If I, Eric Christopher Griffith, become incapacitated and am unable to direct my physician as to my own health care, this statement of my wishes should be respected and followed.

These instructions shall prevail even if they conflict with the desires of my relatives, hospital policies, or principles of those providing my care.

I wish to direct my health care if I am diagnosed to have a terminal condition or to be permanently unconscious. For both of these medical conditions, I have specific directions about whether I want life-prolonging procedures and artificially administered food and water provided.

Specifically, if I am diagnosed to have a terminal condition or permanently unconscious, I direct that:

• the artificial administration of food and water be withheld.
  
• medicines and treatments be administered to ease my pain and keep me comfortable.
  
• all additional life-prolonging procedures be withheld, including: blood and blood products, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), diagnostic tests, dialysis, drugs, respirator and surgery.

(The above is all how it looks in my actual legal doc, tho I really need to get that sucker notarized, bronzed, etc., whatever is needed to make it happen if needed. What's more, I should probably state for the record also that I'm pro-choice, anti-book-burning, loved Clinton, and, uh, I'm gay -- anything to keep a Republican congress away from my potentially vegetative future self.)

What can I say about Monty Python's Spamalot that won't be said by many, many others professionally and for pay by the end of this week? (The show officially opens on Mar. 17.) Not much. Suffice to say, it was a damn good time, a damn good show. I want the sound track damn bad.

I doubt anyone is going to find the narrative very compelling, despite it taking "years" for Eric Idle to write the book for this show. (In theater, the script --everything that isn't the music -- is called "the book" for some pretentious reason, for those who last saw a play because you had a young relative appearing in a production in the high school auditorium.) That might have hurt other shows, but in this case, it helps keep Spamalot more Pythonesque than ever. Hard-core fans might think the show has too much plot, to be honest.

While its arguable that the show bogs down a couple of times during some lengthy comedic exchanges, those bits tend to be the ones lift directly from the film on which this show is based. Going without them would have been a slap in the face to the fans who've been around for 30 years memorizing all the lines of dialog . Not having them would be like adapting Dracula but skipping that boring vampire stuff. The problem is, they dialog takes a deserved backseat to the musical numbers of this show, which are above and beyond in all aspects. It seemed like out of the 21 songs in the show, easily half of them were giant production numbers that were limited only by the space afforded by the relatively tiny stage of the Shubert Theater.

In the end, we left the theater and it's cramped seats and our imperfect placement (I was situated far enough to the left that I completely missed the Black Knight getting his leg cut off) still with pain in the cheeks from the full two hour rictus of being up able to stop smiling and laughing.

Three years in a row I've seen Broadway plays that have been fantastic. What about next year? Word is that the London show of Mary Poppins might be heading to the Great White Way, and as a kid who knew all the words to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious by age 10, I am very likely to be there.

The Jon Stewart show at Cornell -- pure stand-up -- actually went without a hitch, or, maybe I should say with the expected hitches.

The Wife -- whom I call the Squantomedian! -- and I drove by Barton Hall around 8:40 and didn't see much going on. We continued around the block and scored a parking space in a lot a mere block away. This is better than I ever would have expected already.

As we approached the building, Bon tried to pull me toward what looked like a gathering of people in the back, but I wanted to first check the door at Barton I'd stuck my head in the day before. Turns out that was now the backstage area. We headed down a sidewalk beside the building to a door with no handles, an exit only -- but standing there we could here Stewart already in the middle of his first show of the night (the one people had to camp out to get tickets for... though they got assigned seats.)

Our 10pm show was general admission, and we found out how important it was to be there early when we walked around the back. The line from the entrance was already snaking through the cul-de-sac entrance of the Statler Hotel, Cornell's on-campus lodging run by the school of hotel management. As we stood for the next hour, discussing work and our plans for next weekend's trip to NYC to see Spamalot, bouncing on our feet to keep warm, the line continued to work away from us, past the Statler and out of site.

By 9:40 or so, the area of the line ahead of us seemed to double in volume and students behind us in line were getting upset, thinking people were cutting in to the queue in vast groups. Then a friend of the person behind us told them the line actually had snaked around the entirety of the hotel -- we were actually looking at the end of the line, standing next to the beginning.

At 10:10, the line started to surge forward -- and that's when the end of the line made its move, and as feared it merged with the beginning of the line. Nothing to be done, we held our ground and after about 20 minutes of shuffling our feet toward the door, we were let in.

The floor was huge, with bleaches in the back and on the right side for the cheap tickets. Seating was for 5,000. As stated, the main floor was general admission for this second show, and the center was filled by the time we got there. Instead, we went left and up all the way to the second row and snagged seats that put the microphone at about our 2 o'clock position if we'd stared straight ahead. Great vantage point.

Jon -- I think I can call him Jon now -- came on stage about 10:35. Anyone who couldn't see him could follow on the two huge projection screens on either side of the stage. He spent some time ragging the quality of the stage and the pathetic array of plants Cornell had used to "decorate" it, and even did a riff on Ezra Cornell, picking on the Cornell flag on the stage, etc. All good stuff. He even got in a quick lick at Ithaca College, making a reference to it being the place to go if you want to learn to make a bong out of an apple.

At this, Bonny got a little quiet. I'm so used to dissing the ol' alma mater I was surprised she took it so seriously. I asked her afterwards what had set her off with that particular joke and she said "That's such an ancient stereotype" -- at which I laughed, probably harder than I had at the original bong joke.

No worries though. After he did a bunch of jokes on Bush, Kerry, the government, politics, gay marriage, etc., he really hit his stride with some more typical stand-up topics like his kid and his pets (hysterical story about his pitbull eating it's own diarrhea, the puking that up -- and eating it again.) He won Bon back completely when he described how one of his buttock cheeks is bald, and the other so hairy, that he can do a come-over. Nothing my wife likes more than ass-hair jokes.

In the end he did a very un-serious Q&A with the audience, winding things up after a kid gave him a shirt that said something like "I Like Vaginas" on it. Jon tried to put on but he said the shirt smelled like ass. Instead he used it as a pillow to lay down on the stage.

As the crowd drifted out the doors, he was surrounded on the stage by people trying to get tickets and copies of America: The Book signed. He had a big smile on his face doing it. I did, too. $64 well spent.

I'm as sympathetic as the next guy — even more so — when it comes to a day with nothing to write about when that's your job. But this story I just read on the Web site of the Hornell Evening Tribune, the local paper for my old home town shows you just how desperate for excitement that burg is:

HORNELL - Web surfers researching the Maple City online instead learned about the birds and the bees when they stumbled upon a pornography link on a Hornell-related Web site

An errant visitor to www.hornellny.net - unaffiliated with any of the official city pages - posted the porno link in the site's guestbook, where anyone could post messages.

Someone actually called the mayor of the city about this. What's more, the mayor actually took this to the chamber of commerce to deal with. Oh, and the site in question? It hasn't been updated is six years.

Welcome to 2005 folks, where comment/trackback/guestbook spam is a way of life. Heaven forbid anyone on an "official city page" ever try to start a blog and gets the same flood of spam most receive. They'll have to call out the National Guard.

Alright, this tears it: "Homosexual marriages are part of "a new ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul says in his newly published book."

World leaders spouting bigotry didn't go out with the past century, unfortunately. It's bad enough when you know your leaders think some evil crap, but at least most have to keep it to themselves these days. Mostly. When you're the Pope for life and you don't have to worry about being re-elected, I guess you can say whatever hateful crap comes to mind.

And does anyone see the utter hypocrisy of guys who can't married making rules about marriage? Yeah, I thought so. If they knew anything about marriage and they really wanted to punish homosexuals, they'd force them ALL to get married.

I mean, I'll give him his thoughts on abortion. I don't agree with it, but I can at least see his point. But any guesses how many lesbian's John Paul has knowingly had dinner with?

So, I will respond thusly: for some odd reason, since 1982, I have owned a copy of The Life of Pope John Paul II, a comic book actually published by Marvel Comics that told of the story of his life. I read it once. I remember it said he was Polish, and when I was twelve I was mystified because I thought you had to be Italian to be Pope. Anyway, as soon as he's passed away, that sucker is going on eBay the same night so I can maximize the profit potential of reselling it, and them I'm going to donate all the money I make to a Gay & Lesbian non-profit group somewhere.

Really, if there has to be a Rapture, it can't happen too soon, so us heathens can be left in peace with SpongeBob.

In the interest of full disclosure: I'm not Catholic so it's probably no surprise that I've never been particularly impressed by any pontiff, but my looking askance at one man telling all of his followers how to think goes way back to a visceral response. In the 1970s during the coverage of the death of John Paul's predecessor there was a full interruption of all Saturday morning cartoons for an entire day. On all the networks! Scars that run as deep as the time the Carter/Ford debates interrupted a night of Happy Days that I'd been looking forward to all day. (I'm as deep as a puddle some times.)

While not a decade beloved my most -- if anyone -- the 1970's did have some great things like the first Star Wars film, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman... and this two minutes of video (in Quicktime format, or get the MPEG which has the end cut off). This is one of the greatest things ever captured for viewing pleasure. (Read a review of the episode it came from here.)

When you're done watching it, dowload the MP3 for your repeated listening. You won't regret it, though anyone you lives with probably will.

When I was in high school, one of my favorite meals to make myself was Stouffer's French Bread Pizzas.

I know that this stretches the definition of making myself a meal, but how many teenage boys are gourmet cooks? They are simply on the earth to consume mass quantities of, well, anything that isn't a vegetable, the calories of which are used in turn to fuel an unrequited libido that burns like the fire of a thousand supernovas.

Stouffer's French Bread Pizzas could be baked in 30 minutes, from frozen to my plate to my gullet, and deliver the perfect amount of pizza. They had a perfect crunch in every bite, as I'm a fan of the crust and don't cotton much to thems that don't eats their crust. Heathens. I remember with fondness how careful I'd have to be with the first piece—I would almost always burn away the roof of my mouth on scalding cheese—only to find the second piece had sat just long enough to reach the perfect temperature to be held in my hand, skipping the fork and plunging that crunchy goodness directly into my face.

Today I had Stouffer's French Bread Pizzas for the first time in several years. Perhaps my memory is faulty, looking back with fondness on something that was at the time only mediocre, or maybe my advanced years have introduced me to too many truly great variations on pizza (including my own homemade )—but I can say without equivocation that today's experience was far from as joyful as I remember.

This seems to be the running theme of meals as I grow older. Whatever meals I used to love in childhood, as a teen, even in my 20s, is lost to me. The quality has suffered (such as with the above), or I've cut myself off of the substance (ala Coka-Cola, which once proudly replaced the blood in my veins), or I've come to find that the plain ol' steak and potatoes of my youth just isn't as tasty in a world now replete with sauces, salsas, and soaking marinades.

There is one hold out however, one grand, gleaming food source that has remained a constant: The Golden Arches. Mickey D.'s. The multi-national corporation called... McDonald's.

I've seen Super Size Me, I've read the articles, I watch the news, I know the dangers and that they, like all corporations, are technically evil.

None of that changes the fact that when I get to eat a meal McD's once a month (at most!— when I as age 13-18 I ate there every day, Monday thru Friday!), I want to revel in it. I want my Quarter Pounder with Cheese next to my Six-Piece McNuggets with Barbeque Sauce, Sprite in a cup the size of a soup tureen—and most of all I want my Fries.

There has never been someone on earth who welcomes the query "Do you want Fries with that?" more than me. In high school, during those days of eating at Ray Croc's corporate legacy every day —it was right next door to my friend Mark's house, were I ate lunch every day from eight grade to senior year— the Fries were always my primary focus. I could handle having a crappy PB&J that was squished flat and soggy on Wonder bread that I'd had in a gym bag next to sweaty underpants all morning long after a particularly grueling first period PE class involving anything from sit-ups to squat thrusts to square-dancing—as long as I knew there would be Fries to go with that sandwich. I would spend the period before lunch checking my pockets for the change needed to make that single purchase—I had memorized the exact prices with tax for all the sizes of Fries. I was able to tell what coins I had by feel, like a blind person. A blind person who wants French Fries.

I admit, I eat Fries with a gusto that looks quite like a shark in chum filled waters eating a human leg, gulp after gulp after delicious gulp. I consider this a survival tactic because my love for McD's Fries is so great that I abso-fucking-lutely hate to share them. Loathe it. They are mine. Back off. I might be mis-remembering this, but I think I once stabbed my father with a spork when he reached for one of my last French Fries without verbally clearing it with me first. I was probably about 8 at the time...

This is all to say that my wife, who I dearly love and would probably never stab, is bound and determined to suck out all the joy and happiness I get out of visiting Ronald's place. Every time I've eaten there with her in the last two years, she has made a big issue of my habits, such as not letting any Fries to too waste—including hers, which she'd like to just throw away. Unbelievable. Why not just go take a piss in the fryer while you're at it if you hate Fries so much. Jesus.

Fries, by the way, are never filling. They only cause the desire for More Fries.

After I finish my meal in (an admittedly unhealthy three or four minutes), the Wife will then proceed to twist the knife into me by slowly and methodically eating her own Fries one...at...a...time. Her own container is always more than half full and taunts me, much like those anthropomorphic foods on TV that I can't stand, saying "eat me. C'mon, steal me from her tray, she won't mind." Such evil things... how I worship them.

When I give in to these salt-slathered morsels and make the reach, my wife turns on me with The Look. You know the one. The one that just says: "I'm so disappointed in you." When she gives me The Look I feel like she's caught me with a smoking gun in my hand, a crack pipe in my mouth, and a hooker in the passenger seat of my truck full of dogs from a puppy mill.

Which I respond to, quite reasonably says I, with anger: God dam it! Why should I feel guilty? So what if I eat some damn Fries? What's a couple more pounds on my frame? So what if my heart explodes? I'm still hungry, bee-yotch!

So, I told my wife last time we were at a McD's and went through this ritual, that I would never, ever, ever eat a meal with her under the arches of gold ever, ever again. Ever.

I'll take The Look when it comes to a lot of things: not doing the dishes, not emptying dead flies out of the light fixtures in the kitchen, running stop lights when listening to audiobooks in the car, setting the TiVo to record old episodes of Real Sex on HBO, etc.

But my love of McDonald's French Fries—the top pick of my last meal if I'm ever on death row—transcends any other wicked or immoral things I perpetrate in life.

Speaking of which, I have dishes to do.

If there is truly some benevolent caretaker of the universe, why the hell does he allow zits to grow inside a person's nose? That's just wrong.

Just IMed to me by the wife: cute phrase I just overheard.... "My heart is bleeding for you. I'm gonna go upstairs and swallow a band-aid."

I think it is probably pretty clear to anyone who's read my blog that I'm kind of like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. I'm not talking about the weight or the facial hair or the manner of speaking ("Worst. Blog. Ever!")-- because, yeah, I've got that. All I lack is the Android's Dungeon shingle from which to sell my priceless collectables. And the pony tail.

What CBG and I have most in common is that we're complete whores for material goods.

Knowing that, I found it interesting that a few friends of mine have forwarded to me in the last week this e-mail calling for a "Not One Damn Dime Day" on the day of the inauguration, to teach the Bushies a lesson by not spending any money, basically boycotting the economy. Yeah, that'll help. It's about as effective as protesting topless bars by going topless.

It reminds me of that classic piece of idiocy called "Turn On Your Lights," meant to support the family's effected by Columbine a few years ago.

It was nice to see that even big-time famous author types fall for this: read Neal Pollack's spot-on take on NODDD after he was forwarded the e-mail by none other than Stephen King himself. Pollack spells out perfect why this is, at best, a knee-jerk reactionary thing to do. It won't prove anything and doesn't work as a protest. It's pointless. (Maybe the way to anti-Bushites should have protested was getting more of them out to vote last year... naw.)

There's actually a Sniggletesque name for this kind of "protest": slacktivism. NODDD is so unrealistic as a protest that it even has an entry on Snopes.com, the urban-legend debunking site. In fact, it's the first link you find when looking up NODDD on Google.

Will I rush out tomorrow and buy a few books and DVDs just to prove it wrong? No. But will I be in my house using electricity and natural gas and heating oil and Internet bandwidth and food and water and gasoline (snow blower, if needed) and indoor plumbing? Yes.

All of which I'll be paying for.

(Yes, I know the focus is on the "retail economy" but guess what? I've got relatives that work in retail. Guess who the first person is hurt when that economy takes a dump? The one's on the front lines, at the cash registers. The people in power will still be having their billion-dollar parties in D.C.)

I guess if I really loved my country, I'd unplug everything I own and curl into a fetal position under the blankets for the entire day, my lips growing cracked and dry from lack of moisture, trying not to soil myself as the hunger pangs wrack my body. Some patriot I am.

I'd make a good cartoon character on the Simpson's though. Maybe I could be Comic Book Guy's cousin.

We're living in a golden age of television, quality wise. When I think about the sheer number of hours of absolute magic I saw from "movies" last year versus the same on TV, is there any comparison? Does tripe like Van Helsing deserve to even be considered in the same breath as the series ending of Angel? (The answer: no.)

Seriously, name a time in the history of the medium when there was this much good stuff on: West Wing, Lost and Alias on one night alone. 24 is a roller-coaster ride. ER continues to limp along with occasional fits of life (and can deliver better than most "feature films"). The procedural chains of CSI and Law & Order churn out story after beguiling story. Medium is a new gem from the fantastic producer Glenn Gordon Caron, who did Moonlighting when it was good, and who's last show was the fantastic Now and Again (if only Medium had as good a theme song, it would be almost perfect). The only things missing are shows from Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin (West Wing no longer counts) and maybe a good Star Trek. (I admit, I've kinda given up on my old fav, David E. Kelley). Survivor and The Amazing Race continue to prove that "reality shows" don't have to suck (though, let's face it, we should just go back to calling them game shows). Not so good on the sitcom front, but who cares when there's four Daily Show with Jon Stewart episodes each week? Cable has some amazing shows the networks can't handle: The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Sopranos, The Wire, and more.

And not all of these shows are even on my watch list. But what makes this age great is more than just TiVo (which I seem to be using as a way to watch old films with Peter Sellers and Cary Grant) -- it’s the age of everything on DVD. Entire seasons of old shows. What's left that's NOT out on DVD?

I mentioned before that I've got like six seasons of Star Trel" Deep Space Nine on video cassette -- greatest Trek ever, by the way -- which I know I'll never watch. Why? Because all seven seasons of the show are out on glorious DVD! With extras! It would cost $636 to get them all brand new, but that's what eBay is for.

It's true for great shows from the Dick Van Dyke Show to Buffy to The Simpsons. You never have to miss anything. Even shows that never aired on TV.

Of course, I'm talking about Firefly -- a show so good it makes you want to cry when you realize out there are no more. Fox showed them out of order... playing the pilot after seven other eps played out of sequence. This didn't help people catch on, so the ratings never grew and it got clipped. Yet,this is a show so good that despite Fox's ineptitude, Universal gave a greenlight to a feature film based on the show. Same cast, crew and producers.

Which brings me to the greatest thing about this trend of whole seasons of DVDs -- shows that got even less of a chance than Firefly can still get the full treatment. And here I'm talking about a little show that no one every saw in 2003 that got only four episodes under its belt -- in order, at least! -- before it went belly up: Wonderfalls.

Great writing. A premise similar even to another show -- Joan of Arcadia (which I've never seen) -- where a girl hears voices and acts upon what they tell her. However, Wonderfalls was done with the wit expected of the writers like Tim Minear who was a producer on the much loved Angel (and Firefly). (From what I can tell of Joan's commercials, it's pretty preachy.)

Wonderfalls comes out on DVD with all 13 episodes of the show, nine of which never aired. That’s 566 minutes of pure entertainment (less if you fast forward through the credits, but still.) I recommend it highly. Get it cheap now on Amazon -- it ships Feb. 1. You will love it. And I won't share my already pre-ordered discs, so you might as well buy it, so there. Hopefully it will sell like crazy, make Fox regret canceling it, and get a movie deal of its own. Probably not, but hey... a bad Wonderfalls episode is still better than most other big Hollywood movies made today.

Let's talk about going to the bathroom in public. (Yes, this gets scatological, so avert your eyes if you're weak of heart or stomach.)

I've never been afraid of public toilets, despite seeing some horrific ones in my time, including the Grand Central Station men's room, complete with homeless men living in the stalls. I didn't use any of those toilets, even though I was in the beginning throes of what would later become known far and wide as "the Tequila Willie's Incident."

Back then, 1993 or so, I used to stand by the Macy*s store on 34th Street in NYC and look at the toilet across the street. They'd installed this gigantic booth on the street that was a self-cleaning public toilet that was homeless proof—anyone who over stayed their welcome would actually be ejected by the moving walls of this high-tech outhouse. After someone used it and left, it would also self-clean, hosing down the walls, toilet, floor, etc., so the next person would find it minty-fresh, albeit, I assume, damp. I could never bring myself to use it because it cost money to get inside. I'll pay for a lot of things, but not to eliminate my own excrement.

Aside: This morning my brother, the cop, told me the story of the Mad Crapper that struck our hometown of Hornell a few years ago. We got on the subject while talking about how some criminals are put on the sex offender lists for stupid shit like answering the door naked when pizza is delivered, and yet people who do full-on murder don't have a list at all.

One guy he knows of in town is on the sex offender list—the guy did answer the door naked all the time, and once ran out of his bathroom "naked and jerkin' it" (as he put it) and knocked a guy over who was in the apartment. The guy knocked over brought charges, thus the offender is on the sex offender list. What the offender is not on the sex offender list for is being the Mac Crapper, simply because he was in his teens at the time. He was breaking into people's homes and getting so sexually excited by it that he had to offload some freight. This he would do on a kitchen counter. Then he would leave the house without taking a thing.

While I do have got some standards for public toilets, I also have my rituals (and I'm talking a full sit down here, not urinals, which are uniformly gross due to man's inability to take aim). For example, I carefully hang my bag and/or coat on a hook. I flush before I even undo a button even if all appears clear. I grab a wad of toilet paper and white down the ring, then flush that.

But I never use those paper ass guards.

I tried one for the first time a couple of months ago and got exactly the result I'd always expected. It was in the way, made me slide around like a fawn on a patch of ice, and when all was done, it stuck to me like, well, exactly what it was: thin tissue paper. Peeling it off my thighs was one of the more sickening things I've felt in a while, right up there with almost upchucking a big-ass pancake in Hawai'i.

I've used toilets in airports all over this great nation (and the U.K.!) and usually found them to be among the best you can get in a public venue. Perhaps it's because 90% of them have the self-flushing function. Even the ancient underground rest room of the JetBlue terminal at JFK —with toilets you have to flush by hand!—get cleaned regularly, and besides, what more do we really need? Much as I might admire the bells and whistles of a self-cleaning water closet, what out does a roll of tissue, a ring upon a throne, and a good book? Nothing, my friends, nothing.

