Jared’s Blog

So the other day I was eating one of those “Whips” yogurts. If you’ve never seen them, its basically just regular yogurt that they whip up and it gets all fluffy. Anyway, I was eating it and all of a sudden, it hit me. I GOT RIPPED OFF!

Let me explain. The yogurt I was eating was whipped. With air! I checked the weight listed on the container of my Whips yogurt. It was 4oz. I then ran to the fridge and pulled out my regular custard yogurt. It was 6oz. Now for the kicker… They cost me the same amount! So I paid the same price for 2oz less yogurt. That’s 1/3 of the container!

From now on, I will never eat Whips yogurt again. You’re paying Yoplait for air and that is insane.

I can just see the meeting at Yoplait:
Corporate Finance: “We need to find a way to make more money, more profit!”
R&D: “Why don’t we whip yogurt with air to make it light and fluffy?”
CF: “That’s brilliant! We’re reduce the amount of product in each container and consumers won’t even notice.”

I did it last year. So here’s my list for this year. It was rough deciding who to mention and who to leave out. I started with a list of about 40 albums I thought were worthy. After about 20 minutes of arranging all of them, I decided on the following as my final list.

1. Break the Silence - Near Life Experience
Killer band! They rocked at Warped Tour even though they were only playing a tent. These guys are the perfect fusion of punk and metal. That is why they are my album of the year.

2. All That Remains - This Darkened Heart
Technical metal at its best. There?s so much to listen to. I feel deprived by only getting 10 songs. Give me more.

3. Underminded - Hail Unamerican!
I?ll admit, Aaron from DecoyMusic.com did his job with these guys. I didn?t give them a listen for a few months after he had been talking them up, but slowly I became hooked. I?m a sucker for gang choruses too.

4. A Wilhelm Scream - Mute Print
Far better than anyone in the punk genre that I can think of. They play a very technical style that you don?t really see too often in this genre, yet it holds to that simplistic punk sound so well.

5. Haste the Day - Burning Bridges
These guys made such a jump going from their EP to this full length. While I was a fan of their EP, this album blew it out of the water. Brutal and beautiful at the same time. And all these kind words coming from an Agnostic.

6. Unearth - The Oncoming Storm
Another late bloomer with me. Not a huge fan of their previous stuff, but this album is crushingly heavy.

7. Underoath - They?re Only Chasing Safety
I didn?t listen to these guys for awhile just because of the hype surrounding them. I?d also heard their old stuff was way more hardcore, which turned me off. Once giving them a listen, I couldn?t get enough.

8. Lostprophets - Start Something
Been a fan of these guys since their early days. This album is much more accessible than their first, but it?s so damn catchy! I?ll admit I miss their old sound, but this new one I can appreciate as well.

9. Alexisonfire - Watch Out!
Checked these guys out after seeing them live. They didn?t do much for me during the show, but I think I was just standing too close to the guitarist. Stellar album.

10. Shadows Fall - The War Within
Metal gods! They wrote an awesome record this time around. Technical as hell. These guys are on the up and up.

The following albums, I thought, were candidates for a top 10 slot, but couldn?t quite make it over the others. It was really hard leaving these guys off my top 10, but I had to make cuts somewhere. I know there are so many bands I didn’t list here who got a ton of listens this year.

Atreyu - The Curse
Dead Poetic - New Medicines
Killswitch Engage - The End of Heartbreak
36 Crazyfists - A Snow Capped Romance
Eighteen Visions - Obsession
The Showdown - A Chorus of Obliteration
It Dies Today - The Caitiff Choir

So today as I went through and cleaned out over 100 spam comment posts, I pondered… I could do an experiment. Set up a wordpress install and just see how many spam comments I get. I’m pretty sure I could write the code to count them and display them on a page. The only roadblock I can see is that there’d have to be posts to comment on. Sure, I could write a post every day, but that’s tedious. I think I’ll float the idea to a couple friends to see if they’d be interested in hosting it or getting in on the coding. Let’s make this the official discussion area on that topic. 1 2 3 GO!

Well as I said a month ago or so. This site was going to be down for awhile. If you’re reading this, you know it’s back up. However, this is not a permenant solution. I’m not focused on 24/7 hosting of this site at this time. So if it goes down, don’t complain. If it’s slow, don’t complain. Also, coolerthanyou.net also is pointing to this IP, so if you try to go to Burns’ site you get my site. Like I said, temporary and destined to change sometime in the near future.