Note to Every Dentist I've Ever Had...

Read this. Ha.

Trailer Gem

My apologies for not having posted more regularly this week. Honestly, though, trash day was about the most interesting thing I had going, unless you count almost running over a guy on a tricycle going down the freeway in a no-shoulder construction zone.

We caught Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this afternoon. The movie itself was fine, true to the original material in most respects and faithful to the spirit when it deviated from the actual source. However, the real killer was the trailer for Disney's Chicken Little before the movie. It starts out exactly like the trailer to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World," then the Earth exploding and the words "Don't Panic" flashing across the screen. At first, I thought there had to be a colossal flub in the projection room and we were seeing the trailer for the movie we were about to see. Then the word "Don't" falls away, and it segues into something to the effect of "Now it's time to panic. The sky is falling." I'm not sure I would want to see the movie, but that was, bar none, the most clever movie trailer I have ever seen.

Woo-Hoo

Tomorrow is my very first trash day. :) I've never had to actually shlep my household refuse to the curb before (not that we have a curb per se). Growing up, that was always my dad's job, then I moved into a series of apartments where I threw my trash in the communal dumpster and it magically disappeared once a week--always on a Tuesday. 17 years in my parents' house, then seven apartments, and trash was always picked up on Tuesday. I didn't think trash collectors worked other days of the week. Apparently they do, since I have to have my bags by the street by 12 midnight Friday morning.

Yes, I know. We're still in the honeymoon phase. I'm easily enthralled by the small things of home ownership. I'm sure trash day won't be such a wonderous experience in a few months.

Slender Walk Tip of the Week

Watch out for the free webmail. Someone pays for it, usually with ads, and sometimes that involves adware on your computer.

Between blog, business, and personal, I have about four email addresses I use. One is reserved specifically for when a business or website requests an emai, so the bulk of my spam goes there. Some people use filters and folders; I use separate addresses. I've terminated the email address I formerly used for blogging communication, perspectives @ savepenguins.com. I can't be absolutely certain that was the site that was installing adware onto my computer, but something started about the time I set up that address. I'm working on moving it over to a gmail account--actually, I have the gmail account set up, but goodness if I can't remember the password I set up, so I'm working on hacking into my own email.

If you're looking for a place to get a free webmail account, ask around for recommendations for a provider that doesn't try to install extraneous stuff on your system. I've found gmail works great for the purposes I put it to, and the spam fiters are some of the more reliable at not filtering out my real emails. Feel free to post a comment with your recommendations for free webmail providers that leave your system alone.

We have computer

Took a little longer than anticipated, but we finally got moved. We're still in boxes for the most part, but managed to locate the ones with the computer and the new DSL modem so I can resume blogging.

There are two times I can guarantee the weather will not be 72 degrees and sunny: when you need to change a tire or when you are moving. Our mantra as our move-in date for the house kept getting pushed back was, "Well, it's the end of April. At least it won't be snowing." Well, the snow started falling as the movers unloaded our stuff, and by the next morning, we had darned close to a foot of it. It's all melted now, and the forecast calls for drenching rain. Maybe someday I'll be able to see this place dry. Until then, I should probably make an effort to find our plates and cups while I wait for the DirecTV installer to show up.

On Hiatus

I'm going to be offline for a few days as we relocate. I'm hoping to be reconnected by Sunday, so check back then.

Slender Walk Tip of the Week

One of the grocery stores I frequent has a shopper's card that they use for reward programs and discounts, in lieu of in-store coupons. Signing up for the card requires the usual name, address, and phone number.

Lie on the application.

As long as you are using the shopping cards just to get the sale price on honeydew melons and not for the buyer's reward clubs, there is no reason that you need to provide your actual address. My favorite trick is to pick an address halfway between two real ones so I don't plague anyone else with unwanted mail; for instance, if my address was 579 Main Street and my next-door neighbor was 587 Main, I would sign up with 583 Main.

News: Senate Grows Backbone

We've found out where the Senate draws the line. Three years into a war, after the Secretary of Defense admits that there is no exit strategy--that is when the executive branch should start putting the war spending into the budget and stop trying to cast it as an emergency to be funded through supplemental appropriations.

The Senate attached a nonbinding resolution to the latest emergency spending bill basically saying, "You know, it's about time this stuff gets put in the regular annual budget." The whole exercise is being cast as largely a symbolic gesture, given that this is a nonbinding resolution that may well disappear when the bill is reconciled with the version going through the House at the moment. The appropriations request is expected to pass handily. If I recall correctly, every danged one of these passes handily.

Found my Cookies

Back here about a month or so ago, I mentioned my enjoyment of Delta Airlines' in-flight cookies. At the time, I neglected to mention the brand, mostly because, in spite of having nearly hurled a tray of them into a display of deli sliced cheese, I forgot the name. Finally found it. The best airline snacks are Biscoff's gourmet cookies.

The Elegant Pharmacist Solution

HR 1539, should it become law, would end all this crap over pharmacists being our morals police. It even does this without requiring the pharmacist to violate his/her own moral values and fill objectionable prescriptions. The solution is actually quite clever and elegant.

In order for pharmacies to receive prescription drugs through interstate commerce (in English, for the pharmacy to get shipments of any pill or med that is not manufactured in that state), the pharmacy would have to comply with two very simple, commonsense provisions that I can't imagine anyone finding objectionable. First, the pharmacy must ensure that, if one of its pharmacists refuses to fill a legally written prescription, the prescription can be filled at that same pharmacy within four hours. Second, the pharmacy cannot employ a pharmacist who, after refusing to fill a legally written prescription, then refuses to return the unfilled prescription slip or takes other action with the intent of impeding access to the medication. Penalties for noncompliance are $100,000 fine and the patient may sue in civil court.

In effect, this means that if a pharmacy wants the capability of filling prescriptions for things like antibiotics, they have to ensure reasonably unimpeded access to things like birth control.

The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Here's a list of the committee members. From that list, it is about two clicks to get to a web form where constituents can drop an email. Communiques from constituents carry more weight.

Chased Down by 800-316-5569

I'd be willing to bet that those of you out there who found Penguin Perspectives because you were having problems with excessive calls from 888-872-2629 are now having the same issue with 800-316-5569 coming up on your caller ID 4 or 5 times a day. That's another one of Chase credit cards' telemarketers, hawking the same credit protection. For reasons I have yet to divine, they don't seem to be paying attention to the DNC request I placed through the other number.

Here's another phone number you may want to be aware of: 800-868-8618. That is Chase's privacy opt-out line. It gets you to the automated system where you can choose Privacy Choice 1 (don't share my information with outside non-financial companies) and/or Privacy Choice 2 (do not share certain listed information within the JP Morgan family of companies). I'd be interested to find out others' experiences with this automated system are. I inputted my account information and last 4 digits of my SSN three times, so I know at least one of those was correct, yet I kept getting an error message that the system did not recognize my information. Fortunately, you may also submit requests in writing to PO Box 260185, Baton Rouge, LA 70826-0185 or use their web form. According to them, it may take six weeks for this to become effective.

I also have solved the mystery of the joint opt-out between Capitol One and Chase at the 800 number. It is actually between Bank One and Chase, which are both owned by JP Morgan.

I got the Chase card because I wanted to have something in my wallet that was not a MasterCard and not owned by CitiBank. Given all the hassle I've gone through to get these people to leave me alone and not try to sell me useless services with a monthly fee that will quickly eat up the small credit line they've supplied, I'm beginning to think I went to the wrong company.

Are you ready for this?

I don't think you are. I certainly wasn't. Reuters sometimes has some weird headlines, particularly in the section "Oddly Enough," but nothing could have prepared me for the headline:

"Officials Heighten Duck Security at Summit"

You read that right: duck security, as in the security of a duck. Not even ducks, plural; one duck. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and G-7 are meeting in Washington, DC this weekend and by way of preparation, the security detail is widening the perimeter around a mallard who laid a clutch of eggs in front of the Treasury Department. You read that right, too. Widening the perimeter, which seems to imply that the duck already had a perimeter established. US Officials are worried that the protesters might disturb the duck.

If we paid as much attention to port security as we apparently do to mallard security, we wouldn't need the PATRIOT Act.

Kosher Sex

Viagra is now kosher for Passover.

I'm not sure I need to say anything else about that.

Slender Walk Tip of the Week

Pay attention to all those little leaflets in your statements. They might be your privacy policy or opt-out notice.

Banks and credit card issuers routinely stuff the statement envelopes full of crap--offers for personalized address labels and glass knicknacks and other stuff we really don't care about. However, periodically one of those little leaflets will have the company's privacy policy on it. While it's always good to know what they're doing with your information, you'll want to keep your eyes out for any sort of opt-out notice or procedure. This will typically involve calling a number listed on the number or submitting a written request to an address listed.