Well, a bidet might be cool, at least to try. Though I suspect that would mean too many towels in the laundry.

I am totally enamored with what they've done with the cans at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Not only do they have the obligatory self-flushing, the johns automatically dispense a seat cover. It rotates around the ring like the skin on a snake, disposing of itself after every use. You're supposed to pass a hand over a sensor to get a new cover, but I was a little nervous that it would try to rotate a new one while I was dropping anchor, perhaps slicing my rump with thousands of paper cuts. However, it worked quiet flawlessly. Watch a video of it in action.

The world should be working toward a standard of excellence for all public facilities: foaming soap dispensers (quite the rage in Calif., I noticed on my last trip), sell flushing bowls, automatic seat covers, etc. Only then will I think it's truly safe and worthwhile for the homeless to move into the stalls at Grand Central or elsewhere.

Another Aside: Another quick cop story from my bro: They once had on a surveillance tape a college student who walked into a bank vestibule, squatted in a corner to pinch a loaf, and then proceed to pick up his own feces and smear it on the ATM. He actually tried to deny it when they picked him up, and when they showed him the tape he simply copped to the charge without any explanation. Drugs and alcohol were supposedly not involved. This man is NOT on any offender lists anywhere. He's loose. Remember that the next time you use your ATM card.

I was reading the very funny advice column they've started on MediaBistro called ColumnTK today....

(Aside: If you don't know what a TK is, you don't work in publishing. So I'll let you in on our dirty little secret: Sometimes, when people write things for a living, they don't really know what they're talking about.

Or, at the very least, they don't have all the facts or information they need. When that happens, the writer will generally put in the letters TK in place of whatever is missing or unknown. For example: "The world economy takes in $TK collecting whale feces" or "George W. Bush spent TK [number] of years as a cheerleader in college before becoming president."

The TK stands for "to come," but I don't know why it's a K. It's one of those things that every editorial assistant asks and is told "it just is." And so, it just is.)

The top question in the column was from someone working for a public radio show, wondering if they were obligated to contribute during pledge time to the station where they work. The worry was that maybe it was expected, or on the other hand, perhaps giving was crossing the line and "somewhat incestuous."

The answers (from fellow readers) stated that non-profit orgs actually expect staffers to contribute to fund-raising efforts the organization is making. People working for public radio —everyone down to the part-timers—made donations back to the place of work according to another reader who worked for public radio.

That's the stupidest god-damn thing since New Coke.

Why on earth would you give money back to the people who PAY YOU? You work there. You probably work more than you should, especially if they're a non-profit. Time is money, but not if you love your job? Horse hockey pucks!

What kind of bargaining chip do you have with the boss when it comes time for you to ask for a raise? None—you're giving money back to the company already! He should just take some away.

What chance do you have of NOT getting a pay cut if budgets are tight? None—you've basically already taken a cut by giving money back to the company!

Look, I do volunteer work for a non-profit, and I make donations to them. That's fine, I'm doing my part work-wise on the side of my day job and helping with some cash at the end of the year. But if I worked for them as a real employee? I would not donate to their coffers. The point would be to work harder to get other people to donate.

I don't care if it's a non-profit or corporation that greedy to the point of starting a Division of Alchemy to get more ingots for the coffers, it makes no sense for an employee to give back money to its employer.

I admit, I've worked at least one job where I would have gladly taken a paycut just to keep the job around.... but no way was I giving anything back without that good a reason.

This is something the Wife faces occasionally. Ithaca College, our ol' alma mater and her current much-beloved employer, is always screaming poverty. This year they might actually have earned the right since a slew of students they accepted decide to go elsewhere, taking their beer money tuition dollars with them. But even in its least lean times, the College solicits for cash every year by having freshmen make phone calls to every single graduate they can track down to see if they'll give back to the site of their most inebriated learning.

I actually have gotten to the point of enjoying the call each year, as 1) I seldom get to talk to women age 19-22 on the phone when it doesn't involve the number "900" and 2) I love to slowly and candidly tell them exactly why I won't ever give to the college (thus taking up as much time as I can so my young solicitor can't call another fellow alum who might decide to buy another brick for the wall... with their name etched on it as a keepsake to find years later during Alumni Weekend). I consider it a service.

I have my reasons not to give to IC. Primary among them has always been the mistake of getting married on that same campus after graduation to the tune of several thousand dollars. (The location was the mistake, not the marriage, but ask me again next time the Wife is mean to me.) I think IC has seen enough of my parent's money and mine.

At least it has at my current rate of pay. I'm not saying if I had some Trump-esque cash I wouldn't be pushing for a Griffith Hall (all naked sororities all the time!) or willing to setup a Griffith Scholarship (for the Television/Radio student most likely to do the least with their degree by going into a different field).

I've told Bon on every occasion where the topic has come up that we might want to give something to the school—and it comes up a lot—there's no way in hell. We buy tickets to see plays and concerts there. We pay the exorbitant fees to have the occasional dining hall meal when I visit her on campus (always going back to the same dining hall where we met, worked, fell in love, got it on once in the kitchen, and got married. Not all on the same day, by the way).

And, oh, there's the fact that she's woefully underpaid for the amount of work she's putting in. And I'm underpaid having to hear about the politics and nonsense she puts up with.

If the college doesn't get the census back up next year then people might lose their jobs. (But do these places ever actually float the ability to anyone to take a paycut across the board so someone doesn't get laid off? Hell no. I'm sure the president, provost and other six-figure muckity-mucks won't take a cut.)

But I digress. Back to the point: Donate back to your employer? Please. You can always find another charity. Like your spouse.

When Bon is the president of the college pulling down six figures (which I figure will take until about 2018, tops) and I can finally stop working and be a house-husband (but with a flock of full-time French maids at my beck and call)...we'll give some back then. Though really, there's no point, because once she kicks the bucket the college would name some dorm after her anyway.

My best buddy Joseph is once again blogging after a several month hiatus. Go and read his harangue about those silly ass "ribbon" magnets that are now all the rage for showing "your support of troops, diseases, boobs, whatever. He's spot on and I wish I'd written it.

This past weekend, as the wife and I were leaving the glorious grocery Mecca known as Wegman's, a guy pulled into the space in front of me as we were loading bags in Matilda (the mini-van), so I had to back out.

Understand, I hate backing out of parking lots, especially one that garners the traffic that particular store parking lot does, which from the air probably resembles nothing so much as road-kill being overrun by maggots and flies. So I was being careful and going slow, hoping not to hit any elderly widow ladies.

"Is that guy pulling in here?" Bon asked, more rhetorically than not. I looked to where her gaze was and, indeed, the guy in the spot in front of me was slowly following me as I backed out, so he could take over the parking space. My wife said with incredulity, "Unbelievable."

"Unbelievable?" I asked in return. "I'd call it commendable! The man is taking the safety of the almighty pull-thru. I love the pull-thru. If I could, I would write a soliloquy to the pull-thru." [Actual quote from my mouth. I probably should have said "sonnet."]

And I would. But I don't really know how to do such fancy poetry. So here's a haiku instead:

Taking the pull-thru
Increases love, threatens few
Where are my pants?

I'm no poet. But the gist of this brings us to day two of my theme of Why I Am Better Than You (WIABTY™) (AKA, he's insulting us and preaching again): I always take the pull-thru when it is available.

I was surprised that Bon even said anything about the guy wanting the pull-thru spot in the lot, as she knows how important I think they are. Whenever I get one, I actually do a little yell: "Pull-thru!" and gesticulate wildly.

Nothing infuriates me more than watching someone pull into a parking lot and taking a space and just stopping there -- even if the spot in front of that one is as empty as the far reaches of space. Pure vacuum waiting to be filled. Instead, the frickin' retard in question would rather take the chance when they come out of the store later that they could instead back up. Ridiculous.

Vehicular safety is not something you'd call synonymous with my name. I have had my share of little fender tags in parking lots. But all of them have, hands down, happened when backing out of a tight spot. There's few things worse than the crunch or scrap noise when your bumper connects with another, or the cement wall, or that elderly widow lady.

I've learned my lesson folks, and you should, too. Even if it means you might have to walk a couple extra feet to the store, take the pull-thru spot. You'll be glad you did. (And, you could stand to lose a few pounds).

Welcome to the first ever theme week on the Squished Frog Blog.

Our theme for the next few days: Why I Am Better Than You.

I'm not here to insult you. Really. What I'm here to do this week is point out some areas whee I am just the cat's PJs and by comparison make you look like a loathsome, disgusting piece of semi-human putrescence. Try not to take it personally.

The first reason Why I Am Better Than You (WIABTY™) is because I give blood. I've talked about this before (see "Phelbotomists for Jesus"). Obviously, giving my hemoglobin is not much of a hardship because if there's anything I've got an overabundance of, it's bodily fluids. But I think it's important. The guilt I had about not giving during the years I lived in Massachusetts (especially after 9/11) has translated into a fervor. So much so, that I threaten to alienate my wife by my constantly telling her she should be getting a needle in her arm as well.

I should be grateful she has finally agreed—after several years of needling —that when I die I want as much of my body given away for parts as possible.

In fact, lets make this as public as possible right now, just in case she's only playing along with me: Dear World: I, Eric Griffith, being of sound mind and somewhat-sound body (with at the very least some decent working parts that should be useful to someone) want to make sure that when I die that any and all efforts are made to make sure that my organs are dispatched forthwith to as many sick patients around the world who need them for transplants. ASAP. Corneas, heart, lungs, liver, skin, stem cells, fingernails, nose hairs, whatever—take all that and more.

In fact, if my organs can't be used, just donate my whole body to science. Students need cadavers for cutting—they don't just figure out how to operate using frogs, people.

You've seen that convict that researchers froze and then whittled away a millimeter at a time just to take cool pictures of his insides? I'd have been proud to have been that corpse!

So that's the second reason WIABTY™ : I'm willing to give it all way. Anyone who isn't willing to give at least one body part away—a person that is so selfish in death that you have to take it all with you—then you're more materialistic than even a person with a basement filled with toys he doesn't play with and books he hasn't read. (Ahem.)

But today I got a third reason of WIABTY™ : I'm willing to give some of it away now.

And not just the easy, liquidy parts you can get to easily and store in a bag.

Today I signed up to be part of the National Marrow Donor Program, which tracks the names of potential donors of stem cells, blood cells, and (duh) bone marrow. This means that if my type should somehow match with some poor kid with leukemia, I could give enough of myself to actually save their life.

Read that again: Save Their Life.

Okay, so yes, the marrow collection process involves drilling a hole into your ass cheek through to your pelvic bone so they can stick in sterile needles and suck out the bone marrow like a fat kid sucking the cream filling out of a Hostess Twinkie. Afterwards you probably can't sit for a while, and all spankings are off for a while no matter what your dominatrix says.

But it's totally worth it. That life giving marrow could be injected into the blood of a patient coming off of chemo or radiation and start to turn into fresh, healthy marrow in that ravaged body.

The chances of actually being asked to donate (especially for a white guy, and I'm as white as mayo) are, I understand, about the same as The Revenge of the Sith not sucking. But, since we all know every geek-boy in America is going to run out and see it anyway just in case it doesn't suck, how can the rest of you so-called "normal people" not fill out some papers and get a finger pricked just in case it could save someone's life?

Find your donor center, get pricked, and feel good about yourself. God knows I do, enough so that I can take this high-horse of discourse. Don't you wish you had as much hubris as me right now? Well, you can't, loser, because you aren't in the NMDP data base. So you suck.

So... I guess I really am here to insult you.

But I still feel good about it.

It's been a depressing couple of days in Squished Frog land.

The sky is grey and dreary. Last night, there came a killing frost -- and the pony she named Wildfire busted down his stall. I have no vacation time left, and worse, I've got jury duty starting Monday (which I guess is like a vacation, but with responsibility).

Oh, and there's four more years of Bush.

Why didn't I donate some money to MoveOn.org? Dammit.

It is no surprise, sadly. But it hurts because it makes me feel totally at odds with half of my country...and half of my family. Sort of.

My brother, the one-issue voter Republican cop who never met a civil liberty he didn't think was worth sneering at, greeted me on IMs yesterday with a "GOOOOOOO Bush! :)" -- with the smiley. I was gracious to him about it, and he was gracious back, but that was after a loud one hour debate on the phone Tuesday as we tried to convince each other that "our guy" was the right one. Which was stupid, since we'd both already voted.

That's how he always refers to the candidates --"your guy vs. my guy" -- so I'm not always sure he sees this as anything more than a competition akin to a football game; something entertaining but without ramifications. It's how he acts, but I know it's not how he feels. He's got his reasons for voting Bush, mostly steered by the fact that he's a cop and what he sees on the job ("liberal judges" letting suspects walk is a favorite topic of his), and being a new dad. He's just afraid that Kerry was too 'soft,' and he thinks stepping in to take care of business is the right way to do things. (Worse perps like N. Korea and weapons inspections and the like are all just in the way, like waiting to get a search warrant.)

He also refers to the war in Iraq as a "police action." Didn't that go out with Vietnam?

I think I was bothered most knowing my dad voted for Bush. While dinner table topics growing up in my house could easily range from genital contusions to motor vehicle accident decapitations without an eye-blink (courtesy of a family working in hospitals), politics is something we've never talked about. I dunno why. As a child I think I was told by my grandmother or someone intimidating that it was rude to ask who you voted for, so I had never asked my dad.

So last night, I did. I called him up and I asked him "Why? Just tell me why you voted for him."

His answer was that he'd always voted Republican and had never given it much thought not to.

So, I asked him what he thought of the issues like gay marriage (no problem with it) or abortion (he says it should be done when medically necessary). I told him that the guy he voted for was against both -- and had turned the first one into a campaign issue enough that 11 states have now made it illegal, legitimizing hate and bigotry against many of my friends. He's lucky that Roe v. Wade happened when it did in the 70's or I can only imagine the girls he might have picked up in his 32 years on the ambulance doing back alley abortions even in our little home town.

And I barely touched on the legitimacy of the war, the economy, the environment, the erosion of liberties under the PATRIOT Act (no thanks to stupid, lazy Democrats there, of course) and the administration/party's crack down on "moral grounds" on everything comics to television to movies to the internet.

Even he asked me, "don't you think there's a lot of people out there that vote that way?"

Based on the stakes in this election, I didn't want to think so. I haven't ever voted that way since my first ballot cast in 1992.

Then I had a talk with a friend where we discussed what he feels is the biggest reason that Bush won: religions that tell people not to think, be good little sheep and just believe what you hear from the pulpit (and what's loosely interpreted from the Bible)... a message that extends for many to the bully pulpit of the White House.

Put them all together and what are the top reasons people voted for Bush? Fear. Apathy. Lack of critical thought.

The number of times people were called un-American in those days following the tragedy of 9/11, just for espousing a questionable view on his actions -- perhaps the most wholly American thing any person can do, rattle against the Man -- was staggering and heart-breaking. Now, the call, even from Kerry, is to "stand behind the president," which of course means what it meant right after 9/11 -- don't say anything bad. He won, so that must mean he's a-okay! Just like Nixon was, once upon a time.

Still, I'm sure that sentiment of "play nice" will carry the day for a while, maybe longer, especially with the Dems eviscerated like they were the bowels of Congress (Obama not withstanding). I just hope it doesn't last. Questioning and investigating and making sure these guys stay "moral" is the least the policiticans, the media, and the country can do.

Maybe an Edwards/Obama ticket in 2008 would work... but the Dems will screw it up again and probably make it a Hillary/Sharpton ticket or something.

Actually, it wasn't a game here (click for actual debate drinking game). Last night, as we pondered the thought of watching Masshole Senator take on the Handpuppet of the United States, my wife—who I call Squanto, and on some occasions, Squanto-licious— said, "I don't think I'm drunk enough to watch the debate."

So I said, "if you mix the drinks, I'll drink 'em with you."

Over the next 90 minutes, we polished off a bottle of vodka mixed with cranberry and some other stuff I couldn't identify, but it tasted good and made the so-called debate tolerable. This is about as much a true debate as I am a a climber of sheer rock faced cliffs, but it is the official beginning of the truly public part of the popularity contest between the two men who will run the country into the ground for the next four years. Hard to call the rest of the campaign public since not everyone is willing to sign the Bush/Cheney loyalty oaths required to get in.

We paused the debate many, many times to insert our own commentary of disgust and incredulity. I was flabbergasted when at one point Kerry slipped in the "one million jobs lost" stat and in the rebuttal the Handpuppet actually said that one million new jobs had been created in his administration! Direct contradiction, and yet the "fact check" articles I read this morning didn't even mention it. Maybe because the candidates were only supposed to talk about homeland security and foreign policy... must be the papers didn't want to embarrass them. (Though I've been searching through this transcription of the debate and I can't find any mention of this... was I that drunk?)

Two things I would add to any future debate drinking game: drink whenever they pound the podium (they should have that trained out of them with cattle prods) and whenever the sitting usurper refered to Kerry as saying "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." We get it.

Ultimately, if you had to pick a winner of such a public relations stunt, I'd be hard pressed. Kerry didn't sweat or talk like an over-educated snob, so that's a plus. Handpuppet didn't freak out and send in Ashcroft's storm troopers, so I guess he did okay.

In this house, our absolutely favorite part of the whole night was this exchange:

KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said,

The enemy attacked us.

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.

[blah blah blah to fill out 2 minutes]

BUSH: First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.

We both burst out laughing. I sat there and did my impression of Jon Stewart doing W, saying things like, "I ain't stupid, yah know. I'm the president. I know stuff." He's a petulant child caught with his hands in the cookie jar and can't admit that what he's doing is wrong.

After the debate (we missed all the pontificating by the spin doctors since we'd paused the DVR so much, it was already 11), we watched an amazing episode of the Daily Show with said Mr. Stewart that I swear was written between 10:30 and 11pm —an amazing job. I shouldn't say we, as by the time Rudy Giuliani came on to parrot the party line, much to Stewart's obvious disappointment, Squanto was out like a light on the coach with two yellow Labradors curled around her legs.

I extricated the dogs, covered her with a blanket, and went to bed with no clearer knowledge at all if this country was doomed to another four years of criminals running things.

...and some foreigners, too!

I'm so happy to say that I successfully avoided viewing any coverage of the Athens Olympics this year. Not a stitch. The only thing I saw was a still picture of two female beach volleyball players rolling around in the sand hugging... and I don't think that was on a site devoted to "sports."

This coming week, I plan to devote myself to missing any and all coverage of the Republican National Conventions outside of what's show on the Daily Show.

It truly is a great time to be an ignorant American.

Apple's iTunes Music Store has an audiobook section and in perusing it today I see that My Life by Bill Clinton is listed under fiction.

I don't usually like to build my blog entries off of what's been said elsewhere on the Web. I think that's lazy. Then again, I constantly refer to myself with that epithet, and even used "sloth" at some point this week, so what the hell.

Here are the two most earth-shattering bits I read today on the Web (sorry, I mean Web... or do I mean Web?):

I was planning to write about the wonderfulness of The Village, the new movie out this past weekend from direct M. Night Shyamalan (and if you haven't seen it, stop reading right now). Because, well, I was just blown away by it. I haven't stopped thinking about it much since Saturday. I sat in the theater watching the credits and said to The Wife: "I defy anyone to tell me they saw that coming."

Apparently, the world is defying me.

I must be the most absolutely obtuse movie-goer in the history of moving pictures. According to Yahoo!Movies , the average grade this film is getting is a C+ from critics. No one they use has given it an A rating -- and I think it's the best film I've seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

(Before anyone asks, ofcourse, I adored Spider-Man 2 and Hellboy this year, but I knew what to expect. The good-guy would win in the end, it wasn't much of a surprise. Eternal Sunshine and The Village though -- I never knew where they'd take me. The Village was one of those films that made me think about what they'd done for a long time after. That happens maybe with two or three bits of TV or movie entertainment a year, and I cherish it. Sure, it's nice to spend your money, eat your popcorn, and escape for a couple of hours, but it's also nice to see something that makes me just say, "Woah." Joss Whedon could do it almost weekly on Buffy and Angel...)

Most of the critics' bad grades seem to hinge on disliking the twist at the end of the Village, which I thought they pulled off with aplomb.

I've never seen a Shyamalan film that I didn't like. Everyone loves The Sixth Sense, that one doesn't count, but no one seemed to like Unbreakable, and that is arguably the best super-hero film of the last 30 years. (Note: not "comic book film" since it's not based on a comic, though most comic book films are also superhero films since the superheroes genre has overwhelmed the comic industry.) I thought Signs a perfectly scary flick -- probably because I was terrified of Bigfoot movies as a child and haven't had the guts to take my Blair Witch Project DVD out of its case since I bought it years ago. (I admit that I don't do good with dark woods. I'm not a camper.)

Maybe it helps that I went in with a blank slate -- I knew there'd be a surprise, it's the signature of a Shyamalan flick, but I wanted the film to guide me along. I didn't want to try to think ahead of it, I didn't want to guess, I didn't want to know until it was revealed in Night's own good time. I've felt that way since Sixth Sense -- I didn't see the end of any of his films coming at me, except maybe Signs since the water thing seemed telegraphed. Still plenty of scares to be had in the flick. Basement scene in the dark, anyone? (Though, yeah, why the aliens give a crap about that farm house is beyond me.)

Perhaps even more shocking than the "twist" in The Villiage is the stabbing -- the most horrific murder or attempted murder I've seen portrayed on film since Saving Private Ryan. Not very often Hollywood lets a movie switches protagonists half-way through, but, in this case, it worked perfectly.

I've thought about it and thought about it this morning and I can't see where reviewers can see this end as a cop out, an anti-climax, or "one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream" (according to Roger Ebert). Did these people watch the Twilight Zone and try to guess the ending all the way through or just enjoy the damn program? It's not like I haven't felt burned by twist endings before (See Vanilla Sky), but in this case, I was happy one hundred percent (the box-office win is something of a vindication, but if that really mattered, no one would criticize George Lucas for casting Hayden Christiansen as Darth Vader).

Now the end of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle? Saw that coming a million miles away! Suckfest!*

*This is comedy, as I have not yet seen H&KGTWC.

When I was a kid and people would talk about a "load-bearing wall" in front of me, I thought that meant the wall in question was filled up with thousands of little, metal ball bearings.

I think it's perfectly natural to be jealous of those with mutant superpowers of any kind, such as teleporting or telekinesis or eye-blasts. Even the most innocuous of powers makes me jealous however.

