Recreation
Mammon: Best Idol?
There’s a famous expression, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Which is a damn shame, because money fucking rules. I don’t just mean in the typical sense, in that money opens up a lot of doors and also lets you buy cool ass shit – I mean in the sense of its utility and the different abstractions money can represent. For example, there’s a pretty popular Read More
On Miracle Drugs
Burn extra fat! Recover from injuries/exertion faster! Put on more muscle! You see a lot of advertisements for miracle drugs that make dubious claims – At Walgreens, they sold green tea diet pills that claimed to help burn fat faster. They had a shelf dedicated to these diet pills – I deemed it the snake oil section. What’s crazy to me is how much bullshit gets hawked as legitimate, when Read More
On Diversity
I was watching this episode of Bizarre Foods where Andrew Zimmern goes to the Ozarks to eat bear. I guess it’s pretty popular up there, because he was talking about how limited the hunting season was and it’s supposedly really hard to get a permit to actually hunt bear. Anyways, there were butchering the bear to eat and Mr Zimmern starts talking about how bear fat is used for everything Read More
On NPR
I heard this story on NPR recently, about a woman who found herself in a case of mistaken identity. Here’s a link to the story. To sum, someone else in the same town had the same name as her, and she would often get the other Katie’s emails or membership benefits to grocery stores and so forth. This is like the epitome of an NPR story. Katie talks through the Read More
On Enjoyment
One thing I try to work on is focusing on the moment. There’s a lot of focus nowadays on being mindfulness and being in the moment. One aspect that I work on is savoring my food. When I eat, I try to pay attention to what I’m eating. What this means in practice is using all of my senses to enjoy the food – the taste, obviously, the aroma, the Read More
On Transportation
This post is expanding on an earlier post I wrote. I went to a gas station to pick up some water after hitting the gym. I spent a good five minutes trying to figure out which bottle of water to get. Normally, I would focus on value – most amount of water for cheapest price. However, the best value products were the gallon jugs, which I didn’t want to get, Read More
On Advertising, V2
Speaking of advertising, I think the FarmersOnly advertising campaign would make a pretty good case study. I don’t know how effective it’s been, but if my gut is correct, their numbers are probably doing like gangbusters. Here’s the ad I’ve been seeing recently. What’s so great about it? First, I think it does a fantastic job at qualifying its target demographic. I’d imagine the first thought in a person’s mind when Read More
On Ads
Advertising to minors should be illegal. It’s crazy to look back and see what corporations have been able to get away with. If you think about it, advertising is essentially a low level form of mind control, in which a company will attempt to insert itself or its product into your mind space or get you to associate pleasant connotations with it. Advertising to the young can be a way Read More
Blog idea: Urban exploration
Sometimes I like to spitball ideas for things I’d like to see out in the wild. Bear in mind, I’ve done absolutely no prior research on this topic, so for all I know, this niche has already been fulfilled. The concept is google earth lite: the blog, or google maps street view with a more human touch. The gist of the blog is to document the walk between two random destinations – say, from Read More
On Hobbies and Finding Your Passion
I like the idea of being passionate about something. Having said that, I don’t really have a passion. I do have hobbies, though. For me, hobbies are something that improve the quality of my life in some way – something I can derive satisfaction from, or gain physical or mental benefits. However, they’re optional. I can do without them pretty easily, but they’re nice to have. Is it good to Read More