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Thursday, September 26, 2002

What do you get when a favorite childhood toy becomes a killer app? Lite Brite Online, that's what!

Go waste a little work time there today; if anyone asks why you're playing while on the clock, tell 'em I said it was okay. (Link via TopFive.com)
Posted @ 9:35 AM



Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Where's the last place on the Web you'd expect to find a good laugh?* One site near the top of my list would have been Forbes.

I say "would have been" because a few moments ago I stumbled onto a nice bit of dry wit there: the Forbes Fictional Fifteen, a list of the richest made-up figures in the world. Lex Luthor, Jay Gatsby, Montgomery Burns, all the greats are there.

I'll never again doubt that the folks at Forbes have funnybones. (Link via the Superman Homepage)

* Yes, I realize I just put a big "Kick Me!" sign on my back.
Posted @ 4:48 PM



Sunday, September 22, 2002

Take a look to your left. See that list along the side? It's gonna be changing soon.

I'm in the midst of auditioning three new blogs that have recently come to my attention. If they can keep me intrigued, I'll be adding them to my daily rotation. The nominees are:
As I look to embelish my regular reading list with some new faves, I may be dropping one or two of my current dailies which have been underperforming of late.

I'm looking at you, memepool.
Posted @ 1:07 PM



Saturday, September 21, 2002

Who wants to be an American President? Evil mastermind Rupert Murdoch and his minions at the FX network are preparing to air a new reality show in the mold of this summer's inexplicably popular American Idol. The winner will be given the chance to run for President in 2004.

Finally, here's a reality series in which I'd love to compete. Sadly, I can't play. I'll be 71 days short of my thirty-fifth birthday on January 20th, 2005, just missing the Constitution's eligibility cut. Here's hoping there's a sequel.
Posted @ 10:23 AM



Thursday, September 19, 2002

The annual Banned Books Week, brought to you by the good folks at the American Library Association, starts on Saturday. Fight the forces of thought control by reading one of the embattled gems most often targeted by the small of mind.

That list contains more than a few personal favorites from childhood, including To Kill a Mockingbird, James and the Giant Peach, and one that hasn't come to mind in years, How to Eat Fried Worms. The one I'll re-read in celebration of this noble cause will be Shel Silverstein's delightfully subversive A Light in the Attic.
Posted @ 9:21 PM



Monday, September 16, 2002

I've been trying to better myself of late, stretching my interests into more challenging, adult areas. Given my strong pop-culture predilections, I don't know how successful I'm going to be.

Last night is an excellent example. As a civilized capstone to the weekend, I spent about an hour delving into Marcel Proust's masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. The first hundred pages of the book have been a bit of a chore, but I think it's finally hooking me. The pages flew quickly and satisfyingly by in this most recent session. To enhance the experience, I was listening to a Charlie Parker CD as I read. Cool stuff. I may just get into jazz yet.

The CD ended just as I reached a good stopping point in the book. Not yet tired, I looked for something else to occupy me for a while. There were so many choices. Should I get to those New Yorkers I've been meaning to check out? Peruse the Sunday op-ed pages? Maybe put a little classical on the radio while doing some dishes?

Of course not. Rather than any of those worthwhile pursuits, I flipped on the TiVo and watched an old episode of Superfriends. Not even the new Justice League I had sitting there; I could almost make a case for the worth of viewing that. Nope, just an old Superfriends that I've seen maybe a fifty times in the last twenty-five years.

What does this say about me? Am I charmingly off-beat? A hopeless manchild? Just plain goofy? I have an overwhelming feeling last night's activities indicate something profound about my personality. I just can't figure out what.

Ah well, that's enough navel-gazing for one day. I gotta go see if Superman and the gang are able to thwart the Legion of Doom's latest nefarious scheme.
Posted @ 1:07 PM



Saturday, September 14, 2002

Let's see... no posts in almost a week... average post is about 200 words... I'd like to post five days a week... carry the one... yeah, a picture ought to fit the bill.

Today we have the first in what promises to be a sporadic series of pics I've been meaning to share with you good people all summer. We start with a visual follow-up to Independence Day's flag cake entry.



Here we see the finished product, presented to us by the lovely, talented and oft-mentioned Jen. The cake was a big hit, and gave a sweet kick to a most patriotic and tasty Fourth.
Posted @ 7:48 PM



Sunday, September 08, 2002

After seeing Nike's latest big-time ad, "The Orchestra Warmup," a couple of times during NFL pregame shows this morning, I was all set to blog in praise of it today.

Good thing I decided to do the rounds of my favorite sites first, catching up with them after more than a week of woeful neglect on my part. Turns out Steve shares my sentiments, and since he expresses them more artfully than I would have, I bow to him on this one.

