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Jumping the shark - A neologism initially used to describe a TV show that's gone past its peak (so called because of Fonzie's literal jumping of sharks on a late episode of Happy Days). Since it has been coined, it's been adapted to describe just anything that's past the point of relevance.
In this particular case, I think it's the RIAA.
Please stop referring to large snowfalls as "jackpots." For those of us who have to shovel the shit (thankfully I was left out of this last round of precipitation), a "jackpot" is the last thing we feel like we've won.
Mom has the kids for the weekend; they're on their annual New Year's Eve weekend to Newport, which leaves Bonnie and me alone for a blessedly quiet few days.
Last night we joined friends in Brookline for dinner at Zaftig's, an excellent deli-style restaurant, and finished at a dessert restaurant a few blocks away called Finale (photographic evidence on Andy's Flickr pages).
We didn't climb into bed until about quarter to one, but had the rare privilege of being able to sleep as long as we wanted without having to deal with the screams and yelling of three children. And sleep we did, crashing until about 11:00 or so. We probably would have slept a bit longer, but Max decided that he'd gone without breakfast long enough and hopped up on the bed, climbing on top of Bonnie and me and kneading and purring loudly until we woke up.
Compared to how we normally wake up, having a big furry kitty purr at you to wake you up is certainly a nice change of pace.
I've got a cold. This is getting ridiculous. And vitamin C and echinacea are not helping.
Speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Hilary Clinton says that she doesn't think that "politics should be playing a role in how our country responds" to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Well, it was a political assassination. What exactly does she expect?
She is, of course, referring to the Obama camp's implication that her foreign policy skills are lacking. But in the same breath she talked about how she knew Bhutto personally, and they cut to video of Clinton and Bhutto walking together, so how exactly is her reaction not political in and of itself? Gimme a break.
Lovely invention. They go great with bacon, too.
... before she was shot to death.
We made it through yesterday. Christmas is always a big stressor for me, for reasons I've recounted in the past, so I won't bother you with it again.
This week the kids are on vacation. Tomorrow, Thursday, they go with Grandpa (their maternal grandfather) for their annual hotel overnight, where they'll get to go swimming and have fun at a local hotel. Then the following day Grandma (their paternal grandmother) will take them up to Newport for the weekend, and I won't see them again until New Year's Day, I don't think. It'll be a nice break for us, and it'll be fun for them.
Okay, it's been a long time since I brought you any news of the Frickin' Conversion Van. It's still here, resting, in the driveway. I haven't gotten together the scratch for a new engine yet, so it's still waiting patiently.
The battery went dead several months ago, and cobwebs have grown inside, though I've brushed them out a few times. I still have high hopes about restoring it, though it'll still take some time.
If worse comes to worst, I'll sell it, though I really don't want to. We need two vehicles, and for what it'll cost to fix it up, I couldn't hope to replace it with something nearly as nice, so it really makes sense to. Even though with gas well over $3 a gallon now, it's not cheap to run (14 MPG on a good day).
I've had an account for months, and I have to admit, I just don't get the appeal of Facebook. What am I missing? Someone edumacate me, please.
One of the more interesting trends in entertainment has been the rise of cinema pubs -- movie theaters, typically independently owned and operated -- that have been refit as restaurants. People sit at real tables and eat real food and beverages while watching movies on the big screen, instead of crowded into rows.
Given how precipitously movie revenues have dropped and how homogenized the experience of going to the movies has gotten, thanks to years of corporate consolidation, I'm delighted to see this happen. I still think there are some good reasons to go to the movies, and making it a more social experience seems like a great option for some of us. Anyway, I was reading on the local paper's Web site that a new cinema pub will be opening near me soon, taking place of a chain theater that closed about two years ago. I can't wait to check it out.
Some of my Mac colleagues have been having a field day with some of the tin foil hat jibbering lunatic dumbassery that has been bouncing around the intartubes for the last couple of days regarding Nick Ciarelli/Think Secret's settlement with Apple over a lawsuit Apple filed back in 2005.
The long and short of it is that Apple took this guy -- a college kid (albeit, a *Harvard* undergrad) to court to make him tell them who tipped him off to a secret Apple product plan. And Apple ultimately failed. The courts turned down their request, made them pay legal fees, and ultimately, after dragging it out a couple of years, Apple and Nick's lawyer (a fellow from the excellent if sometimes misguided EFF) found an amicable settlement.
