The 09 October post, “Hitting the fan,” has been published as a letter to the editor in the 12 October Chelsea Standard.
Also, I will soon have news concerning the publication of some of my pictures of Living Water Community Church‘s recent Biker Sunday. Stay tuned.
From the Houston Chronicle, 01 September 2006:
“It’s music recorded in a bedroom that’s intellectually challenging and fun to listen to.”
Unfortunately, reviewers found the dining room rather simplistic and unengaging.
During last Sunday night’s football game, one commercial break featured an advertisement for Rozerem, a prescription sleep aid. As usual, the ad included the fast-talking voiceover of potential side effects. This list caught my ear:
“Side effects may include drowsiness, fatigue, and dizziness.”
Wouldn’t wakefulness be a more troubling side effect of a sleep aid?
(Yes, I know what they mean, but still.)
On Sunday, the Stronghold hosted a hayride and cookout. As usual, the cookout was supplemented by 2-liters of carbonated beverages; as usual, the beverage pattern of American cookout history was sustained.
My experiences with cookouts and other gatherings are fairly consistent: someone who does not like regular carbonated beverages believes that there are many others who feel the same way; this results in the misguided purchase and unfortunate donation of beverages such as Diet Coke. Sunday was no exception. Someone stubbornly ignored the abundant lessons of American cookout history and brought Diet Coke and caffeine-free Diet Coke; as usual, those two comprised the majority of the beverages the crowd did not finish. When the guests departed, we were left with three 2-liters of carbonated beverages:
Even though the relevant orphaned beverages are curiously distasteful “diet” beverages, it is still a waste of perfectly good carbonation. So, in the spirit of carbonation conservation, this fresh confirmation of the popular disdain for diet beverages at social gatherings leads me to propose a new rule. Let’s call it the:
No Aftertaste Left Behind Declaration
If at any time in your life you are asked to contribute carbonated beverages to a social gathering, and
If you possess a remarkable disposition that prevents you from ingesting standard carbonated beverages such as Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew or Dr Pepper, instead opting for fundamentally altered varieties of those beverages, such as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Mountain Dew or Diet Dr Pepper, and
If, in the process of purchasing the requested beverages, you feel compelled to indulge your taste for the starkly misnomered “diet” carbonated beverages, despite the overwhelming weight of historical evidence against the assumed popularity of such beverages at social gatherings, then
We, the people of the Standard Carbonated Beverages Coalition, hereby implore you to supplement your diet beverages with a dose of realism;
We, the people who must hear the pitiful cries of the nearly-untouched bottle of Diet Coke as we fill our disposable cups with Coca-Cola Classic, beg you to end the relentless waste of fundamentally altered carbonated beverages.
To that end, we hereby declare that purchases of such beverages for social gatherings are permissible only if:
Your immediate and enduring compliance with this compassionate measure is requested and appreciated.
At the end of each email sent by a Yahoo user, Yahoo includes an advertisement. This was attached to one recent email I received:
“Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Â Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around”
Do you think their spam protection would protect me from their spam? This reminds me of Earthlink’s pop-up advertisements selling their pop-up blocker.
The other day, I played Trivial Pursuit 90s. Since I was born in the early 80s, I thought I might have a decent knowledge of the 90s. But before long, I discovered the truth: I don’t know that much about the 90s. And it was an oddly comforting revelation.
Unfortunately, I still remember Hammer Pants.
My article on the Detroit teacher strike is now online at Edspresso.com. They called it “The Real Victims of the Detroit Teacher Strike”; I like to call it “Ain’t Nobody Dying But Us.” They both work.
Welcome to the new mindreader.burrillstrong.com. This is not your father’s mindreader.burrillstrong.com, primarily because I’m pretty sure your father never had one. If he did, I hope he won’t sue me for copyright infringement.
Anyway, the old mindreader was fully manual, and updating got a bit cumbersome after a while. This program makes it more about the post and less about the process of, um, posting the post, and that is a good thing.
Now, after two or three embarrassing failures, I hope I’ve learned my lesson about promising more frequent updates. But this new setup does, I think, offer a faint glimmer of hope for something more than biannual.
So … hello again.