Steve Jobs Knows What I Wanna Listen To

Since the print addition of Chin Chin won’t be out for at least a month, you’re probably reading this on a computer. And if your use a computer these days, theres a pretty good chance you use iTunes.

I use iTunes, and I like iTunes, but one feature I’ve never gotten into is smart playlists, I played around with them a while ago but wasn’t pleased with the results. I just read this on lifehacker, which lead me to this, both seem like good methods for getting pretty good smart playlists. I like the second, tagging method better. Using the staring system limits you to five “genres” and I like to use one star to remind me to delete the track. I’m going to have to set aside a few hours to start asigning some tags to my library, party, mellow, bonin’, bloggingMusic, etc. If you were wondering, I’m all about Russian techno when I blog.

Here’s to smart playlists.

The Manifesto Toast

I’m not really a religious man, and I don’t have a problem with that. One problem with not being religious is it gives you more decisions to make. Let’s say your a devout Catholic, and your out and about and run into two beautiful women, and they both make it clear that they would like to sleep with you. Being Catholic, you’d believe that the passionate and adventurous sex being offered was wrong, so you’d tip your cap, tell them what dirty sinners they are and walk away. Without the belief system you have a tough choice to make.

Or suppose your a Bhuddist, and you get two phone calls shortly before leaving work on friday. One is from a friend who invites you to come to his house party were you will attempt to drink a keg of beer with four other people. It would be clear that this type of behavior is not what the Buddha would have called the middle path. The next call is another friend who is headed to hot dog eating contest. Sure it would be fun, but you’re following the eight-fold path, so you pass. Tough decision avoided.

I read a book a while back called the The Paradox of Choice about how the many choices are super-modern-fantastic-capitalist-society can force us into making decisions that make us consumers less happy than we would be without all these choices.

It’d be nice to have some kind of belief system to narrow all these decisions down, but church is too early in the morning, I can’t afford Scientology and I’m not nice enough to be a Mormen. I wouldn’t even know where to find a Hindu temple. The best viable option seems to be to come up with my own system, possibly for later publication. But then I’m either a waco writing a manifesto or a sleezy self help guru, I’m not sure I’m prepared for either. So I guess I’m stuck with all those choices.

So lets all raise a glass to anyone brave/crazy enough to write a manifesto. It’s a group that doesn’t get much love.

I saw an ad for the local news last night that ended like with the following:

“San Diego’s homeless are no longer out in the cold. What the mayor did to keep the shelter open, at 11.”

Does anyone else find that amusing? It’s not that I don’t think San Diego’s homeless should have a shelter, I have to wade through them every time I go to the beach, so I’m all for giving them somewhere else to go. I just think the news  writers could have emphasized a differed advantage the shelter gives the homeless.

But I’m glad the mayor is helping the less fortunate, so lets all raise a glass to San Diego’s mayor.

Traffic

We’ve been getting 30+ hits a day lately, with a high of 80 on June 13. That isn ‘t much for a lot of blogs, but considering how lame this one is I think its pretty impressive. The good folks at WordPress give us a nice page showing how many hits different posts are getting and what kind of searches lead people to our blog.

I’m all for giving the people what they want, and apparently people dig hot chicks and smoking monkeys. My other blog (which is dying of neglect) got a lot of traffic based on a story about transvestites in Jaco, Costa Rica. Mentioning this will hopefully get us some of that oh-so important transvestite seeking web traffic. I can’t decide on my next blog, I’ve got the titled narrowed down to hotchicksandsmokingmonkeys.com or hotchicksandtransvestitesmokingmonkeys.com , but who am I kidding, I’m sure those are taken.

So raise a glass with me, to hot chicks and smoking monkeys. Then I’ll give you all some of the pics your looking for.

Bim-Bam, the smoking monkey

Diora Bard, a Hot Chick

…and Mr. Huggsy, who’s peer pressure got Bim-Bam smoking

and one more hot chick, Jessica Alba

Buy Some Music, Save the World

John Lennon used to be my favorite Beatle, back when I was young, idealistic and listened to the Beattles. The other day I picked up Instant Karma, its a bunch of different artists covering Lennon (solo) tunes. I’m not here to give a cd review, but I definitely dig most of the cuts. The album was put out to raise money and awareness for Amnesty Internationals campaign against all the bad stuff going on in Darfur. Its a noble cause, so buy the cd and sign their online petition (that won’t even cost you anything, so do it).

