Imagine what I spend gun shopping...

- Not A Low Calorie Food: Apparently, this lil’ 6 calorie slab of gum I’m chewing on is, as the package says, “not a low calorie food.” The fuck? Are you serious? I’m sure I burn about 3 or 4 calories with my chewing of this lil’ bitch for an hour or so. That means there’s a net gain of 2 calories (6 – 4 = 2). And, THIS, is somehow “not a low calorie food.” I find it hard to believe that the proclamation of non-low-caloricity-ness on this gum package is necessary.

- The Next Pope: Feeling lucky? Go bet on the next Pope. My money’s on Francis Arinze.

- Who still actually says “bling, bling”?: Little white girls.

- Diplo: Good interview.

- Heroes and Villians: This is a beautifully written and heartbreaking “family story.” It’s short and well worth your 7 minutes.

- Rappers are Still Stupid: Yesterday I mentioned that “rappers are idiots.” My (and everyone else’s) blogging idol Serg agrees here. Dude’s hilarious.

- March Gladness: God, I can’t believe I just titled this bullet “March Gladness.” How fucking cheesy. Anyway, I won the Hollertronix Board pool, I got second place in the Soulstrut Board pool, and 5th out of 44 or so in the Non-Prophets Board pool. I hope I won my office pool though. That’s the only one I had any money on. Update later. By the way, this dude had the highest score in all of Yahoo's online tournament. It's pretty remarkable that nobody gets all the games right.

- What a Pity: Someone else’s brilliant thoughts about the concept of pity that I plagiarized from a message-board: “pity is a fucked up emotion…growing up my friends would constantly tell me I was too sensitive to the plights of others. for awhile i considered my friends simply more callous than myself. they weren't as receptive to the loneliness and pain that's everywhere in this world…i would be at a fast food spot and see an old chubby person eating alone and proceed to form a miserable life story around this person who now in my imagination had no living family nor friends and drowned their sorrow in fatty foods. thoughts like these would depress me…now i try to avoid pity as much as possible. it insults the recipient of the pity by painting them as volitionless victims, casts the person feeling pity as somehow superior, and stems no tangible results….i try my hardest to replace my feelings of pity with sympathy founded in understanding. sympathy diverges from pity in that it refuses to strip the dignity from the individual who is being sympathized with. when someone is pitied they're regarded as pure victims without agency. in other words, the person pitying them has negated their dignity. when I pity someone, what i'm implicitly doing is thinking, ‘Only I can help this person, this person needs me, this person's unhappiness is my burden.’ Entertaining these thoughts pushes out the existing person from consideration, the person becomes secondary to their circumstances. once the person has become secondary what is really being considered is not the person but his circumstances. once the person is made the result of their circumstances they've been shamed. they've been made shameful”. I like the part about pity denying/negating the other’s agency the most. It’s on point.

-e