Take, for instance, the mutant superpower of my wife (AKA Squanto, AKA Tenacious B, AKA Shamrock Shake): she can find a four-leaf clover just about anytime she looks.

Since May of this year she's found about 15 of them. One day at a dog agility trial, she came home with about five of them. They sat in cups on our kitchen window sill for weeks until they curled up into little crisp bundles of vegetation.

I look every time I'm in the backyard here, where I've got at least an acre of nothing but clover, and I've never found one. It makes me feel unobservant and... normal. Closest thing I have to a mutant superpower is the guaranteed ability to get who's ever in the passenger seat of my car to make exclamations as I drive.

I'm about two weeks behind in doing this. I keep putting it off. But I have give a quick public critique about Sync.

Perhaps it's because on a lark I applied for a job at the magazine -- as editor-in-chief no less, because my ego knows no bounds. Yet I never even got so much as a "Go Fuck Yourself" from the HR department. Even the vice president is considerate enough to give someone that.

Sync magazine is the latest from my former employer, Ziff-Davis. I knew I had to get to writing this because after buying a copy last week (bargain price: $2.99, guaranteed to go up to around $6.99-- current cover price of PC World, if you can believe that), I was given another copy from a foot-high stack they had by the registers at Best Buy. The chain apparently did a big enough ad buy with Sync that ZD provided a few palettes of mags to stores to give away. It's a time honored trick of publishing, dating, and prostitution: give it away first to get customers hooked, and then make them pay. Dearly.

More importantly thogh, I had to get to this becasue a couple of friends of mine work on the publication and one actually asked for me opinion. She's thinking that I'm the demographic this magazine wants. She's more or less right.

Sync (or sync in the all lower case logo, or SYNC in the indicia) is ZD's answer to the "lad mags:" Maxim, Stuff, and FHM. They're targeted at guys, college age to mid-30's, and pride themselves on vulgarity (R-rated), beer, and babes. And the writing can be quite entertaining. But as a former subscriber to all three, I can also attest that it gets old after about a year of reading it. Sync isn't quite as brave -- it's more of a PG-13. It's a bit more inclined to talk about grilling steaks than guzzling kegs, and doesn't over-do-it on the babes by any stretch. While the average lad mag has layouts that put Playboy to shame, Sync's original shots of scantily clad models was limited to:

• 2 on the cover (with a guy)
• 1 on page 24 (with a guy, apparently ready to do him in the toilet)
• 2 more on Page 79 (again, with a guy... jesus!)
• 1 on page 80 (camping... with a guy)
• 1 on page 82, a repeat one girl from the cover. Same guy.

That's it. Pathetic. This is a lad mag?

Oh, that's right, let's be clear... this is a lad mag for GEEKS.

Sync, you see, isn't for the frat boys that went on to become moderately able to read and can thus enjoy the joke page of Maxim. This is the magazine for the guys the frat boys used to shove out of line at the dining hall. It's for the guys who stayed up all night working on the VAX system, writing letters to the editors of X-Men Comics ("More Kitty Pryde!") in-between inspired bits of fan fiction, all while waiting to compile some code or earn just enough more money to buy a moped or a Super Nintendo.

The reason I was so good an employee for ZD is because of the company's focus on products in most mags. I'm a good product guy. ZD does great product coverage, with PC Magazine as the high-water mark there. Sync is doing the same thing, only for gadgets of all shapes and sizes, from skin-implant chips to basketball playing robots. Once you get over the fact that you're going to be seeing less cleavage than an average issue of Teen People, you'll see that Sync does a good job, even getting a fair share of "scoops" on some products. Well, they're scoops if you don't ever read any tech news on the Web.

Let's look at the magazine section by section...

The typical two-page table of contents (TOC) does feature a hot set of lips with a chip, but that makes it look like an advertisement -- a perennial problem I had with this first issue. Without consistent use of either a background on edit pages, it's hard to tell from page to page what's an ad and what's content. More on that in a bit.

The TOC also reveals the thing I hate the most in the magazine: the header font, used (in strange combination with a font based on the lower-case logo on some pages) to delineate sections of the magazine. This all caps san-serif looks like it was tooled by a guy who'd never seen a rounded corner before. It's difficult to read. It's awful.

Swap It is the section title for the mag's opening pages. Funny to see a letter to the editor in here from the editorial director of Ziff-Davis.com, answered as if he were just some dude.

Page 16 reveals -- aside form the creepy skin coloring of the staff and contributors... I can't wait to see my friend Jill in chartreuse -- icons! The whole magazine is studded with icons so you can see what "rocks," what "stinks" (indicated with a steaming pile of feces icon, natch), etc. It's all part of what we in the magazine biz call "multiple entry points" -- you must have many, many places on a page in a magazine to start reading, usually even in a feature. My wife (AKA Squanto, AKA Tenacious B) even helped pioneer that to an extent with a big feature she wrote years ago that won awards and everything, where she filled 20 pages with about 800 different bits. This was for a ZD magazine that's now out of business, I should point out. (Not her fault. Really.)

Past the masthead (hi Jill! Hi Kelly!) and we enter the Live It section. This is all pseudonews. It's tuff that's been blogged to death already, but stands out by having some pithy comedy writing for each bit.

Page 32 brings in the second thing I hate most after the font -- floating heads. Apparently, when you're writing about someone who's not famous, the way to depict them is as a disembodied floating head with a Photoshop aura. Yet on page 36-- actual photos of people referred to.

Next is Judge It, the pop-culture reviews section. This doesn't differ much from any other lad mag's coverage of music, DVDs, and video games. Yawn. Need to get some actual celebrities in here I care about, or some behind the scenes stuff. I can do all my shopping for this stuff online. And an interview with the robot from I,Robot? Ugh. I think even the editors there can clearly see that film's a turkey. Wil Ferrell discussing 1970's technology (to go along with Anchroman) might have been funny, though.

Learn It is the how-to section, and where the "is that an ad?" syndrome kicks into overdrive. Page 64 is especially bad -- editorial about home theaters opposite a home theater ad from Samsung, both full-bleed. When I was at FamilyPC, one of the editors would go through the page dummy list each month to make sure we didn't create such competitive placement -- no Kodak ads in a digital camera review, for example. Apparently, that's now just standard practice. The advertisers won't mind.

I found the little headings on page 61 that look like a mini-TOC to be very annoying -- if there isn't a centerfold involved, no magazine should have to be turned 90 degrees to read. The little headings seemed to be non-sequiturs, and certainly don't match exactly to the pages that follow. What's the point?

Despite these gripes, Learn It was my favorite section of the magazine, with some nice info on stuff I hadn't seen before and even a full page comic strip. However, the strip's panel about calling your ISP for your IP "number" is nonsense for the average user. If you have a static IP address you'd know it, because you'd be paying for it.

Oh, and the double page spread ad on 76-77 wins hands down for the most disturbing image I've seen since this. Apparently a decapitated bisected, naked dwarf -- showing plenty o' pubes, but apparently not any genitalia -- is supposed to be instantly recognizable as some sort of ambulatory armpit that gets hot women.

Now we hit the feature well, the center of the magazine where all the cover stories go. I think it's called Live It, but apparently only on their Web site. First up is a simple gadget round up, but after that things get interesting. A story on the disappointing world of current robots people can buy is well written and illustrated with actual photos of the author interacting with the droids (this guy should be a columnist... speaking of, why no columns in this book?). The story on people implanting microchips as IDs talks about how a Spainish night club is using them, but ignores that dogs, cats, and a Florida family have done this already... but I suppose carrying pet owners and families aren't the target. My favorite story is called "Junk," a listing of the top 25 worst tech products ever, some of which I had the pleasure of being around for (3Com Audrey, Microsoft Bob, Apple Newton). But, come on, automatic seatbelts and calculator watches? Those ruled! While I like the story, it's too insider I think... who outside of the journalists at ZD care about this?

The final section is called Snag It, which apparently is the shopping area. Again, many, many products listed, It's not much different from the main feature, just grouped under unique categories (tiny products, vintage products, sexy products, expensive products, etc.)

I don't know why a monthly would even bother with a pageof fake ads (page 11) to show bargain prices on gadgets when hardware prices change so fast. The Dell laptop they feature is already $60 more and probably has an entirely different RAM/hard drive configuration now, too. Such a feature is far more useful online where you can track up to the date price changes. However, the online version of the Snag It section doesn't even list any of the products on this page.

Nice camera round up showing the image quality, though, and nice to see the head-to-head style of reviews -- pioneered I think in the late, great PC/Computing --is still around. Here it is used to pick a portable DVD player. Not sure why a screen shot from Revenge of the Nerds mad sense here, however.

The last page of any magazine is usually the one I turn to first. That's the page that sets either sets the tone for a book like this. Whether it's a column, an interview, comedy, an essay, photo spread, and whether serious, irreverent, or just asinine, the last page (here called the "anti-bench test" for some reason) is the very definition of the modern day tech mag. Sync's first last page is devoted to a "musical-chairs-esque" game unit that electrocutes the last person to buzz in. Not an auspicious start. I'd rather see a celebrity interviewed here-- this might have been a good spot for their Beasty Boys interview, though in keeping with a real lad mag, this should page would be good to have a babe with gadgets. Think like the cover of an automotive mag, a bikini-clad model on the hood of the car, but instead you get a Lindsey Lohan in a bikini fondling an iPod Mini.

Actually, that would probably go on the cover. And be a feature.

So, overall, I guess I liked Sync. But I won't subscribe to it.

The reason is, I'm an information junkie, with an RSS Reader that is bombarded already with data about toys and gadgets from sights like BoingBoing and Gizmodo -- even if I didn't work in the industry I could get my fill of this stuff. Any number of blogs, including Sync's own Blog It, and other editorial sites will cover most if not all of what's in the magazine to death before I'd get to it. Anything they do get the scoop on would be written up with such a scarcity of details that I'd end up going online for more data anyway (usually to find out it won't ship for six months).

And If I want to see scantily clad women, I can go just about anywhere online (except for Sync's own Web site, apparently).

Last night I went over hill and even over dale with the wife (AKA Squanto) to watch her do an agility class with our youngest mutt, Kylie (AKA Cooter the Carebear). Following an unwritten rule of ours, since this was her gig and I was coming along to keep her company, she had to drive. That left me with complete control over the iPod so I could queue up an eclectic list of tunes to listen to along the way. Anything I liked. Bwah-ha-ha!

In the course of playing the songs, I discovered something strange... three of my all time favorites feature the world "blue sky" in the title. They are:

• Goodbye Blue Sky by Pink Floyd, from The Wall (Disk 1)
• Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra, from Out of the Blue
• Blue Skies for Everyone by Bob Schneider, from Lonelyland

iTunes also reveals the tune by Blue Skies by the late Eva Cassidy in my collection (from her Live at Blues Alley album.)

Shame I didn't play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (which I think counts, as diamonds are blue. Kinda.) Sadly, I don't have the William Shatner version.

When I was a kid and Garfield was first starting to take off as pop culture touchstone, I decided I was going to become the biggest collector of all Garfield memorabilia in the world.

I got about seven books, a calendar, a Garfield shaped pencil eraser, a plastic Garfield statue (I think it was a statue... it didn't do anything), and uh... Maybe a few years later someone got me the far-over-done suction-cup Garfield for my first car.

Oh, and I did have the record with music from the first (and funny) Garfield prime-time cartoon, with tunes by Lou Rawls. Sad but true, and I liked it. I can still remember the music.

That was it. So much for collecting. (At other points in my life I planned to buy any and all products related to the following: GI Joe, Yoda, Batman (The Animated Series), Deep Space Nine, Dilbert, and most recently the first Spider-Man movie. I am a sheep to the whims of marketers. Lucky for me, I'm also cheap and lazy.

Suffice to say, as the Garfield film rolls out, I'm glad my collecting didn't go too far. I certainly couldn't have waited two decades to get newspaper articles written about my theoretical collection. Picture the Reuters headline that could have been: "Man Houses Giant Garfield Collection in Special Temperature Controlled Vault; Unsurprisingly, Still a Virgin."

I might sell the books on eBay if I can find them. I haven't seen the movie and don't plan on it. And I haven't read the strip, except by accident, in about 15 years. So why this disdain for all things orange and feline?

It is the anti-Calvin & Hobbes in all ways, by the design of his creator, so he was successful -- he wanted to make a trillion with a character that was an icon. He set out to make Snoopy 2.0. and it worked. That doesn't mean I have to like it (the strip that is... can't begrudge the success). The big problem is, Garfield has three jokes.

He's fat (ha!).

He likes lasagna (cats eating Italian food! Ha ha!).

And he hates Mondays. How does a cat even know what day it is? "This is the day I cough up a fur ball, must be Monday?"

(ASIDE: Shrek 2 features one of the funniest furball coughing-up scenes I've ever watched. Well, maybe the only funny furball coughing up scene I've ever watched now that I think about it. Still, damned funny).

All this is a long winded way -- the only way I've got, apparently -- of saying that I can at least sympathize with the hating of Mondays. Today is a typical example of why I just don't have time to blog and I'm crazier than Sun Myung Moon. I'm behind on writing two stories for work. I spend half the day in meetings with vendors and more than the other half on the phone with my brother, talking him through getting his cable modem up and running on his new computer. Between reading e-mail and blogs and news, and deleting spam (one just came in with subject line that said "Mondays aren't so bad!") I've sucked away hours. Knowing I've got two products sitting here in the house I need to review just fills me with guilt when it should fill me with gumption. I'm not getting anything done that needs doing. Just like most Mondays. I try to blame it on recovering from the weekend. Not that I do anything on the weekends. Apparently it takes a lot to recover from somnolence.

So I'll sit here until 9pm tonight if I must and work and work and get as much done as I can because, dammit, it's Monday. And that's why we all hate it. Not just sellout cats.

Our country is being run by a lunatic Christian cult...The United States of America has been hijacked by religious nutballs who are trying to bring about the end of the world!

If only it weren't true.

In the wake of recommitting (see below), it occurs to me I should make it known to people who've never been here before -- because I expect a giant influx of new readers for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL -- who the hell I am.

Oh, where to begin... let's see...

I'm Eric. I was born, grew up, and went to public school in the city of Hornell, NY. By the time I turned 18 and was a senior, I'd become thin, slightly-popular (as much as a D&D playing, Tolkien and comic book reading, Doctor Who & Star Trek watching, non-athlete who was in school musicals ever can be), had a girl-friend and an actual sex life. The world was my oyster, but all I could think about was getting the hell out of there. So I was also a little asshole.

Still, I got out. I went to college in Ithaca, NY, and found myself wanting to be a writer/editor but planning for a lifetime of work in food service -- that was my main job the entire time I was in school. Luckily I graduated with a healthy disdain for the industry, and with enough background form other campus jobs to get a career started in tech publishing. Oh, and yeah, I met a girl in college that I have been with ever since.

She's keen.

My career and hers -- we occupied the same professional space for a time -- has taken us from Ithaca to NYC to western Massachusetts to closer to Boston and then, to our current place of residence: Ithaca. Again. The wife, as she has become known since our nuptials just one short decade ago, actually works at our old alma mater. So she now knows the inside evils of the place, horrors we could only speculate on as students. It's all true, though: colleges do use the tuition money to drown kittens.

So, hobbies: I'm big on reading, mostly comics and mystery novels... nothing too taxing. Well, I did read The Lovely Bones. Great book, well written, though the ending wasn't very satisfying. Realistic, but not satisfying. Because when is reality ever satisfying?

My kick lately has been books ostensibly aimed at children, going far beyond the Harry Potter books (though I'm a big fan). I've read everything from Captain Underpants to Artemis Fowl to Lemony Snicket. I'm starting His Dark Materials next.

I'm big on television, so much so that I do truly feel I missed my calling as a network executive. The cancellation of so many great shows of late has me thinking I'll only watch The Daily Show for the next seven months.

I like to futz with computers, but not enough to spend money on them. I do worship my iPod though. It contains many, many Broadway soundtracks.

I spend way too much time in front of my PC, anyway. And since I work from home, I spend way to much time in my house. I try to temper this with getting out when I can. I took a class on watercoloring lately, for example. I didn't learn much, and its all just distraction from doing what I want to do, which is write a novel. However, I find writing to be occasionally be about as much fun as watching tree bark peel, and only half as painful as if I'd just nailed my hand to the same tree.

Despite that fact, I've worked as a tech journalist for the past 12 years, at magazines and Web sites. I've covered software development tools, the Windows operating system, games, consumer electronics, online publishing, and home networking. My current lot in life is running a daily site covering wireless networking. They let me work from home so we moved out here to be closer to family, cause, let's face it, I might feel old, but the folks are the ones not really getting any younger. At least I can pretend I have the option of getting slimmer/faster/stronger/better.

The wife and I are the (occasionally) proud parents of three dogs, all Labrador Retrievers, collectively known as "The Idiots." Siren (the Poop Dog) is an 8-year-old chocolate female. Caper (the Monkey) is the yellow male, he's five; and Kylie is the yellow female, she just turned five, too. They all have their quirks which would require a blog in and of itself to list. Oh, my nickname for Kylie is "Cooter-Girl" but my wife thinks that sounds dirty. I just think she looks like the mechanic from The Dukes of Hazzard.

I'm a pretty rabid Clintonian Democrat. I wanted to believe that I wasn't really part of either party once upon a time, that maybe I was a pure Libertarian or something. But it turns out I'm not. So you can imagine how much I love the douche bags currently running things. Problem is, I don't usually try to talk about it as I get so worked up I become a sputtering, spitting mess incapable of articulating my disgust with any facts to back them up... anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side. I heard that somewhere. Luckily, many, many people (like this guy) take care of arguing for me.

That's it. Did I miss anything? If so, there's three years of posts on this site, so go do a search on something like "fart" or "boobs" and see what you turn up. [Updated 9/6/06 to use GoogleSearch instead of Atomz.]

It is time to recommit.

I've been at this blog game for a while now. In fact, last week marked the three year anniversary of the ol' Squished Frog Blog's launch, in the wake of my losing a job. At the time, the posts even had a point: dealing with unemployment. Luckily, I wasn't unemployed for long, so my blog completely lost direction, flailing about like a stuntman on fire. It ended up just being like most diary-type blogs.

Which isn't a bad thing. There's three types of blogs in the world today. There's the real-journalism-type blogs that are few and far between. There's the pseudo-news-type blogs that just link off to other things online -- though these are usually worth the time because of the snarky comments made by the blogger. And there are diaries akin to mine, the modern day equivalent of the locked book carried by teenage girls, only spread wide open for all the world to see.

Uh, that might not be a great metaphor...

Okay, anyway, I just miss blogging sometimes. There, I said it. And I feel guilty leaving it like its going to wither and die like so many do. The longer I wait to write something -- whether because I'm working, or trying to have a life -- the more it feels unimportant and doesn't get blogged (it’s a verb! Get over it!). So, no more waiting.

As of today, I'm recommitted to this blog. Daily posts. At least Monday through Friday. Occasionally they might only be links to something interesting. Mostly they'll be insights into my daily life of sitting in the basement writing about stupid wireless crap that some people actually think is a magic way of getting Internet access. I will vent my spleen, I will share far to much knowledge of Broadway musicals and dog feces, and share the hopes and dreams of a man on the slide toward 40 trying to write a novel while having a day job.

Should be a good time.

TechTV is being shut down. This according the blog of TechTV host Leo Laporte -- a great guy who used to write for Access Magazine. I was lucky enough to edit his column and learn something more often than not.

I still regret the time I edited his column to say Microsoft's speech technology was brand new when it had actually been around for a couple of years. I'd never heard of it. Oh well...the things that stick with you for years.

Since I've got the sheepskin in TV/Radio communications, I always thought it would be great to work in that industry but doing what I'd come to love as a career: tech journalism.

When my own (at the time) company launched ZDTV in that time to take on CNET's syndicated shows with a whole network, I was enamored with the thought of making a move. I'll never forget being only about 18 months on the job and doing an on-air audition for the higher-ups in NYC. I was asked to pretend I was interviewing the then CEO of a company about which I knew as much as I did quantum mechanics.

They didn't exactly break down my door with offers to move to the West coast, and I wouldn't have gone anyway. That was always the stumbling block... I don't really want to live in California.

Still, I felt terrible for the industry when CNET shut down all its TV production. I've seen TechTV weather many storms from my safe perch in the NorthEast. I've had friends who worked there (Hey, Ray!), and tried like hell to get other people jobs there. (Operative word being "try," much to their everlasting relief as of today, I'm betting.)

I first met Leo when my wife did a guest spot on TechTV's Call for Help in February of 2000, back when the boom was still booming and she was a hotshot contributing editor with PC/Computing (before that mag also was run into the ground). After Leo started writing for Access a couple of months later, we were in pretty constant contact for the next year, since the column was weekly. We drank at the Bellagio in Vegas during Comdex and traded some war stories (his were better than mine). He invited me to do a guest shot myself on Call for Help during the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show, also in Vegas -- in front of a live audience. I talked about Web appliances that were supposed to take the world by storm. None did. I can't remember what they even were. I'm not much of a prognosticator.

I told Bon this morning how losing TechTV made me sad: "I always figured that on the day you came to your senses and divorced me, I'd just up and move to California and get a job on TechTV. Now I have no backup plan."

One of the options I would probably never have taken in my life is now not even available, and that's depressing. But not as depressing as it would have been to take the option and have Comcast fire my ass and those of many other hardworking people in favor of their craptacular G4 channel, a clusterfuck of programming that's bad on so many levels as to be unwatchable. I tried one night. I know not to judge a book by its cover, but if you can't grab me in the first five pages why should I stay? G4 couldn't even grab me with a game show pitting people against each other by playing Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee. How could you do that wrong? (It wasn't Wil's fault, that's for sure.)

To Leo, Pat, and Martin (the only three guys I really know there anymore -- the total laid off was 285), my condolences. I've little doubt this will be only a blip on the radar of your careers, but I know it'll feel worse, having been there.

I guess its time for a haircut. This morning the wife told me with my current hair I'm starting to look like Paulie Walnuts.

Got this today in Instant Messages from my friend, Major Bill with the US Army (he usually does more before 9am than I do all week):

[SCREENNAME WITHHELD]: Recalling a Blog you wrote a while back about your kidney stone, I decided to get a stomach pain checked Tuesday afternoon. 10 hours later I was in the OR and my appendix was taken from me. Your Blog saved my life...or at least made my surgery easier since I did not wait until my appendix exploded like a puss filled stomach bomb.

The heady feeling of knowing I saved his life was marred slightly by our conversation degenerating into how he should legally change his name to "Malfunction Numbnutts" so it would be funny when he's introduced ("Major Malfunction Numbnutts"... get it? Any Kubrick fans out there? R. Lee Ermey? Sheesh....). Bill said it wouldn't fit on his uniform. Stupid Army tailors.

