Okay. I feel like a cat that's now playing with a bunny that's it's cornered: Do I drop the strikethru on him? Or do you think there's another act in this play?

Let's get one thing straight. I had a breakthrough a couple months ago, when I realized that I actually hate phones. I don't hate much in my life, and almost all of it is of the form "I hate that it has to come to this." But somehow I realized that in fact it has come to this. The phone is simply a piece of equipment, a medium of communications I do not wish to associate myself with any more than is utterly necessary. I'd gotten it down to the bare minimums, the occasional explanatory phone call for NAQT, the endless and tedious sessions of telemarketer harassment, the once a week call of "do I need to pick up anything before I get there", and the 3am sound of my cable box calling home. Simple clean minimalism. The phone was not a necessary component. But then I realized the parallelism. I don't like instant messaging either. There was the excuse I had for a long time that because there were three or four different formats, I didn't want the hassle of dealing with three or four ID setups. But it was more than that. IM and phones share the same problems. When I am thinking, when I am at my best, I've got three to four different thoughts occurring at the same time. You can't express that properly in a phone conversation, and as for typing that, forget it. There's an expectation of exchange of information that simply doesn't work there. I can't tell you everything I'm thinking in one sentence. This is why I like email, this is why I like posting here. I can lay out everything, edit my thoughts, keep the slanderous mambos to a minimum. (This has taken an hour to write already.)
I can also see why people are addicted to these forms of communication. And I do mean addicted. The more hooked in people are to these things, the worse it is. And I tend to find that it's about as repulsive to me as it would be to watch you shoot up. It lessens my opinion of you, if you have to take this call. If you can't break yourself off. And with a cell phone it's as if you couldn't even control yourself long enough to get home. On a cell phone, half the time I can't hear you because of the signal cracking up, and the other half of the time, you're phoning from something that I can hear in the background, and frankly, I'm usually distracted to the point that I want to know what that is, and you're talking over it, so your message isn't getting through. Now I know I've got my addictions: irony, a codependent relationship with the Pirates. But I at least think I'm aware of them.
So why is this coming to a head now? Because my birthday came and went, and now I'm sitting here staring at my 'gift'. Somebody bought me a cell phone. And I think it's worse that they did it for what they thought was the best, but for the worst of all reasons. "We worry about you driving by yourself." Great... somebody thought of the children. Given my predilections for being self-motivated, and knowing all my options all the time, if I get to the point where it's necessary to use it, it's going to be "Hi, Mom and Dad. Gonna die now. Nope, all options exhausted, completely doomed. Bye." That's of course pending whether I remember to charge the thing, or put minutes in it, and given my penchants for cheapness, laziness, and minimalism, I don't like my odds. As for getting rid of it, I can't. It's one of those, it was a gift, and I'm stuck with it, because it would break their heart. Or they got it from a cell phone store, which would make for a damn amusing return. This is one of those family things, you can't understand it. Sometimes I don't either. So I'm doomed to keep this thing in my glove compartment, kind of like the OnStar that's even closer to my head, violating my right to privacy, and not allowing me to terminate service until I actually begin being served. I realize I'm not rational on this issue, but I don't really care. I at least realize, I may not be rational, but nobody else is either.
Isaac Newton thought it a great thing that he died a virgin. I wasn't aiming for that, but I was aiming to live my life without having to deal with cell phones. Now I don't even have that going for me.

A while back in the days when people were talking about how digital TV and 500 channels were going to revolutionize the world, Joe and I kicked around the perfect notion for sporting events. Since you'd have something like seven different audio channels available for each channel, you should hook up the system with appropriate sound for each side, Audio 1 being the network feed, Audio 2 home radio, Audio 3 away radio. The kicker was setting up audio 4 and 5, drunk guys in a bar (home), and drunk guys in a bar (away). We thought it was genius, the home team fan experience, no matter where you are.** Well, I think someone else has made the connection: OpenTV

Please note the paragraph in the article:

"...Their 2.0 PVR allows viewers to not only choose amoung 4 -8 camera angles on select programming, but even more exciting they are able to choose from 4 - 6 audio streams as well. Recently during a Rugby match they not only miked the tradional commentators, but also hooked up some die hard beer drinking hooligans to their audio streams as well. While FCC regulations might restrict what fans say or do on air in the U.S., because of Austrialia's progressive censorship policies, fans were able to enjoy true color commentary from like minded fans."

**Note we thought of this prior to the FCC getting all tight about such things, so it can't work with the existing technology/legal climate, but it's good to see the theory was sound.

In the travelogue appearing here this week, you may find reference to a trip to the Carnegie Library to inspect TV Guides from 1975. While it wasn't my quest, it actually got me started on a new one. I had known about Channel 19 in Pittsburgh, excuse me Jeannatte, for a few years, since it had been a Johnstown station, which managed to get its license moved to a location within Pittsburgh's "must carry" radius. I had known that it had started up in the late 80's as an independent, and had been sort of the very low wattage station for that area. What I didn't know was that circa 1975, it had been a CBS affiliate, then sometime between then and the late 80's, it had collapsed. I would have never known this, were it not for Mike's research.

That's why I'm a little disturbed to find this data probably won't be available to researchers in 30 years. In reading this article, I find it simultaneously revealing as to the awareness of TV Guide as to its own fate, admitting to their own failures, and then promising to fix the problem by becoming completely irrelevant. I had earlier been bent out of shape about TV Guide being not much about TV any more, and now it would seem they're not going to be much of a guide to anything either. I feel a tingle... And there it goes.

