Dick + Anna '64 (Mad Men 403)

Don painting over a water-stained wall in Anna’s house is a device used in “The Good News” to advance the storyline of his visit to California and (apparently) close that chapter of his life. Ostensibly, the discoloration is the result of a leaky roof. Anna tells Don that she has fixed the roof but not gotten around to removing the stain.

The morning after finding out that Anna is dying, Don starts to paint over the stain. Anna correctly points out that covering just that small corner, rather than the entire room, with fresh paint isn’t really going to solve the problem (the newer paint won't completely match). However, the act serves both as a metaphor for Don’s feelings of helplessness in dealing with Anna’s illness as well his coming to terms (albeit perhaps temporarily) with his former identity

Full post at Basket of Kisses...
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Maalox Moment (Mad Men 402)

There's a lot of discussion regarding Lee Garner, Jr.'s shameless bullying of Roger Sterling in "Christmas Comes But Once a Year." But I'll add my own two cents anyway. Roger strongly encourages Joan to wear her sexy red dress with "the bow on the back" because he thinks it will appease S-C-D-P's biggest account. So, there's poetic justice later when Lee forces ROGER to put on a red outfit.

And am I the only one who cringed a little when Joan tells Roger to wipe his mouth after an overly submissive phone conversation with Lee Garner Jr? Instead of kissing his rear end, I got the distinct impression that Roger serviced a different portion of the Lucky Strike heir's anatomy.

On the other hand, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes Maalox is just an antacid.

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You Get What You Pay For: Paid Search Marketing

According to a study by DoubleClick, 41 percent of US customers used search engines to research a purchase. Only 10 percent used a print ad and 9 percent a TV ad. So, effectively using search engines is clearly an important element of modern product marketing.

Simple free search engine listings (also known as "organic rankings") can take a long while to percolate and generate the desired web traffic.

Paid search marketing, such as pay per click (PPC) or cost per click (CPC) advertising, is a more proactive approach to driving customers to websites. It leverages the three major paid search programs; Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter. Typically, queries entered into the “big three” search engines yield a variety of results including: articles, websites and relevant documents along with so-called “sponsored links” placed at various places on the page.

A paid search advertising program lets businesses bid on certain key phrases or create targeted ads which yield more favorable search results and increase the likelihood that customers will click over to a given website.

CHA-CHING!
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Uh, Never Mind

Make of this what you will, but the BP "disaster" may be turning into another "killer bees" story.

A June 2, 2010 New York Times editorial said, "The spill, the worst in United States history and growing more damaging by the day, cries out for accountability and appropriate punishment."

Today, the New York Times reports:

U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk

WASHINGTON — The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.

I'm just saying...
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Vertigo (Mad Men 402)

When Mad Men’s promo poster was released in June, there was much speculation about what it may have been hinting at for Season 4. For instance, TV Guide noted that the image could represent Don Draper’s fresh start as a single man in a new ad agency. After Don embraced the role of de facto figurehead for S-C-D-P at the end of “Public Relations,” I thought the poster was highlighting the fact that the fledgling company had pinned all its hopes on HIM. I realize it’s still too early to predict anything with certainty, but after watching “Christmas Comes But Once a Year,” I’m struck by notion that the poster might actually foreshawdow a Season 4 storyline about Don Draper standing on the precipice of an emotional abyss. Allison’s exclamation that she “feels dizzy” while succumbing to Don’s sexual advances, evoked in my mind a similar motif developed in another story about a man on a ledge, Alfred Hitchcock’s "Vertigo."

Full post at Basket of Kisses...
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This Weekend's OTHER Wedding

In case you missed it...



From Geekosystem:

Today Is Lisa Simpson’s Wedding Day

Yesterday, someone famous got married, and it was supposedly a pretty big deal. But today marks the date of a wedding that we’ve been anticipating for the past 15 years: Lisa Simpson’s, as foretold in Simpsons Season 6.

