Irrational Thinking

Last week while I was on vacation I didn't have anything really planned so I got in the mood to do some house cleaning. The weather wasn't too hot so I threw away a bunch of junk in my basement (almost broke both legs at the same time in the process but luckily I narrowly avoided doing that). Trash day was two days away but I wasn't going to be around so I had a ton of junk piled on my curb two days early. Piles of all kinds of random wood that I had been saving thinking I was going to make something really cool with. A gigantic old random box spring, bags of debris. As I'm piling this junk up on the curb, I get this stupid thought that the google map mobile is going to come and take a picture of my block and update their files. And here my house would be the only one with a ton of shit piled up in the front lawn. Which made me think of when the google map mobile actually did come down my block and snapped a picture of my neighbor going to his car. Wearing the same shirt he always wears when he is hanging around the house. We like giving him shit about that. But he's a pretty awesome dude. Gave me that 50 inch flat screen.

50 incher

I'm not one for gadgets, I don't need the latest app or the best phone. But a neighbor of mine won a 50 inch flat screen tv through his work for being a top seller. He's not one for gadgets either so he propositioned me to do some housework in exchange for his new tv. (I obviously have amazing neighbors) How can I turn down a gigantic flat screen tv? Especially for free. I mean, nothing says success like a gigantic flat screen tv. At first I was a little nervous that a fifty inch tv would be too big for my place. I got over that in three seconds. I hooked it up, and five minutes later I was in love with a tv. I reset all my favorite channels to be in HD. I watched sportscenter and was reading the ticker at the bottom... all 4 inch tall letters. I paused to watch the credits of a movie because I could literally see every word. I even watched The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Pants because it came in so clear that I didn't want to change it. It's ridiculous.
But there are some drawbacks. I went to the Phillies game last night (I almost would have rather stayed at home and watched it on tv) and realized while I was at the McFadden's Bar in the ballpark that my tv was bigger than all the tv's they had there. I kinda felt bad about it. My tv is the tv you see at someone else's house and you say under your breath how ridiculous the size of it is, and how you would never get one that big. It's almost like how I would imagine it feels if you owned a Hummer.

Getting older

I literally got a little older last week. A decade older in fact. I Turned 30 years old on Monday and started to feel like it. I didn't have any new aches or pains, no grey hairs, no loss of memory, but it was something else that made me feel old. I was getting my haircut from a new person that has never cut my hair before a few blocks up the street from my house. Sat in the chair, and the guy asked me what we wanted to do. Naturally I don't really care or know how to describe it, but I just want the guy to cut it and not make me look like an idiot. So he starts snipping and not even ten seconds into the haircut he says, "and we're trimming your eyebrows today?". Which kinda caught me off guard. Now, I know my eyebrows aren't perfectly manscaped and I've even been known to yank out the really long ones before. So, I relented. But damn, one day over 30 and I already have to get my eyebrows trimmed. Luckily when I asked if my ears were okay he said they were. For the record, I don't think anyone is saying anything about Jake Gyllenhall's eyebrows.

More Car stuff

Pretty much what sold me on my car is that it can A)get me from point A to point B, B)it had an ipod connection and C)I could work the radio from the steering wheel. Normally I could care less about working the radio from the steering wheel but anytime I drive in a car that has that option on the steering wheel I can't help but change the channel five hundred times and I like that. And, you can stealthily raise and lower the volume when someone else is in the car. It's especially useful in my car now since the volume control might as well be next to the passenger side door. I realize it was initially designed as a safety feature so the driver wouldn't have to take their eyes off the road fiddling with radio, but in my short experience using the controls on the steering wheel, I've noticed I always insist on continuing to change the station while I am in the act of turning. Doubly dangerous. Meanwhile my other hand is turning the wheel on the ipod since the steering controls don't work for the ipod.

Flying phenomena

I am a pretty observant person. Observant of people's mannerisms, observant of my surroundings, and all kinds of other quirks. I recently traveled to Mississippi to meet my sister who was taking a class down there for a few weeks. I flew down there so we could drive back up to Philly together. I don't fly much but I noticed a weird phenomenon. I think people really like tomato juice on planes. I don't see people drinking tomato juice very often outside of planes. Nobody is going to a restaurant and asking for a tall glass of V-8. I mean I drink V8s at home, and I know a few other people who do, but I always see people requesting tomato juice on planes. I wonder why that is? Ginger ale is another one.
Another observation; if you are traveling and you know you have to take your shoes off for security, why would you wear flip flops or sandals? I saw fifty people in the matter of 15 minutes take their shoes of and walk around barefoot on the same 15 foot stretch of floor. It was nasty. Think about that next time you fly.

Going Green

I'd actually thought of this for a while now, but my buddy reminded me of it again a few days ago. I'm not a skeptic of global warming, I am sure we as humans are doing some kind of damage to the environment, but I'm not a preacher either way. George Carlin said it best "the Earth is fine, it's the people that are fucked." But I like seeing those corporate emails with the little tags at the bottom of peoples' signatures reminding people to really think about not printing this email. And then you think about it, and print it anyway...and you go to the copy machine and see that there are two slices of paper sitting there. One is the email, and one contains nothing but "save a tree, think before printing this email."

Apple stores

I really must be missing something with the grand openings of these Apple Stores. People line up a few hours, even a few days in advance, run through a row of genius's high fiving. Lots of fanfare. But for what? Last I checked the new stores are just like every other store. It's not like they are announcing a new product. Cool, you can come in, and uh.. buy a phone for 400 bucks. What's this world coming to when the most excitement people get is from lining up to get a new phone? Go to the Cherry Hill Mall. It's 15 minutes away. They have an Apple Store there that looks exactly the same as the one here. People didn't get that excited 25 years ago when they opened up a new Clover.

Twitter announces 20 billionth tweet.

I heard this weekend that Twitter celebrated their 20 billionth tweet. So, in summation it could be said that in the past few years, the world has said 20 billion ridiculously stupid things in 140 characters or less. I found an article talking about the 20 billionth tweet which may as well have been written by The Onion. I guess people were interested to see what the 20 billionth tweet actually was.
"The Twitter message was sent at 3:44pm GMT by "GGGGGGo_Lets_Go," a graphic designer in Tokyo who works at an advertising agency, according to the user profile. The message was part of a conversation that appeared to be a comment about a third party that had come online and onto Twitter."
And later the same guy posts, "It looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I'm getting replies from people all over the world. It's scary. What are the chances? Maybe I'm going to die. Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke," he said in another Twitter message moments later.
Nah dude, you are still a loser and you are definitely going to die.