I would like to publicly thank Benjamin Franklin for the glorious invention he made that will make the world feel right again this weekend. I'm not talking about donning spectacles again (five plus years sans glasses and going strong!) or being hit by lightning. The man actually came up with the idea for Daylight Savings Time. Genius. (Visit WebExhibits for more information on DST than you could even imagine exists.)

Of course, we don't really save any actual daylight, its an illusion, but one I find far more satisfying than making a CGI Legolas climb a giant elephant. Though that is pretty cool. The malaise of the winter will lift, the useful hours of the day will extend past five p.m. and all will be right with the world. (People of Indiana, Arizona and Hawaii, you suffer greatly for not experiencing the joys of it. Then again, you probably never see snow so screw you.)

The wife and I have a grand tradition of forgetting to set the clocks ahead each spring going back to college, and then ending up an hour early for everything on that first Sunday in April and wondering where the hell everyone is. I'm looking foreward to it so much this year, that won't be an issue. I'll likely have all the clocks reset by Saturday at noon. I mean one.

Couple all this with the release of Hellboy, and I'm one frickin' happy camper.

It was confirmed yesterday that Spalding Gray killed himself in January when he went missing. I wish it came as a surprise.

When I was young, I remember thinking of suicide as the ultimate in cowardice, the last step of a person without the guts to face even the most trivial of problems. It was very black and white to me then. In my high school there was a point where a lot of people were thinking about the effects of suicide, when a city judge killed himself by driving into a bridge abuttment after being caught doing something dirty, and his son (one of 8 or 12 or 14 kids or something, one of whom was in my class) reacted to the news by swallowing a shot gun.

Obviously it's a lot more gray (no pun intended) now. I think I realized this when I was visiting my maternal grandfather once in the hospital in 1992 a short time before he died. I was there alone with him and someone came in and asked him in front of me about a DNR. I think I just about came out of my chair, saying something like "he doesn't want that!" and at the same time thinking, "What the hell am I talking about?" The man was degenerating before us and why would he want to keep going if he had a peaceful (or at least natural) way out? Who was I to say?

Still, after having my dad in the hospital last week, I can't imagine I'd react much differently in the same spot today, which bugs me no end.

Little known secret: I like to wear an Indiana Jones fedora when I'm working around the house.

Sorry to disappoint you if you thought I was going to say women's underwear. That's strictly for the bedroom. And only on those special nights. *WINK*

It's not just a cap that looks like Harrison's -- it's actually branded "Indiana Jones" inside and with a little pin on the band outside. It's a little less beat up than in the films tho, having never been worn in the ocean, in a snake pit, or while being dragged behind horses in the desert -- though I have worn it while facing melting Nazis.

Sorry, wait, those were just my relatives.

It makes me feel like a journalist wearing a hat like this. All I need is a little card sticking out saying "PRESS."

I just think all young men should go back two the days of wearing hats... I say young because obviously there's many an old gentleman wearing hats. It's probably to distract people from looking at the waist band of their pants up around nipple level.

Back in the 60's and before, a hat on a guy wasn't just an affectation -- it was fashion. Everyone had one. Yet if I wore this hat out in the real world -- even if I could remove the geeky Indiana Jones pin on the side -- I'd be incredibly self-conscious. Not to mention paranoid that I'd forget it some place. An $80 is not something you want to forget in a coat room. And you don't want to be accidentally switching them with someone. If you switch jackets at least you can find interesting things in the pockets. ("Hey! How did a blood covered switch blade get in my pocket?") But if you switch hats, well, you're sharing nothing but forehead flop-sweat stains.

Which I guess explains why guys no longer wear hats.

That title doesn't have anything to do with anything. I just saw the first part listed as a book title and thought it was funny. See, this is where ideas come from. You see stuff, you add a word, you laugh in your head, you share it with the world. Genius.

There's a lot of folks I admire in the world, some of which I follow obsessively, others not so much. The latter can sometimes be because they're not very prolific or high profile, so seeking them out can be a challenge. Spalding Gray falls into the latter category.

Gray is a "monologist," meaning he performs monologues -- one man shows that consist of him sitting a wooden desk with a glass of water reading his handwritten notes from a spiral notebook. And he's a genius at it. Many of his monologues have been turned into movies (Swimming to Cambodia is the most famous). He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel and did a monologue (Monster in a Box) about it.

I have no problem saying he's a genius.

(Though his book was awful -- except for one sequence about farting in a crowded car with the windows rolled up and hoping no one noticed.)

He lived through medical issues (Grays Anatomy)., relationship issues, his mom's own suicide, growing up a Christian Scientist, and oh yeah, lots of depression to make some truly magical words come to life when read aloud.

The Wife and I saw Gray live in Northampton in 1998, performing Morning, Noon and Night, a monologue about every day life with is family. It seemed to me then he was a quite content man at the time and I remember remarking as such.

I didn't know that in 2001 he almost died in a car accident and that the scars of it went deep beyond the cracked skull and broken hip, making him depressed (again). I didn't know he'd attempted suicide in 2002 and again in October last year -- he jumped of a bridge. In front of a cop and a civilian who saved his life.

Supposedly he was making a comeback last year doing a monologue about the accident (Life Interrupted, or Interrupting Life, depending on the source), workshopping it in NYC.

And now, Spaulding Gray is missing . He hasn't been seen since Saturday. The cops are looking.

Great art can't come without great suffering seems to be the theme of a life like his. Because he made some truly great art (and I'm not one for silly-ass performance art). I truly hope he's okay.

My wife ruined the holiday for me this year.

Not because I couldn't find her anything as a worthwhile gift. I couldn't, that's true, but that's to be expected. I finally gave up after realizing I'm really good at extemporaneous gift giving through out the year, just not at the pre-scheduled times as dictated by the Hallmark Company. She can wait until March to get something good and for now will have to live with the boring crap I found for her.

No, she ruined it with one of her typical screeds against the way my side of the family does gift shopping -- i.e., we spend until we can spend no more... and then we sign up for more credit cards so we can shop again.

I'm used to this drivel. She was raised to spend a limited (I think the nonsense term she uses is "reasonable") amount on people at the holidays (and birthdays, another event where we Griffith's over do it). Such spening habits basically means everyone gets a shirt.

I keep very careful track of my spending at Xmas. My parent's instilled in my brother and I very early on that a sense of fairness is paramount and there's no greater sense of fairness than making sure you spend the exact same amount on everyone. I keep a spreadsheet where I carefully can keep up to date who much I spend on select people, plus the overall totals spent. It’s a very scientific process.

But the Wife, of course, thinks we all spend to much. She's embarrassed when she gets more gifts at my parent's house than at her own. To which I say, "who gives a rat's ass?" If it’s the thought that counts, the giving is more important than the receiving, than dammit, I would submit to you my family is more in the spirit than anyone.

None of that bothered me.

But in one of her tirades, she did say something to the effect of "imagine how many charities would benefit from the amount of money you spend each year at the holidays." That has had me thinking ever since, curse my hairy Left-leaning hide.

Of course the arguments against this are numerous, not the least of which is by spending in stores I'm helping lift the US economy (though this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as I'd rather it got better after Howard Dean becomes president, just in case). But her point is still a good one. If I took the exorbitant amount of cash I laid out this past couple of months and it found its way to, I dunno, the CBLDF, or the local Hangar Theatre, or the Tompkins County SPCA, or even the ACLU... would that be better?

I've mentioned before that Xmas morning with my family is one of the great highlights of the year, but as I grow older it does become more of a hassle and struggle than ever to find gifts that are both worthwhile (maybe 50% are) or surprising (probably only 25%). And of that, how many are memorable? Maybe the presence of my nephew will change all that, but this year he's only 10 months old and is far more likely to be fascinated by the shiny paper and how he fits into cardboard boxes than he is the cool alligator bank we bought him on Cape Cod last summer.

And how would I even broach such a subject with my family?

"Hey, mom and dad, so you know how you guys spend a few grand each Xmas on us all, and we love it (because I love getting stuff, and books, and toys) and I love getting you stuff, and we've enjoyed this for over three decades, and it is a family tradition in a family with, lets face it, few traditions...so what do you think about donating all that money instead? We'll just go out and have waffles..."

Big *sigh*.

Maybe I'll just start donating more to charities throughout the year. The wife only has herself to blame if it eats into the money I'd use to buy her gifts on the fly. I can use the charity thing as a deflection when I don't buy her flowers ever again.

There is no truer friend in the annals of fiction than Samwise Gamgee.

But the best scene in the film was Eowyn cutting off the head of the Nazgul's ride. Cool.

My wife just sent out an e-card to an "undisclosed recipient" list (mostly dog people she knows, and me). It has animated Labradors in it, and a guy in tights playing a recorder. And doves. (You can see it here.)

It's cute if you like that sort of thing, but outside of the dogs, the best thing about it is that it was electronic.

That's because I find Xmas cards to be the biggest waste of good paper and precious cardboard that exist these days. I'm no fan of any kind of occasion card... valentine's day, birthdays, whatever. They are only good for two things: including a letter or note (I do especially enjoy getting notes from people at Xmas about how they're year went, or pictures of their kids and dogs that I never see... my cousin Michelle went from doing a big letter each year to now just sending a pic of her new baby sitting with their beagle, which is just as nice) or including money. Checks and money orders accepted, but PayPal is preferred.

I especially despise getting cards from vendors and public relations people in the industry I work in. Lame.

(I admit, I do have a fascination with those cards [and books and posters and calendars] with pictures of puppies taken with a wide angle lens. But I still haven't bought any.)

My position on cards, of course, offends people. Tough crap. If you're thinking of me, make a phone call. If you're an obscure relative, save the save your $3.50 and your stamp and make some extra salsa for the next family get-together.

I am admittedly the most materialistic of people on this, our greatest commercial holiday in the United States, if not the world, but dammit, I want my materials to last a while! You seen one Xmas card, you've seen them all. And my paper recycle bin is already full to bursting, now that I'm past the date of being able to order through catalogs this year.

I will preface this by saying I know nothing about the stock market. I understand the spellcasting of students at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry better. (And yet I'm probably the only person in my immediate family who's ever even purchased and sold stock outside of a 401k.)

I remember rather vividly where I was in the year 1999 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average first went above 10,000 points. I was in a car on the way up Interstate 91 in Massachusetts, headed toward Vermont for some reason, probably shopping. I wasn't driving, which added to the novelty. At the time, Bon and I still lived in our first house in Mass., and I was working for a dotcom after the move by FamilyPC to NYC ad sent me to the world of dot-bombs.

The radio say the Dow had crossed the 10,000 mark for the first time and I was giddy. Having purchased stock in Ziff-Davis (the owners of FamilyPC) the year before and watching as it slowly eroded from the $15 per share I spent down to what seemed nothing (though I did sell it at a quick spike of $22 per share), I took this milestone for the stock market to mean things couldn't go wrong. We were all going to live the life of Riley. I figured I was only a few months away from my first solid-gold toilet seat. I'd have settled for Titanium.

So what's different? Yesterday the Dow again crossed the 10K mark -- the first time in 18 months. And lets face it, in May 2002 ago, things looked more dire then they do today. (Economically, that is. Politically and with the war, the US is just as screwed as it has been since Clinton left office). The LA Times calls the crossing of 10K a "dramatic comeback" since it went as low as 7,286 in October 2002. For some, it’s an "important psychological barrier" to cross. And ultimately, I guess it’s a sign of growth in the economy, which is what everyone wants.

But man oh man, it felt so much better back in 1999.

There's a lot of things I could be blogging about today. My sore throat, my new iPod (thanks Bon!) and buying music on the Internet instead of downloading it for free AS GOD INTENDED, the dread of Xmas shopping while contemplating enormous credit card debt, the return of winter… but there's only one thing that's been on my mind all week. The end of The Office.

If you don't know about The Office, I pity you. This is a BBC show, shown here in the ol' US of A on cable channel BBC America (clever name) and it is, I have to say, the funniest thing I've seen from across the pond since Fawlty Towers (a show frequently mentioned on The Office). It only had two seasons, six episodes each, which equal only six full hours -- but six full hours of the best comedy I've ever seen (first season is out on DVD). Not laugh out loud comedy all the time tho -- some of it is just jaw dropping in horror of embarrassment comedy.

This stems from the central character, the boss, David Brent, an egotistical nincompoop played to perfection by an actor and show co-creator Ricky Gervais -- the man's a genius, and not afraid to look the fool. Always a necessity in comedy.

What's more, in the background of Brent's buffoonery, there's a sweet love story going on as two of the office mates pine for each other but can't do anything since one is in a committed relationship.

[SPOILER WARNING: Don't read the rest of this if you want to be surprised by the series finale of The Office]

What happened to these three characters in the season finale has stuck in my head since last Sunday night when I stayed up well past my bed time to watch the show. Brent, fired in the previous episode as his petty jealousies and inability to lead caught up to him, begs for his career -- the work that defines him, sustains him, just as it sucks the life out of others in the office. I almost felt like I could identify with him, having put so much of myself in to jobs in the past. (At least my jobs were all lost because of the company going under and not my own incompetence, tho that was little consolation at the time.).

What's more, the love story of Tim and Dawn comes to a head. Tim breaks up with the girl he's seeing, knowing he was meant for Dawn, even before he finds out she's leaving the office for good, to travel overseas with her fiancée. And he makes his stand, ripping his microphone off to talk with Dawn in some privacy (the conceit of the show being that it's a "reality show" documentary of life in the office), to make his case, because he knows in his heart she feels the same way he does. And what happened was soft and subtle and real and devastating. And I definitely felt Tim's pain. I think there's no worse pain that putting yourself out there, laying yourself bare, and being rejected for your troubles.

Hard to watch. And riveting television. All courtesy of one of the funniest shows ever.

This weekend was baby weekend.

We made a trip out to Hornell this Saturday to see my friend Bill (hi, Bill!) and his wife and at dinner they brought along two of their six (count 'em! SIX!) kids, the precious, talkative two-year-old Clare and their latest, Will -- incredibly nice, beautiful kids. Clare even let me pick her up and carry her to their van as we left. It's always nice that a kid welcomes someone new like that, but also scary with thoughts that she'd let anyone pick her up. Cynicism is a life saver.

After dinner we stopped over to see my nephew who I've decided to start calling Jed, since it's a mix of John Edward, and because it's likely to piss off my brother and his wife. Jed is just the happiest kid alive. I can't wait until he's old enough to enjoy all the Captain Underpants books I've been buying.

Today, we had to go a birthday part for Bon's grandmother (age 90) and father (he's old enough to be Bon's father!). Most of the attention while there was paid to my other nephew, Christopher, and Bon's cousin's adopted soon, Dane. Dane comes all the way from Russia, where the cousin and his wife (cousin-in-law?) spent a few weeks and a few thousand rubles to get the nine month old. Ever since we heard about them getting him, whenever the topic comes up, I have referred to him by various names: Ivan, Vladimir, etc. This is the kind of comedy that keeps me going, people.

Due to various family "issues" from the last year, Bon and I were apprehensive about the b-day party and seeing a few people, but it's always nice to the see the kids. All seemed to be going fine until the jackets were on and the good-byes were under way and then it happened.

Someone asked The Question.

It's inevitable really. It happens mostly with family, and only occasionally with friends who either doesn't know us well or who just don't get it. When it does happen, it tends to happen all the damn time, until finally we're forced to have a heart-to-heart talk and say "Don't ask again."

The question was from the aforementioned cousin-in-law, who was cradling their precious bundle from the orphanage at St. Petersburg: "So, have you guys decided to have kid yet?"

That's bad enough. She actually tacked on "Or are you just going to get another dog?"

Lord, how we hate this question. I know It's something said out of genuine good nature -- but it's the good nature you find in a Jehovah's Witness so enrapt with their spiritual good time they want to share it with all the world by going door-to-door to talk about it. Parents are sooooo in love, they can't understand why everyone hasn't tried it! Kids: the anti-drug!

There is no appropriate answer to The Question. "We're not interested" would make us appear callous. "We're thinking about it," would lead to inevitable lecture on how great it is despite the lack of sleep and the constant smell of spoiled milk. "Shut up, you git," is, apparently, considered rude.

I know parents end up hanging out a lot with other parents and there's a reason for that -- only other parents can tolerate them.

I simply turned away when the cousin-in-law asked the question. This actually got a laugh from the cousin, who made a comment about my obviously not wanting to talk about it. And he's right, I don't. If I don't want to talk about this topic with my brother who I'm closer to than just about anyone in the world, why would I want to talk about with cousin's I haven't seen in two years? Just because you spent 36 hours on a plane to sign papers in Moscow and bought a mobile for the crib?

In the car on the way home, Bon and I discussed it, how getting The Question constantly is like being the teenager who is constantly told how much you'll like or use something --- it makes you dig in your heels and rebel. Petty, sure, but human nature. We had fun discussing answers to The Question, my favorite being Bon's suggestion of "We did have a kid -- and he was delicious!.

I think that expressing enthusiasm for a book, or a movie is great -- turning people onto some bit of entertainment is always good. I steer you wrong, you're out, what? $8.50 and two hours? But I'm all growed up here. When I want someone's opinion on the big events of life -- having a kid, adopting a dog, picking a religion or a car, or whether to dye gray out of my beard so I can look like I'm 30 all over again -- I will @*%#ing ask for it.

In other words, if you're curious if your kidless friends or family will ever have a child… shut the hell up.

The wife got a new computer up at work this week, a (hopefully) big improvement over the 1998-vintage dinosaur she'd been using. She even got a flat panel monitor. Everyone on earth will have one of these before me. Sigh.

Anyway, while she got the computer yesterday, the IT nimrods couldn't get her hooked on to their Novell servers until today, and when they did, they hooked her into the wrong IMAP mail account. If you don't know your POP3 from your IMAP, the gist is, with IMAP, all your email is stored on the server, not on your hard drive. So when Bon got hooked into the wrong IMAP account she got access to a few years worth of personal email.

Here's a tip for anyone reading: If you don't know a lot about technology, don't assume that your data is safe. Erase those teary notes to loved ones and the porn and for god's sake don't save it all on company hardware -- you don't even own the computer on your own desk, remember.

But if you do save it, make sure its worth reading during technical SNAFUs or after you've been fired.

It's been bugging me ever since I heard Ella Fitzgerald singing it on the speakers outside the Bellagio hotel (just after we watched the fountains dance to that Celine Dion song from Titanic):

Fascinating Rhythm,
You've got me on the go!
Fascinating Rhythm,
I'm all a-quiver.

When a mess you're making!
The neighbours want to know
Why I'm always shaking
Just like a flivver.

I finally just looked up "flivver" and it's slang for an old, noisy, rickety car. Am I the only person alive who didn't know that? I thought it was just a nonsense word.

I've traveled to the city of Las Vegas perhaps more than another city in the United States, probably ten trips there over the last eight years. Usually, I hate the place. Loud (visually and aurally). Smokey. Dry air that makes skin turn to sand. And the reason I usually go -- tradeshows -- means feet so sore you'd think Torquemada invented Comdex. But no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

I've had a couple of good trips to the modern city of lights, however (now complete with it's own Eiffel Tower). In 1998, I and four of my co-workers already had our plane tickets bought and hotel rooms booked for Comdex -- then still the largest in the world, drawing in something like one kagillion attendees, PER HOUR -- when we were told that our magazine, FamilyPC was moving from our beloved home of Northampton, Mass. to that retched hive of scum and villainy, NYC. And those how didn't go to NYC got the boot.

We all got the boot. But, we went to Vegas and had a good time-- trips to Red Rock Canyon, trip out to Hoover Dam -- etc. Very little work was done. Feet weren't as sore. Much more moisturizer was applied. It was good.

During almost all my business trips I've had the good fortune of being a journalist courted by the public relations flacks (I use the term with love, people) of various companies. Over the years, I've been able to attend some very cool shows on someone else's dime, including the two permanent Cirque du Soleil shows, Mystere at Treasure Island and O at Belagio. The former was a perk of working for a company growing fast, the latter a bribe from a company I can't even remember now (I had the temerity to fall asleep during O even though it was cool as hell).

So, that's why this past week Vegas took on a whole new meaning when I was able to treat it as an actual vacation destination. I discovered new things to like -- shopping, shows, buffets -- and got to avoid most of the things I didn't. I hadn't shared a hotel room in Vegas since my first trip there, when my boss, Bob, and I got stuck in a room and serenaded each other with snores until the wee hours.

Worst part of Vegas: Once you see Red Rock and Hoover, the only thing left to do is drive around, or do something that requires big money. So, being that it was also my ninth wedding anniversary, money had to be spent. Credit cards were whipped out. Tickets were purchased. Tips were left. I'm now in the hole for a goodly amount after my expense report is processed. And the vacation is over. Now we're back in grey, grey Ithaca and I barely remember the Blue Men, the acrobats, or the loud concert. But we've got the stubs for souvenirs.

So I've had a recurring phenomenon plaguing me for the last couple of years. I can't say for sure when it started, but I think it was sometime in the summer of 2001, after Access Magazine imploded, when I began this blog, and when I started the current stretch of my life that entails seldom leaving the basement except to feed and (occasionally) bathe.

It goes like this: when I'm at the computer, typing usually -- mindlessly transcribing as I do the blahblahblah with vendors that I have to get briefings from all day long -- or doing something that requires little or no conscious thought, I start to see... locations. Very detailed, full 360 degree camera pans in Technicolor of places from my childhood around "the Maple City" itself, Hornell, NY.

(FYI, Hornell has cut down most of the maple trees that were there when i was a kid. My parents once had about five on their property. Now they have none.)

I never see people in these locales, I perceive actual memories of events taking place there. It's just brain-based travel to the past places I held dear, and some places I don't remember much of at all, and some that I was thrilled to get away from.

One that comes back a lot is the center courtyard of the Hornell Middle School. It was there that every day before the bell rang (at least in good weather) seemingly hundreds of kids from the fourth to seventh grade would gather to play "wall-to-wall." I have no idea what the rules of this game were, or if there were any at all. I think it had to do with running back and forth from the wall of the pool building to the wall of the main school and back. I'm not sure how one got taken out of the game. Maybe no one did. That would have been nice.

My friend Mark once told me how when he was on the swim team in High School -- which had to use the pool at the Middle School, it was the only indoor pool in town -- he was leaving practice once and saw a car that seemed to be bouncing up and down. On closer examination, he saw an upperclass-girl he knew from the team in the backseat having sex with someone. She was yelling (not in a bad way). The windows just beginning to steam up.

I've always pictured that car as being in the Middle School courtyard, even though I don't think you were allowed to have cars there. And in my vision, that car is always in the courtyard.

