Well, is she?

Hello reading person. Sorry there's been such a big gap between weblog posts. Google made it impossible to be logged into two of their accounts on the same computer at once, or something, and that has made logging in to write on the blog much more of a chore than it usually is, or something. And given that it is never imperative in any way for me to make posts to the blog (case-in-point: that "big gap" between posts will, for you, be measured in inches [about two of them], and not in weeks or months. In other words, nobody reads this), it took a back seat to other things, like not posting, quite easily. So, what could be important enough to make me log out of one Google account and into another to document here? I'll tell you, shall I?

This is what I saw when I went to Comcast.net just now:

Is Kate Middleton Hidding a Baby Bump?

CelebTV

I saw this, among numerous other grabby headlines, such as "Sinead O'Conner to Wed for Fourth Time". Incidentally, the reason I visited Comcast.net was to pay my home internet bill, so that I could have continued, unlimited access to a medium whereby I can stay updated on all this garbage.

So here's what I want to know: is Kate Middleton hidding a baby bump? And if so, how is she doing it? As a young person, I hid my fair share of bumps and other things, but I never found it necessary to hidd anything, bump or other. I'm not sure what would force someone into hidding something, nor am I clear on how they would accomplish it. So if Princess Kate is indeed hidding that bump, she is a cleverer chap than I. I suppose if anyone has hidding capability, it is someone who has the wiles and resources of MI6 at her disposal (does she have those things at her disposal? I would imagine she at least has a small contingent with her all the time).

You may be wondering, at this point, if I am really so interested in how she's managing to hidd her baby bump, why haven't I clicked on the link and read the story? Same reason I haven't logged out of Google account A and into Google account B to write a blog post in so long: it's easier not to.

We maybe your best choice. Contract us now.

There's not too much to say about this, other than the fact that I stumbled upon it while browsing the internet for affordable sumo wrestling suits. I was talking to somebody the other day about how great it would be to own a pair of sumo wrestling suits, so I thought it would be interesting to price some. I don't think I'll be buying any time really soon; maybe when the kids are bigger. Here are some excerpts from one Chinese site that promises to "make every effort to meet your demand and satisfy you":

Sumo Wrestler Blow Up Suits

Welcome to Commercial Inflatables Manufacturer, Thank you for browsing our website.

We provides our customers with various kinds of sumo wrestling suit sales, cheap sumo wrestler suit for kids, sumo wrestlers costumes game . In our online store, you can choose whatever you have favor in mind.

No matter for personnal purpose or commercial promotion, even creating your own Inflatable Sumo Wrestling Suits rental business. We maybe your best choice.

Please click the Button to Contract Us Now

Please do not worry about the safety and quality, all of our Sumo Wrestling Suits products are quality assurance, own certificates of EN71, ASTM and ISO standard after tested by SGS.

And here is a link to the site, in case you wanted to experience it firsthand:

http://www.commercial-inflatable.com/Sale-Cheap-Sumo-Wrestling-Suits-6048.html

Granola bars.

A few weeks ago, I went to Costco to stock up on snacks for my office. The snack item that fit my budget was a card-carrying-member-of-the-NRA-sized box of granola bars. I ended up with the bottom drawer of my desk almost overflowing with dozens of granola bars in three flavors: Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, and Low Fat Oatmeal Raisin. "Nice," I thought as I looked down at the open drawer, "there are two flavors for when I'm craving something sweet and chocolaty, and a flavor for when I'm craving something healthy and hearty." That was a few weeks ago. Can you guess what the drawer looks like now? You probably guessed right. It's a big pile of Low Fat Oatmeal Raisin-flavored granola bars.

Attention:

It may seem counterintuitive, but these are the results of a recently conducted survey. (sample size 1)

Omg, Yahoo! entertainment news.

I wrote a post in this weblog a while back about a CNN news headline that appeared at the top of my email inbox, unprovoked, just daring me to click on it. The headline read "How to not get robbed while traveling", if I'm not mistaken. My post was essentially dedicated to just making fun of the headline and the wide range of possibilities a story with that headline has. I don't remember being annoyed by that headline appearing unsolicited in my personal email inbox, just amused. But this has gone far enough. I signed into my email this morning, and was greeted with this:

Yahoo! News: Entertainment News - Elizabeth Hurley's Boyfriend Shane Warne: I'm in Love (omg!) - 1 hour ago

Wow, Yahoo!. (That punctuation is correct because they have an exclamation point as part of their name, because otherwise no one would be excited about Yahoo! anymore. It is so 1997.) Honestly, who gives a القرف. Seriously. You have a social responsibility to not make people read garbage like that. It's ridiculous. That is not news. News is information that is factual (which criterion you met with this headline [in that he said, "I'm in love." We've no way of knowing whether he really is]) and important to the utility of your audience (which criterion you did not meet: I am a [forced] member of your audience, and I could not care less about how this man feels).

