to auto-fill in are "bullshit" and "scam."

Anyway, this particular family member is highly religious yet also believes in the healing properties of this stuff and other kooky things. She also suggested I go see a healing priest to cure my diabetes, but all I got out of that experience was a cold that lasted a week (no joke). Needless to say, the Wife and I are highly, highly, highly skeptical of this enchanted water. I drank a cup or two of it and it definitely tasted different...like, kind of metallic. The rest of it was used to water our plants. :)

Bolivia = not so smart

This has been making its rounds across the interwebs, but apparently a Bolivian newscast thought this footage was from the crash of Air France Flight 447...it's from LOST. *sigh* Are people that eager to get breaking news that they don't bother to verify anything these days?

There's also an email going around (that my fiancee's Dad forwarded to her) with images from this scene of LOST and saying that a memory stick was recovered from the wreckage. Riiiiiight...because technology loves saltwater.

Restaurants

So I was thinking about going to Les Sisters for dinner on Saturday night until I looked at their menu. Don't get me wrong - it's a small New Orleans style restaurant with delicious food. But they're one of those restaurants that mysteriously raises their prices and slashes the lunch menu after 5pm.

When I go out to dinner, most of the time I'm ordering off the lunch menu. I just prefer a sandwich or a burger over something like pot roast or a stuffed chicken breast. (Maybe I just like eating with my hands.) The point is at this restaurant, and many others - when "dinnertime" rolls around, 90% of the lunch menu is unavailable and whatever's left goes up in price a couple of bucks.

I can go get a po' boy sandwich at noon for $6.95 but I show up after 5pm, it's gone up to $9.95 for the exact same sandwich. I hate restaurants that do that. I call bullshit. I shake my fist at your dinner menu, Les Sisters. But I'll see you in the lunch hour sometime.

Tweet

Damn it. My favorite band started using Twitter. So now I'm subscribed to one Twitter feed on my Google Reader. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

I was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend and we both agreed that Twitter is lame because you can do the exact same thing on Facebook, but without all of the photos, videos and interaction. You can update your status on Facebook every second if you wanted to, and it has the incredibly convenient 'wall-to-wall' feature letting you see the conversation between two people, instead of that stupid @username BS, so then you have to click over to someone else's username so you can see what the original comment was.

Can anyone explain to me what advantage Twitter has over Facebook?

Brain Development

*sigh*

No, let's make that a *SIGH*

Last night during Survivor, I saw a commercial for Juicy Juice Brain Development, a juice drink aimed at 2-year olds to promote brain growth. The beverage is "enhanced with DHA, an essential building block for brain development."

Yeah, instead of...I don't know - teaching our children, or interacting with them to build their social skills, let's just cram a juice box down their gullet and see if that makes them smarter. Need I remind you that Juicy Juice Brain Development was not around when Stephen Hawking was born, and that Albert Einstein never watched a Baby Einstein video. Stop relying on commercial products to promote the growth of your kids, their bodies and their brains, and start raising your kid right.

On a somewhat related note, isn't it amazing how humans have survived over 200,000 years without Purell? That might be another rant but I just wanted to throw that out there while I'm grumpy.

Earthquake Stories

Last week, there was a mild earthquake at 1:25 on a Thursday, so during the work day. I was in my car at the time and felt my car sway a bit. It honestly felt like a strong Santa Anita breeze - it was no big deal. I had to clock back in so I walked back to find people from my office standing outside. Was there an order to evacuate? I decided to take my chances since I'm new and I wanted to clock back in, at least. I walked back to my desk and sure enough, my least favorite thing about earthquakes started - earthquake stories.

Without fail, whenever an earthquake happens on work time, you can expect the following scenario to happen: 1. mild earthquake happens; 2. people freak out; 3. everyone spends the next 20-30 minutes standing around talking about the earthquake and sharing earthquake stories. This. Annoys. The. Crap. Out. Of. Me.

Why? Because there is no story. Unless something actually falls and breaks, there is no story worth telling. This was a 4.2 and the building barely shook. There is nothing to talk about. Anytime someone came back from lunch, the first thing someone would ask is, "Did you feel the earthquake?" Then they'd talk about the magnitude of this earthquake, what it felt like, where they were when it hit and any other irrelevant stories barely related to earthquakes just so they could kill time. Get back to work, you assholes!

iTunes Weeding

I think I've hit something of a wall with iTunes and my music collection. I currently have 8,744 songs on my iTunes which means I can go for 24 days and 13 hours without hearing a single song repeated. I mostly set my player to shuffle the songs and just listen to whatever comes up. While I absolutely love having that much variety, the truth is that I'm starting to miss the songs I really love. Take this evening, for instance. It shuffled to a song called "Extraordinary" by Annetenna - a song I easily rated 5 out of 5 stars. Sadly, it has only been played twice.

