9AM Um, Didn’t You Attempt Suicide Last Year?

Cashier #1: Hey man, I think I might be gay.
Cashier #2: What’s wrong?
Cashier #1: I keep having fantasies about being with a man. What should I do?
Cashier #2: Jerk off. A lot. If you do it enough, it’ll get the gay out. It worked for me.

HEB Austin 15, North Lamar
Austin, Texas

Overheard by: Jeff
via Overheard in the Office, Feb 20, 2007

The national parks are becoming less and less popular and environmentalists are worried. I never knew this but it seems these environmental groups depend on people having “a transcendent experience in nature” to bring in new members and preserve their lobbying power in Congress. As you can imagine, when an entrenched power like the environmental lobby is threatened there’s going to be a lot of wailing. An excellent example of hysterical wailing is Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It would seem that not taking kids into the woods will create social, psychological and even spiritual damage. Oh noes!

I’ve never heard of something more lame and idiotic. This is just another iteration of that same old nature worship idea. Walden is like the Bible for this, but I bet if I look hard I’ll find some older examples. I don’t care what anyone says. Nature is not required. Plenty of people have grown up in cities and towns, and never had the opportunity for any trips to nature parks. They’re all normal, functional adults now. I’m a little disturbed people would think the human mind is so fragile it has a magical need for nature.

What I found noteworthy about this is the lament over the decline of visitors to national parks. I still remember reading articles in the mid-1990s about the over use of the National Park System. Back in 1994 you can read the complaints about the throngs of visitors. Also that year you see the beginning of a “back to nature” policy where amenities such as gift shops and hotels were removed from national parks. Perhaps this plan is finally taking its toll. Why would more people want to visit a park that’s become less comfortable?

I am glad to see fewer people visit the national parks if it means those NIMBY environmental groups will lose power. I can’t stand how they reflexively oppose any sort of construction.

The new vaccine, Gardasil, has become a cultural battlefield in the past few weeks and I totally meant to write about it, but I just never got around to it. What pushed me is news that gay men in the UK are demanding the vaccine. Although Gardasil was designed to prevent the cervical cancer that’s caused by HPV (human pappillomavirus), apparently HPV can cause anal cancer. Ass cancer! I never guessed people get cancer in their ass. I’m also pretty surprised this is a UK trend. For whatever reason, it’s the gays in the UK that figured this vaccine could help them.

It really shouldn’t help though. This vaccine is for the young. Early 20-year-olds are at the edge of vaccination. Gardasil should do nothing for the type of gay man who has the disposable income to afford an $800 vaccine. There is a lot to be gained from vaccinating boys though. Men will no longer act as HPV carriers and any of those who grow up to be gay won’t have to worry about ass cancer.

Here in the US, like everything remotely related to health, Gardasil has turned into a morality debate. What was really funny to me was how silent everyone was about it when the vaccine first came to market. This really seemed to disappoint the cable news networks. You could see it in their announcements of the vaccine when they would try to imply it was controversial but never had anything to back that up with. A few months passed when Texas Governor Rick Perry decided Gardasil should become mandatory for girls entering the sixth grade, and thus ignited the conflict we have today. Since there wasn’t a fuss beforehand, I must assume few parents intended to get this vaccine for their daughters.

I’m left wondering though who is going to pay for such an expensive vaccination program? In the US Gardasil costs $360, but I’ve seen higher estimates too and I have no idea why it’s still higher in the UK. If I were a parent I would be pretty pissed if the government stuck me with a mandatory vaccination that cost hundreds of dollars. It doesn’t matter if it’s good for my kid or not. That’s not a trivial amount of money.

The first Democrat to announce they were running for the 2008 presidential race has dropped out today. I should tell you about Tom Vilsack because I’m quite certain you have no idea who he is. Vilsack was a two term governor of Iowa. His political life has been entirely within Iowa beginning in 1987 when he became mayor of his home town, and then moved on to the Iowa Senate. Vilsack is generally considered a centrist. He’s one of those “new Democrats” from Republican cultural territory. While he has criticized the state of affairs in Iraq, he hasn’t proposed anything different from any other Democrat.

“It’s really about money,” is what Vilsack said as he closed his campaign. It’s technically true but I think it’s only an excuse for the real problem. Tom Vilsack was a nobody. Complaining that campaigning costs too much has become the default excuse for anyone who is unknown in politics. We’re all supposed to assume only people with money get the donations needed for campaigning, as if money guarantees success. Well have you considered that maybe some politicians raise such massive campaign warchests because they’re already popular? Also, I would like to know when was it ever cheap to run for president?

Really though I wonder if today’s announcement was actually the beginning of Vilsack’s campaign for the vice presidency. Coming from a heartland state like Iowa, I could see the benefit of having a Charlie Church like Vilsack as a runningmate.

I will miss his campaign logo though. We have always been at war with Eastasia!

I’ve lived here in the Bay Area for six years now and somehow I never heard of this recurring problem until this year. For whatever reason every Mardi Gras San Jose erupts in a drunken, violent party. Here’s a clip from NBC11′s coverage of this year’s aftermath.

