I had my teeth professionally cleaned, plaque scraped and polished today. This followed on from my dentist appointment a week ago which lasted all of 10 minutes and resulted in me needing a "cleaning" appointment with the same predictability that a free Scientology personality test will reveal character imbalances. However I was happy to take a trip to my friendly dental hygienist seeing as I own the world's best set of natural teeth and every year I don't get them polished is a waste of my private health insurance's large dental coverage.

I shaved before my appointment. I also tend to put on cologne before I see my physio. It's not because I'm insecure or anything I just happen to have a realistic understanding of how big and smelly I am and how terrible my beard is.

It seemed to work because my dental hygienist was young and nice and we had as good a conversation as you can have when one person has hooks and a vacuum in their mouth. We talked about jobs and how hard it is to have a conversation when you have hooks and a vacuum in your mouth. It was meta.

After impressing her with my ability to talk while being brushed, my gun barrel straight teeth and my tongue's curious instinct to lick the mirror every time it was put in my mouth it seemed things were going well. So I organised with her a date. She said yes despite the challenges and spillages that the "rinse and spit into this vacuum cleaner" process involved. Next Thursday we're meeting up and I'm having a few molars resealed.

I found an email I sent to Wrigleys in 2002 when they did random market survey mail drop. I got home from school one day and there was two new brands of gum to try. There was the new 'Sweet' extra as well as the "super strong x-cite mint gum". Obviously neither of these products are available today.

However they offered $50 for the best suggestions and comments about their products. My logic was if I wrote a freaking essay about their gum I would surely win the money just by gauge of effort. I was very poor back then and this seemed as good a way as any to fund my chronic Yowie habit of the time.

Quote:

Firstly, cheers for the free sample, I also received a packet of chips that day so It was quite a haul. I trialled most of your two products and also got my family and mates to try some, we all had similar opions.
The X-Cite gums were indeed powerfully minty, although just one or two did not do much compared to a complete handfull. I think that writing the exact number of mints is a good idea however although i did not count out how many mints i received exactly no doubt there will be people out there that will count out the exact number of mints in their packet so hopefully your packaging machines will do a consistent job. The actual packaging looks good and is certainly different and looks high techish with the colour scheme helping this. However, my only complaint about the box is that the whole is just a tad too small and the mints often have a problem getting out. The other problem was that when i took the box out of my pocket, it slid open on occasions. The actual mints themselves did not lack any flavour or mintyness but the amount of mint to gum didn't seem right. There was too much mint coating the gum so that by the time you chewed your gum was filled with crunchy pieces of mints. This problem is fixed by eating more than one at a time because when you chew them in your mouth the gum from each mint joins together. There was one way I found, when eating the mints, to get an extremely powerful jolt of hot, mintyness is to press the recently chewed mint against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Even with just one mint it's quite difficult to hold it there without feeling the heat of the mint. I believe this could be quite useful in marketing for you as it made eating the mints quite enjoyable.
The new 'sweet' extra, however was a dissapoint for me. Granted, it was 'sweet', and not overly so which meant that the taste was not lacking, if not a little plain. Unfortunately the flavour ran out so quickly, unlike your spearmint and other flavoured gums, and after only a few minutes of chewing it was flavourless and not at all sweet anymore. Every piece I tried ran out of flavour quickly and two of my friends also tried it and found it to run out of flavour quickly also. Now, I don't know much about making gum, but the long lasting flavour of extra is what makes me choose it, so when something doesn't taste as good as your other flavours and doesn't last as long either, I would be inclined not to purchase it. Your packaging of the gum is in the same taste as your normal packaging and the white does help acheive the look of sweetness. One thing I did think while I chewed the sweet gum is that it tasted similar to milk bottle lollies that you can buy. I think that if you could capture a taste similar to milk bottles and made it so that it would last like your other flavours, then that could be a really big seller (I would certainly buy a lot of it). Overall I thought that both products were average although innovative, but neither were great. The mints were close though, I think that perhaps making them a little bigger (adding more gum) could make a difference. I hope this information has helped you.

