I want to be a toys-r-us kid

I'm totally stalling today. I know what I am supposed to do, but I am just doing other things to stall.

I really should go to the car dealership and get the oil changed on my car. It's important to change the oil every 3,000 miles or so, or so they say. Well, I don't want to. It's free. I get oil changes and whatnot for the first whole buncha miles or years or whatever. I just don't want to drive there. I don't want to do it.

I also should hang up the clean clothes I pulled out of the drier this morning, but I don't want to. Instead, I'm uploading CD's on to my wife's computer. I'm managing the files on my iPod, so that all the music that I have neglected to put on it are on there now. No, I don't want to do the things I'm supposed to do. I don't want to.

I don't want to go run on the treadmill, but I should. I'll regret not doing it. But I don't want to. I just want to sit here, watch Lost on instant Netflix and play Call of Duty. I don't want to take a shower, but I have to if I want to leave the house. I just don't want to do anything right now. I would rather just sit here. That's what brings me to the blog today. I am totally wasting your and my time. I just don't want to be a grown-up right now. I don't even want to capitalize the title of this blog.

wah, wah, wah...

If Ya Smeeeeeeeeeeeeeell...

So they say that the sense of smell is the strongest of the five senses that ties you with memory. This is very true, as one whiff of a certain whatever will instantly take me back to whatever time it reminds me of. And not in just some vague way, but I mean really, really strong memories. Well, I have a confession today, readers.

I haven't had a cigarette in nine days.

Yeah, I'm quitting smoking, but doing it the exact opposite as I did last year when I tried. I was "live tweeting" the experience last year, and this year, I haven't even told anyone except my mom and wife and regular, everyday coworker lady. It's happening, for real this time. I am determined to do it.

Well, as I walked around outsider, I was taking in some deep breaths, and I was getting this vague feeling of something from ages ago. I could not pinpoint it, but I knew it just smelled like 1998, for some reason. Well folks, I realized that I was smelling what the outside smells like, which I hadn't smelled since then. See, in case you didn't know, when you smoke, it makes you sense of taste and smell go way down, so you don't get the full on effects of those senses. Well, after kicking the habit, I can smell stuff way better then ever. So when I walk outside in the fresh air, I smell the air. I knew my sense of smell would return, but I didn't know how quickly that would happen. Turns out, it's about nine days.

That is all the time I have today, people. If you need me, I'll be outside smelling the fresh air.

Should We Talk About The Weather?

As you could infer from my previous post, I was quickly running out of topics to write about. I'm still in that, and since I don't know what else to say, I'll just do what usually happens in conversations when people don't know what to talk about, but want to talk anyway. Talk about the weather.

It usually happens when I phone home, to check in on the happenings of the good ol' Upper Peninsula. More often than not, it's when I talk to my dad, or when my friendly local wife talks to her dad. Maybe it's a dad thing? I don't know, and I don't think so, because this happens all the time. You call, or maybe not even call, maybe you are just talking to whoever, and the weather comes up. Crazy, eh? This weather is something else, eh? (Note, not all people say "eh" after everything they say, but that's what I typed, so I guess that still comes natural.) A snowstorm, or Lightning storm, or perhaps some thick-ass fog. A flood, perhaps? The weather is just such a nice and easy topic to deal with, because unless you're a hermit, you know what's been up with the weather, generally. Not to say you know we're having such nice, pleasant weather lately because of a huge ridge of high pressure currently sitting comfortably over the middle Tennessee area, which is true, by the way, but you generally know that the heat has eased off and the sun has been shining and the breezes blowing. You know it's been nice lately. Everyone knows it's been nice lately. So you can have the conversation with anyone!