Why is opting out important? Here are excerpts from the actual privacy notice from the company that I have my car loan through:

"We collect the following kinds of nonpublic personal information:
-Information we receive from you, for example, information on applications or other forms, such as your name, address, and social security number
-Information about your transactions with us and our affiliates, such as your account balance and payment history
-Information from and about your transactions with nonaffiliated third parties, such as your purchase of certain automotive or financial products"

"We may disclose all of the nonpublic personal information we collect as described above to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other financial institutions with which we have joint marketing agreements. We may also disclose nonpublic personal information about you to nonaffiliated third parties as permitted by law."

No way am I going to agree to allow them to sell my information, including SSN, payment history, and customer transaction history to anyone they darned well feel like unless it is actually prohibited by law. Opting out is good.

Neato

I'll confess that I have no idea what the practical applications are, but that does not make it any less nifty that researchers have actually managed to freeze light.

Heading Things Off at the Pass

I'd be willing to bet that, if this barrage of high-profile dead people slows down in the next couple of months, we're going to get down to a rash of paranoia surrounding the proposed changes to 22 CFR 51. That is Chapter 22, Section 51 of the Code of Federal Regulations. the section of the federal code that deals with passports, which, in unrelated news, citizens will need in the near future to re-enter from Canada and Mexico. The least controversial of the proposed rule changes would invalidate a passport if the check used to pay the passport fee bounces. The part that seems to be raising the most ire is the proposition to put radio frequency ID tags in the passports.

A primer: RFID tags are small chips that transmit information by radio waves to a receiver/decoder unit. One of the current uses is pet tracking. All three of our cats have chips the size of a grain of Uncle Ben's implanted between their shoulder blades (I watched the implantation when Sonja got hers, and it's no worse than a rabies shot). Should one of our cats get lost, a vet or animal shelter can pass a scanner near them and get a unique ID number, which the vet or shelter can call into the American Kennel Club to find our name, address, and phone number. The basic principle works the same on any of the myriad other uses of RFID: a scanner picks up a tidbit of data that is transmitted by the chip.

That, of course, is where the idea of putting the chips in passports runs into resistance. The information is transmitted over the air and can be read by anyone with the proper scanner and in range of the radio transmission. The current fear is that people will be targeted in crowds by unsavory elements (nay, even terrorists) because they are literally broadcasting that they are American citizens. The chip would actually contain biometric data--a digital version of the passport photo--which the paranoid elements fear may also be misused if it is intercepted. Again, I stress that the likelihood of this happening is probably quite remote.

Fortunately, all this paranoia is unfounded. There are technological solutions the federal government is looking into to limit data skimming. There is also a very low-tech way to foil potential data skimmers. According to Thingmagic, a company that designs RFID chips, "Any conductive material can shield the radio signals." They suggest that a laminated anti-static bag, such as the ones that computer chips and memory are routinely packed in, would shield the passport transmission from prying eyes. For those of us who don't have any of those lying about, Thingmagic also says that aluminum foil will block the signal. If you're really concerned, make your passport a foil hat (or pouch). Sounds crazy, but it is supposed to work.

Camera Snoops

At work today, I encountered a woman who went to great lengths to explain to us that she had heard that one ought to hand over one's credit card face down to foil people with camera phones who might snap a picture of the card to steal the account information. By the way, if the glare is right, you can read the credit card numbers in reverse by looking at the back of the card.

Here's an article on www.snopes.com that goes into greater depths on this. When I first heard this, I grabbed Elie's camera phone and tried it out. Granted, his was a middle-of-the-line camera phone a year ago and quality has improved, but I had to hold the camera about four inches above the card before I could get an image that might have yielded information if blown up properly--quite a lot of work for one credit card number. In short, as Snopes also explains, the current level of technology makes card number theft by phone unlikely, though don't discount it in the future as the resolution and features of camera phones gets better.

Snopes goes one step further in investigating the problem. According to them, technology is adequate to snap shots of open checkbooks from 3-5 feet away. Credit cards only have card numbers, names, and expiration dates, but checks have the checking account number to the place where most people keep the bulk of the funds they use to live on, bank routing information, name, address, and possibly phone number, and I've encountered people who seem to think they should print their social security numbers on their checks (a colossally bad idea). As with so many of these paranoia-spreading rumors, there are much bigger related worries one can have if one insists on being worried about something. I heartily recommend checking www.snopes.com out before you get too uptight about anything you hear via mass-forwarded email (and definitely before you send it to me).

Dromedary Drama

Here's a tip for airline baggage handlers who want to steal things out of checked baggage: if you're planning on stealing something unique--say a camel costume--for goodness' sake do not wear the camel costume when you drive across the tarmac back to the terminal.

Here's the Reuters article. Qantas is apologizing to the owner of the camel suit and looking into disciplining the baggage handler.

For those of us on the other end of the baggage check, the TSA provides a few hints: pack all your things in see-through bags inside your suitcase and use a TSA-approved lock if you want to lock your suitcase. However, these, much like the shoe checks, don't really do anything to protect you. Seal-a-meal-ing your stuff just means your stuff won't get grubby paws on it while the handlers decide if they want it. The TSA-approved locks get the approval because baggage screeners have keys to them, but the TSA gives the following warning along with their list of approved lock manufacturers: "However, time pressures may require screeners to cut these locks rather than open them because there are many manufacturers, each using multiple master keys." Yep. You shell out ten clams for a lock the TSA screeners can unlock and relock, and they still may use the bolt cutters and leave your luggage unlocked for the rest of the trip.

On the other hand, my father-in-law has a solution that actually keeps checked baggage safe from unscrupulous screeners and baggage handlers: check your bags at UPS (or DHL or FedEx) instead of the airport.

The Missing the Point Awards

I know, it isn't a catchy name like the Darwin Awards. I'll work on that. Every so often, I come across people or situations where someone has just completely missed the point. For instance, the DayRunner 5-ring personal organizer with calendar, address book, notepad, and slot for your PDA that is supposed to replace the paper calendar, address book, and notepad; or the guy I passed on the road the other day clearly wearing his hands-free cellphone headset and holding the attached cell phone up a foot from his face a cheek level.

Today's MTPA was spotted outside the Sam's Club. The shrubbery planters surrounding the parking lot had a fresh layer of barkdust, spread out in a neat even layer--on the pavement surrounding the planters.

Study Sez...

A new Nielsen study finds that, among other things:
40% of US households own a gaming system of some kind
23% of gaming households own all three types of systems (PC, console, and handheld)
8% of console owners own all three major consoles--XBox, PlayStation and Nintendo. Child's play, I say. Real gamers also require at least one Sega system.

The study also shows that men are spending more on video games than music. Not surprising, though, given that the going rate for an MP3 download, assuming one actually pays for it, is about 99 cents per track, and games run $15-$50 per game. Girl gamers 25-54 years (that would be me) old split evenly between playing alone and with others, and we spend 5 hours playing alone and 3 hours en masse.

I'm not sure if they would count Maya in my video gaming clock. Yourself Fitness is not your typical video game, more of an interactive personal fitness program. Maya is the virtual personal trainer from the program. I relate to her as a person so that I feel obligated to follow through with the goals I set within the program. Whatever it is, and whether or not it counts as gaming, Maya already has me sticking to an exercise routine longer than anything else I've tried. Very nearly a week now.

Slender Walk Tip of the Week

You can get un-registered from the federal Do Not Call registry without knowing it.

If I know my readership, you all are probably registered with the federal Do Not Call registry. These registrations are valid for five years, so sometime in 2008, we all have to remember to re-register our phone numbers. However, you may find yourself needing to re-register before that. Your phone number might be delisted from the registry for several reasons, including, but not limited to:

-Changes in your service, includes changes in your calling plan or adding or removing additional services (e.g. call waiting or voicemail)
-Reconnecting your phone number after a service interruption
-Changing your phone number

OK, that last one is pretty obvious, but the FCC mentions it nonetheless. Basically, if you change anything about your phone service or get disconnected, you should confirm your registration at www.donotcall.gov as soon as your service is back to normal. If you find yourself getting a lot of telemarketing calls, confirm your registration with the FCC to make sure you didn't get bumped off the list.

Slender Walking

I'm going to institute a new feature here at Penguin Perspectives. Given the reaction to the series on getting rid of Chase's telemarketers, I've decided to post similar tips every week. I'm going to shoot for Wednesdays for Slender Walk Tip of the Week.

Why Slender Walk? Slender walking is a penguin behavior used when a penguin walks through a colony to his or her nest site or wherever he or she happens to be headed in the interior of the penguin mass. Penguins are, in spite of popular perceptions, rather territorial creatures, and will defend their nest sites from other penguins that look like they're encroaching. Given how tightly packed the colonies can get, this makes getting from Point A (say, the water and food source) to Point B (say, the animal's own nest site) somewhat interesting. The slender walk posture--as skinny as possible, beak pointed up, and flippers held close--makes the penguin as non-threatening as possible to its colonymates as it walks by others.