I use mints to freshen my breath without being left with used gum to get rid off. They are good for filling your mouth with minty freshness by just chewing them into powder quickly. You can also acheive a massive mint burst by eating many mints at once and you can play mouth games (the best way to describe it). By doing things like eating as many mints in one go as possible or eating mints then drinking orange juice straight away. Fun Fun. Perhaps you could make a page on your website called "Fun things to do with mints" (or perhaps something more professional) if you end up producing more mint products.

I think that if you build on your idea behind X-Cite and introduce an extremely minty gum with the power of a couple of X-Cites. Market them similar to War-Heads, red packaging. If you put instructions similar to what I wrote in Question 1 about pushing them against the roof of your mouth and really hype up the extreme 'hotness' of the product it may sell well, especially with a younger market.

Well... I wasn't going to post anything else today... Except maybe my story about how I curiously craved chocolate custard this afternoon; left work and bought 600ml of it from Woolworths; got back to work and drank it all at around 4pm. Then 2 hours later I broke my bench press record.

Any comments in the above about sharing gum with my friends or family is a blatant lie because I ate every single piece of those gums no matter how shitty they tasted.

Brad. I'm often amazed at how much food I can pack away during a day. My stomach is constantly begging for more and even the most mundane physical activity seems to spur the need for another meal. Obviously it takes a lot of fuel to motor around my giant, athletic body but every day I'm consuming 5,000 to 6,000 calories. Divide that number by 2200 and you've got the average amount of times I crap every day. I am a hulking machine.

In fact, the more I consider it the more obvious it becomes to me that my body is one of immense physiological prowess. I grow hair, nails and muscle quickly and strongly. My memory is sharp on details and my torso can take quite a beating. I have an exceptional tolerance to pain (for reference see 'Breaking my leg then watching TV for 3 hours' or 'Rupturing a spinal disc and then doing 40 more minutes of weight-lifting).

My giant feet keep me balanced, my giant nose smells out the first hint of trouble... I speedily urinate with alarming pressure and there are, of course, my gun teeth. The more I think about it the more it becomes clear that I am some sort of super-human hero sent to the Earth with some purpose I'm yet to stumble upon.

Now I know what you're thinking. "But Brad, what about your degenerated lumbar spinal discs, tight hamstrings, stunted multifidus, interlocking sacrum and stiff vertebrae? How can you be a super hero when you have to lie down for an hour after walking down a hill and then picking up a sock?"

You see, back in the 1980's my father was employed at IBM, a large North American IT company who in 1983 had a contract with the United States Defence Organisation. He was a lowly ranked technician on a project, probably, where the CIA was trying to breed a new strain of super-humans who could use their superior strength, quick wit, modesty and ability to use tired jokes to overcome the threat of Communism/Aliens/Whathaveyou. Unfortunately the project was compromised and it had to be abandoned, but that was not before a rouge scientist stealthily implanted my Dad with a batch of ultra-sperm and sent him home to my Mum with two tickets to a John Farnham concert and a bottle of Passion Pop. Nine and a half months later - a procrastinator since birth - I was born and immediately starting breast feeding (This is the first part of the story that has any backing - my Mum confirms that I was definitely milking her for between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a day).

But this was still the early 80's and the Cold War was in full swing. Soviet Operatives learned of my location and, under the guise of a Peter Combe concert I was implanted with a tiny time bomb like a talking teddy bear having its battery replaced. This bomb was set to detonate in 2006 - assumedly co-ordinated with the fall of Washington.

The end of Communism came instead, Russia became the capital of riding spinners and the attempted assasination of me and whichever other super babies were born were archived and forgotten about.

Then there was that fateful day in 2006. But the communist scientists had miscalculated and instead of destroying me the tiny bomb was not strong enough to rip through my sinewy tissue and No Fear t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Instead it just imploded part of my spine coincidently at the same time as I was putting down a pair of dumbbells without using my knees.

Now that I have discovered this secret about me I realise I have to find the others. I know they're out there, I can feel them now. Probably. I just have to learn how to activate my full potential. There is obviously some quest of self fulfilment I have to accomplish to reach enlightenment. Like the Matrix I think. I have to realise these boundaries don't really exist. How much of this do I think is real? Do you think that's bullshit you're reading now?