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Transparency (Mad Men 401)

One of the things that caught my eye about SCDP’s new office layout, as unveiled in “Public Relations,” was the new glass conference room. Unlike other work areas that are shielded from view by solid or opaque walls, the conference room is a virtual fishbowl surrounded by clear windows. Intentionally or not, this new production design element corresponds neatly with one of the narratives developed in the episode.

In the very first scene, Don doesn’t know how to answer the Advertising Age reporter’s question: “Who is Don Draper?” Ironically he stumbles because the Don the “ad man” doesn’t know how to communicate with members of the press. The shorthand employed by the reporter for his notes suggests that the interview is taking place in a language Don hasn’t mastered. But he will. And it's the Jantzens, the major client depicted in “Public Relations,” who help him.

...Full Post at Basket of Kisses
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And They Have a Plan...

"Twelve Cylon models. Seven are known. Four live in secret. One will be revealed."

From PopSci:

An Order of Seven Global Cyber-Guardians Now Hold Keys to the Internet

...it turns out there are now seven individuals out there holding keys to the Internet. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic cyber attack, these members of a “chain of trust” will be responsible for rebooting the Web.

...A minimum of five of the seven keyholders – one each from Britain, the U.S., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China, and the Czech Republic – would have to converge at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the system and connect
eveything once again.

... The keys are actually smartcards that each contain parts of the DNSSEC root key, which could be thought of as the master key to the whole scheme.

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Projections (Mad Men 401)

In "Public Relations," (Mad Men's Season 4 opener) a Glo-Coat advertisement brings Don Draper notoriety amongst his marketing peers. He explains to an Advertising Age reporter that his approach is to hook the viewer with a movie-like narrative so that they are receptive to the product information.

However, I’d argue that whether he realizes or not, Don Draper’s inspiration for the ad are the recent events in his very own life.

...Full Post at Basket of Kisses
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Barrel O' Fun

I feel like a monkey's uncle for my sad, sad entry in The New Yorker's "Cartoon Caption" contest (#247).



My wooden submission was:

It just hasn't been the same since they went to the metric system.

The winners were a mixed bag:

• Personally, I think Prozac is a lot easier. - er, um, no
  


• The monkeys themselves should come in three to six weeks. - mine was just as good (bad)
  
  
• They'd probably be more fun if the barrel had air holes. - we have a winner (I guess)

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Comical Con

He's "not a flag-waver." He just happens to wear a costume that looks exactly like an American flag. But, I repeat, he's "not a flag-waver." Well, the shield he waves does evoke an American flag. But he's "not a flag-waver." And yes, he calls himself "Captain AMERICA." But he's not...oh, never mind!

From the Los Angeles Times Blog:

COMIC-CON 2010: 'Captain America' director has different spin on hero: 'He's not a flag-waver'

The director of "Captain America: The First Avenger," the 2011 summer blockbuster that will coincide with the character's 70th anniversary, says the screen version of the hero will be true to his roots -- up to a certain point.

"We're sort of putting a slightly different spin on Steve Rogers," said Joe Johnston, whose past directing credits include "Jurassic Park III" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." He's a guy that wants to serve his country, but he's not a flag-waver. We're reinterpreting, sort of, what the comic book version of Steve Rogers was."

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Has HE Driven a Ford Lately?

Harry Reid on the auto bailout:

Isn't it a good thing today in America that we have an automobile manufacturing sector? If it had been up to them [Republicans], General Motors would be gone. If it were up to them, Ford Motor Company would probably be gone. Chrysler definitely would be gone.

There's only one small problem with that statement: Ford Motor Company didn't get (or need) ANY bailout money.


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People in Glass Houses

I love the smell of petard hoisting in the morning.

It turns out that Keith Olbermann and others were wrong to blame Fox News for the Sherrod fiasco. Olbermann even cut his vacation short to come in and take a cheap shot at the network that's eating his lunch.

Part of Olbermann's diatribe included:

What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist -- even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.

However, as Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post, it's Olbermann who needs to get HIS facts straight:

...for all the chatter -- some of it from Sherrod herself -- that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn't touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O'Reilly. After a news meeting Monday afternoon, an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: "Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right."