Reading this article got me thinking... I really have to capitalize on the powerful marketing opportunities of fraught before I die. Look, I don't want to die and be exploited, I want to be right there to enjoy the exploitation. Then I realized that this was the perfect product. It's not hot sauce... No, no, no. It's Dwight Kidder's Original Fraught Sauce. It's hot sauce that reminds you that you're doing the wrong thing. See, it says Fraught, right there on the label. Fraught sauce combines with many things and none of them are healthy for your colon. Make your hot wings fraught wings with Dwight Kidder's Original Fraught Sauce.** Our slogan: You should know better than to use it.

**No, we are not going to see Fraught Sauce with Puppies.

More only in Western PA sports stories: Only in Western PA could someone get away with this. I can understand the first part, but only in a town with a complete love affair with the backup QB could someone claiming to be Brian St. Pierre get action.

I spent all weekend trying to figure out if this story is the worst incident of youth sports in recent memory, sadly par for the course for Western PA, or the side plot of the next Farrelly brothers movie. You decide.

You will note at no point in this article do they note how they're ripping off the Tick.

Existential joys that I'm probably alone in getting:

"With this, we have the mailing address of every high school in Wyoming! Yeah!"

We tend to be obsessive about answer lines in NAQT, since we know that people have been given liberty to do stupid things in the past, like try and do the full name of Dikemebe Mutombo, and nasty fights break out when they screw it up. But occasionally something pops up where I hesitate to put the full answer down for fear that the moderator will just spend the rest of the round looking back at the answer line going "That can't be right!" and as a result knocking themselves out of rhythm or something similar. This would be an example. [Paragraph 6] It would certainly knock me off stride were an answer line to be the first I'd heard of it.

While this story is great, in the "why was it even considered as a theory?" vein, the explanation found here for how it happened is even better.

I really didn't even need to look at where this was being done. I had that thought of, "Yeah, they're doing this in Pittsburgh, aren't they" even before I looked at the article. This does explain the whole low-level fraught vibe I've been getting in the city. You know what this means folks...more zombie voters. Frickin' zombies don't pay taxes, they won't buy anything, won't help revitalize downtown. Look, we didn't have to give George Romero tenure. I'm just saying...

As I'm looking at the front page of CNN.com this morning, I have to think they're losing their marbles, or it's a very slow news morning.

Major headline of the day: Internet transforms modern life

However, I have to think this is just a place holder until they get their research back from the two stories on the side:
Voice of Winnie the Pooh's Tigger dies | Voice of Piglet dies

I realize this will turn the crime beat people away from their Aruba vacation, but get on the stick, people. The Heffalump's turned into a spree killer!

All I have to say about this: Yes, there had to be testers involved, to make sure they got the flavor and texture right. No, that did not include your favorite stunt carnivore. No, I'm perfectly cool with not being the tester on this one.

We will be without Myron . Admittedly, he was showing the age, and there was that game last year where he called the first half with a concussion, but nonetheless he was the essential component of the Steelers broadcast. I think they'll do the right thing and not try to replace him, but somehow I'm not sure the mix is right there. We'll have to see.

Stopping off at the market tonight, I saw a display with a ridiculous offer. Bag of Marshmallows, 10 cents each. This is the sort of thing that gets my mind rolling in a lot of directions at once, asking questions that really shouldn't be asked, like "Okay, I've got 20 bucks, is that enough to buy this display? How much does this weigh? Could I bench press this? Why are you asking that? Well, mostly because I think it would be harder to bench press, say your weight in marshmallows, versus your weight in weights, just because it would be hard to keep all the marshmallows together. Plus drag, can't forget drag. Does that seem wrong? Horribly wrong, you're only contemplating this for the power trip of being able to say you bench pressed this, and you know that's not even a power trip, that's just being weird on purpose. Besides, do you even know if it would all fit in your car? Well, probably, they're mostly air, but that would take all the fun out of bench pressing, if they got compressed. You do remember that weird on purpose comment?"

So, I only picked up one package. Then I thought. "You know marshmallows, I could buy and sell you, and not give a damn about it. That's only a half-truth, I could definitely buy them, but it is important to display a strong front to confectionery... You DO remember that weird on purpose comment?"

So, I turned away, thankful that I hadn't said any of this out loud. Okay, I turned slowly away, checking if anyone was reacting to anything I might have accidentally said. Then I turned back and got a second bag. Because, hey, 10 cent marshmallows.

Could be Shatner I guess.
To his credit, Paul Anka is a singing legend. To my credit, I only started laughing hysterically at his rendition of Eye of the Tiger. I didn't even flinch at his version of Wonderwall. And well, I was only disappointed his version of Black Hole Sun was a poor second to the Steve and Eydie cover. As for Smells Like Teen Spirit...um, Paul seems a little too interested in telling me about his libido... make him stop, please!

Completely geeky of me, but this article only provoked one response from me: "You FOOLS! That's not the destructive mechanism! It's only playing possum! You're all in danger!"


Meanwhile this story, also in the news from Somerset section pretty much has everything I want in a story: Crappy jobs, after all, who wants to vaccinate a badgerbadgerbadger....blitzkrieg bop. All this needs is a punter and Paraguay.

So I saw this picture of what's going on in Bolivia during this weeks revolution, and I realized: "You know, were I living in a country where the national costume has been co-opted by Homsar, I'd be rebelling about once a week, too."

Somehow I can't help but think this is a merely a cunning ploy to convince more people in the Fixin'-to-Die State of the essential need for robot insurance.