Pastor Dave's Fungible Fridays!

Pastor Dave is now doing a weekly Friday "encouragement".

He Can't Do That!

Joe expresses moral outrage at the Ellensburg PD's indifferent attitude towards jaywalkers.

TODAY... 1/28/10 @ 12:48am

I went out to meet friends for drinks, despite my exhaustion and pile of essays to finish at home. So, on my trip back home, knowing I only had 2 cups of coffee left in the pot from this morning, I made a detour to Safeway for some sugar-free Red Bulls. I got one for tonight, and three to make it through a hellish day tomorrow that will see me staying at school until at least 9pm. So, I popped the Red Bull in the fridge, while popping one Red Bull in the freezer for consumption tonight. Unfortunately, I let it sit in the freezer for exactly 11 minutes, and by that time it had partially frozen, as I found out when I opened the can, it partially exploded, and then I tried drinking it to no avail. So, I had to open a smaller can that I was saving for tomorrow, leaving myself with only two Red Bulls for hell day instead of one. But, lo and behold, inspiration struck and rather than throw away nearly 100mg of caffeine, I chose to tip it upside down and leave it in a large cup in the fridge and I'll have it for breakfast on my way out the door in the morning. It will have lost some of the carbonation, but who cares? I beat the system. I think. Somehow it feels vindicating.

The Meetinghouse Church: Haiti Hope Initiative

Looks like The Meetinghouse Church is onboard with the whole "helping Haiti" thing. Here's Pastor Dave Richards with some info on The Meetinghouse Church's "Haiti Hope Initiative":

The Boring Things Cares

Become a Fan, Make a Difference!

Lest the previous post should lead you to believe that TheBoringThings.com and its staff do not care about Haiti or other Popular Charitable Places, we have created a page on Facebook.com.

That's right, for every person that becomes a fan of our page, we will donate $0.000001 to Haiti! That's 1¢ for every 10,000 fans! Unlike many other "charity" pages that LIE about donating for "every fan", TheBoringThings.com has set a realistic donation goal, and will indeed donate this amount for every fan that the page gains!

Plus, this site can use all the shameless promotion that it can get.

We will even post a video of one of our staff members donating the first cent to Haiti when we reach our (inevitable) goal of 10,000 members!

Remember: TheBoringThings.com cares.

If you have a Facebook account you can become a fan by clicking the link at the top of this post (or by clicking here) and selecting "Become a Fan".

Hey Look, a Haiti!

The American public seems to have charity ADD. Wherever the last natural disaster bomb dropped, that's where the attention is fixed.

Drop another one somewhere else, and the last one will quickly be forgotten.

Also, there are rules for which natural disasters we will care about, and which we will ignore.

Rule #1: Disaster must not be a regular occurrence for the nation.

Everyone knows that if you get hit by a typhoon every single year, and every year it kills a few thousand people, that your country is obviously undeserving of aid. I mean, it happens every year, geez get a clue. Maybe don't live on TyphoonDeath Island anymore.

Rule #2: Floods usually don't count.

Sure, they're one of the most frequent and dangerous of natural disasters, but their frequency disqualifies them from receiving American Public Support. You see, we like to send our money to NEW kinds of disasters, and quite frankly, flooding just happens WAYYY too much in the third world for us to really pay attention to it.

Rule #3: Extreme weather also doesn't count.

Extreme heat or extreme cold, while it may cause death, is simply not very exciting. Do not expect help if you're just gonna sit there getting heat exposure or freezing to death. We need something more. Fires, maybe? If the heat can result in a few disastrous fires, then the disaster may be deemed Worthy. Fires are exciting and make for much better news footage. Plus who wants to buy a bracelet that supports sending aid to a Mongolian cold front? Booooring.

Rule #4: Your country's name must have a nice ring to it.*

"Help Haiti" and "Save Darfur". Who doesn't want to do those things? "Save Myanmar". Myan-what? Who lives in Myanwhatyoucallit? Who even knows where the hell that is?

*Disaster name clause: your country may qualify for American charity if you can give a nice name to the disaster itself, like "Katrina". So long as the disaster name sounds good, who cares where the money is going.

Rule #5: No children, no help.

You must provide pictures of children (preferably black children) in order to gain our sympathy. In your pictures, an average child to adult ratio of 10-1 should suffice.

It is crucial that ALL charity giving during a time of disaster be focused on ONE place. We'll be pretty upset if we find our money was diverted to help something unrelated to [insert current charity country du jour]!

America loses its Mexican fast-food pioneer...

