Weight loss and dieting are such big business in the United States it blows my mind. Everyone is always looking for the best diet supplement reviews or the trendiest Hollywood diet that all of the stars are doing. On the one hand it is way over the top but on the flip side our society has problems at both extremes. Everyone is obsessed with losing weight yet we are a culture of “over indulgers” that flock to fast food and buffet restaurants and refuse to turn away the last bite of anything because that would be wasteful. Ever think that eating that last bite might be wasteful to your life? I came across this list of quotes about weight loss, mostly by comedians so a lot of them are funny, but some even by Socrates and other famous thinkers that really hit home.

“Your body is the baggage you must carry through life. The more excess the baggage, the shorter the trip.”
- Arnold H. Glasgow

“The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.”
- Socrates

And then there are always the funny gadgets that help you lose weight like this personal favorite of mine that I mentioned before in this Youtube video.

It’s been about a week since I received my free set of Dove Men+Care sample products and I am pretty pleased with them. The first thing my daughter said when I opened the box was how good it smelled, “like a clean boy smell”, she’s only 7 but I have to agree with her. It also came with a pretty cool gadget like those scrubby puff things that women use for body lotion to lather up the soap and scrub with except this has like a rubber outerring that makes it more firm and on the other side of the puffy blue thing it has a loofah type pad for elbows and knees and feet etc. Now I don’t have eczema or any crazy skin issues but I do tend to get dry skin in the winter and to the point that my slacks get very static clingy on me, drives me nuts. The back of my neck also gets a little itchy out in the cold dry weather so I use lotion to alleviate both symptoms pretty effectively. Over the past week I haven’t really used any lotion because I wanted to see how “moisturizing” the shower gel and soap were and they seem to be pretty good. My neck hasn’t felt as dry for sure but maybe that is just psychological. In the end of the day the products smell good, feel clean, and look cool so I give them a thumbs up and am glad Dove sent me the sample products to try out and I will probably keep using them just like Drew Brees as I said in my previous article since he landed this new sponsorship deal.

If you haven’t seen it yet you should spend the 58 seconds watching the youtube clip. I saw it on the news and got a good laugh. You have to give it up for the guy for ingenuity and effort but I guess being unemployed probably helped give him the time needed to create this 25′ x 25′ igloo in his parents yard that has 4 rooms, surround sound, cable tv, built in seating, and a natural ice chest for the best appetite suppressant known to man, liquid bread, none other than that fine cold beverage of barley and hops, beer. Personally I am sick of snow and this crazy blizzard season we have had this year but this was a pretty good use of it and cool to boot.

I have been in the market for a new job lately and have been commenting on some cool and unique jobs out there, some with very original or unique work wear as well, like the professional water slide tester I wrote about. And although I am not a full time blogger I do have the luxury of working at home a lot and wearing whatever work outfit I want which can be cool. Anyway, I came across a couple more jobs that for some reason never occurred to me previously but then I thought, wow that might be kind of cool.

NFL Team Jobs – Now I think it would be pretty cool to wear work clothes that consisted of an NFL Jersey especially if it was your favorite team. You might need to hit the gym and get savvy on some no xplode reviews or other supplements so you could hang with the BIG guys walking about, assuming of course you ever really saw any of the football players close up. But I assume like the Photography position for the Tampa Bay Bucs or the Exec Admin Assistant with the Washington Redskins you would probably run into them occasionally. You can also do a selection of NFL JOBS on Monster that isn’t specifically for the football teams but is in the sports business and working in the NFL field which is still pretty cool.

Teamworkonline – looks like a site that provides information and opportunities to wear your favorite team jersey to work regardless of the sport, NHL, NFL, NBA, etc so it’s a nice place to check out too. And all of these have cool internships for people just starting out in their careers or in between jobs or just need a fun job environment to kill some retirement time. I could handle that!

Now with that said, I didn’t find any jobs that suited my skill sets or desire at this point in my career but I did think it was funny I never thought about looking in an area that I love so much. So you don’t have to be a pro sports athlete to work in the sports field after all.

I have had my own fair share of mad experiences with the airlines over the past few years traveling quite a bit on business but last week I saw another example of extremely poor customer service and horrible implementation of policy and rules by my preferred airline United Airlines. As usual I am standing at the auto check in kiosk printing my boarding pass and entering my bag information to so I can get moving through security since about everything is automated these days. And next to m there are these 2 girls (mid 20’s probably) in pretty good spirits chatting about the best weight loss supplement on the market while they are checking in at the auto kiosk. Everything is going fine for everyone until one of the girls bags is over the weight by 5-10 pounds. Now don’t get me wrong, that is just a crazy heavy bag but the way the airline rep reacted was unacceptable and ridiculous. A passenger is allowed to check 2 bags most times these days and are usually charged $15-$20 a bag for each bag now, you know to pay for that expensive fuel costs we had a year or two ago before the prices went back down but the airlines decided they liked charging the extra money and so kept doing it? Well this girl has one checked bag and it’s over the limit by a few pounds but she doesn’t have a second bag to try to balance it out since technically you can have 2 bags at 55 pounds each but she had one at 65 pounds basically. So rather than charge her the 2nd bag fee of an extra $20 since she only had 1 bag to check they charged her an extra $125 over weight bag fee even though she could have checked 2 bags weighing an extra 45 pounds for a total of $40 instead of 1 bag for $145. She argued with the lady but the customer service rep, if you can call it that, was a complete nightmare with an attitude of too bad what are you going to do about it ya little tramp. It is unbelievable to me that companies allow this type of behavior to happen and straight out rob their customers blind for no good reason. Yes there are good reasons to have weight limits for bags, and a limit to the number of bags per person, etc nobody wants to run out of fuel mid flight or crash because of too much weight but it doesn’t take a mathematician or rocket scientist to do the simple math and make this situation right and acceptable to everyone. These kinds of disregard for customer satisfaction really irritate me with these large faceless corporations and it needs to be fixed.

