i've been too busy actually living my life as of late to have time to write about how i should be living my life. it's good, really, but it means i go for over a month without writing here at all. which just doesn't feel good. i've been working, mostly. cleaning projects off my plate, blindly marching into new projects, standard fare. i've found pretty quickly that there really isn't much i can't teach myself on the spot. over the past 24 hrs, in particular. i've found that it doesn't matter how little experience i have with a script, how complex it is, or how awful the documentation is. if it involves php and sql, i can make it function well. it might take two tries, but i'll get it.

but enough patting-myself-on-the-back, this is supposed to be a rant, right?

so lets rant.

i was trying to watch some anime a few minutes ago. a wonderful new gainax joint which will probably not be licensed in forever, since it seems shitty companies license gaianx stuff, and then wait 80 years to put dvds out. but anyways, i was trying to enjoy my anime, and heard an e-mail alert sound go off in the background. usually when i'm trying to watch something on tv, this wouldn't be a problem, because dscaler mutes the wave channel, and alerts would come over the wave channel. but i have no such luck when i'm watching anime, since the audio has to come through the wave channel aswell.

being a bit neurotic about these things, i had to stop what i was doing and see which of my 5 e-mail accounts picked up a hit. it was, to my great displeasure, on my roadrunner account, which i use for shit that i know is going to result in spam. i begrudgingly opened up the mailbox, and was greeted with spam. aces. more spam. didn't see that coming at all. but wait! what was this spam for?

this spam was for pasta pro - the better pasta pot.

no. just no. worst spam in the history of mankind. it's one thing when you have average porn-related spam, or get-rich-quick schemes, but fucking pasta pots? these things are clearly the most worthless product on the planet, but why are there five competeing brands?! i practically live off pasta. i deal with pasta on almost a daily basis. straining pasta is not a difficult process. it does not require skill, highly attuned hand-eye coordination, or any kind of complex hardware. it requires a pot and a colander. these are not advanced mechanisms from the future. these are a pot and a colander.

i watch enough television to know that these pasta pot people are trying to convince everyone that somehow straining pasta requires some kind of degree, and that we need the process simplified. every time i see one of these commercials, i have to think to myself "surely, there are no people on the planet who truly feel that this is a worthwhile and necessary product".

but there's five of them. FIVE. i've only taken one course of economics, so don't quote me on this, but as i understand it, the only reason why there would be five competing brands of pasta pots is if there's some kind of vast and untapped sea of morons out there who have a hard time utilizing a colander. otherwise, the supply created by these five different brands would drive the price through the floor due to sagging demand. i mean, sure. knockoff stuff happens, i've seen it happen. there's currently two brands of these new flat-wisk-grabber-things that've been floating around on infomercials. but there aren't sixteen brands of them, because the market can't handle that much supply, you'd get hung out with warehouses full of shit you can't give away.

i really don't want to believe it, but it must prove that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who saw the commercial(s) and thought "wow, i just love pasta, but i've never been able to eat pasta at home because i strain my pasta by taking the pot off the stove, and then throwing the water and pasta across the room, vaguely at the sink, while i wear the colander on my head like a magic metal hat."

i guess this makes me some kind of pasta genius. i should get a medal or something. [01.25.03@06:00]