Taco Bell Founder Glen Bell Dies at 86

Glen Bell, who started as a small business entrepreneur and became a multi-millionaire owner of iconic fast food empire Taco Bell, died Monday. He was 86.

Bell struck gold with his idea of selling Mexican food, at a time when hamburgers, French fries and hot dogs soared in popularity, amid the fast-food boom of the 1960s.

Bell, according to the L.A. Times sold his company to Pepsico in 1978 for 125 million. He reportedly sold his first tacos for 19 cents.

Bell created creating Taco Tia, El Taco in the 1950s before coming up with Taco Bell, according to the Times.

Go out and celebrate the memory of both Mr. Bell and Dr. King by buying an $0.89 Beefey Five-Layer Burrito.

The Mustache Diaries, The End

I simply couldn't take it anymore. Although the individual hairs in the stache continued to grow longer, hairs simply were growing enough to "fill in the gaps." So, I took the step this afternoon, and shaved the whole thing off.

I should have the ability to be mildly amused by a gigantic Irish ginger every weeknight at 11:35. It's America.

TheBoringThings never gets too political, but for the sake of all that is righteous, this is America's best and only chance to annihilate the scourge of Jay Leno from the television wasteland. If enough noise is made, corporate and capitalistic instincts will kick in, and NBC's desire to save face and look like the good guy will force them to quietly ask Jay Leno to retire from NBC permanently, thus paving the way for Conan to actually take over The Tonight Show.

I love Conan and Letterman, yet I hardly ever watch either, besides the occasional online video clip of a humorous happening from one of their shows. But Jay Leno is awful. In so many ways. He has been forever (don't let anyone tell you that he had to change his comedy when he took over The Tonight Show - Google it - he sucked in the 1980s too).

Viva la comedian revolution.

The Mustache Diaries, Week 2

Week 2. I don't know if I can keep the stache much longer. It's really starting to look stupid to me.

On another note, here's Dave Richards, mustachioed associate pastor:

An Excellent Day

Today was truly an excellent day. First, I had my single-subject design class, which was both informative and entertaining. Dr. Wendy Williams truly is a marvelous professor, one who truly cares about her students and knows her stuff very well.

Then I went to see Daybreakers with 4 of my fellow experimental psych grad students and my roommates. Daybreakers was a very entertaining movie, and well worth the price of admission (I'll eventually put up a complete review over at Movie Posts Only).

After the movie, I went with two of my fellow grad students to The Tav, where we enjoyed a burger and a pint (and by the way, The Tav's burgers are AMAZING) and had some great discussions about psychology, our classes, fellow students, etc.

Finally, after leaving The Tav, I went over to another friend's house, where we hung out, watched TV, talked about stuff, and just chilled.

I haven't had such a social day in a long time. It was nice. And as if all this wasn't great enough, I get to see David Bazan play live in Seattle tomorrow! Just thought I'd share the joy.

I didn't bring my camera to document any of this day, unfortunately, so you'll just have to do with my ecstatic and exhausted face as I bid you goodnight.

The Goatee Diaries

This is... a goatee. Not to be confused with the mustache. It's been about three weeks. Meh.

The Goatee Diaries are now at an end. If you'd like further information on this topic, feel free to click on the above image for a higher resolution look at the fusion between blonde/brown/black curly hairs, freckles, and oily pores. But be warned: you may find yourself inescapably sucked into the vortex that is this hybrid of bad genes and bad grooming.

Heavy equipment operator, or graduate student?

Here yet again we see a minor tweak is all that is needed to transform a psychology graduate student into a heavy equipment operator:

Pensive Graduate Student:

Rockstar-chuggin' Heavy Equipment Operator:

The Mustache Diaries, Week 1, Day 3

The mustache's first day of classes.

I think the mustache helps me retain more information, as each hair follicle is a sort of "hard drive." Unfortunately these hard drives can only hold information that most of the general public would consider useless... a little known trade secret for those guys with mustaches who love to inform you of "cool" things:

The Mustache Diaries, Week 1

A new series here on theboringthings.com. A weekly video journal of my "quarter of Mustache" experiment. Will I have the willpower and lack of self-awareness to maintain the stache throughout the entire quarter? Will I be begging for the end of the quarter (March) by next week? Only time will tell. I will attempt to keep this series informative as well as entertaining.

HMR Plastic

French plastic products for all your fine product plastics needs.

Happy New Year

2010. Goal's for 2010:

- get all A's at CWU

- come up with an awesome thesis topic

- get in better physical shape

- get an assistantship at Central

- try to make The Boring Things in Life even less relevant