Moyamedia

Rod Roddy, What Can He Win?

Mo — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:47:00 +0000

As you guys have been clamoring for the news....

Hold on. I just crashed my head into my desk so hard I had to take five minutes to staunch a nosebleed. Where's the clamoring? I've had zero comments for the last two weeks. Come on! Clamor!

Anyway, here's the new whip.

When I went to the lot, I told the salesman that I'd like to look at cars that weren't white. But they had this one, and it was pretty good, so I ended up bringing it home. So far, I'm happy with it. I'd like to sit a little lower in the driver's seat -- it's made for people of average height, not for me. But despite the cavernous amounts of room inside the car, it doesn't feel bigger or handle much clumsier when I'm driving it than the old one did. Plus it's technically not white -- it's vanilla.

On an unrelated note, I've been unmotivated to blog very much of late, as you may have noticed. Not that you faithful readers help. I'm thinking about going in a different direction with this site. We'll see what comes of it.

Secret Identity Blown

Mo — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:35:00 +0000

Either he's too engrossed in his phone conversation to realize it, or he's preventing his roommate from taking it over, or it's a new fashion statement with the kids -- I don't know which, but the college-looking guy at the mailbox has neglected to remove his Guitar Hero controller.

I even have a camera phone now, but two attempts to capture the moment turned up fruitless.

Text Your Pick to A-V-E-R-Y-R-U-L-E-S

Mo — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Who truly won yesterday's NBA All-Star slam dunk contest? You be the judge:

Dwight Howard ...

or Avery?

Just goes to show that Orlando is where it's at for getting above the rim.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Mo — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:22:00 +0000

Even though I didn't technically own the car anymore, it still hurt a little bit deep in my chest to see it in such a state. I felt like I was using it, betraying it somehow by simply harvesting my belongings and walking away.

Oh well. My payout arrived today, and tomorrow I'll be shopping for a replacement. With any luck I should be able to find one that doesn't suck.

Thanks for the good memories, Thank God. Enjoy your well-deserved rest on the scrap heap.

Quick Question

Mo — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:12:00 +0000

I haven't pulled the memes over here yet, have I? For those of you just tuning in, I used to fill out surveys on my LiveJournal with a passion. Hey, when your job entails sitting at a desk attempting to look busy, you have to do something to fill the gaps.

So here we go.

1. What is in the back seat of your car right now?

The front bumper.

I finally got to the tow yard this morning to release the car for salvage and collect the rest of my personal items -- the license plate and frame, my US-Japan Center bag, Sed's broken Pal Mickey, an assortment of burned CDs. They wouldn't let me take the stereo out, sadly, which, if I want to replace it in the future new whip, is two hundred bucks I have to hold back from the payout I'll be receiving shortly.

So I guess technically, right now, I don't own a car, since I sold it to the shop's insurance company. According to the agent, their appraiser stopped tallying the repair cost once it reached about what I paid for the car in the first place. The check's in the mail -- it's enough to drop monthly payments on a lightly-used full-size below the century mark; you can do the math yourself if you care enough.

Oh, the rest of the survey? Nah, that was just a device for getting into the post. Dawn at Because I Said So filled it out here, if you really want to do it yourself.

And I Don't Even Have Coverage

Mo — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 02:09:00 +0000

So I have pictures of the accident, and yeah, this thing is totaled. Prepare yourself -- you might want to avert your eyes if you're not one for wanton destruction, or if the sight of such wreckage moves you in the wrong kind of way.

I bought this chair in 1996, just after my parents moved to a new house and I needed one. It's followed me to four different residences in two states. But years of abuse at the hands of my fat ass (pardon the anthropomorphization) finally took their toll.

The chair had been listing to one side for a few months, so I knew its time was near. I kept tilting it back up, holding my weight to the other side, hoping it would hold out a little longer. But this afternoon, while Sed was in it, she must have shifted her weight just right, because with a sudden crackle-thump, she was on her back on the floor, supporting the baby, who thought the whole thing was a pretty fun ride.