But the girl and her boyfriend and the steamed up windows are not.

I've envisioned my grandparent's backyard in Canisteo. I remember the backyard of many kids who I barely knew, and that of houses where I used to cut through on my way to school each day. I've seen the concrete walls of Crosby Creek spill way that feeds into the Canisteo River (where I went on my first "off-site" from my parents car, when a neighborhood boy told me there were turtles to see there). I've seen so many places in my head this way that I have forgotten most. Once my brain kicks in it's sometimes hard to remember my brain going there at all.

I don't know why the visions come. I don't know why they're always of Hornell and from my past. It worries me sometimes if I think about it... that maybe my ties to the town go beyond simply having family there, that maybe I was and am meant to actually be there. Like some dramady TV-show gone awry (Am I Ed? Is Hornell my Stuckyville?), will I someday go back? Is my future predestined? Is my subconscious telling me to accept that my past is actually also my future?

I don't have an answer. I wanted to end this post saying "LIKE HELL" or "DON"T BET ON IT." But I can't. I don't believe in fate, but I also can't say "never."

I'll fight it to the last though. On that you can count. The past is the past. The future's got to stand on its own.

I have nothing to say about the California recall election. It was either a "no" or Ahnuld all the way, and obviously they hate Gray Davis out there as much as Rush Limbaugh likes pain killers.

I have nothing to say about work. People apparently get fired for blogging about work (I read it somewhere but can't find the link now). I've already had one scare in the last week that made me think I was heading for a breadline (albeit irrationally -- but only in retrospect), so the less said about that the better.

I have nothing to say about my house. With heat now installed in my basement, thanks to a hard day's labor by my brother, who knows his way around a sweaty pipe (ew), I can spend the winter somewhat comfortable.

I have nothing to say about the new fall TV season. As usual, I welcome it back with open arms and yet dread its ennui-inducing influence on me. It won't feel real until The Simpson's start anyway. Which at this rate might be in December.

I have nothing to say about my dogs. The girls are annoying. The boy only loves me when I bribe him (momma's boy). I wish I could spend the day playing with them and then again I wish they'd leave me alone. I was overcome with a fit of moronic jealousy today when I realized that Siren, who as a seven-year-old bitch is physically supposed to be older than me, is a natural athlete with whom I will never even compare.

I have nothing to say about Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. It's made me laugh out loud. But at the same time he decries the lies of the conservative pundits, I feel like he might be using the same tactics. But I haven't seen him called out in Spinsanity.com like Michael Moore always is, so maybe not. I want to believe.

I have nothing to say about the media either, whether liberal or conservative. I live in a town where the NPR radio stations have shows that are unabashedly liberal. I'm as leftist as they come, but those tree-hugging nuts make me sick. I hope there are conservatives who feel the same about Fox News and Ann Coulter. I guess I just like my media to at least pretend to be objective. I like pretending.

I have nothing to say about Xmas shopping for family. No one makes it easy though. Except me. I make it so so so damn easy for everyone. Would that my family were more like me.

I have nothing to say about the play I saw last night at Ithaca College ("The Waiting Room"). It neither thrilled nor bored me. Because the subject matter was so serious (female self mutilation to look better -- foot binding in old China, corsets of the 1800s, and boob jobs of today) I found it hard to laugh at the right spots. I liked the performance of the bit characters, though. And the lighting was good. Damning with faint praise.

I have nothing to say about the empty lots next to my house that are for sale. They were for sale last year too and never sold. We called to find out how much the one right next two us was, and the guy wanted something like $35,000 for two acres.

I have nothing to say about buying comic books in a comic shop. I prefer the mail order. I missed a month though and feel like I'll be catching up by going to this comic shop downtown every Wednesday (the day the new funny books come in) until at least 2004, because if I don't all miss all the books I didn't order that are shipping late. Pain in the ass, it is.

And that's all I don't have to say.

Nothing quite spells out your loser-dom than reading advice meant for people younger than you that you didn't follow.

I refer to an article at BankRate.com (and why on earth a site with a name like that is handing out advice on how to live your 20s is beyond me) of the "Top 10 Things to do before you turn 30."

I only did one of them. Maybe three. Kinda.

Yet, I agree with all of them. Which makes me an old fart at 33 filled with regret. I suppose some of them I could still try to tackle, but I'm betting that one or two would upset the apple cart of my precise and carefully managed existence. Here's a quick run down of where I went wrong:

1. Drive a wickedly cool car, even if you only rent it. I did once rent a very large Lincoln, I believe it was. Though that was not even in my 20s. I was bitter toward the rental car industry for a long time when an local Hertz wouldn't give me a car before I was 25 years old. Bastards. So, no porche or hummer rentals for me.
2. Date against type. They mean I should have dated a "bad girl" type. Since I only dated (and wed) one girl through my entire twenties, that would have meant either breaking up with her, or getting her to wear more leather. Believe me, I've tried.
3. See the world. I agree completely that it's better to do this when young. But I wasn't interested then and I'm barely interested now. Let alone afford it (and when I say "afford it" I mean, stay someplace other than flea-ridden youth hostels). I used to think it might be fun to drive across the US, but even that makes me envision only fights and sore asses and gross rest areas.
4. Live in a cool place. I have failed at this miserably... even when I worked in NYC I couldn't be bothered to actually live in the city. My practicality continues to sap my coolness.
5. If you drink a lot, do it young. I didn't really take to the bottle until after college. I suppose most of my heavy drinking was during my 20s, so I'll give myself a gold star for this one.
6. Take risks with your job. Take a chance with my career? I guess I did if you count getting laid off about six times. If it means follow your dream career, well, so much for that. I'm still of the mind that a paycheck is better than my dreams, and that makes me just... sad. But I can't bring myself to do much anymore unless I know its filling the coffers that pays for the heating oil that keeps me warm at night.
7. Do Physical Adventure. Yeah. Right.
8. Take your parents to dinner. This one I've mastered! No one beats me to the credit card. No one!
9. Do Volunteer work. Well, okay, this one I did okay with -- I've been the volunteer webmaster for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for about 6 or 7 years. It’s something I believe in and wish I could do more for. My more recent volunteer experiences have been a complete washout.
10. Go to Extremes. Well... uh... does owning two houses before your 30th birthday count? If so, I'm a frickin' wild man.

I would like to do more with my 30s, and make up for this. But practicality -- paying a mortgage, feeding my dogs, keeping cars running, etc. -- always seems to take precedence. Throw caution to the wind and ignore these things and I become a broke, divorced, guy who can't even afford to take Courtney Love on a date, let alone rent a car (not even a Ford Escort).

I was at the post office today, and was paying to send out some crap I sold on eBay (I once again have enough money in my PayPal account to buy some video games I'll seldom if ever play!) and the clerk of course asked the age old question: debit or credit? Ages here being measured in months, I guess.

I like to pay by debit to place I like, because they don't incur extra fees (that only happens at the ATMs, which I don't use... I get cash back when buying candy in the aisles at grocery stores). Places I don't like I pay as if the card is a Mastercard charge, because they have to kick a little over to Mastercard. I do that mostly at overpriced gas stations.

Anyway, he looked at the card and said, "Just so you know, you should sign this card... if it was a credit tranaction, we can't take the card unless it's signed."

He said this, because instead of signing my cards, for the last few years I've just written in block letters "SEE PICTURE I.D." in the strip in the back. It's supposed to defend against identy theft and overall theft -- someone steals my card, there's (in theory) no way they could use it since they couldn't match my (admittedly inimitable) scrawl.

I just spent a grand total of five minutes Googling "see picture ID" and found two different sites that mention using the phrase on a credit card. One said it's smart, the other said it's illegal. I'd look up some more about this, but, well, I don't really care.

Consistency being the bugaboo of small minds, I don't think I'll worry about it, since most of the minimum-wage-slaves at retail don't bother to check for a signature at all, let alone ask to see my picture ID. (Tho some of the robots ask even if its an ATM transaction even tho then they don't need to.)

(FYI, I was going to try and provide the source of the "consistency is the bugaboo" quote via Google, but saw it attributed to both Emerson and TV doctor Ben Casey. Hell, this very site is the number seven result when you look it up, so I'm guessing I'm one of the few people on earth who uses it or gives a damn.)

My parents make me feel guilty every time I take the garbage out.

When I was a kid, my parents bought a trash compactor. They still have the same one. It’s broken down many times (once found with a dead mouse in the mechanics… my parents called him “the engineer”), even sat unused for a time, but ultimately, the sturdy little unit gets the part needed and comes back to life. They’ll never have another one like it, for for they don’t they make ‘em like they used to, not only in terms of working for ever but also in size. Compactors today seem barely capable of holding a crushed milk carton. So my parents will never give that unit up.

Compacting trash is all about saving space (or it should be… occasionally it’s about smushing stuff for the fun of it). And I remember with crystal clarity an evening not long after my parents go the compactor, where they had sat down and crunched some numbers and had come up with a figure that astonished me: they said that in the first couple of years of owning the compactor, they’d saved $124 dollars in purchases of garbage bags. They figured that based on the prices of Hefty’s, cut it in half or a third and base it on how many bags they used to carry the curb vs. how many they used now, carry the three, square root of the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle, and that was it. Money saved.

I don’t have a trash compactor. And I take the garbage out about three times a week, even when the bag isn’t full, just to avoid give bugs time to breed or for smells to start to fester. And every time I do it, I think of my parents saving money with a trash compactor.

Luckily, I don’t think they were very good with math.

There are few things worse than being up and around and having started your day, when suddenly your wife pokes you in the back and says "Get up" and you realize you're still in bed, dreaming of having already begun your day.

It was easier to get started in the dream, believe me.

Also: Rick Dees is the devil. Since hearing his "Disco Duck" on some 70's radio show this weekend, I can't get the tune out of my head. (I wonder if Disney every considered suing him over that voice...)

My wife has left me.



For the weekend. I should be used to this by now, but I always grow melancholy when she's away like this, me alone with two of the three Labra-dolts, with nothing but time. I've got projects and things I want to do, and lord knows I'll do anything to avoid real writing, so I fill the time. Still, I'm for the most part, alone. And even though I might have days when I crave some time to myself, I never really enjoy that time like I should. Oh well. My work day is over (long holler-day weekend and all) so time to start some of those projects.

Okay, imagine if you will, you have a little sister, or a daughter, or a kindly old aunt. Any of the above will do. She works in the local video store. She sells and rents out videos and DVDs to anyone and everyone in town. She's not the owner, she's just an employee, who likes movies and likes to talk to the people that come through looking for the latest films.

In the back of the store, there's an adults only section. She doesn't like those videos. She's not into any of that. But hey, it's there, it's labeled "No one under 18!". She makes sure now one under 18 goes back there, and she cards the folks who look too young to be renting or buying any of them.

One day, a person she's never seen before comes into the store, peruses a bit, and heads for the back. Typical. People don't want to look like they're heading straight for the smut -- they want to make you think its an impulse purchase.

This new customer --quite obviously an adult -- comes up to the counter with a hardcore triple-X video title and wants to purchase it. Your sister/daughter/aunt rings up the purchase, takes the money, and smiles kindly at the customer. She doesn't judge.

And then, this customer slaps the cuffs on your favorite relative.

Over the course of the next couple of years, this relative's life is made a shambles. Arrested on the charge of "selling obscenity," she faces, at the least, probation. But an overzealous district attorney could get her a major fine. or jail time. Of course, she lost her job. And many friends.

In the end of the trial, the DA -- who didn't present any evidence to say this -- argued in his closing that "all videos and DVDs and movies are for kids.... they appeal directly to kids."

And it worked.

Your aunt/sister/daughter gets a $4,000 fine. One Year Probation. And 180 days in jail -- that's six months, if you want to skip the math.

Think it can't happen in these United States of America? Oh, you're probably right. Maybe it can't.

Not with videos and DVDs.

But it did happen with Comic Books.

Jesus Castillo did exactly the same thing in a Texas comic shop. He was brought up on TWO charges of selling obscene materials-- even though he was selling adult books, from a marked display for adults, to an adult. The DA made exactly that same argument, that comics are only for kids -- sans evidence, in fact, the defense had major witness to the contrary -- and the jury still found Jesus guilty.

As of today, the one count of obscenity that stuck (the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Castillo's legal team had the second count thrown out, luckily) will continue to stick, as the United States Supreme Court has refused to hear the case. Read the news about it here.

This case has cost thousands of dollars to defend.

Luckily, Jesus Castillo didn't have to pay for it, nor did he have to cover his fine. That was paid for by the donations made to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Sadly, it's not the first case and won't be the last.

Just keep it all in mind the next time you want to veiw something entertaining that's suitable only for adults, something that will impact no one put yourself. That means porn, or watching the Sopranos, or even just reading a book like Vox or even Catcher in the Rye.

Someone out there wants to take that away from you.

I the two year anniversary of this Web log passed by quietly last month (also the two year anniversary of the death of my favorite job ever, the much mourned Access Internet Magazine... sigh).

In years previous, I really, really wanted to participate in the annual Blogathon. That's kind of like a walk-a-thon but for lazy people. You still get people to pledge their money to you if you do a certain something, but instead of walking or biking a large number of miles, the Blogaton is where bloggers sit on their ass all day long and post at least every half hour for a 24-hour period. The money pledged goes to the charity of the bloggers choice. I figured it was a good way to do something for the CBLDF. But the first year I forgot to sign up in time (and I was unemployed, so you can figure I would have had lots to blah blah about), and last year, something came up that same weekend. Probably having to do with packing the house to move.

And this year, well, obviously, I just don't have much to blog about. Finally, real life is more interestings. Or, barring that, more time consuming...

Luckily, someone else is going to benefit the Fund through the Blogathon this year (it's this weekend, July 26). Check out Mentally Incontinent (god, what a great name). Joe Peacock, the site's proprietor, intends to write a 24-hour novel that day as part of Blogathon. Well, maybe it's a novella. Anyway, sign up, and pledge your support. It's for a good cause.

I find few more natural highs in my life than being caught up in a book. Much as any narrative tale can thrill me in any medium, a truly good book that won't let me walk away, that forces me to actually stay in a single uncomfortable chair for an hour longer than my back would like -- that's a feeling I crave and desire. I think it's partially what makes me want to write a book, feeling like I can capture that in myself, tho that still tends to elude me.

The bad part is when the book is finished. Its all about getting to that final page, the denouement that either puts it all together or leaves me asking more questions. Then it's crash and burn. My energy ebbs, my brain wants to shut down as I assimilate it all, figure out just want it means, what the hanging threads will lead to next time (if there is a next time). It's a somewhat uncomfortable way to come down, but the high was so worth it.

Books are my crack, and this summer I've already read 10 good to great novels. After reading the one I finished just a half hour ago, I think I need a full month in the real world just to recover.

So, anyway, thank you J.K. Rowling. I can't wait until 2005 or 2006 for the next one.

Something I've slowly been breaking myself of (very slowly... like over the last 14 years of knowing my wife) is the collector mentality.

Others would call it the packrat mentality, but those people are cruel and/or ignorant. They have never known the pain of knowing you used to have something you need right now. It's for that very reason my father has an entire attic filled with magazines like Popular Mechanics from the 1960s. Who knows when he'll have to repair something from that era?

My collector mentality has more to do with imaginary wealth than the practicality that comes from being able to rebuild the engine of a car with fins. For I collect comic books. Early on my dad supported this hobby. Once I got past the phase of simply buying a couple of books off the rack at the Keys Drugstore (where I would stand spinning the rack for an hour and a half at a time as Mom was down the plaza at Wegman's stock up for the next two weeks of feeding three males), Dad would sit down with me each month and help me fill out my order form to get my comic books via male order.

I started getting comics via group called Heroes' World, which sent them in a big, corrugated cardboard envelope. Later I moved over to a group called Westfield Comics , which I've been with ever since. I think I'm close to 20 years buying comics from them every month, without fail. How many people can say they've been that loyal to anything, let alone a mail order/retail outfit?

When I started with mail ordering funny books, the form was just a mimeographed sheet. Dad would sit at his desk, pay the household bills (also done every two weeks like clockwork back then, just like Mom with the groceries) and the final thing he'd get too, as I stood by nervously worrying he'd run out of money, was my comics. He'd clear a space so he could see his calendar blotter and he'd slowly, methodically do the math of adding together all the prices of each book together, by hand on the blotter, in one long trailing stream of numbers, until we finally got the subtotal. Then we'd calculate the shipping, he'd write the check, and I'd mail it off. (Since then, ordering has progressed from me doing that same math -- with a calculator, thank god (I think maybe dad was trying to show me how important math was back then) -- on an ever growing order from to doing the orders with specialized software, and then over the Web.)

(Aside: I think I got three parentheticals deep in that last graph! A new record even for me...)

Always when we did the orders together, Dad would ask me if I ordered "a number one." He knew, likely because I'd used it as a justification for being able to get so many damn four-color funny books, that occasionally a first issue of a comic would become wildly valuable. Closest I ever got was ordering Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles #2 (I got #1 in a third printing). Ostensibly these were my brother's comics, but they had value, and that meant I took care of them. I bagged them. I boxed them. It was considered an unwritten given that a paper collectible in my brother's care was likely to end up as coaster or napkin.

Getting a first issue of a new book stuck with me for a while. I've always read comics because I love the mythoi of the various universes (universi?), the obvious adolescent fantasy worlds of heroes and villains has always been a comfort to me, even when I'm on top of the world. Seeing a new spin on it -- Watchmen, Dark Knight, Starman, Sandman, etc. -- always excites me to this day. And there's more than just super-heroes, by the way.

But anyway... When the comic book industry all but imploded in the 1990s due to the rabid speculation among some who bought up multiple comics thinking they'd get rich, and then they all left and companies began to fold and go bankrupt, I felt some responsibility. I admit to buying two copies of the pre-bagged Spider-Man Vol.2 #1 by Todd McFarlane... just so I'd always have one copy in mint condition to sell and get rich off of someday. Joke was on me and the speculators -- so many copies were printed, they could be used as a napkin today and lose no value. In fact, a ream of napkins is probably worth more. And maybe a better read. Toss up on which is more absorbent, though.

So, that guilt helped me break away for keeping everything, strangely enough. I have thrown away items in the last decade that I thought would be cremated with me. Things like pictures I drew, mystery novels I bought at library sales, and even an entire run of Doctor Who novels I bought during the hey-day of that brilliant, cheap-o series. That act broke my heart, while at the same time I kicked myself repeatedly in the ass for feeling that way.

In a recent issue of The Ultimates by Mark Millar, Tony Stark, AKA Iron-man, an alcoholic playboy with the genius to create wildly powerful suits of armor, admits that he's got a cancer that is killing him. And he's taken to giving away all he has every few months and starting from scratch, keeping only the necessities. Of course, that's easy for a rich fictional guy to say. But there's something about it that appeals to me. Why not start over? Why not give away what I don't fully need. It's a great idea...

But not great enough that I'll ever do anything close to it. I still have three dead computers laying around here because I figure I'll get to them and repair them someday. I've got cables that probably used to connect electronic equipment in the 1970s, but since I don't know what they go to, I keep them just in case. I've got furniture and clothes and decorations and more I can't part with.

My dad told me the other day he's still got a uniform t-shirt I gave him that I used to wear in my days working the dining hall at Ithaca College. I've likely got some in a plastic bin upstairs too. I know I've still got the IC Dining hat.

And it never ends... I've got a backlog of books on my shelf to read, and I got one out of the library last week that I'm in the middle of, but I'm still planning on being at Barnes & Noble tomorrow morning at 9am on the dot to get one of the (hopefully unclaimed) copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because I wasn't smart enough to pre-order it, and I want to read it desperately... and I want a first printing.

Because, after all, it might be worth something someday.

I get about an average of 150 spam messages each night between my two main e-mail accounts. As annoying as they are, I check each one -- even those my Norton spam filter marks -- just to make sure something didn't get misfiled. For example, anyone who sends me stuff from AOL or Hotmail are automatically marked as spam by the filter (luckily I have filters that catch most of my friends still using those backwaters of Internet access).

What's a treat however is when one of the spams actually has a clever enought subject line to make me actually stop and read it. My favorite today, for a "pheromone concentrate" that will let me "attract the opposite sex like a magnet" was under the subject "Passion in this smell."

I remember vividly as a pre-teen flushing an entire pack of my parent's cigarettes down the crapper. I felt I was doing a major service to them. After all, my father was the same person who once sat my brother and I down in front of a screen on which he showed a series of slides depicting the very, very worst in things that could be taken out of the human body. The slides depicted everything from Cirrhosis of the liver caused by too much hooch to, of course, the charcoal black lungs of a lifetime smoker.

I like to tell the story to anyone who will listen of what cured me in an instant from ever following my parents down the road to smoker-dom. My aunt and uncle and my cousins used to come over to our house on New Year's Eves when I was small. We'd eat pizza, watch "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and get to stay up past midnight. On one of those evenings, I was thirsty and apparently I thought a half-full can of warm pop (we call it Pop here, dammit!) seemed like it would be adequate to quench my thirst. I found one on the end table in the living room, took a swig with gusto --

And swallowed a mouth full of carcinogen ash, swirled in with the soft drink.

Thanks to one of the smokers in my family, I'd just done the equivalent of lick it the ashtray clean. I hacked and coughed and spit and drank glass after glass of water, my mom standing over me giving each cup full as I needed it, as I tried to get the foulness out of my mouth.

I got phobic about cigarettes after that (and I still am). During one week each summer, my brother and I were conscripted -- as were the children of all who worked for the Hornell fire department -- to do early morning cleanup at the grounds of the annual Fireman's Carnival. This consisted of getting up at 5am to walk around the rides and games and pick up trash and place it in bags. Ninety percent of this trash was cigarette butts.

I wouldn't touch discarded butts unless Dad got me some surgical gloves from out of the city ambulance.

It's not that I don't understand addiction. My own experience is, I suppose, reasonably boring since it involves only caffeine, a problem I share with 90% of Americans. I was hooked on the sweet nectar of Coca-cola well into college, where my job with dining services meant constant access to free-flowing Coke. I would drink it throughout a shift and then fill up a travel cup to take with me to classes or my dorm on the way out. And as a student, I had to eat there anyway, so I drank it even when not working. I realized this was a problem and by the time I began my sophomore year, I'd kicked Coke for good -- shifting instead to the limon taste of Sprite. (In 1998 I shifted to Diet Sprite and after about a year of hating it, have now come to like it more than the sugared kind).

I like to think that dropping Coke signals that I went caffeine free, but it's not true. Chocolate took over quickly as the primary way for me to ingest the most legal of addictive, diuretic cardiac stimulants, and still is. If I could kick chocolate, I'd only have starchy, carbohydrate filled items left -- life without anything based on grain or potatoes would be no life at all.

