T-Bombs on T-day on the way to T-wan

So the thought that occurred to me when I was eating out with some friends, was the fact that bears love honey. I know this may be very strange but let me paint you a picture. My friend asks for some honey and a few minutes later, the waitress (who was very cute by the way) brings her the honey. What's the honey container look like? It's a plastic bear with a big smile. Now this is where I find it comical. We insult the bear for loving honey so much that we make the honey container shaped as bears and serve honey from the top of their heads. Talk about a smack in the face to the bears!

oh and to add another great thing is the fact that I will become an international man of mystery. Just got accepted to study abroad in Taiwan. It's going to be crazy awesome and scary. I do not have a full grasp of Mandarin Chinese yet.. and my worst fear is getting lost in a foreign country and not knowing how to talk my way back home. But I've heard that they speak A LOT of English over there, so I should be spot on. (and this blog will probably be 10x more interesting)

Talking about Taiwan and Honey.. this all really ties into… WTF North Korea? is this going to be the start of WWIII? Man I hope not.. 1) I do NOT want to get drafted. 2) Going to Taiwan probably isn't the best idea ATM… but I could just be part of some crazy event, and go down in History… 3) I'm going to be 13 hours ahead of all my friends.. Does that mean that I kind of time traveled ahead. Do I become older by 13 hours? or how does that work? Have you ever thought about that? Maybe time travel is possible…

Well I'm off to try and watch the new Harry Potter.

Cheerio,

Alastar Swift

Lake-Show vs T-Pups

So, a couple of my friends and I caught a basketball game. Here's the catch, we actually spent money to watch professional basketball players. Now many of you may think I'm a little bias for saying such a sentence, but I mean, I wish I could get payed countless amounts of money to play a game that I would love to play everyday. Now my buddy had got some pretty sweet seats for how much we didn't pay. (let's be honest, we got cheap seats), one of the first things I noticed, 5.50 for a hamburger and 7.50 for a beer?!? What is this crazy nonsense. The second thing was… wait for it… Kobe Bryant (probably one of my favorite players) is a cocky mother@#$%&! I mean wow, I was taken back a little when I saw his off court and pre game mannerism. But, I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from a multi-MVP winner and a player that has won multiple NBA Championships. 


The plan was to watch Kobe put up huge numbers (i think he only got 24pts?) but it turned out to see the T-Pups actually play solid basketball. I saw a lot of sweet plays, dunks, and blocks. BUT I also realized that pro's just really play a crappy "Pro" version of a pick up game. All I saw were players driving the lane then jumping and passing it out. ("a basketball sin" - my HS BBall Coach) This really made me think that I will probably NEVER pay to watch this ever again. I'd have more fun at B-Dubs with an order of boneless wings, a beer, and a big screen to watch it. It'd be most likely cheaper, and I'm going out on a limb, but it probably would have been 10x more fun than at the game. All I heard was this crazy dude (give him props, he was with some pretty fine women) keep yelling, "Yo Lake-Show, Let's Go Lake-Show, Time to Start it up Lake-Show" I mean just countless of randomness. 


The real question about this whole ordeal is… Watch a game live OR Watch it somewhere where appetizers and drinks are cheap?


I know my views will definitely change when more income comes my way, but as for now, cheap appetizers and drinks, a big screen, and a huge group of friends are definitely a better way to watch a Professional Sporting Event. 


"All's fair in love and basketball"


Cheerio,


Alastar Swift


P.S. I forgot, The cheerleaders were definitely worth the tickets. Yes, and I think I saw 2 of them at a bar later that night… as well as Bernard Berrian. Lucky Me, Right?

Wonderful World of Wednesday...

What do college textbooks mess up?