I guess it's society's fault for giving people like Elizabeth Hurley (she's a tennis player, or something, right?) so much pomp and attention. Yahoo! is just fulfilling their part in the celebrity news supply and demand model. A sad, bored group of people live for updates like this, and are so desperate to feel like these shiny people who look good in just their skivvies are their personal friends that they will eat up every crumb of every inane story they can find about them. Then they will eat up the toaster strudels that the flashing banner ad that accompanied the story told them to buy. It isn't Yahoo!'s fault. It's ours. Man, don't we feel like idiots. We don't? Well, we should.

They are NOT your friends! They don't even know you!

Congratulations, Km n Bn.

I think I am starting to understand texting shorthand. From what I can tell, the idea is to use as few vowels as possible and still get your point across. The sounds the consonants make by themselves fill in the blanks left by the missing vowels. For example, look at this text I just sent to my wife, relaying to her some exciting news about our friends who live in sub-Cananda:

Km n Bn r pregs! omg

Congratulations, Km n Bn!

Business laugh.

At the place where I work, sometimes members of our board of directors will come in for meetings. That part of this situation I am describing I am cool with. The part that I am not always cool with is the business laughing that usually goes on while these people are visiting. You know how there's business casual? And business class? And business lunch? There is also a business laugh. As far as I can tell, the goal of the business laugh is two-pronged: first, you want your laugh to flatter the person you are having a business interaction with; second, you want your laugh to overpower the person. It might sound like these two purposes are opposites - after all, isn't flattery essentially a form of submission? But flattery and the overpowering of the flattered do not have to be mutually exclusive in the business laugh scenario, and here's how: if you laugh forcefully and loudly enough, the person will feel, based on the volume and voracity of your laugh, that you think that they are absolutely hilarious. That same volume and force will also enable you to control the conversation, providing you can segue quickly from your laugh into a sentence. Also, your flattering laugh will likely have disarmed the person, giving you even more room to control the proceedings.


Unfortunately, there is more than one person who understands how to use a business laugh at our board meetings. So on board meeting days, the entire office is subjected to maniacal, raucous laughter emanating from the conference room. It then travels down the main hallway to the reception area, where it continues for another ten minutes as people stand around trying to out-laugh each other. It sounds like a hilarious situation, presented here, but when you're sitting at your desk trying to work, it can really jar you. But I guess a good business laugh is an important thing to have in your holster, as each one of us will probably be in a situation at some point where we will need it. So everyone practice your business laughs: "HAHAHAHAHAHA-HAHAAA!! AHAHAA-HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHA!! So we need to lay off seventy percent of non-essential staff..."


Very good. Now video bonus time: I googled (spell check is telling me I need to capitalize that, but I am using it as a verb, and while Google may prefer that I capitalize it, I prefer that I don't) "business laugh" just to see if my discovery was original or not, and it turns out that there is a yogi ("India's Jeffrey Tambor", I have decided to call him) who got about half as far as I have. That is, he stumbled upon the value of laughter in business scenarios. He doesn't seem to focus on its application in controlling people, but that probably has a lot to do with his world view. Here are two videos of him, and one video of the person he reminds me of:

Conversation killer.

You know how sometimes when you're with someone and you take a phone call, as soon as you finish the call the person you're with will ask, "who was that?" I just thought of a great way to kill that conversation before it starts. When he asks who it was, answer, "it was my proctologist." Now, if this person is the type to ask who you were talking to on the phone, he is also probably the type to ask if everything is all right down there. That is when you say, "I don't really want to talk about it." That should effectively nip any further discussion at the bud. I haven't actually tried this yet (I try not to take phone calls in front of other people, because many of my phone calls consist of me cussing out the jockey who rides the racehorse that I own) but I'm pretty sure it would work. And I urge you not to try to substitute "proctologist" with any other kind of doctor. For example, if you say dermatologist, and then tell the person you don't want to talk about it, he still might ask if it's a mole or sun damage or something. But anything a proctologist is looking at is going to be a lot more uncomfortable to talk about than sun-damaged skin. So he probably won't pursue it further. And that concludes today's lesson.

I told you Dick Bavetta would be back.

Decision Armageddon.

In the flurry of activity surrounding next year's presidential election, the media had for a while missed reporting on a public figure whose endorsement is one of the most sought-after by candidates (especially Republicans). Finally, though, new poll numbers on God! A political research firm has released polling data that really paints a picture of where voters are on God's recent performance (I should say the data paints pictures, because like most polling results, the data can be spun to indicate whatever you want it to indicate).

The poll -- which was conducted by the Democratic research firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) -- surveyed 928 people and found that 52 percent of Americans approved of God's overall dealings, while only 9 percent disapproved.