Then raise a glass to your favorite Beatle, here’s to George.

Sandpaper

Keeping with the history theme I feel the need to make everyone aware that this day in History, 173 years ago, SandPaper was invented.  Of course by invented I mean an American put a patent on it effectively stealing an idea that had been around for centuries. 

Besides Duct Tape is there any more useful tool out there than sandpaper.  For starters it can be used to make surfaces both smooth (for things such as painting) and rough (for certain adhesives).  How this is even possible I havent got a clue.  More importantly SandPaper has amazing potential as a nickname for those friends of yours who arent so smooth with the ladies, such as Mike “20 grit” Beatty.

If you would like to learn more about SandPaper so you can celebrate it properly and impress both of your friends wikipedia provides everything you need here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandpaper.

Now that you know how awesome SandPaper is lets make this its greatest Birthday Party in the last 167 years (let’s face it we will never top the 6th birthday with the clowns and ponys.  People sure knew how to party in 1840).  Heres to 20 Grit!

The Last Few Days in History

Items of historical note from June 10 to June 13

• June 13, 1992: Only shutout in Arena Football League history, and no I don’t watch the AFL
• June 13, 1934: Hitler and Mussolini meet, leading Mussolini to call Hitler “a silly little monkey”
• June 13, 1920: U.S. Postal service rules that children may not be sent via parcel post
• June 12, 1994: Somebody killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Hopefully that person will be caught soon.
• June 12, 1967: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last law against interracial marriage in the aptly named case of Loving v. Virginia. Come on 1960’s Virginia, how you going to take Loving to court?
• June 12, 1896: J.T. Hearne sets a cricket record for the earliest date of taking 100 first-class wickets. Anyone know what that means?
• The guy from the Rage Against the Machine album cover lit himself on fire to protest the Vietnam war. Any Iraq war protesters reading this should now feel like they could be doing a little more.
• According to Eratosthenes, Troy was sacked. Now there is a reason to party.

All this great info is thanks to Wickipeidia with a little help from loyal reader Spencer Palmer for the Loving bit. So pick one, or two, or however many will get you through the day, and raise a glass to a little bit of history.

PARRRRRRRRty

Today let us plunder, pillage and party to those rebellious clever teams that operate outside the restricting bureacracy of modern life in that ever so difficult search for booty, heres to you me pirate mateys.

Head for the Mountains

Long ago in my University days, the beer of choice for my friends and I was Busch (and/or Busch Light). This was in no small part due to $1 pitchers at the Up & Up. The price on those has skyrocketed to $2, but that is neither here nor there.

On a spring break trip to Vegas, two friends and I stopped by a gas station to pick up a few beers to take back to the room. We were blown away by the presence of Busch in bottles. Something we had not seen in our sleepy college town or the nearby metropolis of Seattle. Sadly, we could not enjoy the delicious beer because somebody had left there id in the room. Why would you go anywhere on the strip without an id? Apparently the possibility of gambling and drinking hadn’t even occurred to my amigo, despite the fact that we were in Vegas for spring break.

We returned to the room empty handed, and the gas station was too far of a trek to go back for the beer. So sad. Yesterday I was walking back from dinner (Newport Pizza and Ale House, thumbs up), and stopped by the second closest liquor store to my house, that I had yet to visit. No doubt its obvious to you were this is going…Busch in bottles!!

It’s the little things that make life so special.  Lets all raise a glass to delayed gratification.

Here’s an easy one

Today I started working a 6 oclock in the morning and as this is our big alumni weekend I will be busy with AmeriCorps related stuff until late in the evening.  Todays reason to celebrate is one that is often overlooked until it is not present, BECAUSE YOU CAN!!!!  So if you are’nt on jail, or an extremely opressive country go ahead and tip one back because “it’s friday, you got no job, and you aint got shit to do”