Hilarious and Disappointing

My mother has this strange obsession with spam mail. It's rather embarrasing seeing as I am such a huge advocate of anti-spam mail, but still, it's what she does. Today, she sent me something that I must admit was actually quite entertaining. Here's what it read:

For Your Info: If you had purchased $1,000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago you would have $49.00 left. With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00. With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00 cash. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg A recent study found the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found Americans drink, on the average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon. Makes You Proud To Be An American!

Unfortunately for me, I'm not an American. In fact, I'm currently attempting to renew my residency to the US, which proves that I am not, nor will I be soon, a citizen of this country. All the same, I think the ratio difference between American's and European's is quite amusing. American's don't really walk very much. 900 miles a year is barely moving your legs if you think about it. That means that in a single day you only walk about 2.5 miles. That's nothing!

In truth though, the ratio for the English would probably be about the same. See, we walk a lot. Probably upwards of 5 miles a day. My grandmother walks almost 7 every day, and she's 80. Imagine what we youngsters can do! Of course this just means that in order to maintain a comfortable 41 miles per gallon, we are forced to consume more alcohol. I know it seems rough, but we suck it up. We wouldn't want to be hyper efficient and weigh in at 200 miles per gallon now would we?

Have I Got This Right?

I was reading sky news today updating myself on the hurricane that's about to hit sunny ol' Texas when I stumbled across, quite on accident, an article about Sarah Palin. I enjoy her talking. I think it's because I really like listening to idiots dig holes for themselves while more intelligent people just sit there and nod along. Still, here's the article I read:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Sarah-Palin-John-McCains-Republican-Running-Mate-Says-War-With-Russia-May-Be-Necessary/Article/200809215097920?f=rss

For those who won't read it, here you go: It's about how Palin says that America may have to go to war with Russia if the country chooses to attack/invade anyone else. Strong declaration for a vice-presidential candidate, don't you think? She's not even in office yet and she's setting the bar for war. I want to know where these troops are coming from, because they sure aren't coming from Iraq if the republican party wins the election. Maybe she should have just said "I would like to stretch our supply lines so thin we can't win any war at all!"

I found the opening line of the article the most interesting kickoff of any article I've read in quite some time. It opens with the words "The 44-year-old mother-of-five..." I'm glad to see she has been keeping herself busy while not dealing with politics. Those last three kids probably just walked right out of her body carrying pamphlets that read: "vote for mommy, she's a beauty pageant winner!"

Mainly, I just want to make sure I have this right: Sarah Palin is a vice-presidential candidate for a man who, if gets elected president, will have a heart attack before his first week in office is up. She has five children, won a beauty pageant way back when, got her ex-brother-in-law fired from his job, and is already planning on going to war with Russia.

Did I miss anything?

Red Ring of Death

My Xbox360 red ringed a few days ago. For the 360 owners out there, I don't really have to explain any further, but for those of you who don't actually own one, it's like the heart attack and full organ shutdown of Xbox360's. It's rather depressing actually. In my case, my Xbox even made a pathetic little whimper when it died, similar to a car trying to start up with no gasoline left.

The real problem is that I never realized just how big a part of my life that system is. I use it as a communication tool, and gaming platform, an HD TV, a music station- it's quite literally everything. Now that I don't have it, I feel completely cut off from the world.

Pathetic, isn't it.

All the same, it's gone and I have to wait three weeks for it to be repaired. So, in the mean time, I need help coming up with things to do. So far I've discovered the games "sleep", "eat", and "twiddle your thumbs". They are all pretty cool, but I'm looking for something a bit more... off the wall. It's important that I'm entertained.

So, in other words, help.

Never Forget Elephants

I'm the type of person who is often scared by stupid things. I'm not talking about thriller movies or roller coasters, but rather real life situations that happen to all of us. For example, if I'm walking down the street and I see a man wearing a black hoodie in the summer, I assume I'm about to get mugged. It's a defence mechanism. In some ways, I suppose I over think things. I keep building the little things up higher and higher until my once ankle tall mound of dirt has become a mountain of conspiracies and ridiculous fears. I say this because it's important to understand that I'm not ignorant of my irrational fears. I have never been mugged by a hoodie-wearing punk with thirty-six piercings in his nose, nor do I know anyone who has been mugged by a similar looking individual, but that doesn't stop me being prepared for it to happen.

Knowing this about me, imagine how afraid I must have been when I saw the Taiwanese elephants paint self portraits several months ago. They would take a paintbrush in their trunks, dip it into some paint, and paint a picture of an elephant holding a pretty little flower in its trunk. The worst part is that the picture wasn't even bad! I'm no artist, but I don't think I could ever paint an elephant as well as these elephants can. When I'm bested by animals that lack higher level thinking, I start to worry. People were cheering, clapping, gasping, and awing.

I wasn't.

I was too busy thinking about what this could mean for our generation. Elephants are smart, we already know that, but just how smart? They are the only other animal in the world that suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Once, they were kind and friendly creatures. Now, they are becoming increasingly violent and are hunting down humans for sport. Not only that, but they have been known to use sticks as weapons, open doors, sneak around in dark places and wait for people to unsuspectingly walk into a trap where six or seven elephants will pounce out and attack. Elephants are dangerous.

I suppose that's why I didn't applaud. I was suddenly afraid. If elephants are smart enough to open doors, use tools, and paint pictures, I firmly believe they are smart enough to be up to something sneaky. I think these paintings were a mere distraction. A false sense of security, if you will. I wasn't buying it.

I left the show and vowed never to live in a country that was prone to elephants. Those animals are just getting too smart for their own good, and I don't want to be there when our relationship with them goes sour.