And I like mayonnaise. A sandwich without mayo is like driving without a steering wheel. It can be done, but it's ridiculous to contemplate.

That doesn't stop me from busting on my wife constantly for her ever growing need for morning coffee. That beverage is another thing my parents turned me off of as a child, specifically my mother, who would frequently request we get her a cup, usually as she was getting ready for her 3pm to midnight shift at the ICU. I'd put the water on the stove and whip up a cup of instant 'fee, mixed with a dollop of milk (Mom now drinks it black) and attempt to carry it up stairs to her in the bathroom, usually spilling the steaming liquid on my hands, forcing me to rush back down to the kitchen to wash the stench off. The smell of coffee is strangely welcoming, but the bitter taste of it still turns my stomach. I try to make sure Bon gives me a kiss good-bye in the morning before she's touched the cup to her lips.

All of this is a round about way to explain to you the horror I felt, how I actually feared for my life for a split second this weekend, when I broke Bon's coffee pot. I was putting it in the dishwasher, it clanged against a plate, and the entire pouring lip chipped and fell off. I panicked for a split second. This wasn't like the flushing of the cigarettes -- my parents probably never knew that even happened, or if they did, shrugged it off and went out to get another carton.

This was more like stealing all the glass pipes and syringes in a the entire city just as the junkies are coming back to the crack house! This was a coffee maker we'd bought in Massachusetts -- the chances of getting the exact carafe that works with it, especially before Bon returned from her weekend travels, was unlikely.

I was already planning on going out to buy her a completely new coffee maker to stave off her low-caffeine wrath when I remembered... knowing it was a glass coffee pot, she'd purchased a second pot back when we originally got the maker. It was safely tucked in a corner of the garage and has now been washed up is ready to go into use. She'll never know it's the replacement. Well, until she reads this.

But it just goes to show you, addicts are always prepared.

I read this today -- the Blog of Galactus -- and just about wet myself laughing. Of course, if you don't know Galactus, the eater of worlds, or Uatu the Watcher, well, some of it might not be funny, though you'll certainly be able to see how the blog of a being of infinite power is so like that of your average shmuck off the Interstate. So I proclaim it damn funny either way. (Or as the cosmic devourer himself put it, "ftobwmp! (flooding the Orion belt with my piss!)".

Is it Wednesday already? Sheesh.

I want to direct everyone to view this music video, which is my new favorite song in the world. Close the door to your office or plug in your headphones before you watch in a crowded office. (thanks to Ray for the link).

I post this only as a record, not because I wish to belabor the point:

There was snow on the ground this morning. On April 23.

To talk any more of it would lead only to madness.

For Easter -- which I personally consider a bigger non-holiday than Arbor Day, and I think it's ridiculous that anything be closed for it that wasn't closed for Passover, or hell, for St. Patrick's Day -- the wife and I were off to church.

No, we haven't found God (I didn't know he was lost! Bada-BING!) -- My nephew was being baptized.

I don't do well with church. I believe it all began when I was a wee lad, and my grandparents took my brother and me to the Canisteo Baptist church where they were members. Now, staying overnight with my grandparents in those days was always an exercise in seeing just how far politeness could take us before the screaming began. Besides speaking to us in French and expecting instant comprehension, Grandma would feed us only foods we didn't like, from the barely tolerable (Cheerios) to the outright painful (liver -- the first and only time I ate it).

On one Sunday during a holiday season, we were seated in a middle pew toward the back and I listened with horror as the female clergy-person (Reverend? Vicar? Padre? Mother superior? I dunno) went on at length about how children should not be taught Santa Claus, but only the story of Christ. She probably didn't like that Drummer Boy stealing his thunder, either.

I was too far gone on the Xmas commercialism express even at that age to get past the growing anger that sermon inflamed. I think part of her argument was Santa and Satan being too close together in spelling, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

(At a completely different sermon at that same Baptist church, there was stoked in my being a fervent desire to follow the ways of "our lord" Jesus. Except, in my mind, Jesus H. Christ was a kick-ass meta-human super-hero with a flowing robe and a flaming staff or righteousness! He went wandering from town to town like the guy in Kung Fu, helping the weak and trod upon with his Magic Rod (eww) that turned water to wine, and cracked skulls of the bad guys! I vividly remember putting on a bathrobe and a fake beard I cut-out of a paper plate, so I could enact the adventures of this savior turned super-hero. My brother Paul wouldn't go along with it and play Jesus's sidekick, so I probably hit him with the big stick and ran before he could catch me. WWJD, indeed.)

As I grew up -- despite some of my best friends being Catholic, but probably because I dated a Born-again Christian -- I started to feel full-fledged heebie-jeebies with anything having to do with church. I vividly remember being at some church in town for a show choir performance and having such high anxiety, I thought I was having a panic attack. I felt like a hypocrite being in such a building. Picture Bill Gates trying to live with the Amish -- that's how I felt.

It boils down to this. I have a lot of respect for religion. You have to respect something so important is so many lives, cable of driving people to doing acts of such incredible good and despicable evil. While I tend to believe, historically, the use of religion as the only basis for a decision is the road to disaster (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition), I'm also hopeful that religion can be what keeps people from going the wrong way when times are tough.

Not for me mind you. While I'm no atheist, but I'm far from convinced there's any one right or wrong way in the higher-being belief business. That was and is always the argument that most drives me up a wall: "My religion is the only religion that's right. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Presbyterians are all going straight to hell." Yes, and perhaps monkey's will fly out my butt. Religious group-think and blind following just makes it worse. It's not the military. Well, at least not everywhere it isn't.

I don't have panic attacks in churches anymore. I even got married in one, if the chapel at Ithaca College counts. I was disappointed my wife wanted to be married in a chapel, but we made the ceremony wholly ours in every respect: nothing was in it that was forcing us down a path we weren't ready or willing to take.

So, it was interesting for me to watch my nephew get baptized in Hornell's St. Anne's Catholic Church on Easter Sunday. I suppose it's good to know he'll always be accepted there even if he doesn't practice -- everyone deserves a place to go even if they don't know it. But baby John Edward isn't likely to be brought up going to mass several times a week like most of my catholic friends from school did (and probably still do). If it's possible, my brother may be less religious than me, and his wife didn't want a church wedding -- they got married in their back yard. I think this baptism was done out of mother-in-law guilt.

Which is all well and good, but the part that bugged me was that the ceremony basically contains an oath before God that the parents and god parents (which I am not one of) will raise the child to follow the tenets of the church. I guess that's easy for some people to ignore. If the ceremony were forced on me, maybe I'd ignore it too. But, like I said, I have a lot of respect for religion even if I don't practice it. I know for a fact that if I had a kid, when the suggestion came that my child be baptized (and someone always suggests such a thing, because people can't keep they're mouths shut, especially when it comes to raising childred), I'd be poo-pooing the idea in no uncertain terms.

The big guy and I have an understanding -- I can flip-off the heavens after a snow storm and I can say the F-word in church all I want (like I did yesterday... my Mom smacked me) as long as I'm not a dick to other people. Well, people who don't deserve it. But if I make a promise to my personal higher-being, I try to stick too it, even if it's just between us. Like the time I swore I'd give up eating cake. And drive slower. And that I'd never, ever read porn if he would just make the itchy, painful rash go away.

I trust God to know when I'm kidding.

I'm reminded -- as I frequently am -- of The Simpsons, the episode where the old guy with the beard, Jasper, ends up having to be a substitute teacher during the teachers strike and he start's explaining to his class the rules:

"Talkin' out of turn... that's a paddlin'. Lookin' out the window.... that's a paddlin'. Starin' at my sandals.... that's a paddlin'. Paddlin' the school canoe... oh, you'd better believe that's a paddlin'."

This was meant to be my segue into an essay about the horrific overuse of the term "anti-American" these days... it was meant to be, but it's a pretty non sequiturial (is that a term? It should be) transition to what I was going to say. So I'll just say it:

"Anti-American" is our "Better dead, than Red" for the new millennium. The more people who get painted with that brush -- whether it's a former president or a Dixie Chick -- the more it smacks of McCarthyism waiting to happen, again.

(I was going to also add "Oscar-winning documentarians" above, but as much as I admire what Michael Moore has to say, he's become the left's Rush Limbaugh, never knowing went to shut up and fabricating facts to get his point across. Sometimes ambiguity helps, big guy.)

I was up on and off over night actually thinking about this, trying to clarify my thoughts on the war and the current state of affairs in the US. From the get go on Bush's push to war I've been against it, and I've only wavered recently because of the footage of grateful Iraqi citizens, and even more so the horrific tales of what happened to CNN reporters. Could the ends truly have justified the means?

But this morning, surfing about, I read some eye-opening bits from some fellow anti-Americans, especially the political cartoonists who not only draw, but write. They spell things out much better than I can, with the links to the stories that back up what they say. Political cartoons are perhaps the last bastion of truth in the world, since no one takes them seriously. Unfortunately.

So, yes, lets get it out there: I'm a rabid left-wing liberal Clinton-lovin' dove who hates that we stormed Iraq on the pretense of going after WMD and the people responsible for 9/11, when it was really about familial revenge and all that bubblin' crude. So far, no WMDs. Osama wasn't in one of Saddam's guest rooms. And along the way, we've got Rumsfield saying "free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things"-- I bet Ashcroft and the Patriot Act would beg to differ.

No one balked at Afghanistan for obvious reasons. But Iraq didn't hit us first -- or even one of our friends this time. That's because the big kids shouldn't pick the fight. Those are first-grade playground-bully rules that apparently W didn't pickup in prep school.

And there times now when I'm struck into complete terror, when I think the entire Muslim world will decide to take us on because of this. That this is just the precursor to World War III. Bush makes me glad I don't have children. (The last time I felt this much like not having a papoose was, hey! Back during the LAST Bush administration! What a coincidence.)

If nothing else, saying some of this might bring some traffic to my site as some pro-War nuts try to defend the administration. Go nutz, people.

While I'm at it: Macintosh computer suck ass, the Linux OS is for crazy people, and Carmen deserves to win American Idol! (I might as well bring out all the controversy crazies I can with this one post, as I'll soon be back to my usual batch of posts about going to the gym and fart jokes.)

It's no secret that I've always hoped -- indeed, I believe it's the secret hope of every owner of a blog -- that someday, someone will recognize the prose on these digital pages and offer me the chance of a lifetime: to get paid to write this drivel.

And I think that almost happened to me yesterday. Sort of.

Back when my beloved Access Magazine was on the short track to death, I wrote a few little one-off items for our Web site, which are reproduced here on this site, so they aren't lost for all eternity. The last item I wrote was called Placement Perfect , where I hypothesized that the perfect advertising for dotcoms was in unexpected places. Like on urinal cakes.

Today I got an e-mail from a guy named who apparently just read the story. I'm not sure how or why he found it. I checked google, and a search for urinal+cake+advertising doesn't even call up the page.

But find it he did. And this is what he said:

I read Placement Perfect!

It has been me thinking all day.

Urnial Cakes, it is not such a bad idea. Did you ever do any research on if it is done?

There is something on the internet about a company called Flusho based in Houston. I think it is a great idea, but they do not exist.

We operate the website www.justtoiletpaper.com.

We have just done our first test run of printing on Jumbo rolls of toilet paper, and
have a few ideas we would like to roll out.

I think you might be the person to do copy for us.

What can I say? I was flattered. And it was nice to know it was him I got thinking.

But my heady dreams of being the rich and beloved copy-writer for pre-printed ass-paper were dashed quickly when I considered my hectic schedule. Namely, when would I find time to watch Farscape reruns if I were to take on such a job? So I wrote back to him with a twinge of sadness in my heart:

I didn't do any research into the urinal cake advertising idea. But smells like an IPO just waiting to happen to me. Flusho must have got caught up in all the Internet hype (if you know what I mean... nudge nudge wink wink).

I appreciate you feeling that I might be the right guy to write copy about your toilet paper products, but with a full time job already, I barely have time to wipe as it is. Good luck selling the two-ply.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to go read about the "Jack Schitt Toilet Paper" they sell.

When people say relationships take a lot of work, they aren't kidding. Take my wife for example. (I won't say please... Get it? Christ, Henny Youngman would be sad.)

I admit, since I met her, I've long harbored the suspicion that my wife thinks I'm, well, less gifted than her on the intellect side of things. I'm sensitive to it because I come from a family with a long line of matriarchs who run rough-shod over the men. While my mother, grandmothers, etc., would likely say "Rule? With iron-fisted threats of smashing you like a grape? Me? That's not true!"... they are would be lying.

I vowed early on in this relationship, knowing what a strong will Bon has, that I would not be her god damn monkey-boy, that I would standup for my rights, I would express my opinion, and that I would never, ever let her roll the tank-treads of her bad day/cranky attitude/righteous indignation over my back.

Which proves almost unequivocally just how stupid I am.

While I don't want to be the bottom to her top (well, not relationship-wise... get it? Hello? Jesus, are you people even listening?), I also love and crave peace at home. The discomfort and unease that sets in when we're miffed at one other just eats away at me. Especially when I can pinpoint it back to being my fault. For example:

Bon called me today from a dog agility show. Caper didn't have a very good run this morning (he blew the weave pole entry and then decided to go say hi to judge, a big no-no), and Bon was, while not outright angry, perturbed by his performance. Her question of "He's four... when's he going to get a brain?" was one that (Bon would be the first to point out) was quite rhetorical -- just a supportive grunt would have sufficed. She frequently espouses her need for just some support on a topic, even if it's one I vehemently disagree with. We've had the conversation about 50 times. I know it, and it should sink in.

I, in my inverse-of-infinite wisdom, said, "He is a Labrador, you know."

Oopsie. Not what she wanted to hear.

Sometimes it's not what is said between us, so much as it is how we say it. That was definitely the case with the above, since I probably made it sounds like it was some patently obvious observation that any idiot would accept as an excuse. Like, "Duh."

Patience is a virtue we don't partake of much here at case de Griffith, so things are often said off the cuff, without counting to 10, sans any consideration of the phrase's potential effects. Admittedly, even the most innocent of comments are likely to set either of us off into a fury depending upon the initial mood and the lilt of our voice. Did I know the Labrador comment would spark getting hung up on? No. Did I bother to think about how I put it first? Hell, no. It's hard to think one's feet, but necessary.

I could spin this into a metaphor for how the world could do a better job of keeping peace between the borders, but that would be me pulling flowers out of my ass. If the divorce rate is so high, is it any wonder that a born-again president wouldn't be able to get along with Muslims? Men and women raised in the same town can't even agree on where to put towels or hang pictures.

It doesn't help to bring that excess pride into a relationship. Let's face it, eventually, one or both parties is going to be the grass while the other is the lawnmower. But if we -- okay, if I pick my battles and my words more carefully, perhaps there'd be less weed whacking and more fertilization.

My god, that metaphor doesn't work at all. It's actually kinda gross. Sorry. How about this: If I pick my battles and my words more carefully, perhaps I'd spare us all a lot of hard feelings and resentment.

I haven't whined about this in a while, so why not: Lord Love a Duck, why can't I just write?

Lets face it, if you don't know me, if you don't get it by now, I'll spell it out: even in this time of strife for the country and the world, on a planet with melting ice caps, overloaded garbage dumps, and the Oscar going to statutory-rapists (who get a standing ovation, no less), I'm so obsessed with myself all I can think about is me, me, me. And not in a good way.

I'm focused in all my spare moments -- and if I don't have any spare moments, I make some by not doing something I'm supposed to -- on things I would rather be doing. When I finally give myself the time to take action instead of think about taking action... I freeze.

I'm like the constant wallflower at the school dance with this.

It's tiresome. It's frustrating. It's pissing me off.

I'm starting to think I need medication.

Maybe I should give up on fiction. I could do a book of essays instead. Yes... essays. Collect and refine my screeds and yammerings against the injustices of daily life. That might be okay, except in my daily life the worst atrocities consist of wheat bread (see below) and the occasional dog vomit. On an exciting day, perhaps I eat too much cheese and pay for it later (if you know what I mean).

Am all I cut out for is semi-comedic (and only barely coherent) blog entries? Is this what it's come down too? I used to write short stories for fun! My friends would commission me to draw them pictures! I dreamt of going to art school once! I created an entire universe once, before I could even type! Okay, admittedly, that was for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign (yeah, so, what of it??), but at least it was creative. I used to paint.

Of course, I did a lot of that just to pass through the trauma of puberty, 95% of which was in my head, created for myself as the testosterone started to fire off like Patriot missiles. I think I'm doing a lot of the same self-created suffering these days, but instead of using it as an outlet, I find myself blocked. I stare at a screen, or a piece of paper, or out a window, or at a clock, watching the time I allotted myself pass by with all the drama of watching the elderly race with their walkers.

Artists are supposed to suffer, I truly believe that (better the artists suffer than a lot of other people), but what if you suffer and can't make art? I think then, you're just a schmuck.

I blame some of this on "responsibility." Part of me can't work on anything creative, anything just for myself, that doesn't (in the long run) pay. Life is too expensive. Taxes, bills, payments, etc... how can I justify writing silly stories when they don't bring in any money? It was easier back in college, when it was still just a fantasy world -- all those envelopes with windows on the front seemed years away. I can't step back and just do something for me. The thought of completing a novel and no one outside of my friends and family reading makes me feel empty. I wanna be famous, a star of the screen. No, not really. I'd settle for ending up with a paperback in the bargain bin in a couple of years.

It's not going to happen without me believing in my ability to 1) finish it, 2) polish it so it's not complete feces, 3) sell it for an incredibly low sum just so I can say I did it. I think hurdle number one is the hardest. The rest will probably never happen, but should seem easy compared to this.

I spent much of the tradeshow time wallowing in some self-loathing. It happens whenever I'm required to dress up beyond my usual Old Navy loose-fit jeans and polar fleece shirt that insulates me from my basement chill. I'd look at myself in the 1000 foot high mirrors on the wall along the escalators and just grow disgusted. I have someone bizarre ability to look at myself in the mirror head on, whether shaving or brushing my teeth or looking for stray nose hairs to trim, and I think to myself, "Yeah, looking good!" I really do. I'm not prone to worrying about my body. Sure, I sweat just by thinking about being in the sun and my breathing is labored just with a jog down to the mailbox and back, but I don't think about my body -- obviously one that helps push the statistics for the "US Is Filled with Fatties" campaign -- as being radically abnormal.

But looking in those mirrors at the New Orleans convention center, seeing my profile, I wanted to puke. Literally. I was thinking about taking up Bulimia as a hobby. Bulimia has to be better than Anorexia, because I think half the joy of eating is just the mastication. I could never pull off Anorexia anyway -- in my family (both nuclear and extended), if anyone sees me with even a half-full (aren't I optimistic?) plate they'll say "Is something wrong, are you sick?" because I didn't scarf it all down like a ravenous aardvark at a fire-ant mound.

I don't know if they eat fire ants. I just thought it sounded good.

Yeah, so, shut up Griffith, stop whining, do something about it. And I shall. This week and for the rest of time, I am going to devote this blog to a new topic, at least partially: embarassing my self into a slimmer ass. That means you get to hear about my joining the gym (Home: "Guy-m? Oh.... Guy-m!"), maybe Weight Watchers, etc. Which should work great since my entire life centers around sitting still all day long in front of these two monitors. But no one ever said looking at a profile in the mirror was easy. I just wish it wasn't so easy when looking head on.

With the exception of a couple of former employers, one or two former classmates, and most of the Bush Administration, I don't really have any ill will toward anyone on the planet. I love people. As long as they leave me the hell alone.

Still, I always find it galling to see people who I thought were oafs or incompetent, or worse, incompetent oafs, making out well after they've stopped pestering me. For example, my wife, who works at our former alma mater and monitors just about every thing that happens on campus and forwards it to me via AOL Instant Messenger all day long (as well as just about every Buffy and Angel spoiler she can find... Hon, do you do any work up there?), today sent me a note about a former (now retired) professor of mine in the communications school getting "Emeritus" status. Translated from the Latin, that roughly means "you invite me to parties but you don't pay me."

This prof was my "advisor" in college, charged with helping guide me through my major to best improve my future. Our sessions together consisted of 10 minutes each semester. He would count up the number of credits I needed and tell me how many I had to take the following semester. Then he's shoo me away. Hard work for a PhD.

His lack of mentoring skills are not what I remember most about the Doc in question, however -- he was the prof of my first ever course in college, Introduction to Mass Media. The course also had a textbook with the exact same name -- no surprise because it was written by the Dean of the school. It featured chapters on every form of media you can imagine, from movies to radio to tv to music to books. It was a hysterically funny tome... these old white guys would try to explain things to us youngsters, my favorite being a laundry list of all the ways they would define "Rock and Roll." I wish I could remember it exactly, but it was something like:

Thoughts on Disney's The Music Man…

Rock Island was not meant to have music played over it.

My college roommate, Chris, gave Iowa a try. He still lives in Des Moines with his lovely wife and kid (hopefully two by now). I need to call him. I miss a lot of my friends all the time, but he's one I miss the most.

I feel the true measure of a Harold Hill is not in the singing – for there is little required in the role (and no one would accuse even the great Robert Preston or Matthew Broderick of having the greatest pipes) – but in how they deliver one line in the most important song in film, "Ya Got Trouble." The line is: "… words like "Swell," and "So's yer old man"?" Broderick didn't do anything special – Preston always made it look like he was just coming up with those words of the top of his head, even tho the audience knew he had it all planned way ahead.

Kristin Chenoweth is probably the only woman in this production that can really sing.

Why on earth does Amaryllis ask why Winthrop is so upset? She just laughed in his face because he has a lisp. He should have kicked her in the shin with his shiny patent leather shoes and asked "Why is she screaming in pain like that?"

Victor Garber as Mayor Shinn is one of the most spectacular pieces of miscasting I've ever seen. Molly Shannon, however, is beautiful.

I think I might be annoying Bon by not only singing along, but also reciting dialog.

She went to bed an hour before the film finished… I sat here and wrote this, and spent the $50 gift certificate she bought me for Amazon.com. As much as I think The Music Man is the greatest musical of all time, I think the last half is a yawn, no matter what the venue, film or stage, and I am gladly heading to bed. Right after I watch the 300th ep of the Simpsons.

It's entirely likely I will never be allowed to mold the minds of the young. Apparently to do so requires more advanced education than I am currently willing to get (though check with me again next time I'm laid off and that might have changed). Thus my only other current option will likely be occasionally spending an hour or two warping the mind of my nephew. I've been thinking about what I want to impart to him....

