Blowing It

June 19, 2019July 17, 2019

When Bad Movies Break Records, That Doesn’t Mean You Have a Success. It Means You Have a Content Failure #196.

Bad Movies Are Breaking Viewership Records On Netflix.

Recently Netflix released another gem from Adam Sandler. Sometimes the man can hit his movies out of the ball park and sometimes its just another strike out. I do have the utmost respect for the man. He keeps creating and we keep buying. He is a very talented doer and has stayed relevant for nearly 30 years.

However this newest Sandler installment staring himself along side Jennifer Aniston might be one of those strike outs. The story line is way over the top and grossly reaching for humor. The movie is called “Murder Mystery” and to me its no mystery why this movie is breaking records on Netflix.

Have We Ran Short On Things To Watch?

People have simply ran out of quality programs to watch on the platform. That when something as bad as “Murder Mystery” comes out, almost all Netflix subscribers will waste the two hours to watch it for the sure fact that the rest of Netflix content isn’t good enough to detour our television watching escapism to that of superior programming.

Changes To Be Made.

It’s not all on Netflix either, we the viewing public will devour a great show in the matter of days with binge watching marathons. And once we’re finished we’re left with the hangover of longing for what’s next. Maybe what Netflix could do is release just four episodes of a new show right of the bat, because that’s roughly how long it takes to really get into a new show. Than go old school and release a new episode once a week for the next 6 to 10 episode. It would keep people coming back and excited for the next release. Also it would delay gratification which is a lesson we could all use a little more of in this age of instant everything.

Lessons From The Sandman.

It’s a lesson for all of us, follow in Adams footsteps, be a creator, you will find an audience. Also watch less television, I could adhere to this better myself. Lastly if you are in search, find better content, and if you can’t maybe spend that time that you would waste on bad movies more wisely.

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June 11, 2019July 17, 2019

Inattentional Blindness Also Known As Perceptual Blindness #195.

It is where an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight. When it becomes impossible to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation, a temporary “blindness” effect can occur.

It looks as though cognitive biases seem to not allow us to perceive fact, when it’s too incomprehensible to conceive. Recently a male German nurse was convicted of 87 counts of murder. This is the number they have proof of, the actually total could be upwards of 200. That number can’t be proven due to the many postmortem cremations the hospital performed. So the question is, how did so many coworkers over the years working with this man seem to have complete blindness to his actions?

Hospitals Can Be One Of The Best Place To Exercise Tunnel Vision.

Death is commonplace within the hospital walls and I’m sure if you don’t build a tough skin to it, you won’t last long in the medical field. But that shouldn’t be an excuse to completely disregard warning signs that your coworker may be this mass murderer. Granted that is the unexpected stimuli in this scenario. The cause of the blindness, the fact that someone was actively killing off the patients and everyone failed to see it happening in plain sight. The nurse would poison patients in an attempt to show off his revival skills. Making it seem like he was very passionate about saving lives not taking them.

How Are We So Unaware And So Naive?

At what point does something arise within you, that makes you feel off and question the many red flags you may be privy too? And how is it hospitals don’t have loss ratios? There simply has to be data on how many patients perished and under who’s care for any given time frame. The patterns in data don’t lie and clearly had this been an area of focus, this man would have been caught far sooner. Maybe that is the silver lining for this action, that hospitals will take greater focus on who they’re hiring and what those hires due on a day to day basis. Making it impossible for any other to commit these kinds of acts in plain sight. They will now be attentive to the acts of others including their coworkers.

May 23, 2019July 17, 2019

States That Don’t Allow Alternatives To Burial Or Cremation #194.

Washington state became the first state to legally allow human composting as a burial option. All states should follow suit.

From the earth we begin, back to the soil we shall end. It’s nature’s way yet we infringe upon that right. We over stepped our bounds and bastardized the natural process. Who thought the best option would be to embalm a body with formaldehyde in order to be a show piece as your last visual representation on earth? Your life less body is pumped full of toxic fluid, than you’re stuffed into a wooden or metal box and put into a hole six feet underground to serve no purpose beyond a burial site that acts as a memorial for friends and family to mourn over.

Ideally you are at least an organ donor and there was a purpose for parts of you, to help save the lives of others so they may survive. But what about the bulk of you? Wouldn’t you rather fertilize the earth with soil of your flesh? Now filled with beneficial microorganisms after the composting that can continue to help vegetation grow. To “live” on within a tree or a flower, within the fruits and vegetables that feed other organisms. Wouldn’t that be a gift to leave behind.

