Fight the power... but...

I know we need to keep resisting this buffoon who is currently in the Oval Office and his ridiculous cabinet and his poorly considered policies, and certainly we should, but just in case that doesn't work out I have this humble request:

If it looks like we're all going to succumb to despair, all I ask is that someone give me a heads-up as early as possible so I can do it without just seeming like I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

Thank you.

Non-simple simple decisions: When you don't find out the sex of your unborn child

When my wife and I found we were pregnant we decided we would not learn the sex of our baby until he or she emerged at birth. It wasn't that we wished to rebuke what modern medicine allows; we merely wanted to have that opportunity to be surprised. It seemed like a simple enough thing.

Now that we are halfway through the pregnancy, with several visits to the obstetrician and having announced the impending birth to family and friends, I realize that decision was anything but simple.

When we had the most recent ultrasound we had to make explicit mention that we did not wish to know the sex—which we reiterated not only to the technician but also to the doctor when each came in. During the procedure (where we could see the image on a screen on the wall) the technician told us when to close our eyes or look away to avoid potentially seeing something that would give it away.

Remembering Comic Con's Good Old Days (as happens every July)

As happens every year when Comic Con weekend rolls around I am reminded of attending the event back in the late '80s, before it was an event covered by the entirety of the media (and was more focused on the item from which the event draws its name).

Back then there weren't panels with A-list actors, and even the celebrities of the comic book world (the popular artists) that drew crowds weren't my thing. What I'd do was spend some time in Artists' Alley with some pieces of blank paper, talking to small press artists (both those whose work I read and some who, because they weren't big names, didn't have anyone talking to them) and getting autographs—which they would embellish with a sketch.

I recently came across those pages from the cons in 1987 through 1990; scans of those are featured below.

1987 page 1, including Scott Shaw!, Stan Sakai, Jim Bricker, Scott Saavedra, Lou Scarborough, Jeff Nicholsen, Kevin Eastman, Don Dougherty, and others.

Solving the problem of weight loss: Loose pants

If you exercise and lose weight, your pants will start to loosen so that you need to tighten your belt another loop. However, don't worry: You can simply stop working out and eat out a lot and your pants will start to fit better again.

Problem solved, and without having to spend a bunch of money on new pants.

Comic Con's good old days

There was a time when the only people who attended the San Diego Comic Convention were the fans of comic book, sci-fi, fantasy; the only people featured there were the creators, publishers, and retailers of what those fans consumed. I know. I went a few times back in the late '80s, as I worked for a retail store selling comics and collectibles at the time. As such I could get in with a retailer badge for free (it was one of the few perks the job offered). There were creators of some small press titles who I enjoyed meeting, and they didn't have massive lines to wait in to do so.

(Let's be clear: I was never enough of a diehard fan to be inclined to actually pay to get in; I went because it was only an hour's drive, and as my mom lived down there at the time I turned it into a visit to her. I'm not putting down those who paid to get in [they were our customers, after all]; I'm merely clarifying that I was not in that category of nerd. The people who get all decked out in costumes are magnificent, and I dare not sully their efforts by conflating how I was with them.)

Back then, saying you were going to a comic book convention was looked down upon by "civilians"; the mainstream press would not report on it, or if the local press did mention it the story was buried on back pages.

Waking up from Standard Time

Everyone touts the "extra hour of sleep" we get from resuming Standard Time in the autumn (after months of Daylight Savings Time) but that's only of benefit to those whose sleep patterns comply with waking up at the moment the clock strikes a particular moment. If one has regular sleeping patterns, it merely means that when one is accustomed to waking up one finds the clock reading an hour earlier than one was expecting it would be. It also means that the Sunday night after the "fall back" one gets tired at an hour earlier than one is expecting to want to go to bed.

Thus, that's not really of general benefit.

Say what you will about whether Daylight Savings Time is a good idea or not, but the thing that the practice offers those of us who live in areas where it is observed do get this first workday after the switch to Standard Time. The hour seems later to our circadian rhythm than the clock says it is, and at least for me, it proves so easy for me to get out of bed—not merely on time but (dare I say) early.

