Finally saw Black Hawk Down... I think I've become very immune to the violence in war movies -- I've seen enough of them that it doesn't bother me as much as excite me now. Black Hawk Down was very intense and had plenty of action to keep you interested, and it cut out a lot of the sentimental stuff that you don't really care to hear in a war movie.

Personal Ads

I was surfing around on MSN.com today and saw their little link about 9 Amazing Celebrity Couples Who Beat the Odds just to see who they listed. I was thinking they were going to have some really lame shallow list with more recent married couples such as Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston and Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta-Zones... but thankfully, they were smart and listed some older couples.

Anyway... that wasn't very interesting, so I looked to see what other interesting stuff they had on the page and I saw a little ad thing for match.com where you put in your sex, and the age/sex of the person you want to look for and your zip code and browse through personal ads.

I'm not really into looking for men since I have one I'm perfectly happy with right now, so I put in Woman seeking Woman and my zip... and clicked Search. I'm not GAY or BI... just not very interested in men in general. And plus, women are a hell of a lot more interesting than men are... so I don't mind reading ads by women.

There were plenty of everyday women in there that were bisexual/lesbian, or just bicurious... I can't believe how many good looking people are online looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right or Last Night. Some of these girls look like they'd have no problem finding someone in real life... so it just makes me wonder.

As I was scanning through the different ads, I mainly read the titles of their ads, and one really caught my eye...

WELCOME TO MY SWAMP

Okay, first of all... one could only misunderstand such an odd personal ad title. What could someone think it means? That you stink like a swamp? live in a swamp? own your own swamp? have a strange sexual fetish for swamps?

Nothing against the girl, but I thought to myself... "That has to be the grossest sounding personal ad title I've ever seen without having vulgar words in it." First of all she lived in Texas, where there aren't that many swamps... if she were from Louisiana or Mississippi or something... I'd SORT of understand. But anyway, think about it. Doesn't it sound really nasty? It's like saying..."I smell like a dead crab, but don't you wanna date me anyway?" or "This is one rathole you don't want to miss!" I hope she changes that title someday.. unless it's really getting her the attention she desires. I am SURE she meant something else by it anyway.

Images Page Updated

Amazing, but true... I have added a few more pictures to my images page. Found some old crusty pictures of me from my old harddrive from the early to mid 90's. Joy Joy.

Even Ugly Guys Can Model

Can this article also pertain to girls in a way?

I named this one Shelby! After a former co-worker of mine who loved ladybugs. :)

I don't talk about my dreams much because I personally don't believe they mean anything. At least I keep telling myself that.. :P Last night I had a realistic-ish dream that I wanted to document. It, too, means nothing, but I felt like typing about it anyway.

My dream last night was about nuclear warfare. This makes about 3-4 dreams I've had in the past couple years about that. They're always scary but exciting. One dream I had once involved an nuclear bomb having been dropped somewhere in the distance... and I was in some rickety old house and didn't know what to do... the blast finally succumbed, and now I was afraid of inhaling all the fallout dust. For some reason I ended up finding a piece of French bread and put it over my mouth and breathed through it. All of the sudden I felt fine and safe... and it kept me from getting sick. What a weird dream.

Last night's dream was about the whole country. The US was evacuated and we were all together in some outdoor camp. It was always nighttime.. and we were in a nuclear war with some other country, and were expecting nukes to fly in at any time. It was very intense, and I was scared most of the time, but being around so many people made me feel somewhat safe and not alone. The siren came on and we all scrambled around, and as we looked up in the night sky, we could see eerie looking missiles headed down to Earth. They looked slow because of how high up they were, but they were going tremendously fast. Then in the corner of my eye I noticed that there were people on the ground that were aiming something at those missiles. They started shooting off a bunch of things that looked like spider webs or rings of smoke.. it was hard to tell (sometimes I have bad vision even in my dreams). Those spiderweb things went straight towards the missiles in the sky and magically ate up the missiles and they virtually vanished into thin air. I felt such relief when I saw that... And then I found out we were running out of that spider web stuff.. and that's when I began to worry. A second wave of nukes came in, and we all panicked. We could only shoot off 3 spiderwebs and neutralized 3 incoming nukes, and about 5 or so others exploded hundreds of feet above the ground. I didn't feel anything but a lot of other people did (I can only assume)... anyway, time passed, and people started getting sick. There was this really interesting thing you could use to test how much radiation you had been exposed to... it was some thin plastic bag type thing that you pinched between your thumb and index finger and it would change colors accordingly. Anyway.. to make things short... I never got sick.. and after trying really hard... I woke up. The end. Stupid Dream.

