Many people struggle with life’s lessons. I personally struggle with time and money management. For some reason I don’t have that person inside my head telling me when a meeting is nor do I have the one telling me purchasing gas at 26% isn’t the best investment I could make. A few of life’s lessons have been cleared up thanks to a guide to life’s lesson as told in John Cusack’s movies.

I love John Cusack. In fact my copy of High Fidelity has been worn out and will no longer play in my DVD player. His movies are witty and full of real life relatable material. Nothing beats the on screen synergy between Jack Black and John Cusack in High Fidelity.

I remember reading, with great interest, Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In it the book describes, among other things, video walls that cover entire sides of the living room. What was playing on them? Why someone else’s living room! The main character’s wife even goes so far to nag him about purchasing more video walls. What seemed absurd at the time doesn’t seem so absurd now.

The story above tells how shame, not sex or violance, is the easiest way to score ratings with today’s TV audience. Duh. We’ve been having fun shaming our neighbors, classmates, and coworkers via gossip and idle rumors for years now. I’m surprised the TV executives are just now realizing this.

In other news, it’s official, I have no life. I spend the majority of my time in committee meetings, working, and programming a mind numbing school project in VB. What little free time I do have I gladly spend with Lauren or hanging out with my fraternity brothers. Sigh. I can’t wait to graduate and become an adult. The funny part about that is that as soon as I become an adult I’ll be wishing I was back at college. Just more proof you can’t win no matter what.

I pick my nose. I admit it. I spend most of my time while driving looking for boogers, without a care in the world. After thinking about this I realized that a lot of people treat their cars as if they have the darkest tint and no one can see what their doing. Well drivers of America; you are wrong. I can see you picking your nose, eating, singing, dancing, arguing, talking on your phone, and doing your hair. So does everyone else.

I was recently watching television and noticed something interesting. A man named David Fink is running for Congress. Does anything sound odd there? How could you not make out the irony in that name? Another good one is the name of the doctor who’s office I went to in order to have my wisdom teeth pulled. His name was Dr. Fear. Sometimes you have to wonder why people wouldn’t want to change their name under certain circumstances. Of course my last name is Stump and I’m 6’5”, which is odd as well. Of course my name doesn’t have any adverse affect on my career.

Here is an example of my surfing habits: Cam’s freezer talks to him, Dave survives his addiction, Platypus Rex tries not to be pigeonholed, someone had a kid, and finally the one person who shouldn’t have kids does. I’m now off to Fark.com to waste some more of my life.

Only the l0s3rs didn’t play with LEGOS growing up. Slashdot has this story about them, what makes this post worthy is the addition that Hemos puts on about building cities and then destroying them … ah fond memories. It make me want to build stuff out of LEGOS again.

I consider myself a fairly in tune when it comes to business etiquette. However, I’m kind of old school in that I think that sometimes you can’t merely be “fuzzy-wuzzy” with business partners. Sometimes, like in most parts of life, you need to knock a few heads around and yell a little bit. Maybe I’m just an old soul … but I don’t care if people like me as long as the job gets done and the bottom line is looking good at the end of the day. I missed the business class that says your supposed to like who you work with.

If you already don’t know that all of your privacy rights are going down the tubes you should and that corporate america is leading the way – then you should check out this article about one man’s fight to kick some corporate ass. I’ve started sending back empty envelopes (thanks Matt!) among other things.

Here is a good site that tells you how to tell all your banks, creditors, credit card companies, etc. to NOT share your information with others. They don’t share just information, but transactional information, which is what makes this so scary. Another way to fight back is to return all that junk mail to the people with empty envelopes (that costs them money).

Today I went to call my mom and tell her that I had shipped all of the boxes. Guess what… “We are sorry – the circuits are currently busy” – it’s been busy now for 2.5 hours! I hate phone companies!