[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Does Free Equal Good?

Wow...

According to the lady in the Focus Factor commercial who is freakin' astounded that people give away things for free, I'm going to use that poor rube of a woman's logic to rate this blog:

I'm giving these words away for free? They must be good!

How do people wind up thinking like that?

I mean, maybe if you grew up in a neighborhood packed with street-corner pharmacologists handing out all sorts of free samples, and perhaps if you think heroin is good (which it probably would be if you could just get rid of that whole "it will ruin your life and make you Sid Vicious kind of crazy," side-effect) then, hell yeah, a bottle of Focus Factor is going to be a gleaming beacon of awesome to your confused mind.

For all I know, though, a bottle of Focus Factor could make me poop screaming pink turtles. Which, I suppose in terms of attention grabbing, that could get my attention and keep it for at least most of the day.

Anyway, rest assured my friends, that even though I don't charge you to read this blog, sometimes my words are really going to suck. In fact, they may even be like Focus Factor, and they may have no effect on you whatsoever. But they're free. And, I'm letting you read them, good and bad, for absolutely nothing.

The thing is, if anyone out there is like that poor little shill, and subsequently secured that the quality of free stuff is above average, I've got a fridge filled with all sorts of food that's got to be absolutely wonderful!

"Your potato salad away just stabbed and sodomized a jar of pickles, and you're giving it away free?!? It must be good!"

Really... I'm not an ad-genius, but, in this day and age, if you're going to say that your product is good, you'd kind of want to do it the opposite. Say it's a hundred bucks. Bang!

Then, apologize for the price, but claim that it's worth it.

Then again, could it be that by giving this stuff away for free, the head of Focus Factor may just very well keep from getting himself sued? After all, if people find that it doesn't work in any way, they really haven't been swindled out of any money now, have they?

However, and here's the rub, if people buy it and actually believe it works, they'll pay $85 for more, and the beauty of it is, as a result of a placebo, they won't be claiming that it doesn't work.

Man... I've gotta hand to 'em. That's slick. But I digress...

This blog. It's free. And, it sucks!

Enjoy!

-DP



--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/06/2008 03:42:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] I Agree!

--

Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/06/2008 02:26:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Random Sunday Blogeration...

Sooo.... Mitt Romney said that drug companies aren't evil and that the reason for the ridiculously high prices for medications is because of the thundering hordes of evil, poor people getting their meds from Canada.

In other words, Mitt Romney is a fucking tool. And, gee... I wonder who exactly is in his pocket? And, I wonder how much of the $1,700 I just paid for two scrawny injections is going into the Romney campaign?

I will get that money back, Mitt. I don't care if I have to start mugging Mormons, ya prick.

Other than that, a moment of inevitable whining...

I figure, when things take a turn for the better for me, I'm going to look back upon some of these entries to see just how long of a stretch I went through here, and how bad it actually was. I mean, I've pretty much rolled untreated, begging for something to make life better, since the middle of November, I think.

Today, it's warmish here in Wisconsin (it's because of a great many souls of New Year's resolution failures stoking the fires of hell that is located in the center of the earth). However, that "warmish" is actually fifty degrees.

That's a balmy freakin' heat wave for Wisconsin, and my neighbors are opening their windows to air the stuffy, winter funk from their winterized abodes. Unfortunately, it's totally overcast, we're socked in with a very dense and dangerous fog, and all that melting snow is making the place pretty damp, and that has settled into my bones making things somewhat achy.

So, I'm putting the sore ankles and feet up, I'm watching football, and I'm thinking it'll be a low-to-no impact day for me.

Aside from that, in other, less prosaic, news. Today is a very special day for a very special little girl who, for every second of the five years she's spent on this planet, has had a very special spot in my heart.

Her name is Maddie, and she's five years old today. So, Happy Birthday, Maddie.

She's the daughter of the girlfriend/ex-girlfriend. During one of our extended "off" phases, the ex got married, had a kid, found herself unhappy and married to a pretty shitty man, got divorced, and somehow wound up back in my life again and again and again...

Nonetheless, as hopelessly unpredictable as her mother can be, little Miss Maddie is the coolest little buddy I've ever had, and she's a big reason why I really have a hard time permanently slamming the door shut on the ex-girlfriend.

The most fun I'd ever had in my life on any one day was when the yard was being landscaped a few years ago. Every bit of grass was torn up, and my yard was reduced to nothing but dirt, and Maddie and I spent a lot of time that day just playing as though it was the world's largest sandbox. And, when she was digging in the dirt where a pear tree once stood and unearthed a very old, long-buried fork, she looked with wide-eyed amazement, and from there, a full-blown treasure hunt was on as Maddie turned my dirt yard into an archaeological excavation unearthing roofing nails, old toys, a spoon and any number of odd rocks and twisted, weird shaped sticks and roots.