Simple things like grammar. Now yes, I know my grammar and punctuation are quite childish but the scary thing is, I am certain I have better writing skills than most. Just counting this past (spring) semester and this (fall) semester I have encountered multiple grammatical errors in college textbooks. I have also seen evidence that authors will state their opinion as facts. Now am I the only person out there that feels this way? I really hope not, because I've been reading my textbooks as of late. (Surprise, surprise. I start trying hard towards the end of my college year, not visa-versa like most. ha) Here's my theory on how to fix this, If I (or a student) finds a grammatical error in a PUBLISHED and CREDIBLE book, I think we should be able to get our full monetary value back that we invested in this so called, "Book of Knowledge: College Learning Edition". Ask yourself, if your paper were to have grammatical errors in it, would you get an A? probably not, more like a C or D. Then why should they be able to charge $100+ for books full of errors?

Just something to think about, on this "Hump-Day",

Alastar Swift

PS. Have you ever had that ex randomly pop back into your life, when you thought it was all in the past… then it makes you feel like it just brought you two steps back? Don't fret it, the sun will always rise and that's a reason to stay positive. Just think if that ball of fire didn't rise, you wouldn't be thinking about your ex, would you?

Hyper Inflation Looming?

So today, instead of listening in my class, I was surfing the inter-web and stumbled upon an article about the Quantitative Easing 2. For anyone that does not know what I just referred to, please take a few seconds and read the article. From what I had learned from this article, the Federal Reserve will be flooding the market with a total of $900 Billion USD by the third quarter of 2011. The majority of this will happen in the next eight months as the central bank will buy $600 billion in long-term Treasuries. What is this going to do to the economy? Well for now, we see Markets reaching a new high since the crash and that everyone thinks that we are on our way out of the economic scare. I, myself, do not know a lot about finance, investing, and/or the markets. But what I can say, is that flooding the market with $900 billion dollars (that were made from thin air) can NOT be good for the economy. They talk about scares of deflation, but honestly think about this.

We start with an economy of $10k and then add $9k (made from thin air) and what happens, the currency of this fake scenario just devalued because the economy now has a value of $19k. The new money gets its value from stealing the value of the money already in circulation. This leads to inflation, so how can we fix inflation, by inflating the market even more? As I sit and ponder this, is deflation bad at this point? Are people really scared that our dollar is going to regain the power it once had? I mean this could be a scare tactic but when you sit down and think about it, we need the dollar to deflate so that it can regain it's value.

Check out this video. It explains things A LOT better than I could do.  I recommend to view the first part of the video about the Monetary System [6:45 if you want to skip the intro] (If you do spend the time to watch this entire video, please keep in mind that these are views that are far from the norm. Some may not be entirely true, but it is important to see that there are other viewpoints than the daily ones we see)

"Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened." 
-Ron Paul-

Cheerio

Alastar Swift

Old Acquaintances

I have been outside of Highschool for about.. I don't know 5 years? it's crazy to think about because man it feels like yesterday that I could almost relive all the crazy memories that I made in good ole ____ high school. (yes I blanked out my high school name, why… hmm it's not that important to know… ATM) But crazy enough. I ran into someone from my graduating class in my college town, and it took me by surprise! It was honestly the last person I thought I would see this weekend, but the great thing was, that we caught up and talked about crazy things. Sure we might have talked about crazy people in our graduating class, but at the same time.. Is it judging and saying bad thing when it's actually the truth of the person? 

This brings me to my 2nd thought… I only hold my view of someone when I meet them (as in talking to them for more than one minute, and think about it.. you can have a very informative conversation for 1 minute), or I observe any actions that they may carry out (for themselves or towards other people). I don't think that's really "judging" as I am drawing conclusions from what I have personally experienced and not what I have seen/saw of their outer appearance. I think that society has made such a terrible view of "judging" that people have personalize it so much, that they are able to trick themselves into thinking that they don't "judge" people. Which I think is bullshit. I will be honest I judge people sometime, do I like to??? No I don't. I try not to, because I don't want people to judge me off the bat before they realize who I am. But in this crazy world… where we only get one first impression.. things get quite fake and impersonal. or at least that is my view on networking and interviews. 