Just Give Us More Burial Options

Even if you don’t want that option you should have the right to choose. Yet only one state give you that right, Washington state. Other states may have other options. You can dawn a fungus body suit where your body becomes the medium for which mushroom can grow on and fed off of as your body decomposes. Heck you should have the option to have a viking burial if you so choose. Who got to decide on our limited choices of what they do with our bodies when we die? That is the bodies owner’s choice and what they decide should be honored, as long as it does not infringe on others.

May 9, 2019July 17, 2019

Don’t Put Your Feet Up On A French Train #193.

If you forgot to read the French etiquette handbook (doesn’t exist, to my knowledge) I will enlighten you on an offense that incurs a monetary fine.

Picture riding through the gorgeous French country side. The gentle repetitive sound of your train chugging along the tracks, carrying you to your next destination. Legs weary and feet tired from the over exertion you have placed upon them to sight see through this beautiful country. As the train hums along half full of other peaceful travelers.

In the moment, you decide those tired and weary feet could use a break and since no one is sitting across from you, you think to yourself, my feet are clean let’s kick them up for a bit on this enjoyable ride. Possibly slightly rebelling against common decency in that decision.

Not too long after you get yourself into maximum comfort, your ride becomes interrupted by four train security guards demanding payment of 50 Euros for breaking train rules by placing your feet where they lay. Immediately you begin to look around for some confirmation that rules were clearly posted because you after all you are a foreigner and a guest in their country and the last thing you want to do is break the rules. But to your surprise, no rules are posted anywhere, no signs exclaiming immediate fines for lounging.

The Cost To Put Your Feet Up On A French Train

Quickly you are left with 50 euro less in your bank account, only to wonder how would I ever know that this is a punishable offense. Common sense may tell you that you should have never put your feet up in the first place. While your craving for comfort may at times override this with opposite urges. You never think it would bestow such a hefty fine upon you. But take my word for it, it does and now you know too future travelers. Keep your feet on the floor while on the trains and avoid the wrath of the train security guards.

April 22, 2019July 17, 2019

Listening To Depressing Music #192.

The Entire Spectrum Of Human Emotion Is Written Into Music And Songs.

I highly suggest avoiding the depressing songs as much as possible. As we sing along to the music it becomes somewhat of a lyrical mantra. We repeat the words and phrases of someone who maybe in a dark place. And as we sing along we can just as easily send ourselves to that dark place along side them.

Sometimes the ones who are struggling the most emotionally have the deepest most profound writing.

Art Is Beautiful.

It’s attractive at first even catchy but trust me the longer you listen the more you’re drawn in. We all somewhat tend to adopt the emotional, physical and mental state of the artist we follow. When we act that way, is it art attracting like minds or do desires attract the art? Is it the violent individual that follows violent music or does the music influence violence. Possibly a bit of both, I’m sure they fuel each others fire. Same goes for all emotions in music. Mellow music for mellow individuals. Love music for romantics.

Types Of Melancholic Music.

If you listen to artist like Kurt Cobain, Elliot Smith, Frightened Rabbit. Or any other group or singer who have taken their own lives you can hear and feel their pain. You may even begin to empathize them and begin to participate in that pain. They were all great artist but I highly recommend if you’re going to listen to them, please do so sparingly.

April 2, 2019July 17, 2019

All Of Life’s Problems Can Be Traced Back To One Simple Equation. Expectations Un-met #191.

Happiness Comes When Expectations Are Met Or Exceeded.

Every fight, every break up, every blow out, depression, unhappiness, anger sadness, frustration, everything. All negative emotions can be tied back to that simple equation. Were the expectations you placed met or exceeded? If not, chances are one of the aforementioned emotions befell upon you. And in your frustration, those around you may have payed the price.

We so often don’t see it but we nearly always have some form of expectation placed on any given situation. Child didn’t clean their room like you asked, so yell at them. Spouse didn’t take out the trash or didn’t make dinner. Anger and resentment well up. Now you’re upset with them and the more times they miss the mark on those expectations that you placed upon them the bigger the wedge is driven between you. One of the most sure fire ways to breed resentment is to place expectations on another and if you want to add an intensifier put a timeline on it. If a spouse or significant other leaves you, it’s because the expectations they had for your relationship have not been met.