The Ritz Carlton allows employees the ability to correct customer service issues on the spot without approval up to $2000 per incident which is one reason they are regarded as one of the best organizations in the world when it comes to customer satisfaction and more corporations should adopt similar customer satisfaction cultures.

Also, take a look at the new show “Undercover Boss” as an example. I have a new respect for the CEO of Waste Management and the company after seeing that show and believe it needs to happen more in all major companies.

Whether you like the Saints or not you have to love Drew Brees. Not a prototypical bionic quarterback in the NFL by any stretch, in fact he sometimes looks pretty tiny out there behind that line with guys barreling down on him, but he and his family have embraced New Orleans as their own in home, team, town, and spirit and for that you have to love the guy and applaud his success. He is truly one of the great professional athletes in the world and deserves the windfall of endorsements that are sure to follow after winning the Super Bowl as underdogs in such a commanding and professional mannger behind his leadership as MVP of the game and the year.

Nobody can argue he is a great football player and by definition nobody can then argue he is a mans man because the NFL is no joke especially for QB’s that act like pincushions for guys like Jared Allen all day long. And this is going to be a big part of Brees’s endorsement expansion as companies latch onto him as a friendly, likable, every day guy that overcomes huge odds and injuries to be a superstar and is a great dad and citizen alike. Dove is one of those advertisers that are capitalizing on this and embracing Drew Brees as the great football player, man, and dad that he is to promote their new line of Dove Men+Care product line. If it is good enough for Drew Brees it is good enough for me to try as well as Dove has been gracious enough to send me samples of this product line for writing a review on it which I plan to continue once I have received them as well. They have also offered to provide a free product sample to one on my readers as well so if you are interested in trying this new men’s care line from Dove post a comment with the answer to “What was Drew Brees’ son wearing on his head” in the famous picture of him holding him at the Super Bowl. The first correct answer post will get the free Dove products. Good luck and congratulations Drew Brees on a great accomplishment.

And thanks Dove for the opportunity to try this new product line as well, I look forward to it. Here is a special interview with Drew Brees as well as some behind the scenes footage of the Victory Shower commercial where it looks like he was trying to work up a sweat doing push ups and hitting the treadmill. And if you don’t win the free product from this post you can always get a coupon to try it yourself here as well. Dove Men+Care Coupon

I’ve stumbled across this site a couple times an was first amazed at the #1 ranking of the prime minister of the Ukraine because she is not what you would expect except maybe in the movies or a Victoria’s Secret runway show where nobody needs any weight loss or touch up to make them look pretty, she is genuinely “hotness” as the editors put it. Unfortunately the Ukraine was recently robbed of it’s number 1 hotness position due to an election of all things where she was dethroned by someone reportedly “not hot”. It’s quite comical to see the pictures and read the little blurbs about each government official whether they are really the head of a state or not but I was a little surprised that the U.S. comes in at #15 with Barrack Obama, I don’t know I just expected him to rank a little higher I guess. I also think that the number #2 on the list, the Prime Minister of Norway looks a lot like Liam Neeson for whatever that is worth, maybe a movie role. And then if you scroll down to the bottom I am afraid that it would take some pretty drastic measure for the leader of Libya to ever move up a rank from dead last on their scale of hotness. Clearly some of these people need anger management classes and most could use a Hollywood makeover but there are a few on there that may surprise you and it is definitely worth a look and a laugh. So again it’s, http://hottestheadsofstate.wordpress.com/list/ if you are interested and need a laugh.

So whether you take a girl to the movies on Valentines day or the day before or after or just sometime around the big romantic V-day what movie do you take her to this year? Obviously the star studded romantic comedy Valentines Day is the favorite target for the weekend but guys seriously, most of really don’t want to sit through romance so how do you not piss off your girl but still get to see a good movie? Well first if you do have to go see Valentines Day you couldn’t ask for a much better cast in Jessica Alba, Julia Roerts, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hatheway (who all must use the best acne treatment because I can’t believe anyone’s skin is that perfect, not that I’m complaining), Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper(The Hangover), and Jamie Foxx. But it’s a good weekend for opening movies which makes it even more difficult. Top contenders for the guys are The Wolfman which actually looks pretty cool and you can never go wrong in my opinion with Anthony Hopkins in a film and then Percy Jackson and the Olympians looks cool too if you like fantasy sci-fi mythology movies with great special effects. And then there is Avatar, the Titanic of the new millenium and maybe the highest grossing movie ever to be, and it has a love story in it. So if you haven’t seen Avatar yet I can assure you chicks will dig it too and you can play up the love story for the Zoe Saldana’s character and the people of Pandora without getting too much grief. The other too might be a stretch for Valentines Day movies for date night but still look like damn good movies to me.

The Wolfman trailer.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians trailer.

Valentines Day trailer.