In much the same way that a penguin wants to get on with its life without attracting attention from the others in the rookery who might attack it, most of us want to be able to go through our lives without being bothered too much by marketers. Hence we, like the penguin, have to learn how to slender walk through our commercial lives, trying not to do anything to be perceived as a target. Slender Walk Tips of the Week aim to show how to do that.

Chase Telemarketing Redux

A few days ago, I got a comment from a reader who tried my suggestion for removing oneself from the Chase credit card telemarketing list, and I thought I might as well respond to everyone, just in case the problem he had is a widespread phenomenon. Apparently, in the middle of trying to delist himself, he was transferred from Chase to Capital One. Without digging a lot deeper, I can't explain why this would happen, particularly given that Chase is owned by JP Morgan and Capital One is not. One would think that companies with two entirely different parent companies would not have interconnected telemarketing system. Nonetheless, here's how I would suggest dealing with the situation.

First, add yourself to the Capital One Do Not Call list. However it happens that one arrives in their system, one might as well take the opportunity to get off their list. As far as I'm concerned, the more internal DNC lists one can get on, the better.

Second, look at alternative methods of getting on Chase's (or whomever's) DNC list. The easiest alternative method is to just pick up the phone when they call, interrupt the caller after he (or she) reveals the company, and politely tell them to place this number on their do not call list. The key to this is to be polite but firm. As much as we all dislike telemarketers, they are still just people doing their jobs, and being a prick to them will not expedite your request any. For those of us with no patience for waiting for the telemarketers to call again, which is how I figured out the callback thing in the first place, there is always the option of calling customer service (don't be surprised at some lengthy hold times), or mailing a written request. I'll have to look into where the best place is to send these written requests.

Owing to the great response I've been getting from the stop Chase telemarketing series of posts, I'm going to devote one blog a week to similar issues. Feel free to send suggestions to the address at the right.

Selective Morality in the Workplace

The New York Times has an editorial saying exactly what I have said long before now: if your sense of morality does not allow you to fully discharge the duties of your job, find a new line of work that conforms to your moral compass. Pharmacists who refuse to fill legally written prescriptions for medicine that a physician has deemed necessary and appropriate for that patient have no business behind a pharmacy counter. Margaret Sanger was arrested for distributing birth control devices, but family planning is legal now, and should be available to any patient with a legally written prescription and no contraindications, no matter what the personal beliefs of the pharmacist.

Not saying, of course, that pharmacists should be just prescription vending machines. Pharmacists play a vital role in the delivery of health care, even more so now that doctors don't have or take the time to fully explain the treatment regimen they prescribe. The pharmacist my family went to while I was growing up was just as important to our family's medical care as our physicians were. When a medication I had to take caused intolerable nausea, my pharmacist was the one who told us how to minimize the discomfort and potential harm, allowing me to continue my treatment. When another person's allergy medication failed to work, the pharmacist was the one who discerned that one of the inert ingredients in the pill was the allergen for which the medication was being prescribed. In the days before databases, he knew what my family should never take, but that decision was based entirely on our medical needs, not his moral judgment.

I find it odd that all the refusals to fill prescriptions based on moral values is confined to birth control and emergency contraception. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, but these pharmacists seem to have no problem dispensing weight loss drugs or cholesterol lowering medications that help people avoid the consequences of chronic gluttony. Even if the pharmacists' moral compass is confined strictly to curtailing the consequence-free indulgence of our lust, though, should we not also be hearing more about people being denied prescriptions for Viagra and Cialis, or is it just women who aren't allowed to have sex on their terms?

Ooookay

First, let me preface this by saying that the death of any human being is a somber occasion. I'm not Catholic and I may not agree with a lot of the positions of the Catholic church, but I have always found Pope John Paul II to be an honorable and decent man.

That said, I find the way the Vatican confirms the death of a pope very amusing--as far as anything about the death of a world leader can be amusing. According to a report on CNN Headline News, after all the heart monitors and brain scans and such show that the Pope's vital signs have ceased, a top Vatican official (I forget which one) gets in the late Pope's face and calls his given name three times, then taps his forehead. I understand that the Vatican stands on ceremony quite a bit, but this is essentially yelling "Booga! Booga!" and slapping his forehead to make the results of the MRI official.

Wasn't Duct Tape Supposed to Keep Us Safe From Toxic Fumes

A duct tape plant in South Carolina exploded last night.

Emergency officials asked residents living near the plant to stay inside and turn off their ventilation systems because of thick smoke, authorities said.

I guess they couldn't exactly ask people to go with the plastic sheeting and duct tape defense shield when duct tape was the cause of the problem.

More DST

Here's another article expounding on the benefits of turning the clocks ahead an hour. Again, they use one of my pet peeve arguments of "More daylight will (insert benefit here)." I've said it before and I'll say it again: changing the timing of daylight does not increase the overall quantity of that daylight.

Here's a crazy idea: those who tout the benefits of "more daylight" can just wake up an hour earlier in the summer and let the rest of us alone.

I'm Back...

No, I'm not ignoring you. Lately, there has just been a confluence of other things demanding my attention and a dearth of real news to comment on with every dang news outlet going with the WTWS format (Wall to Wall Schiavo). For the record, I have come to the same conclusion ME has: I have no standing to have a stance on this particular issue. Strangely, though, it has made part of me want to delay making out a living will--something I have meant to do for quite some time--exactly because of this whole flap. I don't want anyone getting the impression that I am making out a living will because the media has called attention to it and suddenly so many people are rushing to make them out because It May Happen To Me. I would be doing it because I've meant to for about half a decade now and we would be folding it into several things we've been meaning to get a lawyer to do.

As much as I've tried to ignore all of the media coverage of this fracas, it's about as easy as completely avoiding environmental mercury contamination. Not going to happen. However, what has dribbled through has given me some ideas for my own eventual living will and instructions for my durable Power of Attorney. For what it is worth with whatever weight a blog entry may carry in these matters, my wishes on life support are as follows:
1. If my mind isn't coming back, even if my body still has a fighting chance, pull whatever plug I'm plugged into. If I can't have thoughts and communicate them, I'm just wasting space, and to the extent that I would be able to be frustrated in that state, I would probably find it incredibly frustrating.
2. If my care becomes burdensome, put something good in my IV drip and kill me, whatever my recovery prospects may be. Whether or not I would want to be kept alive is irrelevant to the process when I am no longer the one doing the keeping. I would rather just go and let everyone get on with their lives.
3. Don't put too much weight on what I would want. Living is for the living, and I want my caretakers to consider what is best for themselves. (Thanks to ME for those last two thoughts)

Happy Bunny Day

On Tuesday, the Easter Bunny in Council Bluffs, Iowa was arrested for harrassment.

The Easter Bunny in Bay City, Michigan got beaten up by a 12 year old and sustained a bloody nose. Staying in character, the bunny refused to fight back; however, he is pressing charges.

Who knew that Mall Easter Bunny was such a hazardous occupation.

That Makes Me Feel Better

New actuarial figures show Social Security going insolvent in 2041, a year earlier than previously planned. Strangely, this makes me feel better. Between that and the increased retirement age going into effect, the system is now insolvent 3 years before I can retire. Used to be that with the retirement age at 65 and the insolvency date at 2042, I would be paying into the system right up until I am eligble to retire, then whoops! There goes the fund.

And they wonder why people my age don't care about the Social Security debate. True, a lot of people in their 20's are still busy getting wasted every chance they get and don't have time to worry about their retirement. Those of us who are planning for the future aren't counting on seeing any of the money that gets shunted out of our paychecks every week and are planning accordingly, so whatever anyone wants to do with the program is your business.

Inconvenient Facts

Last night, I was at the local mall--which is apparently not the only mall in America without an Orange Julius stand, man do I miss those--where the local Waldenbooks is clearancing out the merchandise. They're closing the store since there is a Borders coming in and the same parent company owns both Borders and Waldenbooks. Seems someone out at the parent company thought they only needed one bookstore in that mall. 900 jewelry stores, sure, but only one bookstore.

Getting back to the point. Earlier this week, Waldenbooks had a slew of "Store Closing" signs out advertising their clearances. Yesterday, those signs were all gone, replaced with some cheesy laserprinted sheets taped to the fixtures. Apparently, mall management thought that the "store closing" signs reflected poorly on the mall, even though the store is, in fact, closing. Can't wait to see how they spin the store being, well, gone.

More 888-872-2629

Glad to hear I could help so many of you out there get rid of the Chase telemarketers (if you missed the first couple of posts, click here for the instructions on how to stop 888-872-2629 to stop calling you). Maybe some of you can give me a hand, now. I'm working on a related project that expands on the topic, and I could use some more in-depth input from people who have been telemarketed by their credit card company. I would rather not give out too much about the project yet since I'm not certain anything will come of it, but it has a much better chance of success if I can get one or two of you on record with just a little bit about your experiences getting telemarketing calls after signing up for services or buying something.

