Smokin' (definitely not to be pronounced like Jim Carey in the mask)

Near my house there is a plaza/strip mall and beside that there is a retirement home. The retirement home isn't one of those one's where the seniors are being taken care of by people its more just like a community for retired people. They live independently but are far from being rich. They are mostly just average people and I'm sure for the most part they are on a fixed income. Anyway there is one guy who lives there who looks almost exactly like Lee Van Cleef (from the Clint Eastwood "man without a name" westerns). Every time I go to the plaza I see this guy without fail and he is wandering around collecting all the cigarette butts that he can find so that he can smoke them. I always find this mildly depressing. Cigarettes around here cost over $8 a pack (I actually don't know exactly how much they cost they were more than $8 a pack when I quit and that was almost 3 years ago). The majority of that is tax as I'm sure you all know. So I came up with an idea: Cigarette pricing should be on a sliding scale. The younger you are the higher the price and the older you get the more tax is chopped off. Lets say that if you are under 25 cigarettes cost $25 a pack and by the time you are 65 they are $2. I think it would deter a lot of people from starting to smoke because it would be unrealistic for most youths to be able to afford a habit that expensive. But at the same time if you're in your 70s and your still smoking lets face it you should be rewarded for beating the odds.

As usual I'm just talking a bunch of nonsense. This would never work out because trying to implement a sliding scale of pricing would be a sheer nightmare for the millions of retailers out there.

Random Musings

TV Series: Every morning while I eat my breakfast and drink my green tea I like to watch an episode of a selected TV series. Watching a series in sequence day to day is so much better than watching it on TV, you don't have to wait a week for the next episode and there are no commercials. Right now I am watching "Twin Peaks". What a great show. There were only 2 seasons before it was cancelled. Fans of the show say that it was ahead of its time and I guess it was to a certain extent. It was on when I was a kid and I always remember it was known as a weird show, but watching it today it is certainly no weirder than "Lost" and definitely less cryptic. Anyway "Twin Peaks" has some interesting parental connections to modern day stars. Russ Tamblyn who played Dr. Lawrence Jacoby is Amber Tamblyn's (Joan of Arcadia)Father. Mary Jo Deschanel who played Eileen Hayward is Zooey Deschanel (Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy) and Emily Deschanel's (Bones) mother. Grace Zabriskie who played Sarah Palmer and Warren Frost who played Dr. William Hayward played The Ross' in Seinfeld (Susan's (George's fiance) parents).

Actors: I've mentioned before that I dislike Vin Diesel, well I have more reason. I saw him on both Conan and Letterman this week and he told the same lame anecdote on both shows. I hate that shit. Are you so unimaginative and uninspired that you can't come up with more than one story.? This is also one of the reasons that I really dislike Terrance Howard. When he was promoting "Hustle and Flow" I saw him tell the same pimp story in every fucking interview he did. The guy sucks. As far as I'm concerned he's the poor mans Benicio Del Torro.

Signs: You know how on the door of basically every store in the free world it says "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service". This leads me to this question: Was there a point in time when the streets were rampant with shoeless shirtless people? If yes was that time the 1960's? I just can't envision a time when this must have gotten so out of hand that all business' unanimously proclaimed "We must do something about this!!!!". Oh yeah pets too. I guess people used to just walk into stores wearing nothing but shorts with a few dogs and cats maybe an iguana or two and the store owners couldn't really do shit.

Food (sort of): So I have this can of non-stick cooking spray and as I was spraying it on a cookie sheet the other day I noticed the best before date on the bottom. It read Best Before OCT 2606. I started to envision future generations auctioning off the cooking spray for exorbenant amounts of money as an edible product from 600 years ago. It would be like us finding something from 1406 that was still edible. Obviously the date is meant to read Oct. 26th 2006 but what fun would that be.

evolution revolution

I read an article this week which went on to say that they have proof now that humans are still evolving. From the article: "University of Chicago researchers say they've found approximately 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection within the past 5,000 to 15,000 years!". What surprises me is that until recently it was believed by many that humans stopped evolving 50,000 years ago (this of course doesn't include the people who think it went down with some dust, a rib, an apple and a talking snake). I naturally assumed that it was commonly believed that we have never stopped evolving. This brings me to a few questions...

Why would we have stopped evolving 50, 000 years ago and what would have been the last major step for us?

If that was the case and you took the DNA of a 50,000 year old person cloned them and raised them in today's society would they have no problem living like the rest of us? I guess that would be the ultimate test of nature vs. nurture but I find that it hardly makes sense. 50, 000 years ago is soooooo long ago. Think about how long ago the bible was written, that was only about 2 000 years. WE'RE TALKING 50, 000 HERE.

I bet (certain) humans have evolved in the past 2, 000 years I think it only makes sense that its a constant process. Its not as if we've reached some sort of plateau of perfection.

Bruce Willis: Actor by Numbers

Bruce Willis has 2 movies slated to come out in 2006 called "16 Blocks" and "Lucky Number Slevin". This further solidifies my theory that Bruce Willis is trying to make a movie with every number (from 1 - 20) in the title. Let me demonstrate:

1. The First Deadly Sin
2. Look Who's Talking too
3. Die Hard 3
4. Four Rooms
5. The Fifth Element
6. Sixth Sense
7. Lucky Number Slevin
9. The Whole 9 yards
10. The Whole 10 Yards
12. 12 Monkeys
16. 16 Blocks

Seriously?? You would be hard pressed to find many (if any) other actor's that have this many films with numbers in the titles (excluding of course multiple sequels of the same series ). Willis only needs to make a movie with the number 8 in the title to cover 1 - 10 and then he can work on finishing 11 - 20. I think he'll get it done.