I think the funniest thing was how delicately she dug up and removed these items. Whenever she found something, she'd holler and point, and her mother and I would come over and inspect her find. Then, she'd carefully remove a rubber kangaroo or a piece of old, worn glass from its tomb and hold it triumphantly before us with a "wow!"

That day, like a ton of others are burned into my memory, thankfully. Not a second goes by where I don't miss that girl, and even if her mother and I can never get things moving in any sort of direction, I'm glad for those moments I've spent with her and the laughs we've shared.

Let's see... What else is on my mind?

The Steelers really did some dumb freakin' things yesterday (Sorry, Rachael). I mean, every time he got inside the twenty-yard-line, for some reason, Ben Roethlisberger turned into some sort of uncoordinated, paste-eating retard who was so clumsy, it was painful to watch. The only other time I've ever seen a quarterback stumble around so hopelessly was the last time I played football and got saddled with playing quarterback.

The thing is, unlike me, Big Ben is a pretty decent quarterback, so I was kind of surprised to see him chucking up these ridiculously wild passes into parts of the endzone where only a fifteen-foot tall mutant could be capable of catching them.

Oh well... I'm a Packers' fan, so it really doesn't bother me much. Still, I feel bad for the Steelers' fans out there who were subjected to such heartbreak. It was a good game, but, for whatever reason, yesterday, the Pittsburgh Steelers just didn't seem capable of playing a full sixty minutes of football.

Anyway, enjoy your Sunday everyone! I hope this weekend was a wild and wonderful one for you. If anyone needs anything, I'll be around.


-DP

--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/06/2008 12:07:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] In the End, It's Actually Kind of Relaxing...

Now, I've seen traffic in some various parts of the world, but I've never seen the sort of semi-controlled chaos of India. However, this video shows not only the chaos of Indian traffic, but there's also a sense of elegance involved.

Of course, I dare you to toss in a tourist in a rental who has no idea how these unwritten rules operate just to see what kind of massive pile-up you'd witness.

I like it.

One of my favorite traffic stories was on my first trip to Paris in the summer of 1993. It was a Friday morning in June, and as the cab driver negotiated his way through the catacombs of narrow Parisian streets, one turn after another became more and more congested until we found ourselves wound into a massive gridlock of honking, stagnant Renaults, Fords, Citroens and any other little metal box of indeterminate pedigree.

There may have even been a terrified Yugo or Trebant trembling and dying in the middle of it for all I knew.

"Merde!" My chain-smoking, stubble-faced cab driver said with a smack of the dashboard and a glance back at me as if to say Ugly American? This is not the Paris you were meant to see!

I personally didn't care. I was in Paris, and I was learning the French language in a traffic jam that stretched for miles for all I knew, and when it comes to spitting out profanities in traffic, it's a pretty tight race between the Romans and the Parisians. The Romans are a little more animated with their hands and fingers; whereas, the French are far more alluring. Even as my cab driver suffered a brutal beating at the hail of biting French epithets, I could see his eyes in the rear view, and I knew that no matter how much the man in the car beside him cursed his mother for her love of farm animals and sailors, I knew that the cab driver was most likely thinking this will only end one way you bastard! Once I get this dumb American out of my car, I will be sleeping with your wife because you're stuck in gridlock and you're going to have a lot of hours to make up at work.

Fortunately, I only had a backpack to lug around, so I paid the cabbie, gave him a tip, he shook my hand with a laugh, and I trundled off down the sidewalk to quickly realize that the Parisians do a very odd thing when stuck in gridlock:

The simply abandon their cars and start walking.

Of course, I suppose it's not like anyone will hop in one these abandoned autos and take off since there's no way to go anywhere.

I have absolutely no idea how they go about cleaning up that mess. I imagine a herd of tow-trucks come in and start lugging away the detritus of Parisian traffic planning to clear a path. After all, by mid afternoon, the mess was gone when I stepped out of my hotel in pursuit of a ridiculously cheap but damn good bottle of wine (which I actually found at the pharmacy two doors down from my hotel while buying band aids for my blisters).

The thing is, never in my life have I ever seen that sort of maddening gridlock. I wish I'd been in a helicopter as to see the full extent of the spider-web of cars backed up from one intersection to the other. I'm glad I wasn't trapped in it. If I were driving in that mess, I'd have probably died from starvation, and I'd have ended my holiday having my flesh pecked from my bones by French ravens on some shady Parisian side-street.

Now, as for Rome, as much as that's an entirely different story, I'll also say that if you're in a cab somewhere on the streets of Rome, you're going to be moving one way or the other. Your life will be flashing before your eyes, and if you reach your destination in one piece, you will actually fall from the car jolted and rattled to the point of crawling to St. Peter's in the middle of the night on bloodied knees to thank God for inventing cars with brakes so as to not hit your taxi that apparently didn't have any.