...Ironically, [Glenn] Beck defended Sherrod on Tuesday, saying that "context matters" and he would have objected if someone had shown a video of him at an AA meeting saying he used to pass out from drinking but omitting the part where he says he found Jesus and gave up alcohol.

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Eye of the Beholder

Here are my possible leads for the Shirley Sherrod fiasco depending upon the editorial persective of the news organization reporting it:

• "NAACP Audience Cheers USDA Worker's Admission of Racial Bias Against White Farmer" - Fox News
  


• "Brietbart/Fox News Gin Up Controversy with Selective Editing of NAACP Speech" - MSNBC
  


• "Fearful of November Landslide, Obama Adminstration Acts Hastily to Get Past Sherrod Remarks" - CNN
  


• "Nice Colored Lady Gets Back Plum Government Job" - Ex-Kleagle Times (Robert Byrd's Senate Newsletter)

From Reuters:

Analysis: Race issues beset Obama's "post-racial" presidency

...Division and tension between black and white Americans has cropped up repeatedly over Obama's 18 months in office, hurting his popularity and distracting from his political agenda.

The issue surfaced this week when the Agriculture Department pushed a black official to resign after allegations she discriminated against a white farmer, only to apologize a day later for acting too quickly and without the facts.

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Bored Room

I didn't get a charge out of the results of the 246th New Yorker "Cartoon Caption" contest.

My entry was:

"You'll find that our concept of a 'golden parachute' is very unique for this industry."

Here are the winners:

• "And this is our new incentive plan." - that one is okay, but mine was better
  


• "Or we go to Plan B and slip something in his coffee." - how did THAT get in the final three?
  


• "Your father's last wish was for you to succeed him as chairman." - I get the joke, but it just ain't funny

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Overwrought

Frank Rich offers up yet another simplistic and strained analogy written on too much caffeine.

His argument holds about as much water as suggesting that Al Gore's masseuse assault incident signals the death knell for the global warming movement.

From The New York Times:

The Good News About Mel Gibson

The reckoning has arrived for the creator of “The Passion,” whose self-destruction parallels the decline of the Christian right.

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Team Gitmo

There's gotta be something in the Geneva Convention about this.

I'm really gonna have to read one of these books someday just to figure out what all the hoopla is about.

From Fox News: (bold added)

Gitmo Detainees Serve Time By Playing Games, Talking to Family on Skype, Taking Classes

While the 181 men being held in the prison wait to learn their fates after the administration fell through on its January 2010 deadline to move them out, 90 percent now live in a communal environment that includes Skype, the online video chat service, and access to a 17,000-book library.

That's up from 40 percent of detainees a year ago.

The "Twilight" series, a hit among so-called "tweens," is also popular with detainees, the camp's "librarian" said.

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A New Direction?

I wonder if during those "two years of research" anyone involved with the decision pointed out what "the Y" is a euphemism for. It certainly is "more inviting."

From The USA Today:

YMCA shortens name, now known only as 'the Y'

The YMCA is now known officially as just "the Y."

The Chicago-based U.S. non-profit announced Monday that it is changing both its logo and name to "the Y," marking its first branding change in 43 years. The switch comes after more than two years of research indicated many people don't understand what the group does. Officials with the Y say they hope the new logo will be more inviting.

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What the Font?

Nothing says "I'm really pissed off" like a typeface used in cartoon talk bubbles.

From The Wall Street Journal:

LeBron and the Revenge of Comic Sans

Lost in the vitriol over the letter Dan Gilbert wrote to Cleveland Cavaliers fans Thursday night is the counter-vitriol from tech geeks about the type of font he used — the dreaded Comic Sans.

Gilbert, the Cavaliers’ majority owner, wrote an angry letter on the team’s website after LeBron James’s nationally televised announcement that he was leaving the team. It cited what he called James’s “cowardly betrayal” of the team and called the TV event a “narcissistic, self-promotional build-up.”

