All Growns Up

Yesterday was my sister's graduation.


I'm sure its a strange time for her, but I'm excited for her to be looking ahead to college, where, if you ask me, life really begins. She's got one last summer to live it up without a rent bill to pay and food to buy. Oh, and since she's headed to the Y, this might be her last chance in a while to let boys use her bathroom. :) (Sorry, I'll let her go there, but I won't proclaim a moratorium on BYU jokes.)

Thats why I said "Wasn't It?"

If you haven't heard of Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand's 4th most popular folk parody duo), you should check them out. My good friend Randall Bennett, host of Tech Check Daily, encouraged me to check them out. Some of their songs have some swearing, but here's one that fun for the whole family.

Threat Level Yellow

The Dept. of Big Digital security has issued a relationship threat level advisory. The threat meter has been moved to Yellow, with the possibility of being upgraded to Orange within the next week or so. Please remain calm. Do not leave your homes or attempt to locate your loved ones. This is only a Yellow alert. In the event of a change in the current situation, the threat meter will be adjusted accordingly.

Did I miss a class on this somewhere?

Last week I was getting my haircut and my thoughts turned once again to the strange situation that I always find myself in there. Essentially, I go because my hair is too long and I want it cut. I mean "haircut" seems pretty straightforward, right? However, once there, the people who spend all of their working hours in this world of haircutting expect me to know all the technical terms to describe the manner in which I'd like my hair to be cut and to have strong opinions on each aspect of how things look in the end. I mean, when I go to Midas, they don't ask me how I want my brakes changed or in the end how I feel about what they've done. They don't even show me the new brakes. I just assume that they are in there. I don't even get to watch them change my brakes. I mean they are the experts, not me. I think the same ought to apply when I visit an establishment where the employees display licenses on the wall proclaiming their expertise in the field of cutting hair.

Granted I've been getting my hair cut for quite some time now, and you'd think that I'd have figured this all out by now, and to a certain extent I do -- one and half on the sides and back and finger-length on top. I just learned the finger-length part in the last year or so. Before that I would say "one and a half on the sides and back and a little longer on top". Even then, every hair cutting person (hairdresser?) that I know does things a little differently and so obviously its not going to be the same every time, especially given that I'm just walking into Great Clips and taking the next available chair. But really, I don't care too much. The only thing that really bugs me is when they cut the front of my hair (do men have bangs?) and I get home and find out that there are a few hairs that are clearly much longer than the surround hairs. Other than that, shorter = better, although I guess I'm not quite ready to shave it all off.

Always at the very end they ask me if I want it squared or rounded in the back. To be honest, I have zero preference on this, given the huge amount of time I spend seeing the back of my head. What I really want to say is whichever is easier for them, but I really have no idea, so I always opt for square.

So really, every time I get them to cut my hair shorter without feeling like a complete fool, I feel like I pulled a fast one. And 6 weeks later I'll be back to go through it all again.

#1 Again!

If you aren't familiar with the Baby Name Wizard tool, then you definitely need to check it out. Assuming that most of you web-savvy folks out there are already familiar with it, you should know that the data for 2006 has now been released and incorporated into the tool, and also is available at this site, which also allows you to do some other interested queries like looking at name popularity by state.

Most importantly, it should be noted that Jacob has once again managed to maintain its top spot for an unprecendented 8th year running. (It actually may have precedent, Emily is the top girls name for the 11th year running.) What important to know is that since I was born, the name Jacob has increased in ranking each year with nary a dip in my 28 years of Jacob-ness. (Whats not important to know is that its actually increased in popularity each year since 1967.)

Also of note, the name George is pretty much in the midst of a continuing slide toward obscurity. Which is only important if, like my older brother, you got that name handed down as a family heirloom. George is still popular (#153 for boys in 2006) mind you, but you know it really could use a face-lift when it gets beat out by Jorge (#120 in 2006).

Oh yeah? You don't say.