Anyway, back to India... The traffic in the video above looks a hell of a lot like a rugby match of some sort, and I'm thinking there isn't a car within fifty miles of that intersection that doesn't have some patch of paint on it from another car that's also within fifty miles of the intersection. In fact, I'm willing to say that considering all the cars have probably swapped enough paintto the point of being a kaleidoscopic mass of multi-colored cars and trucks in that neighborhood, this would go a long way in explaining at least a few of the later Beatles album covers.

-DP

--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/05/2008 01:06:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] What?!? Another Update?

So far, everything's fine and dandy after my self-inflicted stabbing. I mean, I'm not bleeding out of my eyes and ears, and I don't have an increased desire to consume human brains (I just wish, you know, the desire that I do have would go away. Ever since I dated that un-dead chick, it's just all gone downhill. What? I thought she was just sleepy, and all that groaning and whatnots was a step up from the last girl I dated. Unfortunately, who'd have thought she'd turn out to be a biter? You just never see those things coming, people).

Anyway, I've not noticed any improvements yet, and I really don't expect to see anything major right off. I figure it will take a while since it's a sub-cutaneous injection as opposed to something going straight into my blood stream and finding a fast way into my gooey clockwork of a system.

Plus, it's got a lot of things to fix considering pretty much every joint, and every previously broken bone, has got some sort of inflammation in it. So, it's going to take a while.

So, once I realize that this stuff is actually doing something, I'll let you know.


-DP

--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/04/2008 05:19:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Well...? WELL?!?

Okay... So I pin-cushioned my leg about an hour ago to shoot myself up with a tidy little dose of Humira --which is supposed to work better than Enbrel-- and I've noticed nothing yet.

I mean, how long is this nonsense supposed to take?

After all, at $1,700 (yeah... it was a little more than I expected), this stuff should not only start working the second it hits the system, it should also go out and get me beer, hookers and a big, fat steak. And it should make me look like David Hasselhoff Brad Pitt in his better days. And, it could do my freakin' taxes. I mean, $1,700 bucks to just sit in my leg and do nothing is kind of a let down, really.

One of the things I noticed about the instructions was that it stated the importance of drawing back the plunger on the syringe to see if you've hit a blood vessel or not. And, they said, if you do manage to hit a blood vessel, you're supposed to pitch the whole shebang and start over with a new pre-measured syringe. I've pretty much got only two words for that sort of screwed up thinking, and they involve the word "fuck" followed promptly by the word "that."

The odds of me throwing out any of this $850 dose would be like buying a really nice TV and pitching it off the roof of my house before even bothering to plug it in.

So, considering that, I really didn't care if I was injecting this silliness straight into my femoral artery or my eyeball. Besides, it's my blood. It came out of me, so I'd just be putting it back in, right? What are they afraid of? A bruise?

Gee... I've never gotten one of those before in my life.

Anyway, all that worry was for nothing since I didn't poke a blood vessel, and the sticking went pretty smoothly.

Still... At that amount of dough, it should work now. And, I should be eating a big, fat steak.

-DP

--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/04/2008 12:43:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Just Wonderful... Arrgh!

Today, I am thoroughly going to blame Lakota (not the entire tribe, mind you. Just one particular princess) for a smidgen of my angst today. I mean, every morning I tend to spend a bit of time pondering over my neglected collection of guitars and the dusty trappings of my former life as an occasional musician who actually had a wee bit of promise and whatnot, and normally I look at my paws and realize that I should just stick to typing whatever is sloshing around in my head these days rather than smash and twist them upon a fretboard.

This morning was one of those typical mornings... Until she posted a video of Johnette Napolitano and Concrete Blonde putting their spin on the Leonard Cohen tune "Everybody Knows." Easily one of my favorite things to listen to.

Needless to say, that video stirred up some great memories of my now long-gone heady days, and it was a nice walk down memory lane to hear a woman whose singing voice has always torn through me like warm little needles on a cold and dreadful morning.

Anyway, I'm not going to post the same video here since, well, that would be silly. But, here's the "unplugged" version of the tune, and I think it goes a long way in showing just what an awesome voice Johnette Napolitano has.

Since I've gotten older, and subsequently more, umm, refined (hahaha), I tend to now tilt my meters safely into that which is mellow-ish so as to just grow old without lighting anything around me on fire.

Still, this song, sung by that woman inspires in me an amazing, unstoppable urge to pick up whatever instrument is closest, fire up the amps and the P.A., and blow this stodgy old dust out my sight and all the damn frost out of my world.

There are really only a very few songs which can do that, and I really should thank Lakota for tripping one of the forgotten switches which nudge me in a different and much more fun direction.

-DP

--
Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/04/2008 09:28:00 AM