I just got back from delivering Emily's last Care package. This one kinda escalated over the past week or so. A few days after we last saw her, she phoned home to request that we ship out a boom box or some other form of music playage, since her .mp3 player had shit the bed and she didn't have much transferred onto her new cell phone yet.

Eleanor, bless her, volunteered to clear off her own .mp3 player of the same ilk -we all three have the same one, in pink, yellow and blue

- and loaded a bunch of tunes onto it from her own computer, remembering pretty well which ones Em had ripped onto there to transfer onto her own .mp3.

Gradually, and in what we refer to as the "if you give a moose a muffin" syndrome, the wish list expanded, to include everything from laundry products and knitting gear to more DVDs (she's got close to a dozen down there already), and once the cost of shipping gets anywhere close to the $10 in gas it costs to get down there, of course I'm gonna drive it down myself.

Ebony seemed fine when I was ready to leave (and she's fine now, greeting me on my return home with her usual reckless abandon), but I wanted to keep an eye on her, plus I thought she and Em would love to see each other, so I put a leash on her and loaded her in the front seat for the 50 mile trip. We got all of a block from the house before her crying made me turn around. She's been this way for years; early obedience training and regular trips to places other than the vet are all lost on her now, so I brought her back and delivered the goods a little over an hour ago.

But not before asking whether Emily had brought down the "dead" .mp3 player. She went and fetched it, and we said our goodbyes. I plugged it into the car charger and, boom! It turned right on and both played and displayed all the songs on it. I called her on the spot to ask her to put the "new" one in her charger, and it worked fine.

The moose's muffin is mysterious.

with a side order of shit on a shingle.

Ebony came up lame this morning.



There she is, in happier times.  When the animal onslaught came an hour or so ago, it wasn't accompanied by the wet puppy kiss that comes from our youngest coming in.

She's in a corner of the bedroom, not getting up for nuthin. She's not whimpering, and mostly is resting, but you can tell by her face that something is off. Way off.

So I will be spending the morning with Harry, as planned. It'll just be Harry Newman, DVM, rather than Harry Potter, OOM.

We ADORE this dog, and the feeling is mutual. Emily, especially, will be devestated if it's anything.

Pray. Offer karma. Hell, give a cat a cheezbrgr if it'll get them on board.

Supplemental. It's now almost 8, and she seems fine. She got up on her own, went outside like she always does before feeding time, came in the kitchen looking for om nom noms, and I fully expect to see a rope toy in her yap within the next few minutes. We'll still take her in- she's due for her annual anyway- but oy gevalt.

It makes sense in a way. She's half shar pei, so it figures that an hour later she'd be hungry at last.

When the time comes later this year, anyway:



One of the tellers at the bank this morning had it in front of her station. She just turned the Big L, and this was one of their pressies to her, along with the usual display of black balloons, hanging crepe and whatnot that, sheesh, I remember getting when I turned 30. Yes, I do remember turning 30. Get off my damn lawn.

Eleanor turns a much less numerically significant number on Monday, and there's a chance we'll be spending a good chunk of it on a romantic date at the DMV. The state so helpfully expires licenses on our birthdays now, and I don't think she's been in yet; meanwhile, I auctioned off a car this morning for a client and whoever bought it is gonna have to explain a ton of weird paperwork to the DMV on that, so I may take that for them, as well.  The car's a 12-year-old Mercury Sable (a Taurus, essentially), with over 200k miles on it, but the body's in great shape and it at least starts, so if anybody's looking for some cheap transpo, I can probably take a late bid before Monday.

----

HPB tonight tomorrow early matinee. I finished re-reading the book last night, so I'm ready. For this one, anyway; I've completely forgotten the R.A.B. bit from 7 which JKR teased at the end.

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( Stupid Facebook Questions #79-116 )

It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.

-- Rockford Peaches manager Jimmy Duggan, giving his own interpretation of the meaning of life.

----

Thank you for that lovely anthem, and now Reverend Ray is going to turn and preach to the choir for a bit. Because if you're reading this, you probably understand what I'm going to be talking about, far more than those who aren't reading it.

I've now been immersed in the strange and wondrous world of Facebook for two whole days. I'm finding it a far more alien land than I ever did LJ, AOL or even the Buffalo Freenet back in those early days of internetting almost 15 years ago. Everything is clipped, instantaneous and irreversible. If you want to refine a status or a comment, your only choice is to delete it and start over.