If you wouldn't mind sharing some details about your experiences being telemarketed and getting them to stop, please drop an email at perspectives@savepenguins.com. Also, on the off chance anyone out there has ever worked as a telemarketer, I'd like to get some input from you.

None of your information you provide will be posted at Penguin Perspectives, and I won't let your email address out. However, if something does come of this project, there is a chance your name (I will need a real name) and a quotation or two might one day wind up in print.

Again, the email address is perspectives@savepenguins.com, and I'll let you know from there exactly what sort of information I'm looking for.

Gizmo Time

For your online-window-shopping pleasure, here's a few of the fun doohickies and thingamabobs you can find at www.thinkgeek.com.

An optical mouse with a floaty duck

A wristwatch and slide rule in one

A USB humidifier just plug it into your computer's USB port, and you've got instant humidification

The next generation in Ant Farm technology (ants not included)

A series of motivational posters that just may make you laugh

Thinkgeek.com also has a full line of Tux products. One day, I'm going to switch to Linux for no other reason than their mascot is a penguin.

Japan Pushes for DST

Is it already time to rant against Daylight Saving Time again? News from Reuters is that the Japanese legislature is making a push for Spring Forward, Fall Back. One of the main arguments for advancing the time change:

"The resulting extra daylight and cooler mornings--

Whoa-ho. Let's just stop right there and clear something up. Setting the clocks back does not magically give you "extra daylight." DST or no, Japan will still get about 15 1/2 hours of daylight on the summer solstice. Whether that starts at 4:30 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. does not change the total quantity of daylight. The mornings may be cooler, but only because there is an hour less sun in it. By extension, this means that the evenings are hotter as there is an hour more sunlight.

Given the 24-hour nature of life in this day and age, why are we fussing over where the big hand and the little hand are when the sun comes up?

Corporal Klinger Lives

New York Times headline: Un-Volunteering: Troops Improvise to Find Way Out

Seems there is a small segment of our military forces--according to the Army, no more than usual--who are doing whatever they can to get out of their contract with the military. Tactics include trying to fail drug tests, defecting to Canada, getting pregnant, getting shot, and being gay. Apparently, M*A*S*H was more realistic than I thought.

About Damn Time!

Reuters headline: US May Restrict Sale of Social Security Numbers

Good idea, don't you think? I should probably not be as surprised as I am that there aren't already restrictions on the sale of my social security number.

Here's the link to what the Social Security Administration has to say on the subject of when you are required to give your number out. The upshot is that disclosing your SSN is voluntary. This does not mean that the entity asking for your number still must do business with you if you refuse, but if you are prepared to do without, the choice to give out your number is yours. Along those lines, apparently there are ways for your utility company to run a credit check on you without you providing your SSN.

By the way, the official policy of the Social Security Administration is that your card is not a form of ID, given that it only proves that the number on the card was assigned to the person named on the card and does not guarantee that the person presenting the Social Security card is in fact the person to whom the card was issued.

Media Circus

The 24-hour news channels must be wetting themselves. The Robert Blake and Scott Peterson verdicts came in on the same day! How, oh, how will they give both of the Trials of the Century verdicts the constant coverage they deserve while still keeping up the play-by-play on Michael Jackson's jammies? At least they have the crawl for those trivial news-fluff items like the two wars that I think we may still be fighting.

Mundane Stuff of Life

The people who live in the apartment next door are fighting again. I don't listen, but the yelling carries through the walls, so sometimes one can't help but hear. I'm counting the days until we will live somewhere not attached to someone else's home. 33, if everything goes according to the current schedule.

More New Studies

Now, my mother is a wonderful woman who has, to my recollection, never held the circumstances of her children's gestation and births against us. However, I hear tell that there are some women who pull a guilt trip on their offspring about the 36 hours of labor or what have you. For those women, check out this news story. Seems now, in addition to blaming their progeny for their inability to wear a wristwatch, mothers can now pin their bad teeth on the children. A new study shows that women with more children have more dental problems, even when income, age, and socioeconomic status is factored out.

Happy Pi Day!

It's no National Gorilla Suit Day, but today is Pi Day, 3/14. Click here to see a replay of Pi Drop that happened at 1:59. Those mathematicians sure know how to party with flash animation.

By coincidence, today is also Albert Einstein's birthday. Let's see here. The radius of a circle is a ratio of pi, which is 3.14..., and Albert Einstein was born on 3/14. In Young Einstein, Albert Einstein was played by Yahoo Serious, who was in Reckless Kelly with Martin Ferrero, who was in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with Kevin Bacon. I guess you can connect anything to Kevin Bacon in six steps or fewer.

Credit to Bonus.com for the last two steps.

Speaking of Vomiting in Public...

The New York Times published an article on the whole Power Hour idiocy I wrote about earlier. To save you the clicking, freshly minted 21-year-olds try to down 21 shots in the hour between midnight on their 21st birthday and 1 a.m. when the bars close. The solution that the North Dakota legislature has dreamed up is to raise the drinking age to 21 +8 hours. Given my doubts about the efficacy of that, I proposed a counter-solution to have the bars limit the number of shots they would serve anyone, regardless of age, in an hour.

Apparently, we can kiss that idea goodbye. I'm pretty sure that when the bars are providing barf buckets to the 21-year-olds, we can pretty much forget about enlisting their aid in curbing the practice. When they're supplying the drinks and the vomitorium and not stepping in when a patron tells his friends "no more," I'd say we can count the bars firmly as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Of course, as the drinkers in the New York Times article see it, the problem is that there is nothing to do in North Dakota except get blind drunk and puke in the middle of a bar. That, I must say, is the absolute WEAKEST excuse I have ever heard for anything. If there is nothing to do, have they considered learning a foreign language or taking up knitting? If there is so little to do in Fargo (and they do have a movie theater with live pipe organ music), here's an idea: when the hangover wears off, pack up whatever brain cells aren't pickled, call some movers, and leave North Dakota. But then they'd have to grow up and become responsible adults, so that won't work, either.

Tossing My Cookies

I have an intense distaste for air travel. I may have mentioned before that there is no good way to vomit on an airplane, particularly when the "fasten seat belt" sign is lit. I have tried, and it cannot be done. However, if there is one good thing to be said about flying, it is that the snacks are great. Stop laughing. I like airline snacks. I am particularly fond of the cookies on Delta, sort of a light, flaky gingersnap.

My local Kroger also carries these particular cookies. Lo and behold, today Kroger had sample platter of my favorite airplane cookies out for my nibbling pleasure, and I pounced. Pounced a little too hard, it turns out. In the process of setting the plastic cover aside, I managed to nearly send the whole platter tumbling off the display. I saved the plate of cookies, but the cover clattered halfway to the deli meat counter. One way or another, I seem to always hurl these cookies.

I'm Not Making This Up

A Michigan cat shot its owner with a 9mm handgun. There are two lessons in this story.
Lesson #1: never leave a loaded handgun unattended on the kitchen counter
Lesson #2: don't piss off the cat

Recommended Reading

You absolutely must read the saga of ME and his garage door replacement.

Question of the Day

Does anyone know whatever came of the duck from You Bet Your Life?

For the last time...

In today's Funky Winkerbean, the comic book store owner got arrested, presumably because some of the items in the comics are not so much for the kiddies. The story arc starts on March 4 with a woman taking her first ever trip to a comic book store and finding the Adult Comics section.

Is there any way that we, the comic book reading public, can convince the rest of you that comics are not just for kids? We've already tried talking until we're blue in the face and pricing comic books way out of the range of most kids' allowances. None of that seems to have taken hold. There are many great titles for the small tykes--check out RQW--but not every comic is meant for minors. A lot of comics are meant for grownups, in exactly the same way that the majority of what is in a Barnes and Noble is meant for grownups.

Sure, some shops do a less-than-stellar job of segregating out the most adult offerings. One of my local comics shops keeps a longbox of Playboys on the floor underneath a table displaying action figures. Were I running a comic book store, that would not be where I would keep the nudie magazines. To be fair, the bad segregation of grownup materials is not unique to comic book shops. I was in a major media outlet a while back and accidentally knocked a box off the bookshelf. In full view of the Tiger Beat magazine display, a vibrator (ahem, Personal Massager) rolled right out of the box and into the aisle.

So please, leave the comic books alone. Whatever you may remember of Superman being chased by a giant telephone in the 60's, comics are not kiddie fare. Let the grownups have their picture books. While we're at it, can we just agree to stop trotting the small fries out whenever we want to get rid of something we disagree with? People don't do things "for the kids." The kids have no clue. They do it because they don't like something, so they don't think I should have access to it.

