I heart germs.

Okay, not really. But I am a subscriber to the belief that being a germaphobe does more harm than good. For one, preventing yourself from being exposed to germs weakens your immune system, making you more susceptible to getting sick when you do finally meet with one. But worse is that the overuse of antibacterial products helps create superbugs that are hard to kill because they're immune to everything.

I get it though. There are some pretty nasty bugs out there that you REALLY don't want to get. However, I've seen some commercials that are the epitome of taking things too far when it comes to avoiding germs.

A little while back I saw an ad where the actors made a big deal about not touching anything with their hands. It ended up being an ad for portable hand sanitizers that you can carry around in your purse. The message: you never know what your touching, so HAVE HAND SANITIZER AT ALL TIMES!!!! Well, how about you just wash your hands before you eat? Problem solved!

My all time favourite, though, has to be a new commercial out for automatic hand soap dispensers. They actually say that "you'll never have to touch a germy soap pump again!" Okay, boys and girls, let me explain this to you. When you touch the germy soap pump? You're doing it to get soap. Guess what you do right afterwards? YOU WASH YOUR HANDS! What does it matter if the soap pump is germy or not, anything you happen to pick up will soon be gone without a trace.

Like I said, if you want to avoid germs I won't begrudge you. To each his own. But really, advertisers? Really? I'm disappointed.

Birthdays gone wrong

My family went through a phase where we were really into using funny candles on birthdays. You know, the ones with multi-coloured flames or that play music when you light them up. I loved those candles, they added some flair to your everyday, average birthday cake. Recently, my uncle reminded me why we stopped using them.

Situation 1: The Best of Intentions

One year for my birthday, my grandma found a trick candle that wouldn't go out. Excited to have a laugh at my expense, she snuck one onto my birthday cake. After it was presented to me with a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday, she watched in glee as I skillfully blew out every candle with one breath. As I sat up, feeling smug about my achievement, one of the candles sputtered and came back to life. No problem, I simply bent over and blew it out a second time. Again, it sputtered back to life. At this point most of my family members had caught on to what my grandma had done and were snickering quietly. Except my uncle. Seeing that I was struggling, he licked his fingers, reached over, and put the candle out for me. The uproar afterwards was impressive, and my uncle was in the doghouse for the rest of the afternoon for ruining my grandma's fun.

Situation 2: The Zombie Candle

It was my younger brother's birthday. My mom found a candle that, when you lit it, would play Happy Birthday. After much eye-rolling and groaning when she got it going, my brother was eager to make it stop so he blew it out. The music kept playing. Then he tried the lick-and-snuff manoeuvre. The music kept playing. Next, he actually removed the candle from the base. The music kept playing. Houston, we have a problem.

At this point we were at a loss. How could we make it stop? As much as it was amusing at first, the tinny, overly-cheerful music was starting to get on our nerves. Finally we decided to submerge it in water and short out it electrical bits. I kid you not, the base not only continued playing but changed its tune and started playing This Old Man. We stood there, baffled, and started considering the possibility that this candle base may be haunted. We tried tons of different ways to kill it, I think we even found a battery in it and removed it, and nothing worked. Eventually we buried it in a bag of garbage and left the room to wait it out. It took hours for it to finally give up the ghost.

I believe that was the last time we used a funny candle. Somehow I'm not surprised.

It's the little things

Remotes are rather simple devices. You point it at something. You press buttons. It does stuff. But I never realized how under-appreciated my remote was until it decided to stop working.

The whole ordeal started off fairly simply. One day I went to use my remote, and even though it went through the motions my TV refused to wake up. I looked up how to program my remote, and eventually figured out I had to get the remote into program mode, press codes for the television until the button in the corner started flashing, take out the batteries, put them back in, and voila! The remote worked. Until the next day. So I tried changing the batteries and repeating the process all over again. Once again, the remote worked for a day before losing it again. And then it quit all together. Finally I resigned myself to the fact I had to get a new one. During the two weeks it took for me to actually get out and buy one, I simply went without. Never have I missed an inanimate object so much.

The biggest issue was that my TV doesn't actually go to all the channels on it's own. It can count to 15, and then skips to 70. Suddenly my show selection was limited, and I found myself watching lovely programs such as the Tyra Banks show *shudder*. You think I would just stop watching, but I like to have background noise when I'm hanging out around the house. Then I'd try and find out what else was on, but I'd look away for a couple seconds and miss the few channels I could actually watch. Eventually I just left my TV on one channel and watched it regardless of what was on. Ever heard of "Day of the Triffids?" Neither had I. It's weird.

Yesterday I finally got a new remote. Today I didn't like what was on, and the glee I got from being able to just flip around and see what was on was a little scary, to be honest.

On a completely unrelated note, I've decided it might be time for me to get out of the house more.