Comparing weather from one region to another is also popular, as I touched on above, because, it's been nice here, but it's been shitty there, or vice versa. It would be odd to call up dad and be like "did you hear what that retard Ron Ramsey said here in Tennessee in the Governor's race?" No, you say "It's been hotter than Hades here." Easy conversation, that is universally recognized and understood. I always take note when conversations turn to the weather. What a useless conversation unless it's with family. You're just killing time, at this point. No, you're wasting my time. I don't care if it's been a cold, shitty summer. I want to know how you are doing personally, not how you're region's weather system has been unfavorably affecting your volleyball league. Not that that happened, but if I ever call a friend, not just an acquaintance but a real friend from back home, and we start talking about the weather, then our friendship has surely fallen apart, or at least we just don't know where to begin, because it's possibly been too long since we last spoke. So if I call you and you start talking about the weather, just stop. I don't want to hear it. In fact, I probably already know how your weather has been, because I pay attention to that shit. Why? Because I care enough to look that shit up, occasionally. As noted by my knowledge of the current high pressure system we're enjoying right now, I clearly missed my calling. I'm a fucking amateur weatherman myself. I know what's up with everybody's weather. I just don't feel the need to have conversations about it with my best friends.

Again, not that this happened, but just giving a heads up.

Today, I didn't even have to use my A.K.

I just saw a guy take a leak behind a dumpster. This is a first for me. I watched him as he drove slowly around the building, and suddenly, I lost sight of his car. I looked a little closer and saw him between two dumpsters, draining the vein. I would have been better off not seeing that.

Anyhow, today is Thursday and all is well in my life. No hiccups today, and thats awesome. I worked out, drank my correct daily amount of water for the day. I ate fruit and vegetable. My lunch and dinner were both a form of Indian food, which I would have to say is a first for me. I would say that I never liked Indian food, but I guess I never really ate it before. I once looked at a menu for an Indian restaurant and had not a clue where to even start on what food was what. By the way, I'm talking about Indian with the dot, not with the feather. I started buying these masala burgers from Trader Joe's and they are amazing. Then, I bought some curried rice dish stuff that was awesome. Then today, I ate something I couldn't really pronounce, and it was awesome. I tried it because it said masala on it. So yeah, I think I like Indian food. Culture!

I did a good job today. I am a happy guy today. Hope your day is going as fine as mine is.

I gotta say it was a good day.

Just a Little Hiccup

I think of all the strange bodily functions we humans have to deal with throughout life, the hiccup has to be the strangest of them all.

Let's think about that, and see if I'm correct. There's the burp, fart, cough, sneeze and the hiccup. Well, that's at least the five things I wanted to do at the same time when I was a kid. I figured if I burped farted coughed hiccuped and sneezed at the same time, I would probably die laughing or my head would explode. Either way, I wanted to find out. Well, it never happened, but I still make a note of the times I do any combination of these things.

Like "oh I just burped and ripped one at the same time. Sweet."

Well, I bring this up because I have been getting the hiccups a lot lately. Now if anyone remembers the last time I was getting the hiccups all the time, something was going on, and I was very vocal about my experiences. This time around, I'm getting hiccups, and for the same reason, but deliberately keeping quiet about it. I just don't feel the need to announce it this time.

Anyway, the hiccup. From what I understand, it's when you're diaphram doesn't sync up with your breathing or something like that, and it makes you lurch and jump and look like a moron. So here I am, walking around work, hiccuping, apologizing. That's pretty much my life these days.

The sneeze is pretty neat, too. It's like you're nose says, "get the fuck outta here, irritants." And you expel whatever is bothering your nose. It's like your nose has a built in bouncer for things that are causing the other customers to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Your nose is like "86" and boom, out goes the hooligans. And you can't close your eyes when you sneeze, or else your eyes will pop out of your head like that guy in Mexico we all heard about as a kid.

Burping and farting? They're just expelling gas, but you can make those acts halarious with the right angles. The Cough? Not sure that really counts. That's sorta like a sneeze, how it's you trying to get rid of shit, but it's just not as spectacular as a sneeze. You can sorta feel a cough coming, and you can take medicine to suppress a cough. They make cough medicine, they don't make sneeze medicine. I mean specifically.

They also don't make hiccup medicine. At all. They make Gas-X for burps and farts. They make Buckley's for coughs. They make cold and allergy medicine for sneezes. But what is the cure for hiccups? I'll tell you, folks.

It's peanut butter. Works every fucking time.

