My RSS feed reader was also well over a hundred feeds and quickly kept multiplying how many unread posts it contained (well into the thousands). RSS technology is great because it’s so simple, easy, and quick to sign up for site updates but also dangerous because it’s just as simple, easy, and quick to get overloaded with information! My feed reader now sits at 17 feeds (not counting a 404 report for this site and three delicious tag feeds) with only 51 unread posts (all of which are three delicious tag feeds).

Speaking of those tags, a while back I blogged about del.ico.us tags [yes, I know they dropped the dots but I haven't!] and how they’re useful to setup a system of tasks, such as toread, toblog, tobuy etc.

Well, I realized I’ve rarely blogged about the items in my toblog tag so to solve this issue here’s a nice quick list of six things I was gonna blog about but didn’t for some lame reason(s) but now that I’m motivated we’ll bounce through them quickly and painlessly. I have a total of 54 toblog stories saved, so watch out for a few more quick post n run style articles!

1. Ron Paul hoped to make an impact in New Hampshire primary

On the surface, New Hampshire seems like the ideal place for Ron Paul’s libertarian platform, the state motto is, after all, “Live Free or Die”. The results show Ron only scored 7.7 % of the state’s votes, which makes me skeptical of something; either New Hampshire does not care about living free anymore or the vote was rigged or voters don’t vote well (methinks it’s a combination of all three).

2. Cream of Boston

Are you a young sexy Bostonian? If so, Cream of Boston wants you to sign up for their exclusive dating site for hot people only! I’m not sure quite how I feel about this site yet. Perhaps after I apply and get rejected I’ll form a stronger opinion. As for now, it is what it is. Alternatively, if you’re a smart and hot girl living in the Boston area you can join a much more exclusive club by simply dropping me an e-mail for more, ahem, details!



3. The Gentrification of my neighborhood continues?

When I was younger I really hated the influx of richer, more “sophisticated” people into my neighborhood. All of a sudden BMW’s, cafes, and other signs of the yuppy started showing up in my beloved ghetto fabulous hood. Well, now that I’m older and umm, more “sophisticated”, I welcome the newbies to my hood! Our neighborhood has changed a whole lot over the past ten years, and reflecting back it has certainly changed for the better. There’s a bunch of awesome new restaurants and other businesses (The Avenue Grille, Real Tacos, Astra Salon, Sugar Bowl Cafe), a lot more students from UMASS Boston and a whole ton of renovated triple deckers acting as condominiums.

Well, the trend continues with a proposed new development at the Bayside Expo Center, with a bunch of new shops and office buildings, and I welcome the proposals and new developments. The Bayside Expo Center is quickly turning into an eyesore in an otherwise great area. If you haven’t been to the Dorchester waterfront behind the Bayside Expo Center go soon! It’s now a part of the Boston Harborwalk and is a very nice place to go for a stroll.

4. Dorchester, the most up and coming neighborhood!

As a Dot rat born and raised, at first I was skeptical of all the praise my grimey neighborhood was getting but now love it! In March of last year Business Week named Dorchester as Boston’s most up and coming neighborhood. It’s always been the biggest and most populated part of Boston but perhaps soon it’ll also be one of the nicest places to live. Even now it’s diversity and sheer size makes it a wicked exciting place to live. Rock on Dot!

5. Rock The Earth

Honestly not sure why I bookmarked this site but it’s a non-profit that helps the music industry and its fans act more sustain-ably. I find this a bit ironic as the giant worldwide tours big musicians go on create such a large amount of pollution that it’s a bit hypocritical to ask their fans to cut back. It’s a bit like Al Gore preaching the green lifestyle while he jet-sets around the world. PUHLEEEZE!

6. Massachussets woman commits suicide because of home foreclosure.

So big bad corporations get bailed out when they frack up but honest working class people are criminals who don’t pay their bills?!?!

Here’s a plan, the U.S. government bails out the people with a mortgage instead of the rich corporation. Call it trickle up economics. The poor and middle class people get mortgage only money to pay for their homes, thus keeping their homes and keeping the mortgage companies afloat.

It’s a win-win situation except for the smart and humble Americans who paid for their homes. People like my mom who slowly but surely paid for a house she could (barely) afford.

What a mess. People are dying and becoming homeless while corporations get bailed out by the taxpayers. It’s not government, it’s a racket!

Socialism for the rich, welfare for the poor and capitalism for the rest of us!

OK, now that I’m all outraged and angry let’s end this edition of Webquotes and Counterpoints so I can cool off a bit!

That’s six toblog stories down, 48 more to go.

