How to Take Rejection

What I Watched

Last year, before the new fall television season began in earnest, I wrote up a list of all the shows I intended to watch regularly. Did I succeed?

Strike through is a show that got canceled, red is something I dropped, usually with a comment.

Sunday:
8pm; The Simpsons
9pm: Desperate Housewives, Family Guy, Extras (on HBO, with Ricky Gervais!), Sopranos (when it comes on)
10pm: Grey's Anatomy (but only for Sandra Oh)
Occasionally there's a good Mystery! on PBS, too, usually stolen from the BBC.

Monday:
8pm: Arrested Development [R.I.P. Bluth family]
8:30pm: How I Met Your Mother (new with Allyson Hannigan), Kitchen Confidential (new with Nicholas Brendan) -- Buffy alums fight! [Allyson wins.]
9pm: Prison Break [and of course, 24!]
10pm: Medium [I completely lost interest]

Tuesday:
8pm: Bones, Gilmore Girls
9pm: Amazing Race, My Name is Earl, House, and Supernatural (maybe)[That 'maybe' turned into a never... still haven't seen a single episode. This also ended up as the Scrubs timeslot.]
9:30pm: The Office
10pm: Nip/Tuck (or whatever is on FX. For me they own that timeslot)[They did until Theif, which I wanted to like, but never gave a chance after all the reviews said it was so dull and morose. Sucks, cause Andre Braugher rules.]

Wednesday:
8pm: 70's Show [Bones ended up here, as did American Idol and Amazing Race...]
9pm: LOST (I'd watch Veronica Mars here too if I got UPN, but I don't) [Didn't matter, thanks to the glorious technology of Bitorrent! I saw them all!]
10pm: Invasion

Thursday:
8pm: Alias, Survivor: Guatemala, Smallville (maybe Joey if others have repeats. I have misplaced Friends loyalty.)
9pm: Reunion, Night Stalker (maybe)[This ended up as the Earl/Office hour, and dog bless it.]
10pm: ER (still watching after 12 years. Why?)

Friday:
9pm: Threshold (good buzz as well... need more wacky sci fi shows!) [Ended up watching Doctor Who tho, which was great.]
10pm: Numb3rs (maybe [I like implausible, but c'mon!]), but definitely: Battlestar Galactica

Saturday:
The night to watch Netflix DVDs.

Every damn night:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the companion show The Colbert Report.

I'm amazed just how many of the shows I watched stayed around.

In two days, the TV season is over. I'm actually relieved. It's a lot of work trying not to miss all this crap. Well, not so much work as a major time suck that I love with a passion. Luckily, I don't go cold turkey, as Rescue Me, Deadwood, Entourage and The 4400 will be on soon.

Gorgon Laughs

This guy looks just like a villain from the third season of the original Star Trek. But happier.

Dear Sunglass Hut Corporate Office...

Just an FYI that you missed out on me spending as much as $100 on a pair of sunglasses at your "Hut" kiosk location at the Carosel Center mall in Syracuse New York today. Why? I'm glad you ask. It is because whatever nimrod you have employed there spent from about 4:30 to 6pm away from their post with a couple of signs out saying, "Back in 10 minutes." Perhaps you need to insist that employees wear a watch?  I dunno.

I just know I don't have new Ray-Bans.

Best,
Eric G.

For the Love of Google, Don't CLICK!

I am about to tempt the wrath of GOD. Or the Internet equivalent.

First, let me say right off the bat, I loves me the Google. Sure, they've got their faults and made some mistakes, but overall, they make nice stuff. Gmail. Calendar (now my only calendar, in fact). Desktop with widgety things. The only search I bother to use. Excellent maps. Picasa rocks for organizing photos. It's all good. Great, even.

One of the nice things they do for people is make them money by letting them run...

Well, I'm not going to write the next word, for reasons that will become obvious. You know what I'm talking about. Those things. That other people pay for, hoping you'll see them and click them to sell you stuff. Things which you absolutely should NOT click on, by the way, ever again, not on this site, no sir, for reasons that will become apparent.

