7 Reasons

Tag: 7 reasons

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Road Trips Are Awesome

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Road Trips Are Awesome

    7 Reasons Why Road Trips Are Awesome

    There’s no better feeling than the wind in your hair, the open road ahead of you and some pumping tunes on the radio. You have only two objectives – get from A to B and have fun. Here’s seven reasons why road trips rock.

    1.  You Get to Drive Something Different. Although you can opt to take your crappy Nissan Micra cross-country – where’s the fun in that? A road trip is the prime opportunity to hit that car hire firm and rent the vehicle of your dreams. Go wild. Cadillac, camper van, Monster Truck – the choice is yours. Just remember three things, it needs to be comfortable, you need to opt for a vehicle with cup holders – so as to ensure that passengers can be hydrated with no risk of spillage – and you need a sound system that goes up loud!

    2.  Power Rock. Road trips are 25% about the journey and 75% about the tunes that you choose to accompany your epic voyage. This is your prime opportunity to delve into the greats of 80’s/90’s power rock. I mean screeching guitars, high pitched man voices and lots of opportunities for throwing your rock fingers into the air and waggling your tongues ‘Gene Simmons-style’ at the children trying to peacefully watch ‘Lady and the Tramp’ in the next car.

    3.  Road Trip Games. When else in your adult life do you get to play games? Any sport with a referee doesn’t count. I’m talking good old-fashioned car journey games. There is something about the fact that you are cooped up in a car that makes even the simplest game amazing. In every day life you may see six, maybe seven yellow cars a day and allow them to pass by without comment. Suddenly, simply your location means that the appearance of a yellow vehicle will have you acknowledging its presence with a shrill cry of victory and a short, sharp jab to your partners arm. When else is violence condoned? Ordinarily you may be saddened to see a poor little badger deceased on the side of the road – not when your objective is to spot the road kill before you companions. Embrace the games.

    4.  Junk Food. No matter where you are travelling, chances are you won’t be able to be healthy. So don’t beat yourself up about it. Drink that Red Bull even when you heart tells you it can take no more. Scoff those Haribo and Pringles safe in the knowledge that they were the only option in the Texaco garage on the M42. And, if you have to, follow those golden arches. This may well be the only time that it is acceptable to step inside the home of that creepy clown and heck…supersize it if you want – you need the energy.

    5.  Interesting Characters. What’s the one thing that crops up without fail in road movies? Unusual characters. It’s inevitable. Whether it be a minibus full of boisterous football fans on their way home from a match – eager to show you what’s under their clothes – or a handsome cowboy who seduces you and then steals all of your bail money, it will happen so have a contingency plan.

    6.  Arguments. Whenever map reading is involved, there will be arguments. Use them as therapy, air your woes and criticise your companions’ foibles. Get it out, you’ll feel lighter. See it as ‘On-the-Road Healing’.

    7.  Saving Money. Your outgoings are petrol and snacks, none of this airport tax malarkey or being charged extra by the cretins at Ryanair for a blanket in their sub-zero plane cabin. These saved pennies can be used to stock up on fun road trip activities or as extra beer money when you finally reach your destination. Bonus.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Never Lick A Door Handle

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Never Lick A Door Handle

    Remember Ewan MacDougal of Furniture Fortress and Window Blinds as Christmas Presents fame? Well he’s back. And this time he’s not alone. Joining him on the 7 Reasons sofa is article co-author Nicola Winters. Oh, and a lot of Japanese girls with their tongues attached to door handles. We’ll leave Ewan and Nicola to explain why.

    ***

    There are many trends, fashions and fads that come and go (most are completely alien to me) but yet they get the whole world talking. Some trends catch on, some don’t and some simply shouldn’t! You can often predict the next big trend by looking at Japanese culture. For a long time the Japanese have been number one for innovation, number one for technology and most defiantly number one for alternative fashion. However, there is a new phenomenon sweeping Japan that I certainly hope is not a sign of things to come at home. The bizzare new fetish where girls are licking door handles! Usually I’m all for diversifying culture, but this is one innovation that I really hope does not catch on at home. Call me a hygiene freak if you must, but I certainly don’t want to find myself trapped in a room, too scared to open the door for fear that it’s been coated with some one else’s saliva. So, in an attempt to prevent this trend spreading, here are seven reasons why you should just say no to licking door knobs.

