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January 1, 2006 - January 7, 2006 Archives

January 1, 2006

HABIT FORMING

Two days left in my holiday lull and I get hit with a meme.

Damn.

Frank tagged me with the "my 5 weird habits" meme, in which I am supposed to come up with said habits and tag five other bloggers, too. I came up dry, so I asked Fran what my weird habits are.

"You leave floss on the floor," she noted; why, yes, I do, but not on purpose. I use those Reach plastic floss things, and when I discard them I flip them towards the trash can in the bathroom. Sometimes I miss. Sorry. Weird? Not really, just careless. But we can put that into the "maybe" category.

"Your office is a pig sty." Well, yes, it is, because I have stacks of paperwork and piles of computer equipment and a zillion books and no place to put them short of buying a new house, and nowhere among those piles is a cache of cash. Besides, is having a messy office a "habit"? Borderline. And it's hardly weird. Next!

Fran ran out of ideas, so I thought some more, and came up with these:

I do the dishes because I don't really trust anyone else to do as thorough a job with them, even though Fran is likewise very thorough.

I like my daily routine to follow the same pattern every day: start work at 4:30 am, be done with certain tasks at certain times, go running at the same time every day, have lunch and dinner at the same time (and be done with all eating by 7)... Is that weird? Maybe OCD, but weird?

I carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer when I go running, just in case. And when I ripped up my leg the other day, it came in handy. So there.

OK, that's five- I throw floss, I can't organize my office, I do the dishes as part of some bizarre sanitary compulsion, I'm finicky about my daily routine, and I got the Purell thing going. I could add the compulsion to check my e-mail every 10 minutes or so via the Treo, but I do get a lot of business e-mail and I see a lot of people do that.

Oh, yeah, ketchup with turkey. Sorry.

Can I go now?


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January 2, 2006

CLOWNTIME IS OVER

Too much work left to get done for the beginning of the work week/year tomorrow, and not enough time, so here's a shorthand version of what's on my mind:

1. If I was the victim of someone stealing my bank information to pass fake bad checks (with someone else's name on them!), and the bank had no trouble fixing the problem, why are retailers and the Scan check-authorization system having such trouble figuring things out? And why are they demanding that I jump through more hoops to prove who I am and what the problem was than the bank did? And why did thr retailers cash the checks in the first place if the name, driver's license, and account numbers didn't match up? And if they were the stupid ones, why are they making ME fix it?

2. Those of you who watched the Rose Parade this morning should be aware that by about 12:25 pm here, the sun was out. So there.

3. You can't go into a store here without encountering a USC chotchke display. The bandwagon-jumping is in full effect. For the record, they're a terrific team, Pete Carroll's done a fine job, Reggie Bush is fabulous, and I don't care, because I didn't go to USC. I get to ride the Villanova basketball bandwagon by virtue of getting my law degree there. USC, no. No matter how good they are, they're someone else's team, so no red-and-gold attire for me on Wednesday.

4. You're an NFL team and you find yourself with Mike McMahon at quarterback, something's gone terribly wrong. You find yourself with a Detmer at quarterback, something's gone even more wrong. Play both in the same game and you're the Eagles. That's gotta hurt. On the other hand, the Falcons had Vick all the way and they ended up in the same position: sitting on their asses with a beer and the remote watching other teams make the playoffs. Moral of the story: shut the hell up, it's basketball season now.

Back to "normal" schedule tomorrow, complete with several All Access columns and an all-out shoutfest at the bank. Can't wait.


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January 3, 2006

81 STUPID BOXES

Larry can't do Sudoku:

    I lost interest in this particular puzzle because I couldn't see anymore after two hours of strain. This was a relatively easy puzzle according to the star rating at the bottom and that pissed me off.

    F-ck you Sudoku!

My, my, what a temper. You'd never know it from listening to his show.

    The American economy must be going gangbusters if we can afford the luxury of another time-wasting Japanese fad on our shores.

That's the beauty of being an American- we CAN afford the luxury of another time-wasting Japanese fad.