I'm not a scientist, but I can tell you that the results in my life have been 100% success rate with peanut butter curing hiccups. Every fucking time, as I said above. Next time you get the hiccups, get a spoonful of peanut butter and eat it. I guarantee it'll work.

Anxious Monday

I'm having anxiety today, people. Couple reasons for this. Number one, I'm getting up to 5 teeth pulled today. I say "up to" because some teeth are on one side of my mouth while others are on the other, and I was told before that their policy was to only numb one side of the mouth at a time. Well, then that opens the door for the possibility of knocking me out and doing it all at the same time. This would be ideal, except that interferes with my other thing I'm having anxiety about, though not nearly as much. I have to lay down some drums today for our demo. I'm having anxiety about it because these songs are still pretty new and I don't know how much I love what I play. I'll probably change it and hate these recordings later, but what can I do? I want these recorded so you guys can hear it. I just hope it sounds alright.

But the big issue, the teeth pulling. Not really looking forward to what comes afterwards, probably more than the actual dental appointment. Taking precautions to prevent dry socket and other shit is a real inconvenience. So I plan on eating a lot of food before I go, because I know that eating for the rest of the day will be very difficult. I just ate some eggs and toast and next I'm going to eat some fried rice and egg rolls, just because I don't know when the next time I'll be able to eat solid food will be.

So that's what's going on in my life right now. I know blog posts about what I'm doing are not necessarily the most fun to read, but sometimes you just need to say what is bothering you in a typed or written form. It's just very therapeutic.

Man, Jobs Are Hard

So I was making some peanut butter toast this morning, keeping up the #pbtoast2010 trend amongst my friends. As I did so, I pulled out the trusty iPhone to take a pic and boast about eating peanut butter toast for breakfast. I decided to turn on the geotagging feature which shows everyone where you are tweeting from on earth. As I did this, I somehow accidentally clicked on the "see nearby tweets" thinger. What it showed was that there were a shit ton of tweets sent from right where I was standing. This could only mean one thing. Someone was tweeting from here. I often search the "nearby tweets" thing just to see if anyone here has been tweeting form here and no one tweets from here, or if they do, they don't geotag them, so I don't know if they do or not. Anyhow, when I clicked on the user, username Mizz_GA_Peachez, that was tweeting from here, I soon discovered Mizz_GA_Peachez was none other than the officer I had just relieved. I was immediately intrigued as to what Mizz_GA_Peachez tweets, and since her twitter is not set to private, I was able to read away at all her tweets. Well people, she obviously doesn't read this blog or else she would know that if you put something on the internet, someone will read it, and that someone this time was me. Well, it started inocent enough, talking about God and whatnot. I knew she likes to go to church. I get a bit further down and she's talking about "fuq it" and she's gonna work out in the gym here on the clock. Okay, fine, she works the graveyard shift, what else is there to do? There's no one here. I go a bit further back and read about how this "henn is making me warm." A bit further back she says "buildings empty time to finish off this henn from last night." I put quotes, even though I'm not really quoting her word for word, but that's basically it. A quick look at the callender confirms that she was in fact at work that night. And for those of you not on the up and up with the cool kids and their street lingo, "henn" refers to Hennessey, which is Cognac, which is Liquor, which YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK WHILE AT WORK.

Now, I will fully admit that I am the king of slacking off at work, hiding in closets and unused offices and generator rooms and conference rooms, playing with my phone while working, so I have not much room to talk, but there are certain things you just don't do at work. You won't get fired for slacking off, unless you do it ALL THE TIME I guess. It explicitly says in our post orders that leaving the post, I mean physically leaving the premises, like, in your car to go get some food or go back to your apartment, is grounds for immediate termination of employment. Now nice regular coworker lady, who works with this girl on Mondays and me the rest of the week told me that Mizz_GA_Peachez she goes to get food every Monday, but she's not going to say anything because she doesn't want to be a snitch, or whatever. Well, Mizz_GA_Peachez not only leaves the premises on Mondays when theres someone here to cover the post, she leaves just about every day she works, weather she's alone or not. Goes to Arby's or McDonald's or Taco Bell, which are all just around the corner, but still, man. You're not supposed to leave. You will get fired for that. She also mentioned heading back to her apartment to check on her dog once, and I know she doesn't live all that close to work. I mean, she also said she ate someone else's pizza on Friday night and that she ate it because "a nigga got hungray." Worst part of it all, she put it all on the INTERNET. Use common fucking sense, and keep all your irresponsible shit to yourself. Tweeting that you're breaking every rule and fucking DRINKING on the job? That takes a certain kind of special moron to pull that off.