Frankly, from the sense of being ahead of the game on this one morning a year I find myself thinking, This is so great that we should "fall back" every weekend. Imagine how easy getting up Mondays would be if only we threw off our body clocks this way all the time.

Chopped at the Panda Express

If you have ever been to the Chinese ("Chinese") fast food restaurant Panda Express and seen the chopsticks next to the forks, napkins and soy sauce packets and found yourself wondering, Who uses those to eat at freakin' Panda Express?, I have found such a person.

Solving the issue of sexual harassment

After sitting through a presentation on sexual harassment in the workplace recently, the conclusion I drew was if humans who work could simply not have sex (nor aspire to have sex, nor attempt to exhibit dominance through the pursuit of sex, etc.) then there would never be another sexual harassment lawsuit.

Simple.

~

So, for the many Americans who find themselves out of work and unable to find a job, you can take some solace in knowing that you probably could be as sexually harassing as you want to be and get away with it; there's no potential for the creation of a hostile workplace environment if there's no workplace environment.

I'm not encouraging that sort of behavior, of course, but hey, if you're really desperate for a silver lining and you're an unemployed asshole who has no other outlet for those hideous inclinations, you may be heartened to realize you might be able to get away with it.

~

I probably should have paid closer attention to some aspects of the presentation.

Utopian dilemma

Imagine (for the sake of argument) we someday reach a point where intolerance of all forms (racism, homophobia, sectarianism, etc.) is vanquished, where no groups or individuals are oppressed or persecuted, where the equality that activists of all sorts have fought to achieve is realized. Further imagine that it's not merely an ostensible tolerance where people were merely better at camouflaging their hatred but where everyone quite literally was accepting of everyone else in a sincere way. We'd remember that it used to be bad, of course, but know that it wasn't that way anymore.

In that seemingly utopian scenario, do you suppose we would (perhaps ashamedly) romanticize the "bad ol' days" when we were made to feel ashamed? Do we have an inherent unconscious need to draw some satisfaction from feeling like outcasts that would lead us to have nostalgia for that if it were no longer around?

Sprite-ly

The other day I walked into the break room at work in the late afternoon and saw this:

And I pulled out my phone to capture what I'm sure the people at Sprite will want to use for their next ad campaign.

I'll even submit this tag line: Lemon-lime flavor that's thick enough to eat with a fork.

You're welcome.

(I shouldn't be giving this away for free, I know.)

Dressing for the Super Bowl

Over the next week leading up to the Super Bowl the football pundits will come forth with their theories about whether they think the Packers or the Steelers will win the big game, which they'll base on factors like how Packers' quarterback Aaron Rodger will fare against the Steelers' top-ranked defense, or whether Steelers' QB Ben Roethlisberger will be able to scramble out of tackles and make enough crucial plays to bring Pittsburgh its third title in six seasons.

Their arguments will be based on which team's coaches and players rise to the occasion.

Hey, they have to come up with something to say to fill all that airtime. However, victory won't so much be a matter of what the players do but of what the players wear.

Watch as I pretend no one has made this joke about "The Twelve Days of Christmas" before

We all have heard "The Twelve Days of Christmas," right? Over the course of the song your true love gives to you:

12 Drummers drumming
11 Pipers piping
10 Lords a-leaping
9 Ladies dancing
8 Maids a-milking
7 Swans a-swimming
6 Geese a-laying
5 Gold rings
4 Calling birds
3 French hens
2 Turtle doves
1 Partridge in a pear tree

Regarding all the birds and persons given, I have a question: Do you actually keep them, or are they just temporary? Because if it were me, I must admit I don't have that much room. And don't we have laws against human trafficking, even if it's as a gift?

What's the return policy with all this stuff anyway?

~

But seriously: Six kinds of birds, five groups of people doing things of questionable entertainment value, and the only gift you don't have to feed is gold.

~

I suppose we're just supposed to be impressed by the number of gifts. In the 21st century I suppose the reason we still listen to the song is to be reminded "it's the thought that counts."

And we must enjoy the game of trying to remember all the items. That probably keeps our minds off of what we're actually singing.