----

Here's a status I just wrote there:

[my name]is checking out just how far a status can go in terms of words, characters, whatever. I'm writing a blog post right now on the "Short Attention
Span Theater" model that this place seems to be based on- and about how much goes missing in content, and connections, when you're limited by format to a paragraph, at most, about what's going on in your life. Okay, two paragraphs. Maybe it is unlimited. No, it ends right he

419 characters, or so says Word when I paste it in. That's not much beyond what I had for breakfast, or what band I saw last night, or how frustrating it is to be stuck with two court appearances six hours apart with not-all much to do.  I can do better. I do do better, and that's why I'm going to be one of the last ones standing when it comes to journaling as forms of expression, catharsis, and even, on a good day maybe?, art.

----

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Let's ride bikes!

I can't say I'm surprised that this shortening is becoming the way we are. I was only slightly ahead of the changing of the guard on that count, which I think I can trace back to Sesame Street. That was the medium which did a lot of good in terms of teaching skills, but created a massive change in the way those skills were taught. The two-minute segment became the standard. Anything else caused boredom, inattention, distraction. Technology has embraced and spread this trend, from the MTV-ification of entertainment programming, to the hurry-up paces of modern sporting events, to the ten-minute Youtube being about the longest anyone will wait through (and likely can even upload even if somebody wanted to show more). 

This week's Big Deal Movie Premiere illustrates another side of it. Here, we've had this film completed, in the can, ready to be shown for a year if not longer, and the studio not only holds us back from seeing it for literally months just to catch a bigger-buck opening weekend, it expects us to stay up until midnight to see it at the first possible second after making us wait so damn long.  Nobody thinks there's anything wrong with this, as long as [insert the object of their fanning here] is in the movie and comes out all dreamy.

Me? I still prefer baseball, the lowest-tech sport there is.  I wait to see movies when I want to, and/or when my family and I can.  And I still prefer the extended rant to 419 characters of compression.

----

I've been Facebook-friended by many who do, and a few who did, post their more extended thoughts here. Among those who I've seen, clearly many (and at least one by outright admission) have made these "statuses" (or the corresponding Tweets on That Other Thing) a partial or full replacement for the journal entries I came to know and admire them by.  My LJ Flist has a variety of people, places, occupations, avocations and ages, but every one them who I follow here, without exception, is a good and thoughtful writer. And that's saying something in an era where people increasingly can't string 419 characters together if their life depended on it.

I miss those words, where they're missing. I appreciate and treasure them all the more when they are shared- whether in the form of your own entries, or through your comments on yours, or mine, or somebody's.

Statuses and walls are much harder to follow, even for what is there. There's far more automatic clutter that breaks the flow of work-as-a-whole. On my second day, I figured out how to add a few items to my profile, one of them being the fact that I'm married, and my Wall instantly updated with the following:

♥  Ray is now married. · Comment · Like

As if it just happened now, not close to 22 years ago.

Ah, and then there are those "like" things. The me-too-ification of the internet, which didn't show up here first but is certainly being hastened into ubiquity by an app this big and important. It doesn't challenge the brain cells if you can just click a button to state your agreement with, or appreciation for, something that's posted. If not used enough, those cells rot, and will eventually die, if you don't use them.  Even a "that was funny!" reply uses a little bit of effort, but it seems we don't have time for that, anymore.

----

So it is with that, I end this 2,500th post with appreciation for everyone I've met, and connected with, and still find dear and talented even if you're keeping your thoughts to 419 characters at a time.  I promise that 2,501 will be the first of many more, and with the kind of attention, thoughtfulness and irreverence that has marked most of those preceding it.

Not that I won't use Facebook, or even get into it for what it is.  In fact, here: have a LOLCAT I just put up on an old friend's wall:

Usually, I find Wait Wait's "Not My Job" segment to be the weakest link in the show. Most of the celebrity guests are obviously phoning it in (many of them literally are), they're plainly there to plug their latest something-or-other rather than getting into the repartee of the segment, and actual gameplay is rarely all that funny and even more rarely successful (most of the guests lose, the only ones on the show to do so regularly).

Not this week's episode, though. They brought on Neko Case, whose music I knew only a little about but whose comedic skills I'd completely missed out on. They gave her three questions about her sort-of namesake, the Necco wafer, and not only did she do well on them, she had me falling off my chair several times riffing on it with Peter and the panel! Go to the show page and roll down to the "Not My Job" link.