The interesting thing about the reporting of this story is that the website from which I pulled the above sentence, HuffingtonPost.com, had a headline above the story that read "God's Approval Rating Barely Breaks 50 Percent". That word "barely" makes it sound like Huffington Post is down on God, and pretty pleased that he is only squeaking by in the eyes of the American public. However, when the article breaks the data down, we see that although only 52 percent of people polled had a favorable view of God and his work, a measly nine percent actually disapproved. Don't reflect that little tidbit of information in your headline, do you, Huffington Post? Maybe the headline should read "Way More People Actively Approve of God Than Disapprove". That might be a little less misleading, huh? But that still wouldn't reflect what I think is one of the biggest points to take away from this poll. It's something that the Huffington Post didn't even comment on in their article, probably because it takes all the teeth away from their position: the remainder of people polled responded that they were "not sure" about God's performance.

Here's how "not sure" translates in this context: "Really? That's really a question? We have a Congress that is more than happy to let the country die just to score political points, Europe is experiencing unprecedented financial turmoil, people are dying by the millions across Africa and the Middle East at the hands of disease, famine and militaristic dictators, and you're focusing your energy on a phony-baloney God poll? How will the results of this poll change anything at all? You think God cares if a thousand-person sample approves of his "performance" or not? Come on!" Public Policy Polling couldn't fit that response onto a ballot, so they substituted it with the option of "Not Sure". But the media doesn't want you to know that, because then their story would be even more fluff than it is already.

Also, on a related note, please review the arithmetic of the "In The Arena" team at CNN. Those are some straight up number-crunchers they have there. That extra one percent must be a very special group of people:

I think CNN misunderstood what "sampling error" means. It's a provision for the inaccuracy of surveying a sample of the population instead of the whole population, not an out for people in the newsroom who don't know how to add.

See if you can guess who sent this, Pink Ranger.

Here's an email I received recently from a coworker:

Thanks Carl – all that he wrote in the email to you – was exactly my understanding of things when he left the interview on Wednesday – in fact I even gave him the P/C Orientation info to share with Mom of little boy he talked about - when he left the office – and I knew that he may be going out of state when he graduates – but only to Idaho and since he has rental property here he said he would be back often and would be able to make the one year commitment…………so I have already started calling references and put his background check info in your box….

As soon as I finished reading it, I rushed to her office to check on her. She seemed to be struggling for air! The halting, hyphenated voice! The lengthy ellipses! She must be in trouble! Perhaps trapped under the weight of a collapsed desk! "Help..............me........." But she was fine. I suppose I should have remembered the lesson I learned from Graham Chapman:

One thing that I tell people:

I tell people that rugby is safer than American football. This is usually when they question my preference for my children to play rugby over football. "Rugby is so dangerous," they protest. I disagree. I also like rugby's fan culture more than football's. If I'm going to be counted among loud, often drunk, overfed maniacs, I'd rather it be a group of maniacs who are aware that there is a world that exists outside of the United States. But the whole safety thing is a catching point, because people will remind me that football players wear pads, whereas rugby players might sport a half-inch-thick layer of foam body armor only if they are a small player, and most of them are not. Also, they get to wear a cool foam hat if they've had a concussion.

The thing that makes the difference in safety, I contend, is that a player rolled up in 40 pounds of hard, molded plastic is loads more likely to blindly, stupidly throw himself at another player and then jump up and down on top of him. That's football. And that's why so many people break their arms and legs playing it. The only rule, as far as I know, in place to protect players' bodies is no spearing, which means they can't ram each other with their heads. So no broken necks, but you still could get one of these:

You don't see that very often in rugby! Usually, rugby injuries are closer to this:

One type of injury makes you look cool, the other one makes your life miserable. So I was delighted this morning to read something in the paper - is "in the paper" still the appropriate term if I read it on the newspaper's website? Maybe that phrase needs to be updated - I read on the paper (that sounds even weirder) a quote by a rugby star-turned-football player at the University of Utah who says what I have been saying all along. But he is six foot three and 235 pounds of muscle, so maybe more people will listen to him (for the record, I am six foot one and 205 pounds of cheeseburgers and grape juice):

"Pads make it a different game," Palamo said. "A lot of people think pads will protect you. But all they really do is give the other people a chance to throw their whole body at you without worrying about getting hurt."

There you go. Pads make it a different game.

Impossible.

The other day on NPR they were talking about the aging infrastructures in the United States. I was listening in my car, while driving on a freeway littered with orange barrels and construction workers. One of NPR's guests who was weighing in on the subject was Congressman John Mica from Florida, who is on the House Transportation Committee, I think. The host asked Congressman Mica if doing ______ would be an option (I don't remember what they were talking about exactly, but that's probably because I was so distracted by what happened next). The Congressman responded: "not only is that impossible, but it is beyond anybody's capability..." Impossible and beyond anybody's capability? That really doesn't sound like it's going to happen then, huh, Mica? That's the mark of a politician who is used to having to be able to keep talking even if he has nothing left to say: if you can't find a Yellow Pages to filibuster with, then just start figuring out different ways to say the same thing over and over. It also reminded me of something Ben Stiller said once: "this mission - it just got a hell of a lot more impossibler."

