Hello Shameless Opportunity, errr, Goodbuy

C'mon Target. I thought you were the good, anti-Walmart. I guess not.

Women are dying of breast cancer. It's a terrible tragedy. So why not come down to your local neighborhood Target and pick up a shiny new set of Breast Cancer Awareness Instant Heat Rollers:

And while you're here, might as well pick up a Breast Cancer Awareness Body Fat Scale, now with special electro tumor-sensing capabilities:

Having some friends over for a Breast Cancer Awareness party? Why not make the night extra special by whipping up a batch of toast? Mmmm. We have the perfect tool for the job:

I think you see my point. :) And that's just the beginning:

Target BCA Stuff

Breast Cancer? Never heard of it...

Enough with the breast cancer awareness already. I am now so acutely aware of this disease that I've begun examinations on myself...and I'm a dude.

Now before you start to go all belligerent on me for taking what is assuredly an unpopular stance, allow me to explain why I feel this way. I realize that it's a serious, deadly disease. And I think raising awareness, if it means early detection and/or prevention, ultimately is a good thing, regardless of the disease.

Where I take issue with this disease, however, is the grossly disproportionate attention it gets relative to other, equally or more deadly diseases. Breast cancer, you may not know, is actually not even the deadliest cancer in women. Lung cancer is. And heart disease kills more than all cancers combined.

But for some reason breast cancer gets its own month (October is breast cancer awareness month - of course it's virtually impossible that you're not already aware of this), its own ridiculously ubiquitous pink ribbon, and apparently now there is a matching pink Lance Armstrong "Live Strong" style bracelet as well. I'm watching the Patriots-Cowboys game yesterday, trying to have some strictly dude time, and who is sporting both of these pink accessories but every single last official on the field. What?? Why are we trying to raise "awareness" in NFL football fans anyway? Isn't the fact that one of the words in the disease's name is "breast" enough in the awareness raising dept. for that crowd?

So to summarize...breast cancer is bad. Awareness and prevention are good. All things pink all over the place all the !&%# time...well, that's just plain gripe-worthy. :)

Butter is fattening? I had no idea...

In the news today: "Supermarket shoppers may soon be cruising the aisles with 'intelligent' shopping carts that warn them if they're buying too much junk food, technology experts say."

Article

(shaking head)

I don't really even need to comment on this, do I? No. But of course you know I will. :) What an outstanding example of using technology to better our lives. I can't wait for this thing's sister product, an "intelligent" device that you wear around your waist that warns you when you've consumed too much junk food. It utilizes the latest in ultra-high-tech, a device also commonly known as the tape measure. With tools of this caliber at our disposal, America's obesity problem should soon be a thing of the past.

"Bob, wow, you look great. It looks like you've lost 100 lbs...what's your secret?"

"It's this new shopping cart, it's amazing! Turns out three sticks of butter doused in ranch dressing, a quart of half & half, and a King Size Snickers bar is considered an unhealthy meal. Watch as I put them in the cart. (beep beep beep). Who knew?"

America's Next Karen Carpenter

I'm at the gym waiting for a machine to open up. Finally one does, I hop on, and the girl next to me says, "I hope you don't mind watching 'girl stuff' for 5 min." The girl stuff she was referring to, apparently, was the show America's Next Top Model, on the always cerebral, two-failed-network-collaboration, aka The CW.

So I watch for awhile. I try not to judge a book by its cover. I like to...you know...skim the back cover, maybe a paragraph or two from the prologue, and then judge it. True to the girl's word, she left 5 min. later, and I turned the TV to something a little more...masculine: "Dancing with the Stars". :) J/K.