I guess I just worked here long enough to know what you can and can't get away with. One day, she's going to get caught, and I'll laugh so fucking hard. I mean, this job is what it is, but by doing these things she'd done in one short month, you're just an obnoxious human being and you have very low level of responsibility. I didn't go to college and she did, and yet I know how to behave at a job and she has not a clue, apparently.

I understand doing things to help break up the day here because I know this job can get boring, and be boring for hours on end. But I don't tweet the specifics you fucking tard.

...But apparently I blog them...

*Written from the Security desk at work.

Football is Back!

So this morning, I'm streaming the season opener of the Barclays English Premier League which features a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. I'm able to stream it via ESPN3.com. It's a very nice site to watch sports from, depending on what they carry, which is usually something like Soccer or Tennis or Little League World Series or Darts or Aussie Football...So basically your non-traditional sports. It's sweet cuz it's free. Anyhow, I'm trying to enjoy soccer, and it's hard, folks. Number one, I have no vested interest in any particular club, so I just have to watch everyone and kinda pay attention. The only team I claim to root for at any level of soccer is Arsenal, only because I used to work with an Englishman and that was his club. So I root for them, even though I don't even really know why, or anything about them. I just know that soccer creates a buzz 'round the world, and I want to be a part of it.

I got caught up in the whole thing this past summer during the World Cup, as I do every 4 years. I usually say I want to keep up with the sport, but never do. I want this year to be different, and I have ESPN3 to help with that. I'll be able to easily watch games when they're played, so that should help. The only problem is I just don't know what the fuck is going on most of the time. As I tweeted before while watching Rugby or Aussie rules football, I don't remember which one it was, when watching one of these "non-traditional" "non-American" sports, I now know what women feel like when watching regular American sports. I see people running, and trying to score, but I don't understand strategy. So I like the enthusiasm, but I couldn't tell you why they are doing what they are doing. It helps me understand what they are thinking while watching. I want to understand soccer, I like it. I like how excited the fans are at the games. I just don't understand it at this point.

So I'm trying to be a soccer fan, and I hope I do really stick with the sport, because of it's global significance. I just think it's alright by me. Go Arsenal, for what it's worth, I guess.

Ranking Six iPhone apps

***************If you look at this post and say "fuck, that's long" then go ahead and skip to the bottom. It's cool, but only this time.******************

Alright, guys. Let me say something here. Well, you have to let me say something, this is my blog, and you don't really have to listen/read what I write, and that's fine. But this time, I want you to listen. Wait, I mean read. Pretend I'm talking and you are listening. That'll work.

I'm a big fan of a social networking service called Twitter. Huge fan, in fact. I think it is easily the most important and useful social networking service ever devised. It allows you to be connected to the world at a moments notice, provided that you are following the proper Twitter accounts. For example, follow @cnnbrk, and get breaking news stories the moment they are reported, wherever you are. Follow me (@bradperala) and get useless complaints and a debatable level of quality observational humor, on the go! Follow @Altpress and get all the alternative music news as it breaks. The list goes on and on and on.

Anyway, back in April, I upgraded my Twitter capabilities by investing in the iPhone 3GS. I use the iPhone for a lot of things, but the main thing I use it for, to be honest, is Tweeting. When I got the phone, I immediately downloaded three apps. Facebook, Pandora and Echofon, which is a Twitter app, before I left the parking lot of the AT&T parking lot. Well, I knew there were other iPhone Twitter apps available, but I wanted the first one I saw so I got that one. Also, I had done my research on the best and worst apps available, and they said this one was quite good, so I went for it.

