KFC Subliminal Message

While watching TV for the millionth hour today I noticed a small subliminal message in that KFC dollar snacker commercial. Look at the picture above, can you see anything odd? I know the picture quality is bad (thanks iPhone), but it's still visible. See anything? If you look hard enough at the lettuce on the sandwich on the right side you can see a small dollar bill implanted in there. I don't have photoshop installed on this computer but I did the best I could with iPhoto and tried to isolate it.
See it now? It's much easier to see when you watch the actual commercial. Just some TV fun I thought I'd share.

Blog Life Spans and Complete Sentences

So what do you think is the average life span of a blog?

I would guess not very long at all. Maybe 2-3 months. Either people get bored reading it, or the author gets bored writing it, or your school forces you to stop writing it and threatens to take away your degree. Any way you look at it blogs are short lived creatures.

I had a blog in high school, and that one lasted for at least a year. But that blog was with someone else. Joint blogs I would say are much easier to maintain. Especially if the two writers compliment each other in some way. Otherwise blogs are difficult to keep up. Then again not all blogs are just boring personal journals, some are affiliated with a profession or have some sort of niche that the author, or authors are associated with. In that case those blogs can last for a much longer period. I am not really talking about those, I am more just talking about personal blogs through a blogging service such as Blogger or Live Journal. Those I would argue do not have a long life span.

How often do you hear people speak in complete sentences? I don't think it is as common as you think. People do it, they have the ability to, but alot of them seem not to. Especially actors and actresses, if you ever watch or listen to an interview with an actor alot of the time they'll give an answer and fade out and then just start a new thought without ever finishing their previous statement and just go on, it's like everything ends with an ellipsis and their answer is just one huge sentence with 19 ellipsi between every new thought. You'll also see this alot of times when people who don't know what they're trying to say are trying to make a point about something. They'll add a bunch of fillers like "umm" and "so" and "you know" and they'll go on and on and their thoughts get so convoluted that by the end YOUR not really sure what they said and they certainly don't know what they said and then everyone in the room is just left confused and frustrated at the kid in the fifth row who raises his hand every question and spouts off 13 different beginnings to a sentence and then never finishes any of them!

It's not that this kid doesn't make good points from time to time, he does, but the path to get to those points are filled with so much speech clutter and fillers and half thoughts that it's just painful to listen to. It doesn't help that he sits right in front of me so when I raise my hand and the professor points in my direction this boy automatically begins to talk (because he no doubt had his hand raised as well) and we are all forced to listen to him try to get his thoughts together enough to make one cognizant point.

Now no one is perfect, and it is sometimes hard to get your thoughts out there especially when nerves are involved. But would it be too much to ask to just put a little more thought into what you are trying to say before you begin to speak? I don't think it is.

Recinding

Alllllllllllright. So I made a huge post about how I was never going to drink alcohol again real early this morning. And then all day I was just thinking about how that would actually be and you know what? It wasn't fun. I would just feel weird all the time and people would ask me "oh really why not?" and then I wouldn't really have a good answer aside from all those cookie cutter reasons I listed before and that would just make me look stupid. And as I re-read that original post I couldn't help but get kinda creeped out. It didn't sound like me...it was almost like christian. I don't know it was real weird and I did not like the feeling I got when I read it and when I thought about its implications. I think I over reacted a little bit after coming home from a weekend of excess which I think spurred on this whole thought process starting last night continuing on into this morning and I think I was my body was so depressed from all of the alcohol from the weekend that it clouded my mind and lead me to write that very odd post. Kind of like when Jenna was so upset over her lost iPhone she rationalized buying a $300 razr.

So am I still not going to drink? For the most part yes. But I am not going to absolutely abstain because after 8 hours of thought I have come to the conclusion that it would cause more problems than it would solve and all I really have to do is not spend so much money.

So sorry for whoever read that last post. It was very odd.