On one end of the extreme we have people declaring it a clear victory for bloggers, for the First Amendment, hallelujah. That Apple is a corporate menace akin to Microsoft in its evil ways, and that it shall be punished, and that this was just the first shot across the bow.
On the other extreme we have people saying that Ciarelli clearly suborned people to violate NDAs, and that he should be punished for being a corporate snoop.
Personally, I don't give a shit. I was delighted to post the news that Ciarelli and Apple had settled, for one reason and one reason only: I'm fucking sick and tired of reading (and writing) about it, and want to put it behind me once and for all.
And at the end of the day, I subscribe to Occam's Razor and figure the simplest explanation is the right one, and that's probably how Ciarelli felt too.
Actually, not really "suddenly." We've had weeks of lower-than-average temperatures. But Thursday night, then again over the weekend, we got snow.
Sunday morning's snow was particularly nasty, because it turned to rain, then it got really cold. The net result is that any location that wasn't well plowed or sanded, or cleared, by the time the freeze hit, is now glazed over with a cement-like layer of ice.
Fortunately, I got out my snowblower early enough on Sunday morning that it wasn't an issue for us. I cleared a path to the front steps and the driveway, and about halfway through the process, the rain started to fall.
I was drenched by the time I got back inside, but it was worthwhile. Others who presumed the rain would "wash away" the snow were sadly mistaken. But more rainy weather is forecast for later this week, so they may still be in luck.
This friend of the family has this irritating habit of calling my eldest "Bobby." We've never called him that, nor does anyone else in the family. We called him Bob when he was a baby (still do), though he prefers Robert. For a brief time in kindergarten, he had a dalliance with "Robbie," though that didn't last.
Whenever he says it, I gently correct him by responding with Robert's proper name. But he doesn't seem to get it.
It'll go something like, "How's Bobby doing in school?"
And I'll say, "Robert's doing fine, thanks."
At some point I reach a point where I want to scream, "His name is Robert, what are you, fucking retarded?" but I always dial it back.
I feel pretty strongl that there's an etiquette you have to follow with nicknames that's pretty simple. Unless some addresses himself or herself with a nickname, you shouldn't use one -- unless there's a nickname that's tacitly accepted by the whole family or group.
Beyonce's shilling for DirecTV ranks as the most irritating commercial on TV at the moment.
The New York Post gets my vote for most tasteless obit headline EVER.
I admit it made me laugh out loud, though.
I'd picked up two boxes of Drake's coffee cakes on sale at Stop & Shop yesterday -- Bonnie loves them, and I thought they would be a special treat. Each box contains ten coffee cakes -- two of the hand-sized pastries each are inside a cellophane wrapper.
This morning I woke up, and of the two boxes, only one package of two was left. My kids had burned through them like locusts during a fresh harvest. At least they left two for Bonnie.
Bonnie and the kids got me two great birthday presents that I really appreciated: Battlestar Galactica: Razor and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, both on DVD. I hadn't seen either up to now.
I watched Razor last night, and I was blown away at how damn good it was. No spoilers for the unfortunate of you who haven't seen it, but the part where I was absolutely screaming with joy was in the cockpit of a vintage Cylon Raider, where the old-style centurions are chatting with each other, there's a gold command centurion, and you hear "By your command." A total nod to the old series, not overdone or overused, and just really great.
On top of that, it was, as always, impeccably written and superbly acted, and it's got me absolutely jonesing for the fourth season.
...and it turns out to be one of the busiest weeks in Mac game news that I can remember for probably the last six or seven months.
Which means that I've been writing news on my days off.
Thanks, you pricks. ;)
So yesterday was my 38th birthday (thanks to those of you who have sent me e-cards and so forth), and I celebrated by going to the hospital and having a stress test done. This is pretty standard procedure for my doctor's diabetic patients, she told me. As diabetes can cause vascular problems, it's important to make sure my heart's in good shape.
To do this, what they do is hook you up to an EKG machine -- they made me take my shirt off and they attached these sticky pads all over my chest, then plugged the pads into a machine using a large cable -- and they have you walk on a treadmill. Every couple of minutes the speed of the treadmill increased and the incline also increased. Meantime a cardiologist is monitoring the machine and a technician is checking your blood pressure.
