casualken.com

Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry about the major lack of updates recently. My sisters and I decided to make a short film for Christmas this year, and I’ve been busy working on it for the last couple of weeks - hence, no updates. It actually turned out quite a bit better than expected. I’m hoping to put it on youtube soon in order to share it with everyone - though, with credits, the movie clocks in around 11 minutes, and I think youtube has a 10 minute maximum. I’ll try to figure something out, but I don’t really want to cut it down any further.

I got some cool stuff for Christmas this year. A few examples include:

• A 22 inch gong and a pair of maracas from pops to add to the percussion repertoire.
• A Canon Powershot S3 IS from mom and grandma to add to the photography/filmmaking repertoire.
• A silkscreened t-shirt designed and printed by my sister, Lucy.
• A Magic Bullet from my sister, Tracy - which, if you haven’t seen the infomercial, you can read about it here

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Christmas (or for non-Christians, I hope you had a good monday). Santa Claus dropped by the house on Christmas Eve and he was kind enough to pose for a photo. He shaved off his beard, and I swear it takes off 70 or 80 years.

I would hardly consider myself a health nut by any stretch of the imagination, but I do try to keep an eye on what I eat and drink. The main stuff I try to avoid are things with a lot of fat, and things with a lot of sugar - which for me primarily boils down to avoiding fried foods, sweets, and sodas.

Fried food is pretty easy. I like fried stuff, but it doesn’t show itself often in my food options.

Sweets are generally easy to avoid as well as I’m more of a salty snack person (though I sometimes have to fight the urge to buy some kind of peanut, or peanut butter related candy if stuck in a long check-out line). Plus, I rarely order dessert with dinner (unless it’s flan). Of course if you know where I work, you know that it takes a tremendous amount of willpower not to eat the desserts there. One thing that I really like are donuts, which fall into both the sweets category and the fried food category. Though, as much as I like them, I rarely eat them. I’ve had a grand total of 5 donuts in the year 2006 - all of which fell within 10 days of each other (courtesy of Tim Horton’s).

Sodas are also easy to avoid as my fluid intake consists almost exclusively of water. What is the point of all this rambling, you might ask? Well, I stumbled upon this article, thanks to digg.com, about the effects of soda on your body:

What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now?

Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.

• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: –> –> –>skip translation–> –> –> –>end skip translation–> Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
• 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
• 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
• >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
• >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
• >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (As little as two if you’re a smoker.) But, hey, have another Coke, it’ll make you feel better.

*FYI: The Coke itself is not the enemy, here. It’s the dynamic combo of massive sugar doses combined with caffeine and phosphoric acid. Things which are found in almost all soda.

So there you go. I just found it interesting. The original article can be found here.

So, I saw a person with a rattail today. It kind of took me by surprise, because you don’t really see that kind of thing very often. In this day in age, where there is no shortage of mirrors or reflective surfaces, you’d think that people might use them, y’know, before they leave the house and such. Well, mirrors be damned, this person was out and about. Now, I’m not one to really bag on someone for the choices they make in their own appearance - it’s not like it has any affect on me in any way. . .okay, so maybe I am, but a rattail? Come on. For those who are unfamiliar with what a rattail is, here is a definition courtesy of Wikipedia:

A rattail is a haircut that is characterized by a long “tail” of hair growing from the back of the head. The rattail has been worn by both genders, this haircut is observed most commonly in males under the age of 15 or middle-aged men attempting to appear fashionable. The individual with a rattail typically has his or her hair cut short all over their head except for a few strands in the back that are left to grow out.

In terms of practicality, this hair cut has no real use.

While I’d hardly fault a hair style for it’s lack of practical use, it still seems to be in one’s best interest to avoid looking intentionally foolish.  It’d be so easy to just cut it off.  It’s not like it’s your Queue or something - in point of fact, you’d probably regain some honor by removing it.  You see people all the time with bad haircuts, but it seems like in many cases it is the result of an overgrown haircut, or perhaps it just got cut and needs to grow out a bit. I don’t know about you, but to me a rattail seems awfully deliberate. Maybe I’m wrong and, in this case, it wasn’t a choice. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she gave herself a haircut and missed that bit - like when you’re putting sunblock on, and you can’t reach that middle spot on your back. I don’t know if that’s the case as I’ve never given myself a haircut. I suppose turning side to side to check out your hair in a mirror, you probably can’t see that part. Maybe she doesn’t even know it’s there.   Actually, I sort of doubt that it was an accident since it was braided.

Today at work, a woman came up to me and quietly said that she had been in our restroom, and that there was a wallet in the toilet. I asked her to repeat herself, “Did you say in the toilet?”

“Yes, in the toilet,” she replied. Still uncertain of what she was saying, I asked her again, “Did you say there’s a wallet in the toilet?”

“Yes, there is a wallet in the toilet. Maybe you have some gloves or something, and you can fish it out?” she said. It was at this point that I thanked her for the heads-up and went to tell the nearest person about the wallet. That person was Tracy, who got a good laugh out of it. As funny as the wallet in the toilet was, we couldn’t help but wonder: What kind on moron drops their wallet in the toilet? Well, I guess that it’s not that implausible to drop a wallet in the toilet. I’ve heard of people dropping cell phones in the toilet, so I guess a wallet’s not that far off.  There is still the question of: Why was the person dealing with their wallet in the direct vicinity of the toilet?  Cell phone in the toilet - I can see that happening, as disturbing as that may be - but the wallet?  Well, whatever.

To me, the more pressing question is: Why would the person who dropped the wallet in the toilet leave it there? I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid putting my hands in the toilet on an almost daily basis. I don’t mean that it’s a compulsion or anything, I just try avoid the act itself. But, if I was so foolish as to drop my wallet in the toilet, I would bite the bullet and fish it out. Most people keep important stuff in their wallets (IDs, credit cards, cash, receipts, old ticket stubs, and so forth), so I’d think that you’d want to retrieve it - or at very least, flush it down so people couldn’t thieve your identity. Apparently, this person saw their wallet floating in the toilet and thought, “Well, that’s the end of that,” and left it there. I guess you could argue that the person may not have noticed that the wallet there, but that kind of thinking really blows my whole rant, so we’ll have none of that.

So, in the end, the next customer in the restroom fished the wallet out, and someone claimed it. She said that her “friend” dropped her wallet in the toilet and that she was going to give it back to her. Yeah right lady, your “friend” dropped her wallet.