To borrow a skit from my 43th favorite columnist, Peter King, I'm just going to throw some things out there and see what sticks. Here are 10 things I think I think:
1. Just when exactly did peanut butter become so deadly to children? I don't remember any of this when I was a kid. Was it there then and my parents were just trying to protect me by not telling me? Did they perform secret tests on me just to make sure. Or more sinister, has the peanut butter industry changed what goes into peanut butter making it cheaper to produce (the conspiracy theorist will be thinking GM peanuts) but more toxic to kids. Nevermind all the warning labels e.g. "May contain nuts". Mrs Finndego freaked on me when I went to put a muesli bar in the kids lunchbox. "You can't do that! It's not allowed!" It's just crazy
2. You know, I go to the deli at my supermarket and I get my 200g of ham. They weigh it, throw it in the bag and plop a barcode sticker on the bag. I get it home and I want to make myself a sandwich. Do you think I can get that fucking sticker off without tearing the bag to shreds? Not a chance. Can't we make a sticker that I can open the bag, get my ham out and reseal the bag. Is it that hard? Really?
3. Speaking of that, I'm a dirty filthy smoker and I like to roll my own cigarettes. I get those papers that have two dispensers, so to speak. I try my hardest to balance which side I take a paper from. I take one from the top and then I'll take one from the bottom etc. Anyways, at some stage before I get anywhere near the last paper either the paper from the top or bottom disappears into a black hole somewhere only to be found again after great strife and struggle. You smoke to relax and having to struggle pulling a paper out like that is frustrating. It's 2010 for christs sake. Can we not sort this out? It really chaps my hide!
4. Can we please stop hero worshipping people who can kick/throw/hit a ball really far. I'm imposing a new "Hero" rule. It's really simple.If you are a sports star you have to do something ELSE completely different really well too. I know Alex Rodriguez just hit his 600th steroid induced homerun recently but if I'm truly going to acknowledge that achievement I'd like to know that he also has his sights set on completing his Phd in Linguistics in the offseason or that he will be spending that time competing at the World Rowing Championships. I'd like to see him spending some time in southern Sudan sorting out their needs with the help of his 10 year US$275 million dollar contract. Guys like Ted Williams who was one of the 5 best baseball players of all-time spent 6 years of his prime years flying fighter planes in two different wars. Not only that, he went on to become a world class fisherman. Edmund Hilary, after conquering Everest went onto driving a tractor across Antarctica and then spent the rest of his life raising funds and building schools for Sherpas in Nepal. Something like that I'm thinking.
5. Never underestimate the value of a warm, dry house. That's all.
6. I know they recommend an aspirin and a glass of water before you go to bed as a cure for hangovers. My only problem is that I am always too drunk to remember that before I go to bed! So I'm not really sure if it really works at all.
7. I love it when my kids try to be helpful. It's never always convenient at the time but it's still cute all the same. Fletcher likes to get my work clothes before I leave for work and put them by the front door. He'll get my lunch too and bring it to me. Then he'll want to zip up my jacket. He'll give me a big hug and ask me what I'm doing that day. He loves it when I have to drive the loader! Now, if I could just get him to be so enthusiastic about cleaning up after himself.
8. New Zealand played a test match against someone tonight in Netball. I can't tell you who it was because I didn't watch it, because Netball is boring. There, I said it. There is a sport out there that features really attractive women wearing short skirts and lots of jumping around that I find really boring. I do, however, have a few ideas on how to improve the sport:
a. Three words: Randomly placed landmines
b. Make goal defence and goal attack switch position every quarter. Make these girls play defence too. (Note: the netball courts in town are by my house and in New Zealand netball is a winter sport. I see these poor girls outside in the pouring rain freezing their bums off and half of them are just standing around waiting for play to come their way.
c. Similar to above. I'd eliminate the zoning where certain players are limited to only certain parts of the court. Make it a bit more basketballish.
d.I'd establish a ice hockey-like penalty box where teams would have play a girl down for constant infringement. Because I've taken the court zones away, if you lose your goal defence some one else would have to come in and defend goal attack, probably a midfielder opening up the whole court.
e. All shots from behind the line are worth three points but only in the last three minutes of each quarter.
f. I'm still not really sure how the possession rule works in netball because sometimes the team that makes a goal gets the ball back to start the next play and sometimes the don't. I would eliminate this and alternate possession to the team that just got scored against.
9. Just been thinking about energy and power companies. Everyone knows that we pay for our power at peak rates and off-peak rates depending on our usage during certain times of the day but from what I understand there is a huge disparity between peak and off-peak pricing. Couldn't someone invent some sort of power accumulator or battery pack that I can charge up with off peak power at the lower rate and then have it kick in during peak rates and replace the expensive power or at least supplement some of it. It would also be nice if it could act as a surrogate generator too if the power went out for a few hours. Just an idea. The power companies would probably just increase off peak power pricing if there was too much uptake of the idea so nevermind. Can't beat "the Man".
10. Been reading a lot of science related books lately. I found Stephen Hawkings "Brief History of Time" for sale at the library for 50 cents! I've thinking about things on the large and very small scale lately. I've saved this last one because it may be hard to get your head around and I didn't want to blow your mind right at the start. Here's the question, just don't ask me for the answer. Atoms are, at the center, made up of a nucleus right. Around that nucleus orbits an electron. In drawings, the scale of this relationship is always wrong, as it is always too close. In reality, if we were to enlarge the nucleus to the size of a marble the orbit of that electron would be more than 2 miles! from the nucleus. That's a long way. There is a question in here, I'm getting to it. Now atoms combine to form molecules and these become the building block for everything around us including you and I. If on the atomic scale there is so much space between the nucleus and the electron why do I have to open a door instead of just walking through it. With all that space between my atoms and the door's atoms surely there is plenty off room for us to glide pass each other? Have think about it and I'll give special recognition to whomever gets me close to an answer.
