Near my house there is a plaza/strip mall and beside that there is a retirement home. The retirement home isn't one of those one's where the seniors are being taken care of by people its more just like a community for retired people. They live independently but are far from being rich. They are mostly just average people and I'm sure for the most part they are on a fixed income. Anyway there is one guy who lives there who looks almost exactly like Lee Van Cleef (from the Clint Eastwood "man without a name" westerns). Every time I go to the plaza I see this guy without fail and he is wandering around collecting all the cigarette butts that he can find so that he can smoke them. I always find this mildly depressing. Cigarettes around here cost over $8 a pack (I actually don't know exactly how much they cost they were more than $8 a pack when I quit and that was almost 3 years ago). The majority of that is tax as I'm sure you all know. So I came up with an idea: Cigarette pricing should be on a sliding scale. The younger you are the higher the price and the older you get the more tax is chopped off. Lets say that if you are under 25 cigarettes cost $25 a pack and by the time you are 65 they are $2. I think it would deter a lot of people from starting to smoke because it would be unrealistic for most youths to be able to afford a habit that expensive. But at the same time if you're in your 70s and your still smoking lets face it you should be rewarded for beating the odds.

As usual I'm just talking a bunch of nonsense. This would never work out because trying to implement a sliding scale of pricing would be a sheer nightmare for the millions of retailers out there.

Labels: health, random

Here is a collection of pics of what meth does to people.
The before picture kinda looks like Stephen Malkmus and the after looks like he's been sleeping on the pavement so it kinda fits.
Did you smoke the meth or rub it in your eyes?
7 months later and an adams apple that has grown 7 times its original size.
It's sad, really.
Thanks for putting a band-aid on otherwise you would have looked pretty repulsive.

I think this guy actually looks a bit better in the after pic. Well he looks scared instead of angry. Actually upon looking at it for a while I don't think its the same person.
I love what you've done with your hair.

This pic is my favorite. The guy looks like the same low budget mother fucker in both pictures he just looks likes he's spent a year in a cabin in the woods.
I find this one strange. It looks like his facial hair hasn't changed at all.
Bored with his mundane existence a sub-par cop turns his life around and becomes an extreme drug addict. Coming this fall a police drama that breaks all the rules. CRYSTAL NIGHTS. check local listings.

One thing is clear about the effects of meth. It fucks up your skin and takes away the part of your brain that makes "hairstyle" decisions.

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Labels: health

Yesterday evening I received a phone call from the head office of my bank. They informed me that they were canceling my debit card because they suspected it may have been copied and that I should monitor my accounts to see if anything unwarranted is going on. They couldn't provide me with any specific information except that I had to go to my bank branch to get a new card and find out the details. I just returned from my branch and it turns out that the ATM at the convenience store around the corner from my house is suspected of having one of those false fronts that copies your card and a mini camera video tapes your pin number.

There are a million scams like this out there and I've always thought that it would be really easy to pull a lot of them off. The only problem is I could never bring myself to do any of them because I would feel way too guilty ripping innocent people off. I heard somewhere that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths (that seems high to me) meaning that they have no conscience and are incapable of remorse. These people could commit any crime and not feel bad about it because they literally were unable to. The guy who was going around to all the coffee shops and stealing the Tsunami donations boxes would probably be one of these people although there are definitely other motivations for criminals as well and they aren't necessarily all sociopaths.

Dr. Robert Trestman, a professor of psychiatry and vice chairman at the University of Connecticut Health Center who has done 20 years of research on severe mood and personality disorders, said sociopaths are people who

"really do not demonstrate a sense that you're a human. From their perspective, it's them, and everybody else is just as useful to them as a chair, just as meaningless as a chair. So if you hurt or kill, it's no worse than hurting a chair. It's just the utility of the chair as it relates to them."

If that's 1 in 25 people or 4% of the population that's pretty fucked!

tags:crime, criminals, sociopath

Labels: health, technology

Ultimately its false advertising (I'll get to that in a minute). I wish we could live in an ideal world where people aged gracefully and accepted themselves how they looked but I live in the media obsessed Western world and I guess if I want all the stuff I love about this world I must also accept all the crap that comes along for the ride. But that doesn't mean I have to sit mute on the subject either.

I think Plastic surgery (much like CGI) is still at the point where it looks ridiculous. It's very obvious, bizarre and looks out of place next to natural elements. It's like looking at Jar Jar Binks beside Queen Amidala, one is a thing of beauty and the other is an abomination (not just on an aesthetic level but on a theoretical level too). I not only hate looking at it but hate everything that it stands for as well. As with all cases there are probably exceptions to these rules: Let's say there are some filmmakers who can create CGI that is indistinguishable from reality and there are plastic surgeons who can do the same. They are true artists and no-one can see the seam between the real and the artificial. ( I don't have any specific examples, but they may exist).

Now please don't get confused I am not talking about reconstructive surgery or any procedure for people who genuinely need the work done. When I say plastic surgery I am talking exclusively about vanity surgery. I'm talking about the type of people on Extreme Make Over who think that they're lives will be miraculously better if they could just look different. Its as if thinking that replacing your yellow front lawn with astro-turf and covering the peeling paint with vinyl siding on the outside of your shit-hole house will somehow transform the interior as well. People on this show with that line of thought quickly find the inside of their home is just as empty and messy as it was before the only difference is that people walking by think the house now looks better (if not a little artificial).