There's also a bit later in the program about a failed attempt by London's Metropolitan Police to increase surveillance by putting helmetcams in the bobbies' silly hats. Apparently the devices have an unfortunate tendency to burst into flame, and the resulting conflagrations have an even more unfortunate tendency to make the bobbies resemble characters in a Benny Hill sketch.

The segment ended with, what else? A rousing rendition of Yakkety Sax, which was already in my head before they got to it, but now I feel better, for I have gone and put it in yours, as well.

It seems like an easy enough thing to do.

Plug your computer into the television set. Run cable from set to DVR external input jack. Put Hulu on computer. Tell DVR to record what it's displaying. Hit playback after a few minutes to test connections.

See Met pre-game on disk instead.

Reset DVR to receive input from external input jack. AGAIN tell DVR to record what the tv is displaying. Hit playback after a few seconds to test connections.

See black screen of death on disk instead.

Sorry. I tried:(

Anyone else know how to DO what I'm trying to do?

It was a dark and stormy day. By late afternoon, Eleanor was still not home, work and workout were behind me, but the ground was still too wet to mow. No Mets until the evening, no unseen Dexters or Jackies to be had. Thus it was I gave in to the call of the past and popped in disk one of the Four-series Genesis of the Daleks.

Oh my stars and TARDIS.

The cheesy effects. The brain-at-door implementation of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development (it's in the concordance, Mel, look it up) which explains the iron crosses on the Kaled bad guys. The fascination, even then, with redonkulous anagrams. The Time Lord (I thought the Doctor was the last one?) who rather resembles Marty Feldman playing Eyegor. Most of all, though, the fascinating flipping between outdoor film and on-set videotape which I know was a staple of the 1970s Beeb.  Python had it, too, and they rather made fun of it- such as in this one, right after the first appearance of the Spanish Inquisition, about 6:20 in.

And yet? and still? He's the Doctor. Practically in a pith helmet, and that scarf! (Was that perhaps the inspiration for Arthur's towel?) Somehow, the lack of as many toys, and as much CGI, makes his character all the stronger.  Plus, I finally got to meet Sarah Jane. Get that Phil Collins song out of my head.

So, yeah. I'll be watching the rest of them, and probably not waiting for dark or storm before I do so.

----

The visual effects from it did remind me of one other, much less-loved, series of that era, which I know I've written on here before- called The Starlost. It was developed by Harlan Ellison, who was so pissed by the final product that he slapped an Alan Smithee pseudonym on it and I never even knew, watching them on channel 4 as a teen, that Cordwainer Bird was the same guy who wrote "City on the Edge of Forever." I did know that the star, Keir Dullea, had been Dave in 2001, and that this role was pretty much the proof that HAL had sent his acting career out the airlock, too.

What I didn't know, until this morning, is that Starlost is now available on Netflix.

Naturally, I've ordered the first disk.  Hey, my DVD played Incubus and didn't explode, right?

----

ETA.Em called this morning. She's getting the full spectrum of college life- a kid already expelled for bringing the chronic; the town water supply getting full of tiny livestock due to all the excess rain; a 2 a.m. fire alarm that turned into an arrest of one of the counselors' ex-boyfriends who'd been stalking the place; and in between, they do some actual work-



You can scroll through the rest of them here; she's not the only one with pink hair.

Just some random bits of randomness.

Starting out with happiest of birthdays to lindapendant. Starting your day with a new iPod attachment is cool. Playing Etta James is cooler.

You're pretty cool, too, even for the Great White North.

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I rarely use AOL anymore, but I went just now to find a favorite that doesn't even exist anymore. Instead, I saw a link I'd not thought of in ages, which had been a fairly low-key picture site of one of my dearest (and sadly, longest out-of-touch) Asheville friends.

Hmmm, I wondered. What's Lisa up to these days?

Quite a bit, actually.

Lisa's graduated from UNCA with a multimedia arts degree. The site is now a sampling of her animation work. You know, the stuff the kid wants to do.

Go check it out. It's pretty amazing.

----

I'm almost done with Obama's book, but I'm thinking it would be a good idea to put it down and start re-reading HBP before next week. Thanks again, Warner Brothers (Stan and Reg), for pushing this release back so far from my last reading of ANY of the books. I remember who does what, and mostly to whom, but I have fading recollections of whether they happened in this one, the next one, or the next next one.

Off to the Temple of Doom to see if Emily left it behind before going off to college....

