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I ran across this today: Produce Paradise:

No, it’s not to the tune of Gangsta’s Paradise — would sound a lot better if it were — but anyway the point I’m making here is that the idiots at the A&P supermarket chain are suing the kids that made the video, have both worked at an A&P for several years, and even got permission from the local store before taping. You can barely even see anything that says A&P on it!

Are those executives extra-extra-stupid or what?? Here’s how it’s going to shake out. There will be loads of good publicity for the boys (culminating with an appearance on whatever late night talk show wins the battle for them — I’m guessing Leno, but Letterman could pull it off), and negative backlash for the idiots at A&P. At least one of the idiot suits will lose their job, the suit will be dropped, and, if A&P gets unstupid in a big hurry, they’ll hire the boys to appear in their commercials, to try to stem the unofficial consumer boycott.

Upper management all over the country is rushing to cash in on all the new net technologies and trends — and they ALWAYS ending up fritzing it up, don’t they?

Why is that?

So many things to catch up on, but so few that I remember … oh well, let’s start anyway:

We finally started getting our miserable Texas summer heat about six weeks ago, but today we got a cool front, so that was nice. We didn’t get rain at our house though … Just as it started getting hot, I finally had time (no more working late) to get back to my daily lung-walks (that as you’ll recall I had to start last year after losing 25% of my lung power), and I was really enjoying it, until I started to remember when I quit last spring: My tendonitis is back, as bad as ever. I had tendonitis really bad in my 30s, but I went to a podiatrist and he fixed the problem with some $250 orthotics (that is, fancy custom arch supports). I wore those until they started hurting my feet 5 years later, but the problem never came back — at least until I started major walks last year. So, a couple of weeks ago I went back to the doctor — the very same doctor I had 18 years ago! — and got more orthotics, and now I’m just waiting to break those in so I can go back to working out, and possible lose a few pounds like I did last year … I promised to give a “shout” to Glen, one of our major Home Office executives that visited today. I normally don’t get to hobnob with the Corporate Upper Crust, but I got to talk to Glen quite a bit back when I worked directly with our boss that retired last year, so I went up today to say hi, and gave him one of my Moo cards with the photo of Molly’s smiling face, and my domain address on the back. I just hope word doesn’t get out that I have skills other than Office documents … I’ve been getting lots of great music through the CD-swapping service LaLa.com, and the latest one is Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual”. I had almost forgotten how wonderful that album was — or how cheap and cheesy the synthesizers sounded back then. It’s amazing how much better sounds I can get out of my low-end Cakewalk sequencer than they could get out of millions of dollars of studio equipment just 24 years ago. … Did I mention I replaced my no-name DSL modem/router and brand name wireless transmitter with an AT&T all in one unit a couple of weeks ago? Just wanted to mention it for my future reference … Speaking of which, my motherboard-based USB has been fritzing up over the past few months (the mobo is going on 5 years old, so it’s to be expected), so I ordered a brand-name five-port USB PCI card. It’ll be nice to be able to access my flash drives and MP3 player again …

Okay that’s all for now, maybe I’ll remember more later …

As further proof that I’ve actually been doing stuff during my periods of light blogging, here are some pictures I’ve uploaded to Flickr, so instead of waiting for me to blather on needlessly, check out some of these photos:

Okay, it’s been a week since I’ve posted, and there’s a lot of things I’ve been needing to post — but darnit, I’ve been living my life instead of blogging it, so I can actually have something to blog about (as opposed to, say, “Dear Diary, Today I spent three hours writing in my diary …”).

(NOTE: The above paragraph was a little different from what’s there now, but my wife told me that what I had originally written was “tacky”. I’m not sure exactly what was so tacky about it, but just to save a lot of grief I de-attitudified it a bit; gotta do what ya gotta do.)

Anyway, today I uploaded my first video to YouTube in over a year. It’s not much, shot in low light with our new Olympus still camera, so I had to kick up the brightness just so anything could be visible. Plus, it’s not really particularly noteworthy: Just some slightly buzzed women dancing. Nobody falls down, throws up, or hikes up their skirt over their head.

Those moments don’t grow on trees, ya know.

Anyway, I’ve been needing to upload something for a while now, and it is kind of funny watching these ladies get down/get funky.

Found on XKCD:

If you don’t get it, Google it.

Here’s some text on the 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc (today!), from a German online newspaper and translated via Google Translate:

To jerk-twitch the silver disk displaced the good, old long playing record. Belonged to kneeling star and cracks to the past, the CD of given highly transparent tones of completely new quality. Conclusion with the fear of scratched record and annoying turning.

Just in case you thought things looked funny translated from ASIAN to English …

And to think I was going to bust my butt and do a long catching-up post … and then I find out that today is National Relaxation Day!

So click here and check out all those relaxation tips and resources … and chill!

These days Merv Griffin seems to be known most as a producer, but he started as an actor, and a singer, before becoming a game show host, then a talk show host, then a producer.

I don’t have any memory of watching his talk shows, but, as a game geek from early childhood, I grew up on his (and others’) game shows. My favorite (and the one with the most influence on me) was Word for Word, the little-remembered project that nevertheless gave him the producing cred to be allowed to produce his two megahits, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

Contestants on Word for Word were given a word, and challenged to form other, usually smaller words, out of the letters in the first word. The only word I remember at this point, in one of the first episodes I ever saw, was “cranberry”, and the bonus word was “barn”. I immediately became infatuated with the show, and, more importantly, with playing with the letters in words; the fact that my domain name is an anagram of the letters in my name is living proof of this influence. I even had the board game, which I think is still somewhere in my mom’s garage..

More important than any of his other credits, though, is the general feeling that Merv was a good human being. One person on the Fark message board said:

My grandfather was a writer on the Merv Griffin Show years ago. Long after my grandfather died, my mother got cancer. Merv cut a check to help with her medical expenses. He got us through some rough times.

Bonus points: He had a sense of humor about himself, as evidenced in this scene from Steve Martin’s underrated “The Man With Two Brains”:

You don’t get more serendipitous than this: On Flickr today, I came across a picture of this band I had never heard of before, The Postmarks, and, since they had a girl lead singer, I decided to check them out, and now I’m showing you their video. How’s that for random!

Yes, we survived our annual Tourists-from-All-Over-the-World trial by fire today, but that’s not what’s important right now.

What’s important is that in looking for a MIDI file of one of my all-time favorite songs, I happened to find this music video for it, and in my infinite generosity, I’m sharing it with you now:

Your groove I do deeply dig, indeed …

That is all. You may go about your little life now.