Clearing Out This Week's Random Ideas and Thoughts
Its Friday, time to discharge some drafted posts that I've been working on. They either fly or fry today so let's get right to them.

I wrote up my victory with the ice cream maker earlier this week, Acing the Mint Chip Final for Cooking Stories.

A thought I had earlier this week while doing laps with the remote control (you know, when all you seem to do is go through the entire run of tv stations and still can't seem to find anything worth watching). I've now instituted a personal rule, two laps and still nothing to watch means that its time to turn off the box and go do something else. Anyway, I got to thinking about which had more long term detrimental effects, occasional drug use or watching three or four hours of tv a day? Sure, combine the two for maximum detriment but let's keep them separate for now. I can pretty quickly think of a couple of arguments for both sides but am curious about it. Perhaps I'll have to write it out in a longer post to explore the concept further.

I'm sure quite alot of other people caught the Dinosaurs shows earlier this week on Discovery but if you did not then you really should make an effort to see them when they rebroadcast them. The animation is astonishingly good, the soundtracks are gripping (especially when listened to through the surround sound, nothing like hearing a dinosaur roar behind you) and the storylines are very well put together making the overall package highly polished, entertaining and educational as well. Awesome stuff!

Christmas is almost here and how many presents have I purchased? None. Looks like it will be a busy weekend. But with my brother's family in South Africa, my sister's family heading to France and the rest of the brood back on the east coast socked in by snow, ice and the fury of old man winter, I'm just not going to stress about it at all. P and I have talked about things for each other and the theme is home improvement so I'm looking at circular saws and the like. Things we will need to repair, refurbish and upgrade our house. That is, assuming that we end up getting it, this has been the quietest week of news yet but we should know tonight about the termite inspection.

Another thought I had the other night, one of the major failings of how people think about situations is that they forget to consider the future, they become too focused in the here and now and forget that time is nothing but a successive and endless series of instants. I think this is a major reason why people kill others, they forget to consider the ramifications and have temporarily reverted to a much more animalistic mindset, that right now is the paramount concern and let tomorrow work itself out when you get there. It seems simplistic but it would go to explain how someone can kill another person. Like the asshole who got into an argument with his wife/spouse or girlfriend on Highway 80, got out of the car and set fire to it. Killing two children in the car and inflicting burns over 85% of the woman's body. I hope that fucking scumbag moron gets to spend the rest of his life in prison, scared for his life. How could he have ever done any of it if he'd not forgotten to consider the future ramifications of his actions. I think he was just in an action/reaction mode without any brain cycles left over to consider the future and now he's all set, he'll never have to think about his future again. And maybe that's just as well.

Good Marketing Accolades
Anyone who's seen the recent Guinness "Brilliant" ads knows that they are good, entertaining spots without being in your face pleas to buy, buy, buy. The two cut out Irishmen are funny and the way they love to say Brilliant makes me laugh. They are also introducing new ones into rotation quickly so that all the commercials have a longer useful life without becoming tiresome. The fact that I like Guinness doesn't hurt either but it doesn't really help all that much, remember the Bud Salute commercials are great but I don't drink Budweiser.

Thanks Guinness, for doing a little more and creating some commercials that entertain instead of make me leap for the remote (has anyone else noticed the lack of any Carrottop collect call commercials? now you have).

And, am I the only that is compelled to reply to the tv everytime they do an ad for one of the worst shows ever created, Everybody Loves Raymond? I have to, HAVE. TO. reply and say, No they don't. Every time that effeminate wanker announcer joyously bursts out about what a great show it is and that Everybody does, in fact, Love Raymond. I don't and hate the show. I hate every idiot moron actor associated with it and can't believe that people actually voluntarily watch such horrid shit. It gives me hives just thinking about it.

Final Thought for the Morning
Out of 21 new messages in my in-box this morning, no less than 19 were from idiot spammers trying to extend my penis size, sell me the next Internet boom, sell me crappy stock advice and a few that were in Korean and I just didn't feel like downloading a Korean character font set to read about Korean tramps or whatever garbage they were selling.

And I've easily seen enough of the Nigerian or African spams from humble servants of Mr. Dr. Bongo Junglehumper or whatever fake name they invent. And yet I still get at least a dozen of them a day. Oh well, until someone develops a spam assassin or retro spam bomb or something, we'll just have to deal with it. I would definitely support legislation that punished the guilty with the chopping off of both their hands. That would be a reasonable deterrent to the others, wouldn't it?