Timmy Ho's is coming to Manhattan.

Will New Yorkers prefer Timbits over Munchkins? That taste test will begin this weekend when about a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the city will be transformed into the first local outlets of Tim Hortons, the king of doughnut sellers in Canada.

The Riese Organization, the company that first visited the urban food court upon Manhattan, is ending its affiliation with Dunkin’ Donuts and hoping it can make more money with a chain named after a dead hockey player. Mr. Horton, a six-time all-star in the National Hockey League, opened a doughnut-and-coffee shop in Ontario 45 years ago. He died in a car crash 10 years later, but the chain grew on.

It now has more than 3,400 locations, including more than 500 in the United States, and its signature bite-size treats — Timbits — come in 35 varieties, including lemon-filled and sour cream glazed.

----

Now the only question is when stodgy old outlets like The Times will change the spelling of "doughnuts" to the correct, popular and infinitely letter-saving form used in the two principal names of the chains in its home base. Only Kracker Kreme insists on that old spelling, and face it, who wants a donut if it's got an "ugh" in the middle?

Am I the only one who's getting Nurse Jackie episodes a week before their scheduled airdate? TWoP is through its "weecap" of S1E5, which supposedly aired Monday. But I've seen episode 6, complete with an old friend from Pushing Daisies along for the trip.

If this is unauthorized cabling, shhhhh. Be vewwy vewwy qwiet.

----

Our church owns the house next door to the sanctuary. Clergy get the choice of living there gratis, or picking their own residence and getting a housing allowance. For most of the past decade, we've had older (way older)(ancient)(i.e., still older than I am) ministers who chose Column B, and the trustees rented the place out. Our new team includes a youngun, however, so we had to spruce up the old dump over the past few months.

Weekly updates told us about the progress, but only the church newsletter contained this odd Timbit about the previous tenants:

What Came Out Of The Laundry Chute?

The parsonage has a laundry chute that goes from the upstairs bath-room to the basement. When we started working on the house, we found that the chute was clogged. It took several people to clear the blockage. Here’s what came out:
-1 yard shovel (long handle)
-8-10 items of clothing including towels and underwear
-“Swiffer” floor sweeper
-2 hockey sticks (one signed)
-Fire extinguisher
- 2-15-lb. dumbbells

One of the dumbbells hit Mike Roberts in the arm, leaving him with a nasty black and blue bruise!

Bad timing, that. Mike and his wife have an armload of little kids, and Amy chose the end of the school year to have some overdue surgery done on her knee and she's been hobbling around in a soft cast for most of the past month.

----

I'm off for a round of errands and whatnots before le deluge begins tomorrow. Another of my all-day lectures to a room full of lawyers downtown, possibly seeing Emily at the Albright-Knox tomorrow night, a rainsoaked lawn needing mowing over the weekend, and then (at last count) five different appearances in four different courts in three different cities next week. One of them may be adjourned indefinitely, since one of the parties to it just had quintuple bypass surgery last week.

At least he didn't get hit with a dumbbell. Or have Jackie mixing the drinks.

Cleaning up the kitchen just now, an old riff got in my head. Teh interwebs reference its creator's appearance on Carson and Demento, but I remember it from my years of late-night listening to Larry Glick from WBZ in Boston after my Chelmsford and Brockton roommates got me hooked on it:




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One of the nicest things ever to come out of a major LJ server crash was running across a fellow traveler named (at least here) jeanne_dark (say it out loud, and put out those matches;). Not knowing how long a particular Denial of Service of Doom was gonna last, I'd set up housekeeping on Vox, went looking for LJ friends, found her instead and have ever since enjoyed her views and reviews and even occasional silly youtubes quite muchly, thanks.

This wasn't one of them, but she did post the link to it. It's a what-if speculation of what Star Trek would have looked like if done in the form of an early 20th century silent film.

Any resemblance to Enterprise is entirely coincidental:




The amazing thing is, even in black and white you can just TELL who's wearing the red shirt.

----

Right. Off to work and to make sure somebody did the right thing /obscure.

Morning: blah blah draft crap blah blah watch end of Dexter S3 while drafting said crap blah blah send emails blah blah drive to court one blah call from court two blah blah wind up  with multiple hearings set for second week of August (see Periodic Week from Hell: A Summary, 49 Captainsblog L. Rev. 2009).

