The Romanian Dream » funny crap

Jesus is a Bodybuilder

Mircea — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:23:43 +0000

When I saw the big Jesus on the t shirt of a guy at the gym I thought to myself: he must be one of those hardcore Christians than everybody in the US has grown to accept. Still had a slightly WTF feeling, but you cannot really question the beliefs of a hardcore Christian, can you?

After that I read the full message on the t shirt and understood that not only was he a Christian, he was also a bodybuilder. The t shirt read: Jesus is a bodybuilder. Adding Ephesians 4:11-16 underneath this should add some authenticity, not. Talking about weird things.

Here is the site where you can see all the Jesus gear to help you with your workout & shit:

http://www.discipletraininggear.com/disciple-training-gear-apparel

If you’re not already hooked by this one, surely the God is a power lifter one will get you hooked.

Recycling Drama

Mircea — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:18:37 +0000

Somebody really screwed up something if the giant teddy bear got recycled.

Mail Labels

Mircea — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:13:25 +0000

I usually care about my privacy. This means protecting my personal data from falling in the wrong hands, whenever I can. One of the situations in which personal data leakage (and after that the tons of spam or the identity theft) can occur is when you are throwing away things that have your full name and address on them. That’s why I carefully shred all things that fall into this category. One special item in this category: postal package labels. Usually I peel off the sticker that has my name and address and shred it. I recycle the box.

Now, in the building I live there are two areas in which you can throw away trash: one for things that can be recycled and one for common/normal trash.

Why am I telling you all this? Of course, I’m building up to something extraordinary, not, that I have to share. The other day I was taking out the trash, the common one, and while I entered the disposal area I notice a cardboard box, the dead carcass of a postal package. Setting aside the fact that it was disposed in the wrong location, it had the destination name and address on it. What followed were 5 minutes of continuous chuckling. Here is why:

To protect the innocent soul that doesn’t know how to recycle (not that I give a damn about recycling, but since everybody is doing it I don’t want to be the bastard that kills the polar bears) I have censored out most of the stuff on the label, except the funny part. The fine’s gentleman’s name was: *** ***alertporn. Yeah, you’ve read it right, it ended with alertporn. How the heck does one get to have such a funky name and not recycle? Anyway, right now, I know that the building I live in has someone who can alert us all on porn

The Broken Shopping Cart

Mircea — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:14:08 +0000

I’ve blogged about different supermarket related things in the past (here and here). Now, since I’m going to do it again, I start thinking that I have a small obsession with supermarkets. You see, they represent the essence of the American Dream and are part of the 4 big essential activities that you do: eat, sleep, work and shop. If during the other 3 my “me-time” is limited, once the shopping starts I turn into a small philosopher who thinks about the life’s purpose, financial stability and the number of the aisle which has the tuna cups. Some would say that’s a bit of an overstatement, but remembering where things are requires some serious mental gymnastics (at least to the man who always forgets where he parks his car ).

Anyway, we’ve established the importance of the shopping ritual. Now, am I being unreasonable for wanting a streamlined experience? No. This starts with the shopping cart. If the shopping cart squeals, if one of the wheels is simply stuck of flapping freely or if under heavy load it pulls to one side or the other everything is ruined. How am I supposed to think when the damn thing squeals like a pig entering the slaughter-house? My qi is instantly ruined and I cannot enjoy my me-time (yeah I know how lame that sounds – me-time in the supermarket).

Being an evolved being, I look for ways to avoid this situation. As the only way to avoid it is to get a good shopping cart, I have resorted to testing the shopping carts. Simply take the shopping cart for a spin and see how it behaves. Simple enough, huh? Not so simple when you realize that the surface on which they are parked is different from the surface you will “drive” them on. So take it from the entrance into the supermarket, drive it around a bit and return it. The looks on the cashiers faces are priceless… after you do this 3-4 times. So now, I’m the freak because your carts suck? I usually give up and get the “piggy” shopping cart thus ruining the whole experience.

Supermarket Feng Shui

Mircea — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:33:02 +0000

We all know about the positive effects of channeling energy by wisely using Feng Shui at home, but how do the same guidelines apply to supermarkets? Before diving into how this works, I’d like to clearly state that I haven’t got a glue on how Feng Shui is supposed to work and what all this mumbo jumbo about Qi and vital energy flow is.