A Treatise on Squirrels

Hello again. I read this article a while back and meant to write something about it, but then I got all wrapped up in other things like Portal and IDM music and forgot to ever post it. But anyway here it is, "Scientists prove Squirrels are Sneaky". It's not a long article but it's basically about how squirrels are so paranoid that they actually make a whole bunch of fake hiding places for their food and if you see one making a hole, there is actually about a 20% chance that it is fake. Furthermore squirrels are more likely to make a "fake" hole when they know that other squirrels are watching! Sneaky indeed. But can you blame them? There are so many squirrels frolicking about all competing for the same food source, of course they're going to be sneaky about it! I would be too.

The only thing I don't like about the article is that the writer actually doesn't like squirrels! I like squirrels. I've always said that squirrels are like the extreme athletes of the animal world. They're always darting out in front of cars, swinging across wee little branches just begging to break, risking their lives attempting to steal from bird feeders. I was walking to class once and saw a squirrel fall at least 4 stories from the top of a building. He hit the ground, looked at me and just shook it off and continued about his day. Squirrels are really just adrenaline junkies with fur.

In other news I got into the MPA program at UWM! Which means I am halfway there! I still have to get into the Urban Planning Program in order to do the dual degree, which sucks because I don't think I will hear from them until March! You'd think that they would have a little better coordination with these dual degree programs, it's like the departments have no idea what the other is doing and make no effort whatsoever to find out. Oh well. In time I'll find out.

"There will be Blood" is finally here too, which I am going to see in a few hours. I don't think I have been this excited for a movie since Gangs of New York (when I thought it was a musical, oh what a pleasant surprise that was). I think Daniel Day Lewis is a good example of one of those "quality over quantity" actors. He's been only a handful of movies (25 according to IMDB), and they're all pretty good. Unlike like Samuel L. Jackson, who has been in over 100 different films and has made 150+ appearances as himself, some good some absolute shit. Which is fine I'm not knocking actors who have alot of roles. Maybe Daniel Day Lewis doesn't get approached for that many roles or maybe he is just really, really picky. Who knows!

Im out!

(lots of exclamation points this post)

Oil!

I don't really know what I have been doing these last few days.

This weekend was fun, there was alot of drinking and what not going on. John and Gallagher came down which was a nice change of pace. It was good to see them.

I almost died in the epic and infamous fire in Presidential Tower which was really the first time I have ever been in a place where there actually was a fire. It was kind of surreal to have all of those lights flashing and alarms going off still in a drunken, half asleep daze. Running down 11 flights of stairs hearing that woman's mechanized voice repeat "this is a real emergency, do not use the elevators" brought flashes of 9/11 to my mind. Except this time I was in the WTC and not watching it in my living room. And wading in the hallways with an inch of water from the sprinklers coupled with the smell of smoke just made me think of Titanic. I have pictures of all of this but they don't really do justice to the feel of the whole escapade.

Now was there a real, life threatening fire? No. I think someone lit some trash on fire with a cigarette, but when it's 4 am, you smell smoke, and all of the alarms are going off you have little choice but to treat it as a real true life emergency.

And now I have a cold. Well it's not really a cold my nose is just all stuffed up and I clear my throat about every 2 seconds. I'm sure it annoys all of the people around but most of the time I don't even know I am doing it. So sorry people around me, I don't mean to be annoying.

I'm also STILL waiting to hear back from grad schools. I literally got my applications in September. How long does it take to look at a application? Sometimes I seriously question the organization of some of these places. Although the process is somewhat overly complicated. I mean you have to first apply to the graduate school itself, then the actual program, and if you're doing a joint degree double that. So that's 2 separate applications with three offices looking at your application, essays (which are different for each program), 3 letters of recommendation from all over the country, plus your GRE scores which are sent by an entirely different entity in itself and transcripts (I almost forgot about those). But still how hard is it to run all that shit through the "admission council"? I put it in quotes because I really don't know what constitutes the "admission council" it may a computer for all I know. But I have hope that I'll hear soon. Then it's on to craigs list to find an apartment in Milwaukee (that's the hope anyway). We'll see. Anyone know anyone in Milwaukee? I only know a few people and I don't even know if they live there anymore...

And now its 7 o'clock.. where did this day go? See what I mean? I don't know what I've been doing.

It's -2 degrees outside.

In lieu of actually writing something, I decided to do a cheap "what I'm doing right now" update. Pretty cool huh?

(note the keystolope in the upper left)

Get Real.

