Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Cohesion is not my strong suit tonight

Lots of notes I need to pass along tonight so I will organize them in a numbered list for ease of reading. Battling the Current: where blogs and status reports meet.

1) For those wondering why there was a rather incongruous picture of Snoopy on the top of the post last night that picture is the cover art for Battling the Current Volume 4. Yes, not only will you receive a free CD but that CD actually comes with liner notes and full color graphics. I spare no expense in fulfilling my readers every need. The artist is Tom Everhart and he is the only person who is allowed to use the Peanuts characters in artwork. I think he is a genius and you can usually get a calendar of his work at Borders. The fact that I have a slight investment in his career and have been invited to his gallery openings has no bearing on my previous statement.

2) I can’t believe that I forgot to list this amongst my stats last night. It was pretty much the entire purpose for that section of the post. My blog has outlasted the following shows which all premiered in Fall 2004: Father of the Pride, Joey, Veronica Mars, LAX and a lot of really bad, one season reality shows. Ok, that wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. But I did do better than Joey. That has to count for something.

3) While walking around Philadelphia on Sunday I did go past Ben Franklin’s grave. I was going to take a picture of it but remembered not to due to my belief that it is really bad karma to take a picture of a grave. (Some strange occurrences in New Orleans led me to that belief and I will not waver from it.) There are some interesting facts about his grave. First is the fact that it is right next to the sidewalk so you don’t even have to enter the cemetery to see it. Apparently he was buried with the tourist trade in mind. Also, it is apparently tradition to toss pennies on his grave. I assume that this is based on “a penny saved is a penny earned” though exactly why he would condone wasting pennies is another issue. Also, wouldn’t it be more fitting to toss hundred dollar bills on his grave as they have his picture on it? Or would that be too much of a waste of money?

4) I also walked past the Fresno State women’s equestrian team as they toured all the historic sites. They had official team apparel and everything. This brings up a host of interesting questions. Such as, “Equestrian is a college sport?” and “How the hell does Fresno State have a team” and “Wouldn’t you think that competitors in Equestrian events be slightly better dressed.” I assume anyone who competes in an event like Dressage can buy and sell me twelve times before breakfast and they did not have that look about them at all.

5) I do like my picture of the Liberty Bell and it was a great thing to see. There is a lot of symbolism tied to it if not actual historic importance. It is one of those items that has meaning because we all agree that it has meaning as opposed to anything that happened involving it. When you are in Washington and you look at the Declaration of Independence you can understand the importance of what you are looking at because this is the piece of paper that signified the start of a new nation. The Liberty Bell is a poorly designed instrument that no one has bothered to fix. Just not the same.

6) Quick blog update # 1: I’ve been posting the 80’s weekend rewind on Fridays and I’m going to continue with a weekend post but I’m going to freshen it up a bit. I’ll still post videos occasionally but I want to use the space for some other ideas of mine. I have some Gen X humor pieces that I am working on (more television show analysis, a list of Gen X crushes) that I think would fit in well there. I also have a host of relationship stories and other longer pieces on human interaction that I want to try to write up and use that space to explore. So consider the weekend post to be a bit of a work in progress. You’ll never know what you are going to get.

7) So I went back to playing trivia tonight and I was high score for one of the rounds as a team of one, once again winning free drinks for the night. So that makes three games in Delaware and twice I’ve covered my bar tab. Not a bad little run if I say so myself. Best category by far was movie coaches. I name the movie, you name the actor or actress who played the coach. I was so proud for remembering who was the coach in The Air Up There. Of course, I was ashamed for forgetting what planet the Coneheads were from. But the good news is that I have a few teams wanting me to join them so at least I am beginning to meet people.

8) Quick blog update # 2: I’ll hopefully have my Pick Up Artist2 recap done for tomorrow night’s post. Sorry for the scheduling delay as I know that we all wait patiently for Mystery’s weekly guidance.

9) One last political / economic note before I call it a night. If the government bails out GM I better get a deal on a new Pontiac out of it. The way I see it, if my tax dollars are paying to help the company that should lead to an automatic discount on every car they make. Only seems fair. Similarly, as I don’t have AIG insurance I believe that I have the right to knee one of their senior executives in the groin at the time of my choosing. Now that would be value for money.

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