Afternoon: Three unsuccessful pit stops to find Samsung-USB cord for kid's new mobile;  find no new mail (and therefore none of increasingly past-due invoice payments) at office; drown sorrows by means of ordering a "Delaware" bagel sammich at Snyder location of Manhattan Bagel, the only one that still remembers the old Bagel Brothers menu; stop home briefly and share stories with beloved; find USB at ATT (M-O-U-S-E); mail same to spawn; cardio self at BAC next to Boulevard; complicate life.

I should back up to that last part, huh.

As I headed south from the gym, I saw something distinctively male and valuable lying in the road. No, not THAT, you pervs.  A wallet. Full and fat, from the look of it.

I should note that the dual-carriageway in question, known locally as "Alberta Drive," is rather notorious for being insane. Eleanor almost died in a head-on crash near this very spot a decade ago as she drove a new, small car through the Alberta-Hemel intersection simultaneous with a teenage idiot turning an older, bigger car in front of her oncoming path. There is no parking on the road, and a temporary stop would be suicidal. So I pulled a youie, headed to a safe parking spot in one of the apartment lots just past the apparent prize, walked into the road to grab it,....

and was accosted by a station wagon full of nuns.

Okay. It was more like a Ford Taurus, and only a pair of seeming Sisters occupied it. They'd seen the wallet, too, and wanted to check out both it and me.

Is there I.D. in it?, they asked. Um, sure- my eyes moved first to the collection of cards within it and I found a name, and then, next to it in the window-display section, a business card- of a store about a block down the road and then one block over from Alberta's southern terminus.

Is there money?, was the next question. At first I only saw singles, but flipping further, was a bit more- but not much more than I withdraw from an ATM at any given moment these days- no more than a hundred, tops.  I assured them I'd reunite it with its rightful owner.  But then came the guilt:

You be sure to do the right thing!, said the driver, only able to shake half a left index finger at me because it was holding a cigarette.

My non-existent Irish got up and I said, Whatever. Do YOU want to take it to him?, and handed it through the open window.

Sister Mary Guilt-trip agreed to do the deed; I made sure they knew where the store was, and I headed back to my apartment-parked car. Because of that delay and two red lights, I couldn't tail them to ensure they followed through.  But I did call the store when I got home, and the chickie who answered the phone there, April, informed me that she'd seen no such good Samaritans in the intervening moments. She knew the wallet owner's name, but he manages their OTHER store, on the other side of town. I checked that number, as well; Dan was off today, and nobody there had heard from or about him in the past few moments, either.

So did I fuck up this random act of kindness? Had I passed on by, anyone could've grabbed the not-quite-hundred and begun shopping on the credit cards which I presume are in there. By giving into a Church Lady voice and passing the responsibility to them, I may have enabled the same thing I was trying to prevent. Worst, I won't know until tomorrow (not having the sense to remember much more than dude's first name and his business name) whether it all worked out.

It ain't easy being good.

----

Edited and unlocked for happy-ending reasons: He got it back. They took it to his house, not the store. All's well that ends well:)

Back from Fredonia. Our much-anticipated reunion with the spawn, intended to (1) fix her seemingly broken mobile, (2) deliver a relatively small load of provisions (dormitory laundry rooms no longer requiring quarters but not providing those 50-cent packets of detergent, either), and (3) hug and kiss and reminisce.

On our ride home, Mom and I spent ample time invoking the not-so-Holy Trinity:


                                                                "Jesus, Marion, Josef!"

We love the kid, don't get me wrong, but true love has its moments of testing. This was one of those times.

----

The Fredonia Correctional Facility has pretty strict ruulz for even parent visits during the program. Advance forms needed to be faxed. The child had to be signed in and out like a diplomatic courier's briefcase. Finally, it was made clear we could not interrupt the proceedings by arriving any earlier than the end of her last class, which was supposed to be 5. She called closer to 4:30 to say she was on her way; fortunately, we'd left in time to accommodate this.

From the original journey, I knew there was an AT&T store right off the exit from the 90, so our first stop would be there, to see if her phone could be fixed and, if not, what replacements were available. From all we knew, a replacement Motorola Razr like the one she had would've been fine. Trouble is, Motorola's now on the outs with this provider, and so it was clear we'd be shopppp-ping!