The open letter from Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert to Cleveland fans, written in Comic Sans.For whatever reason, all 421 words of the screed were written in the less-than-intimidating Comic Sans font. This fact is already on the Comic Sans Wikipedia page and it was all over Twitter shortly after Gilbert’s letter was published. A Tweet from Jsmooth995 decried Gilbert’s choice, saying “nobody who posts official statements in Comic Sans MS should be running an NBA team.”

Read more!

The OTHER Mistake by the Lake

A perfect use for this song from the boys at Tabloid T-Shirts:


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It's a Cookbook!!

This is probably just another Illuminati trick to throw us off the scent.

From RedOrbit:

Cyber Command Logo Has A Secret

"9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a" is the coded message found inscribed in the logo of the Pentagon’s newly created US Cyber Command, causing a stir among bloggers and curious techies raring to crack the obscure message.

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Redeemed: Elmer Gantry

On the 50th anniversary of its release, many of the same issues addressed in Elmer Gantry, Richard Brooks’ 1960 adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, are very much a part of the current debate between aggressive people of faith and the more secularly oriented segments of society. Front and center in the narrative is a display of Christian organization leaders engaging in shameless self-promotion, bitter turf battles, frenzied attempts to influence public policy and hypocrisy in the conduct of their personal lives which seem at odds with the person for whom their dogma is named. However, I think it’s interesting to note that unlike the works of celebrated contemporary atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, Elmer Gantry ultimately honors the underlying religious principles that most of the characters observe only in the breach.

Full post at Edward Copeland on Film
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Space: The 2nd Most Important Frontier

Oh yeah, and that mission to Mars thing too...

From Fox News:

NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations With Muslim World

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.

Read more!

Exchange Email Management: Killing The Messenger

Last week I got so many emails from companies inviting me to use their services to submit "Oil Spill Compensation" claims, that I considered submitting a claim for the time spent having to delete "Oil Spill Compensation" spam.

I don't really want or have to read EVERY piece of email that comes in. And quite frankly a lot of the messages that constantly keep filling up my inbox get to be an annoying distraction. So now I use a tool that offers dynamic exchange email management which lets me control incoming email and "automagically" redirect junk to a specified location instead of mixing it all in with the "good" messages. Through the use of filters, I can configure email rules and even send spam directly into the trash (instead of taking up time having to read and delete it).

Now if I could only do something about Flash pop-ups!
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Can You Hear Me Now

It was funny watching 4G users attempting to follow Apple's original antenna "fix." This involved awkwardly cradling the iPhone in their hand (sorta like a tripod) while making calls. HA!

From NBC Bay Area:

Apple's iPhone Mea Culpa: We're 'Totally Wrong'

For two weeks, Apple dismissed rumors of a faulty antenna in the new iPhone 4 as nothing more than scuttlebutt. Any phone has these problems, Apple officials said. Buy a case to fix it.

Friday, Apple came clean: The antenna works just fine. But the software that displays signal strenth doesn't. The company has been using a faulty formula to determine signal strength in its phones for years.

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong," Apple said in a letter from two executives posted on its website Friday morning.

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Life Imitates Art

"...it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means 'friendship'." ~ Mayor Larry Vaughn

From Comcast.net:

Boaters told to be alert for sharks off Northeast

As the summer tourist season ramps up, the Coast Guard told recreational boaters and paddlers Friday to keep an eye out for predatory sharks in the ocean waters off the Northeast, warning that the creatures could easily capsize a small boat or kayak.

The shark advisory, issued by the U.S. Coast Guard district that covers waters from Maine to New Jersey, came several days after the crew of a tuna boat caught and later released a 7-foot juvenile great white shark in the Stellwagen Bank fishing area, about 20 miles off Massachusetts.

Several great white sharks were spotted off Cape Cod last summer, and experts believe more will return this summer, attracted by the exploding local population of seals, a favorite shark food.

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Uniformity

A continuing theme presented in Mad Men is how people deal with the various roles society and happenstance have cast them in. Dick Whitman didn't like his lot in life. So, when the opportunity presented itself, he shed that identity and put on the Don Draper persona. While other characters haven't reacted so drastically, they are often equally conflicted by their assigned roles. This idea is often manifested by what they wear.