"Not only am I holding up two fingers, but I am holding up one finger and another finger."

Ya ok.

Ya ok ummm so I was forced to communicate with a client via email because the phone number he gave me wasn't working. When I emailed him for the first time, I was operating under an assumption that the level of sophistication at which I should try to communicate with him was high. I think that's a natural assumption; in a professional environment, you should make an effort to maintain an appropriate level of sophistimacation. Not weird English-butler level, but just a nice, professional, high level. So I emailed him in an appropriately sophisticated voice. I then received a voice mail from him apologizing that his phone had been turned off, and that if I called again and I should be able to reach him. In his voice mail, he too seemed to be trying to communicate in a professional way. It was a very business-normal message. But I tried his phone again, and got the same result. I then emailed him:

Hi Gamorrean Guard

I received your voice mail, and tried to return, but when I call your phone it doesn't really seem to do anything (no rings, no beeps). The number that I have for you is קםער-קצצ-תפש. Is that correct? We can schedule over email if that's easier for you. If you could just let me know what times of the week you are available for an hour-and-a-half long interview, I can see how we could fit it into our schedule. Thanks

CARL

And this was his reply:

Ya ok idk I never hear you call but ummm really anytime cause my work is kinda flexible let me know when you can

Gamorrean Guard

Really, Gamorrean Guard? You know you can think about what you've written before you send it in an email, right? You don't have to just send whatever pops into your head first. Um idk I guess sum ppl aren't worried about how the way they communicate can make others perceive them lmao.

Caesar's skills.

I just caught a trailer for the upcoming addition to the "Planet of the Apes" saga. "Rise of The Planet of the Apes" opens on [date] and stars James Franco, a CGI monkey based on the movements of the Gollum guy, and [actor]. The trailer I watched, while making me wonder how good this movie might not end up being, also revealed to me how little film studios believe consumers are ever thinking. You hear the voice of James Franco saying, with quite a bit of gravity, "Caesar's skills far exceed that of a human." Then you see the hyperintelligent chimpanzee Caesar writing his name in all-caps block letters with his finger on a touchscreen tablet. Okay. I am pretty sure I could do that. Also, I could do it wearing clothes that I put on myself. Also, I could just tell you my name instead of fingerpainting it like a five year-old. At the very least I would have to say that a more accurate assertion for Mr. Franco's character to make would be that "Caesar's skills are on par with that of some humans." And a more grammatically correct assertion would be that "Caesar's skills are on par with those of some humans." Far exceed?! Yeah, maybe if the human is ten months old! All those people do is hit their heads on everything.

What's ironic about my denouncement of this studio's disrespect for our ability to focus on and process the information presented in a movie trailer is that I had to see the trailer like seven times before I noticed anything funny about what was happening. The somber tone of Mr. Franco's statement was enough for me to feel like what he was saying was very important in correlation with what Caesar was doing. He could have said, "I can't have too much of this delicious watermelon because it will give me diarrhea." And if he had said it in that tone, I would have thought, "Man, what an amazing thing, that this monkey is writing his name." So I guess I am exactly as smart as the studio thinks I am. Unless you show me the trailer seven times in a row. "Jeez, this thing again? Hold on a second... aha! Gotcha, studio!"

Attention:

"Maybe I should take my car onto the freeway and then start texting." No, you should not do that! Just don't do it. Idiot.

This review may contain spoilers.

Below is the header for a user review of an episode of Futurama that was posted on imdb.com:

Tries to do too much in its' short runtime, but it does have its' moments.

24 June 2011 | by Robert (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Spoiler! "Its'" (note the apostrophe after the "s") is not a word! Because "it" is always going to be singular! As soon as you get more than one "it" in a room, you suddenly have a room full of "they". And that's just how "it" works. It is a common mistake (I do it accidentally all the time) to write "it's" instead of "its", because we are used to the idea that to make something possessive, we need to add an apostrophe and an "s" to the end of it. So when we want to tweet about how amazing our new bike helmet is, and all about our new bike helmet's amazing properties, we will often tweet thus: "My new bike helmet is amazing, as are it's properties! <3" (That last symbol is, apparently, a heart. To me, it looks mostly like a "less than" sign in Math and a number three. Or a pair of testicles. Either way, it makes me a bit uncomfortable.)

If we tweeted this, someone would hopefully call us out and remind us that, because "it is" can be contracted to "it's", the possessive of "it" does not use an apostrophe. And we would probably get frustrated and complain that that rule just doesn't make sense. And they would tell us that they're sorry, but that's just the way English is. It's like this fancy, exclusive club where we do a lot of things that don't make sense, and even though some villager in Tahiti might speak a language whose rules are much more practical and uniform, good luck raising your standard of living to a "first world" level, villager, because to do that, it would really be best if you spoke English.