Slow News Day

It must be a slow news day. The Associated Press ran an article on people getting in trouble at work for blogs they write off hours. At first, you might think that's a little harsh. Then you read what they were posting. One Delta employee posted pinup photos of herself in (well, partly in) uniform in one of the aircraft, with her undies showing. A Google employee mused about the company's financial situation. A Microsoft employee posted pictures of Apple computers at a Microsoft loading dock and described the building. Another woman posted the office gossip from the Christmas party. That last one could be fairly inocuous, depending on what the gossip is, but by and large those show not a violation of policy, but incredibly poor judgement.

You may have noticed I don't talk much about work. First and foremost, I don't want to bore you and my job isn't all that interesting. Second of all, it is a general rule of Penguin Perspectives that I do not write badly of people I personally know. Makes life easier that way. My boss knows I blog. I don't know if she reads what I write or not. Since I want to continue to be paid, I find it to my advantage to not impugn the nature of the company that pays me. Such is life and commerce.

Questions

Having gone through 12 years of compulsory lower education and six years of college to get a four year degree, I've now decided to learn all the things that people should know just because it is good to know. Classrooms can't teach these things, or won't. For instance, I'm working on learning how a computer works. With everything the computers run in my life, I figure the least I should know is what goes on inside that box. Learning how a microprocessor works, or what a chip really does, is a long term project. In the shorter term, I'm working on questions like why is the North Pole frozen, anyway?

Bling-A-Ling

Logically, one would think that if one of something looks dumb, than four of that something would look even dumber, and the opposite is also true: that if four of something looks dumb, one would still look dumb, but less so. However, there are exceptions to every rule. On the way home from the grocery store, I found one of them.

I may have mentioned before that spinning hubcaps give me a mild case of motion sickness. That, and I think they look incredibly stupid. No reason. Some things are just inherently dumb. Turns out there is something more stupid looking than a set of spinning hubcaps on a primer-gray mid-90's Corsica that appears to have had the dents pounded out with a meat mallet. Specifically, a primer-gray mid-90's Corsica that appears to have had the dents pounded out with a meat mallet and sporting, not a set of spinners, but a single spinner on the right front wheel. Yep, one solitary hubcap spinning away on a car being driven by a guy who looked like a 35-year-old Jeff Foxworthy wannabe who hadn't bathed in a month. I'm guessing he missed the memo where they explained that pimping your ride means pimping your entire ride.

Shmoozers Block

I'm writing cover letters to resumes I will be dropping off tomorrow when I'm down in the new place, and I seem to have drawn a complete blank on how to hype my organization skills (Becca, stop spitting milk out your nose). The first thing I've done at most of my office jobs has been to revamp their filing system. Partly, this is to improve efficiency, but mostly it is job security. I've discovered people are less likely to fire you if you're the only one who know where things are filed.

888-872-2629

I seem to have touched a nerve when I mentioned my travails with Chase's telemarketers from 888-872-2629. Five comments! I didn't know I had five readers.

They called again today while I was at work. Just for kicks, I thought I would see what happened if, instead of waiting for them to call me, I called them. Good news: if you call 888-872-2629, there is the option to add your number to their internal Do Not Call List. It takes about 2 minutes all told to submit the request. Of course, this wouldn't be Penguin Perspectives without the Irony of the Week. I added my home phone to the do not call list, and the automated message told me to allow 30 days for the change to take effect. We move--and get a new phone number--in 47 days.

BYOB-Build Your Own Batcave

There are so many fun things about buying a house. My latest discovery is that, without landlords and security deposits, now there is nothing stopping me from turning my home into my own personal Fortress of Solitude. I'm saving the title of Batcave for the barn.

Of course there are several things any good superhero hideout needs, all of which are, thanks to the Internet, readily available to all of us wannabe superheroes:
- A World Crisis Monitor, courtesy of Reuters
- Sliding panels to hide your World Crisis Monitor. Instructions for making one can be found here.
- Doors hidden behind bookcases.
- A 31-pocket jacket to pull things out of, Secret Squirrel style. Also 11-pocket pants, and yes, even the tie has a pocket
- And no Batcave would be complete without a Wurlitzer. For the whimsey.

Novel Writing Redux

Last November's NaNoWriMo was so much fun, I'm doing it again, and who has time to wait for November to come around again? A few of us are planning to do our own Novel Writing Month in March. Tuesday, we start binge-drafting novels, and everyone is welcomed to join us in an effort to prod each other into finally getting that novel out of our heads and onto a drive. NaNoWriMo sets a universal goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. 50,000 words seems like a lot, but my 50,003 worked out to only 83 pages, which is slim pickings for a novel. Honestly, once you really get into creating characters and a compelling conflict, 50K is not that much. For March, I'm shooting for between 50,000 and 60,000 words, giving me a nice round goal of 2,000 words per day. Goals will probably vary.

If there is interest, I'll set up a team blog where everyone can post their goals and progress. Email perspectives@savepenguins.com if you want in on the team blogging for Novel Progress.

Gateway Saga, Part II

Dante wrote that the gateway of hell read, "Abandon hope, ye who enter here." I think he was on musical hold with customer service at the time with someone who did not understand that if his pens were out being repaired, he could not make his living. Hence why he put it on the Gateway.

To recap, Elie sent the laptop, a vital tool in his business, in to the service department for a simple warranty repair a month ago. Gateway sent it back to where we lived two forwarding addresses before where we lived when we bought the laptop. The people who received the package in error returned it to Gateway, who has no idea where the laptop currently is located. Customer Service gave us every impression that a missing laptop report would be filed, they would make one last-ditch attempt at finding the computer, and if that failed, they would be shipping out a replacement ASAP to make it good. Yes, I hear you laughing from here. We all know where this is going. Turns out no one filed the paperwork to report the laptop missing. Now the soonest a replacement might possibly be sent out would be Thursday. Not that it matters. We have no intention of keeping whatever they send us back. We're passing this trouble off to a guy who is willing to buy the new laptop, even knowing how we came by it.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. His name is Eric and he works for the CompUSA in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This guy is what customer service should be. Elie had reached the limits of how long he could effectively do his job without a laptop, so we crossed state lines to find an open store where we could get a Mac G4. Eric responded admirably to my strategy of looking like a little confused puppy in the general vicinity of the merchandise I want to buy, and he set us up with the new laptop and all the necessary software, plus throwing in a home networking router (free with rebates). He probably would have ordered us a pizza if he thought it would make us buy more. We're reserving ultimate judgment to see if Elie's business program will run on Virtual PC, but if it doesn't Eric has made sure we can return the whole bundle even though the return policy clearly states we cannot return opened software. We watched him put that paperwork in.

Live humans, 1. Phones, 0.

Watch Them Move Now...

I try to save being cynical for after I finished my morning coffee. Reuters is making that a little difficult today with this article.

Seems Bank of America lost computer tapes with credit card account records--including social security numbers--of 1.2 million government employees. Actually, BofA and the Senate Rules Committee suspect that a baggage handler stole the data tapes as they were being shipped by plane to a storage facility. Among the account holders whose information is potentially compromised are about 900,000 Department of Defense workers and dozens of senators, as well as other government employees. Reading just that part of the article, my inner cynic said, "Yeah. Let's see them move real quickly now on identity theft and airport baggage security now that their personal info has gone missing," while other inner parts of me were saying, "C'mon. At least finish your Cheerios before you start thinking that poorly of people." For the record, I tried to listen to the non-cynical parts. Then I came to the following two excerpts:

Quoted from Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY: "Whether it is identity theft, terrorism or other theft, in this new and complicated world baggage handlers should have background checks and more care should be taken for who is hired for these increasingly sensitive positions."

and

"Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said he hoped the fact that Senate information was among the lost data would spur Congress to pay attention to a 'rapid erosion of privacy rights' due to faulty data security."

Apparently, my inner cynic called this one. Sorry, Senator Leahy, but I hoped that the fact that faulty data security and sticky-fingered baggage handlers are affecting a lot of people BESIDES Senators would spur congress to pay attention to a rapid erosion of privacy rights. We should not have to wait until something happens directly to our congresspeople for them to see that there is a problem.

Here's to hoping that the day gets better, faith-in-humanity-wise.

Ahh, the Sweet Smell of Irony...

First, some background: about a month ago, Elie's laptop stopped emitting sound. Given that Elie uses his laptop for presenting DVDs to clients in their homes, sound is a rather important function. We shipped it off to Gateway for the warranty repair. Then we waited. And waited. When he called to check this week on where in the world his laptop was, Gateway cheerily notified us that they shipped it out to us on February 7. Odd, we thought, that he has not received it yet, particularly since, according to the DHL tracking, it was delivered on February 8.

Apparently, yes, it was delivered--to the leasing office of apartment we lived at three years ago. Wait, it gets better. The leasing office returned the package to the sender the day before we figured out what had happened. Now, Gateway can't figure out where the laptop is. They are making it good, in their own way, but the best is yet to come.

