The goings-on in a rather mundane life.

Today was one of those wasted days - I have a lot of those - the kind where it's so rainy and cold that all I can think to do is bunker-up at home and watch the television. It makes me glad that I spent some money on a nice TV but sad that I wasted an entire day at home staring at the TV and my cat, who doesn't seem to know the difference. I'm also glad that I don't keep snacks in the house, because I would have sat here all day munching potato chips, and that wouldn't be good.

I watched a football game, because that's what Americans do on Sunday. Later, I watched a documentary on the History Channel about Albert Einstein and his struggle to develop and prove his theory of relativity. We were told that, at the time, the theory and it's proof were viewed as historic by people in general, and after it was proved, Albert Einstein became a celebrity and a household name. I wondered when we started talking about smart people as being "Einstein's" or started mocking stupid people by saying, "Nice going, Einstein." The documentary didn't go into that.

There was an ad for one of those drugs that is supposed to make you stop doing something. This one was excessive urination, which is odd because we are told to drink more water. Now, we're peeing too much. The drug had several side effects which included fainting and decrease in semen. That's bad, I guess. Why is it that drugs never have positive side effects? Couldn't there be a drug that would make your blood pressure drop and would also make you more interesting at parties? I'd take that one.

Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg at a night club in New York. Outside of the legality of carrying a loaded weapon into a night club, I wonder about why high-profile athletes carry weapons. Have you ever read about an athlete who interceded in a crime, saved a life (or his own) or generally helped anyone because he had a gun on him? No. All you read about are guys being shot or killed and athletes going to prison and losing a lot of money because they were carrying a weapon.

60 Minutes did a profile on Michael Phelps tonight. They said he's going to make "hundreds of millions of dollars" hyping products and generally lending his image to junk that people sell. So far, I've only seen him on those Rosetta Stone ads and I must say, I'm not impressed. He's obviously a great athlete and a nice guy who loves his mom and all, but I'm not motivated to buy anything because he tells me he uses it, which leads me to believe that Subway and the other companies who are paying him those millions are wasting their money.

I don't see Phelps as being all that charismatic, and I'm not sure he's a very good investment. I think that any company who gives large sums of money to any celebrity endorser would be better served by telling us that they're dropping the price of the product by 3-percent. That would sell a lot more stuff than having some famous face attached to it.