For instance, Season 2’s "Maidenform," involved a storyline where the Sterling-Cooper creative team established two distinct types of bra customers which they categorized as : "Jackie Kennedy" (black bra) and "Marilyn Monroe" (white bra).

This motif is even more apparent in Season 3 and demonstrated by the repeated use of uniforms and costumes throughout many of the episodes as I've outlined below.

...Full Post at Basket of Kisses.

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One For the Road

Here's my last rant on the recent death of Robert "the conscience of the Senate" Byrd and all the fawning over the ex-Klansman which ensued.

Andrew Sullivan's comments caught my eye:

Speak no ill of the dead? Well, let me simply say that the racist, populist, larcenous bigot of a Senator - a man who robbed the American tax-payer to pave his state with baubles and bribes - is not going to be much mourned in these parts.

And John Howting's piece in Human Events sums up my frustration quite succinctly:

Good Riddance, Robert Byrd

Filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act for over 14 hours straight. To this day, the American left vilifies Sen. Barry Goldwater for voting against this legislation but where is criticism of Byrd? Goldwater had a strong pro-civil rights record coming out of the 1950s that included voting for civil rights legislation and working with the Arizona NAACP to desegregate Arizona’s public schools. Goldwater voted against the 1964 Act only because he believed that Title II was not within Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce and was also an abridgement of the 10th Amendment.

Robert Byrd did not have the same civil rights record, far from it he was a Klansman. And, Byrd was never able to make a legitimate argument that he rejected the 1964 Act on constitutional grounds alone because while he filibustered the bill he quoted The Mind of Primitive Man by Frank Boaz. He cited Boaz’s study which concluded that the white man’s brain weighed more than the black man’s brain and therefore the white man is smarter. He also insisted that the writers of the Declaration of Independence did not intend for their words to be taken literally because they must have understood that all men are not created equal ...that the darker man is clearly inferior.

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A Real Crock!

Well, it looks like 1 out of 3 for the 244th New Yorker "Cartoon Caption Contest."


I think my timely entry deserved to be in the finals:

"I hate to admit it, but this iCroc is all marketing hype."

Here are the actual winners:

• "I feel a vibration. Can you call my cell phone again?" - Actually, that's pretty good.
  


• "These executive desk toys are becoming a nuisance." - Are they picking winners out of hat now?
  
  
• "Cancel my lunch date and get me a six-foot baguette." - Oh, I get it, he's going to eat the crocodile ...ha ha ha (sarcastic laugh)

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A Tale of Two Dixiecrats

I hate to kick a guy when he's down, but Robert Byrd has always been a hot button of mine. As usual, notice how this one sentence is buried in the last paragraph: "A former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Byrd later became a champion of civil rights."

For the life of me, I'll never get how Byrd, a former Klan RECRUITER, got a free pass all his life for those activities, while Strom Thurmond who, for all his faults (and he had many), was NEVER in the Klan and actually fought against their violent activities. Yet, HE, not Byrd, is the one progressives still like to hold up as their poster boy for racism.

Rant over.

From MSNBC:

Sen. Byrd, 92, hospitalized; condition called 'seriously ill'

Longest serving U.S. lawmaker was first elected in 1952

Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress, is "seriously ill" and has been hospitalized, a spokesman for the West Virginia lawmaker said Sunday.

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The Other Kind of Defibrillation

An 86-year-old bedridden grandma took an "aggressive posture?" Seriously?

From Courthouse News Service:

Police Said to Taze Grandmother

Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, "Don't Taze my granny!" an El Reno police officer told another cop to "Taser her!" and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," according to the complaint.

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Optimizing Web Searches: Needle Meet Haystack

The Holy Grail of web marketers is to somehow find a way to get their site “ranked high” in search engines results. And by “high,” people usually mean being listed in the top three dozen results for a particular search (hopefully, within the top ten). Since the GREAT majority of users don’t look past the third page in any given search, anything short of that is a waste of time.