Luckily, neither of them got hurt. But man, that's just one more thing we have to replace.

Oh, the car? Yeah, you'll know more when I do. My insurance says "wait it out so you don't have to pay the deductible," her insurance says "we haven't been able to reach all parties involved," the shop's insurance says "we'll call you with a claim number to get the ball rolling." I say "take as long as you want, I guess, because you're paying for my rental and the storage fees, after all."

Open Letters, Super Bowl Edition

Mo — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:45:00 +0000

Dear Jordin Sparks,

You fail at the National Anthem. Seriously, how hard is it to count to three? It's like counting to four, but you stop one sooner. Also, there are no turns or mordents anywhere in the music. Never sing it again.

Thanks,
Rick

Dear Patriots coaching staff,

It's Phoenix, assholes. Take off the hoodies and go get some polo shirts. You look like a bunch of damn slobs.

Yours,
Rick

Dear Halftime Entertainment Selection Committee,

Here's a thought: How about next year, you get someone who's relevant to modern music to perform? This is a slippery slope you've got us on, picking groups that the prime 18-34 market liked in sixth grade. Who've you got lined up for next year? All-4-One?

Or a better thought, one I've stated previously: BRING BACK THE MARCHING BANDS.

With pride,
Rick

Dear Tom Petty,

Get a haircut, hippie.

Regards,
Rick

Dear Eli Manning,

Four years ago, when you were drafted by the San Diego Chargers and then pulled a prima-donna act and refused to play for them, I decided you were a tool and not worth my time. But today, you have redeemed yourself.

Today, you and your Giants stopped the Patriots' run toward only the second ever undefeated season in the modern NFL. You ensured that the most hated team in football today would not have bragging rights over not just the championship, but the perfect year.

Today, Eli, all is forgiven.

Sincerely,
Rick

Dear BeliCheat,

SUCK ON THAT.

Love,
Rick

P.S. When you return to the seventh circle of Hell tonight, give my regards to Rachael.

Push One, They All Fall

Mo — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:58:00 +0000

It's nice to see the rest of the major pizza chains finally following Papa John's' (hey, let's see you pluralize a possessive, then) lead into the 21st century by implementing online ordering. I just point-and-clicked my way to a large hand-tossed Pizza Hut super supreme for delivery in 45 minutes. (Chill out, pan fans. You and I both know that shit is nasty after it's been sitting in the box on the ride to the house. The only way to eat a Pizza Hut pan pizza is out of the pan sitting down at the restaurant, a la Chicago-style.)

Why Pizza Hut, you ask? Didn't I write a screed against them in the wake of the Stuffed Pizza Sandwich? Wouldn't it be more sensible to go with Domino's? After all, didn't they jump on the Web-order bandwagon first? And what's with all the imaginary questions?

Simple answer, really. I'm nuts. But as regards the Domino's business, that's simple too: apparently, none of their stores deliver to my address.

Wait, what? Two of the three pickup locations mentioned are within three miles of my house. The second store on the list is in the same shopping center as Pizza Hut, Vito's Pizzeria (good stuff if you're willing to wait 80 minutes), Pine Garden (my Chinese delivery of choice), and several other fine restaurants I've no doubt would be delighted to bring food to my house just as the aforementioned three have (or will). What's more, I live in a highly university-student-intensive area. It would certainly behoove Domino's to try to sell pizza to them, and by correlation, me.

The last time I couldn't get Domino's to deliver to my house, I was seven years old and the chain was just finding a toehold in Albuquerque. Apparently not much has changed -- I have a beer gut, white hairs in my beard, and a child of my own, but Domino's still doesn't want to bring me pizza.

Well, forget you, Domino's. I don't need you anyway. By the time you finally deign to deliver to me, I'll be back in the land of the good stuff, and then you're all screwed.