We arrived just past 5, and just in time for a massive bit of business going on- most of it involving families of five, dragging their kids behind them, all with past-due cellular bills, wads of cash, and existing phones (not necessarily theirs) in tow, and I seriously wondered whether this store was on the main bus line from the Chautauqua County Central Meth Lab. Eleanor was in the car, with not much to do but wait. Em and I were inside, not doing much better, and after a few minutes I suggested I wait alone, pick a suitable mobile for her, and then walk over to the inviting-looking Applebee's next door where she and Mom would get set up to start eating. Fine.

Now much closer to 5:30, and me being the one bored to tears by myself, the line proceeded to not. Move. AT ALL.   Little Jethro, all 18 months old of him, was threatening to book for the parking lot for the fourteenth time. (He probably left his cigarettes in the pick-up.) Next door, appetizers were getting cold and, more to the point, wine was being drunk without me even getting to watch, much less partake, so I made an Executive Decision: to return and finish the phone replacement ordeal after dinner.  It was at that Murphyslaw-like moment that I managed to fix the phone all by myself.

Moments later, a plate of I Can Haz Chzbrgr Slider Appetizers pending, I handed the freshly fixed fon to Em, and her crest promptly fell.  This was not the outcome she'd planned.

NOW is when she explained how she really wanted a phone with better texting ability. How she missed her friends back home and how that was her best way to keep in touch with them and yadda yadda yadda. How the return of her own phone was an insult. How sorry she was for saying most of those things seconds after she said them.

Ultimately, feathers were smoothed. I sent them campusward in search of ice cream while I took a second crack (bad choice of words for the earlier crowd) at the task at hand. Much better. Me and Todd got it done, with a suitable Samsung with a slideout QWERTY keyboard, for a reasonable price in a reasonable time. We delivered the goods to her after they returned from the ice cream parlor, said our fond farewells, and got back on the 90 homeward bound.

We weren't much past halfway to the Lackawanna tolls when my own phone vibed.  There was a text. Hmmmm, who could THAT be from?

( Cause you can't take a GOOD picture OF your phone WITH your phone.... )

Hey, where are you guys? I want to show you my new phone.

Apparently, she texted her entire list with this happy news. Which, ironically enough, includes the 'rents (or at least did). The new phone's been busy when I've tried reaching it since.

She deserves it. I'm glad we took care of it. But sheesh. Save the drama for the NYSSSA program down at Adelphi next time, huh?

Eleven minutes of Incubus was enough to make me wonder how NBC EVER let them cast Shatner- and dude hasn't even shown up in the story yet.

Apparently, there are some who liken it to a classic minimalist Bergman film. For me, at least, it was more evocative of this:



All in all, Incubus gives new meaning to the old Kirk tag line, "We come in peace, shoot to kill."

----

We're off to see the artist tonight. A trip to the AT&T Store is in the plans. We're also bringing laundry detergent, an interesting selection of DVDs she requested, and the blanket under the bed. Which is as scary as Incubus, but far as I know, Shatner's not under there.

I've come across a serious fun blog site recently called The Consumerist.  Among other recent postings, they analyzed some of the bigger ripoffs at your local pet store, the latest fun and Blu-Ray games from those throttling finks at Netflix (but hey, they did just send me Shatner's big-screen debut in the Esperanto epic Incubus), but this collection of incredibly stupid old ads takes a whole bunch of cake:

( Stupid is as stupid cuts.... )


None of this past stupidity keeps up with the present, however.

Twice in three hours to and from a client appointment, on two different radio stations, I got to hear some moronic dittohead substitute host for Limbaugh accusing our president of being in bed with the Communists in Latin America.  Obama prefers dictators to democracy, it would seem, and what better example of that could be offered than the Administration's stated opposition to the late June coup in Honduras which overthrew a democratically elected president? I wouldn't requote this if I didn't hear it twice, it was so hard to believe somebody said it the first time:

I was going to post the tales of our family's woes from earlier today: me misplacing my glasses, Eleanor misreading her schedule, Emily mislaying and then not being able to use her mobile.

Eleanor not only beat me to it, she used the identical header I was going to. It's a catchphrase we often use when one, both or all of us are swimming in The Stupid particularly more than usual: "Mister & Mrs. Spastic go to the supermarket," or whatever.

After all of this occurred, but before either of us sat down to blog, I was in the kitchen doing the washing-up, and Eleanor came over to put some things in the dishwasher. In the course of that, one of us rapped the edge of a knife on the top of the dishwasher, causing it to spin in a circle. Instantly, we thought of and said aloud the same thing: that it looked like the old teenage party game of Spin the Bottle.