Being one summertime away from my 29th birthday and continuing to be a (faithful) single Latter-day Saint, I hear a lot about marriage. In fact, just this past Sunday, our high council speaker's wife felt like it was important for us to hear about the importance of marriage. She introduced her topic by saying she'd talked to a couple other single members of our stake and said that she was planning to speak about marriage. One, a guy, said "Please don't", and another, a girl said "Oh yes, please do." And she decided to side with the girl. I think at that point approximately half the men in our ward tuned out. When she launched into a talk from Elder Bednar that started with "Temple marriage is essential for our salvation", I'm pretty sure that the other half hit the mental snooze button.

Not to say that we don't care about marriage or don't realize its importance. I'm sure there are a few recalcitrant ones who don't agree to that or who really are putting off marriage because they don't think they can afford it right now. But I would say that the vast majority of LDS single men are not married because they haven't found what they're looking for, or when they did find it, it wasn't looking for them. Not because they figured they'd sail right on into the celestial kingdom without a spouse. Trust me, we're all well aware of the fact that only married people can go to the highest degree of glory. We hear it at least several times a year if not several times a month. So if you are worried that we aren't getting the hint, don't worry.

Along the lines of talks on missionary work, most talks on marriage fall into the camp of telling you how important it is, without giving you much in the way of how to go about doing it. Most marriage talks tell you that its important to be willing to be selfless and sacrificing and to treat your wife with the utmost of love and respect, and that qualities like a testimony and potential for being a good mother should be looked for above qualities like attractiveness. But rare is the talk that attempts to give a man some guidance in how to go about winding up with a wife in the end.

So essentially, several times a year, we get to sit and listen about how we need a woman to be our help-meet, and that she should be someone more spiritual than ourselves (a topic that deserves its own post), and that without her we're pretty much on the express train to ministering angel town, but without actually giving any counsel on how to actually get married, other than that we need to "date more". Keep in mind that most of the guys truly do want to be married. Pounding us over the head with how screwed we're going to be if we don't get married isn't going to do anything other than make us think that its not even worth trying any more. Meanwhile, the sisters get the whole "if things don't work out in this life, there's always the next" routine, as though if you haven't already gotten married by age 27, you must already be worried about your own personal salvation. (What happens to single people after age 30? Do they just leave the church? Has anyone ever actually gotten married in their 30s?)

Anyway, I'm sure there are topics here that could use some expansion, but for now lets just say that if you are worried that single adult men in the LDS church aren't aware that marriage is a requirement for exaltation, you can sleep easy knowing that we get the picture.

The Medium Digital

UPDATE: This morning I put my watch on and came to work. When I got here I looked down at my watch, and lo and behold, it had ceased to function. A mere 3 weeks or so after buying it, the display is blank, and no combination of button pressing has served to revive it back to life. Guess I'll be finding out about Wal-mart's watch return policy pretty soon.



Recently I suffered a blog-related tragedy. The Big Digital 3.0 suffered a crippling blow -- its band broke. Not just the little part that holds the two sides of the band together. That's always the first to go, and can be sufficiently replaced with a rubber band or a tape/plastic hybrid. No, this time, the actual band decided it couldn't take no more and tore all the way to one of the holes where the tongue of the band goes.

I've known for a while now that the time would come that I'd need to replace my watch, but I'd scoured the web looking for the correct model of Armitron, always unsuccessfully. I've found at least one on e-Bay, but it was being sold as part of a 17 watch bundle and it really wasn't worth the cost to buy (and ship) 17 watches. After having the band break this last time, I thought maybe I'd be able to be one of those of no-watch people who use their cellphones for time-telling purposes. I gave it a shot for a day or two and let me just say that they are not equally convenient. Digging into my pocket vs. looking at my arm -- no contest.

Having decided that I did not want to be watchless any longer, I made a stop by the nearby Wal-mart and browsed their selection of Armitrons. In the end, I settled on one with a reasonably big digital display (medium digital by comparison) and plunked down my $15.

