Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
Sorry, can't seem to put pictures on this post...so maybe later. Well, I'm off to Cheyenne to see my mom for her birthday. The work week's finally over. Not a particularly bad week or anything...just not feelin' it as one might say. I have made good progress with regards to a transition to Lake Tahoe. I haven't punched anybody in the stomach as of yet. I've got my health, my wealth, my lovely self. What more could any man want? Well, besides that?
Wednesday night, I watched the bromance "I Love You, Man" starring Paul Rudd & Jason Segel...and Jane Curtin, JK Simmons, Adam Sanborn, Lou Ferrigno, and a bunch of others. The story is about a man (Rudd) who just got engaged to the woman of his dreams...but then realizes that he really doesn't have any guy friends...and nobody to be his best man besides maybe his gay brother (Sanborn). So...he goes on a few "man dates" to find a new best friend...but as most dates on short notice tend to be, they turn out to be disappointing...until he meets a guy (Segel) at an open house he's working at...and they hit it off. Hilarity ensues, a special performance by Rush, girlfriend becomes insecure (for no particular reason), the Hulk administers an incredible sleeper hold, and it's basically a romantic-comedy...but with straight dudes. I would recommend it for anybody. It's hilarious. Wanna know what else is hilarious?
Last night was the basketball tournament...and I had already had a long day by then. Let's just say that I had to do a lot of formal business stuff in my suit...and for some reason it had to be done outside where it was in the mid-90's...and I really hadn't had anything to eat until I was able to break away long enough to get a brownie and an iced coffee. Oh yeah, running on nothing but cocoa & coffee is the way to go. Anyway, as mentioned before, I haven't so much as touched a basketball since I moved back to Utah...but now I was on a corporate team...with the General Manager & 2nd in Command. Just the three of us playing co-ed basketball. We did pretty good. We won the first game, then we were robbed in the second because...you may not know this either...but apparently there was a foul limit of four. I know, right? It wasn't me...but yeah, we had to forfeit. They wouldn't even let us play 2-on-3...even though we were up 12-5 at the time. Ridiculous, right? Oh...also I played the last two games...with a shattered right big toenail. It was awesome. Have you ever tried to drive the lane, do a spin move, play side-to-side defense or jump when half of your foot is swelling to three times its natural size? Not fun...but we stuck it out. Apparently there's another tourney in October...and I'm gonna get back into shape dammit. We had to settle for Bronze because of that forfeit crap...but that wasn't the best thing that happened yesterday...
So after the 2nd game, I'm checking my phone for messages...when all of a sudden, I feel a cool little breeze on my face...like somebody had turned a fan on. I slowly glance up, see a pair of long smooth luscious legs, follow them up to a very attractive coworker (we'll call her Giggidy, trust me, it works) and she's just gently blowing on me (not that way). As our eyes meet, she puts up this huge smile, then covers her mouth and says, "Sorry, you probably don't want to smell my peanut butter breath." I smiled back and said, "No, I was just thinking that an angel was breathing on me...and apparently I was right." She smiled and then skipped off to play a game (she was on the other company team and there game was just starting). I may have found me a new friend. It was my first time meeting last night...so we'll see how it goes from here...but yeah, definitely best thing today...making Giggidy smile...and getting blown...on. Anyway, here's some news...
Marilyn Update - An American widow is selling her husband's burial spot directly above (aka on top of) film legend Marilyn Monroe so that she can pay off her mortgage. Elsie Poncher has put an advert on eBay to auction off the tomb in Westwood Village Memorial Park, Los Angeles. "Here is a once in a lifetime and into eternity opportunity to spend your eternal days directly above Marilyn Monroe," says the advertisement. "In fact the person occupying the address right now is looking face down on her." The burial plot is currently occupied by the late Richard Poncher, described by his widow as an entrepreneur who bought two tombs from baseball player Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's ex-husband, as the pair were divorcing in 1954. Monroe died at the age of 36 in 1962. Poncher died at the age of 81 in 1986. Elsie Poncher said she would move her husband's remains over one spot into a crypt intended as her final resting place if the sale was successful and she would be cremated instead when the time came. Bidding for the plot opened at $500,000 and had reached $2.5 million by Sunday. No one from eBay was immediately available to comment on the bidding process or to give more details. Poncher told the Los Angeles Times that she hoped to raise enough money to pay off the $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills home. "I can't be more honest than that," she told the newspaper. "I want to leave it free and clear for my kids." The Westwood Village Memorial Park is home to many celebrities, including Dean Martin, James Coburn, Roy Orbison, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood, and, from this year, Farrah Fawcett. Playboy's Hugh Hefner bought the crypt beside Monroe in 1992. So here's your one chance...to have a posthumous ménage e trios with Marilyn Monroe & Hugh Hefner. It's very interesting that Miss Poncher is selling a plot of land that's like one-hundredth of an acre for nearly twice the price of her estate in Beverly Hills...but hey, that's how the real estate market is. Location, location, location...and on top of Marilyn Monroe is a legendary location. I mean...DiMaggio, JFK, that's pretty prestigious company.
