i think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me

a few totally unrelated things that have me thinking today...

inspired by (well, just about totally stolen from) jenn, i pose one of the great existential quandaries for the consumer in all of us...what are the items on which you've spent lots of money but turned out totally worth it. in other words what have you bought where the price::quality ratio was deservedly high, where you got your money's worth and more, even though you spent more money than you might normally spend?

my answer, as in the comments on jenn's post...

when i was just out of college i spent almost $200 on a leather jacket. lots of money for a dumbass 22 year old waiting tables and working a $65/week music buisness "internship". but i wore that thing constantly for years and years. now the lining is ripped and there are a couple of holes and the distressed light brown bomber look is a bit dated, but damn, it was great for a long time. and women loved it.

recently i spent $500 on a new camera, a canon powershot S3..and it's been well worth it...it's helped my photography immensely. especially as a complement to the ridiculous amount of money i spent to go to egypt and morocco. i definitley wanted to get some great shots there, and i think i did ok.

i'll add that the money spent on the trip was well worth it, even if i haven't fulfilled my promise to write more about it. well, i did a bit for egypt. and the morocco portion is in draft stage. no, really.

on another note...a recurring thought i've had over the years is that if there's an afterlife, i would love to get some answers to the major burning and arguably not definitively resolved questions from recent years...such as (but not limited to) who really shot jfk, were the rosenbergs guilty, what happened to amelia earhart, is o.j. simpson actually guilty (and if not, who killed nicole brown simpson and the other guy) or what's the top-secret formula for coca-cola, or whether bush was wired during that debate with kerry. so i wonder...what are your questions you'd want answered if there is an afterlife?

** this of course begs the folding in on itself-like question of whether there is an afterlife. which is a question that can only be answered when you die. the implications of said answer thus...yadda yadda...

finally (and inspired by bill simmons's column today), as the baseball-inclined among you most likely know, players usually get to chose the music that plays when they come to bat. so, imagine you're a major league basebal player...i'll give you a minute....

what would you chose for your "at-bat" music? you can chose a mix of 1-4 songs. me? i'd probably go with "how soon is now", "september gurls" and "i wanna hold your hand". maybe throw in the shameless promotion for a friend by using the trolleyvox's "just you wait". of course, this would change during the course of a six-month season.