Of course, I had to turn it into a longer and sicker riff: that "Spin the Knife" is the teenage Goth version of the game, knives sold separately at a Hot Topic near you.

This is my fourth post of the day on three different sites. I think I'll do something productive with my life now.

...but definitely not a Muppet short. Oh, wait. It IS a Muppet short:



(tri-corner hat-tip to digitalemur for finding it)

I haven't posted this in a few years, and with the news about local cops stepping up traffic enforcement for the holiday, it seemed like a good time:

( Buffalo Rules of Driving )

----

We both had a nice chat with Em on the phone this afternoon. She's taking two art classes at NYSSSA- sculpture, which she hasn't done that much of and is loving, and a painting class. This week's assignment was to work in a white-on-black kind of medium, and here are the samples she sent of that work:

( Read more... )
Eleanor posted a bunch of her other stories here.  I can't believe the first of the four weeks is already past. It's gone so fast, and yet she's learned, and we think matured, so much in just that time.

----

Happy fourths. Or, if you're over the line into Sunday and/or drinking heavily, happy fifths;)

*

Something's up. If this was an orchestrated move to prepare her for a Senate run or It Which Must Not Be Named in 2012, it would not have come out on the Friday news graveyard of all Friday news graveyards, on the day before July 4th.  Her chorus of Yes You Betcha Men would've all been on their talk shows talking it up and spinning it. 

No. This was pre-emptive, not premeditated.  The only question is, will the charges, or the cuckolding cutie, or whatever she's trying to bury, now come forward?

So far, anyway, this is the best list of alternative explanations I've seen:

( Not a Top Ten List, and certainly not by David Letterman. Or me. )

^* Fake celebrity impersonator. Fake gun. Fake chesticles.

Which stands, possibly, for Happy Too Much Independence Day.

A dear, bright, funny and above all (for me, at least) well-spoken Friend posted the following words last night. Most of them are from here, the words of a Houston-based blogger who I'd not heard of before this morning, but the final words, just as poignant and well-intentioned, are from Sara- newly-married, twice-conferred with degrees attesting to her dedication and brilliance, but still a part, and a way-too-often forgotten part, of our stratified Service Economy:

( Read more... )

I have a few kind words to add, too. Here, and in real life as a result of this revelation.

It's not just mobile phones making us oblivious to the people around us who would otherwise interact, and find connections, and become Real People to us if we only let them.  It's a host of technological "advances" which have come along in parallel to our cellular towers and turned us into far more oblivious zombies than we were even before the beginning of my own daughter's lifetime.

I'm as guilty as anyone of these sins, more of omission than commission. I've had a cellular earphone stuck in my ear, at least while driving, for most of the past decade, but I've gone beyond that form of isolation, as most of the people do who I'd otherwise meet, when I'm walking down the street. For most of my almost two years of fairly religious gymwork, my ears have been cut off by my own personal soundtrack of .mp3 choices, which cuts me off from the need, but also the opportunity, to ever have to say hello to, or make conversation with, or connect my world to their worlds- of the guy about my age in the yellow Adidas t-shirt, or the woman about my age with John Lennon glasses and the black workout pants, who I see virtually every time I'm in there but who I never have a chance, much less a need, to introduce myself to.

My debit cards speed me on my way through checkouts. My EZ-Pass keeps me from saying hello to, or exchanging money and smiles with, a very redundant bunch of Thruway toll-takers. And thanks to the joys of "smartphones" (a term encompassing Blackberrys and Palms and my own recent concession to the al-Lures of the i-Phone), there's rarely a  need to talk to anyone even telephonically anymore.

It's all bigger.Stronger. Faster. We have the technology. But is it better? I don't think my friends in retail (or my wife in retail, for that even more matter) would think so.

Earlier today, I stopped in our nearby Tarjay store to buy a panoply of things I'd put off- gym shorts to replace the increasingly felonious ones I'd been sporting, some new wine goblets, and some overdue chew-and-pull toys for the dogs.  I made a point of talking, generally and genuinely, with my cashier on the way out. I mentioned the recent experience of my Friend, the often-alone barista at an in-store Starbucks at an out-of-state Target store, and how important I knew it was to maintain contact with everyone I could connect with.

Her only reply was, "Wow, I wish we had a Starbucks in here." (There's one in the strip mall about 500 feet down the road.)

Hey. It's a start. 

Happy Interdependence Day to you, whether you observe it or not.