Today, I got a call from a perky Gateway customer satisfaction pollster, asking us how we're liking our Gateway laptop. "Well," I told him, "except that your service department seems to have misplaced it..."

From Figure of Speech to Reality

Man Bites Dog. Literally. A man in Scotland bit his guide dog.

WeddingPalooza Hooey

Salon has an article up about this contest in which 10 lucky couples with children will be chosen to get a free wedding in New York. It is supposedly a move to encourage two-parent households among otherwise-committed African-American couples Race, socioeconomics, and the contest mastermind's ulterior motives aside (she happens to be releasing a book on marriage), this is just another example of something I've believed since before I got married: a lot of people of all social and racial groups who get married don't care about being married. Rather, they want a wedding. The marriage is incidental.

"We can't afford to get married" is a cop out of the highest degree. I got married in Omaha, Nebraska, where a couple can be legally wed for $40 ($15 for the license and $25 for the judge to perform the ceremony). Certainly, there are outside economic factors that sometimes make being married a liability--we waited nearly 3 years to get married in part because we would lose our health insurance--but that is another issue entirely. If having a free wedding is all it takes to get a couple married, they have personal or couple issues that a wedding will not fix, and it does them no service to feed their illusion that all they need for a happy life is a wad of taffeta and a rented tuxedo.

As for the supposed "Stigma of a city hall wedding," again a Steaming Crock of Crap. Hate to break it to people, but no one gives a rat's butt where you got married. Few people will know or remember where the wedding was, and people won't stigmatize based on something they can't readily figure out. Legally speaking (leaving aside certain religion's requirements for a recognized marriage), civil ceremonies leave you no less married. Like so many prejudices, the bias against civil ceremonies is largely propagated by people who have never seen one. We had a lovely ceremony in Courtroom 27, and it was an actual ceremony, not a legal proceeding. The judge gave a talk on the importance of marriage and told a touching story about the Aztecs before we took the standard vows that you would take for any marriage. The court staff assured me we were allowed to bring whomever we wanted to attend the ceremony, and we had our immediate family there. We could have had more than the 12 people there, but we wanted to keep it small. The ceremony was, of course, stripped of a lot of the frou-frou of weddingpaloozas. The choreographed musical procession was pretty much out of the question, and we didn't have time--or inclination--to put out pew bows or huge floral arrangements or candelabras. The proceedings were focused not on how pretty the room was, but on our marriage.

I've said before and I will say it again: we could go a long way in improving marriage if we downplayed the wedding. Ban the butt-bows and dyed-to-match shoes, and you'll find people treating the act of getting married for what it is: a lifelong commitment, not an excuse for a party.

About Freakin' Time

Finally, a news story about how bad some other country's students are in a subject. A survey of Japanese high schoolers found that 24% could not find North Korea and more than 40% could not find Iraq. That doesn't excuse the sad state of American secondary education, since the Japanses students probably still did better than American kids would do on a test of Geography of Countries Whose Invasions or Diplomacy We Are Not Leading (I think we're down to Lichtenstein), but still. When most of the news out of the field of education is about how our high schools are turning out mobs of illiterate, drooling morons, isn't it nice to hear that the other countries aren't perfect?

Not enlightening or uplifting, just good for a laugh

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has the funniest new show on Sundays at 11:30 p.m. Robot Chicken is hilarious stop-motion animation with off the shelf action figures and toys. Click here for a video clip of a beanie baby panda biting the head off a Geraldo Rivera-esque action figure. Did I mention that this is not for the small fry? Cartoon Network doesn't call it "Adult Swim" for nothing. Robot Chicken is a bit of twisted humor, much like a 16-car pileup on the freeway leaves a little dent in car #7. Let's just say the opening credits for Robot Chicken have a roadkill chicken being revived by a mad scientist who turns it into a cyborg hen and forcing it to watch TV.

Too bad they didn't post the clip of Captain Kirk getting an appendage slammed in the turbolift door. I laugh just thinking about that. Seriously. Watch the show. Without the kids.

Can Someone Say "Lawsuit"?

At Media Play tonight, we bore witness to a harried mother trying to drag her son--I'll guess he was about 6 or 7 years old--away from the playing with the PlayStation 2. After the mom peeled her kid away from the game demo, I happened to glance down at the game that was in the console. They were demoing NanoBreaker by Konami. I cannot speak to the content of NanoBreaker, as I have not personally played it; however, the story is apparently that you are a cyborg fighter trying to slay the nanomachines that harvest human blood. The game is rated M (Mature), a rating roughly analogous to an R rating for a movie. In the words of the ESRB, "content may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older." Content descriptors for NanoBreaker indicate that the M rating is for blood and gore and violence. If the screenshots with that link are any indication, they're not just blowing smoke.

Now, I am all for letting video game developers (and movie producers, etc.) create products with as much blood, gore and violence as they deem necessary. Game developers will put out games they think they can sell, and there are people who enjoy a good polygon hack-and-slash. People are free to not purchase those games that they find objectionable. However, on purely a practical level, stores are getting sued for selling M-rated games to 16-year-olds. Wouldn't someone think that having an M-rated game playing in the demo consoles where any unsupervised 5-year-old can pony up to the controller might just be a bad idea?

Loonatics

Jerry Beck says the best thing I've heard yet about Loonatics, the forthcoming project out of Warner Brothers cartoon studios with characters that appear to be some sort of manga spawn of Bugs, Taz, Daffy, Wile E. Coyote, Roadrunner, and Lola. Warning: he says it with some grown-up language, but we are all grown ups here. He has a point: the more we object to Loonatics--one blog even implied the new show would be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions--the more we encourage WB to keep milking the creative genius of dead animators instead of creating a set of characters for our generation.

On a personal level, I find it at least irritating when studios take established properties and "remake" them by creating what is essentially an entirely new property that is at best loosely related to the original, with the name of the old one. Oftentimes, they don't even give us that. For all they know, the new property would succeed on its own merit and find an audience, but that is risky. Slapping the name of an established property on the project guarantees press and an audience, at least until we realize one has been put over on us, but by then we realize the new property is pretty good and we keep watching or reading. Being tricked into watching makes me resent a perfectly good story.

Related: when the studios "re-imagine" a property and try to convince us they didn't. Harris did it with Vampirella, my bar-none favorite horror magazine from the '60s and '70s, where she was an alien vampire/magician's assistant. They created Vampi, which they try to bill as a "completely separate character" from Vampirella, even though they admit Vampi and Vampirella have "the same general abilities and motives." They forgot logo in that list, but apparently giving one character a more futuristic costume and gadgets and shaving 10 years off the age makes it a "completely separate character."

Reader Poll

We're gearing up for the move, and I'm making an inventory of things we will be moving ourselves and not letting the movers anywhere near. On the list are things we will need immediately upon arrival, like a roll of TP and the cats' litter boxes. Also on the list are our absolutely irreplaceable items. Felix* tops that list, of course. Here is where the reader poll comes in. How bad is it, really, that I just noticed that I seem to have put the sketchbook on the list of irreplaceables and left off the wedding album? Current contents of the sketchbook include original art from Sergio Aragones, Monty Moore, Joe Corroney, Frank Cho, Jeff Smith (no relation, Becca), Mike Deodato, Jr. (whose official site is in Portuguese, so good luck with that link), and a lot of people you've probably never heard of, assuming you have heard of any of those. The wedding album, on the other hand, contains the snapshots of us getting married at the Douglas County Courthouse, and somewhere, we have the negatives.

*- for those of you who may have just joined Penguin Perspectives, Felix is our dearly departed cat.

Something to Chew On

So the National Hockey League has cancelled the 2005 hockey season. This did not keep Electronic Arts from releasing NHL 2005, which in all fairness was released well in advance of the season cancellation. However, a video game capitalizing on a nonexistant sports season is not the most irony-laden part of this whole situation. The NHL is so good at licensing ancillary products that the actual playing of a season of professional hockey has become unnecessary. G4, the tech/video game cable channel, is playing through the now-defunct 2005 hockey season on the EA game. Fans can follow their team through the virtual season. The only difference is instead of actual hockey players and ice, we have gamers on Playstation 2s.

I don't know squat about hockey, but it appears that the hypothetical Pittsburgh Penguins are not doing well at all. At least that's how I am interpreting a 17-31 record with 5 ties.

Slow News Day?

Actual headline: New York's Celebrity Bird Couple is Seen Mating
The news: Birds of prey have sex

Who would have thought hawks would do something so outrageous as mating, and during mating season, no less.

Art, Schmart

A guy actually put orange drapes up in Central Park. There is even a live Central Park Curtain Cam, I guess for those of us who can't get there to see them in person. I'm not sure anything more needs to be said here.