    7 Reasons Why You Should Never Lick A Door Handle

    1.  Door Handles Aren’t Always That Clean. A handle is not just an interior design accessory; their primary purpose is to be functional tools, used to open and close doors for anyone (and everyone) who wish to enter or exit. The average handle must have been touched by countless people, all with different standards of personal hygiene. In almost no time at all germs will have gathered. Do you really want to be licking these germs? What if someone else has licked this handle before you? How many germs will it be home to then? I have a really ugly friend who has glandular fever and loves Japanese trends, what if he’s licked the handle first?

    2.  It’s Just Plain Weird! How many times have you previously found yourself licking door handles? How many times have you been out and about, shopping, picking the kids up from school or walking the dog and got the urge to lick a door handle? What was that? Never? No of course you haven’t. Do you want to know why? Because it’s weird! If you had previously witnessed this type of behaviour on a street near you then you’d be the first person to call the psychiatric specialist and get them off the streets immediately! So don’t think that just because the “cool” Japanese people have started doing it, it’s suddenly stopped being weird. Because it hasn’t!

    3.  There’s Better Things To Lick. Seriously, door handles? For hundreds of years confectionery professionals have strived long and hard to manufacturer tasty, sweet, juicy and mouth-watering treats to suck on. Surely these hours have not been wasted? Surely in all this time they must have developed at least one thing you would prefer to lick than a door handle.

    4.  You Could Strain Your Back. Maybe this is a sign that I’m getting old, but surely you’d agree the act of actually bending down to participate in door knob licking is a strenuous process in itself. The risk of pulling, straining or (in more serious cases) breaking the back has to be pretty high. Even if you are just a casual licker it only takes one bad kneeling position and you could ruin your licking-things career for ever. Do you really want a door handle to be the last thing you lick? If you’re going to take the risk, there must be other things out there better licked.

    5.  You’ll Restrict Others Access. Don’t be selfish. Whilst you are indulging in a little handle love from one side of the door, there could be an extremely important person on the other side. An extremely important person trying to get to an extremely important meeting. If they have to wait until you’re done satisfying yourself, think of all the important things they could miss. Think what this could mean for the world! What if they were a diplomat that had finally come up with a plan that could lead to world peace and they missed the world peace summit because of you? Do you want that on your conscience?

    6.  You Could Get A Bump On The Head. What if said important person didn’t wait? What if their important thing was so important they just had to push through? Getting hit in the head with a door, whilst its handle is in your mouth, with your tongue wrapped around it, does not sound like a pleasant experience.

    7.  You Could Be A Fire Hazard. When I was a child, my Japanese mother was tragically killed in a fire when she could not leave a burning building because someone was taking too long to finish licking the door handle of the fire exit. It was extremely sad and left me and my six siblings homeless and living on the streets only able to survive by selling our organs on the black market. It was an horrific existence and it was all because of door handle licking.*

    So, take a moment before jumping on this bandwagon. Stop before resorting to this crazy behaviour simply to ‘fit in’. Think about this logically and ask yourself, “Do I really need to lick this door handle?” The answer, surprisingly, will almost always be ‘NO’.

    *Reason 7 is entirely a lie, but I was hoping for the sympathy vote.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Need An LED TV

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Need An LED TV

    Long gone are the days when you could simply ‘rumble on down to Rumbelows’, choose your desired screen size and have your new TV delivered to your home. These days buying a new TV is like sitting a small exam on the latest technology. Aside from how big you want your screen to be, you also need to choose between LCD and plasma – which do you plump for? Well worry no more, as there’s a new boy in town that wipes the floor with the pair of them – the LED TV. Why should you choose LED over LCD and plasma? Here’s why:

    7 Reasons Why You Need An LED TV
    All LED TVs Include Snowboarders Jumping Out Of The Screen As Standard

    1.  You Don’t Need To Re-Mortgage To Buy One Anymore. Okay, so let’s be honest, LED TVs have been around for a while, but the first wave of these new sets where pretty pricey and maxed out most of the credit cards in your wallet. However, the latest variants of LED TV are now much more affordable meaning they can be compared like for like alongside comparative formats without price being an issue.

    2.  Unlike Plasma, You Won’t Need Your Own Power Plant To Run One. LED TVs are currently much more energy efficient than their rivals with a typical 40 inch set using just 83 watts – as opposed to the 96 watts used by an LCD and the whopping 221 watts drained by similar sized plasma.