Demolition Derby

Mo — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:24:00 +0000

At around noon, the clerk at Midas called to discuss what they'd found wrong with my car. I'd asked them to check the brakes, and sure enough, she reported, both the front and back drums were slightly warped. They could replace everything and fix it within two hours, she said, to the tune of nearly $500.

I winced -- hearing a car repair bill in that range always reminds me of the last one I had, the one that cost about that a month to keep from falling apart. Still, it's a small price to pay for my family's safety. (I'll decline the transmission/radiator/defibrilator/whatevorator flush until the world is populated solely by roaches and sentient Twinkies, but I don't neglect my brakes.) So I told her to go ahead and do it.

Little did I know that $500 was on the low end. Of course, these places always lowball you with the price, but before this the difference was never the price of a new car.

They'd gotten the brakes fixed, the clerk told me when she called back, and the technician had taken it for a test drive to make sure everything worked. On his way back, however, as he passed one of the myriad college apartment complexes in the area, a girl (late for class, no doubt) came screaming out of the entrance doing at least 40 and smashed into my car's front fender.

To think I had almost taken the camera along for Dad and Avery's Grand Outing. (We went to the park and the library while they worked on the car.) Now I have to attempt to paint the total destruction of my poor Sentra with words. It was sitting in the middle of the road when we approached, in a lake of its own breached fluids. The hood was folded almost in half along the diagonal from the front driver's side to the rear passenger's. The front bumper was loose and hanging on the ground. The grill was shattered, pieces sticking up out of the top of the engine compartment. The windshield sported a spiderwebbed hump where the driver's head hit it. (Wear your seat belts, kids!) The airbags hung limp and impotent as I harvested my belongings. If this car is not totaled, I don't know what is.

A lot of people believe that everything happens for a reason. The worst accident I've been in was a harmless bumper tap (it was jarring, and the guy who hit me drove off, but my car was undamaged and Avery didn't even wake up), so I could have been karmically due. Plus we've been talking about getting a new car anyway, something family-sized so we can fit kids and dogs at the same time. Perhaps some greater powers were working to make it so. I'm not so sure, but if my car was due for an accident, it certainly is a stroke of good fortune that neither I nor my baby was in it at the time.

Still, I'm not looking forward to having a car payment again. Damn Florida. I totally blame you for chundering out such horrific drivers.

Housekeeping

Mo — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:35:00 +0000

A couple of administrative things to touch on.

Updated the graphics and music pages. If you've been reading my LJ or my mind, you know I'm back in the swing of drum corps again. I updated the music page to reflect my deepened experience with brass and the new corps. Likewise, the graphic page now has some images I put together for the corps' public face, including its logo. Building that is not only great experience for my design portfolio, but it was also a lot of fun and I got paid for it. (Well, a buck, but money's money.)

I'll be deleting my Myspace account as of tomorrow. I never go there anymore, except to administratively delete the porn spam invites that have accumulated in my mailbox. Having an account is more of an annoyance than a help -- if the banner ads and eye-bleedingly vulgar user layouts and forced theme music weren't bad enough, the recent arrival of click-through advertising would have pushed it over the edge. I needed an impetus to kill it, so when I learned about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day I decided to hop on board. Even if it's just a handful of people who do this, I'm ready to be rid of it.

The floating Avery head changes every month or so -- if that's the only amusement you get out of my site, at least check it out.

That's it for now, until I can be bothered to implement the redesign I'm kicking around.

Priorities

Mo — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:42:00 +0000

To the left, Avery's groceries, comprising organic produce, organic whole-milk yogurt, organic beans, and flash-frozen edamame. To the right, Dad's groceries, comprising coffee, Fruity Pebbles that were on clearance, and a bag of gummy worms half-eaten on the way home from the store.

So uh. Do as I say, not as I do.

I Wish I Could Quit You

Mo — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:46:00 +0000

It is a sad statement on my personal priorities that when I hear about the life of a young star tragically cut short, my first thought is, "Man, I better get back to a computer and post this on the Celebrity Death Toll Update."

