Pet clothes

I just saw a commercial for pet clothes for the first time. Thankfully, it was at least at Petco- when dog clothes designers start putting up commercials on their own, I will run for the hills.

My thought: It is morally wrong to buy clothes for your dog when people are starving, genocide is occurring, etc. Furthermore, your dog hates it. And you.

Gchat moving on up

Gchat seems to be the choice of the young professional these days. This is probably due to the fact that you can use it quite easily from a web interface, but it's interesting to see. Messaging programs have large network externalities- the more who use the program, the more value it has to each user. Thus, it's hard to start a new messaging system as you need a large number of users to begin using it quickly. Gchat probably benefited by riding on top of Gmail- a product that does not have network externalities, and so is easier to turn into a success. Either way, I'm pleased- I've already given in to Google being controller of the internet. Besides, I couldn't imagine talking to anyone on AIM, with its bright little running man logo, past the age of 25 or so.

Robert Tinkler

This guy is the absolute epitome of an actor who takes bit roles and third-rate projects, and manages to get just enough work to stick around. His IMDB rap sheet causes one to think "that a was a movie/tv show/dvd?" at least 15 times. Personally, I thought his character in Harold and Kumar was well done.

Plus he has a funny name.

Human Rights Campaign debates

First off, haven't we gotten to the point where debates don't matter? I'm not hearing anything remotely interesting or new...it seems that a platform is drawn up, and that's that. To hear Edwards or Obama try to be as pro-gay as possible without actually committing to gay marriage isn't interesting or revealing, it's just disappointing. Screw the debates. If only Mike Gravel wasn't so crazy, or if only we could ever have someone who just stood up there and answered the same questions the same way, regardless of who was asking. I'm pretty sure that that is in no way a remotely original complaint, but it's the state of politics today.

And, of course, the Republicans aren't even pretending to be for gay rights- none of them accepted the Human Rights Campaign's invitation to a separate forum. I don't know whether this is the fault of politicians today, or our political system- it seems that there has to be, out there, a group of people who are conservative but cool with gays. They will never have a candidate though, becuase the candidate would have to come out of the Republican party, and being pro-gay would immediately eliminate any Republican from consideration for the party nomination.

In conclusion, politics is shit.

Airline Seats as Diet Motivators

Seen on a Lean Pockets box:

Seems little different than the typical "eating this made me lose weight!" claims on many similar products. However, this woman claims that "After being heavy for 48 years, I was tired of worrying about tight airline seats." This is the ONLY reason given for her desire to lose weight. Maybe those seats are just so small, and she wasn't really that fat? Oh no sir- according to the statistics given, pre-diet she weighed 247. As a 5'3" woman, that gives her a BMI of 43.7, miles beyond the cutoff for "obese," which is a BMI of 30 above. I'm really glad that profit-mongering and service-cutting by airline companies has had the effect of convincing Americans to lose weight. Clearly having an armrest in one's side is more uncomfortable than, you know, heart attack, diabetes, or just being in the category of "morbidly obese" (BMI over 40). I'm sure they used the word "morbidly" on a whim.