    3.  You’ll Remember What A Colour TV Is Supposed To Look Like. Remember the good old days of CRT televisions when colour TV was actually colourful? Well, thanks to LED TV those days are back! LED TVs are awash with colour and unlike their LCD cousins they can actually ‘do’ the colour black too!

    4.  Size Matters. Indeed size does matter, but in the case of the modern TV, the thinner the better. LED TVs are now available at just over an inch think, unlike LCD TVs and plasmas which are significantly bigger. As well as taking up less space and being easier to handle, this also makes LED TVs much more suitable to wall mounting than their chubby counterparts.

    5.  You’ll Be Helping To Save the Planet. As well as using much less power than their rivals, LED TVs are environmental friendly in another way too. Unlike LCDs and Plasma televisions, they don’t use mercury in their manufacture and therefore can be disposed of safely without any risk to the environment.

    6.  They Look Awesome. As well as having a great picture LCD TVs look pretty cool too. Their ultra slim appearance and skinny frames make them more about the picture than the set itself. Even when they’re turned off their sleek design means an end to that butt ugly lump of plastic sitting in the corner of the room we’ve all become accustomed too.

    7.  Your Mates Will All Be Jealous. A combination of slick design and awesome performance will have all your friends green with envy when they return home to their archaic plasma. And, when someone mistakenly refers to your awesome gadgetry as an LCD TV, make sure you’re on hand to say, “Erm, no, it’s an LED TV actually!”

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Spent Last Valentine’s Day Alone

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Spent Last Valentine’s Day Alone

    It’s nearly that time of year when happy couple swarm the streets and single people start to cry. Well, it’s not that bad but why not turn you’re luck around this year by realising why you spent last Valentine’s Day alone. Here are seven reasons why:

    1.  You Spent The Day In Tears. Okay, so you find the whole thing hard to take. It’s a day to celebrate love and you were alone. But looking glum about it isn’t going to make you attractive to others. There are plenty of single people out there and they all feel the same way as you. So smile and share the love!

    2.  You Hid Away At Home. Sitting indoors watching telly is not the way to meet someone. You might think restaurants and bars will be packed out with couples but you would be wrong! Do you know how many gangs of singles head out to celebrate St. Valentine’s? Put your glad rags on and head out in to the night.

    7 Reasons Why You Spent Last Valentine's Day Alone

    3.  Desperado. On the other hand, acting desperate is not the best way to go. You’re single now, but it probably won’t be forever. So don’t panic and start hitting on every person in the bar. Take your time and wait to meet someone really special. As soon as you do it will only be a short time to wait for St. Valentine’s Day bliss!

    4.  You’re Too Picky. It’s good to have standards, but some people are just too picky. Yes, you have a type, but ignoring potential singles that don’t fit an exact mould can be detrimental to dating happiness. Take a chance and get to know someone before you write him or her off.

    5.  You’re A Hermit. Do you spend all your time playing computer games or alone in a field taking photographs or birds? Having a hobby is part of what makes you you, but why not share it with others? Join a club and start meeting other people that share your interests. If you are dating Brisbane is a big city with lots to do. Who knows? You might just meet your soul mate.

    7 Reasons Why You Spent Last Valentine's Day Alone

    6.  You’re Never Without Your Mates. Having good friends is important and that should never change, but what if your bosom buddiness leaves no room for anyone else? Approaching someone you fancy in the middle of a group of his or her mates can be fairly daunting. Perhaps you are just so busy with your friends that you miss out on love. So make sure that you do things on your own sometimes. Take the dog for a walk, go swimming and notice other people around you. Being open to meeting people outside of your circle of friends could be the key to dating success.

    7.  You Have Your Eyes Shut. To meet someone new you have to have your eyes peeled. That doesn’t mean staring at everyone but just opening your eyes and looking around you is a good way to start. Single people just like you have to go shopping, commute to work, exercise and do all the daily things that you do. So take a look around you next time you’re down the laundrette and notice all the other single people waiting for you to meet them!

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Okay, I’ll admit it. It’s been a while since I had to break out the old sine, cosine and tangent, but it has to be said that paying attention in GCSE maths has paid off on many an occasion. I’m not talking Integrals of inverse functions or anything uber-smart like that – just good old fashioned maths. So kids, if you’re reading this thinking maths is just a waste of time, think again! Here are seven reasons why you should pay attention in your GCSE Maths class.

