He says there aren't any easy answers. I say, he's not looking hard enough!

It's currently nearing dinner time as I write this, so I'm about decide what to eat. I'd like to include spinach in the mix since I just bought some this morning and am eager to be impulsively healthy. Only problem is, I'm running low on ideas of how to consume said spinach. A salad could work, but I have no dressing... I could drape it over a frozen pizza, but I don't have one of those either. So when life hands out a roadblock such as this, I turn to the one true, all-powerful master of knowledge: Google.

A normal person may search for "spinach recipes" or "food with spinach" but I chose to enter the obtuse, all-American query: "easy ways to eat spinach". I began typing this into the search-box, and suddenly, nosy old Google tried to guess what I was searching for.... A helpful feature both for your specific search and what you should be searching for as determined by popularity. So I had entered in the first three words, "easy ways to" when several 'suggestions' dropped down. I will list them in order:

easy ways to make money
easy ways to lose weight
easy ways to kill yourself
easy ways to earn money
easy ways to get high
easy ways to loose weight
easy ways to save money
easy ways to make money
easy ways to burn calories
easy ways to die

Apparently, humanity's most popular problems are: money, weight, suicide and spelling. And hiding in between: how to alter your consciousness to presumably escape all of these things.
I couldn't believe it! Money makes the list four times, followed by weight with three, and death with two! Ergo, if people can't find an easy way to get richer or thinner, the next obstacle to tackle is how to kill yourself! Unbelievable! Is this where we've arrived as a society? Is this what the downtrodden and unsatisfied have resorted to? Maybe not, since there is still an abundance of fat, poor people.

Not only are these our biggest problems, but we are searching for easy ways to deal with them! Invariably, there are Google patrons sitting at their PCs right now thinking, "Ok, I'm pretty sure I want to off myself, but I'd rather not put in a whole lot of effort." Then, after a search or two, "Ehh, this isn't working... may as well get high instead. Let's see here..."

Normally, one could attribute such lazy, vain, and capitalistic ideals to Americans, but Google is used around the globe from Australia to Zaire... indicating a that humans as a whole characterize such qualities.
I don't really doubt this, but it's almost nice to know that Americans aren't the only ones indulging in the eight deadly sins (eighth being poor spelling).

I think I might actually take my time with the spinach...

Throwing Ducks at Balloons

I'm sure people have said this before, but thinking about life on a universal scale makes going to work each day pretty damn pointless. Yet I/we continue to go. Because I expect it of me. Where else would I be? Doing what I want to do with my life? Nooooo, that's ludicrous.

Expectations of me > me. Doesn't matter who's doing the expecting; I will always comply. But what happens when there are no more expectations? Do I actively seek out more? I seemed to do so after college: The one point in my life where I/anyone had nothing to expect. I guess that's a frightening point. It may relate back to a sense of purpose all of us think we have. Without expectations, there is no purpose. Without purpose, there is no life (according to many (religious types (in general))).

Yet I have life. I'm living it right now... Maybe not ideally, or correctly, but there were experiences had and scars inflicted to prove them.

Anyway, now I expect myself to go to work everyday. There is nothing written anywhere to change that. It is... my dessstiny. But free will triumphs over destiny in the end. Sweet. But what if I chose destiny? The whole thing collapses upon itself after that.

I think I've already chosen destiny in a way. I've pointed myself in a direction and propelled myself through space... without any regard to the physics involved. I seem to think that that only thing that can deter my path is some external force. A mass traveling through space cannot accelerate/decelerate on its own. However, as a human, I could latch onto another force within a close proximity to myself and alter my path that way. Problem is, there is a lack of these forces. So I'm forced to continue through the universe like Bender until that supercomputer/god thing can fling me somewhere else. That would be something.



Oh late afternoon Fridays, how dare you make me write such things....

Cavernous Notions

If a friend of mine ever buys a Mustang, I'm going to call him "Mustang Sally"... only to show my envy.

I bet most of celebrity blindness is caused by confusing the sun for a spotlight.

Whenever I hear someone running up behind me, I think, "well, this is it!" But after I see the jogger pass by, I wish him well.

Geese are the ninjas of the ornithological world.

Since cab drivers can pick up both men and women, does that make them bisexual?

"Let them eat cake" is the tastiest famous quotation.

A human head on a spike is just a failed attempt at a totem pole.

A pile of dead bunnies is pretty sad... but it's not the saddest thing.

I would become a sailor only for the nautical metaphors.

If I were to submit a painting of mine to a museum, I would first cut it up into a jigsaw puzzle... just to make them work for my inspiration.

So Annoying...in..the Morning

• DVD Menus - Alright, we get it. You can animate titles, fade in and out, and add startling sound-bytes. It's all very impressive. But it prevents me from doing one thing: watching the content. Having to wait for words to stop moving so that I can actually select them is a huge waste of time. It was neat back in the late 90s when DVDS were new and hip, but ten years later it only hinders and annoys. Also, stop billing these "Interactive Menus" as special features on the cover. Their absence from the DVD would now be a special feature.


• Bands Reuniting - Not long ago, The Police reunited to perform at the Grammy's. After which, they announced a world tour or whatever. Having never really listened to the Police, I can safely say we don't need them around again (can't argue with that logic). They must have broken up for a reason, so why get back together? Do they miss the limelight? Do they miss the $$? Will they even have new material? I think it's just a sham that preys on hype and nostalgia.


