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sgtwolvehttp://blog.burrillstrong.com/

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 72

One of these things is not like the others (11 February 2007).

Yes, that is me in the back. (That’s Janni in the middle and Jenny in front, too.) And yes, I am wearing new glasses. Leading experts estimate the glasses make me look 20% smarter.

Also, feel free to play along at home: what are three ways the title is true?

Frennies from heaven

Ah, the penny: that humble mortar in the masonry of American money. No other piece of U.S. currency would benefit from the expertise of a good psychiatrist as much as the penny. It is battered, bruised and beleaguered; it is derided as worthless; it is daily deemed a hassle and discarded as financial effluvium. Even the Detroit Lions are more highly-regarded than the penny.

Oddly enough, though the penny is so thoroughly downtrodden, it is not the runt of the litter. There is an even smaller denomination, but it gathers no criticism, perhaps because no one has spotted this younger sibling of the penny in the wild. However, many have seen evidence of its existence — almost always at gas stations. What is this unheralded, unhated, virtually unknown coin?

Why, it’s the 1/10 cent. The fractional penny. Or, less awkwardly, the frenny.

I have long been a skeptic of the existence of the frenny. I thought it was just a pricing game by the gas stations: “Our gas is only $2.19 … and 9/10 of a penny, but don’t you worry about that almost-penny.” (Of course, I thought games were supposed to be fun, too, so my credibility may already be suspect.) But then I went to my local Meijer, and my skepticism was challenged.

Like many other establishments, Meijer now helpfully provides a change-eating machine from Coinstar. The machine, with its near-insatiable appetite, ingests coins nearly as effortlessly as Simon Cowell ingests the tone-deaf. When the machine finishes its meal, it spits out a dejected, sobbing person. And when the Coinstar finishes with the coins, it provides a receipt that tells a cashier how much money to give you.

If you are a perceptive reader — and if you are, I suggest you find a perceptive writer to read — you may have noted that I did not say the receipt tells you simply how much money you fed the Hungry Hungry Coinstar. That’s not how these things work. The Coinstar isn’t a bank machine that generously smiles upon customers (because it knows the bank will extract its fees other ways); it’s a little green business machine. All those little gears and circuit boards need income to support their extravagant lifestyles, so it claims a fee for its services — a fee which is pleasantly proclaimed by a sign on the front of the machine.

The fee is not overwhelming, particularly considering the extensive social lives of modern gears and circuit boards; it’s just a little awkward. For the privilege of having your change counted and digested by Coinstar, you’re charged eight and nine-tenths cents per dollar. It actually has the fraction visual, too, like it’s better than those other morally bankrupt change eaters that have the audacity to charge 8.9 cents. Ignorant, unsophisticated curs, the lot.

When I see Coinstar’s fee, I am tempted to feed one dollar’s worth of coins into the machine, just to see if it might spit a frenny at me. For just a moment, I am distracted by the oddly fulfilling thought of holding an elusive frenny in my hand; however, I soon remember what a frenny is worth, and I realize I would have wasted eight and nine-tenths cents on the pursuit of currency that would buy me nothing.

Unless I could accumulate nine frennies. Then I could buy a gallon of gas.

Committed like a polygamist to his first wife

A while back, Jerimy Finch, a highly regarded high school football players, committed to play football for Michigan.

commitment [kuh-mit-muhnt]
an agreement or pledge to do something in the future

No, wait. That’s not quite right. He gave his commitment prior to signing day, so he could give only a verbal commitment. And that sounds great … until you realize that while a commitment typically holds some weight among the general population, a football verbal commitment isn’t much of a commitment at all. It’s more of a whim, or a suggestion, or a fleeting thought, like a promise ring in high school. I’ll love you forever, but only until I meet some other hot football program.

verbal commitment [vur-buhl kuh-mit-muhnt]
(college football) a non-binding spoken intent to attend and play football for a specific college or university

That’s more like it. See, after he verbally committed to Michigan, he had second thoughts. His compass turned southwest, towards the Crossroads of America, and he soon fell under the spell of that remarkable football (in other words, basketball) powerhouse, Indiana University.

Fortunately for Finch, he gave not an actual commitment, but a verbal commitment. So he made a call to the best friend of second-thinking athletic high school seniors: the decommitment.

decommitment [di-kuh-mit-muhnt]
(college football) the retraction of a verbal commitment

Having been swayed by Indiana’s fabulous basketball warm-up pants, Finch decommitted from Michigan and told Indiana he’d be traveling their way. But after the decommitment, rumors abounded: he’s sticking with Indiana! No, he’s thinking of coming back to Michigan! No, he’s moving to Tibet to become a Buddhist monk!

After all that, what happened when national signing day rolled around? Why, he signed a letter of intent to play football for the Florida Gators, of course.

So much for commitment.

But I’m not irked at Finch; he only happened to be the ripest target, having been a Michigan commit who changed his mind twice.  Ultimately, my problem is not with him, or with any other recruit; instead, it is with the misleading “verbal commitment” that abounds in college football.  If a recruit decides not to attend one school or another, that’s fine; however, I would rather not see any sort of commitment enter the picture until that recruit is ready to be held to that commitment in some way.

But enough about me; now you click on me

Life on the internet can be exasperating.

Like many people, I spend plenty of time on a computer. I spend my entire workday in front of a computer, and in my free time, both my photography pursuits and this pesky little blog compel me to gaze at my monitor as if it holds not just the meaning of life itself (42, I’m told), but also the recipe for McDonald’s Special Sauce (rumored to have something to do with G. Love) within its gleaming rectangular lake of pixels.

As part of that time on the computer, I spend my fair share of time on the internet, because … well, that’s why it exists. The internet, it seems, is much like Mt. Everest: why surf? Because it’s there!

With that justification, exploring the internet is a lifelong pursuit. The content just keeps going, and the extent of one’s exploration is limited only by one’s stamina and force of will; in this sense, the internet is much like graduation ceremonies. Except the internet is constantly updated with additional content, whereas graduation ceremonies are syndicated reruns.

Since the pursuit of the knowledge of the internet is never-ending, there are countless opportunities to find its exasperating qualities. And I don’t mean myspace. No, I’m talking about a less conspicuous exasperation.

While surfi…I mean, engaging in wide-ranging long-term computer-based research, it is common for me to visit several sites at once, because my generation invented and perfected Attention Deficit Disorder and I Have A Short Attention Span For No Good Reason Disorder. And since the world has been slow to awaken to the brilliant and generally life-changing development of tabbed browsing, there are times I am forced to endure multiple browser windows.

Really, running multiple browsers isn’t a serious issue. Just unrefined, like a rotary phone in a touch-tone world. But it lends itself to one of the internet’s exasperations: self-aggrandizing websites. Not so much in content, but in behavior.

I’m sure you know the type — the sites that consider themselves so overwhelmingly important that when they do something truly noteworthy, like, OMG, load a page!, they don’t sound a quiet alarm in the background. Instead, without warning, you’re whisked away from your profound (ESPN.com) research to see what the internet hath wrought. But the urgency of the interruption is needless, as the site only wants to say hey, you remember how you asked for me? I’m here. Check me out. Worship my source code.

Fortunately for both me and the internet, this is not an overwhelming trend. Most sites haven’t developed the look-at-me complex; only a few consider themselves so important that only the long-lost child of Dan Rather and Katie Couric could report the major breaking news that Gmail just fulfilled Burrill Strong’s request to open a new message.

Now I’m just waiting for my TV to change channels when something noteworthy happens on another network. Until that happens, if you need me, I’ll be at the nearest graduation ceremony.