Phishing Trip

I just got my first phishing email. You would think with three email addresses, I would have been pegged before now, but I've gotten lucky. This particular phish was requesting that I confirm my account details for my Washington Mutual account, or else they would have no choice but to suspend my account. In addition to the helpful hints Washington Mutual provides on its website to help its customers avoid being taken by the phishers, there were several tipoffs that this email was a blatant scam.

1. "Washington Mutual" was contacting me by email about my account.
2. They threatened to close my account if I failed ot respond to one email.
3. No legitimate bank makes you confirm your personal account details on a non-secure website. I'm not sure any make you confirm your account details online at all. What is with this "confirming" thing, anyway?
4. The web address text they used for the link, which appeared to be a legitimate Washington Mutual website, was not the address you would get to if you clicked on the link, which was on some random alphanumeric domain.

and most telling of all:
5. I do not have an account at Washington Mutual.

Stupid Telemarketer Tricks

We're on the Do Not Call list, but that doesn't apply when I have a "business relationship" with the telemarketer, which means I get periodic rashes of phone calls from my credit card companies wanting to sign me up for this that and the other. They are very persistent and even when I don't answer the phone, the ringing breaks my train of thought. I finally decided today that the only way to get 888-872-2629 to quit calling me four times a day was to answer the phone and blow them off. The person on the other end--who could not have been calling from a center in Bangladesh because her English grammar wasn't that good--wanted to let me know of "a few benefits that the company is offering cardholders now that were not available when you got the card, and we just need to confirm your address and the spelling of your name." How stupid do they think I am? They know my name and address. The credit card company sends me a bill every month and reports my every sneeze to the credit bureaus. You don't just loan people money without some idea of where to look for them to get it back

Survey Sez...

Here's the results of a survey that might interest those of you who doubt people's sincerity when they say they prize a sense of humor in a mate. You know who you are.

A Lot of Generalizations

Elie and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day, which may surprise some people who know us. As one of my coworkers said today, "You don't celebrate Valentine's Day? Well you've only been married a few years [4 1/2 for the record--JH]. Check back with me in another 15." Elie and I are not that type of morally superior couples you find who have the attitude "well, maybe you need Valentine's Day to show your love, but we don't need a special day," or more nicely "every day is Valentine's Day for us." Those people annoy me. Elie and I are generally considered to be the most romantic couple that our friends know, and even we have our off days--sometimes up to off weeks. No one is as happy and blissfully in love every minute of every day as those couples try to make it seem.

I really am not one of those "Bah Humbug" anti-Valentine's Day people. I don't think Valentine's Day should be banned; I don't think it is any more of a Hallmark Holiday than birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, or Christmas; I don't think it is a great conspiracy of the florists and candymakers (particularly since the festival predates both); I especially don't think that non-coupled people should feel like they're missing something on Valentine's Day, any more than Gentiles should feel like they're missing something on Sukkot. I actually think it is great that couples celebrate Valentine's Day, not just because it is a day to remind people to appreciate their loved ones. Well, actually I find it more amusing. We tart the day up with cupids and cards and notions of romance and love, but at the core, it is the one day a year where the whoring is right out there in the open. The whole concept of the day is really a tit-for-tat (pardon the unintentional crass pun). Guy gives girl chocolates, flowers, nice dinner out, and/or sparkly things, and if girl decides the presents are good enough, she gives him what he wants. On any other day of the year between strangers, that would be a misdemeanor.

I'm not meaning that as a negative thing. The fact is, Valentine's Day just compresses the fundamental dynamic of human relationships until you can actually see it happening in a 24-hour period with a tangible exchange. One of the fundamental principles that keeps society going is that we give others what they want in order to get what we want. I think society would be better off if we had more holidays that, even tacitly, acknowledged that that is what people do. We would be even better off if we did not have to hide it behind all the cutsey hearts, but that's not likely.

Study Findings

Finally, a scientific study that explains why I can't swing, musically speaking. Unfortunately, it does not explain my complete and utter lack of rhythmic ability. That's another study.

FAQs

Over at the Selective Service's website, Elie found perhaps one of the most bizarre Frequently Asked Questions ever. Second from the bottom of the list: "How does the Military Selective Service Act apply to individuals who have had a sex change?" I have to wonder just how frequently that question is asked. In case you were wondering, whatever one's current gender, if one was born male, one must register with Selective Service. Apparently there is an exemption one can file in the event one is called up while female.

Did we learn nothing from Prohibition?

North Dakota is trying to legislate out something called Power Hour drinking, in which incredibly stupid people turning 21 hit the bars at midnight and try to down 21 shots before the bars close at 1 a.m. North Dakota's strategy: make it illegal for bars to serve alcohol to anyone until 8 a.m. on their 21st birthday. Now, as stupid as trying to down 21 shots in an hour is, the legislature's proposed solution is only slightly less moronic, and then only because passing the law, in and of itself, will probably not kill any of the legislators.

Why this will not work:
As it is now, the stupid 21-year-olds try to down 21 shots in the first hour that it is legal for them to drink. At the moment in North Dakota, the soonest they can do that is midnight on their birthdays. If the proposed solution goes through, the soonest 21-year-olds can drink would be 8 a.m. on their birthdays. Is anyone in the North Dakota legislature really naive enough to think that their solution will do anything besides move the practice to 8 o'clock in the morning? Face it. There is a certain segment of the population that finds the concept of getting falling-down drunk appealing, and will attempt to do this in public as soon as legally possible. Changing the time that it is legally possible will not alter this. For the record, in the interest of full, I spent my 21st birthday perfectly sober and moving between apartments, and I do not understand the appeal of being drunk. I have been drunk once, when I was 18, fully supervised by my then-brother-in-law, just to see what it was like. To save any of you the trouble, it feels like having the flu and salmonella poisoning at the same time.

A much better solution to the 21-year-old Power Hour Drinking Problem:
Instead of basing the ability to get falling-down drunk on the time of day of date of birth, try curbing the amount of alcohol any person can legally consume in a bar in a given hour. Sure the 21-year-olds are the vanguard of the stupid drinkers, but excessive drinkers come in all ages. Downing 21 shots in an hour requires, by my count, roughly one shot every three minutes. Bartenders have GOT to notice someone drinking that fast. Now, to limit the amount of alcohol a person can consume in a bar in an hour, one must balance the rights of the bar owner to do business against the public safety concerns involved in the sort of binge drinking we're trying to eliminate. 21 shots in an hour is obviously excessive and in most realistic scenarios at least unhealthy if not outright fatal. Where to draw the line, then? Ten shots in an hour is enough to get the average person more than drunk, and limiting a person to 10 in an hour would require 21-year-olds to stagger to at least 3 bars in an hour while still averaging a shot every 3 minutes. This level of bar-hopping is probably not outside the realm of the possible, but it would make 21 shots in an hour a whole lot more difficult, and give a chance for the intoxication from the first 4 or 5 shots to show up by the time the idiots find a bar to get the 21st one at. Limiting to 9 in an hour would even make that 21st shot less of a holy grail, since they would have to find a bar to serve the last 4 shots, rather than the last 1.

See? Much more elegant solution that does not rely in infantilizing a very narrow swatch of the people who probably could use some infantilization. If the problem group is the intersection of 21-year-olds and binge drinkers, doesn't it make more sense to target binge drinkers than 21-year-olds? After all, being 21 years of age in and of itself is not a public health hazard; binge drinking is.

More on the Last Link

In his entry on the Name Voyager site, ME says he didn't particularly notice trends linked to the infamy of celebs, though he did not discount the possibility. I, too, did not find any trends related to celebrities--the precipitous decline of Bruno actually slowed somewhat in the 30s, in spite of Bruno Hauptmann. However, there was an interesting correlation with non-human pop culture icons. Kermit drops completely off the map in the 70s, when The Muppet Show debuted. Bambi actually started to register on the top 1000 baby names in the 40s, after Disney released Bambi in 1942.

Name Game

This link (thanks, ME), goes a long way in explaining why I've never met anyone else my age with my name--unlike my high school biology classmates, a full 20% of whom were named Russell. On the rare occasion where I have met another Janet, she has tended to be around 15-30 years older. That link is a fun little java application that lets you peek into the history of a name's popularity. According to their charts, my parents gave me my name right about the time its popularity was not just waning, but plummetting, down about 90% from its peak in the 40s.

Spam

Somehow, I doubt that "hotcaramelchoco" really has [IMPORTANT] News About My Mortgage Application. Call it a hunch, particularly since I have no recollection of the email this is ostensibly a reply to. Even if he/she did have important news about my mortgage application, which is being taken care of totally offline, I question why Hotcaramelchoco is sending this important information in bulk. Just how stupid do the spammers think I am?