Where Are Your Expectations Set?

Maybe you even set your own bar too high to begin with, and you’re scrambling to keep up. Which in turn makes you unhappy because you aren’t living up to your own expectations you set upon yourself. Many successful people are often times some of the most unhappy people because their expectation for themselves and their businesses are set so high that if they miss the mark they are a failure in their eyes. Or if they hit the mark they still feel they could have done better. Which there is absolutely nothing wrong with being driven and having high expectations. Just always keep this fact in mind, it could be leading you down a path of pain and misery. Either learn to enjoy the suffering. Or change your ways

If you do have expectations for someone else, high or low, make sure you preset those notions with them, so they can make sure they either attempt live up to them or they can depart from them entirely. Or make sure you have a plan in place in case you don’t meet others expectations. Your financial expectations might be different, your time spent together expectations could wildly out of balance. Your family expectations could not match up. Make sure you communicate these desires. Happiness is simply expectations met or exceeded.

Expecting Too Much From Others.

We all have friends or family who are never on time, always late or they just outright flake on their plans altogether. And we all have the same negative reactions towards them. Let down, upset and sometimes angered. We expect people to follow through on their word. But what if we knew some of our people were that way and we began to expect their excentricities. Those quirks, although rude would never catch us off guard or make us mad again. They would simply be meeting expectations and if they were there and on time they would be exceeding them.

Pain from a death comes from the expectation that person would be alive tomorrow. Yes you will miss them but missing anyone or anything is you expecting to see that something or someone more than you currently are. Losing what you expected to have, love, long life, family, health, friendship. Losing all or any of that can be incredibly painful if it goes away. All parents expect to have happy healthy children and when that expectation doesn’t happen it can have devastating effects on you and your family.

Lessons Learned.

However if you know that all these things are very much possibilities that can happen in life and you begin to accept and expect that. It will drastically soften the blow if anything does go awry. All in all, if you want to be happier, lower your expectations. Once you have those lower expectations, you can than go out and exceed them.

March 21, 2019July 17, 2019

Using Q-tips To Clean Your Ears #190.

It seems banal that something as basic as cleaning your ears with q-tips can have major health implications.

Recently a man was diagnosed with a life threatening skull infection. What was the culprit? Cotton fibers that had been liberated from there assumed solid q-tip. Just a minute dispense from a cotton swab. Those fibers than maintained lodging within this man’s ear, only to accumulate bacterium. In this case Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a dangerous disease-causing pathogen. Which eventually grew into an oozing cyst within this man’s skull impacting his brain and releasing a discharge through his ear canal.

Myriad Of Q-tip Related Damages

Punctured ear drums, trauma, tympanic membrane perforation, impacted earwax, infection. Just to name a few of the potential problems faced when using Q-tips.

Better Ways

Contrary to looks and aesthetics and a general overall gross factor. Ear wax is actually good. It lubricates and protects the ear canal and the ear is pretty efficient at cleaning itself. But if you absolutely feel it’s necessary to clean out earwax due to possibly obstructing your hearing. First visit a specialist. If that’s out of your price range, try a finger. They’re too big to dig deep and cause damage and can remove the surface wax. If that’s not enough you could use hydrogen peroxide or Olive oil or ear wax drops. Each will clean out the ear canal with a few drops and won’t go past the protective barriers.

All in all there are better more effective ways out there to clean the ears, that don’t have as much potential to cause damage. The man at the beginning of the story ended up recovering but not until having the cotton fiber bacteria growth medium removed from his ear and eight weeks of antibiotics.

March 15, 2019July 17, 2019

How Is It That We Still Use Air Filled Rubber Tires For Our Vehicles #189?

There Has To Be A Better Solution.

Ahh damn the dreaded low tires pressure light comes on again. What is it this time? Nail, screw, shards of glass? I guess just be lucky it wasn’t a complete blowout on the highway then you’d really be shit out of luck. Or worse flipped over on the side of the road.

Why is it, we still use and rely on a 1/2 inch thick piece of rubber filled with air to drive us from point A to point b? Have we ever attempted to engineer a new type of wheel one that doesn’t require air to fill it? How is it possible that rubber tires have dominated the wheel industry for a century and yet advancements in technology can’t create a new never flat tire? Possibly a honeycomb like structure that requires no air and it’s still flexible and doesn’t pop at the most inopportune moments.

