Gas Station Hot Chocolate

Has anyone ever noticed hot good hot chocolate is from the gas station? I know they use just normal powder mix but its always mixed so well and it never settles to the bottom. I wonder how they do this. Is there some special technique I don't know about. Or specific machinery that I can't get without a license? Whatever it is, its totally worth the black market cost.

My Drive To Work:

I live pretty far from work. Without traffic its a 45 minute drive. And seeing as I live in LA, there is no "without traffic". There is traffic at 3AM somewhere. I guarantee it. I listen to NPR sometimes but it gets repetive so I like to fill the time with podcasts. My three favorite podcasts to listen on the way to work:

1. How Stuff Works with Josh and Chuck - This podcast is part of http://www.howstuffworks.com. They have a few others but this one is my favorite. Josh and Chuck are hilarious and well informed on whatever it is they talk about. And they talk about whatever. Picking the most obscure topics, you get a history, current events and random facts about random things. I also like their Stuff You Missed In History Class. I might have a tiny crush on Miss Katie Lambert. Don't tell the missus.

2. This American Life - The juggernaut of podcasts is hosted by Ira Glass and features stories on a particular topic with a wide variety of angles on that story. Its often deep and poignant and sad and funny. Its a well written painting (yes, that works) on the many facets of the American life and I think anyone would benefit from listening to it.

3. WTF with Marc Meron - I actually just started listening to this this morning but it was mentioned in the newest issue of Wired so I grabbed an episode and loved every minute of it. Hilarious stuff. I can't wait to listen to other ones.

Almost done.

For those that don't know, I am a writer director. Technically. I have done shorts and I am working on my first feature. I am nearly done with the third draft of my script and then it'll be ready to send out.

I have a couple leads on meeting potential investors and am very hopeful. I really like the script. It still makes me laugh and I think it flows very well. Who knows what others think though.

My goal was to be finished by the end of February with the script and I will make that.

Consumerism: Solving Problems You Didn't Know You Had

I was at a well known retailer the other day and I saw a brochure for a "quiet dishwasher". It said how much my loud dishwasher can ruin my day to day functioning and how this dishwasher was so quiet, that you couldn't even hear that it was running. It even came with a graph that had estimated values for when you bought your current dishwasher and how you paid for it which gave you the estimated decibels of your current machine.

Have we relied on products to make our lives better so much that we have run out of problems to solve? I didn't even know that my loud dishwasher was ruining my life. Sure enough, that night, I ran the dishwasher and all I could hear for 30 minutes was the swish swish of incoming cleanliness. And our dishwasher sucks. You have to pre-scrub half the items that go into in order to get them clean enough for the machine to clean properly. It came with the apartment but if it was actually mine, I probably wouldn't be able to stand it.

I think the basic root of the problem is we have become so numbed to the real problems in our lives that the small victories, the quiet dishwashers and automated ovens, give us reason to go on. Wife hates your guts and wants to leave you but won't because it would ruin the kids life? Screw talking to her, get her a new dishwasher! A quiet one so she can hear herself think. That might be a bad idea. You don't want her thinking!

Why does the rest of the world hate America? Because loud dishwashers are our problems. Perspective people, let's buy some more of that.