Now that we got that out of the way, during an intensive 15 minutes long term study, I have found that the supermarket you’re buying your groceries in can have a serious impact on your mood. As we already established, I’m an expert in Feng Shui and controlling the vital energy flow of my surroundings. So this disruption in the energy flow is clearly related the shopping ‘experience’.

For example:

Walmart is a the classic example of ruining your Qi. The sad people who work there, the limited products variety (you cannot sell every brand for next to nothing, right?), the 30+ surveillance cameras in the store parking lot, the corny price labels and the general store layout in general are enough to suck every last bit of positive energy out of you. If you cannot afford to shop anywhere else, your Qi is already very low. When you shop with a weak Qi you’re effectively turning yourself into a negative energy zombie that will suck energy out of everything it touches. That’s how I explain the sadness of the places that have e Walmart near by. BTW: I only went once, and after that my Qi was in Feng Shui ER for weeks before I started having positive thoughts again. Save Money, Live better? I don’t think so.

Safeway is a bit better. Some people working there are actually younger than 50. The supermarket layout mastermind did his job here. The selection of products is larger. The two major Qi turnoffs here are the fact the story is specialized mostly on food and the rewards card. The fact that it’s specialized mostly on food can be viewed as a good thing, but as time (or the lack of it) is a big energy drainer I find this a bit inconvenient at some times. Yes, I will admit that most of the times I am shopping I will only buy food, but I feel really sad when I have to make 2 stops instead of 1 to buy all the stuff I need. Hello? One stop shopping? Safeway is still figuring out what that means. Second aspect is the rewards card. Everything costs more without that stupid rewards card. What are they thinking? Do you really think that tricking me into having a piece of plastic will mean that I will return happy? Don’t you know that positive energy doesn’t flow through cheap worthless plastic?

Fred Meyer Sand Castle

Now we get to the place where I do most of my shopping: Fred Meyer. It’s like a Safeway, but they know what one stop shopping means and the prices are the same either you’ve walked in the first time or you’re a returning customer. Also the variety of products is a bit higher. You can buy some nasty health impacting food here, but right on the next aisle you also have the healthy choice. And that’s what matters in the end: being given the opportunity to make the choice and having the needed education to make the correct choice. The store layout could be improved a bit and it’s always consistent in all stores. Overall it has a good energy flow and for the moment I’m happy with it.

I was going to stop here and give you the impression that I have the coolest shopping Qi on the block, but it’s not really fair to do that. The coolest energy flow, by far is generated by Whole Foods. Store layout, products quality, the cashiers attitude are fantastic. They have really done their homework or made a pact with the devil. The whole place is full of positive energy which you can have for a not so small fee. You see, as all things that are good for you, almost everything you buy here has a bigger price on the tag. And that’s totally cool if you have the gold nuggets for that. I mean, what’s the price of your energy level? (putting a price on that would be like putting a price on your health. That would be stupid, right?) For me, at least at this point, it’s a good place to go and buy some specialized products that you probably won’t find that easily in other places. And not to make it sound like supermarket heaven: the parking lot is really crowded at peak hours. Seems that positive energy is in short supply after all.

A Bear’s Diet

Mircea — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:00:45 +0000

Ever wonder what the diet of a bear in captivity is? Now we have an answer, kind of.

Picture was taken at the local zoo, where the nice people who feed the bears thought it would be cool to share this info with the rest of us You can also look at sites like this one to learn more about the feeding habits of bears in the wild.

Suprisingly, I eat more than 50% of what’s in there. The highlights are: the peanut butter, the blueberries and the bread (eating the same brand if you believe it).

Now, if I move really slow and growl more, I could stand in for the bear at the zoo whenever he needs a sick day.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Mircea — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:45:43 +0000

First, watch the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2620588569/

Now that you saw the trailer, couple of questions:

How can your life be fantastic if your neighbors are not fantastic? I mean, something being fantastic basically means that it is perfect. If something disturbs this, it’s not fantastic.

Another thing, if Mr. Fox’s life is fantastic, why do they feel the need to also mention that his wife is fantastic? If his wife was not fantastic, would they even dare mention something about his fantastic life?