Perhaps worse is that the more famous the deceased, the more I kick myself for not getting there first.

Somebody Call Steven Tyler

Mo — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:52:00 +0000

If you've been paying attention to my Flickr page, you've probably noticed that I am losing The War on Pink.

It's not that I have a problem with pink on principle or anything. It's just that girls get inundated with the pink from such an early age. It piles up and up and eventually it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- girls wear pink, so pink is their favorite color and that's all there is to it. So I determined that from early on, Avery would have a lot of color options to choose from rather than getting pushed into the pink pigeonhole.

Thing is, though, it is really hard to find clothes for baby girls in any other color. The pink saturates the shelves at your local discount retailer (at which, unless you're retardedly wealthy, you're shopping for stuff that's only going to fit for three months), and other colors -- if they're even available -- are very well hidden. Your other option is to go across the aisle to the boy stuff for blue clothes, which usually have footballs or monster trucks or other extensions of a penis emblazoned across the front. Avery has a pair of blue-and-green dinosaur pajamas, and they even button left over right rather than right over left like all her flowery pink ones.

I could blame this all on a vast conspiracy by the garment industry, a cruel method of forcing us all into two colors so they don't have to spend money on other dyes. But as a parent, I've realized the truth is much simpler: We get offended when people guess our child's sex wrong. And because they all sort of look like little androgynous, rotund, clean-shaven Wilford Brimleys, wrapping a girl in gender-neutral colors like green is a recipe for disaster for high-strung parents. So we stick them in pink in order to keep ourselves from strangling the next waiter who offers to bring a high chair for the little man-lady-man(?).

Oh well. At least she looks cute in it. Navy blue's not really her color, anyway.

While We're Talking About Things I'm Approximately Twenty Years Too Old To Know Anything About

Mo — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:56:00 +0000

For her birthday in March, the only thing Sed's little sister (the sick one) wants is a Hannah Montana T-shirt.

I wish I knew what it was about this winkingly manufactured, no-talent hick hack that made the kids scream and the parents punch each other over tickets. Someone explain it to me. The "Achy Breaky Heart" guy shows up at the pitch meeting and says, "Uh, my daughter could sing purty good, but she oughta wear a blonde wig," and now it's a multi-million-dollar industry.

Have you ever watched an episode of that show? Here, let me save you the trouble with this synopsis: Go buy a banjo. Cover the frets with sparkly lip gloss and improvise a flying V out of a pair of toddler jeans. Then hit yourself in the forehead with it for thirty minutes. (If you're worried about brain damage, feel free to alternate between blows to the forehead and the crotch.) Congratulations -- you have just undergone the Hannah Montana Experience.

And now Miley Cyrus is acting like she's some kind of serious performing artist, taking off the wig and putting on way too short of a skirt for a 15-year old, doing the second half of her show out of character. Listen, missy, our kids didn't come to see you all tarted up, they came to see the character you play singing the songs Disney wrote for you which are all about leading a double life. Honestly, how has everyone on the show not already figured out who you are?

I guess it could be worse. At least she's not twins.

Rug Rats, Not Mickey Mice

Mo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:05:00 +0000

Sed came home today all worked up about something she'd heard on the news. It's reached critical mass in the media and on Thee Inter-Nets, I suppose, and the sheer ignorance of the punditry and palaver speculating on future events has worn her through to the point of befrayment.

"Why don't these people know anything?" she raged. "Jamie Lynn Spears is on Nickelodeon, not the Disney Channel!"

Apparently, in the wake of this whole teen star pregnancy hurly-burly, the question on everyone's lips is what step Disney will take to re-establish its network as a wholesome, clean-cut outlet for family-friendly programming, all the while totally disregarding the fact that both shows the lesser Spears has starred on (All That and Zoey 101) have appeared on children's television's elder statesman. Even if you're not a stickler for detail, you'll see the contradiction.