Seriously. Don't do it.

Let's come up with a code word for those... things. I know, we'll be like spammers and just replace one letter. We'll call them "aSs." How's that? (Guess which letter I replaced...)

This saga (such as it is) began yesterday when I got a e-mail message telling me that I was "not compliant with [Google] policies" for running Google provided aSs here on SquishedFrog.com. To me, this message looked like a phishing scheme. There was nothing very official looking about it, no logos or anything, except the wording, which was a little too official. I checked out the policy page and found out that the e-mail I was sent wasn't lying about the polic -- you really are expected to not point out that you have aSs if you're using Google ASsence (the name of the service; again, one letter different). No arrows, no language saying, "click my aSs," no banners pointing to your aSs.

The company is basically scared to death of being accused of ClickFraud. (Their terms say: Any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited.) I don't blame them. It's a dirty business.

Still, I could not understand why one page of my blog archive pages (April 2005) was singled out -- that made the message seem even... phishier.

So, to make sure it was legit, I e-mailed Google ASsense and asked them.

Oopsie.

It was.

I got a personal e-mail back from Google ASsennse Team, pointing out to me exactly what on the offending page was so offensive. He said:

The phrase we found on the page mentioned below is "Anything for extra traffic. I'm a whore. Click my aSs*." As this could be interpreted as an encouragement to click on the Google aSs* displayed on that page, we kindly ask that you remove the Google aSs* or the language from that page.

Which is just crazy.

First: There's some companies that make millions of dollars a year off Google aSs (seriously), but I ain't one of them. In the 15 months I've been running aSs on this site, I've made about $150 bucks. I'm so small a fry, I don't warrant even being noticed by the greatest power the Internet has ever seen, let alone talked to. It is obvious that I was found by some trolling spider they have out looking for some combination of the words "click" and "my" and "aSs" on sites using their ASsense service. (Thus my judicious use of the term "aSs" in this post, natch. See, told you it would all come together.)

Second, I'm not changing my content because Google told me to, especially on something 14 months old that no one will ever read again. Arrows and repeatedly begging for clicks is one thing, but one innocent mention a year ago? Ludicrous.

I didn't read the terms of service and Google knows it. No one reads those things except lawyers and big companies. To imply that my saying, "Anything for extra traffic" begs people to look at aSs is silly, and they have no right to say I'm not a whore. I can be as whorey as I want. I'm a Web-based trollop. A blog strumpet. A fucking digital midnight cowboy. (Shit, the terms of service also say you can't have excessive swearing...)

Third, I can't take the aSs off that page without taking them out of the archives altogether, they're part of the page template.

My solution: I went to the offending entry and I put a strike through the last phrase. (Like this.)That should be good enough for people, though I know the spiders they use won't recognize it and may still be offended.

And I don't care. If the great Googlers on high in Mountain View, CA, want to pick on me so more, let them. They can give me my $150 (as I've yet to take a payment, I figured I'd break $200 and then get it) and I'll pull all the aSs they provide and we'll go our separate ways.

The lesson learned is simple, kids: aSs is not there to be seen or clicked or paid any attention to, at all. I'm not even allowed to click on my aSs, so you shouldn't either. I mean it. Don't.

* I used that other bad word before obviously, and so did the guy sending the message, but changed it for this quote, so I don't go through all of this again in a year.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

If this really happens, my diet is screwed.

New Scientist Breaking News - A future with no bananas?

The world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed.

(Thanks to Lauren for the title and the link.)

Strange Encounters

I can probably count on one hand -- using just a couple of fingers -- the number of times I've been out to a bar or restaurant and had the occasion to strike up a conversation with a stranger or a bunch of strangers, rather than talk with whoever I'm there with (usually the wife... whom I call Squanto), or, more likely, just stuff my face. I'm just not that guy, and stand in amazement at those who can meet someone and know their life history in the span of a few minutes.