So I say screw all the professional, fake, and impersonal events that take place in this world. What happened to being yourself and not having to set your life to a certain standard of living. I believe in doing what you want, and everything else will fall in place, and if it doesn't.. maybe that is part of growing up and experiencing life which will lead you to a whole new perspective of your life. I do not like quotes nor using them, but this one is worth it.

"What goes around, comes around. Karma? Who said you can't be the 'comes around'." - Alastar Swift

Cheerio

Alastar Swift

 

Worst Mistake of My Life...

Ok, probably not the WORST mistake.. but it's up there. Buying Call of Duty: Black Ops was probably a mistake. Why you may ask? It's taking up time that I should spend studying, informing myself about worldly issues or things of that nature, and most of all, playing my guitar. Oh I should probably include, applying for jobs and studying homework.. but that's what Veteran's Day is for! All day is homework and applying to jobs that probably won't hire me as I try to find any job that is not an MGMT at my current job.

Now to what I have spent the better part of my night to… COD:Black Ops, crazy game. Can't compare to the last one, because well two different companies own the rights to Call of Duty series, and each one takes a year off to develop the up and coming game. So this year it is Treyarch's turn to shine, and they did a pretty good job. I really can't say that this one is better than the previous one, but it's still fun. My roommate, his friend in California (he's a marine), and I have been playing for a couple hours tonight. But you know what, everyone thinks ooh, video games what a loser… but you know what, it's how I can keep in touch with my friends that live in different states. You can talk about crazy stories and funny shit that has happened in your or their lives, while having fun working as a team dominating some random kids from around the world. Plus, the things you hear on xbox live, you will never hear anywhere else. The content of most childish arguments and crazy things of that nature, it's unbelievable what comes out of some people's mouths. Really funny though I have to add.

To all that play, and to all that don't. It's all about having fun, isn't it?


Alastar Swift

Open Gym Madness

So I usually spend about 2 hours a night working out, either lifting and playing basketball or I just play basketball for 2 hours. I'm not saying that I'm the greatest player, but I'm good enough to tell who are going to be legit and who are just terrible at basketball. So tonight, I was just observing the pick up game that was going on, and let's label these players, Yellow Shirt, Skin, and Black Beater. Now this game pretty much revolved around these three players, and from the start I could tell that these guys were pretty good, and the rest of the team were ok, but lacked the fundamentals of the game. One thing I noticed of these 3 musketeers were that they all called every single foul even if their wasn't one. If they missed a lay-up, they would yell, "FOUL!" and I'm sitting on the bench warming up by dribble between my legs, and I would burst out laughing every time that would occur. I'd have to say, Yellow Shirt had an excuse for every missed lay-up, or for his lousy and sloppy drives to the basket. I don't know what his deal was but man, I just wanted to say, "Suck it up man, you fucked up. Just admit it." Is it that hard to admit that you fucked up? I don't have a problem saying it, but I guess a lot of people don't like to be wrong.

I'm just thinking to myself, I guess that's a way to save yourself after you try to drive the lane, they play great defense and you launch some crazy prayer of a shot. I give these guys credit because they have a pretty sick shot, but after what I have explained from what I saw tonight. I'm sure anyone that plays basketball will understand the "type" of player that I am describing. It was like watching a shitty AND1 showcase.

But thank god the other court's pick up game had gotten over, so that I didn't have to watch that anymore and could finally play a game.

Alastar Swift

"Don't leave any shots left in the chamber"

Can I say "NO" to work… nope.

So Today, I was called into work, since all the MGMT are gone, and they needed me to close the store. So what else do I have to do on a nice Sunday Afternoon, football, Call of Duty, Halo Reach, watch Discovery, History, or TruTv channels, workout and maybe play a couple of pick up games of bball? but at $14 an hour and I get to run the store for 7 hours, Heck yes! Sign me up.

