Biggest Regrets

Today's Quote That Explains Everything, Ever

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." ~ Anais Nin

Ew, That's Creepy

I hate when that happens.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

There was something really special about this holiday season, but I just can't put my finger on it.

Today's Thing

Here's today's thing you never saw, and probably never would have without the Interwebs.



This a Bolivia bug. Also called a pussy moth. No, really.

Anyway, I want one. Are these cute, or what?

It's About Time

It's about time my book made its way to a place where I can start corrupting young minds!

Oh, yeah, it's UC Berkeley. Already corrupted. Shoot.

Michael Jackson is Near Death

I was sad to this this story today. Apparently, Michael Jackson has a rare disorder, Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency (a potentially fatal afflication).

In reading more about this ailment, Wikipedia states: "People of northern European, Iberian and Saudi Arabian ancestry are at the highest risk for A1AD."

Blast! If he'd known about the higher risk for Europeans, maybe he would have stayed black.

A Visionary Idea

Here's an inspiring story about bringing glasses to the masses. (That kind of blog copy should only be written by trained marketing copywriters. Don't try it at home.)

One to Ponder

Thanks, Brandon. I'd recommend wearing asbestos pajamas on your deathbed.

Kids to Kids Adopts Another School

Kids to Kids rocks. You know the group, since I've volunteered with them for, oh, three years or something now. Wow. What a hoot so far.

Anyway, Kids to Kids adopts schools and gives kids books. At these adoption launch events, I take photos. I got to do that today, too.



I'd expect more photos of smiling kids with books soon. Oh, just deal with it.

Today's Puzzler

"Treasure troves."

Are there other kinds of troves?

Remember?

Remember when "Planet of the Apes" felt a ridiculous premise for a movie? At what point would monkeys have gotten the upper hand?

Uh, not so ridiculous now, huh? Witness the first step toward ape domination.

I'm Not Taking Your Photo, I'm Giving You a Cracker

Hey, it works.

Sometimes

Sometimes, you take a photograph, and it's a nice photo. Cute kid. Nice, simple composition, sharp enough.



But the photo doesn't really tell the whole story sometimes. Sometimes, you're in a dimly lit room, and the lighting is this ugly flourescent, and the child has had upwards of 17 pounds of sugar and won't stand or sit still, not even for one shot.

And still, you get one.

Sometimes, those are the most rewarding shots of all.

Best. Day. Ever.

If this happened to me, it would be the, well, the second best day of my life. After meeting Anne-Marie, of course. Phew. Dodged another bullet on that one.

You Wouldn't Believe the Crap People Get in the Mail

Seriously.

Anyone?

Anyone know of a playground with one of these spinny things in Las Vegas?

Where are they all?!

Day Care Valet

Another Brandon Muller original.

Stuff Your Stocking With This

Found this little gem, just in time for the holidays. I ordered four. Can't beat the $13 price tag!



Click here to check it out on Amazon.com.

Saving the Best for Last: Why?

So, today I'm browsing USA Today's Web site, and I'm scanning down the list of news stories.

* Investors scramble after Madoff is charged with $50B fraud
* Why home values may take decades to recover
* GM to temporarily close 20 plants to slash output
* White House, Treasury say they won't let automakers fail
* Fifth Georgia bank closed, 24th nationwide failure in 2008
* Gasoline pushes down retail sales and wholesale prices
* Dollar falls to 13-year low against yen
* FDIC chief sees housing pain into 2010
* Bank of America to slash 35,000 jobs over 3 years
* Foreclosure numbers tumble in November, but bad news looms
* Auto deaths down 10% so far this year

That's a lot of bad news.

A couple of things struck me as odd. First, one of the only two items on the list that weren't bad news said, "Forclosure numbers tumble." That's great news. But, then, because they couldn't just report the good news, they pulled the rug out from under us with "Foreclosure numbers tumble in November, but bad news looms."

"We gotcha! You were feeling good for a second there, weren't you? But, no! Snap! We zigged when you expected us to zag!"

The other thing that struck me as odd was that the only purely good news on the list was positioned in the very, very last slot. Auto deaths are down 10%? That's huge!

You can almost hear the editorial staff at USA Today discussing this news items. "What amazing news! Let's bury it under all the crap!" (They probably used some fancy journalistic term, though.)

I wonder why just about everyone is feeling anxiety about our world and our economy right now? What's the downside of reporting all the news, good and bad? A question as old as reportage itself, I imagine. How about if we lead with the news about foreclosure numbers tumbling and auto deaths being down? What does that do for us? Doesn't it give us an emotional launching point that's optimistic and hopeful and positive rather than a feeling of dread and angst and gloom?

We can't help but have our attitudes shaped by the information we ingest, from a variety of sources. It's garbage in, garbage out. No one's impervious to it. It sticks to you like dog poop on your shoe, and you carry it around with you. And in the case of the economy, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because fear and uncertainty and pessimism actually cause some of the bad news that's being reported.

So, I say we balance things out. For every story about the doom, we get a story about a dolphin with a prefabricated tail. For every thousand naysayers, we get an Obama. It's our responsibility to communicate this to our media overlords.