As it turns out, I'm not having any heart trouble, fortunately, though I am pathetically out of shape.
One of the worst things about Christmastime for me is the constant drone of schmaltzy Christmas music in any public area. I went grocery shopping yesterday and had to listen to some of the worst renditions of Christmas "classics" I have ever heard. By the end of it I was damning myself for not bringing headphones so I could listen to the music on my iPhone instead.
After the tenth or twentieth lousy, breathy, too-slow-tempoed and teary-eyed nostalgia-dripping rendition of "White Christmas," or an overly triumphant and vibrato-filled version of "Silent Night," and I'm ready to jam darning needles down my ear canals. Throw in some R&B diva doing vocal calisthenics as she butchers "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and Mannheim Steamroller's execrable "Deck the Halls," and I'm looking for some way to end my suffering forever, I swear. I'm not even fond of The Boss doing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town."
To be fair, there at least a few Christmas songs I like. The soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, for example. Actually, that's the only example I can think of that doesn't make puke back up into my mouth.
It's not that I'm anti-Christmas. But it's because when I hear that music, I'm in a store. And they're playing that music to put me in a holiday (read: shopping) spirit. It's just so goddamned blatantly manipulative. Puts me in a bad mood. A bad mood that lasts at least until January.
My kids are pigs. Executive function problems or not, my kids have stepped on Bonnie and me for years when it comes to picking up after themselves and keeping their things organized, and I've had quite enough of it.
I told them in no uncertain terms that they had until the end of the weekend to pick up their rooms, and anything left on the floor would be sent to the dump come Monday.
I've got all next week to clean their rooms from top to bottom if I have to. I'm taking the week off, as I have some vacation time to use before the end of the quarter or I lose it.
Enough is enough.
For the last few days, I've been feeling absolutely wretched. A mild head cold I started the week with turned into something else and navigated downward into my throat and lungs, so I've been coughing and have had next to no energy. I ended up sleeping away half the day yesterday, quite by accident.
I'm feeling moderately better today -- but I'm still out of sorts. It's the after-party hangover feeling you get from being ill.
One thing has begun to irritate me more than a little bit: Bloggers and other online posters who point to a posting on another site without bothering to check the source. If you're interested in tracing back the attribution to read the original article, you'll often find that blogger A has linked to blogger B, which found the link on another site, which in turn sourced the story from another site.
What you also find is that this is the blogging equivalent of the Surrealist parlor game "exquisite corpse," where players would assemble bizarre sentences by linking together parts of speech. It's possible for one blogger to misinform or misinterpret what he or she has read or seen, and that difference gets amplified and further distorted the further away from the original source the information gets.
Building 19 is one of the unquestionable treasures of New England.
They're a discount retail store chain that focuses on reselling liquidated merchandise from retailers who have gone out of business, or had a warehouse fire, or overstocked, or whatever.
It's one of the most humbling retail experiences you've ever had -- the stores are shabby and the merchandise is often just piled on tables, showing signs of damage. And they sell a *lot* of cheap junk. But occasionally they'll have absolute gems, and that makes it worthwhile, at least for those of us who value a bargain over the presentation.
It's the sort of place where you can occasionally get Armani tuxedo for $49 that smells like a building fire (nothing that won't come out with a good dry cleaning). Or find an oriental rug that might cost pennies on the dollar compared to what a fine rug merchant would sell it for, as long as you have a pickup truck and can haul it away yourself.
On this most recent trip, I picked up perfect-condition hardcover copies of Dungeons & Dragons manuals for my older son, for Christmas, for $8 a piece -- compared with $30 each at Borders. I also got for myself some Tsubo footwear -- fantastically comfortable designer shoes for $30, compared to $90 (the cheapest I could find the boots I got) online.
Anyway, our kids are intimately familiar with the Building 19 experience, and Emmeline and Robert both have little patience for it (or, for that matter, for shopping in general).
But James is a bit more adventurous -- he likes to explore the metal pile at the junkyard with Grandma in the hopes of finding a usable bike or scooter, for example.
So James came with us yesterday, when we took a ride up to Hanover (about 40 minutes away) to find some bargains.
James, never one to miss a joke, saw the Building 19 sign when we pulled into the parking lot. Their slogan is "Good Stuff Cheap."
"Good Stuff..." he paused, pretending to have trouble reading the last word.
"C - R - A - P," he spelled, giggling.