• How I Quit Smoking In Less Than One Minute And You Can Too! Part 1

Also subscribe to my feed to ensure you catch the whole series!

In the first part of this series we discussed how after 18 years of living nicotine free, a drunken encounter with the cancer stick led me down the desolate path of addiction to cigarettes. I say addiction to cigarettes because the addiction goes behind being hooked on a drug, it’s also a lifestyle, a social enhancer (and destroyer), and it’s something to do. It’s the last one that really gets you too. While waiting for a bus, walking down the street, taking a break from the cubicle, listening to someone talk, reading a book, and so on and on goes the list of activities made more bearable with a smoke in hand.

To those who’ve never smoked, it’s tough to explain why it’s so difficult (yet, easy) to stop. Before I started smoking I always thought that if I ever did smoke I could easily just quit whenever and be done with it. Once I started smoking I realized my previous thoughts weren’t quite 100% valid. There was some truth to the idea of just quitting, but when social factors such as friends, advertisements (the stop smoking ads would just remind me I hadn’t had a smoke lately), and other social situations are added into the mix it becomes tough to separate smoking from your daily, weekly and monthly activities.

The post-dinner smoke becomes a habit and eventually all activities are associated with how they relate to you having a smoke. Getting up in the morning means your first smoke of the day, showering means you can have a smoke while you wait to dry off, finishing your homework is a cause for a cancerous celebration, and look at that, the end of your cigarette is just a reason to light another one with its butt so you don’t waste lighter fluid. It’s not so much that quitting is difficult, it’s that returning to your regular life without a cig in your hand is awkward, foreign and overwhelming.

With that, as promised let’s get to the pros of smoking:

• It’s a social enhancer.

At a party or other social event, smokers automatically have something to discuss or use as an introduction.

• It’s legal.

I’m sure a lot of smokers would prefer a nice, fresh Cuban cigar to their cancer sticks, but alas the non-free market doesn’t work.

• Help Southern farmers.

Though many people in the Southern states have expanded to other crops, there still exist a lot of people who rely on tobacco for their livelihood. You might be killing yourself slowly, but at least you’re putting food on someone’s table!

• It’s a relatively cheap drug.

Compare to alcohol or coffee or any of the other legal drugs and the per smoke cost of cigarettes seems cheap.

• Get a nicotine high every now and then.

Most smokers stop getting a high from their cigarettes a few packs into the habit and pack a day smokers are lucky to get any kind of feeling off the first puff of the day, yet alone the countless other butts they consume.

• Save medical costs by dying early.

Grim but true.

• Or smoke so much your lungs are encased in a protective layer of tar.

Unrealistic but very rare cases do exist where people live into their 100′s and smoke a pack a day. I don’t recommend this strategy.

Now, for the cons of smoking:

• It’s a social crutch.

Opposite to what I said above, cigarettes can become a social crutch for some, where they run to the smoking area at parties and stay there for the night’s duration.

• Increase pollution locally and globally.

Butts everywhere, mass-production emits tons of carbon and other chemicals, transport spews more pollution and even consuming the cigs puts smoke into the air.

• Smelly clothes.

You might not notice it but non-smokers will be repulsed by your stinky aroma.

• Less disposable income.

Here in Massachussets cigarettes costs about $6 per pack. If you smoke a pack a day, that’s $42 a week, $168 a month and a whopping $8,736 $2,016 a year! That’s insane!

• Being reliant on a foreign substance.

One of the big reasons I quit smoking was my desire for independence and freedom (this desire also led me to ditch the car and buy a bike). While a conscious smoker your happiness will be tied to whether you’ve gotten your nicotine fix recently or not. Not only that but it determines your daily schedule and what you can and can’t do.

Now there’s of course plenty of other negative aspects of smoking but I’m quite sure the vast majority of visitors here will be aware of the dangerous and unhealthy aspects of cigarettes so I’ll spare everyone from reciting the evils of smoking.

In the next (and possibly final) post in this series, we’ll tackle what I did to quit smoking, how you can use my strategy and we’ll open up the discussion for any other strategies or ideas you have. My strategy really did work and it’s simple enough that anyone can use it and logical enough that I feel it could work for a significant amount of you.

Being relatively smoke-free for more than six months now I’m here to tell you about the immense benefits of not smoking and how to quit smoking in less than one minute. There’s simply too much material to cover in one post so we’ll have a 3-4 part series about cigarettes, their dangers and how to quit. Today let’s go through some of my personal history. Next we’ll talk about the pros and cons of smoking, focusing on health, economics, and time. Finally, we’ll discuss how to quit smoking in less than one minute. If you’re not subscribed to the RSS feed, now would be a good time to subscribe!