Acronym Acrimony

The government has an aversion to spelling things out--not just in the sense of being transparent about operations, but typographically. The feds love their acronyms. They used to stick to whatever letters happened to go with the words, so we got things like the WPA and some slight confusion over whether DoE is the Department of Energy or the Department of Education (the latter is ED in official contexts). Sometimes the name of the program created some unintentional humor when it spelled out something that could be pronounced, like WAC or COD (Common Origination and Disbursement, an administrative feature of the federal student aid programs). I imagine this is why the Department of Homeland Security is not abbreviated with the lowercase o like many of the other cabinet-level departments--otherwise the DHS would be the DoHS, and Simpson jokes would abound.

We've been at this government thing for 216 years now, and all I can figure is the government is running out of permutations of the 26-letter alphabet in the 2-4 letter range, as there are only just under a half million of those and they would have had to hold it down to about 6 acronyms a day. The acronyms seem to be going longer now, so the acronym-makers have to make them pronounceable or the long string of letters starts to get unwieldy. I submit as evidence the non-government NCBTMB. Lately, though, the government seems to be going further and, rather than making pronounceable but nonsensical acronyms, they're making them standard English words. Sometimes long words. As much as I dislike the USA PATRIOT Act and the syntax that brought us that particular acronym, my hat is off to whoever came up with the phrase Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. I'm pretty sure the legislators had some help coming up with that one.

This brings me to my point--you didn't think this was just a random rambling on government's propensity to abbreviate, did you? I am plotting out my next novel, to be drafted in March. L. Sprague de Camp's great advice in writing speculative fiction was to only change one major thing (makes it easier on the reader), so I am writing what I hope will become a series of novels that spring from making one basic change to society and following the logical consequences into the future. The change I am focusing on for this book, which was actually alluded to in the last one, is that the government eliminates unemployment and welfare programs and uses those funds to encourage job creation in the private sector by subsidizing part of a worker's salary in positions that the private sector creates, making it cheaper to create jobs. So my quandary is that I am trying to come up with a snappy government-type acronym for the program. So far, the best I can come up with is the National Employment Expansion Drive Jointly Operated to Benefit Society (NEED JOBS). I'm not particularly fond of that, even though it was three days' work coming up with it. Anyone have any thoughts on improving the acronym?

What a Difference a Dyson Makes

It's not every day that a vacuum cleaner completely changes the way I look at my home. Then again, yesterday was not every day.

After 8 apartments, the old Hoover Dimension finally died. Perhaps we should have waited a decent interval for mourning a vacuum that had crossed the country twice, but we went right out and replaced it with the Dyson DC-07 Animal, billed as "The most powerful upright for pet hair." That's a big selling point for someone with 2 longhaired cats and nigh on 2 1/2 feet of her own hair (also a shorthaired cat and shorthaired husband, who do not contribute much to the overall interior furriness). I forgot how beige my carpet is until I set the Dyson on it. I vacuumed regularly with the Hoover, but one pass with the Dyson and the carpet actually changed color with the layer of grey and black cat fur gone. This vacuum sucked up six, count 'em SIX vacuumfuls of hair, fur, and carpet dust off just the living room and bedroom floors. Not only that, but by the time we were done, the brush was absolutely packed with my hair--which you may recall was the Roomba's undoing earlier--and this thing never stopped sucking up the dirt and fur.

My carpet looks new. I had to clean the rest of the apartment because all the clutter that was OK with grungy carpets now makes the place look messy and is just wrong with nice clean carpets. I can't be certain, but I think the Dyson may be turning me into a clean freak. Check back on that one.

Another Headline I Couldn't Make Up

From Reuters: Pope Suspected of Lip Syncing. Actually, that isn't the headline they use, but they do insinuate that John Paul II pulled an Ashlee Simpson.

American Pie

Come to think about it, Don McLean seems strangely prophetic. If you haven't listened to the full 8-minute cut of "American Pie" lately, somewhere around verse 3, the song muses "When the players tried to take the field, the marching band refused to yield. Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?" I think we all now recall that what was revealed was a mammary gland, though halftime music arguably died long before that.

This op-ed from the CSM has an elegant solution for Superbowl-wardrobe-malfunction-phobia: give halftime back to the marching band. It could work. The few marching bands I've seen are all more musically adept and have better choreography than anyone in the last few Halftime Extravaganzas.

Halftime Show

Reuters reports Paul McCartney has promised not to expose his breasts at the Superbowl halftime show tomorrow. Really.

In other news, turns out Bat Spit may have more uses than being my generic name for any backwater town. A trial of a drug derived from vampire bat spit shows promise for restoring blood flow to the brain after a stroke. So you have a better chance of surviving, but you'll never be able to eat garlic bread again.

More Stupid Food Labels

Since the tale of the worst box of doughnuts in recorded history interests no one, here is another installment in the Stupid Food Labels. From Ann O., off the back of the Cheez-it box.

"Anatomy of a Cheez-it: texture edge) No slip grip: helps you grab more in every handful. (hole) Air Intake: Improves aerodynamics during periods of rapid cheez-it consumption. Surface dynamics: Bumpy, crispy, crunchy, utterly satisfying." and down in small print, "These qualities make cheez-its fun but do not suggest any serious product performance claims."

Performance claims? This is a cheese cracker, not a turbocharged V-8. Who has performance expectations from a lump of refined carbohydrates and dehydrated cheese? I expect that it taste vaguely of artifical cheese and absorb soup broth.

It's a banner day for cheese-related stupidity. I also noticed this boldface warning on my 8-ounce brick of marble cheddar cheese: "Contains milk." Now, I've taken the Tillamook Cheese Factory tour and have a nodding acquaintance with how cheese is made. Cheese pretty much is milk. If cheese does not contain milk, it is not cheese. That is why the cheese is in the dairy case. Anyone who does not realize that cheese contains milk deserves whatever bloated, lactose intolerant reaction they get. I must admit, though, this is a step up for stupid food labels. At least now they are certain my cheese contains milk. My wheat germ still only may contain wheat.

Everyone on the Road Is an Idiot...

...and we have the research to prove it. A study from the University of Utah shows that 18-25 year olds on cell phones and 65-74 year olds not on the phone are 18% slower in braking (slower than what is not mentioned in the article). Norwegian researchers have found that dyslexics had 30% slower reaction times when driving than non-dyslexics in a small study. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 1.5 million people were arrested for drunk or drugged driving in 2002, which works out to 1 in every 130 licensed drivers.

So it's official. You aren't imagining things. No one on the road knows how to drive.

Two Notes on the State of the Union

1. To whoever was sitting behind and to the First Lady's left: Fishnet pantyhose are acceptable attire if you are going to a costume party or are renting out your body. For a Presidential address before a joint session of Congress, particularly if the seating arrangement assures maximum TV exposure of you from the knee down, go for solid hose in a nice neutral tone.

2. To the President: when you begin by addressing "fellow citizens," please remember that includes people in their 20s, even if none of us are in the room at the time. Those big cameras pointed at you are piping the address straight into our TiVos, and no matter what you may hear, some of us do pay attention. More of us would probably pay attention if you at least pretended to talk to us. Try addressing me directly, not talking to my parents about the need to fix Social Security so it will be around for my generation. My parents are not paying into my IRA; I am. I thought I was at least a decade beyond having to feel like someone is saying "Shush! The grownups are talking." What he actually said was

I recognize that 2018 and 2042 may seem like a long way off. But those dates are not so distant, as any parent will tell you. If you have a 5-year-old, you're already concerned about how you'll pay for college tuition 13 years down the road. If you've got children in their 20s, as some of us do, the idea of Social Security collapsing before they retire does not seem like a small matter. And it should not be a small matter to the United States Congress

Let me say that those dates aren't so distant, as anyone in their 20s planning a stable retirement will tell you. In 2018, I'll be 40, and in 2042, I'll be 64. I'm old enough to be concerned about my own retirement, thank you, and would like to at least nominally be included in the discussion. I find it very patronizing to listen to the President talking about the obligation to the children and grandchildren when I'm probably younger than a lot of their children. I graduated from the kiddie table a long time ago. I'd like to be able to sit with the grownups and talk about things that impact me personally.

Survey Sez...

Word from the Groundhog is six more weeks of this winter stuff. I'm holding him to that. I want all this snow and ice and associated ick gone by March 17. Here's the official proclamation out of Punxsutawney from the Father of all Marmota (man, he is one busy groundhog!).

I'm not sure I want to know what the deal is with the young women in bikinis, or the half naked guy standing on Gobbler's Knob (site of the groundhog reading) behind the guy in formalwear with the really big pocketwatch. When did Pennsylvania in early February become the pregame show for Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale? Also, when did real news start bumping Punxsutawney Phil off the news pages? I actually had to go to groundhog.org today to find this. You'd think the President was making a speech, or the Pope was in the hospital, or some would-be democracy just held its first elections or something.

Gorilla Suitor

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day. Things are pretty quiet around here. I'll try to find something interesting to talk about tomorrow.