Sometimes I like to look at what service people had used for their tweets, and I noticed that a lot came from "web" and a lot came from "txt," while others came from sources I was unfamiliar with. So I was curious as to why someone would send their tweets from services other than the ones I knew about/used. I began to download a few apps I had heard of and check them out as to see what I could possibly be missing out on. I ended up with six apps, including the original Echofon that I would test out and see which app was best. Then I would recommend the best one to my friends. I began the test on Wednesday, and I think I'm done now. I've seen all I need to see to formulate an opinion. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

The six apps are: Echofon, Twitter for iPhone, Twitterific, Hootsuite, Seesmic, and Tweetdeck.

Let me start off by saying that I have used only Echofon for the past 4 months, so I naturally base all the opinions of the other apps off comparisons to that. I tried to be objective, but I just like Echofon so much, it's hard not to just find the things on the other apps that are different to it, and not like it. I wanted to see if the others were as easy to use, while possibly offering further service. What I found is that they pretty much don't. While some of the apps were neat, and clean and easy to use, they just didn't compare to Echofon. The way Echofon is set up is so convenient and easy to read. I would check my updates after a while, using a different app each time to see how it loads my many friends updates. Most of the time, I would check the updates on all six apps, which was time-consuming, but I had to do it that way. Some of the apps, the way their color schemes are set up, I would read them, then read the same updates on another app and wonder if I had even read it. I must have just skimmed over it. I don't know that's a personal thing I guess. Let's get down to it before this gets waaaay go long-winded.

The Good In Each:

Twitterific:

This app is probably the silver medal winner in this whole thing. What I like about it? It makes a sweet bird chirp every time you open it. There's this feature in there where you can see who has replied to any user. That's nice so you can get a feel of how many people reply to users, and get a better feeling of what their dealing with as far as that goes. Not entirely useful, but I like to know those things. You might not care, but I liked that. They color-code the background of Tweets involving you, so as you're scrolling though, you can clearly see the things pertaining to you. My brother uses it. When I had a problem figuring something out, and tweeted my problem, the actually replied to me on how to fix it. Big bonus points to them for that. That means they care about the users. They wanted to help me. If I had never gotten used to Echofon, Twitterific would be the winner.

Twitter for iPhone:

I like the sound effects when you reload the feed. It does this slide and pop sound thing, and it's neat. Loads quickly. Simple layout.

Tweetdeck:

I found it extremely easy to rifle through my tweets and list/replies with this app. I also have Tweetdeck for the desktop on my computer, so there's a nice little tie-in there. When you mark tweets as "seen" it make a cool clicking sound that makes me happy and want to hear it again.

Seesmic:

Simple and clean. Nothing special about it, but in a good way. If you wanted an app, any app, then I would not fight you if you wanted to get this one.

Hootsuite:

This app probably has the best Facebook section of all the ones that offer it. If you haven't checked you're twitter in a while, it'll just load the most recent tweets unless you ask it to load more, so therefore, it loads faster than most others. It also doesn't load until you ask it to do so.

Echofon:

Clearly indicates #hashtags, links and replies by putting them in a different color and font in the timeline, not just if you select that tweet. Shows how many new tweets and replies you have at the bottom with a little red circle and the number inside it. This aspect is only on Echofon, and I really wish all the other ones had it. When you want to tag someone in a tweet, after you type the @ and a letter, it shows a little bar on the bottom of the people you follow so you can quickly choose the one you want, instead of trying to remember how to spell someones ridiculous username. This is also true for #hashtags. just type the # and a letter and it'll remember all the things you hashtaged in the past, and suggest it. Most other app do not do any these things. You can open pictures and links directly from the timeline, reducing the amount of times you have to fumble with trying to click links on the tiny iPhone screen. It gives you a push notification when other Echofon users reply or mention you, which is really nice.

