Vince Dee

Podcast? meh

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Here’s a podcast type thing. Listen to it…or not. sigh.

It’s been over a year since my last official blog post

What kind of shitty blogger am I? My last post is dated December 3rd….of LAST YEAR. L O, freaking L. I’m busy living my life, and I guess I’m just not as much an exhibitionist as most other people. Plus, are you REALLY that interested in hearing what I have to say? I’m just another of millions of voices echoing through the din of the Internets…why should anything I say matter to anyone? I have been thinking about beginning a podcast, though. Again, why bother? Well, part of the reason is that I’m finding myself getting into a voice recording career right now. It’s called voice acting (most call it voice overs). It’s basically any time you hear someone’s voice recorded in an advertisement on TV, radio, or other forms of media. It’s a really competitive industry, but super fun. It has taken up the bulk of my time this past year.

Continue reading It’s been over a year since my last official blog post…

Beware of people who claim “You get what you pay for”…they’re idiots

I’ve been seeing this assertion more lately in online discussions, and it’s getting annoying. The idea behind saying “you get what you pay for” is usually that if you pay more money for something, you’re going to get a better something. It’s complete bullshit, of course, but that sure hasn’t stopped people from blurting it out from their high horses whenever some discussion about value comes along.

The whole idea behind shopping for something is to get the best value you can. You want to pay the least amount possible for the best quality thing you can buy, right? If comparison shopping was ONLY a matter of paying a certain price for a certain level of quality, then all you’d ever have to do is pick a price point and buy whatever is selling for that amount, and all is good. After all, you’re going to “get what you pay for”, so you don’t even have to compare manufacturers, materials, or any of the other myriad factors that normally go into comparison shopping. You know, because people selling stuff ALWAYS price it according to how well it’s made and not just in an effort to extract the maximum amount of money from your wallet, right? Of course not, so the whole notion of getting what you pay for is completely flawed on the most fundamental level. So, anyone who barks out “you get what you pay for” hasn’t even bothered to put the least bit of effort into thinking about what that phrase means. They are a lazy, unintelligent consumer and probably usually pay way more for stuff than they should.

When country music is no longer country music

I’m listening to Keith Urban sing on CBS TV and I can tell you there is NOTHING country about this guy’s country music. It’s your everyday basic pop song. And the only thing that makes it the least bit country is that he sings it with an occasional twang in his accent.

Is this what country music has come to? Shania Twain, Keith Urban, Taylor Swift? This is the future of the genre? I’m not a huge country music fan, but this is part of the reason. I like the old country music that was truly a different style of music, and you knew it when you heard it: Earnest Tubbs, Patsy Cline, Willy Nelson, even Dolly Parton (though I think Dolly heralded the beginning of the end for real country music). And don’t even try with “crossover” label…crossover is a bullshit argument used to justify the switch from real country music to pop music.

At this point in music history, it appears that ZZ Top is more country than the country artists. Sad.

posting from my iPad

I just downloaded the new iPad WordPress app and I’m posting from my iPad, just to see if it’s really any easier than posting from a desktop or laptop computer. So far it’s not too bad, except the onscreen keyboard on the iPad kind of sucks. It’s biggest issue, IMO, is that the keyboard doesn’t have the apostrophe or quotation marks on the main keyboard. Instead, every time I want to type something like “can’t” I have to press the number keyboard button. It’s pretty frustrating and was a poor decision on apple’s part to design it this way.

WKRP in Cincinnati

I was perusing the Craigslist ads today and came across an ad from Cincinnati, which promptly got me humming the tune to “WKRP in Cincinnati” (sorry, Cincy. It must be hell to be known for one mediocre sitcom from the ’70′s and the Bengals). I couldn’t remember the lyrics, so I looked them up:

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered,
Wondered whatever became of me,
I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, WKRP.

Got kind of tired packing and unpacking,
Town to town and up and down the dial
Maybe you and me were never meant to be,
But baby think of me once in awhile.

I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati..

While I was at it I noticed the history of the WKRP call sign (yeah, there really is a WKRP call sign). It was first registered by some small radio station in Georgia in 1979 (no doubt trying to take advantage of the publicity from the TV show). But then it appears that it’s been bounced around the country, with various stations using it at different times, then giving it up. Why would you give up probably the most famous call sign in our culture? That’s like scoring the 867-5309 phone number, then saying “nah, you can have it”. The WKRP call sign (which, in case you don’t know, stands for W-CRAP) is currently owned by a company but not being used.

No toys in kids fast food meals: Giving away more of your freedoms

Santa Clara County has decided that you do not have the ability to make decisions for yourself and must be babysat. In a 3-2 decision, they decided to ban toys in fast food meals that are intended for children. In our nursery school society where anyone thinks this kind of law is okay, this is just another brick in the wall. It’s par for the course, because this is what we do: regulate other people’s lives by telling them how we think they should be living, even when it doesn’t affect us. That’s freedom? If you are in favor of this type of law then you are an idiot. There’s no other way to put it. That would mean that you think it’s okay to dictate to other people what kinds of food they should be feeding their children, and are okay with making that opinion into law. You, then, are not deserving of a democracy and instead deserve the shithole society that Americans now live in. From helmet laws and seatbelt laws to laws such as this that attempt to force people to behave in a way that’s supposed to be good for them (from someone else’s perspective), Americans are no longer Americans. We no longer have “freedom of choice”. We now live in a dictatorship where we are the ones dictating how everyone else should live their lives. Shame on you if you think this is the type of direction our society should go.

Low Calorie Chili Dogs

Everyone wants chili dogs on Memorial Day Weekend, right? But all those calories and fat! YIKES! You’d have to do P90x doubles all next week to make up for one or two normal chili dogs. Well, now you don’t have to compromise your diet too much to enjoy the decadent taste of chili dogs this weekend. Here’s what you can do:

Your average chili dog looks like this (calories, fat grams, grams of carbs, grams of protein listed in order after each item):
Ball park frank 180 16 3 6
Wonder classic hot dog bun 110 1.5 21 3
1/3 cup Dennison’s original chili with beans 180 7 18 10
Total: 470 24.5 42 19 per chili dog. Can you imagine eating two of these? Ouch.

Try this instead:
Hebrew National 97% fat free beef frank 40 1 3 6
Sara Lee 80 Calories & Delightful wheat hot dog bun 80 1 15 4
1/3 cup Dennison’s 99% fat free beef chili with beans 52.5 1 7.5 5
Total: 172.5 2.5 24.5 15

Results: 470 calories versus 173 calories. That’s 297 fewer calories, 22 fewer grams of fat, 17.5 fewer carbs, and 4 fewer grams of protein per chili dog. You could eat almost THREE of these chili dogs to one regular dog. Now you can eat your dogs and not freak out too much about what you’re doing to your body this weekend.

Hope this helps someone enjoy their Memorial Day Weekend just a little more than usual. (btw, I just happen to like beans in my chili dog. You could try Hormel’s no bean less sodium chili, but the calorie numbers aren’t quite as good).