But I digress. I digress all the time. My brain is basically in a constant state of digression. Whatever. The point of this post is to applaud the innovative efforts of Robert of the United Kingdom to make "it" possessive. It is clear by the strategy he adopted that he knew that "it's" is not correct. So he went big and moved the apostrophe around to the other side of the "s". Definitely a bold move. He should have thrown the apostrophe out all together, but his boldness must be admired.

David Rodriguez

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species! If you're reading this, Mr. Rodriguez, know that you did teach me something in sixth grade. Did you ever go on the Space Shuttle? I know you weren't an astronaut, or anything, but you always seemed like you would have done quite well on the Space Shuttle.

DON'T say that!

It just occurred to me that the overused assertion that "that person doesn't deserve you", used to console someone who's just ended a romantic relationship, is really of very little consolation. It may be comforting to someone who wasn't really emotionally committed to the relationship (like a pop star who was "dating" one of her backup dancers), but if there was any emotional sacrifice or connection, the last thing someone wants to hear (besides, "I just checked, and there is a woodpecker trying to build a nest in the top of your skull.") is that his significant other wasn't good enough for him. How is that supposed to help?! That's a vindictive angle to take, and if the person you're consoling cared at all about the other person, he will be feeling very tender and sad, and maybe even hurt, but not vengeful. If he is feeling vengeful, it is out of reaction to emotional pain, and you should not add fuel to that feeling. Do this person a service by avoiding the easy utterance of, "she didn't deserve you." Are you so thick that that's the only thing you can think of to say? Use your brain! Don't say that, you idiot!

Breakfast.

Yes, of course I want to have chocolate eclairs for breakfast! What fool wouldn't? (I think one of my work colleagues is planning on eating me. She has been fattening me up for a month now.) Bring on the eclairs!

A selection from my outbox.

I just spent a lot of energy crafting this email to a friend, so I thought it prudent to preserve it here in the weblog. Interestingly, the friend to whom this email was sent is mostly the only person who ever reads this blog, unless I force my wife or my brother to read it, which I have been known to do, with varying results. So here you go, friend, here's that same email one more time:

Thanks for the great update. Yeah, you take your math class, friend. Just do it! You're so close!

I had to make so many posts because I was watching a movie that needed to be posted about, at parts. It was very important. I've heard of Northern Exposure, I think my parents used to watch it with much enjoyment. I'll have to put it in my mental queue. Monique seems pretty cool, and I haven't seen UberJew in three days (that doesn't necessarily mean she hasn't been here, but if she has, she's been uncharacteristically quiet) so it's good. Getting lots of goofing off done here in Utah.

Get this! Our assignment for photography this week is portraits, and as soon as I found that out, I thought, "I have to find a way to get a picture of Roland my crazy neighbor." I assumed I would have to sneak the picture, because he seems like a guy who would flip out if you tried to take his picture. He tore down all the fences (oh damn, the UberJew just walked in, proclaiming, "SHE LIVES!") separating our yards, which I think is against the law. Luckily he's hired some steely-eyed Polynesians to build new ones. So I started trying to sneak pictures, and it didn't work. There's nowhere I can hide to get close to him in our shared driveway, which is where he spends about 70% of his life. So finally I strapped on a pair and approached him, asking, "Roland, can I take your picture?" Surprisingly, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "I'll take your picture!" This threw me off, and I stuttered, "Okay, we'll trade pictures of each other. I'll go first." Then he started walking away. "Wait, Roland, can I take your picture?" "Yeah!" Still walking away. "Wait, Roland, stand right there for a second while I take your picture!" I finally got him to stop and look at me, and I got some cool shots, as you can see. I was pretty excited. I've been riding that excitement all week. Also from my PoliSci class, because I got my grade back and I totally got an A! So it's pretty much 10 out of 10 over here.

Max figured out how to crawl, which has opened a whole new chapter of terror in our home. Little dude just loves to pull stuff down/out/around, all the time, and now he is mobile. So look out cats. And shoes in the shoe basket. And flowers in pots. And everything. I just talked to PJ on the phone, she says to say hi to you. That yarn bombing looks AWESOME. Send me pictures of every single thing you bomb. Or put them on your blog. I look at that. You guys should yarn bomb something in town in the middle of the night. If I was there I would help. But I'll send Reggie as my proxy. So just imagine that it's me sitting in the middle of your lettuce. Keep up the good WArk! That was a terrible attempt at a Washington joke