Chain Stores = Cookie Cutter Commercial Areas

I'm tired of seeing a Lowe's and Home Depot on every corner. They're both great stores, but they're just too big and seem to plant themselves in the worst locations. Let me give you two examples:

Lake Worth - This is the city I live right next to... our land is technically Fort Worth, but we have the lake in our backyard... Lake Worth. It's a very small suburb with a low population, and it has a big hill that overlooks the Lockheed plant and Carswell AFB and has a beautiful view of the lake, when you think about how flat most of this area is. Except for an IHOP at the top of the hill... the rest of the hill was mainly trees and a habitat for wildlife. On foggy days, the hill looked mystical... almost like you were in the hills of Ireland. Lowes decided to build their store RIGHT in the middle of that hill.. where you could see a view of the lake. That's tacky! Lake Worth's main street is already inhabited by dumpy looking strip stores, and to add to all of that, they're going to take up most of the only hill they have with a freakin' LOWES. Yeah... so it'll make going to Lowe's more convenient for some folks, but it'll take away from the land in that area. Lake Worth does not seem to give a crap about what their city looks like. Everything is dingy, borderline trashy, and has no style or taste... and it shows in the way they've allowed the construction of lackluster stores in their city.

Carswell Air Force Base - I don't understand the sense behind this one at all. Right next to one of Carswell's radars, a Lowe's is being built... it's like right on the edge of the Air Force Base, in a not very crowded area. WTF?? :)

In Honor of Dave Thomas...

I ate at Wendy's two times yesterday! I almost went there for breakfast before I found out about the whole thing (weird when things happen like that)... :( I hadn't been there in a long time since they closed down the one near my house, so I figured I should pay a tribute to the very sincere man who appeared in those commercials for Wendy's. He was way too young to die at 69. :( R.I.P. Dave Thomas.

Homework Kills - What a crappy way to die!

I don't know if I'd exactly blame the school system, but lighter books and built-in backpack parachutes are definitely in order!

*singing* She's a... smaaaaall wonder...

If you were an 80's kid like myself, you might remember a cheesy show called "Small Wonder" about a robotic girl that a family kept as a daughter. If you actually want to see a few episodes of the show...someone has completed the tedious task of creating realplayer versions of them. Man that brings up some old childhood memories.

- found @ fark.com: lots of blog-worthy stuff there, but I don't want to gank all their links -

Eight year-old sacrificed by temple priest

Something tells me that since this incident showed up in their newspaper, it's not a common everyday thing to chop off kid's heads in India... let alone any country. Why do people have to so many ridiculous things in the name of religion?

- Link from my awesome friend and co-worker Will -

NO WONDER I'VE GAINED 50 LBS IN THE PAST 4 YEARS. This is my eating style!

WTF

Last night, Chris and I went to Albertson's (a grocery store chain), and as we were leaving, we passed by one of those stands with toy/candy dispensers, and became rather disturbed.

After looking at the toys, I was perplexed at why people would sell such things to little kids. There were four dispensers, $.50 each item:

Dispenser #1: Mini-Gun Keychains - Tiny versions of real guns, probably made of plastic. What kid would think it was cool to have a mini-gun on his keychain? A baby gangster?

Dispenser #2: Pooping Animals - Yes, you've probably seen these at novelty and gift shops everywhere, and no matter how many times I see them, I still think they're disgusting and pointless. Just in case you've never seen them... here is a picture:



Stupid & gross, huh? I just don't see the entertainment value in that... and I'm an easily humored person.

Dispenser #3: Bomb Bags - What an inappropriate time to be selling anything that explodes. They're little silver colored bags that you're supposed to squeeze... throw, and watch them explode. What's after these? Play grenades?



Dispenser #4: Crucifix Necklaces - After your choice of guns, pooping animals, and bomb bags, you can choose a crucifix? What for? So you can buy one and find God after playing with those other toys?