The sole link Disney has with Jamie Lynn is through Big Sis. (Well, that and one episode of a reality show called "Switched!" that aired on ABC Family in 2003.) Amusingly, the Mouse is taking more flak for the actions of a teenager not on its lineup than Britney's schoolgirl sexualizing, lip-synching, commando-going, head-shaving, back-to-back unwed pregnancies, and beating the crap out of a Ford Explorer with an umbrella ever did.

Nick's gonna come out unscathed, though. Even if Disney weren't taking the brunt of the fallout, Big Orange is better equipped to deal with scandal -- or anything unpleasant that might actually happen in real life. They've had Nick News for years, exposing the channel's (admittedly late-night) viewers to issues like drug abuse, homelessness, politics, and the host's battle with breast cancer. Sexuality might be uncomfortable, but certainly not totally out of bounds.

Parents, this is why it's important to watch TV with your kids -- so you don't look like a moron opining about issues regarding their shows.

Golly, F-F-Fellas, Great Sp-Sp-Spiritual Harmony Would Be Sw-Sw-Swell

Mo — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:31:00 +0000

I know it's weird and bordering on sophomoric, but every time I happen across a discussion about the mythical first emperor of Japan -- be it a passing reference as part of a larger work, a serious discussion of national heritage, or anything in between -- I can't help but giggle.

It sure would be nice if I could stop mentally referring to him as "Jimmy."

It Used To Just Be the Dogs

Mo — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Proof that this kid now officially has teeth:

At least she isn't eating my shoes.

That is to say, at least it hasn't damaged them yet.

Department of Redundancy Department

Mo — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:46:00 +0000

I hate driving in a city I've never been in before. Sarasota is no different. Of course, the lane I'm in ends before I'm ready to turn, so I have to merge over. And of course, some asshole Florida driver refuses to let me, racing up in his peeling, twelve-year-old minivan to fill the spot I'm preparing to enter. This leaves me no recourse but to squish in behind him at the red light. (You know how to squish. There's not quite enough room for you to change lanes properly, but you have to do it, so you do your best to get into the correct lane while leaving enough room in the one you're departing that traffic can get around.)

As I ooze over, the shirtless driver puts the van into park and gets out of the car to dialogue with the motorist ahead of him. Is it a fight? Is it a discussion about directions? WHO CARES SHIRTLESS GUY JUST GOT OUT OF THE CAR AT A RED LIGHT.

The license plate on the van? "NATIVE 2."

I Never Got a Science Fair Medal, Either

Mo — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:17:00 +0000

GIVEN:
1) The baby likes to be held as she falls asleep
2) Once the baby is asleep, she can be eased down into the parents' bed as long as the parent lies down with her for a few minutes
3) The baby can then be left to sleep on her own

EXPERIMENT:
Try to climb into baby's crib with her in order that she may fall asleep in it rather than requiring the parents' bed.

HYPOTHESIS:
If this works I am a huge winner.

METHOD:
1) Rock baby to sleep in glider while reading Chapter 9 ("The Woes of Mrs. Weasley") of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
2) Climb over rail into crib while still holding baby, wincing as mattress frame creaks alarmingly.
3) Attempt to lie down comfortably in a 50-inch-by-28-inch rectangle despite a height of 74 inches without jostling the baby to a point of awakeness.
4) When baby hips to your jive, rock her gently while whispering "Shhhhh" in a soothing manner, all the while propping yourself at an awkward angle against the headrail.
5) Give up as mattress frame begins to pop, climb out quickly, retrieve now-wide-awake baby and retreat to computer.

CONCLUSION:
Well, I'm a huge something, anyway.

You Wear That Toque and I Will Wear That Chef Coat

Mo — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:10:00 +0000

Have you seen that show Take Home Chef? It's on like four times a day, and if you watch cooking shows like I do you've probably happened across it by now. Basically, this smarmy Australian guy takes a fifteen-member TV crew to the supermarket and picks out some poor frumpy housefrau shopping by herself (somehow, she never spots the entire production staff of the TLC network descending upon her), upon which he attaches himself to her, leech-like, and forces her to help him cook dinner for her significant other.

