Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Buster Tongue My cat Buster is a gray behemoth.  He weighs more than my 16-month old daughter.  Seriously.  That's because Lily is only in the 6th percentile of babies her age for weight, while Buster is in the 106th percentile of weight for cats.  I've had Buster for 10 years now, and during that 10 years I have been trying in vain to capture on film one of Buster's most hilarious tricks.  I suppose calling it a "trick" is deceptive, since I don't think he has any idea he's doing it.  Buster's trick is that he will sometimes stick his tongue out.  Yeah, I know, really tricky.  But you just don't understand until you see it.  He'll be sitting there with his mouth closed, doing nothing at all, and his giant pink tongue will be sticking out of his mouth like he's giving me a giant raspberry.  It's hilarious.  It only happens once every few months, but whenever it happens I have to immediately run and tell Jane to come look.  Big laughs all around. But then, Buster will see all the commotion and invariably he'll meow or lick himself or some other thing that makes him reset his mouth, and then we won't see the Buster Tongue again for another few months.  And so, for roughly the last 10 years I've been trying to capture the Buster Tongue on camera.  I've been close many times, but it just hasn't worked out.  I've got enough blurry shots of slivers of tongue to fill up an episode of "In Search Of".  Then one night last week, as I was playing Madden in the wee hours, I glanced over on the beanbag next to me and saw a giant gray ball of fur with a tell-tale crescent of pink.  The Buster Tongue!  I bolted from the beanbag, which is really hard to do, and got my digital.  I was careful not to approach Buster too quickly, and very careful not to say anything to him, because he always responds and that makes the tongue go away.  I don't know how long he had been sitting there with his tongue out, but he put it in about 1 second after I snapped this shot.  And now the Buster Tongue is eternal. 11:05:16 PM    Say what?[]

The Sinclair Boycott Most readers are probably aware of the background story regarding Sinclair Broadcasting's decision to air a Kerry smear ad over public airwaves just before the election.  This has prompted numerous calls for a boycott of companies who advertise with Sinclair stations.  Talking Points Memo is a great place to go for the best summary and update of what's happening with this story. Sinclair, of course, is the company that decided that it was "too political" for their 60-plus stations to air the episode of "Nightline" that consisted only of Ted Koppel reading the names of the fallen in Iraq.  So much for supporting our troops, huh? I was so sickened when I heard about Sinclair's decision to air this program that I was actually spurred to initiate my own boycott, something I have never done before for political reasons.  Spite, yes.  Political reasons, no.  Actually, I think this transcends the political race because it's also in sweet spot of media monopolization, free speech, etc. This is a big deal.  And it cannot stand. I ended up following one of the links on TPM to a list of advertisers for each Sinclair market.  I composed an email with some a firm but non-threatening declaration that I was opposed to this action, and that a boycott of any Sinclair advertisers would ensue.  I also may have mentioned something about the fact that I have a blog and that I love to write.  Sure, I inflated my readership to the tune of 200 readers, but I decided that was more strategy than fibbery.  Regardless, enough people do show up here to matter.  I was astonished to get a response back about three hours later: October 12, 2004 Dear Doug: Thank you for your concern regarding the actions of the Sinclair Broadcast Group.  We had no prior knowledge of the political stance of SBG and their local affiliate, KMWB23, when we placed our advertising dollars.  It is not our intention to support this kind of political indecency. As a result of their insistence in airing "Stolen Hour," we have sent the following letter to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Dear Sir: As an advertiser on your Minneapolis affiliate, KMWB23, we are appalled at Sinclair Broadcasting Group's lack of corporate citizenship in the mandatory broadcasting of "Stolen Hour." The deliberate support of any candidate over another candidate has no place in media programming governed by FCC regulations.  It is the obligation of FCC license holders to present a balanced approach to broadcasting.  Notice the word balanced, not the word unbiased.  Offering Senator John Kerry a chance for rebuttal on your "documentary" is not a legitimate use of balanced reporting. It is our intention to cease advertising with your affiliate unless actions are taken by the Sinclair Broadcast Group to establish and maintain fair and balanced viewpoints in programming. Sincerely, Scott and Debra Rosenthal Owners Carroll's Furniture, Inc. 1203 West County Road E Arden Hills, MN 55112 What do you know?  Direct action works.  I'm buying my next couch from Scott and Debra Rosenthal.  Certainly, I doubt the WB is getting fat off of Carroll's Furniture, but this response meant a lot to me.  I tend to get down about the prospects of fighting what's happening in our government and media, in general.  I think that's typically because the things that damage us most happen in ways that aren't visible to most people.  (I'm thinking of Dick Cheney's energy task force, or the FCC media consolidation discussions.)  But this Sinclair thing is just such a brash thumbing of the nose at fairness, democracy, etc.  As KRS-One might say, you've got to react when someone tries to come right up to your face and diss you.  It's hard for me to see how it all fits together sometimes.  I'm talking about capitalism and democracy, the big stuff.  Today was a good reminder.  Sinclair is a public company.  Their livelihood is their ability to trade on the public airwaves for which they have been given a license.  If they choose to violate that public trust, there are two avenues.  One is for the FCC to grow some fucking balls and put the hammer down on these jackasses.  So far, the FCC seems to have been relatively silent on the matter, focusing instead on Janet Jackson's tired breast. The other avenue is to remind Sinclair that they are a public company.  They live on ad money.  When enough people tell the advertisers they don't want them to run their ads on Sinclair stations, and they are willing to withhold their consumer dollars if the companies don't listen, then suddenly Sinclair is losing revenue.  Voila!  You want to be counted?  You want to make a difference?  Voting might be an avenue to do that, but remembering Florida in 2000, it might not.  Funny things happen to votes sometimes.  Votes don't have a universal value.  Everybody wants them, but only if you really insist on casting one.  Many people don't want you to vote at all. Rather, the best way to be counted these days is as a consumer.  When companies operate on slim margins, a few consumers add up in a big way.  Black, white, poor, rich, red state, blue state, our money's all the same.  10:40:48 PM    Say what?[]

