Thank God Microsoft Made A Bid On Yahoo!

Now maybe I’ll have something else to read about besides The Second Coming Of Christ (known to us common folk as the release of the MacBook Air)!

Seriously, if I have to wade through another Blue Million posts in Google Reader about how Apple’s latest offering is the best thing since sliced bread (or even the flipside, that it amounts to a $2k Frisbee) I’m going to cancel all of my feeds except boingboing! For crying out loud, we get it already! It’s a really really thin laptop. And expensive. And did I mention that it’s, well, really really thin? News Flash: It’s a computer, not the end of world hunger! May we please move along?

Now if only someone, anyone, would write about Microsoft and Yahoo!.

It’s not much of a hobby, but it’s a hobby.

Some people collect stamps and some collect coins. Some folks like crossword puzzles while others watch birds. Whatever the activity the point is still the same: Everybody needs a hobby!

Declaring War on War

I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of hearing the phrase “The war on (fill in the blank).” We have (official) wars on terror; child obesity; drugs; poverty and homelessness to name a few. Quick searches on Google, Live Search and Yahoo! turned up references to wars on Christianity; democracy; smoking; truth; infrastructure; George Bush; rats; fathers; shampoo; the media; guns; dissent; minorities; waste; immigration; Christmas; war on the “war on Christmas”; troop boredom; doctors; consciousness; science; whistle-blowers; spam (the email variety not the processed meat, although…) and my personal favorite, bullshit.

There’s one more “war on” to add to the list and that would be the one that prompted this rant: The “War on Internet Piracy”. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not advocating the piracy of copyrighted material. My beef is with the use of the phrase “war on” and how it’s been bandied about to the point of meaninglessness.

The “War on Terror” is almost forgivable. Almost. After all an actual war, complete with soldiers and everything, is being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. (I say “almost forgivable” because “War on Terror” is a misnomer. If it were called “War on Terrorists” it would be closer to the truth.) As for the rest of them, by trying to add weight to whatever cause they are “warring” against (or for), they actually soften the impact of the phrase. I mean, really, infrastructure? Spam? Troop boredom? Pointless.

Does this inclination to label causes as a “war on” say something troubling about our society, that we’re fascinated or obsessed, even, with the notion of war? Or is it simply a symptom of the dumbing-down of language? I don’t know. Thoughts?

Poo Happens! (At the Carnegie Museum of Natural History)

My Grandpa always told me, “You can dress up a turd and take it to the museum, but it’s still a turd!”. Sage words, those.

Apparently, though, Grandpa forgot to pass that advice along to the folks at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who have a new exhibit filled with fun for the whole family! Well, it’s full of something, anyway. And that something happens to be poo! And, lest you think I jest when I say “…fun for the whole family!”, here’s a fun filled quote from Ellen James, who does something or other at the museum: “Some people may hear about this exhibit and think it sounds weird or gross or funny, and they’re right, it’s all of that…but you’re actually going to learn a lot about the science of poop.” Which makes me wonder…do scientists call it “poop”? But I digress…

Anyhoo, if you’re in the neighborhood drop on in and have a peek at the poo.

A big shout out to my friend Lisa (who happens to be a proud Keystoner) for the tails-up, as it were!

Workin’ on the weekend

Today is Friday, or, as I like to call it, Monday. “Monday?”, you ask. Yes, Monday. Because my work week commences this morn, you see. For the next three days, from 5 in the a.m. until half past 5 in the p.m. I’ll be workin’ for tha man, totin’ his barge and liftin’ his bale.

I don’t like it, this workin’ for tha man, but like the Good Book says: “By the sweat of thy brow…”. And besides, I’ve discovered that lying around all day in my robe, eating sharp cheddar cheese and potato chips, goofing on my laptop, all while watching General Hospital, doesn’t exactly promote brow-sweat, nor does it pay all that well. Go figure.

So, I think I’ll stumble to the kitchen for a shot of Joe, check the weather and the morning headlines, scrape the frost from my car windows (Old Man Winter will not die soon enough to suit me!), and join my fellow wage earners on that “…long road to the middle”.

I’d rather watch General Hospital, though.