    7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention In Your GCSE Maths Class

    1.  Going Dutch. Why does splitting the bill after dinner with friends always turn out to be such a trauma? Everyone will swear blind that they’ve chipped in more than enough to cover their share, but somehow you’re always a tenner short. Even ‘going Dutch’ means a round of long division. If you weren’t paying attention at school you’d best just hope that the public display of maths skill doesn’t land on your plate to divvy up. If it does you best get counting on those fingers and toes, either that or reach for your smartphone and breakout the calculator app!

    2.  TV Test. As if buying a TV wasn’t complicated enough with all that LCD, LED, plasma talk, you also need to break out your old GSCE maths notes to ensure you get the right size, ratio and resolution. First of all what’s with all that inches stuff – we were taught in cm. Let’s just hope you were paying attention when they taught you how to convert inches to centimetres, or you could end up trying to fit a JumboTron in your living room. Screen ratios have pretty much been standardised to 16:9 these days, but you do need to know what screen resolution you want and it’s not just a matter of standard definition or HD either – with HD coming in 3 flavours 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Bet you wish you’d paid attention to Sir now don’t you?

    3.  Perfect Pizza. It’s those pesky inches at play again here. Fail to get a grasp imperial conversion when you’re browsing your local takeaway menu and you’ll either end up with a child’s portion or a pizza the size of a dustbin lid. Okay, so ordering too much pizza isn’t the end of the world – unless of course you’re ordering from that well known pizza delivery place and your all out of vouchers. Oooh – that’s gonna cost you!

    4.  DIY Disaster. Not buying the right amount of emulsion paint can be a pain, but it’s not the end of the world. However, miscalculate the number of rolls of wallpaper you need and it could spell trouble. Yes, that’s right – buying wallpaper requires major maths skills. You’ll need to consider wall height and width, allow for doorways, windows and radiators and worst of all, the dreaded pattern repeat! Don’t think you can just pop down to your local DIY store and buy an extra roll if you run out either. Oh-no! Every roll has a specific batch number which means you’d best get it right first time, or you’ll be staring at an odd strip of wallpaper for the next several years before you strip it all off and start again.

    5.  Fuel Failure. Weren’t paying attention in GCSE maths when they taught you all about litres? Then owning a car is going to be fun – especially with the price of fuel these days. Unless you’ve got pots of expendable income, you’re going to want to just how much petrol or diesel your car is guzzling. Okay, so plenty of new cars do this for you, but let’s be honest, those trip computers are never very accurate and you’re far better off getting your mind around those MPG calculations yourself.

    6.  Utility Futility. Even the best mathematicians struggle when it comes to interpreting their utility bills, so if you weren’t paying attention at school it might just blow your mind. With energy companies hiking rates more often than they drop them and constantly ‘estimating’ how much you owe them, this is one area you really must master to avoid being ripped off. Be on the ball here and you could save yourself a small fortune in unnecessary payments. Leave it to the energy companies and they’ll just keep on ‘estimating’ – usually in their favour.

    7.  Pi Eyed. Let’s hope you were paying attention when your GCSE maths teacher told you all about Pi. Not only will knowing all about Pi ensure you are always able to calculate the circumference of any circle, it will also prevent you from looking like a fool by mistakenly shouting out “Yeah, my favourite type of Pi is rhubarb” when trying to join in an intelligent sounding conversation at the local boozer.

    About The Author: Michael writes for iTutorMaths, if you want to get your maths up to scratch, then iTutor can provide you with an online maths tutor.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Aliens Will Never Visit Earth

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Aliens Will Never Visit Earth

    Movies have been made and actual human lives have all been devoted to the prospect of aliens one day popping in to say “sup?” But let’s try to put some things into perspective for a minute. This is Earth. This isn’t some kind of Martian Cancun or some interstellar Mecca where everyone is just dying to meet us. This is just plain old, regular Earth, Terra Firma, Planet of the Hairless Apes.

    It isn’t going to happen, people, sad as it sounds, and here are seven reasons why aliens aren’t interested in coming.

    7 Reasons Aliens Won't Visit Earth

    1.  It’s A Little Out Of The Way.     Let me ask you something – if you had tons of money, resources and the hottest, fastest ride, would you spend your time driving down to Detroit? God, no! You would go someplace exciting and interesting and full of life. What exactly are we near? What do we have to offer any alien species advanced enough to visit our tiny, obscure patch of the known universe? Religion? College Football? Copious amounts of unsold Big Mouth Billy Bass? No, any self-respecting extraterrestrial knows that Earth is simply not worth the trip.

