Sometimes I watch the local news and get disgusted by the stories they run. Not necessarily because of the stories themselves, but because of which stories they choose to run. If something makes headlines nationally, then there tends to be lots of local stories focusing on that particular thing for the next two months. I first noticed it during that shark biting incident. Everything was about shark bites for a while, and this is Arizona! Lately a lot of the stories have been about dog bites. It's really annoying. I always wonder what worthy or interesting news stories did they drop because they have to have something about the latest trendy national headline.
I guess I'll never know.
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Now that I actually have a CD player in my car I have a much larger selection of music to choose from. One of the first things I noticed is that electronic music sounds better at night. I don't know why, but driving around during the day listening to "Nu Horizons Vol. 2" isn't nearly the same as listening to it at night. Does the reality of daylight clash with the fantasy created by the music? Is the lack of visibility at night an enhancement? (Actually, I know it is because I remember being at Coachella and thinking, "This would be much cooler at night.")
Well it's just rock, alternative, and hip hop for me during the day.
[I found out that jungle works too so I've been working on my jungle collection.]
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So a friend of mine made chili from scratch. She asked me what I thought about it and I said it was pretty good. Well, she kept asking me about it. Over and over again. (Pet peeve right there; I don't like being asked or told anything over and over again.) Finally she asked if it was the best chili I ever had. I said it was one of the best chilies I'd ever had. So she had to ask who made the other best chili I ever had. I said it was a canned chili and I don't know who makes it. She was shocked and appalled that I could consider a canned chili on par with hers. So I have yet to hear the end of it. Every once in a while we'll talk about something (completely unrelated) and she'll say, "Maybe you should get it from a can." or some shit. You know, the fact that the chili is canned doesn't change the fact that the chili tastes damn good. Maybe she would have preferred that I lied. *shrug*
Some people really need to get over things.
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Processed swiss cheese has to be one of the worst things ever done with cheese. I did something
unusual and went to McDonalds for food. They had a chicken bacon bbq sandwich that sounded pretty
good. I mean how could you make the bacon/bbq combination taste bad? The answer is to put a
slice of crappy processed swiss cheese on top. Normal swiss cheese smells bad, but at least it
has the redeeming quality of tasting good. This smelled bad, tasted bad, and had an unnatural
texture on top of that. I tried to scrape it off the chicken so I could finish the sandwich,
but it had already melted into a smelly, gummy mess. I've re-learned my lesson about McDonalds.
Never underestimate their ability to make bad tasting food. (I do dig Big Macs though so I can't
say they're all bad. Just mostly bad.)
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I was watching tv and they were showing a new Cheesecake Factory restaurant that's opening up in Chandler. I looked at it, and it's the exact same as the one I saw in Scottsdale and one I saw in Ohio. I find it all too disgusting. I know that's the purpose of a chain or franchise, to present the same look and/or product across all of their storefronts, but when you travel across six or seven states and find a carbon copy of the place you left, why bother traveling?? It seems like different places are all gradually becoming the same place. Same restaurants, same bookstores, same coffee shops, same everything.
Local businesses are part of the local personality. They're the unique places where memories are made. (If you've ever watched any of Rick Sebak's documentaries like "An Ice Cream Show" you'd understand how important these types of places are.) As much money as McDonalds is spending on commercials showing people making those memories at McDonalds, I just don't know that that happens. I know I don't have any special memories of eating at McDonalds as a kid, but I do remember Hamburger Works, where they had really good burgers and sawdust on the floor.
Do your part to stop the homogenization; support local businesses. Instead of always going to Baskin Robbins, try something unique like Mary Coyle's. (Mary Coyle's is an ice cream shop in Phoenix with great ice cream, 50's-ish music, pink everything, and they've been around longer than I've been alive.) I may not go there often enough to singlehandedly keep them open, but they do get most of my business. It's also one of the places I take people all the time because it's a fun experience and a venerable Phoenix institution.
Did I mention that most of the new houses in Phoenix look alike? I think you can
guess my feelings on that.
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I was watching Nova on PBS, and the show was about the brain. It was so interesting I couldn't take my eyes off the tv for 45 minutes (I missed the first 15 minutes). One part of the program was talking about "blind sight"; a rare medical condition where a person can see, they just can't comprehend what they're looking at. They were showing a guy who couldn't comprehend anything he saw on his right side. The weird thing was, he could discern movement, and sometimes other individual aspects of vision, on his right without ever comprehending what he was seeing. He could see something move on his right side and comprehend the movement, but he couldn't tell you what it was that was moving. Or he could see that something was blue and comprehend the color, but he couldn't tell you what the blue object was.
Scientists have realized that there are quite a few different parts of the brain responsible for vision. The cause of this guys "blind sight" was a disconnect on his right side to the part of the brain that handles comprehending the image, while a more primitive connection was still there that was allowing him to make out movement. It's that primitive part that makes you want to turn your head when you see sudden movement out of the corner of your eye without comprehending what's moving. Anyway, fascinating stuff.
After watching that part of the program I think I finally understood why it's
possible for me to drive two miles down the road and not remember having
actually seen the road once the entire time. At least it makes me feel better
to think that when my conscious mind is too distracted to deal with traffic,
my primitive mind is taking care of the driving instead of chalking it all up
to pure luck.
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Does anyone else think that all the taxes we have are unconstitutional? I earn my paycheck, but
before I get it taxes are taken out. I buy gas and taxes are applied to the sale. Luckily I don't get
taxed to drive, but I do get taxed simply because I OWN a car. The current system is quite unfair.
I've got a solution; sales tax. No income tax, property tax, or any other tax, just sales tax. The
only people who would pay tax are those who spend money. People who spend a lot of money would pay a
lot more taxes. I understand that if this system were implemented that it would mean a high sales
tax, but I'd feel much better losing money while buying something instead of just losing it
immediately from my paycheck without ever seeing it. Just my 2 cents.
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Regular expressions are your friends.
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Why do gum makers make sugar free gum? I don't think the 2 or 3 grams of sugar in gum is
really going to hurt you or make you any fatter than you already are, but long term use of
aspartame has been linked to health problems. I mean, it's not like gum contains massive
amounts of sugar, like soda (unless you chew about 10 pieces a day). Why do manufactures
always seem so eager to poison customers. There should be a law that keeps businesses from
killing customers. (You would think that it sounds like a bad business practice to kill your
customers, but it's pretty common. Look at crack dealers and cigarette companies.) [By the
way, I'm sure there are laws to keep companies from killing people; they just don't seem to be
enforced often enough.]
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If I had a wish right now, I think it would be to have 36 hour days while everyone else
had 24 in theirs. There are so many things I want to do and not nearly enough time to
do it in. I figure an extra 12 hours a day would be just about right. If changing how
time operates for one person wasn't possible, I think being extremely rich would be close.
If I was rich it would at least free up 40 hours a week. ; ]
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Why are chicken items named after parts that chickens don't have like "Chicken Fingers"
and "Chicken Nuggets"?
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I can't believe there are people who actually eat the "McRib" sandwich.
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I wish TV stations would go back to showing cartoons on Saturday and Sunday morning.
Is it that kids aren't an attractive enough demographic or that adults can't bear
to live without the news for even a few hours?
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