So it was doubly strange and weird and coincidental to me when I got a phone call last night at 10:30pm relaying what happened to my cousins.

Squanto and I were sitting in the living room with my friend Giff, who spent the last night as he moved from a percussion teaching gig in Syracuse yesterday to another in Horseheads today before he drives back home to Michigan. He was showing us pictures of his baby daughter on his laptop (the new wallet when it comes to pictures). The phone rang, and since I'd already told my brother and Joe we were not going to be shooting each other in the face that night in our weekly Halo 2 deathmatch on Xbox Live, I assumed bad news. When I saw the Caller ID said "OHIO," I figured it was for Giff... but he's not from there, only his in-laws are, and if they were calling, then the bad news was for him.

But it wasn't bad. It was my cousin, Michelle (she's from Ohio). She's the daughter of my uncle David (Hey Dave!), my dad's younger brother. She wanted me to guess who she was with right then, and I didn't even try, because for all I knew she was drunk and had just met Steven Tyler of Areosmith and found me on her speed dial so she could tell someone before she took him up to her room. [Please note, I do not know if she has any love for Mr. Tyler or his music or his body, but, c'mon... Steven Tyler!.] Then she told me the person's name was Kerry. With a K. And there's only one guy I know with that name: my cousin, formerly of the United States Navy (second oldest of my late Uncle Larry, my mom's older brother).

Somehow these two disparate cousins of mine, from different parts of the country, found themselves in the same bar on a Tuesday night. In the course of talking they discovered they both originated from the same area, then that they both had the same uncle ("Everyone knows Uncle Gerry!" Kerry exclaimed about my dad), the same aunt, and the same cousins named Eric and Paul. Hell, Kerry's grandmother is now living in Michelle's late grandmother's house... I should know, because it happened at my suggestion, since ladies both are/were my grandmothers. Michelle and Kerry ended up calling my mom and dad, Paul and me to tell us about the meeting. I talked to Michelle, her husband Scott, and Kerry for a few minutes. We figure that sometime in the distant past they probably did meet as toddlers or something at some function bringing together the Griffith and Stephens clans in some way. Must have.

It makes me wonder just how many people tangential to my existence I've missed out on meeting by not chatting up strangers. Probably thousands.

Then I think of the fine meals that would have interrupted and I decide, yeah... I'm just not that guy.

"Pratically Perfect in Every Way"

Out to dinner  tonight, the wife -- whom I call Squanto! -- returned to the table from the restroom and, well, let's say the headlights were on. High beams.

"Wow," I said. "Are you cold?"

She nodded and held up an arm covered with gooseflesh to underscore the point.

"I guess you are. What did you order for dinner?" I asked hoping she was getting something that would warm her up.

"Pulled pork," she said, "We'll see if it's any good." (It was.)

"You can put on some hotsauce." I pointed at the bottle of Fred's Lime n' Spicy on the table. "In fact, maybe you should just drink some."

"Uh... no."

"Just a spoonful. You know, a spoonful of hot sauce helps the goosebumps stay down. Mary Poppins said that."

"Then she was one twisted bitch."

The Best Dog? A Deaf Dog

Since Saturday morning, the wife and I have been baby-sitting my parents dogs. They used to have just the two Shetland Sheepdogs, but inherited a third from my grandmother, who felt the dog was too much for her. Which is my fault, because I got her the dog. Tho honestly, when we got Maggie from the pound back in November of 2002, I thought she would be dead by now. They told us she was 11 at the time, and the fact that just about every molar in her mouth was gray and rotten (and later pulled) seemed to indicate the truth of it. But if she's 15 now, she's pretty god-damn spry. Though she is deaf as a post.

Here's a picture of her. With no teeth to hold up her mouth, her snout makes her look like Jimmy Durante.

It's not politically correct to say it, but I will: I find deafness a wonderful trait in a canine.