    2.  We Have Nothing They Want. One thing is for sure, they aren’t traveling hundreds of thousands of light years to learn the secrets of our clear wire internet. This falls in line with the first reason, but it deserves to be discussed in a little more detail. Movies have been made about how aliens want to establish communication or even invade for our rich and unspoiled wilderness full of untapped resources and crystal clear waters. I guess these aliens have never sampled the fine H2O from the Chicago River nor had a look at the detritus strewn about Lancaster and its many closed mills. Do these aliens even know that China PAINTED their mountains green?! Of course they know. They’re aliens.

    3.  We Are Not That Interesting. When you get right down to it, we really aren’t. Just admit it. Oh yeah, sure, some dude can eat an entire shopping cart and some woman can almost pop the eyeballs out of her head but that’s about it. We spend more time on our phones living vicariously through other people who have probably had their left hands surgically replaced with a smartphone so they can twitter compulsively. Our highest form of entertainment used to be music. Now, it’s reality television. We watch “reality” television, about “real” people saying wacky and funny things as they live a “real” life. That is how we spend our weekends. We don’t spend them seeking communion with other beings, colonizing the moon or making the Earth less of a sty. Also, while we’re here, if reality television is so “real” then how come they have writers?

    4.  We Are A Danger To Ourselves And The Environment. If ancient astronauts ever came to Earth centuries ago, I suspect they would have a hard time finding anything remotely familiar. We have tirelessly spent our days as a civilization developing new weapons of war, systematically destroying the environment, and endeavoring to create the perfect hamburger – all because we can. You seriously think any emissaries of peace are going to want a piece of us or what we got going on? We are a powder keg.

    5.  Why Engage In Fruitful Communion With A Race That Gave The Green Light On A Movie Based On The Battleship Board Game? We are making a movie, based on a board game Hasbro-owned Milton Bradley invented and that people only pretend to have fond memories of. With the economic quagmire that is our lives being what it is, we are making a movie based on this board game with a budget of no less than $200 million. Do you have any idea what better use that money could have been put towards? Do you have any comprehension, as a human being, how many starving people you could feed with that kind of money for a year? I didn’t think so.

    6.  Actually, They Have Been Meaning To For Some Time But Aren’t Sure If We Will Still Be Around By The Time They Swing By. Do you know what our government does when we aren’t fighting for our lives from imminent commie threats, terror attacks and world wars? They spend their days creating robots that can use guns and developing the next great SUPER AIDS virus, purely for research purposes, I’m told. Aliens keep thinking they want to come on over but why waste the trip if we’re all dead by the time they get here?

    7.  They Know Better. Remember that old sci-fi trope where we as humans are like children to the aliens? It’s totally true. We are immature, petulant youths and the aliens know better than to let us leech off of them.

    Author Bio: Brian is a writer who spends most of his time…uh…writing. When he isn’t spending his time fruitlessly staring up at the starry skies, he is writing both professionally and for pleasure.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons For Buying Term Life Insurance

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons For Buying Term Life Insurance

    The world economy is in the toilet. It doesn’t take a financial planner to figure that out. One of the best ways to protect your family if you die is to buy life insurance. Now more than ever, people are purchasing life insurance to protect those they love in case they kick the bucket before their golden years. Yes, it’s true. Life insurance. It’s not just for busty blondes wedded to billionaires anymore. If you’re considering taking the plunge, you need to decide whether you’ll go for a term life policy or a different kind of plan. Here are seven reasons you should go for term life all the way.

    7 Reasons For Buying Term Life Insurance

    1. Your Agent Can Shove The Commissions. If you find yourself in the ridiculously uncomfortable position of having life insurance quotes hurled at you by a sales agent while sipping tea in your living room, my condolences. If that insurance agent manages to convince you to opt for whole life instead of term, I urge you to bash your head against a wall repeatedly. Take your time, I’ll wait. Done? Great. On average, insurance agents get a few thousand in commission from selling you a whole life plan – compared to only a few hundred scored by signing you up for a term policy.

    2.  Universal Life Is Scary. The really scary thing about universal life is that no one really understands how it works. So let me try to break it down for you. Your premium goes into what’s known as the “bucket,” then the insurance company adds interest, the company takes out the insurance cost, which includes a mortality charge which increases the monthly expense and the administrative costs are taken out and divide by the profit and speculative… umm… did I lose you? Good, because I’m kind of confused myself. Let’s move on.