In any event, yes, it was only 5 min., but I gotta tell you...I don't get this Top Model thing AT ALL. I think I get model-hood in general. An ugly chick, after all, sells little by way of clothes and makeup. A blunt way of putting it, I suppose, but that's pretty much the gist of the industry. But where do these so-called top models fit into the equation? You've got this physical attractiveness spectrum, ranging from sweet spirit/Cinnabon frequenter to smokin' hot/anatomically correct, upon which you can place any given girl. It's elegant. It makes sense. But then, for some reason at the "hot" end of the spectrum they make this crazy, inexplicable turn and veer into a very bizarre place. What, exactly, is "top" about these models? I believe the term they like to use is "exotic", but to me...they're just weird looking. And when I say I like my women curvy, I ain't talking about the curve between every rib. For you He-Man fans out there, let me put it this way. Teela good. Skeletor...bad.

Here's a little taste from their official website:



What the crap is this all about?? :) Yeah baby, nothing screams "sexy" like biking shorts, grandma's orange afghan, big hair, raccoon makeup, and pretend rock-climbing. (wiping up drool) If only she were 20 lbs. lighter. A shame. Oh well there's always next season. ;)

Le Hideous

I had this crazy dream the other night. I dreamt (this is proper usage, I looked it up) that a company actually commissioned me to design the ugliest, gaudiest, most obnoxiously amateur paint job for their fleet of passenger buses. So I obliged. And after several iterations of increasingly unsightly candidates, I finally settled on the ultimate in fugly. I give you...Le Bus!





"But Lane," you ask, "why on Earth would you create such a thing, and do you really expect people to pay to ride in it??" Relax...it was just a dream.

Oh wait, no it wasn't. :)

Come to Zion, Come to Zion

Because it's a great place. It is THE place, despite what Brigham Young said, as far as I'm concerned. Which is what has compelled me to write this entry. There is about a 98% chance that you, loyal reader, also make the following mistake, so this entry probably will not be a popular one. But that's okay because something needs to be said...

Let's cut to the chase. It's not "Zion's National Park". Nor is it "Zion's". Zion ain't a person, and he doesn't own the park. IT'S JUST ZION.

Z I O N period.

But don't just take my word for it, take a good long gander at the actual park sign:



See the apostrophe and the "S" after Zion? Yeah, me neither. Now, that said, see if you can identify what's wrong with the following sentence:

"We're going to go on a National Park tour. We'll start at Yellowstone's, then hit the Grand Canyon's, Yosemite's, Bryce's, Capitol Reef's...and end at Zion's."

(choose your own adventure blog, ala those books way back in the day):

If you identified 5 errors please go to the beginning of this entry. If you identified 6, please continue to the follow paragraph.

Congratulations, your comprehension skills are most impressive. The End.

Bogie dumptruck! Incoming!!

I want to know who it was that decided that "rolling through a stop sign" is a dangerous criminal offense which warrants police officer harassment (I've gotten a ticket for this before), but who also thinks that it's perfectly okay for uncovered dumptrucks with a small mountain's worth of gravel shrapnel and other deadly stone-like projectiles to go barrelling unrestricted down the freeway.

Why are they allowed to do this? There is such a hubbub made about the road-side bombings in Iraq, and yet you hear nothing about the dump-truck induced war zone in our very own backyard. Am I the only one who has been driving along I-15, minding my own business, when all of a sudden a virtual shotgun blast of dirt and rocks begins to pummel the front of my vehicle?

And of course Murphy's Law dictates that you're most likely to have one of these unpleasant encounters after the installation of that nice, pristine new windshield. :) Surely there is a law against this on the books somewhere. My prediction is that it's just a matter of time before a large enough chunk has just the right combination of momentum and shape to be able to penetrate the windshield safety glass and maim an otherwise innocent driver.

Then and only then will the gatling-gun rivaling freeway "nuisance" reach the criminal equivalent of the vile and wicked stop sign roll.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night...

...nor spell check, nor common sense, nor...

I took this picture today at the Post Office in East Bay in Provo with my phone camera (hence the kind of crappy quality - sorry):

Two things. First, I don't know what a "Guaranted Delivery" is, but I sure as hell ain't payin' no $16.25 for it. Oops, $16.25 is the starting price. I can only imagine how much you'd have to throw down for some "Nxt Daye" service. Our tax dollars at work, baby!