Faith & Brain Power - Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns boost their brain power through meditation and prayer, but even atheists can enjoy the mental benefits that believers derive from faith, according to a popular neuroscience author. The key, Andrew Newberg argues in his new book "How God Changes Your Brain," lies in the concentrating and calming effects that meditation or intense prayer have inside our heads. Brain scanners show that intense meditation alters our gray matter, strengthening regions that focus the mind and foster compassion while calming those linked to fear and anger. Whether the meditator believes in the supernatural or is an atheist repeating a mantra, he says, the outcome can be the same - a growth in the compassion that virtually every religion teaches and a decline in negative feelings and emotions. "In essence, when you think about the really big questions in life -- be they religious, scientific or psychological -- your brain is going to grow," says Newberg, head of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania (founded by Quakers). "It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu, or an agnostic or an atheist," he writes in the book written with Mark Robert Waldman, a therapist at the Center. In his office at the University of Pennsylvania's hospital, Newberg told Reuters that "neurotheology" - the study of the brain's role in religious belief - is starting to shed light on what happens in believers' heads when they contemplate God. Science and religion are often seen as opposites, to the point where some in each camp openly reject the other, but this medical doctor and professor of radiology, psychology and religious studies sees no reason not to study them together. "The two most powerful forces in all of human history have been religion and science. These are the two things that help us organize our world and understand it. Why not try to bring them together to address each other and ultimately our world in a more effective way?" Atheists often see scanner images tracking blood flows in brains of meditating monks and nuns lost in prayer as proof that faith is an illusion. Newberg warns against simple conclusions: "If you see a brain scan of a nun who's perceiving God's presence in a room, all it tells you is what was happening in her brain when she perceived God's presence in a room. It may be just the brain doing it, but it may be the brain being the receiver of spiritual phenomena," said Newberg, whose research shows the short prayers most believers say leave little trace on the brain because they are not as intense as meditation. "I'm not trying to say religion is bad or it's not real. I say people are religious and let's try to understand how it affects them." Another notion Newberg debunks is the idea there is a single "God spot" (not to be confused with the G-Spot) in the brain responsible for religious belief: "It's not like there's a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God." Instead, religious experiences fire neurons in several different parts of the brain, just like other events do. Locating them does not explain them, but gives pointers to how these phenomena occur and what they might mean. In their book, Newberg and Waldman sketch out some of the "God circuits" in the brain and their effects, especially if trained through meditation as muscles are through exercise. Meditation both activates the frontal lobe, which "creates and integrates all of your ideas about God," and calms down the amygdala, the emotional region that can create images of an authoritative deity and fog our logical thinking. The parietal-frontal circuit gives us a sense of the space around us and our place in it. Meditation suppresses this sense, giving rise to a serene feeling of unity with God or the world. "Even 10 to 15 minutes of meditation appear to have significantly positive effects on cognition, relaxation and psychological health," the authors declare in the book. Newberg, who grew up in a Reform Jewish family and has studied many religions, said his work might help both believers and atheists understand religious feelings, which he said were "among the most powerful and complex experiences people have." But he cautioned against expecting "neurotheology" to come up with surprising insights soon: "As good as our techniques are, they are still incredibly crude. We have a long way to go." Just an interesting little ditty that I found. The only joke I really had was the G-Spot thing...and now my mind is elsewhere reminiscing.