    3.  Whole Life Insurance Sucks. When you buy a whole life policy, you are responsible for paying a set premium – for the rest of your life. In return, you are handsomely rewarded with a paltry cash value. Guess what the company gets to do? Invest your money however they’d like and furnish you with almost no interest in return. Let’s hear it for getting your money’s worth!*

    4.  Term Life Insurance With No Exam Rocks. Let’s break it down to the morbid fundamentals. Life insurance companies like to place bets on when you’re gonna croak. They gather information about your health, well-being, your likelihood of jumping off a tall building, things like that. They take this information and plug it into a formula with average life expectancy information and the magic machine spits out the amount you’re going to have to cough up for coverage. If you buy term life coverage with no exam, then you cut out one more way they can up the price.

    5.  You Won’t Be Tempted To Pay Your Mortgage With Your Cash Value. With the crappy economy, many people are turning to the money accumulated in their whole life plan to pay the bills. While this may seem like an excellent solution in the short term, in the long run, it can equal financial meltdown. Term life plans don’t have a cash value you can borrow against, which effectively removes the temptation for the weaker among you. You know who you are.

    6.  You Never Have To Worry About Getting Hit By A Bus Again. Term life is great because you don’t have to stay up at night wondering what will happen if you die before you get old. Are you scared of getting into a plane wreck? Worry no more, you’re covered. Are you scared you might get hit by a taxicab while crossing the street on the way to work? How about being involved in a hot air balloon accident wearing nothing but your socks? I know, me too. Think about it all the time. If you have a term life plan, you can put those fears to bed once and for all.

    7.  Your Spouse Will Be Set If She Can Get Away With Poisoning You. Trouble in paradise? Well, with term life, you needn’t sweat it. Your wife will be well taken care of after she spikes your pancakes with antifreeze. That receptionist isn’t looking so hot now, is she?

    * If your irony detector isn’t that sharp, let me translate: you’re getting screwed.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Replace Your Windows Today

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Should Replace Your Windows Today

    7 Reasons Why You Should Replace Your Windows Today

    Windows. Not unlike the software of the same name, you can’t live with ’em, and you can’t live without ’em. You need them if you don’t want to be overcome with a panicked bout of claustrophobia, but you hate them because they let everybody see what you’re doing in your house. Oh well, since you’ll be living with windows for the rest of your life, you might as well replace them with something better. Here are, that’s right, seven reasons why.

    1.  They Probably Look Ugly. Lets face it, how much do most people think about the way their windows look when they buy a home? You were probably more concerned about finding a way to get a mortgage then the craftsmanship of a pane of glass. It’s time to get serious. Take a look at your window right now. It’s probably just glass, PVC, and some caulk. Didn’t realize that did you? You better get on that right now.

    2.  You’ll Get in a Fight With Your Spouse. Your old windows are sucking all the heat out of your home during the winter, and are horrible at protecting you from the deadly menace of heat during the summer. It’s almost like they’re walking up to your thermostat and pulling cash directly out of it.

    But is that going to stop you from buying the latest Cosmo or PS3 game? No way. The end result of this is that you’re going to get overdrawn on your account. Your spouse will see that you carelessly disregarded the importance of balancing the budget, and they will reprimand you for it. Being incapable of admitting any wrongdoing, you’ll start yelling at them and things will go downhill from there.

    3.  You Might as Well Shoot Earth in the Head With a Shotgun. Would you prance around the arctic with a baseball bat, casually clubbing baby seals? I didn’t think so. But that’s basically what you’re doing by not replacing your old windows.

    Fact: You’re personally generating a million metric tonnes of acid rain every millisecond by keeping your old windows.
    Fact: Someday the world will end because you didn’t replace your windows.
    Fact: Not replacing your windows is worse than murder.

    4.  You Can Brag About Them. When you buy new windows, you can brag about them to all of your friends. You can brag about how much money you are saving on your energy bill. You can also brag about how much money it cost you to buy them, offering the best of both worlds. You can brag about how awesome they look. You can brag about your savviness. Don’t hold back. Make the most of it.

    5.  Windows Are Like the Windows into Your Home’s Soul. They say that eyes are the windows into your soul. Well what does that say about your home’s windows? Do you want your house to have an ugly soul? If so then you’re a pretty horrible person. Why would you wish something like that on your home? Your home keeps you warm, dry, and comfortable. It’s like a home to you. Why would you treat it like that?