This was about 2 weeks ago. So far its okay. You have to realize that The Big Digital was the only watch I wore (not counting the Fossil that I wear on more formal occasions) for nearly the last 7 years. I don't like the band as well as the other, and the numbers are not nearly as huge. It has a few more features that I'm sure I won't find a reason to use (2nd time zone?) and some icons on the face that I still haven't determined what they represent. The one thing I like that the Big Digital did not have is a little circle with the day of the month in it on the main face. No need to push a button to find out the date. Thats nice.

If Lost were like 24

I'll be honest, I used to love 24. I watched the second season religiously, taping it with a VCR if I was going to miss it, and re-hashing each episode with friends afterward. I had a few gripes with the way it was going, but for the most part I really enjoyed it. It was my first real taste of addictive serialized television. When the 3rd season started, I was super excited and waited with anticipation for the season to begin. I watched the few first weeks, and then I just quit watching. I’m not 100% sure why, but I think some of the gripes I had became more pronounced or the cumulative effect of the things I didn’t like continuing over a long period finally got to me.

Currently, I am a big fan of Lost (and Heroes), and despite not having a lot of patience for filler episodes, I’m guessing I’ll see this one through to the bitter end (or the zombie season, whichever comes first). This season, perhaps not so much lately, there’ve been some complaints about the direction of the show and some of the decisions they’ve made, and I agree with some of them to an extent. But I was thinking the other day that thankfully Lost isn’t directed the way 24 is, and thought of giving some examples of the way Lost would have gone if it was run like 24.

1) The survivors would have fought and defeated the Others, tamed the smoke monster, made it off the island and back to Sydney mid-way through season One, and would now be fighting aliens.

24 burns through plot lines before they ever have a chance to develop. Lost has kind of the opposite problem where we heard that Walt was special a couple years back and maybe by Season 6 we’ll hear why, assuming they even remember to address it.

2) Charlie would have killed approximately 75 Others by now.

By Desmond’s count, Charlie’s killed more of them they have of him. If this were 24, Charlie would have reacted to being strung up in a tree, not just by killing Ethan before we could get any answers of out him, but he would have crossed the island and unloaded clip after clip into random no-name Others.

Side note: Who is actually physically larger, Kiefer Sutherland or Dominic Monaghan? IMDB lists ex-hobbit Monaghan at 5’ 7”, while burly Jack Bauer comes in at a decidedly unthreatening 5’ 9½”. Any time some whose age isn’t counted in months includes ½ inches in their height, you know they’re lying.


3) The survivors would have had 6 leaders by now, each one in turn, turning out to be working for the Others.

Pretty much every season, whoever is running CTU turns out to be in cahoots with the bad guys. You’d think they have worked out a better background check process by now.

4) There would be a side plot where Claire and Kate fight over who gets to date Hurley.

I tried to come up with a set of Lost characters to mirror this scenario, but as far as I can tell only pretty women are allowed on the island. Maybe it’s one of its mysterious properties. On an episode of 24 this season, two male CTU employees were cat-fighting over Chloe, network television’s least attractive romantic female lead. Meanwhile, a much more attractive new hire at CTU goes unnoticed. All I know of all the things that don’t make sense on CTU, men fighting over Chloe ranks right near the top.

5) Every season the Survivors would manage to defeat the Smoke Monster and the Others, only to find out in the next season that there is yet another batch of Others on a different part of the island and that there are yet more Smoke Monsters.

Do terrorist have any tactics that don’t involve nuclear explosions?

6) The President – or one of his staff – would be behind it all.

I don't have a problem with conspiracy theories involving high-level government officials, but is anyone else capable of masterminding a nuclear explosion who doesn't work at the White House?

7) Jack, Kate, and Sawyer would have escaped back to the beach in the first segment of the first episode of Season Three.