The Things I don't like:

Tweetdeck crashed more often than any other app. Twitterific has a HUGE add on the top of it, and that's annoying. Hootsuite you have to pull the screen down to refresh instead of it just doing it on it's own, like some other apps do. I see nothing to complain about with Seesmic, except that it doesn't have the colored text to indicate usernames, links, pics, hashtags, or mentions. Twitter for iPhone would be great if it told you how many tweets you have to read. If you exit on the replies page, when you open it again, it's still on the replies page and that confused me a number of times. Twitter for iPhone and Twitterific are the only two to offer the landscape view which is nice because some prefer to read stuff the long way sideways instead of the long way vertical. Seesmic doesn't tell you who has retweeted this random tweet, so you have to open it to find out. dumb. Hootsuite, Seesmic and Tweetdeck open pictures as the entire webpage in which it was uploaded to instead of the other three which just open the picture to the full screen's capacity, which the latter three is much better, IMHO.

So really, it just boils down to preference. If you want my advice on which iPhone twitter app to use, may I suggest Echofon, and Twitterific is a close second. Both are really easy to use and stuff. The Twitterific people replied to me, which goes a long way in my book, and it has cool sound effects.

Bottom line, if you skipped all that review jazz up there and just want the meat and potatos of the whole thing it goes like this. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest:

Echofon: 10

Twitterific: 9.2

Twitter for iPhone: 8.1

Seesmic: 7.6

Tweetdeck: 7

Hootsuite: 6.8

As you can see, you can't really go wrong here. Whichever app you choose, they're all alright, I just found Echofon to offer the most advantages versus disadvantages. With such a simple service as Twitter, you shouldn't really have too much going on with the app. Simplicity is key, yet make the experience enjoyable for the user, and Echofon and Twitterific accomplish that. The end.

Today, I Learn How to Spell "Deficiency"

For those of you who don't know me very well, you may not know that I am a vegetarian. I don't remember if I talked about this before, but if I have, read it again, bitches. Anyhow I've been a vegetarian since June 7th, 2008. That's the easy date to remember of 6/7/08. I would also fall into the sub-category of "ovo-lacto vegetarian" as I consume eggs and cheese while drinking milk and other assorted dairy products. Anyway, that's just a little background info before we get under way here today.

I went to the grocery store this morning and was grabbing some things to eat at work this week. As I was checking out, the cashier commented that I had a lot of good things there and that it was going to be hot, for whatever reason mentioning that would be useful. I decided to crack a joke about how this basket of food was a "lazy vegetarian's grocery basket." She suddenly go very serious and asked me if I was taking a B12 supplement. I replied that I was not, and she proceeded to tell me how important it was to take B12, and that if I don't, my spine will erode and my brain will stop working, in a much nicer way that I just described. She encouraged me to pick up some supplements the next time I go shopping, and that others that she has reccomended to start taking supplements have thanked her for helping them out.

This struck me, folks. I suddenly realized that I may be deficient of vitamin B12, as I have been vegetarian for so long, and that's not "normal." It struck me because it is possible, and I know nothing about vitamin B12. So that got me thinking, how in the hell would I be able to tell if I was deficient of a vitamin or mineral? Would I feel it? Have I been feeling it and not even know it? The only time I was for sure deficient in something was the time in early 2009 when I decided to dabble in vegan-ism, and cut out eggs and dairy, only drinking almond or rice milk. After a few weeks of that, my fingernails started breaking off, and chipping. I realized that something was for sure wrong, so I put the eggs and dairy back in my diet, and haven't had a problem since.

But what if I was doing something to myself without even knowing it? I decided to look up B12 once I got home. Symptoms of deficiency and good sources of it. Turns out the best source for B12 is liver, but that's totally out of the question. You get about %750 or you DV in a serving of liver. Two reasons I ain't eating no liver, One, even when I ate meat, that's gross, and two, it's meat. I don't eat meat.

