Having seen the previews for the movie, Meet Dave, I am beginning to wonder if Eddie Murphy is at this point capable of starring in a film in which he plays only one role.

While in Starbucks the song “Mad World” by Michael Andrews & Gary Jules came on the sound system. One of the employees commented to another that it was “very depressing”. The other replied that it used to be her favorite song. I found it kind of funny.

I went to see Iron Man yesterday. First, I would like to note that it is hard to be afraid of anyone seen riding a Segway. And secondly, I find it odd that the Dude shaved his head and got a job at Stark Industries, seems like that would have been a better gig for Walter.

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last couple of weeks, I’m sure you’re aware of the 200 or so people who have become ill from eating tomatoes.

The book Cause of Death which I bought at Barnes & Noble tonight brought to my attention an outbreak of salmonella linked to Schwan’s ice cream in 1994. According to the book, there were 224,000 cases attributed to this contamination. I was a little surprised by this because in 1994 I was thirteen and I don’t remember it at all. The source of this very high (and not entirely credible number) is the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Daniel pointed me to a New York Times’ article about the above-mentioned ice cream debacle which mentions a 1985 outbreak of salmonella that involved “16,000 confirmed cases and 190,000 estimated cases from contaminated milk”. I don’t recall that either, but I guess it would be less likely for a four-year-old to much care about such things, still I don’t remember ever being afraid of milk.

The difference, of course, is that the media at those times was not in “let’s panic the masses!” mode.

Tonight I had dinner at my favorite local hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. They have inexpensive candies near the register, usually little packets of chicle, but tonight they were offering something different:

“Carlos V” is a Nestle product. I was intrigued by the description “Milk Chocolate Style Bar” and the fact the king on the package bears an eerie resemblance to that creepy Burger King mascot.

When, as a teenager, I tried Mexican chocolate I found it to be unforgivably bland, in spite of a description that still sounds appealing to me. I’m not sure what they meant by “Milk Chocolate Style”, but what I found tasted like a combination of chocolate, sour milk and honey. This was not bland, it was something far worse.

Politicians who want to stem the tide of immigration from Mexico into the U.S. should consider supplying them with better chocolate.

With the proliferation of cellular phones, there has been quite a lot said about the experience of watching someone converse seemingly with themselves only for a change in position to reveal their headset. This morning on the elevator I had the experience of standing next to a young man who was talking softly and gently shaking his head, “No” at intervals. I assumed he was talking on a cell phone and was wearing a headset on the ear which I could not see. When he exited the elevator, I saw that this was not the case.

Should I develop schizophrenia, my intention is to wear a Bluetooth style head-set to allay the discomfort of those around me (of course, I might not follow through with that intention if I became too incapacitated to remember the idea or to care). Recently talking with some friends one suggested a cell-phone recycling program which would distribute old phones to the mentally-ill homeless for much the same reason.

While listening to the radio in the car, I missed a figure (specifically the number of elderly persons who die of hypothermia in the United Kingdom each year) and there was twitch in my right hand — a desire to grab the mouse and scan back to the section in question.

I feel like a hopeless cliché when a website I am looking at features an ad for something I might actually want or need. I wonder about it; trying to reason through just why Salon.com has a banner ad offering a “2 for the price of 1″ discount on Penn & Teller tickets. I begin to worry that Sam Gosling really would know all about me after spending twenty minutes in my apartment with my stuff.

Faced with my own predictability, I begin to ask uncomfortable questions. If I consider myself unconventional and I own a Mac does that mean I’m only unconventional in the conventional way?

One would think that the Philadelphia Police would have gotten their fill of bad press lately and so enact policies which would curb the civil rights violations which they are so prone to commit. It is my belief that the tendency to violate individuals rights in Philadelphia is not on the behalf of the individual police officers, but rather is a feature of the organization itself.

First there was Mayor Nutter’s “Stop-and-Frisk” program which maintains that one does not have the right to walk down a street in Philadelphia without consenting to being searched without probable cause by a police officer.

Then after a police sergeant was tragically shot and killed by a suspect in a bank robbery, the Philadelphia police immediately surrendered any good will or sympathy they might have gained from the citizenry by beating a group of men during a car stop — an incident which was caught on tape by a Fox News helicopter. (Turns out Fox News is good for something after all.)

Now they have detained four individuals and searched their home because they circulated a petition questioning such tactics as the “Stop-and-Frisk” program and the surveillance cameras which had been installed in the area. They were held for twelve hours without being charged. Their home was torn apart by police looking for “evidence”, some of their belongings such as their computers are being held by police as “evidence” and the home itself has been sealed off rendering them effectively homeless.

These severe actions were taken because one of the aforementioned surveillance cameras was vandalized. The police spokesperson mentioned the protest literature found on the property, some anti-police graffiti and a “bunker” on the roof which they compared to a structure built by the MOVE organization (not an incident which I would cite as an example of good police work). Had the police actually found anything more sinister they most certainly would have said so. The most incriminating thing they discovered was some spray paint. I’ve bought spray paint in the past, perhaps that means I too am out vandalizing surveillance cameras during my free time and since when does a misdemeanor within the general neighborhood give the police the right to toss people out of their home?

For the record, the bunker was a greenhouse and the graffiti was located on an adjacent property. But even if it wasn’t, I’m pretty sure putting graffiti on ones own property is protected under the 1st Amendment, as is circulating a petition to protest police actions. The City of Philadelphia is still located within the United States of America and as such its citizens are still protected under the Constitution, whether the government there likes it or not.

“I will veto every single beer — bill with earmarks.” – Sen. John McCain speaking today at the National Small Business Summit in Washington D.C.

Well, it would be refreshing to have a president who wasn’t an alcoholic.

In other news, it hit 100° F yesterday and today here. The only good thing I can say about that is I prefer it slightly to those days when it is a couple of degrees cooler and I can’t tell where my body ends and the air begins. At temperatures like these I suppose I should be grateful I live in the midst of so much urban sprawl; carbon dioxide isn’t combustible, but oxygen is.

On Sunday, I watched the movie, Enchanted. When the movie came out all of the bus stops in the area were sporting a poster advertising it and I thought that the evil queen pictured was Vanessa Williams. Imagine my surprise then when I realized it was actually Susan Sarandon. The age of Photoshop is a strange one indeed.