Getting in touch with the TSA

The hullaballoo about the new TSA screening procedures (where at the security checkpoint one must choose a full-body scan or being patted down by a person) and the protest movement someone sought to organize today, a very busy travel day, to encourage people to choose the slower pat-down and drag down the system, makes me ponder the following question: Is the government secretly trying to make us want to get in shape?

Post #1000 Extravaganza. Or Not.

This is the thousandth post here on the blahg (and after only six and a half years), and thus I am faced with the challenge of deciding what to do about that.

On the surface, it seems noteworthy because one-thousand seems like a number worthy of commemoration, but other than being the point where whole numbers change from three digits to four what is particularly special about it? Ultimately that aspect holds no intrinsic value save what we have been convinced to imbue upon it. If one is impressed, is not nine-hundred ninety-nine not also pretty darned impressive? (If someone handed you a check for $999 would you rip it up because it wasn't $1000?)

I'd thought of making a big deal out of the post where the number corresponded with the highest prime number that's still under one-thousand (nine-hundred ninety-seven), but I didn't remember to pay attention and the opportunity to do so obviously has now passed. Not that a prime number is any less arbitrary, but it would have appealed to any nascent math nerd fan base I may inadvertently be developing for the site.

Nonetheless, I have devoted sufficient attention at this point to realize that #1000 is here, stepping into the batter's box (so to speak), and thus if I find myself inclined to make a big deal of it, I need to make that decision. Even as dismissive as I was above about it holding significance, as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing about it now there's no denying that I've been brainwashed convinced of it being potentially noteworthy. The proverbial cow has escaped the barn; closing the door is pointless.

See you in four years, World Cup

On Sunday I sat and watched the entire championship match in the World Cup. Oh sure, I stepped away at times for a moment (to use the bathroom, to put in a load of laundry, etc.), but for the most part I watched the whole thing. I even posted a status update on Facebook where I commented on how the ref was giving so many yellow cards that I feared I'd get one through the TV.

And the thing is: I was reasonably entertained, even though I wasn't really rooting for either Spain or the Netherlands, even though there was no scoring for nearly two hours. I'd casually followed the tournament, had watched parts of earlier games, and had even gotten emotionally invested in the U.S. team's victory that propelled them to the second round.

But did that convert me to a soccer fan? No more so than watching it during the Winter Olympics converted me into a fan of ice dancing.

I'm sure that in four years, when the next World Cup takes place, I'll watch some if the matches are on TV, but I doubt in the intervening years I'll view even a single game. Just like how when the Olympics roll around on that same schedule I'll watch the vaunted international competition. It will be a function of the power of sport combined with the convenience of merely turning on the TV. It won't make me seek out those events between the games even if they can be seen. It can hold my attention for a few weeks and then… there'll be something else.

Perhaps the appeal of soccer for the rest of the world is not merely that the sport involves nothing more than one ball and an open patch of land but also that they don't have the plethora of other sports competing for their attention the way Americans do.

If the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all suddenly folded would MLS games shoot up in popularity? Certainly.

Now, it would still be way below NASCAR, but eventually, after the world's supply of oil is depleted and that cannot continue… and the associated worldwide quasi-Armageddon brings down most everything else, it's likely that soccer will be the primary sport here.

Oh wait. That is unless the World Series of Poker is still around. If there's still gambling and there's still TV, it's likely ESPN will be airing that. But hey, there's 24 hours in a day; they can't fill that all with poker.

World Cup madness

Wednesday morning as I got ready the World Cup match between the U.S. and Algeria was on. I flipped by and watched a bit before getting in the shower, and when I was later getting dressed it was halftime. As I put on my shirt the TV in the bedroom showed me highlights from the first half, which featured a disallowed goal by the U.S.

That's when something inside me snapped. A bit. Figuratively speaking.

Last Friday the U.S. match against Slovenia had aired before I left for work as well, and there I happened to see live what would have been the winning goal be waved off by what was declared by pretty much all observers as to be an awful call by the referee. I was so quasi-incensed that I even went on Facebook and posted how that ref better never set foot in this country.