• "Gifts" from Charities - What do the United Way and The Sopranos have in common? If you answered 'extortion', then you must have incurred the same form of intimidation I did from some stupid charity. This particular form involves receiving personalized address labels in the mail described as "Our gift to you." They usually come around Christmas time when the season is ripe for the giving. This seems innocent enough, except they also ask you for a donation... completely optional of course, but this is not unlike the mob doing you a "favor" by offering you their protection. I'm afraid that if I use one of these stickers without contributing to their cause, a brick will come crashing through my window later that night. I can see the headlines now: "Baseball Bat with March of Dimes Logo Found Near Pair of Broken Knees"


• Buying Reduced Fat or Diet Crap by Accident - Scenario: "You stop by a local Kwik-E-Mart to buy a drink. You grab the first Snapple Lemon Iced-Tea you see and buy it from the clerk. You then unscrew the cap, take a sip, and almost simultaneously spew it back out into the face of an oncoming stranger. You then inspect the bottle looking for the words "Battery Acid" and instead find "Diet". Come on, Soft-drink companies! Differentiate your soda from your crap by at least changing the color of the bottle...


• Obnoxiously Bright Headlights - Traffic nightmare #2698. Remember when you used to position your watch so that it would reflect blinding light upon your little brother's face? Well, the adult version of this annoyance is those bright white headlights equipped on some cars. These emit the kind of light you have to rotate your mirrors downward while driving in order to avoid. I'm usually not in favor of government regulations, but this should be punishable by death.


• Commercials Stealing Every-day Phrases - Just this morning, I used the phrase "Good call" to show my appreciation of an action made by my coworker... a phrase I have been using for as long as I can remember. But not long after I said it, did I recall a certain beer company using the same words as a tagline in their commercials. Now, whenever I say those words, I feel as though I'm a walking, talking advertisement for this beer. Not cool. Hopefully, a company doesn't start using "I f***ing hate Miller Lite" as their new slogan, because then I'd be really screwed...
  

A Picture is Worth 122 Words (adjusted for inflation)

Are you female? Do you often run out of space on your digital camera's memory card from taking all those photos? Wouldn't it be nice to know how much memory you'll need for that next girls' night out? Well fret no further! Introducing Photo-Predictor! This patented new technique will determine just how many photos you'll snap of you and all your friends while you're out hopping those bars. Interested in learning more? Read on!

Betsy has just bought a new shade of mascara and to celebrate she has invited her friends Susie and Mindy out for a night on the town. After searching under her piles of shoes, stacks of Cosmos, and other female stereotypes, Betsy has found her digital camera. The batteries are charged, and she has loaded it with a 128 MB memory card. Let's find out if that will provide enough room...

Betsy must now calculate every possible photo opportunity the three of them will manage to create that night:

To simplify: B = Betsy, S = Susie, M = Mindy

First off, there will be one of each:
B
S
M

Next couples:
BS
BM
SB
SM
MB
MS

Notice that BS is separate from SB. Since Susie can also be on the right of Betsy, it is not satisfactory until there is a photographic record of both poses. Therefore, we are using permutations and not combinations.

And finally all three together:
BSM
BMS
SBM
SMB
MBS
MSB

Adding the above permutations together, Betsy will take at least 15 photos: Small potatoes for 128 MB. But let's see what happens when Betsy's two friends turn into four...

Using the formula:

           n!
n_P_k = --------
        (n - k)!

where we will find the number of permutations of k (girls in photo) taken from n (total number of girls),

           5!
5_P_1 = -------- = 5
        (5 - 1)!

           5!
5_P_2 = -------- = 20
        (5 - 2)!

           5!
5_P_3 = -------- = 60
        (5 - 3)!

           5!
5_P_4 = -------- = 120
        (5 - 4)!

           5!
5_P_5 = -------- = 120  (remember 0! = 1)
        (5 - 5)!

Totaling the numbers above, we arrive at 325 photos!
Uh oh, Betsy. Looks like it's time for an upgrade.

Hopefully, the Photo-Predictor technique has provided a helpful method for solving yet another one of life's woes. Oh and don't forget, each of Betsy's friends will also have a camera. So that makes 1,625 photos the rest of us will be sifting through after they're all posted on Shutterfly the next day.

Until next time, keep on replicating yourselves, girls!

DOG KILLS CAT, SELF

Some stuff:

• Other people might not see through Harry Potter's bullshit, but I do.

• Lily Allen sings some pretty catchy songs, but her lyrics are rather elementary and littered with cliches

• I can't sit down for an extended period of time with a wallet in my back pocket.

• In "Bart's Comet" (2F11), what was Bart's "SuperFriends" nickname?

• Technology jerks need to arrive at a standard format of flash media

• I think I'm going to start wearing my employee badge on my waist instead of around my neck. This way, my life will change completely.

• Robot Chicken is the funniest show on television right now.

• I haven't checked homestarrunner.com lately...kinda not really lately at all.

• Greed is good.

• An animated Napoleon Dynamite is just as good as humanoid ND.

• I see Nicholas Gurewitch agrees with my assessment of Myspace

• Let's see if I find a way to double-space this list before I post it.

• I need to get back to work