Cellphones and Cigarettes

Are cell phones the new cigarettes?

Do you remember when everyone smoked, everywhere, and all the time? Well I’m too young to really remember but after watching a few episodes of Mad Men, I am reminded of that generation and their smoking habits. In the 50’s, no one believed that smoking was bad for you.

Fast forward fifty years to a society that encourages people to buy cell phones for every member of the family. It’s no longer uncommon for children in elementary school to have a cellphone. Now I know there have been a lot of studies done on the radiation that emits from cell phones and to whether or not they can cause cancer, but from what I am reading lately, all of these studies are statistically useless…

“For one thing, they surveyed too few people. Additionally, the majority of studies focused on the effects of cellphone use after several years, but in most cases brain cancer takes a decade to develop.” - Popular Science (Jan’09)

So now the real results of ten to twelve year studies are starting to trickle out. Some countries have already banned children under the age of 14 from having cellphones, and many more are joining in. What scares me most is that in these studies, they define ‘regular cellphone use’ as once a week. Under this definition, and in our society, every kid over the age of two is more than a 'regular' user of a cellphone.

Nicotine or not, I’m not even going to begin to discuss the addictiveness of the cell. Crackberry anyone?

AC/DC, Fight Night, and the Promoter

So I joined my brother tonight and went to an International Kickboxing Fight Night thingy...not really my scene, but interesting none the less. Interesting because the first few songs that I heard at the event were all AC/DC. This got me thinking. At what point will AC/DC not be played at fight nights, or other sporting events? You could tell the promoter for the event was in his forties or fifties, and loving the music, so my question is this;

Twenty or thirty years from now, when our generation is putting on events, are they going to still be playing AC/DC and Black Sabbath, or are we going to be playing 30 year old music from then, like Lincoln Park?!

Not that I consider Lincoln Park to be the 'new' AC/DC, but at what point are they no longer equated with the fight song? Twenty years from now, will listening to Sabbath at an MMA fight seem like putting on the Beach Boys before Boxing? Anyways, just a thought. Oh and they actually did end up playing Lincoln Park half way through the night, and yes, one of the dudes in the picture was also there, seriously, haha.

Hope

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

-Barack Obama

Not Quite A Passport But...

So yesterday I realized that my driver license expired on my birthday, three days ago. I jumped in the car and drove VERY CAREFULLY to the DMV. Driving without a license means you are also driving without car insurance. That is not a smart thing to do, in fact it is illegal, as I was told by the DMV employee. All I had to do was pay $75, get a new photo taken, and voila, painless... unless you are an idiot like me and tell them about another drivers license (you think) you have in the state of Tennessee.

First of all you have to understand the process for me to even get the TN license. I waited in two separate Nashville area DMV's, got denied from the first two, then drove an hour north of the city to eventually sit in another two hour line up. Ignorance played a HUGE part in why I didn't get the driving permit in the first two places. To keep it short, here in BC, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is the government, (and controls everything). When I need to show a drivers abstract, my driving record, it comes from them, ICBC, (the government.). This isn't the case in Ontario, or many other Canadian provinces, but all I can say is this: If you unaware of how things work in other places (country's, provinces, states, whatever it may be), that's fine, but take the time to learn about them, and DO NOT DENY the application due to your own ignorance. ICBC is not my insurance company, it is the government from whom all driving records flow. This month long process, and without a TN license = no TN insurance = no driving a car in an extremely non-bus-friendly city = easily one of the most frustrating processes of my existence.

Ok, now knowing that... imagine accidentally divulging the info that you have a TN license, and the lady at the DMV telling you that you need to give it to them in order for you to get a new Canadian one. I'm not giving it up, not a chance, I worked hard for it. I say that "there is no way for me to get it to her", or "I don't know where it is", or "it could be in boxes from the move back to Canada three years ago"... meanwhile slipping it out of my wallet and into my pocket. Eventually she says "I need that number or I can't drive." Now I've gone too far in this web of lies that I can't pull it out of my pocket and give her the number, so I had to think, and besides, sitting there and looking distraught may help me? Maybe she'll give in and just forget I said anything at all? I can't drive back home 'to look for it', so I say I'll go back to the car and call my wife, in hopes that maybe she can find it? In the car I write down my TN license number, think of a great way to tell the clerk how 'organized my wife is' and that she amazingly found the number in a matter of minutes. I even fake a phone call to Leana just in case the lady is watching me out her window... and then I notice something on the card... expiry date Jan 23, 2007. I do not hold another drivers license.

I go back in, wait in another line, and get to another employee.

"Do you hold another drivers license somewhere else?"

"No" I reply.

"Great, you'll get your card in the mail in a week or so."

I'm an idiot.

Shower Routines

So about three months ago I realized I had a post-shower routine. Why did it take me so long to realize that I always towel off the exact same way... head first, then body, left arm, right arm, left leg...?! So I posed the question to Tegan and Sara and the rest of the band and found that almost everyone had a routine, even if they just realized it.

So I'm going to start a new poll and I'd love to hear from you, "Do you have a post shower routine?"