Carl

I would feel much better if I very quickly set the record straight on something. The person we have lovingly dubbed "the UberJew" is a very friendly, good-hearted lady. We are not anti-Semites. I am not a witch. The only reason we feel comfortable referring to her that way is because she has repeatedly made it clear that she wants to be identified primarily as a Jewish person. The first three things we ever found out about her were that she is "originally from Israel" (we don't know exactly what that means yet), that she has a tattoo that means _______ in Hebrew on her neck (again, lacking exact details), and that she owns a set of Israeli commando knives that are illegal for her to possess in this country. She has bandied this fact about loudly a number of times, usually as a deterrent to a perceived threat: "Well, if they do that, I'll just come back with my Israeli commando knives..." So, out of respect to her, we call her the UberJew. And now to the pictures. Below you will find one of the (very flat, unedited) photographs of my neighbor Roland that I referenced in the email, and the result of my Google search of "Israeli commando knives":

Dang, look at that thing! Okay, UberJew, we're cool. No need to bring your knives in to work. It's all good.

Ebay.

Customer service&Contact Us:

1.Customer satisfaction is very important to us, if you have any problem after receiving the product ,please feel free to contact with us, we will very happy to help you solve it .your e-mail will be replied at the first time, international shopping exist the time difference, if you don't receive our reply ,please don't worry ,it is just that we may have not see your letter, some times ,when you send me the letter may be we are in deep night and fall into sleep.

The Authenticator, part III

Cordless phones by 1991! What a world we live in!

The Authenticator, part II

That's why you don't wear white tube socks with a black suit, you idiot! Who do you think you are, Michael Jackson?

The Authenticator

No! No, Ricardo Montalban! That Authenticator is some bad news! That bearded cracker is trying to trick you! Get out of there! Run, Ricardo Montalban!

"Nooo!" Crash!

A

a

a

a

a

a

a.....

So now the rest of the movie will be fighting, right?

Anonymity bolsters boldness.

I have discussed the frequent lack of civility on the comment posting-boards of the internet before. People call each other idiots, they make scathing assessments of the character and disposition of those who are the subjects of the stories being commented on, and it's all done with the assurance that an insult posted as a comment online will not lead to any physical retribution. This lack of accountability makes people ruthless.

It's an interesting and fairly recent development. If you read a story about Aaron Burr in a newspaper in 1804, your best option for making known to the wider readership of that newspaper your ill opinion of Mr. Burr would be to run out into the street and shout, "Aaron Burr is an undistinguished knave!" (that is the 1804 equivalent of "Aaron Burr sux!") If you truly had as much audacity as many present-day comment-posters seem to have, you might seek Mr. Burr out, and then say, directly to his face, "Mr. Vice-President, thou art an undistinguished knave!" Then he would shoot you right in the stomach. The internet, with all of its screen names and avatars, has provided a wonderful disconnect between angry normal people and the objects of their rage. Unfortunately, this merely redirects that rage towards other normal people, who react defensively, escalating the conflict on the comment posting-board. Political scientists call this an "inadvertent hostility spiral". It is not ideal.

But the anonymity of a screen name cannot protect you from ridicule, as has heretofore been proved in this blog. When you post a comment at the end of an article that is aggressive and belligerent, you put a target on your back. Your grammar and spelling had better be perfect, because the nature of your comment makes other commentators want to have a go at you. It is not in your best interest to be angry and stupid. As a prime example, witness the reaction of a Salt Lake Tribune reader to the (possibly inadvertent) double-posting of a rather long comment by another reader:

JBrown247 3 hours ago in reply to TheSportsAuthority Do you really just post the same thing over and over again? You must be a liberal; they always say the same stupidness over and over and over because they think it makes it sound better.

My reply to JBrown247 was soon to follow:

CautiousCarl 2 hours ago in reply to JBrown247

you must be a conservative: you use words that aren't words, like "stupidness"

"I didn't pay attention."

Just got off the phone with one of our clients, who was following up on an interview he'd had last week. He wanted to know if any progress had been made towards our manufacturing the bulletproof ski goggles he ordered, which is what we do here. I asked him who his interview had been with:

H.E. Pennypacker: Oh, I'm not sure, I'm sorry.

Cautious Carl: No worries, we'll figure it out. What did the person look like?

H.E. Pennypacker: It was a lady with black hair.

Cautious Carl: Okay, I think I know who it was. Was she pregnant?

H.E. Pennypacker (laughing nervously): Uh, I didn't pay attention to that.

Do you know what pregnancy does to a lady's body, Pennypacker? It doesn't take a private eye to discern pregnancy. It's not something that takes special attention to notice. I mean, the woman we're talking about is due in a month. Maybe he thought I was asking if she was of distant German heritage, or if she was wearing green socks. Those are things you wouldn't notice if you weren't paying attention. Here is something you would notice even if you were somebody's pet ferret:

Attention:

Recent studies conducted at my desk have shown that:

What? They were the only edible things sitting on my desk. What was I supposed to do?

It's good to be a good atmosphere.