For the first 18 years of my life I never smoked a cigarette and was very adamant about the dangers of smoking and trying to get people around me to quit. When I was a little kid there was one or two incidents where I threw a cup of water at my step-father while he was smoking. Needless to say I quickly figured out this was not a very good strategy! I’d also see my mom smoking on very rare occasions and would take the cigarette from her and threaten that I’d start smoking it if she didn’t put it out. So, you can see I was certainly not a smoker, knew the dangers and publicly promoted not smoking.

Alas, a few months into my freshman semester at the University of Southern California, I got a little too drunk and ended up smoking a cigarette and enjoying it. Though I smoked on only very rare occasions for a few months, eventually I degraded to being a pack a day smoker. The low point came that summer, while working for my step-dad as a construction worker, I smoked nearly two packs a day!

The next school year, I incidentally transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, home of Tobacco Road. Though I didn’t repeat the mistakes of smoking two packs a day I still smoked way too much. Even as a poor college student, I could easily find ways to scrounge up the $2-$2.25 for a pack of smokes. Yup, they are dirt-cheap there as much of America’s tobacco is grown in the region.

So my drunken slip turned into a habit and six years later at the age of 24 I was still smoking nearly a pack a day. At this point though my desire to quit was growing exponentially every day. A few incidents pushed me past the tipping point. In January of this year I quit smoking cold turkey. I had one relapse, which I expected to happen, but it only served to further convince me that not smoking is clearly the right move. Seven months into my smoke-free existence and I’m wicked happy and healthy. Buying and riding a bicycle personally helped me remember to keep my lungs clear and over the course of this series we’ll discuss similar strategies for kicking the habit and staying clean. Remember to sign up for the RSS feed or e-mail updates to stay up to date.

My elbow is still a bit tight and sore from the fall I took a few days ago so this morning I’ll share a few more videos from Revver with you.

Daily Greens 86 – Workin’ For The Weekend

One positive benefit of rising gas prices, four day work weeks! Hopefully 4 day weeks are a trend that will continue as workers will be more productive with that extra day of rest and our economy will benefit from healthier people who are not cooped up inside their office five days a week.

No Paine, No Gain

A look back at Thomas Paine and his positive influence on the USA. Should we look to radicalism in our modern times for solutions to our great economic, educational, and environmental issues?

Where is your hippie “hope” now?

A satirical video about Barack Obama crushing the dreams of young kids hoping to become the next star athlete or musician. Personally, I think it’s about time schools integrate rap music into the curriculum and teach students how to use musical equipment in a music class rather than ignoring kids’ interests and discouraging them from following dreams. Sure, everyone won’t make it as a musician or athlete but by providing these kids a venue in an educational setting it could help keep them involved in the rest of their education.

Newspapers

Rest in peace newspapers, you’re simply not efficient or useful anymore. Nearly all of my news comes from the internet, which I’m finding is now much, much more accurate than the generic, corporate run newspapers. Plus, there’s no need to consume a bunch of paper to get a few stories I might find interesting when I can just use the internet to get the most updated version of the story and communicate instantly with others about the story. Attempts by the newspaper industry to adjust without adjusting draws similarities to the movie and music industry, both of whom are still struggling to understand our modern world.

Recycle An Old T-Shirt into a Sexy Bikini

I’d call this reusing more than recycling but in either case it’s a great tip for the ladies out there. We reuse our old shirts as rags around here but since it’s just cloth there’s more than one or two reuses for them.

That is all, folks. Have a great weekend!

We start off with Matt of HookLineSinker fame. He’s been sick lately but is finally starting to feel better. Being sick sucks so let’s all wish him a super quick full recovery. At least Matt’s sickness gave him a chance to see a great movie, Into the Wild, the story of Christopher McCandless‘ journey into the Alaskan wilderness. It’s a fantastic movie and I recommend all my readers check it out. If you like Pearl Jam you’ll love the soundtrack to Into the Wild, as it’s an all acoustic album by Eddie Vedder. Matt also saw the new Angelina Jolie movie, Wanted, this weekend and saw a stark contrast to the simple but sad beauty of Into the Wild:

Wanted is a great example of 100% American Hollywood. They try to get the audience of people who have boring jobs (99.9%?) and make them feel like they could be a world class assassin and be around hot women and fast cars and blah blah blah. I enjoyed it for what it was but the whole time I’m thinking, I’d rather not have to deal with riding the top of a train, getting shot at, being beat down repeatedly, getting stabbed and cut repeatedly, and just get away from that whole mess and live a normal life. The movie ends with the line “What the @#$% have you done lately?” … How um, cheesy? For starters I overpaid for movie tickets to a movie theater that has sub-par seating and projectors.