In short, I was treating football (soccer) like a sport I cared about.

Not a part of Tweet-ory

The Library of Congress is going to archive tweets (the posts on Twitter) for future generations.

I knew it was prudent that I never jumped on that bandwagon.

~

I can barely get people to pay attention to my blahg posts (judging from the site metering I do); I see no need to commence a Twitter feed and see explicitly how few followers I get.

Well, the bigger problem is that I don't tend to think in terms of 140-character chunks, so to participate in "tweeting" would require way more effort to be pithy than I imagine Twitter is supposed to be.

~

I'm avoiding contemplating what historians in the future will make of the combined content of thousands (millions?) of individuals who (I would guess) were not composing their missives with regard to posterity.

Of course, I'm not sure there will be historians in the future. The trend seems to be heading toward less reflection and more immediacy (as evidenced by the aforementioned Twitter) and what one is doing right that moment. University history departments will get few applicants and will cease to be funded. The only purpose the past will serve is for pop culture nostalgia specials on VH1. These archived tweets seem unlikely to become the subject of academic investigation.

If nothing else, given the millions and millions of tweets included, it would turn in to a full-time job to review and analyze them all (or even a significant portion thereof). Who's going to have that kind of time on their hands when everyone will be too busy tweeting about what they're doing?

Thank goodness this post won't be archived in a library.

Taxing the limits

That the post offices are open until midnight on April 15th so that last-minute tax returns may be submitted without missing the deadline is proof that procrastination is as American as baseball, apple pie, and getting out of jury duty.

Our government at work

Obviously there's a lot of high emotions over the health care bill, with people worked up both in favor of it and opposed to it. However, it seems that the purpose of the government these days is to provide something to excite some people while at the same time angering others.

Whether the bill ever benefits anyone or bankrupts the country (or, more likely, falls somewhere in between), the debate (or "debate," regarding the nature of how that happens these days) is spurred has succeeded immeasurably in that regard.

Many people surveyed responded that the policy-making process is broken, but clearly they're harboring somewhat outdated views on what the process is supposed to achieve.

Good apostroph-eats

[Yes, in the last post I demonstrated a new insouciance about the use of apostrophes--and if you haven't read that one yet, please do go read it first. Seriously. I'll wait. And now, while you're primed for the topic, here we go again.]

Not too long ago my wife and I were watching a Good Eats episode. Finding Alton Brown generally entertaining we don't really need a specific interest in the topic, but for the record the show was a recently produced one (in what he's calling his "American Classics" series) about pound cake.

As any fan of the show knows, Alton's spin on cooking shows is to provide both historical and scientific information about the food in a playful manner. It's kind of Julia Child meets Mr. Wizard meets Monty Python. Between segments or when going to commercial there's little "bumpers" that have text on screen with bits of trivia about the food or dish being featured, to further the educational component.

There's a certain standard for attention to detail that has been established over the show's decade of production. For that reason, the content of one particular bumper was a bit confusing at first.

Using the possessive for the pronoun it is a common stumbling block for those composing in English, but that error tends to be mistakenly using the contraction it's instead of its. That much is understandable, of course, as the apostrophe-s combination does make the possessive for nouns.

However, on this bumper the text featured a sort of everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink format for the possessive: its'.

 

Yep, another dazzling photo of a TV screen.

At first it seemed a risible typographic error, a superfluous apostrophe after the s, where the person typing the text just couldn't stop. However, for such an egregious mistake to slip by on a professionally produced TV show where there's a reputation for being detail-oriented would be particularly unforgivable, so I had to ponder what other explanation there could be.

Eventually it came to me. In culinary vernacular there must be a special usage whereby it was first being made plural—presumably because there are different chemical compositions for different sugars to which it could be referring—and then that be made possessive. That, I'm sure, would be the only context where that much could ever be appropriate.

The show purports to know food history and science as they contribute to recipes and cooking; there was never an overt suggestion it focused on the particulars of written language, but apparently there's something for the English majors, too—as long as we're paying attention when the show is going to commercial.

Oh, and I suppose we could learn to make a pound cake if we followed the main part of the program.