ZOMG! We are in Emo alert level black!

The Homeland Depression Advisory System is a means to disseminate information regarding the risk of black mascara, tight girl pants, and fake suicide attempts to federal, state, and local authorities and to the American people.

I am constantly on the lookout for new and interesting music. Here's a few methods I use to find new music.

Usenet

This can be hit or miss, but hitting up usenet groups for genres you like can be a good way of finding new music. One of my favorite groups is alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.inde. I'll check it every once in a while for new content. There is a group for whatever kind of music you like. If you don't know what usenet is, here is my article on the subject.

Yahoo Radio



Yahoo radio is an interesting service when you don't want to put much thought into the process of finding new music. Just start listening and make sure to rate every song you hear. Over time it will begin to figure out your preferences and play more songs from categories you enjoy. It will even make suggestions based on what other people like who have similar taste.

You can get a jump on training the Yahoo music player by going and searching yahoo music for the kind of music you like and rating it.

Like-Minded Blogs

Finding a blogger with similar taste in music can be difficult, but will pay off. The good part about a blog is that you also get a review along with the music, so you can pick and choose what you want to explore with a little more information under you belt. I would recommend starting with Shepizzle - Indie Music Reviews which seems to cover a lot of ground and have something to tantalize a wide variety of musical taste buds.

Testing... Testing... Something broke, please stand by.

Update: It looks as though something may have happened and my content had to be restored by my host from a backup. Everything is back up and running, but several images are missing for all posts back to June 6th. I will fix them all in short order.

Update: Dreamhost keeps super awesome backups, so I was able to restore some of the pictures I was missing. Ignore this post, move on, nothing to see here.

I have made a startling discovery today.

Could this be a coincidence? I think not. I'm putting my money on some kind of Atari/Microsoft Powerpoint conspiracy.

75% of all pie charts resemble Pac-Man.

Goyin - for those not in the know, is Utah's latest Multi Level Marketing venture.

My little brother showed me this. The ONLY text on Goyin's page is the FDA notice. Everything else is images, and they have no meta title, so guess what gets indexed by Google?

To add insult to injury - Goyin's page is on a blacklisted SPAM IP range. That means pretty much anyone with filtered internet connections can't get through because it's a known SPAM domain.

Here's a way to get in touch with me. Spam robots need not apply.

I couldn't believe this. Has anyone heard of Allî? It's a new weight loss drug that blocks digestion of up to 25% of the fat you intake during every meal. If you eat more than 42 grams of fat in a day, guess what? That's right, the drug makes you poop your pants.

“It’s so important to understand that you must adopt a low-fat, healthy lifestyle,” Jones says. “We call them treatment effects — that’s a signal for you that you’re not staying in the guidelines. What Alli will not do is make up for not living a healthy lifestyle.”

This is not a joke. Here's some quotes from happy losers users:

“(I)’ve pooped my pants 3 times today, and sorry to get descriptive but it even leaked onto the couch at one point!”

“(Y)a know how when you start moving around in the morning ya pass a little gas. Well, I did and then went into the bathroom and to my horror I had an orange river of grease running down my leg.”

“I’m thinking that infant diapers might be a cheaper way to go, just use them as a large pad.”

“No pun intended, but I’m very anal about it, I started very cautiously, and I’ve just grown more and more comfortable with it, I just follow the diet. I knew I couldn’t go out and order hot fudge cake.”

So there you have it, the future of weight loss - pooping your pants when you cheat on your diet.

Today I was introduced to Skurfing. Skurfing is a mixture of skating, surfing, and wakeboarding. Instead of holding a rope, the rope is tied to the board, and instead of you moving, the water moves beneath you.

There are only a few places where you can Skurf in relative safety - and one is right up in Spanish Fork. This is video of Brikon and Adam I took with my phone. I have some pictures too, which I'll upload as soon as Brikon sends them to me.

Anyone who is tall knows that finding shirts that fit can be a pain. At 6'6" whenever I go looking for a T-shirt to buy, I end up trying on a bunch of belly shirts that really should fit but seem to be more suited for playing pick-up football games in the 80's.

Manufacturers seem to put less emphasis on the length of a shirt and more on the width. I guess this makes sense because most people are of average height (hence the word average). Here's a sizing chart from American Apparel - they don't even have length on the chart at all:

Length not mentioned. Hrmm...