This also serves to reinforce one of the bedrock principles of reality in this otherwise uncertain world: The Onion gets it right more often than any other news source.
Posted @ 12:20 PM



Saturday, September 07, 2002

A couple of quick follow-ups to yesterday's multipost:

  • If you just can't wait to find out how my fantasy football team is doing, you can keep up with the Greywings and the rest of my league on our Yahoo public page.

  • Driving home about 7 last night, I found myself behind a car with a bumper sticker mocking the whole OBX thing. It read "OuterBanxious." Wish I'd thought of it.
Posted @ 1:58 PM



Friday, September 06, 2002

With the new job, internet time and writing time have been practically non-existent the last week. This unexpected hiatus has caused a backlog of Deep Thoughts and brain farts to pile up in my mind. I leave it to you to discern which is which.



From the very first time I saw one, I've hated those faux-European oval stickers that folks slap on their cars. In Europe they have a purpose, designating the car's country of origin; here they're just pretentious and annoying. The most prevalent offender in this region of the country is the one representing North Carolina's Outer Banks, a favorite vacation spot for, it would seem, just about everybody who owns an oversized SUV.

The abbreviation used to condense "Outer Banks" down to a workable size is, oddly, "OBX." It took me no time to figure out what that meant to me, but it's taken over five years to boil my feelings about the symbol down precisely to a similarly pithy few words:

You can't spell "obnoxious" without OBX.

Trite? Perhaps. But trust me, it will serve me well for years to come.



I used to pride myself on being good in a crisis. When chaos threatens to envelop one and all, I remain cool-headed and in control. A really nasty crisis invigorates me, awakens my Inner Leader, makes me a "take charge" kind of guy.

But I'm not just a good emergency leader. If someone else steps up and starts calling the shots, I can be a great follower, too. I don't waste any time arguing, I jump, because there's no time to waste and serious consequences are in the offing if I hesitate. In a crisis, the important thing is to do something, anything, and sort out the details later.

This week, I was ruminating on my steadily decreasing opinion of President Bush since the high he reached in my esteem after the September 11th attacks. In those first horrible, nightmarish days, Bush did exactly what the country, what I, needed him to do. He was determined, he was strong for us, he said what he had to say, and he helped gets us through the crisis. I still didn't agree with or like the man, but I respected him more.

I also felt a tiny spark of kinship for him. Here was someone else who was at his best in a crisis. Maybe he was a better man than I thought him to be, after all.

The ensuing months have belied those positive views. Increasingly, he looks like the Bush of old, the man whose policies I abhor and whose motives I must question. I heard someone on the radio this week talking about the "transformation" of Bush since the attacks, and I thought to myself how strained and ludicrous the assertion sounded. This was no new man. He'd done well when he had to, when there was no other option but to do what had to be done. Anybody can do that, I realized.

Anybody can do that.

I don't think I'll be bragging anymore about how good I am in a crisis.



Caught without a book at bedtime on Tuesday, I grabbed my well-read copy of Dave Barry Slept Here and settled in for a few laughs. It's been at least a decade since I agreed with the assertion made by many that Barry is today's Mark Twain and the funniest man in America, but his old stuff is still hilarious.

Or so I thought. I got about ten pages into the book, but there was nary a laugh to be found. I guess I've been wrong this whole time. Barry didn't get less funny; I just got tired of his extremely formulaic writing style.



Praise be to the gods of autumn, the NFL is back! To deepen my enjoyment and (more importantly) knowledge of the sport, I joined a fantasy football league this season, after many years of wanting to do so. It's an all-beginners league, so it shouldn't be too competitive, which is a good thing. I'm looking at this as a fun warm-up for next season, when I plan to start a league of my own with a few other similarly-inclined friends.

I'll be posting about it plenty throughout the season, bitching and bragging as appropriate. Let's start off with some introductions. Here are your 2002 Greywings!

Current starters:
Brett Favre - QB, Green Bay
Plaxico Burress - WR, Pittsburgh
Kevin Johnson - WR, Cleveland
Eric Moulds - WR, Buffalo
Shaun Alexander - RB, Seattle
Eddie George - RB, Tennessee
Marcus Pollard - TE, Indianapolis
Paul Edinger - K, Chicago
Green Bay Packers - Defense

On the bench:
Brad Johnson - QB, Tampa Bay
Jacquez Green - WR, Washington
J.J. Stokes - WR, San Francisco
Kevan Barlow - RB, San Francisco
Robert Holcombe - RB, Tennessee
Stephen Alexander - TE, San Diego
Go 'Wings!
Posted @ 9:49 AM



 


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