Yes, it's a fad. Yes, everyone who's doing them now will drop it and move on to other time-wasting activities, just like they're moving on from Texas Hold-'Em. Yes, it's exceedingly pointless. But I, too, was just like Larry, frustrated and erasing entries until holes formed in the paper and cursing out the newspaper people and the editors and the Japanese (who didn't even invent the game and therefore bear no real responsibility for it).

Today, I fly through the "easy" and "medium" puzzles, take "hard" and "diabolical" Sudokus as interesting challenges, and end up staying up past my bedtime working the puzzles in "Games Magazine World of Sudoku" and "Pocket Sudoku 1" and even doing Sudoku for Palm devices on my Treo cellphone. I have spiffy mechanical pencils just for Sudoku (who needs pencils anymore for anything else?). I have made peace with Sudoku. Larry (the Japanese know him as Turtle-san) shall at some point see the light (or, as the Americans say, "get the hang of it"). As Sudoku master Ty Webb once said, "Be the Sudoku."

    I'm 1 for 6 in Sudoku so far, and that needs to change soon. This ain't gonna be my Rubik's Waterloo. I can't wait for this to be unpopular to do.

    F-ck you faddish behavior and the desire to conform!

Got something for you, Mr, Wachs- click here and don't say I never do anything for you. You're welcome.



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January 4, 2006

ANOTHER PULITZER MOMENT

Before his death, the L.A. Times' David Shaw infamously ripped bloggers for being unaccountable and boasted:

    "When I or virtually any other mainstream journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column, for example. They will have checked it for accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel, among other things."

D'oh!

D'oh!

D'oh!

D'oh!

D'oh!

Confirmation and due diligence are apparently optional with the folks who write, edit, and print many daily newspapers.

President Dewey would agree.


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ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS POST

Paul Harris says:

    The problem is that every single one of these people blaming The Media are doing it on their radio shows, their TV newscasts, their newspaper websites, or their blogs. What they fail to acknowledge is that they are part of The Media, too.

    ...

    So am I. So is Rush. So are all the people at CNN and Fox News Channel and NPR and InstaPundit and DailyKos and The Suburban Journals and Fark -- and that woman who opened a Blogger account because she just has to share some fabulous news about her cats.

    You see, there's no membership card to join The Media. It doesn't matter whether you have a radio show that's syndicated to hundreds of stations or heard by two members of your family on a small-town college station at two in the morning. You're still in The Media. Same goes for a local cable access TV show, a free weekly neighborhood newspaper, or even a blog.

    If you publish, broadcast, or otherwise distribute content, stop referring to The Media in the third person.

    Instead, have the guts to be specific in your complaints. Don't like what some news network did, or the headline in a certain newspaper, or the wording used by a particular blogger? Then vent and rant all you like, but mention them all by name, rather than blaming The Media in general.

    This is the new paradigm, and you're part of it. Get used to it.

He's right, but the problem in the mining disaster story is that the same mainstream media that dismissed blogs and talk radio as fonts of misinformation with no checks and balances like THEY have managed to screw it up. The same folks who like to say they're better because they have editorial standards clearly don't have standards when it comes to getting a scoop. They didn't do what they say sets them apart from the blogging rabble.

Maybe they ARE no different.

So, out of curiosity, I checked the front pages to see who had the story wrong. Yes, deadlines had something to do with it, but if the presses have to roll and there's no confirmation, how can you just print a story and hope for the best? Some papers waited, some printed "still unknown" stories, and some just ran with the wrong story. I made a list, but it's a mile long- the count was 150 wrong, 53 right, a few dozen with inconclusive or early still-in-progress stories. (Some of the correct papers were in the Eastern time zone, and some of the mistaken are on Pacific time- what's THEIR excuse?) There are a lot of editors who are apparently OK with printing uncorroborated, unconfirmed stories if the deadline's approaching and there's a paper to print. Unlike the TV networks and blogs and radio, once those papers are on the trucks and headed for your driveway, it's too late, which means they have a special duty to, you know, make sure. The electronic media can immediately correct the story, the blogs can post at any moment, but a newspaper is what it is. And that's the problem- I'm not jumping up and down and pointing fingers and taunting the editors, but I AM disappointed that so many. faced with deadlines, sacrificed their stated editorial duties to get the headlines out there.