I should be used to my three Labrad-dunces jumping up at every move I make, but it annoys the ever-loving crap out of me when they do that: "Where you going, dad? You going to get the ball? Is it time for cookies? Are we going outside? You going to throw the ball? Is that left-over pork chop for me? You going to drop that? You want me to bring you a ball to throw? Is it dinner time? HUH? WELL??"

Very tiresome. But Maggie been sleeping at my feet under my desk. I can get up and go upstairs and come back down, and the old toothless duffer is still snoring away! Amazing.

Of course, the downside is, she can never go off leash outside the fence. Even if I did trust her to come back -- and I wouldn't -- she'd never hear me call her.

So, I hate to say it, but I look forward to the day when my oldest, Siren, (who just turned 10) is no longer hearing. Maybe then she'll calm the hell down.

Look to the Sky

Less than two months to go...

Facing Repercussions

Idiots:

From Movie & TV News @ IMDb.com - Studio Briefing

Conservative commentators have branded the upcoming movie Hoot, which features teenage environmentalists sabotaging a development project in order to protect the habitat of burrowing owls, "soft-core eco-terrorism." CNSNews.com, a unit of the conservative Media Research Center, noted Monday, "The teenagers in the PG-rated movie face no repercussions for the illegal acts and instead are portrayed as [heroes]."

Oh, so criminals should face repercussions! Apparently only in movies where they are children saving owls, though. Not, like, I dunno... leaking the names of CIA operatives or something. Jesus. Learn to complain about something worthwhile, you nimrods.

By the way, Hoot is based on a book by Carl Hiaasen (author of Striptease and many others), and it uses almost the exact same structure as many of his "adult" books, in which crazy eco-loving people who practically live like Bigfoot in the Everglades stick it to the man for destroying wetlands or some such.

Which is all good fun. Unless you hate owls.

Posted by Eric G. at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

Walking Tall

Walking is the new eating in my house.

Well, not quite... I mean, I don't do it three times a day, dream about it, or even look forward to it. But it doesn't suck.

(The proof: down 16 god damn pounds since March 18th. That's like an entire little yappie dog. And keep in mind, I'm cheating at this diet all the time, so it's got to be the walking, right? Right?? I mean, I even have a pedometer....)

What's actually most fascinating about the walking (and not going to the gym, which is nothing but an exercise in public humiliation... stop me if you've heard this before) is finding new places to walk. The wife and I have learned a lot about cool places in our little town that a month ago I didn't know existed.

We started a few weeks back going down to Cass Park on the Inlet to Cayuga Lake, and it's a nice, even paved trail that's marked out to 2 miles exactly (and includes the Ithaca Children's Garden with the giant turtle). However, as you go through the park, there are signs about ever 50 feet with "WARNING! Beware of foul balls!" This isn't about ducks hitting you with their testicles -- tho that's really the only danger in the cold. The other day we found out that it means children, ages 5 to 14, playing baseball like the little RITALIN addicted spazes they all are. There were hundreds of them out last night, and each one with throwing a baseball without direction, while on the other end a kid stuck out a gloved hand in a straight, Nazi salute-like arm position, all while curling the rest of the body into a protective shell against the coming pain if the ball hit, all the while trusting that some higher power would direct the ball to their mitt and not into my head.

So Cass Park, nice as it is, is out for the summer (too crowded anyway). In between we hiked over at Taughannock Falls State Park, which is always a nice time and ends with gorgeous falls, so you feel like you accomplished something. Now we're going to new places. For example, we discovered this past weekend that ou can walk all the way around Beebe Lake, in the heart of the Cornell campus. And it's only a mile around (it's really more of a pond). We did 2.5 trips on Saturday, got dirty looks from some geese, and got to see co-eds sunbathing on a bridge railing, talking on cell phones and catching skin cancer. Glorious.

Cornell has all sorts of hiking, including an entire park, the F. R. Newman Arboretum, right across the street from a house that was bought out from under us when searching for a place here in 2002. Had we got that house, we might have known about the park for years and maybe taken up walking so much sooner.

Tho probably not.