You can get supplements, and that's all fine and dandy, but as I had read before, you can basically find all the vitamins and minerals you need from plants, weather their exotic like weird seaweed or just a regular old vegetable you would buy at you're grocery store and because it's in it's natural form in the food, it's better for you than a synthetic one made in a lab. Turns out that's not the case for B12 (the source, not the supplement). It is created by living beings, not plants. "Oh, shit" says me. Well, it's a good thing I eat eggs and dairy. So that brought me back to the cashier at Trader Joe's, the one who was concerned about my vitamin deficiencies, and I thought about how much B12 I can get from the foods I eat. (I'm assuming she was assuming that me as a vegetarian, I don't eat eggs or consume dairy. Au contraire, my dear.) Turns out I get all the B12 I need from eating an egg. Boom. Done. No worries. I started reading about the symptoms of the deficiency before even finding out if I had one, which of coarse makes you start feeling all the symptoms, because we're all hypochondriac deep-down.

So yeah, I'll just continue eating eggs. I don't eat animals but I eat eggs, because an egg is not an animal, because an animal is a living thing and life begins at birth, therefore eggs are not animals. (This is a WHOLENOTHER argument that I'm not going into today, but this is how I feel in general. K?) I should be fine. It just weirded me out to think that I might be deficient in something and not even know it. It made me think twice about it. It made me think "is this going to kill me?" And if the answer is yes, then I should probably pay attention to it. This a B12 deficiency can do some serious neurological damage, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to experience that, so I'll continue with my current diet choices, and I'll be just fine.

P.S.

Found this, and was grossed out:

Human faeces can contain significant B12. A study has shown that a group of Iranian vegans obtained adequate B12 from unwashed vegetables which had been fertilised with human manure. Faecal contamination of vegetables and other plant foods can make a significant contribution to dietary needs, particularly in areas where hygiene standards may be low. This may be responsible for the lack of aneamia due to B12 deficiency in vegan communities in developing countries.

So eat shit and live?

Soundtrack of my Summer

I wanted to write a quick one this morning because I won't be able to tomorrow. I'm going to Memphis, TN tonight to play a show with my band. It's pretty neat. I'll leave it at that.

I was wondering a few months ago which album, song or songs would become my anthem of the summer. There's always a song or album that when I hear it later, I am immediately brought back to the days of summers past. I wasn't sure which recently purchased album would do the trick this year. I never know what it was until much later, when I hear it again and the memories pour back to me.

It has come from an unexpected place this year. Everyday at work, I listen to a local radio station called Lightning100. I realized they play songs on this station I've never heard before by artists I rarely listen to/have never heard before. I would never listen to these songs or artists on my own, but I needed something that was very work-friendly, so I chose this station. It plays a mix of old and new, and it's on the light rock side, I guess. A lot of Dave Mathews and Counting Crows. That sort of station. Well anyway, they keep playing these handful of songs all the time, and it hit me the other day. These songs, the songs I didn't choose to listen to, are the soundtrack of my summer. Even though its just the crap I listen to at work, these songs will forever be linked to me and the summer of 2010. So I began writing down the song titles and artists names so I can go out and get these songs so I will be able to go acquire them later, in order to look back. Yes, I am planning my future memories of right now. That's how awesome life is right now. I never want to forget these days, and if it's a song that brings it back, then I better be prepared.

It's Both a Galaxy And a Huge Disappointment

I just sat outside with my laptop for a good five minutes. It was sorta in the sun a little bit, and now it's almost too hot to type on. I'm not sure this is a good thing for a computer.

Candy bars are delicious. I had mentioned before how I like Snickers and this is still very true. What I don't get is people that think Milky Way bars are any good. I ate a Milky Way not too long ago and it was gross. Not gross in the way that it would be if you ate a turd or something, but gross in the way that other candy bars are so much better than Milky Way. I have a hard time understanding why one would choose a Milky Way when other options exist. My experience with the Milky Way was one of utter disappointment. You think before you take a bite that it will taste like a Snickers without the peanuts, but it really doesn't. The lack of peanuts is obvious, but it's also the texture. They're so soft and pointless. It's just a mash-up of chocolate and caramel and nougat in your mouth. It's soft, and not easily chewed. I like to chew food, people. Not gum it.

Now I know some people are allergic to peanuts and will never be able to enjoy a delicious Snickers, and the only way they can get something close to it's awesomeness is to eat a Milky Way, and that's fine. But if you have a choice, why would you not go for the best, every time?

