Worst Blog Ever

You know those numbered stickers that you see on fruit?  The ones that tell the cashier which code to punch into the register?  They've started advertising on them now! The attached image is a sticker advertising the new Yogi Bear movie.

Advertisers are no longer content getting their message to kids through sugary cereals like you'd see on a box of Caffeinated-adrenalin-laced-chocolate-covered-sugar-bombs.  Now advertisers are seeing a trend towards parents giving their kids actual healthy food, hence the expanded advertising market.

My problem with this isn't so much the advertising to a consumer.  My issue is that this advertising represents a windfall of profits to the fruit companies, that does not get passed on to the consumer.  Another example of industry reaping the rewards of advertising while the consumer continually gets shafted is advertising in movie theatres.  Think about going to a movie and watching the 20 minutes (exagerated...but not much) of commercials before the movie.  Now, think about how much the theatre gets for those ads, and think about how much you paid for your movie ticket.  I can pretty much guess that you're not getting a break on your ticket price.

Going back to my earlier complaint about advertising on fruit, I wanted to say that healthy eating isn't cheap. Due to the heavily subsidized food industry, as well as economies of scale, it is much cheaper to purchase a highly processed (and dubiously nutritious) packaged meal than it is to purchase the raw materials to make your own meals.  And as government has proven in the past, you're not going to see many policies that make it easier to buy healthy food; like a sin tax that directly funds healthy alternatives (a Snickers Tax for instance).

Because it is so expensive to purchase fruit and veggies, I have no issue with industry getting extra money through advertising.  That being said however, I think the industry should pass some of that windfall onto the consumer.  Let's not allow healthy eating only accessible to the rich.

This is a drawing I have been working on for the last day.  I call it Puppy_bot.

Kristie and I were walking the dogs in the Ngaio gorge today, as we do virtually every day as long as the weather permits.  The paths in the gorge are generally quite narrow, and if you should pass someone travelling in the opposite direction, it would generally mean that one person would have to make way for the other by stepping aside and letting the other person pass by.  This generally happens many times a day, without incident, and with the person who was allowed to pass, thanking the person who would step aside.  As I said this happens many times each day as the path is shared by both walkers and runners.

Today however, we were walking along the path and we noticed that there was a runner coming up the path, with two kids behind.  So, as we would normally do, we quickly found a little alcove to step aside and let the runner through.  What did we get for our consideration? Did we get a box of chocolates, flowers, or cold hard cash?  Nope; we got nothing.  Not even so much as a "thanks" from this jerk! OK, I understand that sometimes when you're exercising hard, you just don't have the energy to speak, but this guy didn't seem to be suffering from exertion; he did seem to have a bad case of arseolitis (totally made up word).  He didn't even do the whole thank-you-nod.  The arsickle (another totally made up word, but now I'm going to use it all the time) didn't even make eye contact.

What a wonderful example he was giving to his children, or as I now refer to them, arscubes.

Today I spent the morning replacing the faucet on my kitchen sink.  Which you wouldn't think would be a very long and drawn out process, but in actuality it took a couple of hours.  Why should it take so long, you ask?  Good question!

Being an older house that was converted from one big farm house into a duplex ages ago, our plumping is kind of a patchwork of old and new plumbing, and as is the case with many things here, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the way things are put together.  Case in point: The shut off valve for our cold water isn't on our house, it is located under our neighbor's house.  Second case in point: The shut off valve for the hot water isn't anywhere near the cold valve.  It is up in the attic, connected to the hot water heater.  Just getting up into the attic is a bit of a chore, as is the case with many attics, it wasn't designed for easy access.  So I had to scamper up there, crawling along the wooden beams so as not to cause any damage to the ceiling, and managed to bruise my knees up pretty well.  First item of protection for the next project? Knee pads.

After I got the water turned off, I had to remove the old faucet, but as there wasn't much room to work under the cupboard, I had to remove the basin from the counter, but in order to do that, I had to pull out the dishwasher so that I could gain access to the other half of the fasteners that hold the basin on the counter top. Pulling out the dishwasher wasn't too much of a chore, but while taking out the basin, I managed to get a few cuts on my fingers on the edges of the metal.  Second item of protection for the next project? Work gloves.

I had managed to get all of the hoses and connectors off without too much issue, except that there was a slow continuous drip that was coming off of one of the pipes I had disconnected, which wouldn't have caused any problems if it weren't for the fact that it was dripping directly onto an electrical outlet.  Have I mentioned that everything is 220 volt here?  Third item of protection for the next project? A brain that should tell you to turn off the power when working around water.  Luckily, I didn't get any shocks.

So after disconnecting the old faucet and hoses, connecting the new one, connecting the hoses to the the water valves, and then scrambling to the attic to turn on the hot water and scrambling under the neighbours house to turn on the cold water, I was all done!  Well, I would have been done, if I didn't connect the hot water hose to the cold water pipe, and vice versa.  So...again with the scrambling to turn off the water and the whole bruised knee thing, reconnect the hoses properly, scrambling again to turn the water back on, and it all worked fine.  No dripping or anything.

After reinstalling the basin, the only thing left was to put the dishwasher back.  In the course of dragging it out, there was some insulation strewn about the floor, so I started tossing it back in, when I grabbed this strange, mishapped plastic thing.  Or what I thought was a strange mishapped plastic thing.  Turns out, what I picked up was a dead, mummified, petrified rat that had died under our dishwasher.  Last item of protection for the next project? A bucket to throw up in after grabbing a dead, mummified, petrified rat.

Long story short, (too late) the kitchen faucet is working fine, and I have to purchase some protective equipment for the next household project.