I was recently talking to Chow about my site and how it could use some more regular features to draw in readers. The rest of the conversation, much to Chow's chagrin, was spent fine tuning the first idea whilst discussing Chow's ambition to land his first girlfriend in 2007.

I will now begin hopefully a long tradition of ripping off Letterman with my first, and admittedly highly contextual, Thursday Top Ten:

So did you hear that Chow is interested in dating now? I'm pleased for him, I really am, but I'm not looking forward to his eventual loss of innocence when after everything seems rosy at first things inevitably go wrong. Soon Chow can start to experience the trauma and drama of a long term relationship. In this week Thursday Top Ten we're looking at the "Ten Things Chow's Girlfriend is most likely to be overheard saying in an argument"

10. If you're going to keep twitching like that every night I want you to stop drinking so many Jaeger Bombs.

9. I don't care how many Tribulus Terrestris pills you took, I'm not in the mood

8. I told you to slow down around that corner..

7. I don't care if we can get another one cheaper on eBay

6. ...and call Advance Hair Studio!

5. Stop asking me to call you DJ chow while you tweak on my nipples

4. Admit it, You love that schnitzel more than you love me

3. Did you crush my Ming vase between your Pecs?

2. Why is there so much back hair in the drain?

1. I read your website Chow... I can't believe you rated me on quality, value and service and compared me to your other girlfriends!

It's 4:20am Thursday and I haven't showered since Tuesday.

It's been three days since the World Cup officially began, the best level of One Day International cricket ever played at the most inappropriate time ever. Games starting at Midnight-1am and finishing up just in time for breakfast. Even a die hard fan is going to need some special motivation and a few encouraging activities to last through each match. So I present this weeks Thursday Top 10 Ways to Handle Sleep Deprivation during the World Cup:

10. Prioritise everything planned for tomorrow to work out which things you can skip such as showering, shaving and eventually work.

9. Put Finishing Touches on Bronze Shaun Tait Idol. Or just give him a bit of a polish.

8. Whenever there's a change of balls, get a beer.

7. Study and perform weather rituals to ensure that you haven't stayed up until 5am to watch a no-result due to rain.

6. Teach your body to take 25 minute power naps during each innings break.

5. Register for Betfair and Place $10 bets to try and win the money you would have earned tomorrow.

4. Whenever a commentator utters a double entendre such as "probing the corridor of uncertainty", have a beer.

3. Invite Chilean Leftists around to watch the game.

2. Whenever there's a drinks break, have a coffee.

1. Place $10 bets to try and win back the money you lost yesterday trying to win money for today.

Identity is one of the most important words that I know. Identity is what makes me different from everyone else, and what makes you different from me. The way you perceive yourself and who you actually are, in actuality, are tautologous.

Basically, you are who you tell everyone you are. So far this year I've been - or at least introduced myself at parties as - the following:

A Nerd
A Jock
An Author
A Music Analyst
A Camper
An Australian
A Drunk
An IT Professional
An Information Associate
A Cripple
A Detective
A Brother
A Son
A DJ
House M.D.
A guy in a green shirt
A Programmer
A Photographer
A Concert Goer
A Poet
A Citizen
A Part Time Student
A Full Time Student
Every position on the basketball court
A Patient
A Seller
A Consumer
A Lover
A Reviewer

But life isn't like the Village People and it's when each of these identities is stripped away from it's core concept and mashed with all the others like left over bits of soap that you get me. Brad. I am a giant, multi-coloured ball of soap.

I sighed loudly as a urinated at high speed after drinking lots of water at the gym today.

Then I sighed again. Then a third time.

The maximum capacity of my bladder is over three times that of my lungs. I could drown three people.

Half a litre of chocolate custard before working out will also help you maintain energy levels and lift more weight.

To think Mum said staying up all night watching cricket wouldn't be productive. I lasted 23 hours of awakenedness and I managed to give my entire room a clean and tidy during the second innings as India plummeted out of the World Cup, disappointing millions.

I also got a lot of other stuff done earlier in the day, though I have been awake so long that I don't really remember the early parts clearly anymore.

I wonder if tonight's result will affect the delivery and cost of any of our best-shore components...