I realize that they are now all back at the beach as Season Three comes to a close, but had this happened on 24, the first few minutes of the new season would have involved Jack, Kate, and Sawyer easily escaping as the Others simply left them unattended at the dock with bags on their heads. By far my biggest gripe with 24 was that there was always no-way-out cliffhangers every week that were resolved way to simply in the first moments of the next episode. The plane with Jack and Nina in it is shot down by missiles? No problem, our main characters survive without a scratch and only people we’ve never met die.

Prison Break took this to a whole new level, throwing in outlandish cliffhangers and their resultant resolutions at nearly every commercial break. Prison guard found your escape hole? No worries, when we return you’ll find out that actually one of our escapees is standing right behind him with a shovel.

8) Charlie could never have gotten high and Paulo would have had nothing to do.

Why? Because on 24, no one ever uses the bathroom. :)

Smells like young adult spirit

Last night, I was able to make it to the last hour of a Mos Def concert at the U (he only made it for the last hour and fifteen). It was a pretty interesting show, given that a) he's a socially conscious rapper, b) this was in Salt Lake City, Utah, and c) his music is pretty laid-back.

Anyway, we had a good time and it was definitely worth the $5 the tickets cost (for students). I think my favorite part was walking into the crowd and saying, "Hmmm...smells like college."

I'VE GOT 2 TOGETHER...at the Megaplex?

Anyone who's attended a sporting event where the cost of admission is more than free, has probably seen ticket scalpers offering "2 down low" or asking if anyone's "got tickets?" I always try to get these two people to talk to each as they are often standing right next to each other. Not sure what their deals is. (I'm kidding of course. If YOU don't know, I'll tell you sometime).

But how often have you ever been a movie on opening night only to find out that either a) the movie is sold out, or b) there's already a huge line of people waiting to get in. Its times like these, that it might be worth dropping a few extra bucks to jump to the front of the line, or to get some reserved seats that aren't on the very front row. Speaking of the front row, how can it be legal to let people sit that close to a gigantic screen? If sitting too close to a TV hurts our eyes, I can't imagine what kind of damage you suffer sitting 5 feet from a gigantic movie screen.

In the same vein, why does every seat at every movie cost the same amount? I realize that there are such things as matinees and dollar movies, but really what I'm saying is, should the first row of seats cost the same as better seats in the middle? and additionally, how can they charge the same price for a movie that cost $10 million to make as they charge for a movie that cost $200 million to make? Or even more to the point, some movies are crappy. If Shawn and Marlon Wayans make a movie, it shouldn't cost as much to see that as it costs to see a good movie. It almost seems unfair to make you pay the same amount to see a movie that's obviously gong to be terrible (anything starring Rob Schneider for example) as something that looks to be really good (anything starring Will Smith).

Movie theaters are the only place that works on this weird economy that I can think of, except maybe public transit (although bad seats on the bus are more about who you are sitting next to). The performing arts has determined that some seats are better than others. Sports entertainment has pricing based on seating, and also on the level of play. NBA games cost more than college games, and college games in turn cost more than high school games, generally.

I'm sure there's some kind of time honored system that makes this whole weird movie pricing phenomenon work, but it always makes me scratch my head.

Hey! Don't I Know You?

I'm sure you've all been in this situation before. Across the room, you notice someone who you remember from your past. Maybe they were in a class with you, or you met them at a conference, or they went to your church congregation. You recognize them, and maybe even remember their name. Then you wonder, "Do they remember me?" and then you wonder whether you should go up to them and say hi or not.

For some reason, this happens to me all the time. Partly, I've known a lot of different people in my time in Salt Lake and, for the most part, us singles tend to move around a lot, so you get a chance to run into people you haven't seen in a while fairly regularly. Secondly, I enjoy getting to know people and know about them, what they do and where they are from and what not; which, in turn, helps me to remember them. Finally, I also have been blessed with a pretty good memory. Lately, my short-term memory is starting to not be quite as sharp (I find myself needing to write things down more often), but I'm still pretty good at hanging on to things once they make it into my long-term memory.