I think I need to have my hearing checked. People on the phone sound muffled and quiet, I talk really loudly at restaurants, and when people are talking to me I have to tell them to speak up.

What's going on here?? Am I going deaf? Have my ears run their course? I don't know but something is up. I clean them regularly so what the deal?

How long do body parts last anyway? Think about your heart. It's ALWAYS doing something. It never stops. When you go to sleep its still beating, when you are watching tv its still beating and that doesn't even take into account when you're actually doing some sort of cardiovascular activity! How can it do that? I feel bad for it, always having to work. The same with your lungs! But they are bigger so somehow I don't think they work as hard. They go alot slower too...plus you can hold your breath and give them a break. You can't "hold your heart" and see how many beats you can skip. That's called cardiac arrest.

I suppose your brain is always doing something too. You can give that a break by cutting off oxygen to it, but that causes damage so I guess it is not really a break. Your blood is always on the move too... nerve endings always sensing, synapses always synapsing, nails always getting longer, your eyes are ALWAYS seeing, especially when you're asleep which is counter intuitive as it is.

When we sleep are we really resting?

You're breathing slows yes, but what else speeds up?

You're body generates heat too. Have you thought of this? It's not easy to keep something at a toasty 98.6 degrees. Do you know how much electricity it would take to heat something at almost 100 degrees for 80, 90 years?? Neither do I but I can only assume its a ton. And all of this without even taking into consideration the external forces on our bodies. Stress, pollutants, billions of carcinogens...we've got about a million different types of waves running through our bodies at any given time, microwaves, radio waves, tv waves, HD something or other waves, this spectrum that spectrum...the list never ends!

And those are just the things we can't control. We do much worse to our already constantly running body on purpose! We smoke, we drink, we inject all sorts of chemicals into our systems, we pop pills, play sports that where we run into things for hours on end, we exercise...

Who came up with this genius idea anyway? Making our body work harder on purpose? How does that make any sense? (Then again, things in the medical field are a little backwards...Ohhhhh to cure this disease we inject it INTO ourselves... What's that? To cure cancer I need to what? Shoot radioactive waves into my body? Alright this should work...)

With all of this shit going on I am surprised humans live more than a week let alone 70, 80 even 90 years. If I was an alien and saw how weak and fragile the human race is I wouldn't even waste my time attacking the earth I would just push the earth about a foot closer to the sun or raise the ocean a few feet and I am pretty sure it would wipe out the entire human race. Our body temperature goes up not even 10 degrees and we die. How pathetic is that? We are so unadaptable its funny. It rains in San Diego and people don't go out for weeks!

And we think we can colonize the moon. Get real.

Happy New Year!!

I wonder how many blogs will have a post with that title today? My New Years was officially the most low key new year I have ever had in my life. I went over to my girlfriend's house ate a bunch of ribs, drank some MGD and watched Knocked Up and a little more than half of Harry Potter 5 and went to sleep. I think we turned on Channel 2 or 5 like 1 min before 12 and watched the "countdown", which was just a bunch of fat (huge really), old ass people dancing and making out with each other to a Frank Sinatra impersonator.

But you know my low key New Years was fun. It was not like my girlfriend and I were being purposefully anti-social, she just got out of the hospital so she couldn't drink and she can barely walk. So what were we supposed to do?

I think the fact that I knew I couldn't go out made it alot easier to not to. If this had been a different situation and I HAD to stay in for some horrible reason like I had to watch my non-existent little brother or my girlfriend made a big to-do about staying in when I knew all of my friends would be out having fun, I would be writing in a much different tone right now.

For the last two years though I have been in the mindset that New Year's is a big bust and that it is just another night (and many people agreed with me on that). I mean everyone is tired from the Christmas rush, most people have to work on the Eve, so it is understandable. But after watching those old men dancing with their fat wives sweating profusely, I thought to myself maybe there is more to this night that I had originally thought. Maybe it isn't just another night. And in my Grinch like moment of realization I realized that if you treat New Years as just another night that is what it ends up being, but if you treat it like a holiday, then it is a whole different story. So watch out New Years 2008 (or would it be 2009?) because I'm gunnin' for you.