Well this is great for people who vary in width only, but people vary in width and height. When I buy a Large T-shirt I want it to be longer, not fatter. Fat people need a good reason to lose weight, but tall people are stuck the way they are. T-Shirts should be tall and skinny - fat people should have to go to special stores to buy T-Shirts.

I've decided it's time to find the ultimate T-Shirt for tall people. At least the ultimate shirt for tall people who care about that way they dress. This quest began years ago and ends when I find a T-Shirt that fits me - AFTER it's gone through the wash.

Here are our main choices for quality T-shirts: American Apparel, American Agents, Gildan, Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and bella (yes, they make men's shirts too).

For the purposes of comparison, let's compare a large T-shirt from each manufacturer:

Apparel Agents is an off-shoot (is that the right word?) of American Apparel. They started their own company when American Apparel practiced union-busting tactics. They do not have any measurements on their site as far as I can find, but I assume they're about the same as American Apparel.

My goal is to obtain and compare one of each of these shirts. I will be using the scientific method and use as my control an old shirt that fits me well and came from a company that does not make shirts anymore. I will be comparing how the shirts fit both pre and post wash and comparing them on feel and quality.

bella is the dark horse - I didn't even know they made mens stuff. I'll be excited to try them out. According to their measurements - their shirts are a few inches longer but not fatter at all.

Stay tuned for an in-depth comparison of each shirt.

C-Span is a barrel of laughs. Sometimes I think they're just trying to see if people are actually watching.

What would Oscar winner Michael Caine do? This is a question I often ask myself whenever I have a tough decision in front of me. Would I hit the bad guy over the head with a fire-place stoker, would I explain the elements of a good magic trick, or would I mix a drink for a guy and lead him on a journey down an alternate version of his life?

While driving around Utah, I am often cut off, almost killed, and otherwise inconvenienced by the horrible, mouth-breathing drivers. Just today I had someone pull out in front of me while riding my scooter - I almost hit them and got killed.

I think in a situation like that, Michael Caine would give the idiots a big thumbs up. A middle finger is aggressive and mean - which isn't my style. A thumbs up is more sarcastic, less confrontational, and a bit funnier.

I think it's best to be non-confrontational in a situation like that, and I think Michael Caine would agree with me. Flipping someone off just puts them in defense mode where they don't care about what they did, while giving them a sarcastic thumbs up just makes them feel like the moron they are.

So here's to you, Michael Caine.

p.s. Bonus points for anyone who can name the three movies I referenced in the first paragraph. Well, mostly just bonus points for naming the last one.

I have about 4 drafts sitting here of long diatribes about the health care industry in this country. I decided to publish none of them and spare my blog from the sheer length of these rants, I'm not sure my server is capable of handling the anger and frustration I have doled out.

Instead of the long diatribe, I will lay out the key points here:

• Nobody in the health care industry could give two sh!ts about you. If they do happen to give a sh!t, they are not in a position to do anything to help you.
• Health care providers have very creative billing systems. Sometimes you won't know about the bill from some obscure person you looked at in a hospital once until it has already gone to collections or worse. Make sure that you pay your janitor bill in addition to any doctors you have seen. There might be an extra, separate bill if you happened to use the drinking fountain. You don't get to know about these until it's too late.
• Insurance companies are in the business of telling you things are covered beforehand, and then denying claims on those things later. This is called a bait and switch, and it's illegal in other areas of business. The health care industry gets a pass on legality.
• The health care industry is interested in one thing: the almighty dollar. I do not have any illusions about how insurance companies work. No, they don't care if you die. If the money they have to spend fixing you is more then the money you will give them by paying insurance the rest of your life, they have no reason to care for you.
• Illegal immigrants get free health care. Confidentiality means they can't even get turned in to INS.
• Health care often gives you one of two choice: die or let them ruin your life with insane amounts of debt. That's called a lose, lose situation.
• Most doctors will see you but will only listen for an opportunity to prescribe you whatever drug is currently being pushed.

Yes, I'm bitter.

Caveat: I do not believe in socialist health care systems. However, anything it better than what we have now. Our current system is socialist for the poor, accessible to the rich, and oppressive to the majority of people who happen to be in-between.

The people behind our current system - health care providers, medical directors, pharmaceutical companies, and especially insurance companies - I'm talking about the specific people who designed these systems - should be taken into the street and shot.

Better yet, they should be injected with easily treatable but deadly diseases, and then everyone in the country who cares to should get to write them a denial letter for receiving care. The letters should be read every waking hour to these people while they slowly die.

This is how i feel.

Note to self: Don't leave a candle in the back seat of your car on a hot day.