Shopping in the way

Rule of shopping at Trader Joe's with my wife: She picks out items and I push the cart, and no matter where I try to park myself and the cart to be out of the way for that moment, no matter how much it seems like it will be out of the way (such as in front of the dog food), it's precisely where the next person to come along needs to go.

Hmm. Maybe I should try to convince Trader Joe's to pay me to stand in front of slow-moving items.

Freaky Franco / Oscars Schmoscars

So, who had James Franco as the first Freaks & Geeks alum to get an Oscar nomination?

Yeah, me too.

~

We saw so few movies last year I find that the interest in the Academy Awards is even lower than usual. Granted, to put any attention toward the motion picture industry patting itself on the back is inherently ludicrous unless you actively have a financial stake in the outcomes, but to the extent that the AMPAS has convinced the public to give a crap for decades I'd always at least taken some heed of what got nominated. There have been films in past years that got nominated that made me think, Hey, maybe I'll try to see that eventually, and for the movies I had seen I had something to root for.

Marginilizing marginalia

On this podcast they discussed the topic of marginalia (writing in the margins of a book) based on this piece (which alludes to how the rising popularity of e-readers "means the decline of marginalia... much to the dismay of many book lovers, librarians and historians."

Up front I'll admit: I was never one for that, but that may be mostly because my thoughts when reading a book were not pithy enough to fit in that modest space.

(That's why it takes me so long to finish a book: I read slowly to start with, and then my mind drifts on its own, and I could never attempt to capture that in the margin.)

Not to mention not wanting others who may read it later to come across it.

Thinking about not thinking about the Deficit

Everyone knows that spending beyond one's income is imprudent, but it's the American way. Next year, even with proposed reductions in spending we'll still be living a trillion dollars outside of our collective means. And Americans are fine with that; according to polls when it comes to the question of what people want cut, they can't agree on what to cut, and thus ultimately they don't want anything cut.

So, to refine that opening statement: Everyone knows that we're supposed to say that living beyond our means is imprudent when posed with the question of having a deficit, and on some level to believe it's bad, but ultimately we accept that that's merely how it is. And how it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Happy Nobody-Knows-How-to-Punctuate-This-Day Day

Whether it's written Presidents, Presidents', or President's... nothing has changed about this since I wrote about it last year; there's no agreement on where the apostrophe should go (or if it should be there at all).

It was so much easier when there were still separate holidays for Washington and Lincoln.

Enjoy buying a new mattress (if you're celebrating the day off properly).