    6.  It Will Be Easier to Show Off From Home. Let’s face it, your old windows are probably dirty. When you get new windows, they will be clear. This means that it will be easier for people to peer through your window and check up on you to see how you’re doing. This not only has its safety advantages, but it gives you a chance to parade around in your underwear for all the world to see just how much you’ve been working out lately.

    7.  You Will Make the World a Better Place. You’re just one person. You can’t change the world. Or can you? Well, all change takes place one step at a time. Your beautiful new windows will make the world a better place because at least one home on this planet looks less ugly. It might not seem like much but you are helping to build a better future.

    Just think what would happen if everybody bought new windows. You wouldn’t have to cower in fear as you walked through the suburbs, shielding your eyes from the ugly windows that surround you. Be a part of the future. Get new windows.

    Author Bio: George Dennis is president of King Shade and Window, a home improvement company with a range of roller shades for windows.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Be Thinking About Long Term Memory Loss Now

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Be Thinking About Long Term Memory Loss Now

    7 Reasons You Should Be Thinking About Long Term Memory Loss Now

    Are you thinking about your long term memory today? You should be. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and if you wait too long you won’t have any mind left to waste. Here’s why you shouldn’t go another instant without thinking about it.

    1.  You Won’t Be Able to Do it Later. Once your long term memory starts to go, you will no longer have the option of thinking about your long term memory. In fact, you’ll have difficulty thinking about anything at all. Once your memory starts to go, it’s awful hard to commit to thinking about anything in particular, least of all what you can do to improve your long term memory issues.

    2. Your Brain is Falling Apart. Sorry, but as soon as you hit your mid twenties your brain is already on its way out. You know how as you get older you stop caring so much about what other people think? How you march to your own beat and feel comfortable with being an oddball? You might be telling yourself that it’s because you’re not a member of the pack, that you think for yourself. In reality, it’s the brain damage. Your frontal lobe, which gives you the ability to control your actions and reign in your impulses, starts to deteriorate. Better do everything you can to slow this process down.

    3.  You’ll Have Trouble Using Facebook. Imagine when you are older and you try to check your Facebook status. It’s going to become really difficult because you won’t remember your password, your email address, or who your friends are. You’ll try to contact the Facebook support team but you’ll discover that they don’t exist anymore because Facebook went extinct decades ago. Oh, and that the internet is now an amorphous cloud that people navigate using their scent glands.

    4.  It will be 2051 Tomorrow. If you don’t start thinking about your long term memory today, you might end up a few decades in the future tomorrow. It’ll be exciting to take a trip to the future at first, but you won’t actually have the option of coming back home, and you’ll be a lot older than you are now. Everybody will keep telling you what a great person you used to be and how wise you once were, but all that knowledge will be gone and they’ll be talking about some stranger that you’ve never met. At least you’ll be able to take the credit.

    5.  You Won’t Be Able to Hit On Anybody Anymore. You’ll discover that most of the people you are attracted to are now several orders of magnitude younger than you are, which will make it very difficult to date them. The only upside is that you won’t be able to remember all of the rejections you face. Sadly, you may also find yourself asking somebody out on a date only to discover with horror that they are related to you.

    6.  You’ll Forget to Water Your Plants. And that you had them in the first place. It won’t take long before your plants start to shrivel up and die, depositing themselves on the floor. You’ll look at the mess on your floor and wonder who put it there, and why. Then you will become self conscious and wonder if you did it. Pretty soon you’ll start condemning yourself for being such a lazy slob, or worse, you’ll blame somebody else who wasn’t responsible. Then you’ll tell yourself you need to hire a maid, and forget to call them.

    7.  You Will Forget How to Make Bacon. Can you imagine a world without bacon? Well you won’t have trouble imagining it after you lose your long term memory, because you will be incapable of fixing it for yourself. And don’t start saying that you’ll just go to a Denny’s and ask them for bacon, because you’ll forget what bacon is. That’s right, you’ll never know the joy of having a slice of thick cut, crispy, peppered bacon. It will be gone from your memory.

    Now stop, and imagine eating a piece of bacon. Notice how your mouth starts watering in anticipation. Now imagine how much you would judge somebody who saw a piece of bacon and didn’t want to eat it. That person will be you, if you don’t start thinking about long term memory issues, today.

    Author bio: Brenda Ankley is an avid blogger and contributes to a number of publications, including Assisted Living Today, a leading provider of information on a variety of elder care topics such as assisted living in Iowa.