Anyway, I find myself in the situation of seeing people that I've known in the past quite often. And often times, I happen to know quite a bit about these people. I almost never assume that people are going to remember me, and if they do, its more in a "I think I remember you from my ward" kind of way. I, on the other hand, often remember quite a bit about these people. So, usually, I pretend that I don't remember much about them either, because I think it would probably be pretty weird for someone you barely recognize to come up and know everything about you. I mean I think people will probably get a little creeped out and think that I've been stalking them or at the very least was overly interested in them at some point. And thats not the case, at least the stalking part. Occasionally I'll run into some girl that I'd had a crush on, but thats not the norm. I just remember things about people. And then later I pretend I don't know those things. Is that weird?

Back to Work

Hey, I'm back from San Antonio where I had a great time with my family. You can see some pictures if you click on this photo:



It was great to spend a week with my family and its good to be back at home as well.

Can you say adobe?

Ah-do-bay!

That's right I'm off to San Antonio to visit the Alamo (sans basement) and also my niece and her parents, along with my whole family. Should be good times. I'm sure I'll have tons of digital evidence to post on Flickr when I get back in about a week.

Sometimes it just nice to know that I'm not a jerk

Tonight I played some pick-up basketball at a church with a group of people, only one of whom I really knew previously. The group was pretty varied in their talent levels, ranging from a couple guys who were decently quick and could knock down a 3, down to a couple people who were really lucky to make an open lay-up. Of course, that latter group could include me since I missed what felt like at least 20 gimmes. Of course its been at least a year since I even laced up my basketball sneaks and played in even a pickup game. Oh, and I forgot to mention this was co-ed with two girls who could hold their own with this crowd, (one tall, one short) and two who really were overmatched for the most part.

Anyway, now that I've set up the scenario for you, let me just say that one guy who was there was a jerk. There are a lot of other terms that come to mind for what I'd like to call him, but they just aren't appropriate in this forum. But he was that insidious type of jerk who doesn't really ever quite cross the line. Just in the way he carried himself and some of the things he did, it was clear that he had some real issues. I'm going to list a couple examples of things he did that just really irked me, and unless you play pickup ball you might not really understand.

#1) He thought he was pretty much the shizz, and I'll grant that he was quick and knocked down a couple tough shots. He tried to take me one-on-one quite a few times when I was guarding him and he thought he had some nifty spin moves, but they weren't really all that nifty, because he could really only go right in the end, although he did make some fade-aways and got past me a time or two (I'm not the quick cat I once was). But a couple times I stayed in front of him and he tried to go up for a layup and when he missed, he had the audacity to say that I fouled him "with the body". I've played a lot of pickup ball in my day, but I've never heard someone call their own foul "on the body", i.e., I didn't hit him at all with my hands or arms, but because he jumped into me and then missed, somehow it was a foul on me.

#2) On numerous occasions when he had knocked the ball away from one of our players he claimed that it actually went off them out of bounds. I'm not saying whether it did or it didn't, but when you swat the ball away from someone, the odds are that it you hit it out of bounds, and in a pickup game if the other person doesn't come out and say, "No, its off me" then pretty much you just let them take it out up top. Remember that this is a co-ed game where a couple of the players have practically no discernable basketball skills.

#3) At one point, after a fast break that we had, he had the audacity, nay the gall, to claim that one of our players (who was just lucky to be standing up) had travelled while standing under the basket shooting a layup. I don't know that I've ever heard traveling called in a setting like this. I mean, I like to know that I'm trying hard and playing my best, and I like to win, but not to the extreme of calling a traveling violation, which I'm not sure even actually occured, on someone who isn't very good at basketball. I mean the guy I was guarding was camped out in the lane like it was the Alaskan frontier, but there's no way I'm going to call a 3-second violation in a church pick-up game.

Of the four games I played in, I managed to not be on his team ever, and that pleased me. I think I probably lost more than I won, but I'm pleased to say that we won the final game on a in traffic layup by yours truly, one of the few I actually made.

Its been quite some time since I really met someone who got under my skin like that, and I probably shouldn't worry about it too much, but in the end I was just glad that I'm not that kind of person.