Ensuring that a site gets the desired search result requires an understanding of what those search engines are looking for. Site administrators used to try to “trick” search engine algorithms with tactics such as repeating words at the code level to get ranked higher. Nowadays, most search sites are smart enough to realize when these types of games are being played and may actually rank the offending sites lower or NOT AT ALL.

The real trick is figuring out what key words the average member of a web site’s target audience would typically enter when running a search and somehow incorporating terms those into the content of the web site itself. That’s easier said than done.

Search Engine People, an Internet marketing company that offers search engine optimization (SEO) services, uses a number of strategies to help their clients get ranked higher. For instance, they run predictive queries to determine the level of search traffic and then go after terms that have sufficient search volume. Along with that, they evaluate the conversion potential for the level of search traffic that is generated. High quality traffic is MORE important than simple quantity.

The other aspect of getting a site ranked higher is the type of content on that site. Quality content is one of the fundamental KEYS to attracting links from other sites which in turn secures superior search engine rankings. This is the only strategy condoned by Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Also, with the advent of Universal Search, many types of content now exist, and provide opportunities to rank. Some opportunities are: text content, images/picture, videos, user ratings and reviews, user generated content, and press releases/news.

If done properly, good content will increase search engine rankings as well as establish a web site as an authoritative source of information on a given topic.

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The Vuvuzela is Verboten

My sentiments exactly.

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Edith Shain RIP

From MSNBC:

Nurse in V-J Day kiss photo dies

A nurse famously photographed being kissed by an American sailor in New York's Times Square in 1945 to celebrate the end of World War Two has died at the age of 91, her family said on Tuesday.

The V-J Day picture of the white-clad Edith Shain by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.

The identity of the nurse in the photograph was not known until the late 1970s when Shain wrote to the photographer saying that she was the woman in the picture taken on August 14 at a time when she had been working at Doctor's Hospital in New York City.

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Phoney

I wish I hadn't neglected to submit my entry in The New Yorker's "Cartoon Contest" #243. I know I wouldn't have won, but I could have complained with more zeal.



My idea was:

"It's for you."

I was sure someone else got that in before me and made it to the top three. Instead, the "winners" were:

• "That was the wakeup call from Hell." - huh?
  
  
• "Terrormarketer." - groaaaaaaaan
  
  
• "I think the collection agency is getting serious." - really?

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The Color Green

Revisiting my comments about past Mad Men episodes is often a cringe worthy exercise. Like chapters in a book, each episode is part of a collective whole. It’s easy to over emphasize many individual plot trees that ultimately turn out to be of minor significance in the forest of Season 3. That said, one motif I continuously harped on was the juxtaposition of the colors blue and green. I saw many examples as having a deliberate symbolic importance rather being simple arbitrary production design decisions. Specifically, blue seemed to represent traditional social mores and institutions in existence at the start of the sixties which, like the fall of Rome Gene reads about, give way in Season 3 and force the character to face change in their lives. This is often depicted by the use of green tones.

I received a range of feedback on this from some who thought that I “may have a point” to others who found me being “overwrought” in my analysis.

Now that I’ve had a time to fully digest and reflect on Season 3, I am more certain than ever in the merits of this read. So, forgive me if I take the time to yet again lay out my case for this interpretation. In doing so, I have selectively pulled relevent content from my recaps of the last thirteen episodes.

I realize that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and not EVERY use of either color applies equally. But, I’m still convinced that a definite pattern can be discerned.

...Full Post at Basket of Kisses.

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Definition of Irony

If and when the current administration's Department of Justice prosecutes BP for the Gulf oil spill, expect the current administration's Department of the Interior to be called in as a defense witness. BP was a finalist for the 2010 "SAFETY Award for Excellence" which recognizes "outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance by the offshore oil and gas industry."

The announcement of the winner was postponed to an as of yet undetermined date.

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Like Selling Ice to Eskimos

Here's a new definition for genius: selling running shows to consumers in the ever-growing baref00t jogging market.

Vibram Five Fingers is the most interesting/unusual looking in this new category of athletic gear.

