Cheddah

Warning: You May Find This Post to be Cheesy as Hell (they have cheese in hell?)

This morning at work somebody thanked me for smiling at him. It the kid who delivers paper for our massive-big-pieces-of-paper printer and today he had several roles of paper that he was dropping off. This meant he had to take several trips back and forth. When he first came in, I did the "hello, how are you" basic greeting, and every time he went past my desk, I looked up and smiled. Not really a big deal, one would think.

On his way out the door after he had dropped off the final roll of paper, he said to me, "thanks for the smiles. I've been having a kinda bad morning and that was really nice."

I told him he was welcome and that I hoped his day would get better. I was a little surprised that such a small gesture on my part could have much impact on his mood.

Now that I think about it though, there have been days when I haven't necessarily been in the best mood and I've passed a stranger in the street (or somewhere) who smiled at me and made me feel much better. Corney as it sounds, that kind of random happiness is quite contagious. I kind of wish more people would bother to look around them and grin occasionally instead of brooding in their on little universe. I don't know that it would really make some huge difference in the world, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Gadgets

As I'm sure everyone knows already, the new iPhones come out on Friday. Today in the SL Trib there is an article about what they will and will not be able to do. I have to be honest, I haven't really been very excited about this new gadget and now, after reading the article, I am even less so. It seems to me to be a really expensive phone that doesn't do half the things that my phone does now (or at least is capable of doing. I don't take advantage of the internet stuff because I don't want to pay extra for the plan).

I'm certainly not going to rush out and buy one. Though I probably know people who will.

This is hillarious:




Update 6/27: There is an article in the New York Times today that makes the iphone sound a little better. I still have no real interest in getting one though.

Silly Rabbit

On my way to work this morning I heard a story on NPR about Kellog's and thier sugary cereal. Because kids today are fat and sugar crazy (this is bad) the big K is going to stop marketing ultra-sugary products to kids under 12. Anything with over 12g of sugar (still seems like an aweful lot) is either going to be re-formulated or they're going to stop marketing them to kids.

Ok, so when they figure out that Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks just aren't the same without sugar crammed into every bite (they can't change the formula if it messes up the "great tast people expect from [their] products"*), just who are they going to market these cereals to? Even without the cartoon characters et al, how many adults want to eat sugar for breakfast. I know there are some, but most grown ups want to go for something with a little nutrition to start out their day. However they change the marketing, this kind of breakfast food is still going to appeal to kids more than anyone else.

I think the target group will be teenage/twenty-something boys. This guess is based solely on the fact that my brother eats a full box of choco-sugar-bits for breakfast everyday (ok, he doesn't eat the whole box, and I made up the cereal, but you get the point).

As for me, I'll stick with boring standards. Raisin Bran anyone? All those sugar saturated cereals just don't taste that good to me anymore.

*I'm quoting from memory. I'm not sure that's exactly what the guy said, but it was something along those lines. To hear the story, go Here

Happy Solstice!

Huzzah for the longest day of the year and the official start of summer!

Huzzah is a grand term, isn't it?

It certainly feels like summer. I'm begining to think it might be worth it to fix the AC in my car ($500 (!!!!!) to fix it, yuck). Probably not. It's more likely to be worth it to ride my bike to work and take the nicely air conditioned bus back home. Or take the bus both ways. Hmmm, lose half and hour of sleep or suffer in a sweltering hot car? That is the question du jour.

Actually the question du jour is "How terribly cliche am I if I flirt with the FedEx guy?"

And that's not so much the question du jour as it is the question of the minute. I don't have the attention span today to have a question du jour.

"What's the soup du jour?"
"The soup of the day."
"Great, I'll have that."

I leave you with this to ponder:

Follow the Fold...

...And stray no more. One of our clients at work just a moment ago asked me where I went on my mission. Apparently I have the niceness you get when you go spread the "word of our lord" for two years. When I told him I hadn't gone on a mission because I am not LDS, he was very disappointed. He said he was going to pray for me.

After his meeting, on his way out the door, he said he's going to "find a nice young man and send him my way." Not really knowing what to say to that, I just smiled and nodded. Now I'm afraid I may get accosted by missionaries while at work. Won't that be... interesting.

Ah the joys of living in Utah. At least we don't have any Jehova's Witnesses. I hear they're nearly as bad (if not worse) than the mormons. I could go on some rant about organized religion and how much it bothers me when one group of people tries to impose its beliefs on others. I'm not in the mood to rant today though.

I am in the mood to tell all my loyal readers (2 of you?) about the movie I saw last night. Day Watch is the sequel to Night Watch, a bloody fantastic Russian Horror movie. Night Watch was really amazing and Day Watch is perhaps not quite as good but still well worth seeing. Here are the trailers for both (Night Watch frist cuz it's the first in the series)







There's a third installment too which is in production (I think) called Dusk Watch.

Dear Old Dad

As most everybody already knows (thanks to the million "Dads and Grads" ads out there now) Father's day is right around the corner. Father's day is a really hard holiday because my dad is not an easy person to shop for.

He has hobbies, true, but they all either require expensive gadgets (he does photography) or he has pretty much everything he needs. Maybe if I were rich (which I'm not. But speaking of money, I owe American Express less than $1,000 now! Yay! I should have my soul back in just a couple months! Back to dad) I could get him some super cool camera thingy or something fancy for his bike.

I almost always end up resorting to a DVD or CD. Usually it's something that I give him because I really want it, and it's easy to borrow Dad's stuff. This year he gave me a specific title. I'll most likely give him the DVD. It's easy. It doesn't feel very meaningful though. What a cop-out gift. Can't our parents be appreciated without us buying some silly little bauble?

Along those same lines, Amazon has Coolest Father's Day Present Ever! Seriously, it rocks. To really appreciate the awesomeness of it, you have to read the customer reviews.

Eharmony and Strippers

First read this.

Personally, I don't really care about the lawsuit and all that. It's just another sue happy american trying to get all they can. I roll my eyes and get on with my life. I am really tickled about the analogy that eHarmony is like a strip club. That made me grin.

My Mashed Potato Lied!

It's my Birthday! Yay Me! I'm going to take this moment to sing my praises, because it is, after all, national ME day. Youtube failed to provide me with the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they praise God and it goes into one of Terry Gilliam's animations. You know the one where there are clouds and lots of hooplah and trumpets that are being played by bums (not the homeless kind). I really wanted to post that here to illustrate the praise of me. Since I couldn't find it, I leave it to you, dear reader, to close your eyes and picture the scene in your head. If you haven't seen MP and the HG (what's wrong with you!!) or can't quite recall what the hell I am talking about, you must (no excuses) drop everything, find a copy of said film, and watch it!

I'm determinded that this is going to be a wonderful day. It's amazing how well it works just having the right outlook. I could easily be very disappointed about today - I have had a cold all week and it's still lingering, I'm at work, blah blah blah, the cough drop I just ate tastes really terrible! Eeew. Despite all that I'm quite happy. (double eeew, the cough drop is chewy too. Gross. I can taste the zinc.) I refuse to be in a bad mood, and therefore I'm positively chipper. Life is grand.

I think I need to share some exciting pictures now. Last year on my birthday I had dancing Storm Troopers. It's going to be hard to beat that, let's see how I do. I present:

Stewie! Beavis and Butthead! Random Dancing Bear!

And finally, just to make the day complete, here is a kinda really crappy super special Birthday Flash just for me (it will also make sense of my headline). YAY! GO TEAM VENTURE!