So, my mission over the next few weeks is to trim down the library. One of the reasons I keep so many is songs is because sometimes a random song will come on and it will just grab me and become an instant favorite. A perfect example of this is the song "Home in the Woods" by Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons. I never know when some random song will catch me and speak to me. One time, my fianceé asked if I thought I had enough songs on my computer and I said, "Yes - but there's still good music I haven't found yet."

*sigh*

As it stands right now, I have -

- 44 items not rated (new albums and such).

- 73 items rated 1-star out of 5. I've weeded out a lot of-1 star items, but I rate most of the free TV shows and podcasts as 1-star since it doesn't really matter.

- 318 songs rated 2-stars.

- 2,283 songs rated 3-stars.

- 4,665 songs rated 4-stars.

- 1,413 songs rated 5-stars.

I already see some cutbacks coming to artists I am kind of in the middle on. I probably have their entire albums (either purchased, borrowed or "found") but only need 75% of their catalog. So those filler songs by 311, Queens of the Stone Age, White Stripes, Rubyhorse, etc. will probably get chucked first. That's my guess. I'll report back on my weeding as it progresses.

Offer

In case you haven't heard or figured it out, I recently received two offers of full employment. I initially accepted one at a printer I was temping at very close to home, but then got a way better offer at a place 45 minutes away, so I accepted that instead. I wasn't really comfortable at the printer for a number of reasons, but figured at the least, it was better than nothing. I'll go into more detail about my Six Months of Misery in future blogs. I'll also relate some stories that happened at the printer in the time that I was there, and try my best to refrain from using the word "douchebag" too much. Stay tuned.

Allison Mack. Connected.

So I was reading up on Smallville the other day, which is an awesome show, by the way. We're watching it on Netflix and have 1 disc left in Season 4. (Anyone that posts spoilers in the comments and ruins something for me will have Deathstroke the Terminator sent after you.)

I digress.

So I'm reading up on Wikipedia and clicking around to some of the actors' names, and I come across Allison Mack's entry on Wikipedia. It's a normal page until you get to the bottom and see that she is on every single social networking site. Seriously. You can get in touch with Allison Mack on her official website, via Sodahead, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Friendster (sidebar: people still use Friendster?) and hi5.

I've never even heard of most of these sites, but holy smack! I guess, on one hand, it might be smart because she's protecting her name and preventing impostors from posing as Allison Mack. On the other hand, how in the heck does she keep up with all of them? Probably has a personal assistant. "Hey, make sure you check my Sodahead account first, then my Facebook before you get me coffee."

What Not to Wear

For some retarded reason, one of the headlines on Yahoo! last week was an article entitled 9 Things You Should Never Wear to a Wedding. I'll save you from clicking on the article by just posting the list here:

1. White
2. Shorts
3. Short miniskirts and bustier tops
4. Coattails
5. Anything gold / sequins / glittery
6. Leather jackets, skirts or pants
7. Baseball hats
8. Western wear - bandannas, cowboy boots
9. Jeans

This has to be one of the dumbest articles I've ever read as every single point they make just states the obvious. I hope they publish an article next week called 9 Reasons Not to Drink Bleach.

Zuma Nesta Rock

Which of the following statements is the most ridiculous?

A) That MSN consulted "baby naming experts" to comment on Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani's new son, Zuma Nesta Rock?

or B) That people are out there actually proclaiming themselves to be baby-name experts?

I'm definitely going with B on this one. I feel dumber for having read that article, and MSN should feel dumb for putting that as one of their top Entertainment headlines last week.

Only kind of ridiculous is that MSN fails to get two out of three domain names correct in the article, listing them them as ThePerfectBabyName.c om, BabyNamingCentral.co m. Whoever wrote that article got a little bit too happy with the sp a ce bar.

The Clogginator

Holyyyyyyyy crap! Even though this came out last year, it was a featured ad on MySpace today.

The Baconator from Wendy's - two 1/4 lb. beef patties, two slices of American cheese and SIX strips of bacon! I wonder if they did product testing and the most common feedback they got was "Not clogging my arteries fast enough. Suggest adding more bacon."

There is a Wendy's within walking distance of my office, but I think I'd have to walk the 18.3 miles home to burn off even half of this thing.

Guitar Zero

Check out this story of Blake Peebles, a 16-year old who dropped out of high school to focus on playing Guitar Hero. Apparently, he bugged his parents to let him quit school, and they "couldn't take the complaining anymore." Wow, great job, parents.

Where did I put my Parent of the Year ballot form again?