Coke Money - Speaking of reminiscing, I'm not sure if I already mentioned this before like a year ago...but did you know there's cocaine in your money? Like LOTS of it? Traces of cocaine taint up to 90% of paper money in the United States, a new study finds. A group of scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found "alarming" evidence of cocaine use in many areas. U.S. and Canadian currency had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85-90%, while Chinese and Japanese currency had the lowest, between 12-20% contamination. The findings were presented yesterday at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C. Study leader Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth said that the high percentage of contaminated U.S. currency observed in the current study represents nearly a 20% jump in comparison to a similar study he conducted two years ago. "To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes," Zuo said. Scientists have known for years that paper money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals and directly through drug use, such as snorting cocaine through rolled bills. Contamination can also spread to banknotes not involved in the illicit drug culture, because bills are processed in banks' currency-counting machines. "I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Zuo said. Such studies are useful, he noted, because the data can help law enforcement agencies and forensic specialists identify patterns of drug use in a community. Previous studies that have reported on cocaine traces on money have had several drawbacks, Zuo said. Some only sampled a small number of bills, while others destroyed the money in the process of testing. Zuo and his colleagues used a modified instrument that allowed for faster, simpler and more accurate measurement of cocaine contamination than other methods, without destroying the currency. The amounts of cocaine found on U.S. bills ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to more than 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand). The scientists found that larger cities like Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit had among the highest average cocaine levels. Washington, D.C., ranked above the average, with 95% of the banknotes sampled contaminated with the drug. The lowest average cocaine levels in U.S. currency appeared on bills collected from...right here in Salt Lake City (apparently we prefer meth). Despite the high percentage of cocaine-contaminated banknotes, Zuo points out that the amount of cocaine found on most notes was so small that consumers should not have any health or legal concerns about handling paper money. "For the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange. It also won't affect your health and is unlikely to interfere with blood and urine tests used for drug detection." Oh thank God. Also, not to be a Negative Nancy on the whole study...but I have a simple explanation for the increase in cocaine found on the bills...and it's not the economy...but rather not destroying the currency when the study was done two years ago...because then those bills are contaminated...and still in circulation so that they contaminate other bills, not unlike how disease spreads by contact. Simple...and absolutely sound logic. Sorry Mister Zuo. Still, that's a LOT of cocaine in them bills. Just thought I'd let you know...and now the concept of money laundering makes a little more sense. They have to wash it to get all the yayo out of it. That's how they're able to transport it. Now I can become a druglord. My dream is complete.
Surviving San Diego - As far as ideas to save some of that foldin' money, here's one. For their one-and-only family getaway this year, the Billingtons checked in to an upscale San Diego resort on Sunday with many of the usual vacation accessories -- bathing suits, board games and golf clubs...but they also brought flashlights, sleeping bags and an inflatable mattress because the pool-side room they booked for just $19 comes with a tent where the beds normally would be. They even had to pack their own toilet paper. While many of Southern California's luxury hotels are battling a severe slump in business by offering extra services and more amenities, the Rancho Bernardo Inn is luring guests with the exact opposite -- no frills and barely any basics. Called the "Survivor Package," the hotel's deeply discounted promotion lets patrons trim its standard $219-per-night rate on a sliding scale of deprivation, lowering charges with each amenity stripped from the room. The most basic version: a room for $19 with no bed, toilet paper, towels, air-conditioning or "honor bar," and only a single light bulb in the bathroom for safety. The next level up adds in a bed -- sans sheets -- for $39 a night. For a bed plus toiletries and toilet paper, the rate is $59. Maureen Carew, assistant general manager of the four-star inn, called the promotion "clever marketing in a downtime." Herman Billington, 39, a personal trainer who owns his own business, says it's the only vacation he, his wife and their two sons, aged 9 and 10, plan to take this year as they concentrate on "keeping it lean." "The boys get to feel like they're camping, and I get to go to the spa," said their mother, Erica Billington, 37. Luxury hotels and resorts have fallen on hard times during the recession, as corporate travel planners shy away from lavish spending and consumers plan thrifty, if any, vacations. Across the industry, occupancy rates have dropped about 10% Carew said. The slump has pushed room rates down, with many of California's more luxurious properties throwing in a breakfast, a round of golf or extra night's stay for free. The outlook for the rest of 2009 is bleak, according to Smith Travel Research, which predicts that U.S. hotel revenue per available room will fall 17% and demand will drop 5.5% by the end of the year. Carew said Rancho Bernardo's promotion drew more than 420 reservations, including 240 bookings at the $19 rate and 116 at the $39 rate (gotta love that bed). Like the Billingtons, mortgage banker Brian Sciutto, 36, is watching his pennies. His Sunday night stay at the hotel is his first getaway in two years, though he brought his iPhone (hmm...interesting) and mail from home to keep busy. "I feel like I'm on vacation but I'm not," Sciutto said as he enjoyed the cool breeze blowing in from the golf course outside. "I feel like I'm being spoiled for 19 bucks." Interesting idea. I like it. It's innovative, gives a various clientele what they want, and apparently effective at filling space that is otherwise a financial burden. Kudos Rancho Bernardo. A new spin on the concept of the luxury log cabin...and I'll definitely keep you in mind next time I'm in San Diego a.k.a. Heaven.
Anyway, that's enough for today. I'm off to Cheyenne. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend as well. Have a great day everybody!!!
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