Blogger’s Night Off

Desmond Getting Pissed

Its a good thing we took a vow of poverty then innit brother?

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Forsaking All Others

I’m not sure exactly where the phrase “forsaking all others” is from, might have been part of my wedding vows or the oath I took when I joined the U.S. Navy or maybe it is from my college fraternity pledge, but I have been hearing it in my head a lot recently.

When I came home from work on Friday I had with me the borrowed DVD of the movie Lucky # Slevin to watch (thanks Mark.) Also on Friday, in the mail there was a red envelope with Notes on a Scandal inside. Here it is Sunday night and neither movie has found its way into the DVD player.

Not because we weren’t in front of the TV any this weekend, we were, for a good bit of it, but because we watching more of Season 3 of TDTVS.

Ben: Bring me the man from Tallahassee.
Man leaves, and Locke and Alex exit the closet.
Locke: Is that some kind of code.
Ben: No Locke, we don’t have a code for ‘There’s a man in the closet with a gun to my daughter’s head.’ Although there clearly should be.

P.S. I do know that it came from my wedding vows…

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Lost in Hitchcock Woods

Polar Bear PitAs a recent graduate of the John Locke School of Survival I feel right at home in the woods. But when Donna and I somehow got off our mapped trail this afternoon and stumbled on this trail, I have to admit that I became a little uneasy.

For the first time in about three weeks we finally escaped the high gravity couch and took a walk in the woods. The last time we took a hike, on that same day, we watched a couple of episodes of Season 1, Disc 5 of TDTVS. Today, along with the walk, we also watched a couple episodes of Season 3, Disc 2 of TDTVS.

Papa got a new pair of shoes!

We finished the evening off with dinner out with friends. We went to our least favorite Italian restaurant, Roma Pizza. We got the polar opposite of last visit’s service, if anything our waiter was too attentive. We decided to get something besides pizza this visit, I had spaghetti with sausage and Donna had the veal parmigiana. the food was good, but not great, we’ll be sticking to the pizza from now on.

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Optional Equipment Shown

I’ve been watching a lot more television than I used to lately and the down side of this is commercials. Theodore Sturgeon was probably a little optimistic about the percentages as they pertain to TV ads, it is more like 99% are crud.

The ads always show stuff in a positive light, except for prescription medicine which have to go on and on about the possible side effects. Car commercials have some rules too, but do their best to find their way around them. If you advertise the starting price of the car, you have to show the price of what it would cost to buy the car featured in the commercial. They show this much higher price in the fine print at the bottom of the screen and it only appears for milliseconds. This price is always considerably more than the base price of the car by thousands of dollars. The current big price jump champion is the new Nissan Murano with a base price of $26,330 with a price as shown of $38,930, nearly 50% more expensive.

A way to avoid showing this greatly inflated cost is to not mention the base price of the car at all. But to be fair if you are not featuring the base model of the car in the ad, you have to place this helpful little phrase in the fine print for a few milliseconds — Optional equipment shown.

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Question Time

Hillary Clinton goes to a primary school in New York to talk about the world. After her talk she offers a question time. One little boy puts up his hand. The Senator asks him what his name is.

‘Kenneth.’

‘And what is your question, Kenneth?’

‘I have three questions:
First – whatever happened to the medical health care plan you were paid to develop during your husband’s eight years in the office as President?
Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office?
Third – whatever happened to all those things you took when you left the White House?’

Just then the bell rings for recess. Hillary Clinton informs the kids that they will continue after recess. When they resume, Hillary says, ‘Okay, where were we? Oh, that’s right, question time. Who has a question?’

A different little boy puts his hand up. Hillary points to him and asks him what his name is.

‘Larry.’

‘And what is your question, Larry?’

‘I have five questions:
First – whatever happened to the medical health care plan you were paid to develop during your husband’s eight years in the office as President?
Second – why would you run for President after your husband shamed the office?
Third – whatever happened to all those things you took when you left the White House?
Fourth – why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early?
And Fifth – what happened to Kenneth?’

Lost Out On Lost

Tonight was the February meeting of the MMC. This month it was in Augusta and the big item on the agenda was trying to figure out what to do for our 15th Anniversary dinner later this month.

The one person committee had it narrowed down to 5 different restaurants in the three different cites on 3 different nights. The haggling lasted until nearly 9:00 PM with nearly twenty differing opinions on when, where, and how much. It was as difficult to reach an agreement as it was for the SALT talks. Believe me, in the middle of it, it felt as if it was taking as long too.

By the time we got home there were less than fifteen minutes to go in tonight’s episode. I sat in front of the PC, but Donna couldn’t resist the call of the siren and headed in to watch the last bits. I’m going to wait until tomorrow and watch it online at ABC.com.

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New Bumper Sticker

Forgive me if I can’t remember which magazine it was in, the latest editions of both Automobile and Motor Trend landed on my desk this morning, but there were some photos of several near totally un-camouflaged Porsche Panameras. The four-seat, four-door sport coupe, that is supposed to be on sale next year as a 2010 model was out doing high speed testing. If they were parked along the side of the road in the pictures how did we know they were out high speed testing you ask? Because each car was sporting on both front and rear bumpers a bright yellow sticker:

Get yours here: Government Approved High Speed Testing Vehicle Bumper Sticker

Oh, yeah, IE users you should be able to change the theme back to Brian’s Red if you want to.

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