I guess it's all a matter of taste preference, but I just don't understand, and probably will never understand why anyone would choose a Milky Way. It's just not very good.

I'm pretty much a fan of all other candy bars, with the exception of 100 Grand. Those are gross too. I haven't eaten one in years, but I made a very strong mental note to never eat one again when I last did. I don't even remember why, I just remember having a very strong opinion on the bar.

Do you like Candy Bars? What is your favorite? Least favorite?

If you like Milky Way, please explain why. I will probably forever disagree with what you have to say about it, but I just want to hear it.

RE: Tribute to the Greatest Blog In The World

****In a strange twist of fate, I wrote this blog in mid February, talking about a blog post that disappeared in December, and for some reason, this blog explaining what had happened when the post was never posted was also never posted. I guess it wasn't meant to be? Well to fucking bad, Blogger. I'm posting it now.****

In regards to The Greatest Blog Ever Written, or the tribute I wrote to it back in December, I want to let you all know that I have found it. I actually found it about ages ago, as I didn't know that the auto-save feature had actually worked on that fateful day. I was saved in my drafts, and I have fully recovered it. Now I am posed with two options. Shelve it forever because the tribute I wrote was so good, and I wouldn't want to disappoint with a lackluster unveiling. Also, my feelings have changed a lot in the past month and a half about the whole thing I wrote about so if I posted it, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps I'll leave it as long as I have to, and when I get desperate for something to post, I'll throw out "The Lost Blog."

So if you fire up Keep em' and you see the title "The Lost Blog," you'll know it was a cop out/massive public demand to read what I wrote one time back in December.

It's also funny to read about how I struggled to figure out how to put in hyperlinks, when there is a convenient little button on the top of the compose section of blogger page, that you just highlight the text and insert the site, and it makes the link for you.

So anyway, thanks for readin' today. (this blog was also a cop out, in case you didn't notice.)

Realigning My Focus

Man, so I went back and have been reading older posts from like, April, and going through and adding labels for all the old posts that I didn't do at the time. Well as I scan them over to figure out what to tag it as, I realized that my blog has made a serious turn in the past few weeks. I used to write so good. What happened?

What probably happened is I started thinking the blog was more important to the world than it really is. This is a place to put my thoughts, not necessarily my opinions all the time. Sure, the well placed scathing opinion piece is alright every so often, but I feel like I lost my focus on what's important here. What's important is to paint a picture of how I think and view the world for real. Yes, I admit I listen to and think about music a lot, therefore I like to write about it a lot. But I need to remember why I started ramping up the blog posts in the first place. It was supposed to entertain, not scold or inform. I mean, it can inform sometimes, just not all the time.

So here is my pledge to write more posts like this or this. Less like this and this.

Thanks for reading!

I Can Clearly See Your Nuts

I saw something the other day while driving home from bringing my wife to work. I was one of those things like what I saw back in March when I was driving, when I saw something for a brief moment and was inspired to write an entire blog about it. Well that happened again. This time, it was a little bit more profound.

I was going over the overpass on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard off the I-65 exit when I saw a man walking towards me. He looked very shabby and one would have to assume by his appearance that he was homeless. I don't want to immediately say for sure that he was homeless because I don't have proof. Anyway as I looked closer at him, I realized his pants were falling down as he was walking. I could also clearly see his nuts. What struck me was that he didn't seem to care all that much. It made me imagine what he had gone through in his life to get to the point where you can be walking on a busy road with cars everywhere and have your balls hanging out and not care about it. On the other hand, he could have mental issues, and therefore has no filter for such things, but this also cannot be confirmed because I didn't talk to him. I try not to talk to people that have their balls hanging out. Not that I think I'm better than someone who has their balls hanging out, but if he's walking down a busy road, but I just think that would be an uncomfortable situation.

To be at a point where you're private parts are just not so private anymore, that's where he appeared to be. It helped me focus on what's really important in life. It helps me to realize that where I am in life is not so bad. It obviously could be much worse.