The typical human foot is an anatomical marvel of evolution with 26 bones, 33 joints, 20 muscles, and hundreds of sensory receptors, tendons and ligaments. Like the rest of the body, to keep our feet healthy, they need to be stimulated and exercised.

That’s why we recommend wearing FiveFingers for exercise, play, and for fun. Stimulating the muscles in your feet and lower legs will not only make you stronger and healthier, it improves your balance, agility and proprioception.

Solar flashlight anyone?
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Original Teen Angst

Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" came up in conversation while celebrating my own daughter's 17th birthday. I had forgotten how impressive a song it is as nine stanzas are worked into a complicated melody.

And has there ever been written a more profound lyric than this?

We all play the game, and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire

Light years ahead of today's Taylor Swifts and Lady GaGas.


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Some Things Never Change

A very observant Peter Sciretta posts in Slashfilm.com about the "Wilhem Scream" of props.

Look close and you may notice the same newspaper showing up over and over again in a number of television shows and films. Sciretta postulates that "it was created as a royalty free prop for television shows. Somewhere along the line, the prop became a reoccurring gag between propmasters."

Shots of Ed O'Neill holding the prop in "Married With Children" and then years later in "Modern Family" make a nice set of bookends for the piece.




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LIFT-OFF!

Video Highlights From SpaceX website

From CNet News:

Falcon 9 rockets into space in dramatic maiden flight

Powered by 10 engines and the vision of an Internet entrepreneur, an untried Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Friday and successfully boosted a dummy payload into orbit on a maiden voyage intended to help pave the way for commercial missions to the International Space Station.

In a major milestone for the commercial launch industry, the two-stage Falcon 9's nine first-stage Merlin engines, fueled by liquid oxygen and RP-1 kerosene rocket fuel, roared to life at 2:45 p.m. EDT.

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King of the World

Mock James Cameron's display of smug, self-importance if you will. When we're attacked by killer robots from the future, you won't be laughing!

From Reuters:

Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer

Film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron said on Wednesday that BP Plc turned down his offer to help combat the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron said at the All Things Digital technology conference.

Cameron, the director of "Avatar" and "Titanic," has worked extensively with robot submarines and is considered an expert in undersea filming. He did not say explicitly who he meant when he referred to "those morons."

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The Power of Christ Compels Her

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confusingly expounds on the importance of the "word" in her life.



Pelosi never REALLY explains what she means by "word." Could THIS be it?


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Pot Meet Kettle

Andrew Sullivan called Peggy Noonan "unhinged" for her Wall Street Journal piece taking the Obama administration to task over their handling of the BP oil spill. Frankly anyone (like Sullivan) who is still spreading the rumor about Trig Palin being Sarah Palin's illegitimate grandchild shouldn't be calling anyone else "unhinged."

But, I digress...

After cherry picking one sentence out of Noonan's piece, Sullivan characterizes it way:

The premise of Noonan's moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand.

Bullshit. Sullivan is the one who sounds moronic by pushing his own "tangle of prejudices and feelings wrapped up in hyperbole." I read her column and Noonan's premise is clearly NOT what Sullivan describes.

Noonan says (bold added):

...I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs.

Her point, in other words, is that the federal government can't solve EVERY problem. And, after getting elected promising otherwise, Obama is being hoisted on his own petard. Reasonable people can disagree with Noonan's assessment. But, she's hardly over-the-top as Sullivan suggests.

FWIW, in response to an email he received criticizing Obama's slowness in organizing a clean-up, Sullivan says:

My reader has a point. Not being glued to cable, I wasn't thinking of the clean-up. But I need to look into it further before I concede the point.

He doesn't have an opinion because he's not "glued to cable?" Sounds more like Sullivan is the unhinged one.
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Step 1: Come Up With a Better Name for Plan

If this fails, BP is going to try using golf balls and scraps of rubber tires to clog the leak (I'm totally serious).

From USA Today:

BP starts 'top kill' plan

British energy giant BP said in a news release Wednesday that the "top kill" maneuver to try to stop the gushing oil from a rig in the Gulf has started, but the move has never been tried before, and company officials say it could be a couple of days before they know whether it is working.