Last, but not least, he’s called Fantastic Mr. Fox right? Could he be fantastic without a fantastic life?

Conclusion: A trailer full of redundancies and contradictions. He might be fantastic, but the trailer to the movie sure isn’t.

The Dog Powered Shopping Cart

Mircea — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:18:24 +0000

Ever since we moved last time, each shopping trip experience turns into a small hassle when we have to transport the groceries from car to our apartment. The car is in the parking garage on the P2 (-2) floor and our apartment is on the 2nd floor. Due to the fact that we go to the supermarket roughly about once per week we usually have a full shopping cart worth of groceries in the trunk of the car. This means 2-3 trips from the garage, each. The elevator is of great help, but we can do better.

As time is money and we don’t want to lose money, I thought of a simple solution to save some time. What if we had a shopping cart in the garage that we can use to move all the groceries at once. That would be great. But where would the shopping cart be stored? And what about the lazy people that wouldn’t bring it back after using it. Suppose we have a way to get past that. How could we take this idea further?

A while ago, we thought about getting a pet. A dog. An interesting idea which unfortunately didn’t pass the cost-benefit analysis. Now with this new idea… what if we would put a small harness on the dog and make him pull the shopping cart? Think of fun we would have. Add to that the fact that we would drive down the cost of owning a dog! With proper training, once we get home we could hand him the car keys and say: You take care of bringing everything up. Wagging his tail the dog would go looking for the shopping cart, load everything and bring it upstairs. That’s a good dog. Woof.

Disclaimer for the animal lovers/fanatics: We wouldn’t actually do that to a dog. Or would we? It’s just something fun to imagine and laugh about, if the dog is a small one. We would definitely do this to a husky

Deadliest Warrior

Mircea — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:36:10 +0000

Lately I’ve been watching The Deadliest Warrior on spike.com. The show is kind of interesting and reminds me about another show I used to watch: Battle of the Beasts.

Basic idea is to answer a question like: between a pirate and a ninja who would win a fight? Now, the creators of the show cannot simply say: this is better. They need to add a scientific aura to the whole thing or the people who watch it won’t believe it. So they bring in ‘experts’ to asses the damage of the weapons that the warriors would traditionally carry and perform all sorts of tests. Some pseudo-medic assess the damage and declares if it would be a fatal blow or not (dude, I can do that, and have not spend 20 years as an ER doctor ) and some computer geek wannabe measures all the ‘parameters’ of the weapon. These are fed to a ‘sophisticated computer program that can accurately simulate the battle’. Now I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but I know that this is bull-crap.

1) The uber-program looks more like Excel than a simulation software.

2) There are certainly way more other aspects that need to be taken into account, if such software exists, if you want to be able to only model the warriors. And I’m not even going near the AI subject, which, I doubt that they even mention or have taken into account.

That being said, it’s fun to watch it so see how much ‘damage’ a ballistics gel torso can sustain from the primitive weapons they are testing.

Last but not least, I have a question for the show creators: In the “Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz” episode, what were you thinking when you’ve chosen the winner? (everybody knows about the Green Berets; the Spetsnaz are top secret Russian commandos). So these dummies actually picked the Russians as the winners. Are you f… dumb? Don’t you know who the good guys are?

Networking

Mircea — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:55:32 +0000

I was returning to work from my lunch break when I noticed that a big guy was walking by my side. This is not a crowded area so you can imagine the uneasiness I felt seeing this big, bearded guy that looked like a biker walking so close to me.

But it was ok. He was happy and extremely chatty This is how the conversation went:

Big Guy: How’s it going. You live in this area?
Me: Yeah.
BG:I like this area. Do you like this area?
Me:Yeah, sure (I moved here, so probably I like it, went through my mind)
BG: I like it here. I like interacting with people.
Me: That’s nice. Good for you.
BG: Where are you from?
Me: (Oh God, another American asking me where am I from) Around here.
BG: No, I mean where are you from? You have like an accent, Sweden, Poland?
Me: Does it matter?
BG: No, I just didn’t get much chances to interact with people where I was.
Me: Where were you?
BG: Does it matter?
Me: No.
BG: Whatever, I was in prison.

Then he just kept on walking. I like it here in the US. They have such friendly convicts.