Top 5 Depressing Thoughts of the Day

Raptor here bringing tidings of cheer and good will to the masses. Or something like that.

5. I’m starting to see an eerie parallel between my life and that of George Costanza’s.

Middling jobs, no real chance to push myself, no drive to push myself, and I’ve always wanted to be an architect (except I can’t draw). I’ve also begun to shout randomly when I get excited. The one key difference between the tow of us at this point is George seems to pull in a surprisingly large amount of tail despite his lack of looks. I’d say I have the inverse of that.

4. They’re firing up the largest particle accelerator in Cern soon, which could potentially destroy the earth.

In general it’s a very small like 0.0001% chance that it could happen, but there is a chance. Apparently slamming tiny protons at one another at high rates of speed has the potential of creating mini black holes that if they don’t dissipate fast enough have the potential of falling to the center of the earth and devouring us from the inside out. Typically the scientists involved say that if you believe that you have a limited understanding of particle physics, but when pressed further into whether it’s statistically possible they concede yea it is.

I’m not all that worried about it nor do I think anyone should be, but I probably should stay away from Cern, having some of the worst luck in the world. Oh and just so as not to tempt fate let’s shut it off on December 21, 2012.

3. It cost me $44 to fill up my 11 gallon gas tank, and next week it could very well be $55.

There’s a variety of things driving up gas and all of them piss me off. We’ve all heard about troubles in the middle east, Chavez deciding to go all socialist, and the Iraq War. The one everyone seems to give a pass to is hippies. They’ve done a good job of limiting our ability to get oil. First they’ve done a great job of limiting our ability to gain access to our own resources. So there’s a drawback on the whole supply side. But after you pull it out of the ground you have to do something with it to make it viable. On that end, we haven’t built a new refinery since oh 1978 or so because it’s so damn hard to get licensing for the places. Then to compound things Katrina and Rita come through and do a great jobs of taking out a good portion of the refineries we have.

I have an uncle who’s working on fuel cell technology. It works great on the small scale, things like keeping cell phones powered up, but when you extrapolate that to something with the size and power of a car it becomes cost inefficient. You know those Honda commercials about hydrogen fuel cell cars. They’re pipe dreams right now. I mean they exist, but they cost between $500k to $1M to make. You know who gets them? Celebrities, who get them for free because they up the brands profile (another thing that pisses me off, once you are rich you start getting shit for free).

I get great gas mileage in my little civic with the toy car engine. I average between 32 to 37 miles per gallon depending on how much crap I have in my car. When I’m on long trips and allowed to speed a little I slide upward to 38.5 (55 mph optimal speed my ass). But I still wind up having to fill up like once a week and that takes a considerable bite out of my beer fund.

I hate hippies and environmentalists. In the words of Eric Cartman, “They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.”

2. Micheal Douglas helped create an energy crisis.

Hooray for The China Syndrome.

So with gas prices going up, it would be nice to get your home energy from something besides your local power plant which is probably running off of gasoline or god forbid coal. How about the power of the atom? Unfortunately, people fear this idea and would rather put out miles of those bird killing windmills or area intensive solar cells all of which are highly dependent upon weather conditions which change like…weather conditions.

Again this is another example of limiting ourselves and our capabilities.

1.Journey’s on tour again without Steve Perry… and I still may go.

This one pains me. no matter how well this Arnel Pineda can sing, it's just not the same. But at the same time, it's Journey..sort of. Plus Cheap Trick and Heart will be playing alongside.

Unlike the soulless McBane, I appreciate the awesomeness of 80’s music. And it’s not in the ironic sense, it’s in the this is fucking awesome kind of way. Look I appreciate today’s music intensely. I dig me some Tegan and Sara, I’m nuts for Guster, and I want to nail Kelly Clarkson. But the 80’s were the prim era for musical hooks. No one was better than this than Michael Jackson. But you can’t really go to any of his concerts right now without feeling really dirty and feeling immensely sad that he’s melting like the evil Nazi guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Journey’s still touring with there somewhat nebulous band line up and damn it nothing can make a shitty day better than a little Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin.