Fraught, now with puppies!

Greg is now quoting me. Color me honored, if slightly disturbed by this, given it was just a throwaway line. However, I should have noted that last week Dave Barry actually WAS fraught with puppies!

Okay, now all the stuff I had loaded up and was going to do this weekend:

1. Finally remembered to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live. I feared that with that much writing talent it could either go '27 Yankees, or '02 Rangers, and if Friday was the typical night, I lean towards the latter. I also had seen this, which basically screamed buzzkill. (The one thing it has done is really expand the language of whatever medium it's covered in, ever see "puked" in a wire story headline before? Between that and Snoop introducing network censors to the conundrum "Do we let 'cockblock' slide?", they're really doing some amazing stuff.)

2. Saw the premiere of Dragnet, mildly impressed, since I worried (based on the ads) that they were going to have Ed O'Neill turn Joe Friday into Psycho Dad. They didn't do that, but the Dick Wolf crew really did just cement the whole Law and Order: Los Angeles vibe. Which I guess is fair, if you work backwards, the bumpers in L&O: Original Recipe were just a revision of Jack Webb doing voiceover scene intro. If they can just remember that Joe Friday is not Lenny Briscoe, we'll be fine.

3. Who ordered this? No, seriously, somebody's paying for this, I once claimed in a tossup that the cancellation of this show was the ultimate death of disco (1987, yeah, freaky ain't it), and now we're going to have to go take Buffy and drive a stake through this undead revival?!? Nothing good about this, and it's even going to be worse than the original. A quote:
"It's just going to be a huge, splashy competition featuring phenomenal dancing," Nash said. "It will be very sexy and highly entertaining and include the personal stories which will make you root for them to win or lose."
Disco meets bad Olympic coverage.... Amazing, something on ABC/Fox/Family Channel/CBN that would actually cause me to wish they had the 700 Club on.

4. Pitt basketball manages to whiff it again. The fact that this is twice now they were sitting at #2, #1 lost and then they did is starting to make the local media smell choking. We'll see. Though one more time of it, and it's going to probably start to stick.

5. I didn't really like Snood but I understood why people liked it, in a similar vein to something written here, but I've found myself badly hooked on a similar game at gamehouse, Pileup.

6. Mark's post on the North Shore Spirit got me poking around the Northeast League site, and I have to say, I may actually be in favor of a small amount of revisionist history. Anything to get this history of the league to sound even mildly promotionally minded.(also notable for its prominent mention, okay, mere mention of former Pirate farmhand Trey Beamon) Normally something like this would be designed to encourage people to come, but with its constant mention of the leagues failures and franchise movement, I'm feeling bitter, and I've got no stake in the matter.

7. No matter your politics, you can always mock the French. And this is quality mocking. And for those of you in quizbowl, a handy set of background links.

8. Today I discovered a piece of software that I'm having to work with requires a compiler be present on the same box during installation. Should I scream at the manufacturer for not realizing this little flaw in the process?

9. In line with the coffee house stupidity tax (third item on this page). Last Thursday night, I stopped by a new Starbucks (now with drive-thru, which prompted a nice WTF? look as I explained it to Joe) Ordered small tea, gave the guy a bag of Chai tea from their little rack of teabags in front of the register. I then took the tea, walked over to the dispensers, added milk and sugar to my taste. Now, in this exchange I basically saved about $1.50. Am I thus: (a) an ass, (b) a cheapskate, (c) totally justified? I think all three.