Mishmash Musings

Ya know, I’ve been seeing SO MUCH coverage about the current crop of Toyota recalls that I have to wonder if there’s maybe an ulterior motive involved here. Like maybe the American press is using this as an opportunity to knock Toyota down a peg and help bolster sales of domestic vehicles from Ford and GM. Because really, isn’t this all going too far? Do we need daily freakin’ coverage of what’s happening with Toyota? Does the Toyota president’s testimony before Congress really need to be streamed live on the internet? WTF???

Look, I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with Toyotas, but my mom has a 2009 Camry that was recalled, checked, and deemed perfectly fine — which is something not enough of these news stories are getting across. Not EVERY SINGLE ONE of the millions of recalled cars has a freakin’ problem. But that’s not what you’d think after reading some of this mainstream media coverage. Oh, and Chrysler is recalling more than 330,000 minivans to fix airbags. How long do you think that will be in the news?

I’m not trying to minimize the seriousness of the Toyota accelerator and brake problems, but there really seems to be a lot of scare-mongering going on. I mean, I was looking for auto insurance quotes today and ended up getting sidetracked by like 50 different stories about Toyota. Please. We own two Toyotas right now and my mom owns one. We’ve never had any problems with any of them, and would continue buying the brand without hesitation.

Can you guess what the worst fries in America are? I’m not talking about taste here; this is strictly a calorie/fat thing. Well, according to the author of the wildly popular Eat This, Not That series of non-diet diet books, the Texas Cheese Fries w/Jalepeno Ranch from Chili’s wins this title. One order contains a whopping 1910 calories with 147g of fat and 3580mg of sodium. Ugh, simply looking at those numbers is practically enough to give me a heart attack! I love fries, but I’ll definitely stay away from this particular dish at Chili’s!

There was another shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb last week, but unlike the massacre of a couple years ago, this one was an isolated incident. The gunman has been identified as Zach Isaacman, who claims to be a junior at NIU. He allegedly had followed a woman to her dorm at 3 in the morning, and started banging on the doors after she entered. Then another student named Brian Mulder came over and told Isaacman to leave, at which point Isaacman shot Mulder in the leg. Mulder is expected to recover.

It sounds like there could be more to the story than this, but new reports are still a bit short on details at this point. Why would Isaacman just suddenly shoot that other kid in the leg? Was he drunk? High? Did Mulder physically threaten him? Who knows.

I almost went to NIU during my undergrad days… now I’m thinking maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t!

I just read about a woman named Michelle Bisutti who finished medical school in 2003 with about $250,000 in student loans. After deferring payments (and probably flat-out missing some along the way), various fees and penalties along with interest charges have caused the loan to balloon to $555,000. The article then goes on to talk about how Bisutti — and several other former students who are having trouble repaying — are trying to get out of their commitments somehow.

I have to say that I have no sympathy for people like this. They all admit to not reading the fine print carefully enough, while the folks on the lenders’ side (Sallie Mae, usually), claim that the repayment terms and penalties are spelled out a number of times.

To me, it seems like people are just so used to being able to walk away from big debts that they figured they could do the same to their student loans. If you’re drowning in credit card debt, you can file for bankruptcy and have the debt disappear. If you can’t make your car or mortgage payments, you simply wait for repossession or foreclosure. It seems like at least some of the people profiled in the article acted like that’s precisely what they planned to do all along — just walk away from their debt. But student loans don’t work that way.

Look, I know college tuition is expensive and goes up every single year. But people need to SHOP AROUND for tuition the same way they shop around everywhere else. It doesn’t say where Bisutti’s degree came from, but it probably wasn’t an Ivy League school if she was too dumb to read and understand the fine print. I attended community college for two years to get my Associate’s degree before transferring to a place that granted Bachelor’s degrees. Then I earned my B.A. by taking a combination of online and on-campus classes, paying an average of $200 per credit ($600 per class). And now I’m in a grad school program that costs a total of $11,000 at the University of Missouri (though the SAME program is 4x that much at a “name brand” school like USC). I will finish with $0 in student loans. Not because I’m rich, but because I’m going to schools that I can AFFORD.

I posted a couple days ago about tweaking my ankle while jogging. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten any better, even though I’ve been icing it and resting. Plus, now it’s noticeably swollen when compared to my other ankle, so it might even be getting worse! I might have to go to the doctor if this doesn’t clear up soon.

Anyway, I’m definitely going to be laid up for a week or more as I try to recover. That’s going to throw my whole training schedule off, which means I’ll have a lot of catching up to do once I’m back in action. In the meantime, I wish I had some ephedra diet pills or something to help me combat the potential weight gain that might occur as a result of sitting on the couch for a week straight. Or, maybe I should just throw out all my potato chips and cookies right now to save myself from temptation!

Have you heard about the problems U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller has been having with the helmet he’s using for the Olympics? It’s the one pictured to the left here, and apparently the IOC has rules prohibiting “advertising slogans”, so they take issue with the “Miller Time” phrase painted on the back. The IOC didn’t like “Matt Man” either, even though it was just a tribute to Miller’s cousin Matt who died from cancer three years ago at age 18.

Man, I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not like he had a big click here with a website address painted on the helmet… His name is Miller, so Miller Time seemed like a natural phrase to use. It’s not like he’s endorsing the beer. At least the IOC realized it was going to far with the Matt Man thing and allowed Miller to keep that slogan on. Wow, are these “games” stuffy or what? No wonder I stopped watching years and years ago!

No offense, but how idiotic does someone have to be in order to get injured by a stupid video game system like the Nintendo Wii??? I just read an article that says injuries from playing Wii are on the rise, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. At first I thought the article was going to focus on senior citizens and talk about arthritis treatments or something. After all, I know that retirement homes have been using Wiis to help keep residents active, and that age group would seem to be more prone to that type of problem anyway.

But actually, the article doesn’t name a specific age group when talking about the Wii mishaps. It seems that people are falling off the three-inch high Wii Balance Board (are you kidding me???). The article also cites “head injuries” that can occur from playing Wii in confined spaces. WTF is that all about?

I swear, some people….

I spent most of today sorting through and printing a bunch of digital photos that we’ve taken over the past year and a half or so. I had half an album left over from the last time I did this, and was amazed to see how much I’ve aged in that short time!!! I look so young in pics snapped just two years ago compared to now. Wow. I wonder if that’s just me being hard on myself or if I’m just not taking good enough care of my face. Seriously, I need to check into some youthology products or something. Pronto.

At any rate, I feel a bit more organized now that I’ve printed out our most recent pictures. I’ve got to start doing this more often, though. I had a LOT of snaps to go through — and I don’t even think we take that many pictures to begin with! Maybe I’ll start doing this every three months instead of every 18. That should make the task a bit more manageable.