[Amazing! Smashing! A Brilliant Success!] 

Hooray for Steve! What an enjoyable journey through the ins and outs of pencil sharpening. We shall forever remem... never mind. On to something new.

You may notice that mathcaddy.com now recommends Death Cab For Cutie's new album, Transatlanticism. If you noticed that, good for you. You get a point. If you also noticed the Bruchi's logo, good for you. You get two points. (That's three points altogether, for a total of... wait for it... three points! Congratulations!)

Anyway, that particular album is incredible. Since first hearing them on a CMJ cd a few years ago, I have greatly enjoyed DCFC, as they are often called by people who cannot waste their time by spelling actual words. But to put it simply, this album kills. It's incredible. (In fact, it gets no credit whatsoever. It's that incredible.)

But seriously folks, this is just a wonderful peice of plastic. (Yes, I bought the CD.) Go get it. Or download it. Or whatever. Just listen to it repeatedly. It will take you a few listens to get into it, but you'll be quite glad you did. I sure was, my friend.

"I wish the world was flat like the old days, so I could travel just by folding a map. No more airplanes or speed trains or freeways. There'd be no distance that could hold us back." - Lyric from "The New Year"
[Posted by adam.b at 9:46 PM] comment on [Amazing! Smashing! A Brilliant Success!] permalink

[Public Propoganda Anouncement (Persuasive Essay)] 

Well apparently passing preschool, kindergarden, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and part of 9th grade will teach you how to write a great persuasive essay such as this:

In today’s fast-paced kill-or-be-killed society, we really just do not have time to fumble around with the slow, clunky pencils sharpeners of yester-year. The future of pencil sharpening needs to be nothing less than quick, efficient and easily accessible machines that produce the quality of sharpness that we have come to know and love. We simply do not have the time or energy to continue to use the fiddle-faddle that our ancestors left us with.

Back in the day, when pencils were first invented and proved to be a very viable product, the only thing missing from their trend was an easy way to sharpen this new-found contraption. Early pencil users would sit by the evening fire for hours on end just whittling away at their pencil trying to achieve pencil bliss. This process soon became know as a ‘waste-of-time.’ The next few generations of pencil users made such improvements like the famous hand-crank sharpener, the more famous hand-crank sharpener with adjustable pencil sizes and the most famous automatic pencil sharpener. Although these were all great inventions for their time, they lack the speed and efficiency that consumers need today. For example, say you only have 3 hours in which you have to write a 5-paragraph essay that will determine the rest of your life as you know it. Would you waste any second of that time fiddling with an obsolete pencil sharpener? I did not think so.

Pencil sharpeners should not only be quick and efficient, but also easily accessible. Place yourself in that same situation again. You raise your hand to get permission from the instructor to sharpen your pencil. The instructor is deeply involved in a novel and he does not notice you as soon as you would have liked. Once he gets to a point in his novel where he can put it down, he walks quietly towards you, being very careful not to disturb any one else. He slowly heads your direction and takes his time to check your peer’s papers as he passes them by. Finally, he reaches you and he nods his head approvingly. You get up, walk to the pencil sharpener, sharpen your pencil, walk back to your seat, sit down and continue writing. A total time of 1 minute and 48 seconds completely wasted. That single pencil sharpening took up nearly one third of the allotted time, when you round up to the nearest hour. If pencil sharpeners were somewhere easily accessible, on the back of your pencil for instance, then you would not have to waste so much time or suffer the ridicule of using a cheaply produced pencil sharpener in front of the whole class. The benefits are just infinite.

Although a quick, efficient and easily accessible pencil sharpener would be nice, what good would it do without providing the sharpness that we have come to know and love? It wouldn’t do any good at all. With all the previous ‘improvements’ in pencil sharpening there have always been obvious flaws that have not been addressed. With the hand-crank it often left you with a dull point and it was constantly jamming. Although the newer automatic sharpeners did not jam much and they provided a very sharp tip, they were very noisy and ate up your pencil instantly. Pencil sharpeners of the future will get rid of those petty flaws and set a new standard for pencil sharpeners everywhere.

Now you may think all of this is just too good to be true, but let me get to my point. We can not thrice another day while our pencil sharpening technology stays stagnant! We need quick, efficient and accessible pencil sharpeners today! And we, the generation of now, are the only ones to fulfill this need!

Oh boy, oh boy! Do you think that I passed? By the way, BLogger apparently does not like indents at the begging of paragraphs.
[Posted by steve at 9:15 PM] comment on [Public Propoganda Anouncement (Persuasive Essay)] permalink