The most insulting part of the show, though, is when they get back to the woman's place and he tells her to go pretty herself up while he sets up in her kitchen. Invariably, she comes back something like two hours later wearing the Outfit of Ultimate Cleavage, or some tube top that is totally unsuited to working in the kitchen. Hair is curled, glasses are gone (who needs to see?) and hemlines ride so high that if some of these chicks were in a restaurant kitchen Curtis would make them put on a bikini hairnet.

Seriously, it's like a 30-minute She's All That every episode, if instead of Rachael Leigh Cook the part of Laney had been played by Rachael Ray (right down to getting frighteningly slutty and wearing too much eyeliner). I keep waiting for the episode when they show the mark walking down the stairs to the kitchen in slow-motion while they play Sixpence None the Richer.

The Reason for the Nonsleepin'

Mo — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:11:00 +0000

Me: Avery decided she doesn't have to sleep anymore.
My mom: Really?
Me: Yeah, she's waking up in the middle of the night and grabbing my face, wanting to play.
My mom: I think that might be partly my fault.
Me: Oh?
My mom: When you were about her age, you would sleep for maybe fifteen minutes and then be up and ready to go. I definitely remember saying to you, "I hope you have one just like you."
Me: I was afraid it might be something like that.

This is My Near's Roof Revelation

Mo — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:27:00 +0000

It's a good thing "stop procrastinating so much" wasn't one of my resolutions for 2008. Not that it makes me feel any better about taking so much time to post them, necessarily. Though I have taken some of the load off myself given that Avery's are apparently "not sleep" and "start crawling."

Once that kid gets going, it's not like I can sit at the computer and just let her at it. There are trash cans to topple, dog toys to suckle, cords to unplug. But honestly, it's good that things change with Avery, because this job was just starting to reach the point where I get complacent. (If you're familiar with my nine-month-multiples rule, the math works out. Not that I know anything about math.)

Just to clarify, I don't really make new year's resolutions. I set vague goals for things that I would like to accomplish but won't be terribly disappointed in myself if I don't. I try not to have more than three, because once you go over that they become very difficult to maintain and you use the pressure of having to do so much to justify not doing anything.

So here we go.

1. Post 365 times.

Apparently, some crazy bastard has taken the concept of NaBloPoMo and extended it out for all of 2008. Considering it's the fourth and I'm just now getting around to putting something here, I'm obviously not going to win any prizes for that. But among the four blogs to which I have posting access, I hope to make a cumulative total of a year's worth of posts.

Yes, I'm aware it's a leap year. Pretend I get Thanksgiving as a holiday.

2. Submit something for publication in print.

I wrote this one last year -- it's been my lifelong dream to be published. I've written lots of stories, but been too scared to send them out. My fear of rejection is paralyzing, and the only way to get over it (which I have to do if I ever want to see a novel with my name on the cover) is to start getting hit with them.

Of course, just when I was getting ready to hunt down possible venues, Avery came along. She became my full-time job, and I didn't have the time or energy to look into what magazines might accept my work, or at least not reject it without opening the envelope. (What about when Mama's home, you ask? Well, the baby's not the only girl in this house with whom I enjoy spending time. Sed works 80-hour weeks, so I take advantage of the brief moments when we're all awake in the same building.)

The one-year-olds I know are all good at entertaining themselves, though. By the middle of this year, it should be possible to set Avery down with a toy while I write cover letters and submittals.

3. Start hiking again.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time in the mountains with my Boy Scout troop. There was a period where we would find a new site every two weeks, backpack in, trek around the countryside, stay the night, and then schlep everything out. And I liked it -- to a point. We had a few scoutmasters who were absolute slavedrivers, who thought fifteen miles uphill in the rain was the pinnacle of good times. But once that rain went away and we found ourselves in a poetic aspen-bordered meadow, the trip back was rather peaceful.