I have received lots of pressure of late to post to this weblog again. Lots and lots of pressure. International pressure. Economic pressure. The masses are clamoring for more! Clamoring! To the masses' delight, I have just stumbled upon something that is worthy of scrutiny. Behold an excerpt from a recent article authored by one Michael Lewis on concacaf.com, explaining a Guadeloupean soccer player's trepidation at playing in front of a Kansas City crowd who cheers for him when he plays for the local club team but against him when he plays for his national team:

"It doesn't matter," he said. "At least there's going to be fans. It's good to be a good atmosphere. They could be back us of backing the other team. I prefer to play in a full stadium agains us than in an empty stadiu. I hope some of them will back me, too."

So I guess the message here is members of the press (yes, a staff writer for concacaf.com is a member of the press) can just write whatever the H they want. Just whatever. They can even copy and paste from transcripts of interviews conducted by other members of the press, even if that transcript was translated into English by a foreign member of the press using free web-based software (this is what I suspect happened with the above quote). There is, of course, the possibility that this is a word for word quotation, and that this soccer player just talks this way. But I really doubt it. I'm pretty sure this one's on Michael Lewis. If I made a habit of blatantly half-A-ing my work like this at my job, I'd probably get fired. I wonder how much Michael Lewis makes? Honestly, probably not a lot. And honestly, he probably earns it.

The importance of being forewarned.

Apparently the world is due to end tomorrow. No, sorry, tomorrow is Judgement Day, and the world will end five months later. After tomorrow, only the wicked will be left on the Earth, the righteous having been sucked up into heaven by the Celestial Hoover WindTunnel. Harold Camping figured this out, I assume after somber consultation with a wine-stained copy of the Bible and a plate of cheese fries. I feel like I've lived a pretty good life, but Doctor (sorry, no - I've just been told he is not a doctor) Camping's approximation that only 3,000,000 people will be saved does make me a bit uncomfortable. That's like four percent of the Earth's population. I've met loads of people who are more righteous than me, and that's only the people I've met! I suppose all I can do is maintain a positive attitude. Unless I could find a way to help the preachers of impending judgement hone their message to be a more effective warning voice - that ought to earn me some extra points, right?

So, with that motivation, I present to you a vital, albeit small, revision I have made to the "May 21 Doomsday" page of the site judgementday2011.com. This paragraph is warning Los Angelites that their city is due for a monster earthquake, and warning the rest of the world of the disasters that earthquake will instigate:

An earthquake in Los Angeles could triggers tsunami’s, drastically affect our communications, and spiral the entire country into an Economic Apocalypse. This, or other natural disasters, combined with radiation poisoning from Nuclear fallout will let us know that Judgement Day will be May 21 2011.

The instant I read it, I saw what crucial omissions these prophets had inadvertently made. So I sent a quick email to them, with my corrections redlined so they would know what changes they needed to make:

An earthquake in Los Angeles could triggers tsunami’s nut allergies, drastically affect our communications, and spiral the entire country into an Economic Apocalypse™. This, or other natural disasters, combined with radiation poisoning from Nuclear® fallout will let us know that Judgement Day will be May 21 2011.

I anticipate that an email expressing the thanks of Harold Camping and his disciples, and ensuring me of special treatment during tomorrow's fireworks, will arrive soon. I just hope it gets here before midnight. I wonder what time zone the doomsday schedule is based on?

Muhammad's dialect.

I was cc'd on this email by a work colleague:

Fontella Jones,

We have left messages for 2 of these girl’s parents and tried to talk to parents of the other. Neither parent spoke much English (not Spanish speaking) so we did the best we could but did not get far. We are trying to figure our a way to communicate with these families but no promises….Spanish we can do but these appear to be an African/Muhammed dialect so wish us luck…

- Astronaut Mike Dexter

I, in fact, was the one who made the attempt to communicate with the families mentioned here. And I can say with near-certainty that the man I talked to was actually speaking King Henry VIII dialect, with possibly a mix of a few John Wycliffe dialect words and phrases. These are dialects with which I am well accustomed. But he had the accent of a speaker of Muhammad dialect, to which my ear is not attuned. He could not understand me because I was speaking Joseph Smith dialect with a Prince Vladimir I inflection that I picked up from my time in Ukraine. Knowing the gentleman was from Northern Africa, I tried to channel what I had picked up in Johannesburg listening to the South African John Wesley dialect, but this strategy was hampered by colloquialisms that don't transcend the region. It was more confusing than trying to communicate with my Siddhartha Guatama-speaking friends in middle school. Needless to say, my colleague's assessment is accurate: we did the best we could, but did not get far.

How to get robbed.

Like many, many people, I use Google's gmail service for all of my emailing needs. There are myriad reasons people use Google's package of web-based services: they might like how colorful the calendars are; they might like other things. One thing about gmail that I am neutral on is the news feed update bar at the top of the screen:

The red arrow and box show where the news updates appear.

