Design Flaw of the interim:
The post office that I go to on my lunch break has now instituted the rule that it can't give out more than $5.00 in change. I guess they got sick of people complaining about getting a fistful of Sacajaweas. So when I went in at lunch today, I found myself in a quandary. I didn't mind getting two booklets of stamps, but because I had only $20s and singles, I couldn't actually work the machine. Even though I was only going to require $4.40 in change, because it was broken up by the programming into two transactions, I couldn't get it to let me have my stamps.

I don't know if I'm more sensitive to these programming glitches because I spend my work day trying to prevent them, or if I'm just becoming less sensitive to it as time goes on.

I run into the strangest examples of Pennsylvania politics on occasion. I had rented Charlie Chan in London, and ran across the documentary on the disc. Right in the middle of it, they show the influence the character had, by showing a political ad to be run in theatres, with Charlie Chan urging the residents of Pennsylvania to overturn the state ban on showing films on Sunday. Nothing much to say beyond that, it was just a moment of amazingly incongruous reality that had to be shared.

Now I'm not saying that this will escalate, and it looks like they're calm and rational now, but I have to think we need to put a pushpin on this. If in 50 years we have to write the great history of the decline and fall of fun in America, the day that one team called animal control on the other team's mascot should be a chapter. I'd call fraught on the whole situation, but I think this one can resolve itself. However, it is standing right up against, to borrow the MST3k definition, "a whole weird area here", where all manner of insanity could reign (in the forms of lawyers, animal control, PETA, the NCAA's previous ruling on Native American names, and vengeful SEC football fans. A powderkeg if ever there was.)