Head Shots

I was looking through some online albums last night and realized that I take a lot of pictures of my hair. I do it when I'm contemplating getting a haircut so that I can see how bad it looks from the back. I never really delete digital pictures, so I have photos of the side and back of my head taken in a couple vacation spots while I'm wearing sunglasses and a couple good bedhead shots. Years ago when I imagined how a paperless society would benefit the earth while technology simplified my life, this was not a future I imagined for myself.

Conventional Wisdom and TV

I'll be really upset if it turns out that watching TV in the dark doesn't damage your eyes. Now that I've suffered through years of watching movies with the lights on, it better be for a good reason.  I mean, what about movie theaters? There aren't any lights in there and no one seems too worried. That's the problem with these conventional wisdoms; there aren't any quantifiers to let you know how much damage this stuff does. I bet we also find out soon that staring at the sun isn't bad for you. I'll really be living it up if that comes true.

Blasting Brain Cells

Soon everyone will look at dentists the way they now look at car mechanics. Twice in my life I've been to a dentist and been told that I needed work done on a few teeth, and then when I've gone out for a second opinion, the new dentist always contradicted the original diagnosis. I'm also a firm believer that getting dental x-rays every time you stop in for a cleaning is a bad idea. I know they say it's a small amount of radiation, but I still think that blasting radioactivity into your skull at any level is likely a bad idea. I need to save those brain cells so I have something to kill with plastic-bottle whiskey.

Today on SteepandCheap we have some Primus EtaPower EF Stoves, Teko Women's Light Hiking Organic Cotton Socks, and SOG Twitch II Knives.

Always Pointing Fingers

Whenever I see a kid that's really, really good at a sport, I'll silently blame his or her parents for ruining their kid's life. This little girl climbs at the same gym as me (Yeah, I joined a gym. No big deal.) and she's mind-blowingly good. She's always there before me and leaves after me, and her dad stands five feet behind her, watching her climb the entire time. I feel like part of my feelings toward the parents comes from jealousy, but since it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to admit that I'm jealous of a 6-year-old girl's skills, I'll keep blaming her parents. It reminds me of a guy who used to come into my bike shop who was known as "Super Dad" when he wasn't around. It takes a special kind of person to motorpace their kid five hours a day. I always thought it'd be fun to drag him around behind my car for even an hour.

Ice Cream Dreams

One of my friends maintains that you'll have nightmares if you eat cheese right before going to bed, and I've found that he's correct. Sometimes I'll eat it right before sleeping anyway. I find that it's a safe way to have fantastic, bizarre dreams in some kind of lo-fi hallucinogenic land where I can never run quite fast enough or jump far enough. I've also found that ice cream and other dairy has the same bad-dream effect. Sometimes I won't remember my dreams when I eat dairy before going to bed, and now I'm wondering if it still gives me bad dreams and causes unrestful sleep. Maybe that's why I was constantly tired between1st and 8th grade, since I would eat a bowl of ice cream before going to bed for those seven years. Also, maybe that's why I don't like ice cream.

Tax Prep Day

Being an American is pretty easy. All you have to do is pay taxes, vote, and serve on a jury once in awhile. The volunteer army makes things a lot easier for civilians. That said, taxes are a real nightmare. The system is so needlessly complex that even if you're honest and try really hard to do everything correctly, you know you messed up somewhere in the filing. Stacks of forms with alpha-numeric names and massive graphs in tiny font are enough to make you want to move to Canada. During tax season, I usually consider turning down work that won't pay much since I know how much of a headache filing is going to be. I heard Wesley Snipes lost his ass after claiming he didn't have to pay taxes based on some loose wording in the constitution, but I heard he also once paid his taxes by writing a bad check for $3 million. The point is, if you can figure out how to do your taxes with a few mistakes, you're still better off than Wesley Snipes.

Solo Travel and American Flag Sandals

One of my friends woke up in an alley in a Southeast Asian country and he said he didn't even have to check if he had been pick pocketed. I initially considered this a ringing endorsement for solo non-lucid travels in Thailand, but then he said he didn't have to check if he was pick pocketed because all of his pockets had been pulled out of his pants. His flip-flops from Old Navy were also missing, which is a drag no matter how much you like being barefoot.

Berets and Convertible Porsches

I just can't take a guy seriously who's wearing cufflinks. I have to treat him like he's wearing a beret or driving a convertible Porsche. He probably goes tanning and gets really depressed if he misses a workout. And it's not like he wears the cuff links because he's unnaturally short or has a prematurely receding hairline, he looks normal, but there just has to be something wrong with him.

Meteorite

My parents' neighbors called the newspaper last summer because a meteorite went through her dock. There was a hole about the size of a basketball framed by corona of burnt wood. I'm not sure if the newspaper people ever arrived, but I didn't bother checking the water underneath the dock for a piece of space rock. It was the fifth of July, and they'd been lighting fireworks on their dock all night. Let them dig for space rocks to show to reporters when they arrive.