And below all of that, you can see Jim Beveridge's inbox. I don't

know who Jim Beveridge is, but between emails from the

AOL Beta Administrator, The Planet Marketing, and himself,

he appears to be all business. Except for that forwarded message

about the VERY big kitty. I hope Jim stopped to check that one out.

It's important to give your brain a little break every once in a while.

It doesn't bother me to see a little tag for some story that the sharply-dressed, fair and balanced cats at Fox News think is crucial to get out there. It just doesn't really excite me, either. I think the only time I've ever clicked on the link to read one of those stories was when it was a BBC story about Richard Branson announcing commercial space flight for all (who have like $400,000 laying around) in his Virgin Atlantic Star Cruiser or whatever the shuttle is called. That was a grabby headline they put up at the top of my inbox, and I took the bait, and I was not disappointed. But usually nothing in that little space can entice me to click on the link to find out more. But today...

Today I was checking my email and I saw this:

CNN.com Recently Published/Updated - How to NOT get robbed when traveling - 1 hour ago

Now this, I thought, is going to be worth reading! But luckily I stopped to give the prospect of reading the story a little more contemplation before I took action. Why would anyone at CNN write such a story, I asked myself, and why would they feel it was crucial to present the word "not" in all caps? It could be that earlier they had accidentally posted a story on their site entitled "How To Get Robbed When Traveling", and had subsequently received many complaints from faithful readers who took the story's advice and pointers to heart and were then relieved of precious passports and digital cameras while on holiday in Europe. Would I really want to invest time into reading an article from such a careless and socially irresponsible news outlet? The other possibility I considered was that CNN wants people to get robbed while traveling, so they are trying to mislead people into reading an article that will give them a false sense of security. Maybe the article tells travelers that the best way to keep your money safe is to pin it to the outside of your pants, because people in other countries have got tourists' backs. If this is the case, then I obviously wouldn't want anything to do with this story. So I did not read it. Which makes me feel less informed, but also very clever.

Oh, there is nothing like emailing in the spring!!!

I received this email:

Hi Monsignor Frampton! This Is Ursula Vivienne Mikhailovic!

I called yesterday (April14th 2011) and we discussed when i should be able to come in and call again! You said early May or June? Also, i would volunteer in the community but i don't hold a driver's license! I am willing to help volunteer with anything until i get my license and i will be will to help out with the community! Let me know! Thanks so much!

-Ursula Vivienne Mikhailovic

I wanted to match her obvious enthusiasm, so I responded thus:

Ok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

Received this email from Borpo at Ray-Ray's Fun House:

Hey I Really want to do this.. I have 5 younger siblings... but none of them are with my anylonger. so I was hoping that maybe I could find another "brother" lol so it sounds like a good program is there any schools in wvc that I could go to? if not may I get an exact adress?

What we have here is a showcase of new-age punctuation... like "lol".. "lol" counts as punctuation now, you know lol it basically has the same function as a period lol the ellipse is a useful alternative to a comma... although you have to remember to put three periods in it (if you only put two... it acts like a period... like "lol") lol so there's your punctuation lesson for the day.. now you shouldn't be troubled by these tricky buggers anylonger..

Lazer cappability: the ease with which a laser can be capped

Apparently, the Japan tsunami washed a lot of garbage into the ocean. There is a story on NPR.org about the efforts of scientists to forecast where all of this garbage will end up (it was concluded that most of it would wash up in Hawaii and the west coast of the continental US). Naturally, many web-nerds have been busy commenting and counter-commenting on the story. Some of the comments deal with individuals' small-minded indignation at this sea garbage even being a story at all:

Rebekah Scott (rebrites) wrote:

I wonder who the poor Hawaiian tourists and surfer dudes will find to sue for their pain and suffering. Thousands in Japan die or are hurt or lose their homes and health, and all the USA can do is whine "what about ME???"

That is silly, ma'am. Of course the worst thing about the tsunami is the human suffering it has caused, but it doesn't mean that tons of garbage floating all over the world is a non-issue. We can be concerned about both things at the same time. Howzat?

While a portion of the posted comments are rooted at the holy roller level of "everyone is a selfish jerk except for me", more enlightened minds are using their comments to propose viable solutions to the inevitable landfall of the mass of trash. Enlightened minds like astro-maritime technology guru Pat Jessee:

Pat Jessee (jypssee) wrote:

Is there not a lazer cappabilty to reduce this flowting island of debris into dust size particals? Or a large ship with a big drop down opening where it could swallow up and sort and recycle major wood, etc.

Come on, scientists! Have we forgotten our laser capabilities? And our lazer cappabilities? Is it not high time we deployed the large drop-down opening sorting ship? This is a call to action! The island of debris is flowting towards us as we speak!!