Too Many Flat Tires.

Every time you get a sharp object lodged in the rubber of your tire it’s another trip to your local tire shop requiring hours. They will sometimes fix it for free, the only cost you is hours out of your day. Yet often they find that it’s not repairable and you need a new tire sometimes even new sets of tires all because one little sharp object or the rubber has worn off in just a year of driving.

Who Has An Alternative Answer?

It’s pretty ridiculous that we haven’t found an alternative yet. Is it due to Monopoly in the rubber tire manufacturing industry or is it an area that lacks focus and doesn’t have any innovation for the future? Or is it due to economics? If people’s tires always continue to wear out and they continue to purchase new ones when they do. That there is a client for life and you always have reoccurring financials.

My point here is that we need to find alternatives, we need innovation to invent new wheels, more durable tires. We need more competition in that arena. So in the future we needn’t worry when we run over the next nail.

March 13, 2019July 17, 2019

Create A College Scam And Then Get Everyone You Made Accomplices In Your Crime In Trouble #188.

One of the biggest college admissions scandals in history was revealed. And the person who took it down is same person who started it.

This comes as a surprise to me. I had already thought that money could buy you a diploma at the elite schools. Now it’s proven that it could, you just had to take a shadier path to get there. A man created a false charity to launder money in order to bribe school officials, and coaches. Than they facilitated ways to cheat on the SAT and ACT. All in order to get kids who would otherwise not make it into the elite universities away in. Then after this man who created this whole fraudulent system gets caught. He then goes and throws all the people he brought into this system under the bus. For fraud that they were committing under his tutelage. It’s hard to think, who wouldn’t take a bribe that says you can help a student get into the college. They want to get in to and you’ll make money facilitating this. Just on principle alone it would be hard to turn that down. Especially when people need more and more money survive just the day today life and pay bills.

So now you get paid you help a student. Who wouldn’t otherwise get into college get into the college of their dreams. After doing so the man who bribed you. Comes back and incriminates you for helping with the scheme he concocted in the first place.

The College Scheme Exposed.

Schemes like these have probably been going on for decades. It’s only now being brought to the attention, I assume because it was on such a large scale. And it wasn’t quite enough money to turn a blind eye.

Ultra wealthy parents of children have been working the system for years in order to get their children into the same alumni. Honestly colleges are already so damn expensive that they should just make that the entire system as is. If you want to get into a Princeton or Harvard. You just have to have x more dollars than anybody else. It seems like that’s how the system already works. All in all I think the scam just really exposes the college system as a whole. A corrupt flawed overpriced system. College is the ultimate scam.

Don’t Blame The Parents For Wanting A Better Life For Their Children.

I don’t blame the parents for wanting the better life for the children. I don’t blame the school officials or coaches wanting to earn more and help a child out in the process. The real people who suffer from this are the kids who either learn cheating gets you ahead. Or they are given a golden ticket that they never had to work for. Which may give them even more entitlement down the road. The fact that they need to do this to get into the “right” college in order to have the “best” future, is the real scam.

March 12, 2019July 17, 2019

Never Throw A Rock Over An Overpass #187.

A woman sitting in the passenger seat of her vehicle. Was killed in Texas on Saturday from a rock flying through her windshield. While her and her family were driving home along the highway.

The rock was thrown from an overpass. This one should be a no-brainer. Who in the right mind throws a rock over a highway overpass? Maybe you don’t think it will hurt anyone or go through a windshield but even still what would be the point of throwing a rock over an overpass? Unless you were trying to injure someone. Or if you were just trying to do some destruction. Either way it’s 1000% the wrong move.

Now this 33 year old mother of three will never be around to raise her children. Those kids lost their mother right in front of their eyes and for what? was it a prank a joke did they not intend to harm anyone?

An Avoidable Accident.

It’s a very avoidable circumstance, a failure that should never happened. Maybe it was wrong place at the wrong time. But if you’re just driving home on the highway you shouldn’t have to worry about projectiles exploding through your windshield. That’s not the wrong place that’s someone who is making a terrible decision. Rocks simply shouldn’t fall from the sky and crash through your windshield.

I hope this individual comes forward and apologizes even though no amount of apologies can take back the damage that’s been done. They will also need to serve time for their crime. Because this is essentially a homicide. Maybe it’s also time we improve car windshields. Possibly make them with a clear plastic.