1) Show tunes are not inherently evil.
2) Don't settle for being just a "boob man" or a "leg man" or an "ass man." Consider the whole package. Especially the parts you can't see.
3) Sleeping in on weekends until 2pm is your God-given right until you are at least 19.
4) The toys are much better now.
5) Deep Space Nine was the best Star Trek. Period.
6) Don't join the school band unless you really, really, REALLY love music... and carrying an instrument a lot.
7) Avoid clothes that use the term "husky."
8) The cartoons on Cartoon Network that aren't made specifically for Cartoon Network? They suck.
9) Nothing tells a girl you like her like snapping her bra strap.
10) Comic books are meant to be read. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't treat them like delicate collectibles.
11) Crocheted doilies, on the other hand, are expendable. You can use them as napkins.
12) Spelling words out completely when using Instant Messages is much cooler than using bizarro truncated spellings.
13) Swirlies (face into flushed toilet) are to be given, not received. Actually, you should only give them in return. Bring friends as backup.
14) Picking a signature style of clothing in high school will go a long way toward setting your personality. For instance, I wore tie to school every day for years. I would recommend, however, by the time he start high school around 2014, that he try something more space age. Perhaps tin-foil hats. Or a cod-piece made of black rubber.
15) Yes, it's true, Spider-man is REAL.
16) The way you feel about girls while in high school? All hormones. You don't have any real feelings that can be trusted until at least age 20.
17) Thus, telling a girl you love her three days into a "relationship" is not smart and only works out very, very seldom.
18) Those geeky kids in computer club? Becareful... you might grow up into one. Albeit with better skin.
19) Always referring to friends by their last name is cool and people like it. Unless the person's last name is "Kratz."
20) You can always successfully divert blame for flatulence when there are three people present. Two people and one dog will also work.

I just called, the head is still up but she's 5 centimeters dialated. I've got the dogs loaded in the car, a video camera with a fresh battery, and we're out of here.

RING

Eric: Hello.

Doofus*: Hey, this is Doofus from the Ithaca Journal, and I'm calling to make sure you received delivery of the paper this morning.

[[Nice tactic.... look like you're just a concerned customer service rep so that when you mistakenly call people who already have what you're selling, you can gracefully get off the line to the next person.]]

Eric: Uh, I don't receive the Journal.

Doofus: Well sir, then I'd like to ask you if you'd like to start receiving the Ithaca Journal. For only a small amou --

Eric: So go ahead. Ask me.

Doofus: --nt of money... [[pause as that sets in.]]

Eric: Well, are you going to ask me?

Doofus: Sir, I just did.

Eric: No you did not. You said you'd like to ask me. But at no time to you make an interrogative statement of any sort.

[[shorter pause as he girds himself for continuing dealing with me... perhaps the people who give him trouble feel guilty and eventually break down to buy the Ithaca Urinal...]]

Doofus: Sir, would you like to start receiving the Ithaca Journal? For only a small --

Eric: No, I would absolutely not like to start receiving the Ithaca Journal. But thanks for asking!

Doofus: Thank you for your time.

CLICK.

*Doofus is not the name I was given by this telemarketer. I would say I used the sobriquet of "Doofus" to protect the innocent or myself from libel, but I really don't remember what he said his name was. Other comedy names I could have used: Goofus, Chester or Shecky.

A while ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a reporter for the Seattle Times. Seems she was surfing the Web trying to find candidates for story she was writing about how people use the Web to try and find a job. Perhaps she had no taste, but she greatly admired the ol' homestead here at squishedfrog.com, and wrote me a note saying so. Which was very nice. But she wished I lived in Seattle so she could include me in her story. Turns out, must be not many people are looking for work in Seattle, because she used me in her story anyway, which I just found online. You can read the entire story, but the pertinent part about me is below. I think it sums up my life online nicely:

Eric Griffith, a 33-year-old Web editor in Ithaca, N.Y., has created an unusual hybrid: part blog, part work portfolio, part marketing campaign for brand Eric.

Recruiters visiting his squishedfrog.com will discover that he puts his socks on before his pants, he used to work for Family PCmagazine, and this: "I feel it should be known that I harbor no fear of sticking a knife into a toaster."

He's got a quirky online store that sells, among other things, a squishedfrog.com thong. There's a link to his writing samples and, even though he's employed, a résumé.

"I've been laid off too many times to think I can afford to not be on the market, just in case the worst happens," he says.

I hate faxes.

I've always hated faxes.

I can't remember my first time encountering this Hades-sent paper nightmare visited upon the masses. Probably when I was working for the film development office, Spring Creek Productions, in NYC just out of college. They had the typical-for-its-time rolled paper fax. This one might have been fancy enough to cut the pages in the appropriate places, tho as I recall, that being 1992, that was a hit or miss proposition at best. Many a time I had to take these waxy rolled up bits of parchment and run them through the photocopier to get them into a semblance of readable material for the principals there (who seemed to never read anything anyway, they were always schmoozing on the phone).

Faxes have done nothing but clutter my life ever since. I'm cursed with being a pack-rat AND someone who occasionally wishes he could find some stray piece of paper -- I've got papers tucked away in my basement dating back to the early 70s that are in relatively mint condition, mind you -- so as an editor, getting faxed press releases, I felt I had to hang on to them all. Because you never know when someone would want to know the specs on a Dell 486 PC or the new features of MCI Mail.

Even with 85+ spam messages a day I'd take email as my preferred method of communcation any day. I'm at a point now where I don't even give out a fax number, and the only one I do give out is one that send faxes directly to my email as an attachment (www.callwave.com does this for free, fyi).

So why the diatribe? I just got off the phone, twice, trying to call the customer service at Time Warner Cable. The DVR (re: TiVo for dummies) they gave me was wonky -- it tried to tape "There's Something About Mary" nine times last weekend, and I didn't even want it once -- so I took it down to trade in for a new one today. The new one says "This Setup is NOT AUTHORIZED for use" on screen. So I call for help (after all, "24 American Idol" is on tonight!) and get switched to their answering service. And they tell me this:

"I don't know if they're there to call you back sir. But I can take down your name and number and fax it over to them."

What did she just say to me? Fax??

"You're going to fax my information over to them? You don't have e-mail? Or some kind of direct computer link? You're seriously going to fax it?" I asked.

"We're on a computer, we write it up and send it off by fax immediately."

"Fax," I say, and realize that I will never, ever get a call back. "Well, that's some fancy technology you've got there," I told her, and gave her my name and number.

And here I sit with a useless DVR, while my name and number spits out of a fax machine in an empty office in downtown Ithaca.

In reference to this... one of my other writers is apparently afraid of pronouns. Especially "it."

I always thought "splendiferous" was a made up word. Not that I necessarily made it up. Maybe Bugs Bunny or someone of that ilk. Imagine my surprise when not only does MS Word correct me on spelling it, but it also has an entry in the dictionary. What's next, "Nin-cow-poop"? "Maroon" as an insult?

Neil Gaiman, probably the worlds greatest living fantasy writer (tho I don't really read much fantasy besides his, so I'm biased), said in his blog that comic books are "a medium that gets mistaken for a genre."

My god, that's so succinct it makes my teeth ache.

If you don't understand it, see me after class. I will keep my ridicule to a minimum.

From Wired News:

"Bloggers are navel-gazers," said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism. "And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books."

Ouch.

Okay, so much as I complain about certain aspects of living back in central New York State -- namely, the GOD DAMN SNOW -- there are things I love. Sure, there's the close to family, nice town, cheap house, yada yada yada... but perhaps the greatest thing is once again finding all my favorite snack foods from childhood.

When I was a kid and we'd spend weekends up at my grandparents farm so my family could chop enough wood too keep them from freezing to death or so my mom could spend summer days and evenings fishing or driving the dune buggies everyone seemed to have (sans any actual dunes, though we frequently got stuck in deep puddles up in the woods), we'd occasionally drive in to the town of Angelica and I'd get a box of DooDads. Today most folks would call it Chex Mix, but they'd be wrong. Chex Mix is home made, DooDads were right off the assembly line. The combined the crackers, with pretzels and little cheese sticks. And peanuts, but I don't like peanuts too much, so I'd eat around them. Nowadays, DooDads have been transformed into Ritz Snack Mix. They taste exactly the same and they took out the peanuts! Some things have improved in this country since the 70s besides the fashions.

Last night at Wegmans I also found my French-onion dip of choice as a child, Bison (made locally in Buffalo!) While it's certainly no different than the HelluvaGood brand I've eaten for years, it does come in an 8oz container which I prefer (with 12 oz, you run out of chips before you run out of dip and that's a waste and makes me feel guilty. One shouldn't feel guilty when stuffing their craw with salty, greasy goodness dipped in whipped sour cream and onion, I always say.)

Pretzels come in all shapes and forms and sizes. But to me there is only one truly great pretzel: Anderson "Gems" Nuggets. They come in a big plastic barrel. They used to sell them at the Staples near the Access Magazine office, but then they disappeared and I thought they didn't make them any more. Low and behold: they sell them at the local Tops Friendly Market.

Finally, my current favorite. To me, Corn Nuts are a relatively new snack: I didn't catch on to them until only four or five years ago when I lived in Northampton, MA. When I left Northampton, I was in a panic that I wouldn't be able to find them again -- I used to buy them in the bulk food aisle at the local crunch-granola grocery in town. I shouldn't have worried. Not only are their the Corn Nuts brand you can buy at many gas stations and even CVS pharmacies, but they have big huge bags of them at one of the farmer's market-type enclaves here in Ithaca where I wouldn't buy anything BUT the nuts of corn.

So, this week I've covered TV/TiVo and snack foods. If I can manage to fit in dogs, computers, and porn my wife, I'll have covered everything in the world that matters to me. I hope to do it while eating the modern day DooDads.

You know how some words look funny or seem to look just plain wrong after you look at them too much? That's how I feel today about the word "Plus." I have it in several decks (the sub-heading under a headline) on my site and it just looks... wrong. I think maybe I'm thinking of 'pus' when i see it, but it doesn't feel like an oozy kind of word.

Maybe I should stop playing Halo on the Xbox until midnight everynight, too. That might help.

I've come to the conclusion, after two days at this wireless LAN conference, that the wimmen's don't go for the Wi-Fi.

Big surprise, huh?

I'm considering blogging about something every hour I have left in California, or at least until they pry away my beloved wireless Internet access.

Someone asked me to day how often I take advantage of wireless Internet access at cafes or places around Ithaca, so I can get out of the house and still get work done. I'm embarrassed to say, I never have. I hate typing on laptop keyboards, my laptop has about a 45 minute battery life, I'm too lazy to leave the house, blah blah blah. Any excuse will do. But maybe next week, I'll try it. Of course, I need to find a place in Ithaca with free wireless public access. I almost hope I don't find any, then I can blame it on others and not my own intrinsic lameness.

Yet am even I inane enough to come up with more to blog about? Stay tuned.

Today I'm -- as I imagine I used to say it before learning to put my tongue between my teeth -- firty-free.

Of course, like almost every birthday I've had since I was 19, I'm spending today working. I began by posting some stories on the site, then I took out the recycling (which is an adventure when you have a 100 foot long driveway on hill... thank god I bought that hand truck), and now I'll work for another six hours before I leave to go to Rochester to get on a plane to go to California. I should land tonight about 1am Eastern time. Woo. Hoo.

Still, also like most previous birthdays, I expected to be melancholy and I'm not. I guess staying busy on the day of helps. (Maybe less busy to an extent -- my bosses took me off one of the two sites I was running so I can be devoted to 802.11 networking full time. I'm still not sure how I feel about that... but I'm mostly glad to still be employed).

Thinking about my birthday too much -- the downside to 35! Eleven years before I can spell my age backwards and forwards again! Where are my pants? -- would probably put me over into slight depression. Or not. I guess I don't know why I'm not thinking about it more, other than to say being 33 is like being 23 or 27 or several other ages not divisible by five... it's just a place holder.

This bugs me. My grandfather told me this puzzler as a kid and I thought I had it worked out once, but I saw it again in a comic strip today and it's bugging me.

Three guys go into a bar. Two order mixed drinks and the third gets a beer. The bartender charges them $10 each, for a total $30. They pay and go to a table.

Where's the 30th dollar?

Even earlier today I thought I had this and I don't. I used to be a mathematical genius before I let my high school chemistry teacher crush my academic spirit… I blame him for my not getting this.

In the never ending battle to get the floor in my kitchen fixed, I did a search today on Google for Ithaca Tile & Hardwood, business I saw advertise on, of all things, a shopping cart last night night at Tops. Google pulled up a page at CafeShops (home of the Squished Frog Store, you non-consumer bastards!): Ithaca is the City of Evil. That got my attention.

That store in turn linked over to a page at FreeRepublic.com that spent paragraph after paragraph spelling out just why the writer thinks my old/new home town is a terrible place ("Ithaca is so "Green" that Ralph Nader got more votes in Ithaca than George W. Bush") filled with Liberals and Communists and Activists and a few other -ists.

And the more I read it, the more I was thrilled with the fact that I live here again.

I don't think Ithaca NY is even as progressive as it could and should be (dinner with our college friend Amanda, who's one of only a handful of femaile police officers in this burg spelled that out... she had some fun tales to tell), and the occasional step out of the city limits to encounter some rednecks makes me want to run back to Massachusetts sometimes. But it's incredibly nice to know the right-wingers think it's so leftist here at the tip of Cayuga Lake that they'll make up shirts against the town.

Eight years ago today, I married the most wonderful woman in the world.

She makes me smile involuntarily at least once a day and it's only with the depth of my feelings about her that she can make me as angry or as happy or satisfied as she does. She's my rock, my conscience, my better half, my provider, my sweet-hot-snookie-wookums, and my friend. She's the cream in my coffee, the sunlight on a cloudy day, her body is a wonderland. Tonight I will give her a gift and take her to dinner and tell her for the billionth time what she means to me and it won't be enough, as she deserves so much more.

Bonny: She's a good thing.

During his visit this past weekend, Joe saw something at the local super Wegman's store that he just had to have: a 1.5 liter bottle of what he considers one of the finest fermented beverages ever, Grolsch Lager.

I admit to having some admiration for Grolsch, but it's entirely based on the bottle. I think Grolsch has some of the best packaging ever. I've seen the bright green bottles reused for everything from salad dressings to salt shakers. Seeing a beer in a thick glass bottle over one foot tall is an impressive site.

Joe managed to drink about half of the bottle (in addition to helping me polish off a case of Smirnoff Ice and a magnum of champagne he'd bought us years ago – he brings out the lush in me), and was too much of a baby to take the rest on the plane with him back to Florida. So approximately .75 liter of lager is in my fridge. And seeing it there, thinking I'd begun to form a taste for beer after a few months of various "beer-ish" beverages (Skyy Blue, Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade are my drinks of choice), I thought I'd give it a try.

I almost puked.

That grog is the very definition of the canned cat piss people tried to make me like in high school and that instead turned me into a teetotaler until I was out of college. It tastes like the bitter run off of the ass-crack perspiration of a thousand gibbon apes. I'd sooner let squirrels gnaw my testicles than let that swill come within a meter of my cake hole ever again. I'm pouring it out with extreme prejudice.

But I still think the bottle is pretty cool.

If you love me... if your REALLY love me... you'll got to this Web page righ now: http://mergerinfo.hughes.com/5060/index.jsp. When you get there, click "Voice Your Support" and fill out the form with complete honesty and have Hughes send a letter on your behalf to the many, many idiots in government who have control over mergers. And then you'll pray that Hughes and Echostar form a marriage that show those pikers at AOL Time Warner how it's done. Oh, yeah, and it'll mean I get my local channels on the DirecTivo without any more hassle, either.

So yesterday, I made a joke about how much I like getting those spam messages from people who claim to be overseas sons-of-diplomats looking for a few thousand/million bucks to help them get out a few million/billion bucks which they will then send to you after you help them.

It's been in the back of my head for a long time -- why on earth does this scam still get sent? Hasn't the entire world picked up on this yet? Apparently not. Worse, this WiredNews story says that "According to statistics presented at the International Conference on Advance Fee (419) Frauds in New York on Sept. 17, roughly 1 percent of the millions of people who receive 419 e-mails and faxes are successfully scammed.

"Annual losses to the scam in the United States total more than $100 million, and law enforcement officials believe global losses may total over $1.5 billion."

I would love to meet one of the people who fell for this. So I can LAUGH in their FACE.

Most people would be annoyed to get their fourth spam message of the day that says something like "Kindly Pardon me if this my letter would be an embarrassment to you for I am Miss Zlatko Pasalic, 36years old, a native of Zenica in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina writing you from Woomera Immigration Detention Centre, South Australia."

But not me. Because every time I get a spam that means I'm NOT getting another press release about something I should be writing about at my site but just don't have time for. So i welcome you, get rich quick schemes and weight loss fads. Clog my box with your wares. I beseech you.

1) Yellow walls in my basement office.
2) The fact that an ice cream truck has gone up and down my street every day this summer.
3) The complete lack of traffic on the street. Except for that ice cream truck.
4) My neighbors next door (Ann and Jori and their kids -- the two quietest children I've ever seen) and across the street (Marty, the retired cop. He has diabetes but still likes that Bonny brings him Xmas cookies each year.)
5) Dragonflies. If there were a contest for the coolest looking bugs ever, they'd win. And I'm sure they'll going to lead Kevin Costner back to OSCAR!
6) The screened in front porch. Even though I barely ever used it.
7) Getting UPN via my DirecTV dish (grrrr.)
8) Hardware floors throughout the downstairs.
9) Having the dining room next to the living room so we could watch TV during dinner. (What, you think we had conversations? We were in the same house all day, every day, for a year!)
10) The fenced yard.
11) Having city sewer service. I've never had a septic tank before and I'm not excited by the prospect.

I think my dad is even more worried about it than me. He was very excited when the latest This Old House magazine (to which he subscribed me) had a big article explaining septic tanks. He also told me this story, which he says is the extent of his knowledge about septic, that he read in the paper years ago: Guy is pumping out someone's septic tank. Lady of the house comes down to watch. She sees several foreign items in the sludge and asks what they are. The guy sheepishly says, "Ma'am, those are condoms." Woman says, "But my husband and I don't use condoms!"

Sadly, I don't know if it was the husband or a son or who got in trouble on that one.

1) Mature Landscaping.
When Bon and I looked at a couple of houses out in Ithaca earlier in the summer, she expressed disdain for their use of the term in their ads, and then all she found were some potted flowers. "We have mature landscaping at home," she'd say.

Mature landscaping translates into having plants so old and thick they might as well be trees. Having flowerbeds so over grown with lilies and daisies that they creep out over the sidewalk so you are always walking on the lawn. Having vegetation so thick that you can't even reach the weeds.

I hope we plant absolutely nothing at the new house (though I've been told the place is already overgrown with weeds. That's easier, because then I can just kill everything outright.)

2) Crows.

3) Mosquitos. (I should have a West Nile joke here. But I don't).

4) Stones on the edges of the drive way. The previous owners must have run out of money -- the paved a strip in the center for one car, but wanted it wide enough for two, so they put rocks on each side. Which I used to hit with the snow blower and throw into the yard all the time.

5) Showering. Despite having a nice full bathroom upstairs, the extra large tub did not lend itself well to a shower curtain rod. In fact, we never found one. No rod means no curtain means no showers up stairs. I'm not careful enough to deflect all the water toward the wall. So for three years, I've only showered downstairs then had to go back up to dress.

6) The town of Hudson. It's a nice, quiet, cute town. With absolutely nothing to do and only two moderately okay restaurants.

7) Rocks. MA yards are filled with rocks the size of small cars. At least mine is, all with little peaks sticking up threw the lawn.

8) The kitchen floor. It was never sealed properly and looked bad (though I liked the color).

9) Wall to wall carpet. Sadly, there's MORE wall-to-wall carpet in the new house. So maybe I'll miss having less of it.

10) Putting peanut butter in the refrigerator. This has nothing to do with living in MA, but dammit, my wife always puts the PB in the fridge! It's too hard to spread that way. Hard PB ruins the bread! It's an outrage. So in Ithaca, things will be different. I'm putting my foot down.

Peanut butter will go in a cupboard where it belongs.

And we're only buying chunky, too. Creamy is for losers.

I got to tell one of my writers (ahem) today something I was told long ago by my former boss, Dan, who is now one of those in the trenches with me at Internet.com, slugging it out each day to improve the world for IT people every day through pithy prose.

Dan's writing rules were simple and have stuck with me for years since he first wrote them on a white board in his office circa 1995:

1) Say what you're going to say
2) Say it
3) Shut up.

I think he should write a book on the subject, though I think it would be hard stretching each step into a chapter.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's lawyers are filing an appeal in the highest criminal court in Texas in the obsenity conviction of Jesus Castillo, manager of a Dallas comic book store. Castillo has recieved six months jail time, a year probation, and a $4000 fine. Read the full story at ICV2.com.

And that's why I'll never stop working with the Fund.

As my previous post conveys, I'm not above saying stupid things. Some might say I pride myself on it, but even I know when I've crossed the line. Just as often, I've been on the receiving end of people saying strange things. The questions is, do you point it out when someone says something that makes no sense on Planet Earth?

A woman at our vet's office front desk has a bizarre affection for my dog, Kylie. When Kylie was in for her spay operation and had to spend the night, this woman actually went and brought her into the front to spend the evening behind the desk with her, that way Kylie wouldn't be lonely. When I picked Kylie up the next day, there was a note from "Kylie" saying how much she loved this woman and she would love to go live with the woman someday if we ever gave her up.

(I'm sure if Kylie was human we'd have had to take out a restraining order based on that alone.)

Last night I had to go to the local Veterinarian's office to pick up some records they'd made of our dog's medical histories, so we can take them to NY after we move and find a new, overpriced canine quack. The Kylie-loving woman was behind the counter and making sad faces and comments about how we shouldn't leave. Trying to make small talk, I said, "sure, we'll stay if you want to take over the mortgage on the house we just bought."

She frowned, looked at her computer screen, and said "No, can't do that, we're doing that all the time."

Wha??

What does one say to such a non-sequitur? Nothing. I smiled and nodded and took my papers and left without a comment on that slip up. Because I think that's probably best for all involved.

I base this on something that happened to me when I was in the eight grade.

I was walking from my friend's Mark's house back to school after lunch -- I ate there every day by myself, watching Benson in his living room (Mark and the others had lunch a different period than I did). As I was walking back to Hornell High, I passed by a girl who I considered one of the more beautiful in existence even at age 11. This stunning beauty left me a drooling freak even ignoring me, so today I was in overdrive when she actually asked me a question -- she wanted to know what time it was.

I only barely glanced at my digital watch when I blurted out, "It's 69 minutes past 11!"