On the point of false advertising. We are attracted to the opposite sex first and foremost on a physical level (anyone that tries to deny this is full of shit) lets face it essentially we are still mammals and we still possess natural animal instincts. Somewhere deep Below all the McDonalds jingles and Simpson's quotes we have the basic inherent instinct to procreate the species (even if it is un-necessary anymore with world over-population). Like animals we pick mates based on physical traits. If you went to the supermarket and bought a box of Kellogg's Rice Krispies and then went home and opened the box only to find No-Name rice puffs inside you'd rightfully be pissed off. The same thing would apply when Joe/Jane-Schmo has offspring with Neo-Barbie/Ken and a goblin-child pops out. Plastic people aren't bringing the genes they advertise to the pool.

tags: plastic surgery,ideas,insight,

Labels: health

These pic's has been floating around for a while now but this is the first I've seen them. They show the downward spiral of a girl from New York over the course of 15 years. I find the pics so haunting becasue you can pretty much see her slowly lose here soul.

Tags:drugs, pictures

Labels: health

I was watching TV today and they were interviewing one of the doctors who successfully removed the Egyptian conjoined twins...the surgery took more than 12 hours ( I cant really remember but it was a long process) anyway the surgeon being interviewed made it clear that he believed that a higher power was at work when they
were performing the surgery as if their hands were being guided by God....I hate to be such a skeptic but by that logic it was Gods original plan to have created the conjoined twins. Why would God step in when they were performing the surgery if he created the twins in the first place?? That being said it is amazing that both of the kids survived after the unprecedented surgery.

Labels: health

Sunday June 13th was exactly one year since I quit smoking (I would have posted yesterday but my internet
was acting stupid which is another issue all together)

-> I smoked for 9 years, about half a pack a day and had never really tried to quit.

-> Quitting was a lot easier than I thought it would be, in fact it wasn't really hard at all. (I do have
to say that I don't have an addictive personality though, I really learned that from quitting)

-> It is less than a week for the physical dependency effects to go away and then you just have to get over the mental addiction, which for me was just about every hour my brain would say hey its time for a cigarette, and you just have to stop and say to yourself no its not.

-> My only tips for quitting are these: 1. get yourself some cinnamon flavored gum (cinnamon is good because
it has a bit of a burn to it) 2. picture yourself lying on your death bed dying of a smoking related disease. (seriously, If you were at that point wouldn't you wish that you had quit)

-> Quitting cold turkey is the only way to do it: If you think hey I can just cut back or slowly wean myself off that's bullshit and it wont work also no nicotine patches or gum also bullshit how do you quit the substance you're addicted to by continuing to put it in your body?

-> don't try to quit with someone else: at first it seems like a great idea, like hey we can give each other moral support, that's bullshit what inevitably happens is you both convince each other what a good idea it is to smoke. You may be thinking yeah right I'm stronger than that, well if that was true you wouldn't be smoking. It really comes down to making a personal decision and going through with it.

-> don't believe the hype: Everyone wants you to think that quitting smoking is really hard, the cigarette companies (so you wont try) the nicotine gum/patch industry (so you'll buy their shit), all the ex-smokers (so they can brag and feel good about themselves)

-> In the most basic boiled down version of everything quitting smoking (or anything else for that matter) is the easiest thing to do in the world. YOU JUST STOP DOING IT!!! sounds simple, well it is.

how did you quit stabbing yourself in the arm with that knife? I just stopped doing it.

Labels: health

It never ceases to amaze me how much people buy into without even thinking...

Today I heard some people raving on about a low carb diet as if it was the greatest thing ever. I dont know why the millions of people on these low carb diets cant see that its just another diet like the many before it. Cutting Carbs as opposed to cutting fat, wow what a brilliant idea. The expression "Everything in moderation" is best for this situation. If you eat a balanced diet and exercise you probably wont need to go on a fad diet. It wont be long before cutting fat out of your diet is what youre "supposed" to do again.
anyway this is just a very stupid example of what I was thinking about...

A long time ago someone came up with the brilliant crux of marketing "create a problem and then sell a solution". I really have to commend the person who came up with that one casue it really is quite amazing that it was pulled off so perfectly. Its actually so far advanced from the basic concept that it is more like web. Here is a breakdown.

Fast Food/Junk Food<---You are too busy to cook for yourself, and processed food is so fucking good....you know you cant live without it.
+
TV<---Hours and hours of non-stop programming that provide you with commercials (which are really just public service announcements about new products. Isnt it amazing that they provide this service for us for free?? and cable is so cheap.) Tv also provides an alternative to exercise, a window into "celebrity" life and the the overall feeling of inadaquacy.
+
Magazines/Movies<----More unrealistic expectations for the general public.

But wait maybe not...you can be happy too if you just try out this new diet...it'll
work we swear...
by the way the diet industry is a multi-million (probably billion) dollar industry.

I know this all seems very simple and if youre thinking all this is so obvious that it needs not be stated then I commend you, but Ive had similar conversations with people who honestly never think about this stuff and amusingly enough find it rather profound. Most of those people are what you call consumers.

Labels: health, random