What I'd like to know is what the hell the vendors were thinking when they decided to carry those items, and if it had anything to do with the demographics in that area. First of all, kids are usually the ones who will want to buy something from there, and secondly, 3 of those items don't really send out a halfway decent message. Plus, it looks a little disrespectful to place a crucifix dispenser right next to indecent looking toys. Chris and I decided to buy one of those bomb bags out of curiosity. Chris thought maybe we should try it right in the parking lot, but I was worried that someone would freak out and call the cops on us for vandalism or some other crap.... so we drove to a slightly more remote area, and squeezed the package and threw it out of the car. A few seconds later, the bag expanded and made a faint *pop*. We were sorely disappointed. I was expecting at least the sound of a paperbag being blown up... but this was purely retarded. Maybe we got a crappy one... but if all they do is make a little *pop*, then I don't think it was worth my time and $.50. Oh well... I guess I'm not so worried about little boys playing with this as much anymore. IT'S JUST THE PRINCIPLE.

WOO HOO! IT'S SNOWING!

Hope it doesn't snow TOO much... but when does it ever do that in Texas? :)

....2 minutes later....

Ah darn.. it stopped snowing.

Happy New Year - 2002!

So.. once again it's that time to make a promise to yourself that you'll have a heck of a time trying to keep. I've never really made a new year's resolution before... and this year I finally have one.

Chris gave me the idea of course.. and it was definitely something I've been sitting on for a while and trying to muster the strength to accomplish.

My main new year's resolution this year? To quit EATING SUGAR! Refined sugar mainly... but that means, no normal cokes, candy, cake, and other sinful goodies. THAT is going to be hard... especially because I've always hated artificial sweeteners! I don't know if I can handle not eating cake again because my mom gets these TOTALLY scrumptuous cakes from some Vietnamese bakery somewhere and I can never stay away from them. Maybe I can make very small exceptions heh.. I'm not sugar intolerant ... not like Chris (is or might be).

Since sodas were my main source of liquids.. I guess that's going to have to change since I want to avoid diet drinks as much as possible. I don't want to quit consuming sugar at the price of possibly developing cancer from artificial sweeteners like Aspertame and Splenda... blech.

I can definitely handle water! I love water... but sometimes when I drink it, I feel more thirsty, and my throat gets kind of dry from it. I love cold water... mmm.. .goes down easy and makes me feel refreshed. Chris suggested I try to stick to water for as long as I can, and then when I have that sudden craving for a carbonated beverage, to drink a diet one -- that's what worked for him.

Chris totally avoids all sugar now... and I am so amazed at his willpower. If he can do it, I would think I could do it, too. His motivation is to avoid getting sick from sugar intake... my motivation? I guess to prevent diabetes and/or possible weight loss.

Anyway, I'll give it a try... I know I can get used to it. If Chris... a once TRULY hardcore Coke/Pepsi/Dr. Pepper freak can suddenly enjoy diet versions of his favorite drinks, then there is hope in this world. Besides I should try to get used to eating less sugar now so that I can pass on this eating style to my future kids. I want healthy kids.. not porky, overweight, sugar munching kids. My neice-to-be Alexis has a diabetic mom, and they don't really snack on candy or juice much. When we were on a family trip with them and noticed that not once did Alexis crave snacks or candy... it was astonishing... she looks like your everyday peppy kid who'd love to down a twinkie or a packet of chewy bears, but it was almost as though she naturally ignored anything with sugar in it. That's what I want my kid to be like darnit!

One more thing... I've tried drinking diet drinks with aspertame in them and I swear when I drink some it feels like some invisible force suddenly shoots down to the bottom of my stomach and causes it to hurt and feel uncomfortable. It happens every single time I ingest aspertame... even when I tried sugar-free jell-o once... man my tummy hurt from that. I'd really like to not have to drink any carbonated drinks if possible... especially diet ones. Am I the only one who gets a stomachache from artificial sweeteners? They taste so chemical to begin with, and it's almost like you're drinking plastic.

Anyway.. here a few more things I'm going to attempt to accomplish this year:

- Get my house spotless!
- Find more time to maintain I Eat Meat!
- Get to level 60 in EQ
- Complete some more college hours
- Start saving up money for a new car or a house
- Upload a new layout for goodness sake!
- Get the proper amount of sleep
- See my family more often
- Get our VW in good shape
- Be a LITTLE more positive and smile more :P