Engineers will try to pump enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well and plan to follow up the mud with cement they hope will permanently seal the well.

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Shear Nonsense

The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest (#240) left me feeling clipped.

I actually liked mine best:

"Norm, I left another message with the pharmacist about your Cialis dosage."

The winners, on the other hand, tried too hard (pun intended):

• "That's it. I'm returning those narciscissors today!" - ha ha, what a cut-up (NOT)
  


• "Keep going—it's starting to turn me on." - eh
  


• "I wish you’d go back to doing self-portraits." - isn't that what he is doing?

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Get Outta There

They left out Kirk's famous "Let's get the hell out of here" from "The City on the Edge of Forever," but a pretty neat compilation nonetheless.

(H/T The Hot Blog)

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Cosa Nancy

I'm about a third of the way through 2006's "The Godfather's Revenge" -- Mark Winegardner's continuation of Mario Puzo's famous saga. The novel is set between the events depicted in "The Godfather II" and "III."

I'm not quite sold on it yet. There have already been two or three references to oranges and, frankly, the motif is getting tired.

But, Winegardner does throw in neat bits like a scene with the Johnny Fontane character and his daughter. While marching in a Columbus Day parade, the daughter complains about her feet hurting from the high-heel boots she's wearing. If Fontane is meant to be Frank Sinatra, then his daughter is Nancy Sinatra. Thus, it's not too far fetched to suggest that Winegardner is making a sly reference to her big hit song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." Only, in this case, they're not.
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Rut Roh!!!

I'll have the "Alan Shepard" with fries.

From The Telegraph (UK):

Dog on the menu for Chinese astronauts

China's first man in space has said that Chinese astronauts eat dog meat to keep their strength up as they orbit around the earth.

Yang Liwei, the 44-year-old military pilot who commanded the Shenzhou Five mission in 2003, revealed the menu on-board the spacecraft in his autobiography, The Nine Levels between Heaven and Earth.

...He listed a menu including braised chicken, steamed fish and dog meat from Huajiang county in Guangdong, which is famed for its nutritional benefits in China.

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Lost and Found and Lost

The most inspirational video on YouTube AND a spirited rebuttal both done as palindromes. Expect to see more and more of these as they replace the "bible code" and sudoku as the next BIG thing in word play fun.

Lost Generation:


Lost Generation Sucks:

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Inventive?

The New Yorkers 238th "Cartoon Caption Content" didn't light my fire.

While my entry may have been fair, it was culturally current:

"This would be much more exciting in 3-D."

The winners, as usual IMHO, weren't all that better:

• I told you the matinée wouldn't be crowded. - I have reservations about this one
  


• And I have him booked right through the Iron Age. - check please
  


• Before we got fire, we used to talk to each other. - doesn't do a thing for me...which means it will win

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Lest We Forget

Today is the 65th anniversary of the Allies victory in Europe.

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The Name Game

Since Mad Men and Breaking Bad debuted on AMC, I’ve been struck by the alliterative nature of their respective show titles.

Well, nothing succeeds like success. So, I’m pitching ideas for other ”original” series AMC could add to their programming portfolio that use similar two word alliterative titles. To make it REALLY challenging, I made a rule that the word ending in “ad” could have ONLY three letters.

Sigh. Try as I might, I could only come up with 17 out of 24. Feel free to help.

Anecdotally Aad: Set in Amsterdam, this show follows "legal" drug dealer Aad Derksen as he finds himself more involved with the lives of his clients than he wants to be. Aad narrates each episode.

CAD Con: CADTroics, a corrupt defense contractor specializing in a “computer aided design” based weapons prototyping system wheels and deals with elected officials, military officers, and lobbyists as they peddle their own high-tech version of the “$500 Pentagon hammer.”

Designated Dad: A deadbeat dad is tracked down thirty years after abandoning his wife and now adult daughter. In lieu of back child support and/or prison time, the mom and daughter convince a judge to sentence the man to be a foster father to a mom and daughter who are the same age now as when he went AWOL.


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