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San Jose’s police are trumpeting this year as a huge success even after all those tire slashings and window smashings. Past years must have resembled riots I guess. This behavior really amazes me because normally I think of San Jose as the dullest city on Earth. It’s barely even a city. San Jose is better described as a collection of suburbs. The downtown area is a couple of blocks that empty out every night at 5 pm. I don’t really understand why these otherwise passive residents go insane every year.

I’ve been buying contacts for years. For most of those years I ordered them from a company in Quebec. They had, hands down, the best price of anywhere. It was $28 and change for a 90-day box of Focus Dailies. One sad day they closed down and I was left to find a new supplier. I paid $36 for while, then a few months ago I found another company that sold them for $31. Not bad but I was still disappointed to know I was paying more than I used to.

Well now that I need a stronger prescription for my feeble eyes I went on another price search. I didn’t have any luck with my usual price search engines so I tried a random, desperate Google search. One of the results was for Wal-Mart’s Vision Center. I didn’t even know they had such a thing! Well when I saw their price I did a double take. Wal-Mart was selling my contacts for only $23.72! What an incredible price! That’s cheaper than the cheapest price I could find six years ago.

Now I’ve been to Wal-Mart before and I’ve seen their prices. Sometimes they’re better and sometimes not, but I find it astonishing that they’re able to bring such savings to contact lenses. It’s not as if the contact lens makers have an interchangeable product. If Wal-Mart didn’t carry Focus Dailies, it’s not as if I could pick another kind. Once you get fitted for a particular brand, you stick with it unless you go to your eye doctor to get them changed. Yet to actually squeeze this amount of savings out of the manufacturer blows me away.

I know Wal-Mart’s become a polarizing issue but how can a community not benefit from such awesome savings? How would I be better off buying them from my local eye doctor who wanted to charge me $45 a box?

2PM After Eight Days of This, You Get the Miracle of Hanukkah

Lady: Where do skidmarks come from?
Guy: I don’t know, but in the evening when I undress, there they are.

5400 West Sample Road
Margate, Florida
via Overheard in the Office, Feb 20, 2007

Several months ago I made an effort to cut down on the amount of fast food I ate. My goal was to allow myself only one meal a week from a fast food joint. I’ve done a fairly good job sticking to that.

Well I’ve been sick for the past couple of days but fortunately today I’m feeling a bit better. At the very least my appetite is returning. So I was considering going out to grab a burger to indulge a bit while I’m trying to get over a miserable flu. There’s a Wendy’s near by and that seems as good a place as any.

Suddenly though a thought occurred to me. I know McDonald’s shakes are supposed to be loaded with calories. That’s why I gave up ordering those a long time ago. However I have still been ordering Wendy’s Frosties. How do they stack up? Well the Frosty does have fewer calories, but I was still pretty surprised at how many it took up. So then I got the idea to check the rest of the typical meal I order from Wendy’s.

I am stunned to see this meal has more calories than I should get in a single day. I never ever imagined it was this high. I mean I knew it had a lot of calories. It is a pretty big meal and it’s from a fast food chain. Still though I assumed it was somewhere between a third and a half of my daily calories. Suddenly I don’t feel like eating anymore.

I was reading Curbed as I do everyday during lunch and when I came to this post I was just stunned at Ismael Leyva’s bold design. I am not embellishing or exaggerating when I say the rendering for 785 Eighth Ave took my breath away. This is the kind of building that gets described as iconic.

When all the construction is done it will be a 120 units in 42 stores fit into a gorgeous 556 foot tower. The height appears so impressive because it’s immediately surrounded by such small four and five story buildings. I’m sure there are people complaining about that. I can already hear cries of “out of scale” this and “contextual” that. Cry babies. If you zoom out on a map of the neighborhood you see plenty of buildings with similar heights.

Making this construction even more notable is how it’s forced to wrap around its irregularly shaped neighbor on the corner of 8th Ave and 48th Street. I can’t believe this was the first choice for a design. The landlord for that building must have been either too stubborn or too greedy to sell.

My only complaint about this place is the plan for a private garden in the square locked in by buildings. There are going to be at least 120 people living in this building. There is no way they could all use what is sure to be a tiny garden so the maintainance fee money that goes to the upkeep is just a waste for most people. That would annoy me if I were buying there.

I can forgive that depending on the floorplans. I can’t wait until they’re available!

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The neverending battle between bossy women and annoyed men just got scientific. Actually I think the article is a bit on the sexist side but I guess MSNBC needed to dumb the research down to get people to read the story. Essentially a husband and wife team of researchers determined that people will do the opposite of what they’re told out of a subconscious need to assert their freedom. The headline friendly version is that men ignore their wife’s orders to do household chores, not out of laziness but rather to show that they are their own boss.

Forgetting that battle of the sexes talk, I think this is a remarkable discovery. After I rolled my eyes at all the Star Trek blather about how humans cannot live with being controlled it turns out it’s a little true. When people feel they’re being dominated they subconsciously act out against their oppressor.

So what does this mean for millions of married couples? This isn’t so different from roommates with different tolerances for being messy. What happens then? Either the neat person has to accept doing more work, lower their standards or try to hen-peck their messy roommate into cleaning more. I kind of think they should just go ahead and do more work. In the end they are the person who is demanding that level of cleanliness. Why should they be able to badger others into conforming to their wishes? If you want the pots and pans cleaned, you clean them. I am content to wait until I need to use them.