Desktop Tower Defense

If you haven't played Desktop Tower Defense, I'll just tell you right now that its surprisingly addictive and I've still got a lot to learn. Basically its a game where little "creeps", circles mostly try to move from one side of the board to the other, while you build towers to both shoot them and force them to wander through the maze that you've set up for them. I haven't yet tried the "Hard" difficulty setting, but I was starting to do pretty well on Normal until they switched things up a bit for v1.2.

Anyway, if you need to kill some time, check it out. A full game on Normal takes about 7 minutes.

Longer Lunch Breaks?

In case you didn't see this already, its a digital short featuring Rainn Wilson of "The Office" fame on Saturday Night Live. I'm not sure why I enjoy it so much, but I do.



Maybe it has something to do with the talking turkey sub or the mounted tiger head's voice.

English, We Hardly Knew Ye

From an article about the Marist women's basketball team's upset victory over Middle Tennesee State:

[C]oach Brian Giorgis said: "These kids never stop ceasing to amaze me."

Wrap your head around that one.

What happened to cup sizes?

Brian Regan, one of my favorite comedians has a bit where he talks about cup sizes at restaurants and the silly displays hanging from the ventilation duct to let you know what the different cup sizes are. And yes, its a silly idea, but maybe not so much now. Lately I've been discovering that the old size standards have changed. When I was working in the fast food industry the sizes were thus:

Small: 16 oz.
Medium: 22 oz.
Large: 32 oz.
XL: 44 oz.

and I want to say that the children's size was maybe 12 oz., but I can't be sure about that. I think pretty much everyone was used to this standard. But in the last 6 months or so, all of a sudden, fast food places are pulling a switcheroo on us.

This morning at Carl's Jr., I ordered a combo meal and when asked what size drink I wanted I asked for a medium, only to be shocked moments later when a 32 oz cup was slapped down on my tray. Apparently medium is now what large used to be. At Wendy's if you order a combo meal they ask what size you want it. If you get a "medium" sized combo, you get a 32 oz drink. The "small" size comes with a 21 oz. Strangely though, if you order a "small" drink from the 0.99 value menu its a 16 oz. Its gotten to the point now where I occasionally ask the worker what size the cups are. Not that they ever know. This is especially critical in the drive-thru where too large a cup may result in the cup not fitting in your cupholder, and too small a cup with no refill recourse may be inadequate for my thirst-quenching needs, not to mention the fact that you don't even get to see what size the cup is until after you've already paid.

I'm not sure why the restaurants have done this, but I'm guessing they aren't doing it because their customer have demanded it. I've yet to hear anyone complain, "I wish that a medium soda were a lot bigger, but still called a medium." I haven't looked into the pricing, but I suspect that these new "mediums" are priced higher than the old ones.

Albums That I Love #15: Food & Liquor

Its always exciting to find a new artist who you really enjoy listening to. And when they have a great debut album that's strong from start to finish. Lupe Fiasco's debut album, Food & Liquor is definitely one of those. I first heard "Kick, Push" and thought it was a great chill rap song, and liked the different vibe. Very laid-back. When I finally was able to check out the album, it was a great hip-hop album. I wouldn't say there are a lot of tracks that stand out, but the album flows smoothly from start to finish with Lupe putting together some great rhymes without needing to fill them up with cussing. Food & Liquor is definitely an album worth checking out.

1. Intro
A little bit of rhymin' and a little bit of introducing, basically introducing the concept of the title, that there's a little good and bad in all of us -- Food & Liquor if you will.

2. Real
For some reason I don't have anything to say about this song...

3. Just Might Be Ok
...Or this one.

4. Kick, Push
As I said earlier, this was the song that made me check out the album. Its a song about skateboarding and love and love of skateboarding.

5. I Gotcha
This song's got a nice piano melody playing throughout, while Lupe lays down the verses over the top.

6. The Instrumental
This song has some of the wickedest rhymes I've heard in a while. I'll put some of the lines here, but you really have to hear it to do it justice.

