Anti-Simpsons programming

Most of the time, I watch the Simpsons at 7:30 in the evening. Tonight, though, I'd seen the episode several times recently and so decided to click around. On local channel 13, we've seen repeats of the local high school football games, including an outstanding game by Michael a few weeks ago.

Tonight, however, channel 13 showed the Pentagon Channel, primarily a set of reports on the goings-on in Iraq. They even included the weather forecast for Baghdad and cities in the north and south. I guess that if you want to tell your story, you might as well not rely on the liberal MSM (mainstream media) and just do it yourself.

Lapland's Elfing classes - Boing Boing

Because of my age and other circumstances, when I talk about returning to work, I hear a lot about reinventing myself. Well, as one from the "over-fed, long-haired, leaping gnome" generation, Lapland's Elfing classes might be just the ticket.

Neatorama » Blog Archive » Saddest Cubicle Contest

I don't know which is sadder: to win the Saddest Cubicle Contest or to have the second-saddest cubicle.

Meanwhile, management is on the case, ensuring that future workspaces will be bright and open:

About time and space

In the Sunday paper, Target has a 52-page insert just about toys. That doesn't include the coupon booklet inside. Jesus' day must surely be coming. (Expect to see heavy advertising and lots of markdowns as retailers combat an expected slump in holiday sales.)

We learned about this insert earlier than we'd expected. This is the start of Daylight Losing Time, aka standard time. Marley, not wearing a watch, saw the daylight and decided that it was time of his breakfast, even though it wasn't yet seven o'clock in people time.

These 25-hour days are nice, giving us extra time on a pleasant autumn Sunday. Of course, just having time isn't good enough for some. The New York Times included a large-format, glossy color brochure from Marquis Jet.

25 Hours
As little as $119,000

You can rent your own jet for that long for that much. (It's bit of twisted deja vu. Sandra and I watched Fever Pitch last night. Drew Barrymore played a character who was working with Marquis Jet.)

[Addendum: if your sleep cycle has been disrupted by the changing time, a Guide to Metric Time (or decimalized time might be just the thing to help you sleep.]

Then, again, geniuses aren't always whom we'd expect

Top 100 living geniuses - Telegraph

Riding the Rails--Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression

One of the cornerstones of my father's history is his experience riding the rails during the Depression. He traveled from Maine to the Pacific Northwest, looking for work and, no doubt, some fun. The stories he told were rich with danger, pain, and humor.

He wasn't alone on the road. There were lots of folks, young and old, searching for work, searching for a place to begin or restart their lives. This web page, Riding the Rails--Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression, tells the story of teenage drifters and includes some of their letters home.

As I've been cleaning out my father's papers, I've not found any letters to his parents. There are a few notes from his friends during the war, but nothing yet about the times as a hobo. Some of his stories are recorded in Carole Gariepy's A History of Queen Lake. I'll record some more here.

Nice mask

World Series night games

Nationally televised World Series night games have rendered the out-of-town newspapers useless, at least with regard to reporting on the game. Fox Sports has scheduled the night games to start at 8:30-ish Eastern. That means that a typical game will finish some time after 11PM, often later. The Boston Globe, New York Times, and others have to put their early editions to bed so that folks in the exurbs can have a morning paper. As a result, most of the content was written before the game started. We might, if we're lucky, get a partial score from the 5th inning.

Back in the day, a kid could get off of the school bus, hurry home, and watch the rest of a World Series game. You could watch Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run in the 1960 series before it was even time for supper.

Off in the hills when the ship comes in

As I've mentioned before, I still receive email notices about jobs in my field, even though I'm not able to work right now. This morning, I saw one that was close to an ideal match (documentation tools engineer). I probably should unsubscribe to these mailing lists until I'm ready to work again. I often underestimate how much I miss work.

Prenuptials we never read

Another link we didn't click

Happy Birthday, Earth

WorldNetDaily: Everything that is was created 6,010 years ago TODAY!

Some of you might be following a different calendar or might have a differing view of the age of life, the universe, and everything.

It's more than we can stand

It's a struggle that we'll probably lose, but still cannot walk away from the fight. The struggle, of course, is the struggle from sane grammatical usage. English speakers on both sides of pond have tried raise the alarm regarding improper use of apostrophes. There is a Facebook group called If You Can't Differentiate Between "Your" and "You're" You Deserve To Die. (Thanks to Nancy D.) I'm not sure that apostrophe abuse is a capital offense, but I know that I stop reading almost everything that has an it's where an its is the proper choice.

Even German writers are facing the enemy within. BTW, Google translates the phrase in the middle of the page, "Der größte anzunehmende Idiot," to be "The largest idiot who can be accepted".

The Book of SPAM: a SPAM-TASTIC Guide to Absolutely Everything Related to SPAM!

'Nuff said.

Neatorama » Blog Archive » The Book of SPAM: a SPAM-TASTIC Guide to Absolutely Everything Related to SPAM!

Penn researchers find emotional well-being has no influence on cancer survival

This article - Penn researchers find emotional well-being has no influence on cancer survival - runs counter to what we've wanted to believe, that improving our mood or attitude will help us get better faster. I still believe that, with a positive attitude, one can be a better patient, more willing to do the things necessary to get well. It's important for me to remember, however, that a good attitude is a support for, not a replacement for, good medicine.

A what from whose what?

There are a lot of questions that I didn't ask of my parents and, probably, an equal number of answers to which I did not pay attention.

I found this in a box of papers that we'd collected from my father's house. The box included my grandparents' citizenship papers, birth and marriage certificates, and passports.

The receipt is for the cost of administering ether as an anesthetic while my uncle was having a bullet removed from his arm.

Getting ready for Halloween

Basic Instructions: How to Deal with Trick-or-Treaters

What the cool morning brings

We have another frost this morning, a bit more widespread than Friday's. The bird bath has a skim coat of ice. As I lit the stove, I wondered when it was that we had to start buying book matches. Long after we quit smoking, we could still find free matches in hotels and restaurants. We still have a book from Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington DC, where we met after my mother's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. The wood, strike-anywhere matches, of course, are more fun. You can light them on your teeth (although hazardous if you have a droopy mustache), on your belt buckle, on the back of your pant leg (denim is best), and just about any coarse surface where you're sure to leave a mark.

I couldn't remember the Finnish word for matches and tried a couple of online dictionaries:

On the next site, I found a term, tulitikkulaatikko, which means a box of matches. The home page of this site shows a list of popular searches.

English-speakers are looking for Finnish equivalents of "i love you" and such.
Meanwhile, the Finns are looking for the English words for VoIP, booze, marry (or more colloquial descriptions of marital activities), and Happy Easter (!?).

Marley's unsettled by the gunshots from the hunters in a nearby pond. They're hunting geese, I suspect. Last week's police log had another report of gunshots in the area. It turned out that a farmer in the neighborhood was putting down some of the farm animals.

Dictionary

More than 10 years ago, the CEO of our small company asked to borrow my dictionary. I told him that I didn't have one, that I looked up definitions and spelling on the web. "That's crazy," he said. "A writer should have a dictionary on his desk."

In the meantime, the dictionary that I don't have on my desk keeps getting smaller: Webster's USB New World Dictionary - Gizmodo.