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January 5, 2006

COMEDY CENTRAL'S STAND-UP COMPETITION: A PLUG

Go here and vote for Greg Behrendt, a gentleman and scholar and very funny man. (And, according to the huge ad for his new TV talk show in the TV trades this week, "INSIGHTFUL HUMOROUS PROVEN" with "Communication. Humor. Experience." He's HUMOROUS and has Humor. How can you beat THAT combination?)

OK, you can also vote for Doug Benson. But that's it.


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ONE GOOD THING TODAY

First, say hello to Bevo, today's happiest potential menu item at Outback:

The number of yahoo locals running around in red and gold USC crap has been reduced to zero today.

The bandwagon's empty.

Ha.

(This can only be understood by those of us who live in Southern California and do NOT root for USC. We feel much better today)


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January 6, 2006

TGI'M OUT OF THERE NOW

Late last year, I wrote at All Access about the woman who digs up the flotsam and detritus that gets tacked to the walls of places like TGI Friday's and Ruby Tuesday's and Bennigans and Houlihans and you know the places, and I mentioned how, every time I end up at the Torrance TGI Friday's, I get seated next to a rancid, used, stained, disgusting figure skate that looks like it was extracted from Ernest Borgnine's intestines.

We stopped there for a bite this evening. And at my left shoulder was...

Serves me right for going there. And I'll ask again: who would think that the ideal decor for an eating and drinking establishment would be dirty footwear?


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January 7, 2006

LAZY SATURDAY

Just a couple of comments:

1. We saw "Match Point" today. You would think that Woody Allen got his Dostoyevsky out of his system with "Crimes and Misdemeanors," but no, he had to go and make the SAME MOVIE ALL OVER AGAIN, or at least the Martin Landau part, except with younger actors, a London setting, and no comic counterpoint. The main character, in case you can't quite grasp the source material, is shown early on intently reading "Crime and Punishment," then consulting a Dostoyevsky companion book, raising the question of how, having read the original, he can then proceed to... OK, we're treading in spoiler territory here. But the "Crime and Punishment" rip- again- was annoying, and, I'm sorry, but Scarlett Johansen really doesn't do much for me, especially when her character is a chain-smoking, whiny, drunk, egotistical failure that somehow has guys willing to ruin their own lives to be with her. (And the sex scenes are unconvincing- Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Johansen have zero chemistry)

Finally, Woody Allen may be the only director who thinks that straight twenty-something males are deeply into opera. Woody, dude, er, no. And while we're at it, try editing sometime- over two hours was way too long to tell this particular story.

2. The trailers had yet another movie attempting to convince the moviegoing public that Everyone's Gone Gay ("Imagine Me and You") and another The President's An Idiot movie ("American Dreamz"- see, Bush is bad, Rove is bad, "American Idol" is bad, terrorists are just cuddly comic characters, and America is the worst of all, because a rich Hollywood writer-director who's made millions from you morons thinks so and, gee, everyone else he encounters on the lot or at the Coffee Bean or the Arclight cafe thinks the same way, so it must be true). And a dire-looking Steve Martin remake of "The Pink Panther" that received zero laughs from the audience. followed by an even more dire "turn off your cell phones" spot with Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau that elicited crickets. And they wonder why people aren't going to the movies.

3. Memo to our local Japanese restaurant: you'll get more repeat business if you even feign attentiveness to your customers. Really, if you make us feel like we're an imposition, we won't be returning. Just thought you'd want to know that.

4. Marty Mornhinweg got promoted to offensive coordinator by the Eagles with Brad Childress' departure for Minnesota. This is disturbing on so many levels I can't begin to discuss it. So I won't. Bill in Detroit asked me if we'd take Matt Millen off the Lions' hands, too. I don't think that's necessary, actually. (And you can keep Joey Harrington, too, pal)


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About January 2006

This page contains all entries posted to PMSimon.com in January 2006. They are listed from oldest to newest.

December 25, 2005 - December 31, 2005 is the previous archive.

January 8, 2006 - January 14, 2006 is the next archive.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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