New discovery

I just read kottke.org for the first time. It's really pleasant in its zaniness and has given me a renewed perspective on blogging. If I was completely non-ideological, or perhaps just more prolific with actually blogging, this is exactly what kind of blog I'd like to have. Let's see what effect that line of thinking has.

An open letter to Microsoft on occasion of its new ads

Dear Microsoft,

I have always enjoyed your products. You revolutionized computing, and I thank you for that. You created a superior product and we all bought it. And you continue to innovate, or, and the very least - and you shouldn't apologize for this - bring the best innovations of others to the masses. Good for you.

But now you've brought us this new ad campaign where we can apparently broadcast ourselves saying that "I'm a PC and we like broccoli" or "I'm a PC and I appreciate ugly dogs" or whatever. Now I realize that, by using a PC, I must be a loser. That saddens me.

I always thought Mac users were a bunch of weirdos. Now I realize that it is my fellow PC users that are the weirdos. Mac users are like that hip dude in the commercial that you are now trying to make apologies for.

And I'm the pathetic fat guy.

I feel lost and alone. Thanks Microsoft. Maybe I'll just wait for Google to make an operating system.

Lots of love,
A Microsoft loser

Hopefully they track bird flu this well

I came across an interesting article on Wall Street Journal's website about the cost of weddings, which argues the real cost of weddings is much lower than the reported $28,000 cost reported in a recent survey (which was financed by the crazy wedding industry). There was a most curious source of statistics in the article, however:

Roughly 2.2 million weddings took place last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So somehow keeping tabs on marriage numbers falls within the CDC's mission of "to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability."

Interesting. Maybe my single friends that think one must be sick to get married are right!


(NB: The author notes for his own health and well-being that he disagrees with this last statement)

Movie news worth noting

Those who know me know that I deviate most significantly from the human race in two ways:

1. I don't like ketchup
2. I don't like movies, and particularly don't like sitting in movie theatres

Though I have yet to encounter anything to make me deviate from point 1, I do make occasional exceptions for point 2 - I have already committed to seeing the Simpson's movie in theatres (not on opening night, of course, but once the crowds thin out a bit).

Now comes along this news, posted by my friend Scott, that a second X-Files movie is in the works. This pleases me. A movie now is much more fitting than their attempt to do one mid-series, which, while not awful, was not nearly what it could have been.

The first X-Files movie, however, did provide for me the quote I used on my award page in my senior yearbook in high school. Kudos to anyone who can cite the quote in the comments, and a prize is probably deserved to anyone who can figure out who the quote should truly be attributed to (I improperly credited it to Cigarette Smoking Man...whoops).