Now's As Good A Time As Any

I’m thinking about maybe going to Ecuador this summer (among other possible places). The only thing is that I feel like I’d like to go to a new continent rather than revisit one I’ve been to. But it’s rather quite expensive to get to places in Asia.

I went out Thursday night to get my car out of the ice, and on the way one of my eyeglass lenses popped out. Now of all things to fall out onto a snowy, icy street that you’ll never, EVER find again…ARRRGH! That’s what, about $100 down the drain? So now I’m back to my Harry Potter-type glasses.

Maybe I should go live on a commune for a while!

Sometimes I feel like the situation in the world (that’s not to say in my life; I’m pretty okay) is so disappointing that the only way to fix things is to create some kind of alternative reality, some kind of Utopia in refuge from all the craziness. I don’t know what that would mean exactly: maybe get together with a bunch of people, buy up a bunch of land (maybe in a Third World country) and start everything over? Or, on the other hand, maybe I could construct this Utopia in my own mind and then put it all down in words. That seems like kind of a dodge, though.

I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to be happy in my life, and I also think I know what it would take to be a virtuous person. But the two often appear to be fundamentally incompatible. Moreover, I doubt whether I have the courage to accomplish either one. So, like most of humanity, I continue to muddle through. But presumptuous as it may be, I have a nagging feeling that I could do more.

Rolling Rock beer used an ad strategy I’ve never seen before. They aired ads before the Super Bowl suggesting that they were going to air an ad during the Super Bowl (while not mentioning the Super Bowl by name). Then they actually didn’t air an ad during the Super Bowl, but rather followed up with ads alleging that they had aired an ad during the Super Bowl (or, as they put it, “on Sunday”). Think how many non-Super Bowl ads they could air alleging that they aired a Super Bowl ad for the same price that an actual Super Bowl ad would have cost!

Life is confusing.