I love how Matt describes the chase scene and getting shot at as mundane tasks. I’ve yet to see Wanted, I intended to but will hold off based on that review. I’m perfectly content with my life right now and don’t really need to escape from it. Sounds like a movie I’ll eventually rent but for now the four free passes I have to the movies will go towards seeing Wall-E, which sounds absolutely amazing. Also Matt, I’d highly recommend you go ahead with your plan to get rid of one of your cars and highly encourage you at least consider bicycling to work. Buying a bicycle is easily one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and it’s already paid for itself through sheer enjoyment and improved health!

Next up is Ahmad Farid from Unleashing Thoughts. Ahmad witnessed an interaction on a bus between the driver and a passenger that was rude on both parts. Ahmad makes a dark realization that:

Two people who have never seen anything bad from the other are just treating each other as enemies.

Unfortunately it is human nature and history that automatically makes us confront others as enemies. Ahmad wonders:

Why do people like to show anger and hatred? Is it for showing strength? Dignity? Honor?

The answer, I believe, lies with our ancestors. They were forced to analyze everyone as an enemy first in order to protect themselves and their family. Those people who assumed everyone was friendly most likely died quicker due to more evil people taking advantage of them. Eventually humans start grouping themselves into communities and were able to overcome sinister individuals and were forced to act nicely to each other but as my post from six days ago and the passenger and driver on Ahmad’s bus show, our angry and aggressive tendencies have a way of showing themselves. It is why many of us must make a conscious effort to be nice but experience anger without thinking about it.

It’s now my distinct honor to introduce the next President of the United States, Douglas Ragan, from The New Pundit. I’ll let himself explain why he’ll be the next President:

I am not actually running for President of the US for a few reasons. One reason is that I am 33. Another reason is that I have no political experience. And lastly, I am a very reasonable person who does not enjoy lying, therefore no one would ever vote for me.

So, he won’t actually be the next President but by not enjoying lying I already have more faith in him than either of the mainstream candidates! The New Pundit continues to act non-Presidential and gets right to work addressing a huge issue for many Americans, oil and the environment:

There are some economic minded types out there who believe that the green movement may be the next big thing in the economy. Some of the ideas would create many new jobs and there are a number of companies who would greatly benefit by getting their green ideas off the ground.

As one of those “economic minded types”, I’ve got to agree that the green industry will be the next big business in the USA and around the world. It’ll require a shift in consumer and corporate behaviors, from planned obsolesce that requires continual consumption to a sustainable model that focuses on local communities and thus strengthens the nation as a whole by strengthening each of our neighborhoods. If we focused all new development in the US towards green methods we could slowly but surely reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and ensure every citizen would have access to clean and cheap energy. It’s a win-win for everyone except the current behemoths of the economy.

Justin from LifeofJustin brings us some good news and bad news. A few days ago his iPhone stopped working:

So at this point, I am ready to barge in to the Apple store here in Phoenix and see what is up with this thing. I am really hoping to get a replacement of some kind. I just hope they don’t make me wait to get a new phone in the mail.

As a fellow iPhone owner, I feel Justin’s pain as the device becomes almost an extension of yourself, when it’s working right. I’ve had a few issues with my own iPhone so I especially understand the frustration of the expensive phone not working perfectly. My own problems have involved poor service, slow response time, and frequent freezing. I’m past the warranty but I might make a trip to the local Apple store and see if they can help me out too, after all Apple’s customer service is supposed to be phenomenal.

The good news from Justin’s life is that he went to Hawaii for the weekend. I’m a bit jealous that he got to just up and go randomly to Hawaii, especially since one of my good buddies just came back from there and had an amazing time there. It’s made me start thinking of taking a trip somewhere myself, though I’ll for sure be biking there once my injuries are healed and bike is fixed so Hawaii is out of the question for now. I’ll be going to the Saco river at the end of the month but want to go somewhere new too. Any suggestions?

Finally Casey from Volunteer Boston discusses a pretty cool non-profit group that helps Bostonians plant orchards in their urban environment.

EarthWorks is a non-profit that works with community groups to plant and maintain urban orchards in Boston. They concentrate on communities with limited resources where they can have the biggest potential impact. EarthWorks tries to connect the neighborhood residents with nature – something that seems quite far off in the middle of the city.

It sounds like a very cool organization. I’ve been considering planting a pear tree in our backyard lately and Casey’s post might just inspire me to go ahead and do so. We already have a small garden but we have just barely enough land for a few trees too so might as well!

Thanks again to all my readers for making June the best month in this blog’s history.

Box n Shovel…haha…loi.