So besides all the crazy customers I have to deal with, this one sticks out as one of the worst customers I have ever had to deal with.. I'm going to rank it #4 on the list of crazy situations Mr. Swift has encountered.
So I get a page for a customer return and I go and meet this customer. First, she doesn't even let me say anything, she just attacks me. wait. let me fill a mental picture for you of this customer. (Lady was about 5'5", short white/blonde hair, probably 220lbs and had one of those nasty flower dresses on) so she is attacking me on the fact that she didn't get her candy for $0.49, and telling me there are signs up all over this certain candy bag that it's part of the deal. So I tell her to wait and go look for it, and it's clearly not marked like the other candies. So when I try to explain that she grabbed the wrong bag, she blows up and yells at me how "My company" hides products to screw over their customers. So I'm blocking her out, and thinking, 1) She got mad at me before I said anything 2) she lied to me and 3) now she is yelling at me and telling me I'm wrong because I called her bluff.

But she's still yelling, and I can either say sorry, and endure this stupid-angry-childish-rant made by this 40+ year old women, or I can just give her, the $1.49 refund of her candy and get her out of the store. So I decided on the latter, and I say, "I can refund you the $1.49" And for some weird reason, she get all pissed off and says "NO, I want my candy for 49 cents!!" "Why would you refund me $1.49!?" I'm taken back, I'm like did I make a mistake in my math, (Candy costs $1.99, coupon makes the candy .49, um equals.. $1.50.. and I round down because well I can and she was being a C) So I spend 5 minutes explaining, why I am refunding her $1.49 and how the math works.. and Then I see the lightbulb go off in her head, and that's the moment she stops yelling, and starts laughing at how much she loves candy.

I think some people need to be cut off from buying/eating candy. Why is America so unhealthy? I know candy isn't the overall Evil.. but still freak out about a bag of candy?! I mean c'mon people don't look so desperate sometimes.. $1.49 on candy.. On road trip with friends to a resort, a homeless dude asked me for some spare change for something to eat, I was like fuck yeah, here's a $1.25 go buy yourself a Mcdouble. But then again, no one knows on that trip that I gave someone a free meal. crazy how somethings work out.

To all those crazy people out there, keep it up.. cause it makes my life interesting.

Cheerio,

Alastar Swift

PS. I know you aren't reading this homeless guy, but hope that you are doing well, and my advice is to eat something more healthier than McDonalds. (I had bought one of their fruit smoothies, which are ok, as I haven't ate McDonalds for about a year?)

Most Harmful Drug?

This morning, while I was writing my Strategic Management paper I was watching CNN. According to an European study, Alcohol is the most harmful drug. 

<http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/01/alcohol.harm/index.html>

So I'm thinking.. this is still legal? How many lives it kills, how many lives it ruins, how many households are broken, and how many marriages fail due to alcohol. but then again, it's socially acceptable. You know what else is socially acceptable, racism and bullying. Everyday you can see some type of racism or bullying, and yet you also see plenty of new stations doing stories of, "Cyber bullying and Bullying" need to stop. And then the commercial break will be some Political Figure verbally abusing their competition to gain popularity and votes. But then again it's alright for adult to bully each other.. it's more mature, right?

Then when you try to explain this to people who are "political" they say it's just, POLITICS. I hate that answer, it's just politics? and then they go on about how you can't change that and you just have to go with it… I find it very funny that they say that, because then they go off to hide in a little booth to mark a check on a ballot. For what? to try and change something? Let's be honest, does voting really change things? may be on a small scale, but on a large scale? you can't be serious, I mean how many deceased people end up voting every year? that's a statistic I would love to see. Or as we all remember, how many votes do NOT get counted every year? 

Just something to think about on this chilly November 1st morning.

Alastar Swift

PS. Hmm interesting you don't find Cannabis or Psychedelics on that "most harmful" list