When I first set this goal, Sed and I used to take the dogs to the Sandia mountains open space. But since we moved to Florida, I haven't bothered to find any hiking trails. Which is silly -- there's an arboretum just beyond my back fence, and a state park perhaps a mile away. Plus, since the highest hill in the Florida peninsula is 300 feet above sea level, you're looking at some easy terrain.

If I can figure out how to get Avery into her backpack carrier by myself, this one will be easy. Otherwise I might not be able to do it as often as I'd like. But that's OK. One day is not a lot of time to make a massive lifestyle change. If you're resistant to change yet stubborn in your determination (like I am), setting the bar too high will just frustrate you as you repeatedly fail to clear it.

4. Figure out how to get the baby to sleep by herself.

Because oh my God you guys. I will go crazy.

Point Zero Zero Zero And So On

Mo — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 03:25:00 +0000

Back in my car, listening once again to my beloved jazz station with hourly NPR news interruptions, I hear this bit.

When all the sales are added up for the year, businesses saw the smallest increase possible -- 0.1 percent.

I don't want to get all Bill Walsh here, but it cranks my shaft when reporters (and worse, editors) get simple math wrong. If I had to be there in the math class in fourth grade when we talked about decimal places, so did they. Let's use it, shall we?

One-tenth of a percent is not the smallest increase possible. The smallest possible positive number is one over infinity. Since we're talking about sales, though, let's just go ahead and allow that the smallest possible measurable increase is one cent. Being as the piece was about business expenses nationwide (or worldwide, or it could have just been corporate spending, I wasn't paying that much attention), I rather doubt those numbers are the same.

If you're going to talk about numbers, do it in a way that doesn't make you sound like a lazy third-grader slapping a report together during recess right before it's due. And if you say "that's what copy editors are for," well, you're half right -- the editor is supposed to be trained to catch nonsense like this, but if you didn't write it in the first place we'd like you better.

This is why I give the smallest credence possible to broadcast news. NPR, though -- I thought you were different.

Ways You Can Tell You're in Vancouver for Christmas

Mo — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 04:34:00 +0000

The hospital you're visiting has not one but two name-brand coffee shops in the lobby.
When your cousin talks about starting to try for a child, he says that he and his wife are going to "pull the goalie."
Despite the relative strength of the Canadian dollar, a six-pack still costs $10.
The cashier at Starbucks recommends that next time you go to "Timmy Ho's."
You turn on the TV to see Don Cherry wearing a double-breasted red velvet suit with a Santa Claus tie.
Everybody working in the hospital is Asian.
Forget Black Friday -- your mother-in-law is psyched for the Boxing Day sales.
Your in-laws mourn the fact that NHL players get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, and count down the hours until the junior hockey world tournament on the 26th.
It snows.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

You Don't Zonday

Mo — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:47:00 +0000

Maybe I've been off the Internet for longer than I thought, but I have no idea what the hell VH1 is talking about with its Best Year Ever selections for Web stars. OK, of course I've heard about the crazy-eyelinered "Leave Britney alone" guy, but who the crap is Tay Zonday?

The show presenters were going on and on about how his song "Chocolate Rain" was all over the Internet. The dude even got face time in a bit about how to make a viral video. And apparently I'm sheltered, because he has a Wikipedia page and everything, but I've never seen or even heard of it.

So how do you feature someone so (at least to my complete uncognizance) random? In my head, this was the IM conversation between the VH1 writers.

visforvideoremember: dude did you finish that viral video segment?
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: no lol
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: we need sum1 to make fun of themselves on tv
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: but nobody wll do it
visforvideoremember: wtf
visforvideoremember: did you call crocker?
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: ya
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: he sux lol
visforvideoremember: well what about the cholcolat rain guy?
visforvideoremember: have you seen that one?
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: uh no
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: whats a cholcolate raine
visforvideoremember: here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
visforvideoremember: omg now its officially viral
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: rofl
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: lets write it
ilovenostalgiaclipshows: and go get beers
visforvideoremember: five oclocl somewher lol