But wait! On further thought, it all makes total sense now. I guess I can forgive them one little typo. Think about it...the Post Office isn't just an expensive D.I. alternative to rid yourself of your annoying packages. They actually have a plan in place to deliver them to the address you wrote in bold letters on the front. In fact, they guarantee it!

How do UPS and FedEx compete with such mind-blowing performance?

The REAL Maverik Monster

Maverik has this stupid ongoing promotion about some supposed monster running around doing I don't know what. This guy:



If a descendant of Bob Marley, Mr. Spock and Predator had a kid with Smurfette...and then you mixed in some wicked-cool shades, you'd have yourself something very close to Mav's monster. Now, I believe I go to the Maverik just about as often as anyone, and I've never seen it. I don't know anything about it, except that it won't seem to go away. Hey Maverik, what does your stupid fictional monster have to with my craving for a Jalapeño and Cheese Bahama Mama, or perhaps a $1.99 hoagie from Leopold's Deli with all the fixin's, anyway? I'll tell you what. Nothing.

But the Predasmurf is not even the point of this entry. :) You've got a monster alright, Maverik. It's that heinously disgusting place in the back you pass off for the men's restroom. Gross! GROSS!! And when I think a bathroom is gross, trust me you have a problem.

How does a bathroom even get like that? It seems like if you did absolutely nothing to it from the day that building was constructed, it still would only be half as bad as it currently is. I would venture to say there are some new compounds growing in there that science has yet to identify. How many bathrooms do you suppose there are where you actually increase the amount of bacteria on your person after attempting to wash your hands?

Sick!

But don't worry, North Springville Maverik. You keep putting those 12-packs of Diet. Dew in the cooler and I'll see ya in the morning. :)

A "Titanic" Oversight

Every week, especially during the summer, you constantly hear in the news about how the latest blockbuster movie just broke a bunch of box-office records. They've made up some real doozies, too, just so they can report on them being broken. For example, "Movies that never hit #1", "Second Weekend", "Theater Drops", "Widest Indies", etc.

But that they have all these uninteresting stats they've made up to report on is not what bothers me. Nay, they can slice and dice, and then re-slice and report until the cows come home. What my gripe is this entry is their apparently cavalier attitude towards what I feel is a HUGE factor in all this movie money bean counting. And that is adjusting the totals for inflation. Or more accurately, neglecting to do so.

The studios must think that if they report a movie as having broken some money record, that will stir people up and instill in them the desire to go out and see it. You know, see what all the "fuss" is about. And they are probably right. But it doesn't change the fact that, over many decades of movies, this endless parade of new broken records is completely and totally meaningless when you don't adjust for inflation.

One way to think about it...a dollar was worth much more in, say, 1977 (the year Star Wars was released), than it is now. So to directly compare it with the dollars that Spiderman 3 just made, which is precisely what they do, is mathematically retarded. Put another way...think about what a movie ticket cost in 1977. Probably on the order of $2. The last movie I went to, 30 years later (2007), was $8. These poor older movies don't stand a chance.

The purported king of the movies, in terms of box office total, of course, is Titanic. But if you adjust for inflation, which you must do, Titanic places at a much less impressive 6th place, all time. Sorry Titanic, you lose! You're not even the king of 5th place, much less the world. :) All hail the true king of movie revenue, Gone with the Wind (1939), with an adjusted dollar total (2007) of no less than $1.3 billion dollars....compared to Titanic's paltry $844 million. And to round out the top 5, we have Star Wars at #2 ($1.17 billion), The Sound of Music at #3 ($937 million), E.T at #4 ($933 million), and The Ten Commandments at #5 ($861 million).

The next time you're listening to the entertainment news and they break out with "Spiderman 4 just broke the record for the most earned during a full moon in a spring month"...I want you to remember this post. :)