There’s a really popular trend right now of bombarding Pres. Bush with criticisms for a lot of reasons, but particularly for the current conflict in Iraq. I can’t attest that his reasons for entry were flawless or that we “should” or “should not” be there (that’s so grey, in spite of what a lot of hard-headed and self-important protestors think). Basically, I feel that I, along with most Americans (both for and against the war) are not perfectly informed and therefore, I have a hard time picking sides, though I do dislike the whiney liberal media. Anyway, on to my point.

In listening to the news, we are quick to hear about the rising death toll in Iraq. Interestingly enough, though, it still loses out to the number of fatalities caused by drunk driving in the United States by a ratio of about 17 to 1 (according to MADD and DoD Reports, comparing fatalities of 2005 to both causes). 17 to 1. 17 to 1. That’s in favor of drunk driving. There aren’t 17 reports against drunk driving for every report of some legislator fighting Bush’s Iraq policy. In fact, I’d wager that the number is quite inverse.

There are some big differences, too. Those who serve in our military do so with a commitment to laying their life on the line in the defense of our nation. Those killed by drunk driving accidents are often on their way home from the store, taking kids to a school play, going to see a movie, etc. They never chose to have their life unnecessarily endangered. How is that fair?

So what I don’t get is why we can spend so much energy slamming Bush for his foreign policy while we let 15 more people die here for every one that loses a life in Iraq and we do relatively nothing about it. Why? I guess it’s a weak and easy strategy to heave blame on someone else so we don’t have to feel guilt for our own misdeeds. Plus, if we really cracked down on alcohol misuse, we wouldn’t have those hilarious commercials. I mean, talking frogs. That’s good stuff. That’s worth 16,000 citizens a year.

Before any of you avid thegoont readers out there go crazy and throw down $1+ million for Britney Spears’ recently shorn hair, I encourage you to watch the following Sarah McLachlan video to see what she did with $150,000. It’s really impressive what she did and really sad what people want (opening bid: $1Million) for the memoir and publicity of the controversy of an under talented white trash, ex-Mickey-Mouse-club pop star.

What’s really hard for me is that it doesn’t seem we’ve actually even heard anything from Britney that made her famous, ie. her music. Her fame now is riding the wake of her prior fame mixed with a spiral of controversy that reporters just eat right up.

To be fair, the aforementioned site does plan on donating a “portion of the proceeds” to various charities, but who knows what that means? Anyway, I wonder what someone will give me for my facial trimmings this morning. I could start “buythegoontsfacialhairfromthismorning.com.” Opening bid? $20. Not much, but hey, it’s residual!

I just had dinner from the Pupuseria/”Restaurante El Salvador” and it made me think of how much I love a couple of my favorite holes in the wall in Provo. The first is the aforementioned El Salvadorian wonder. It’s a good way to get full on some good food on the cheap. For example, if you walk in and get a couple pupusas to go, you’re shelling out $3.20 +tax and you will be beyond full when you’re done eating them. Plus, it doesn’t have the negative “outcomes” that eating Beto’s gives me. Anyway. Good stuff.

The other is a little Chinese/Vietnamese place called “Saigon Cafe.” The owner’s 14-year-old mans the cash register and often waits the tables. It’s a complete mom-and-pop (though I’ve never seen a “pop,” just the mom and her kids) establishment. My wife and I would often spend $4.25 (after tax, even!) on the combo plate special of the day, split it between the two of us, and leave full. Again, you’re not giving up good food to eat at this budget either. Bite for bite, I’d take it over Panda Express or any of the other chains.

I decided to include some maps to the 2 places and, again, recommend any Provo residents or visitors to stop by some time.

You know how sometimes you say things and then realize that what you said is completely nonsensical, even though they don’t strike you as weird and sound perfectly natural. Let me give you an example. Today, a co-worker was kind enough to give me a ride home (thanks Cameron). On the way, he called a girl he’s been hanging out with. Now, I’ve heard about this girl and talked about her with him at work, but I’ve never met her. If we were the only two people in an elevator, I’d never know who she was.

Regardless, as I was leaving the car, I said “And tell *girl* (name not disclosed to protect the innocent) I said ‘hi.’” It seemed like a perfectly natural closing comment until I think… “wait a second, I’ve never met that girl.” I mean, if Cameron were to pick her up for her date tonight and say, “oh yeah, Lewis says hi.” She’d probably say, “Cool. Who’s Lewis?” “A co-worker.” “Why’d he say hi?” “I dunno. He just said to say hi.” “So… what are we doing tonight?” “Digging up graves in honor of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.”

I wouldn’t want to be the source of such an awkward conversation. So why did I tell her to say I said hi? I don’t know. Just… don’t do it unless you know the indirect object of your salutation. Life’s little lessons.

Every week here at Sewell, we have a marketing meeting. These are used to inform the marketing staff of our site traffic trends, conversion rates, etc. I also make a presentation on new and upcoming products we’ll be selling (I do merchandising). Sewell’s a pretty relaxed place to work, so we can have some fun with these presentations. I think I had more fun than I was even planning on and completely lost control for a little while. How embarrassing. Anyway, our guest star in today’s presentation was the Bunkey. Please feel free to download it and share it with your friends. But not your best friends. They’ll think you’re weird and heaven knows you worked way too hard for those to let Bunkey kill that.

Bunkey’s First PPT

Jacob’s quote was not just made up for making up’s sake. It was an actual quote to a girl after a class. Apparently he and another guy were talking about how cute and little the girl was (because she was present and listening) and then told her she was unique. In class, they had been talking about structuralism so, in Jacob’s own words, “it all fit.”

“It’s your uniqueness that makes you unique, and I’m validated in making this claim because I’ve kissed 20 girls.”

- Jacob, talking to himself in his very own head.

Jacob’s quote of the day: “In the library (this is a University library, mind you) today, I saw this dude pick his nose and eat the booger. This is an RM we’re talking about here and he should have kicked that habit at least six years ago.”

“I stopped eating my boogers when I was ten. Maybe nine.”

Thank you, Jacob.

They found this guy in a zoo in Cleveland. Part monkey, part bunny, part paint.Net, part hilarity. OK, less hilarity. But still good times at Sewell.

PS - Paint.NET is towards the top of my ‘A-list’ free software out there. If you haven’t used it, I highly recommend trying it. It’s 100% free and actually has very little to do with MS Paint, which is a joke. It won’t offer the full functionality of Adobe or JASC’s line of image editing software, but it still has all the main fun features you could want. This includes a wide variety of tools, including magic wand and lasso selection, rubber stamping, color extraction, polygon shapes, etc. The latest edition (3.0 at time of writing) also lets you open various images in an intelligent tab system. You can also drag and drop files direct from their directory onto Paint.NET where it allows you to either drop it into a new layer or into it’s own editing area in a new tab. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Also absolutely free. Which makes it more absolutely brilliant. Absolutely, absolutely brilliant.

Download Paint.NET 3.0

Maybe it did this in the past, but I wasn’t aware of it. But Acrobat Reader ver. 8 now has OCR built in and is very easy to use (as far as the process of copying and pasting from a pdf goes). It’s actually pretty accurate, too. You do get an occasional phrase like:

“of any settlement Dr heaving of soil”

I present to you Dr. Heaving from the far off land of Soil! He just recently went through a divorce from Lady Puke of yon dirt and this is his settlement.

Anyway, still a neat feature. I do miss having my little grabby hand icon by default though and haven’t found a super easy way to get it back.