The Community Printer   In my office, several people share a community printer.  This can make for some awkward moments, as inevitably people will print things that they might not want other people to read.  The best way to get around having your print viewed is to initiate your print, then high tail it to the printer to grab the sheets as quickly as possible.    My general assumption is that the quicker people grab the pages, the more scandalous the content must be.  I once saw somebody waiting at the printer slot with open hand before the page even came out.  I’m just guessing, but I think it was a NAMBLA application.   I’ve certainly been guilty of using company printers for personal reasons, like the time I printed the entirety of my blog.  I had to stand at that damned printer for over 36 consecutive hours.  I’ve been caught printing betting lines and oodles of fantasy sports stuff.  Most people either pretend not to see it or smile knowingly.  It’s embarrassing to get caught printing non-work material, but I figure this is part and parcel of the modern work environment.   One thing worse than having your non-business printouts read is being the person to accidentally stumble across somebody else’s stuff.  At my last job, I happened across about sixty pages of detailed and personalized astrological printouts for a fellow employee.  Of course, she probably knew I was going to find that stuff.  Then there was the time I found a bunch of Monster.com printouts from a fellow employee’s job search.  Smooth move, Ex-Lax.  Her face turned red when I handed them to her, but at least I wasn’t her boss.  Of course, I ended up applying for, and getting, one of the jobs on her printouts.  Still, why print them at all, especially at work?   The worst of all is getting caught voraciously reading someone else’s printout, and then having to try to play it off when they catch you.  Actually, that’s not true.  The absolute worst is when you genuinely do pick up someone else’s stuff by mistake, and just as you discover this and get ready to put it back, the person finds you with their illicit print in your hands.  Now you appear to be a nosy jerk and you didn’t even get to read all of the good stuff.   This happened to me last week.  I went to the printer to pick up some stuff.  I grabbed the sheets, but there was one on the bottom that wasn’t mine.  It was a sales order acknowledgement from an online sex toy store.  I very quickly glanced the words “thong” and “strap-on”, and then I noticed someone was standing beside me.  Now, the honest truth is that I only had it in my hands long enough to realize that it wasn’t mine, and no unnecessary reading took place on my part.  That’s not to say that I wouldn’t have read more if I’d had the time.  There’s no doubt that I would have, though she didn’t know that.    It was incredibly awkward.  For one thing, the person in question is a classy woman, probably near 50 or so.  She seems to me, after just five months of working here, to be very staid and proper.  She wears a cross around her neck, and so forth.  However, I had also noticed that she was attractive and in very good shape.  Not that an unattractive older woman wouldn’t have the right to wear a thong and a strap-on, of course.  (Was it a strap-on AND a thong, two separate items?  Was it a thong with a strap-on attached?  Why couldn’t she have shown up five seconds later?)   I’m sure she assumed that I saw enough to imagine that she was engaged in some funny business between the sheets, or wherever.  She was embarrassed, and my stammering, “Uh…this…this isn’t mine.  This is mine, this spreadsheet”, probably didn’t help matters much, either.    Now each time we see each other, which is multiple times a day, we just smile politely at each other.  Other than me imagining her pegging her husband while wearing a thong strap-on every time I see her, we have a very professional relationship. 9:57:39 PM    Say what?[]

© Copyright 2004 DH. Last update: 11/6/04; 2:14:01 PM.