"He just sits, and listens to the people in the boxes
Everything he hears he absorbs and adopts it
Anything not comin out the box he blocks it
See he loves to box and hope they never stop it
Anything the box tell him to do, he does it
Anything it tell him to get, he shops and he cops it
He protects the box, locks it in a box"

7. He Say She Say
A song about dads who aren't around and how it affects their kids adversely.

8. Sunshine
Another of my favorite tracks. Very chill. Sounds like walking outside on a perfect day, like today.

9. Daydreamin'
A great song about daydreamin'. Feels like a ghetto Alice in Wonderland. First verse is about driving a giant robot that's filled with ghetto people. Second verse seems to be about filming a music video.

10. The Cool
A song about a zombie coming back from the grave to get back to his life of drug dealing. Cool music.

11. Hurt Me Soul
A song about hip-hop music and how he didn't like it and its themes, but then as he grew up he saw that lots of what he heard in the music was all around him and it led him to write rhymes himself.

12. Pressure
I guess its worth mentioning that this track features Jay-Z who at the time was in about month 5 of his seemingly 6 month retirement.

13. American Terrorist
A song looking at acts of "terrorism" and racism in America.

14. The Emperor's Soundtrack
Not sure what this song is about, but I like the way it sounds. Its like a gospel record.

15. Kick, Push II
A revisit to the skateboarding theme of Kick, Push. Talks about a group of kids skating together and how they held together when they didn't have much else going for them, and how getting away from trouble at home to skate was an escape that wasn't drugs. Its almost like a remix of Kick, Push but with totally different verses and chorus and sound. I know that doesn't make sense, but to me, somehow, it does.

16. Outro
A 12-minute track featuring more shout-outs than I've ever heard in a row, including shout-outs to pretty much anything you can think of. Myspace, for example, or Dave's Quality Meats.


If you made it all the way to the end of this review, you deserve to know that this might be the last of the "Albums That I Love" series. I'm kind of at the end of the albums that I can think of to write about for now. I'm going to have to figure out what the new weekly feature might be. Feel free to offer suggestions.

In case you hadn't figured out you could click on the "labels" on each post to find more of the "albums that I love", here's the full list:

#1: August & Everything After by The Counting Crows
#2: The Carnival by Wyclef Jean
#3: Donde Estan Los Ladrones? by Shakira
#4: Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard
#5: Joyspring by Kurt Bestor
#6: The Blue Album by Weezer
#7: Best of 2006 (as voted by me)
#8: The Rising Tied by Fort Minor
#9: Sueños Liquidos by Maná
#10: This Desert Life by The Counting Crows
#11: The Hits by Garth Brooks
#12: Let's Face It by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
#13: Code Red by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
#14: Come On, Come On by Mary Chapin Carpenter
#15: Food & Liquor by Lupe Fiasco

The delicious aroma of literacy

Recently, the Pizza Hut Book It! Reading program for Elementary School kids has come under fire. Critics are saying that it encourages kids to eat unhealthy foods and that it forces parents to go to Pizza Hut as part of raising literate children.

I just want to say that were it not for the Book It! program I would have never eaten Pizza Hut pizza in my entire childhood, save one or two rare occasions. It was always fun to get to go with my mom and we would get our personal pan pizzas and a sticker to put on our Book It! badge for that year, and if we were lucky my mom would even buy some breadsticks to eat with it.

I don't know what critics are suggesting we replace the Book It! program with. A coupon for Wild Oats Market? Perhaps we could just give the kids some money for reading. I'm guessing they aren't going to go buy carrot sticks to reward themselves.

I think what would be really neat would be if we could get some kind of a bidding war going between food service establishments to sponsor the reading program each year. See if we can't up the ante. We are a free market economy right? A little competition couldn't hurt. Maybe we can get these kids a regular size pizza instead of just the personal one. Then mom wouldn't have to buy her own.