I think she actually paused long enough to look at me with sadness and say, "So is it twelve o'nine?"

I nodded, mostly to bury my head in my chest, and hoofed a hasty retreat to the comparative safety of playing dodge ball with upperclassmen.

Thus, my un flagging opinion: Let strangers have their dumb slip ups. It's far kinder to let people think it's gone unnoticed.

Unless of course they're friends or family, in which case you save up the knowledge for ridicule in the future.

The sign of good friends are those who, when you pronounce a word wrong that you realize you may never have said aloud before, and you say it like it sounded in your head, and they don't understand you, those friends blame it on their own geek-ness instead of your own stupidity.

I have good friends.

(FYI, the word "tithe," as in giving one tenth of your income to a church because you're, well, stupid, is pronounced with a hard "I". Not like "tith," which is what people with a lisp call breasts.)

Let's hear it for living the dream.

My youngest first cousin, Jeremy (I've got more second cousins than I can remember the names of, since my first cousins have been having kids since before I graduated high school), is living the dream. He's writing comic books. Even if it's just for his own fun, it's more than I did, and I hope he goes for the gold.

I had my chance. I was hired by DC Comics in May of 1994. The offer was on the table.  I would have been helping them make CD-ROMs and do audio books and probably would have been a driving force in making their first Web site (which, in reality, sucked donkey farts until about a year ago). Chances are I would have known all the editors and thrown out ideas and wrote some things and maybe, just maybe, become a comic book writer. Like the dream.

Maybe I could have been the next Evan Dorkin. Or Brian Michael Bendis. (Well, they can both draw, so I'd have settled for being able to write some decent dialog. Hell, I'd have settled for licking Jeanette Kahn's boots.) Perhaps. Perhaps.

Instead, I went north, and worked for five years at a computer magazine that ultimately told me, in Vonnegutian fashion, Go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Go take a flying fuck at the moon.

Anyway, my point is, Jeremy, still in college, surviving a lot of crap in his life, has come through in flying colors and is working and playing and doing something he enjoys. By the time I was just a freshman I was taking my job too seriously. I hope he's having a damn good time. Seriousness can wait.

Who uses the word "impetus" in e-mails to people they haven't talked to in ten years?

I do.

So, it's true. You can't have everything.

Here in MA, I have reveled in the glory of my DirecTV/Tivo combo (called "DirecTivo" by those in the know) like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin, rubbing his underarms with gold doubloons. Similarly, I'd rub the TV Guide on my pits and giggle and cackle as I scheduled tapings and fast forwarded through just about every commercial of the last 7 months.

Yet, of course, as you know, when it comes to Internet access, I was a pauper. Picture Oliver Twist (or is it David Copperfield? One of those damn Dickensian urchins) saying "More Please?" but holding a coaxial cable instead of a bowl of gruel, and that's me.

Now, I've been making some calls, and I find my high-speed Internet access options are amazing. Not only could I get RoadRunner though TimeWarner Cable, I can get other providers if I want -- and I did. As of September, I'll be an Earthlink Cable customer. They're cheaper in price, have full-time dial-up backup, and they're network friend.

But when it comes to DirecTiVo, I feel like I've been lashed to a fence made of concertina wire and had my back laid open by a cat-o-nine-tails. Well, maybe it's not that bad (or good, depending on what you like). Get this:

DirecTV, even if they give me the waiver for getting the networks, won't provide the WB and UPN. The just don't have national feeds for them. Well, that's not so bad, I can get basic cable from TimeWarner, right?

Sure, I can -- but still no UPN. There's no UPN station serving the Syracuse Ithaca area. Even with the expensive digital cable there's still. No. UPN.

What the hell is this, the fucking STONE AGE?

So. That's it. No more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm going to miss the entire 7th Season of my favorite show. The fact that I'm willing to pay an exorbitant amount for this doesn't matter (just like it didn't matter that I would have paid through my arse for broadband here in MA).

You can't have it all. Not digitally, anyway.

I think most people who know me think of me as easy going. Maybe even a panty waist. I know my wife thinks I'm a spineless sea critter some times. For example:

Today, I'm on the phone with our buyer agent in Ithaca. After we'd toured the house for the inspection Monday night, we saw some things we wanted the sellers to take care of. Nothing major, no deal breakers: they had a swing set for the kids, but since we doubt the dogs would use it, we wanted it removed. There was a piece of vinyl siding down, we thought they should replace it.

They sellers said okay to those two, but (apparently they were asked to fix them while in a bad mood we're told) they balked at our request to replace a single roof shingle missing from the garage, and to spray the bumblebees that have bored holes into three different spots on the porch in which they now reside.

Our agent, to her credit, said the bees really need to be sprayed even if she goes up there with an out-of-date can of Raid to take care of it. But I told her on the roof shingle, fine, whatever, I'll take care of it when we get moved in. Bon was listening as I talked on the phone and said with visible disgust:

"Why are we letting them skate on this?"

Yes, why? I'd say it's because it's not worth the hassle. Which perhaps boils down to the same reason I let my wife handle the negotiations with car dealers? The same reason I don't yell store clerks? That I don't hand out negative feedback on eBay? That I don't flip people off while in the car?

Fear of confrontation? Sympathy for other parties? Hoping to duck under the radar until I'm back in my happy land of gumdrops and cotton candy? Pure wussy-ness?

Perhaps all those things.

However, there's one thing I continue to do and fight for, even in my own small pathetic way (get your hip waders on, here comes the sermon-slash-commercial).

Turns out another poor soul might be losing his shirt to a corporation.

Not Enron this time. This story won't make the local news, sadly. This is the story of an artist, someone who works to make a life just to entertain others. Years and years ago, he took a nickname for himself - King VelVeeda - and for years he used it with no hassle.

Then Kraft Food finally realized that he existed. For years the food giant made their millions without any idea. But once they knew, they had to defend themselves against him, right? After all, his nick name and their Velveeta Cheese are practically the same thing, right?

Even though they're spelled differently. (Parody, anyone?)

And that the artist in question, Stu Helm, never made a buck that would have gone there way. You've never heard of Stu, so you know he's not rich.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund took Stu's cause as their own, but sadly, the first round is lost. Some asinine judge said he can't use the name in any commercial context. Now he might lose his entire life -- if he loses to Kraft, they will make him pay their 6-figure legal fees and punitive damages.

I've been thinking about quitting my job as the Web-guy for the CBLDF lately. It's not the same as it used to be, but just today, finding out that this case is ruining someone's life like other lives have been ruined before, made my decision: I'll stay with the Fund, I'll do what I can, and I'll fight for these guys.

At least with douche-bag companies like Kraft, I have no fear of confrontation.

There was a murder in my yard this morning. A loud, thoroughly raucous murder. I heard the murder through the open windows in the kitchen, as I sat eating my toast in nothing but shorts, as the already sultry-at-6am air wafted in against my back. I was reading about Sarah Jessica-Parker at the time. The sound outside the window sent a chill down my spine, even in this heat.

There's been a number of murders on my street since we moved in, and this wasn't the first murder I'd heard, then watched, in my own front lawn. We had an even bigger murder in the back yard once. I'm thinking perhaps it could be a selling point: "Buy this house, bring your binoculars, and watch for a murder!" we could say on the listing sheet.

Some people don't like to see a murder. I personally find it interesting, and in a way, kind of uplifting. Then again, even if I do, perhaps it's nothing to crow about.

I have an idea for a short film, based on real life. Starts with a wide-shot of two women, both working those little kiosks at the airport that line the oversized hallways aisles, each sitting on a tall stool next to their booths, just across the hall from the pay phones and the woman's loo. One woman's cart is filled with faux jewelry and cheapo watches, the other is selling overpriced memorabilia for the city of, oh, let's say... Philadelphia. Travelers walk by and rarely gawk at the wares. The occasional cart filled with the elderly and handicapped and unlucky sods with broken legs goes by, beeping like a garbage truck in reverse -- one actually goes by ringing a bicycle bell to get people out of the way.

The two women, both in their early thirties, wearing the same airport uniform, stare into space and are not speaking. They don't even notice the potential customers. One of them has a cup of coffee and occasionally perks up enough to sip it.

Suddenly, one of them lets out a shout to the other, and they start a vibrant exchange about their boyfriends, until one has to tell the other her boyfriend left her. During all this, carts continue to guy by, beeping, and whenever it happens, they have to shout "What? I didn't hear you!" In the end they are laughing riotously at one another (while a gentleman looks on at some Philadelphia-labeled teddy bears, looking occasionally at the laughing clerk, wondering if he'll ever get waited on… but as her laugher continues, he moves on to his gate. Finally, the laughter subsides and they both fall to occasional giggles, sighs, smiles, then gradually to silence and blank stares.

I've never read anything that won a Pulitzer before. Well, at least not on purpose. I suppose I might have accidentally read an article or column somewhere that won a big award. Though I don't think they give those awards to articles in Stuff or Highlights for Children (my fav when waiting at the dentist's office... I loves them Goofus and Gallant strips!).

(Actually, I just checked, and I did read a Pulitzer Prize winning novel before, Ironweed by William Kennedy... but I defend my honor by saying it was for a class and I don't remember anything about it except that Jack Nicholson was on the cover. And I have seen the movie of The Color Purple.)

Anyway, I am reading a Pulitzer Prize winner now: Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I would probably not have tired it except for the fact that I thought Wonder Boys (based on another of his books) was a great movie and that it's about comic book creators. Albeit fictional creators of the Golden Age based loosely on Superman's creators Siegel & Schuster, though with much more fascinating backgrounds, I assume.

Salon said in a review of the book, "Chabon has created an important work, a version of the 20th century both thrillingly recognizable and all his own." Probably true. More relevant for me, however, is that its an important work to comic book geeks because it treated the industry and revered creators with respect (and Chabon has since been a honored guest a couple of comic conventions). And even better than that, it's a damn good read.

"You never know how much you use a railing until you paint it."

I saw Mulholland Drive the other night, and I can safely say... "Huh?"

[[SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to ruin this movie's so-called ending for you if you keep reading.]]

I like an ambiguous film ending as much as the next guy. Sometimes more. However, it's one thing to leave the audience with a sense of "Did that really happen?" versus a sense of "What the hell just happened?"

Everyone knows by now that Lynch wrote and directed what was supposed to be a television pilot and when he got rejected, he got his actors together again to film an "ending." It's a shame, because, it was a great pilot. Crazy stuff, good character development, one of the funniest hit-man sequences ever, and a mystery that you're just itching to get to the bottom of. Who is Rita? Was that homeless guy real? Why were those old folks smiling so much? What's the connection between Betty and the director? Ann Miller is still alive??

It becomes quite obvious when the pilot ends and suddenly Lynch decided he was making a "film": about five seconds before the first nude love scene. (There was ample opportunity for similar nudity in an earlier shower scene where he managed to avoid showing boobies at all. ) After that very promising turn character turn, we're suddenly thrown back to the territory that helped make Lynch's Twin Peaks a parody of itself: dream sequences, red curtains, and special effects of miniature people. I was expecting an FBI agent to order pie.

Once again Lynch leaves me hanging like he did over a decade ago with Peaks -- starting so strong, then it becomes clear there was never any ending planned in the first place. (Thank heaven for creators like Joss Whedon who makes sure that each season of his shows ends with an actual ending.)

A reviewer of this film at IMDB.com said "Many reviews have mentioned that Mulholland Drive resembles a dream, and it does. Like a dream, it shortcuts to dead ends, it includes excerpts from other unrelated dreams, it lingers on what it finds fascinating, and disowns the ideas it finds boring."

Yes, it's like a dream, but the way Lynch handles it, it's also called cheating. You don't leave all these plot threads dangling when introduced so enticingly. You don't show a gun in act one and not have it come into play later. Or you can do something worse like this film did: show the gun and by the end have people wondering if that was really a gun, or was it a poodle? (That is not an actual example from Mulholland Drive... but it might as well be.)

If you've ever seen "Inside the Actor's Studio," you know that James Lipton, the host, gives new meaning to the words 'suck up'. His constant fawning stars is bad enough, but his incessant prattling over the French talk show host who created "the ten questions" is worst. Still, kissing ass works, as we all know, and it got Lipton on the man's show in France. I saw the footage of that appearance, and it really looked to me like the host didn't want Lipton anywhere near him.

Be that as it may, the 10 question are very good ones, and I'm sure the Hollywood elite think about how they'd answer them constantly, since being on Actor's Studio is a badge of honor these days.

With my own obsession with fame that I'll never achieve, I also have been thinking a lot about the questions. Actually, I've only been thinking about how I'd answer two or three of them, which makes the prospect of answering all 10 daunting, but I shall because you all deserve to know.

1.  What is your favorite word? Salutations.  (Saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious seems pretentious here. Though I do know all the words to the song.)

2.  What is your least favorite word? Perhaps. Followed closely by maybe. I don't like to use them, and I truly hate hearing them.

3.  What turns you on or what is your favorite thing?  My wife's giggle. Better yet, my giggle at something my wife says.

4.  What turns you off? Inopportune phone calls.

5.  What sound or noise do you love? This is the hardest question here... if it was 'smell I love' I could tell you (good perfume), but sound/noise that I love? The sound of Windows booting up correctly? The strange "boing" noises from the TiVo menu? Homer's "D'OH!"? The UPS truck pulling up with a delivery? The silence of the lambs? I really don't know.

6.  What sound or noise do you hate? I loathe the sound of my oldest dog, Siren, flapping her ears at 5:30am to announce that she is prepared for her morning meal.

7.  What is your favorite curse word? Slit.

This requires some explanation. When I was in college, my freshman dorm room was right next to a guy named Kevin. He and I became friends and with three other friends we lived together junior year in an off-campus apartment.

Kevin is perhaps the most gifted musician I've ever known. I've only seen him play his violin twice, once in a video tape of a recital, another time at our friend Chris's wedding, but it would move you to tears to hear it.

We gave Kev the sobriquet of FuckFace. In fact, we still call him that. (Sometimes it's shortened to Fucker.) Kevin also had a gift for grousing and complaining that would mingle in the worst possible cursing you could imagine. There was a point where he constant referred to a part of the female anatomy by the above term, and I, like a lemming, picked up on it. Now, when should something happen to me that requires a quick expletive, if I don't think about it, I still almost invariably say "Slit!"

I feel so un-PC.

8.  What professions other than your own would you like to attempt? Law enforcement.

9.  What profession would you not like to do? Slaughterhouse worker.

10.  If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive? "You're early."

Maybe Joe brought it on himself since he did sign up to get his site, Facts are Meaningless, reviewed. But, I think the review of his site that was posted as part of the Peer-to-Peer Review Project was excessively mean-spirited and negative. Maybe  that's what the writer, the "author" of the PixelKitty.net blog,  feels a "review" is all about. Or maybe she's a femin-nazi (hey, a Rush-ism!) who jumps to conclusions.

I could go through and point-by-point talk about why this "reviewer" is nothing but an ass of the large, red baboon variety, but, there's little point, as it won't change her image of Joe. His site has problems (most of which are my fault, since I designed it), but he's got bigger fish to fry than to fix them now – he's starting life over in a new state, and he and I will address those problems when the time comes. In the meantime, I'm just happy he continues to entertain with well written screeds against stupidity.

However, after reading a few posts, Joe's "reviewer" immediately decided he was a "freshman looking to get laid" because he made some comments about how he can hold his beer and that you don't always get "brains, beauty, and down to earth personality" in all women. She said "You ALWAYS find those qualities in ALL women. ALWAYS. Or they dump you for the insensitive dweeb you are."

Yeah, right. Yank the other one, it plays Jingle Bells. Even the most feminist of women reading this know that's utter excrement for reasoning. (If you don't, I know some women you could meet that lack one of those three, and I know a few who lack all.)

So, let's jump over to PixelKitty.net and rate her on the same criteria. (FYI, she's a freelance Web designer from Australia, mate.)

• Overall impression: Hectic and filled with non-content. She quotes her site stats program and links to other sites. How singularly uninteresting.
• Writing Style: See above. Links are lazy blogging. One or twice a month, maybe. Why not actually write something? Anything.
• Design: The typical over-designed, overly linking blog page. What's with the font? In IE 6, it's completely unreadable unless you highlight it with the cursor. Nice job with the CSS. And anyone who has a site with one of those dumb-ass stickfigure images of themselves is a frickin' moron. I hate those things. (Oh, am I being unfair and unreasonable? I'm so sorry!)
• Special features:  The blurry objects in the background that might be shot glasses filled with urine are... interesting? No, actually, they're annoying.  (Why would any blog need special features? It's an online journal, not an e-commerce or entertainment site, you mindless dumb-ass.)

Her final dig in her review: "...there is no About section. So you cant [sic] work out if this guy is 16 or 60, interested in bears, taking the piss out of himself or has a blog simply because he thought it would be 'kewl'. I personally think its [sic] the latter."

That dig couldn't sum up her own blog better.

As a friend of Joe's, I look forward to his every post, as does everyone else who knows him, and several people who don't. Joe's a not only the exact opposite of a chauvinist, he's perhaps too nice – his employers and his friends walk all over him (god knows I do, whenever the shit hits the fan, he's who I call) and all those 'beautiful, brainy, nice personality'-filled women would do even worse.

So, sure, I'm biased. He's my best friend.  But hopefully more people read this page than that review and will know that a trip to Facts are Meaningless might mean to extra </html> tags at the end of the page, but it also means you'll have something interesting to read from a great guy.

Not that I'm a genius, but I do want to point out that I did say Spider-Man would be one of the biggest films of the year. Based on the fact that it's had the biggest opening weekend in film history, it may very well be one of the highest grossing movies of all time. (Of course, the fact that they won't take discount tickets probably didn't hurt the box office receipts a bit. Greedy bastards.)

I have to admit, while at the 7pm show on opening night, it was not sold out, so I was beginning to think my prediction was dead wrong. As people filled in seats around us, we watched some of the true freaks that make my comic collecting hobby feel shameful: the guy in the black trenchcoat with a Spidey "black costume" t-shirt; some kid in a zoot suit, for whatever reason... maybe he thought this was The Mask;  one teen in  full red & blue Spidey costume, including the pants, only without the mask. I hope he did that because he lost a bet. Had it been me, I'd have worn the mask to hide myself.

"What do you think the ratio is in here of guys to girls?" I asked Bon.

"I dunno. Looks like maybe 60 to 40? Actually probably more like 70 to 30," she said.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

"Still not the best place to pick up guys, though."

(Turns out that, based on exit polls, the audience was split 50/50, if you can believe that.)

So, yes, I saw Spider-Man.

It did not disappoint. Will see it again. Looking forward to the DVD already.

Was it perfect? No, few films are, especially superhero movies. Think of the terrible special effect of the Joker falling in Batman, or the dues ex machine of Superman turning back time, or Wolverine not wearing yellow spandex in X-Men, and I'm sure you'll agree.  (Though Unbreakable was pretty perfect... maybe the best super-hero movie ever.)

My biggest gripes about Spider-Man...

[[These gripes contain SPOILERS, so don't read them if you haven't seen the film.]]

1)      The Goblin was not very sinister. I think Defoe's performance was more than nuanced enough, but the character's sheer desperation made him more sympathetic than hated to an extent.

Nice homage to the comic, however, when he was killed by his own glider. Better yet, the Daily Bugle named him.... any crazy who wants to be taken seriously does not use the word Goblin, nor does he describe himself based on the color he wears. I don't think that even works for Green Lantern. (If that worked, today I'd be Purple Editor.)

2)      Danny Elfman's score was his usual Wagnerian crap. During the opening credits, it felt exactly like a watching Batman back in 1989 – the music wasn't a complete rehash of his Batman score, but it did nothing to distinguish itself. (Imagine John Williams doing a score that didn't distinguish itself – Star Wars doesn't sound like Indy, which doesn't sound like Private Ryand, which doesn't sound like Jaws...) There's no reason to run out and buy the Spider-Man sound track, unless you like the screeches of Macy Gray. Elfman hasn't done anything unique since he penned the theme to The Simpson's, though he does occasional good work for Tim Burton. But I'll bet that's more Burton's influence than Elfman's.

3)      Not enough chatter. In the comics, Spider-Man is known for constant stream-of-consciousness insults and jokes as he's smacking around the bad-guys. It's long been one of Peter Parker's stranger, yet more entertaining, defense mechanisms. There was some of it in the film (I loved when he webbed Jonah's face and said "Sonny, you let mom and dad talk now"), but not nearly enough.

There's a list of editing bloopers from the film up already.

What did I love?

• Great performances by all, especially Tobey – he's now the one true Peter Parker, just like Michael Keaton is/was the one true Bruce Wayne.
• Kirsten Dunst in a wet dress. Hell, Kirsten Dunst even several layers of wool is good for me.
• JK Simmons at J. Jonah Jameson was perfect.
• Aunt May wasn't an incredibly frail old lady like she was throughout the 60's and 70's before they killed her (and then brought her back to life... don’t ask, it's a comic's thing).
• The fact that if you stayed to the end of the closing credits, they played the Spider-Man animated theme from the 60's.

The film's been picked on by some for a thin plot, a week second half, and special effects that didn't keep Spidey well grounded. Computer Generated Image (CGI) effects these days are pretty easy to spot, much like stop motion/claymation is, and you have to accept that to an extent. It's not hard when you're willing to suspend disbelief that super-heroes could exist in the first place.

Be sure to check out my love letter to the movie studios for screwing me out of an extra $2.75 per ticket today over at Bad Samaritan: The Next Generation. And then go to your local cineplex and see Spider-Man on Friday anyway.

Yeah, I just bought the one on the left at Wal-mart -- but I've had the other action figure (sitting down) since I was 11! I also own a web-shooter than sprays silly string. And I'm proud of it.

This morning, I was full of glee to see that above the fold the Boston Globe Arts & Entertainment section cover was completely devoted to one movie subject. This elicited my usual response of late. To which my wife said:

"Honey, I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I'm getting really sick of hearing the Spider-Man theme song."

I sat in silence, uncomprehending such blasphemy.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size
Catches thieves, just like flies
Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man!

Okay, maybe I've been singing it to much this past month. But I don't care.

I can truthfully say, this movie is one I've waiting for my entire life. Sure, there was a point as a kid that I was much more in tune with Batman. Blame it on Adam West and the high-quality of his television show. I still have the Batman cape my grandmother made me as a kid (she probably made it so I'd stop ruining all her towels with clothes pins to make capes). There are still firemen in Hornell that worked with my dad that, to this very day, should they see my brother and I together will say, "Hey, it's Batman and Robin!"

Is he strong? Listen, Bud!
He's got radioactive blood.
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead.
Hey there, there goes the Spider-Man!

But that all changed when I finally was old enough to learn to read, and in th