Day Without a Gay (Translation: Can of Worms)

We're dealing with a can of worms here.

I get it. Gays should miss work and participate in this "Day Without a Gay," to bring attention to their plight. I guess the plight involves having too much disposable income and impeccable taste.

Anyway, here's the tricky part. What if you just happen to call in sick that day? Wouldn't a weird kind of dilemma present itself? You'd come back to work the next day, and assuming you're not gay, even though there's nothing wrong with that, and wouldn't you feel compelled to say to everyone at work, "Uh, yeah, yesterday. Really under the weather. Took the day off to recover. That's it. Just sick. Sick day. Yep, out sick yesterday."

And, of course, the gay people in your office would be really ticked off, because you're kind of implying that you don't want people to think you're gay even though there's definitely nothing wrong with that.

"Day Without a Gay"? Interesting strategy. From the looks of things, lots of people are already participating in the "Day Without a Smart Person" campaign. That one appears to be ongoing.

I Have a Huge Bathroom

Gotta love Craigslist!

Today's Random Photo

When we see amazing images of hummingbirds in flight, we think, "Hey, I could probably do that." We would be wrong.

It Ain't a Picture of a Kid: Enjoy

!

Today, my friend Brandon sent me an e-mail containing one symbol. It was this:

!

Wow, I thought. An opportunity to learn more about this ubiquitous symbol! (I didn't think that. I thought a smaller word, but it sounds fancier to say it that way.)

My very next thought was, "Is it exclamation point or mark?" I guess both are OK.

Now this is something I didn't know:

"The exclamation point was introduced into English printing in the 1400s, and was known as the 'note of admiration' until the mid 1600s."

Talk about fancy! One can't help but feel a little lofty using the phrase "note of admiration." And I'm all about loft.

I was also surprised to learn this: "Exclamation marks can also be placed mid-sentence and function like a comma."

Wow, I never! knew that. Which! I'm pretty sure! is not proper usage.

Of everything I learned about the exclamation point/mark, this was the most alarming:

"One study has shown that women use exclamation marks more than men do."

I guess this means women do more admiring than men. Or maybe they just exclaim more than men. Yeah, no kidding.

I think I like the exclamation point when it's part of an interrobang. Don't you agree?! (An interrobang is a combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark.) I've been "banging," to use printer jargon, for years, and I didn't even know it.

I don't suppose interrobangs are all that welcome in formal writing, but to me, there's nothing quite like the one-two punch of a question mark AND an exclamation mark to give one's question the appropriate amount of curiosity AND urgency.

More exclamatory tidbits, I say!

"There is a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, spelled with two exclamation marks."

Now, that's just too cool. How could I have not come across that little gem before now?

This one's a bit more of a baffler, probably because my knowledge of math is about as extensive as my knowledge of gym.

"In mathematics, the exclamation mark represents the factorial operation. For example, 4! is 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24."

Who knew? If I had seen "4!" somewhere, I probably would have just thought someone was really enthusiastic about the number four. And who isn't, come to think of it?! You kidding?! Four?! Why, I interrobanged four times in one night back in college!

This one took me from baffled to entirely lost:

"In computing, the exclamation mark corresponds to ASCII character 33 (21 in hexadecimal)."

Oh, well. One can't know everything, or one would be God. And that job's already taken.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to learn more about this very! exciting symbol, Brandon?!

Today's Redundancy

My favorite redundancy: Evangelical Movement.

Today's Random Kid Photo

Mime, a Zoo and Bird Poop

This is somewhat remarkable.

A friend from high school wrote the other day to say that they'd performed mime with me, in a zoo, in 1979. This is remarkable because I truly can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday much less what I did close to 30 years ago. (Let's not even get into the subject of how, on God's green Earth, high school somehow took place 30 years ago.)

I wrote to another high school friend and asked if she remembered what this other friend was talking about, and she wrote, "You frequently went to the zoo to do mime. You were the geek of geeks. This one particular day you convinced some other people to join you. A bird pooped on someone when we were frozen. I don't remember who."

First, yeah, mime has kind of fallen out of fashion. I get that. But at the time, it was cool. Trust me on this one. Shields and Yarnell rocked.

Second, I did mime at a zoo?

Third, how on EARTH does one remember such intricate details of a day that (allegedly) happened nearly 30 years ago? I'm speechless. (Unrelated to the mime thing.)

What's your earliest detailed memory?

I Dislike Failing

Shoot.

I had this great idea for a photo. It would involve strapping a camera to my stomach, and flinging a kid around, and capturing the action by having someone snap the shutter remotely.

Tried, oh, 200 exposures. But I just couldn't get it. I don't know if my arms are too short, or if the kid was too heavy (kept him from flying out kind of horizontal, away from the camera). Maybe I need a wider angle lens to get this one.

I hate failing.

Then again, sometimes failures turn out OK, I guess.

Today's Movie Review

That there "Quantum of Solace." That sure is a movie. Lots of action, most of it familiar. Baffling story.

Mostly, things are just too easy for this Bond. There's nothing at stake. And the villain looks like somebody I could beat up.

I sure do miss me my "Moonraker."