Don’t anthropomorphize your dogs.
They don’t like it.
—gekko
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Bad Timing
Have you ever noticed?
Here in South Puffin I would generally watch “Local 10 News at 6” except Local 10 News at 6 doesn’t start at 6. The little flag in the corner of the screen includes a clock that tells us it is 5:59 or even 5:58 when anchor Laurie Jennings says, “The 6 o’clock news starts now!”
WPLG in South Florida, home of Local 10, isn’t the only offender. Have you ever noticed that CBS even named its flagship news magazine for a stopwatch but every time Andy Rooney wasn’t available to fill his time slot, 60 Minutes would run about 52. Now that Mr. Rooney kvetches on an entirely different channel, 60 Minutes consistently stops at 52 and fills the remaining 8 with commercials plus 7 seconds of Scott Pelley reminding us to join him next week for all 60.
And we’ve all experienced the spate of prime time shows that started a minute early or ended a couple of minutes after the hour, just to mess with programmers on the other networks.
It messes with our recorders, too.
I don’t like missing the first minute or two of meteorologist Trent Aric’s tropical forecast when it leads the local newscast. I hate missing that last minute of House or Harry’s Law when Fox or NBC inches the clock ahead.
There is nothing more important in broadcast than the clock on the wall. Nothing. Not the Costa Concordia lawsuit. Not Lindsay Lohan’s probation status. Not even the anchor’s hairdo.
My friend Dave Kimel taught me that at WWSR when we talked about public service advertising. “Emerson [Lynn, publisher of the St. Albans Messenger] can always add another page to the newspaper,” Mr. Kimel said. “But we can never, ever add another minute in the day.”
I know that Mr. Kimel and I can tell time. I wonder why ABC et al can’t?
Thors Trials & Tribulations
Google Latitude showed my friend Liz Arden near the Howland and Baker Islands, off Papua New Guinea the other day.
Cool.
Except she was in California, about three blocks from the Googleplex itself at the time.
I tried to enter my own address. Google puts me in Elfrin, FL. Or in Marathon. Or, after I put in the exact street address, city, and Zip three times, down the block at 150 Abblesnaffy Road, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33040. Their map and satellite imagery are right for that location but not for 920 Abblesnaffy Street, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33099.
And when it shows my location, it won’t show Liz Arden’s which strikes me as pretty useless. After all, I know where I am.
Latitudes and attitudes.
Wordless Wednesday
Tuesday Twaddle: The State of the Union Sucks
And it has at least since Lincoln freed no slaves.
The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion. While it apparently freed 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time, those ten states had seceded and recognized neither U.S. law nor fiat. Mr. Lincoln’s Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves citizens.
Now federal regulators have outlawed any and all import of the reptilian plague of pythons in our swimming pools and swamps.
The import ban restricts only the Burmese python, two African pythons, and the yellow anaconda. The Obamanation called it “a victory for Florida’s native environment.” Those of us actually in Florida know it, too, freed no slaves and captured no pythons. See, these snakes are captive-bred in the U.S. so that import ban had the same effect on snakes Mr. Lincoln’s on slaves.
It took the Army of the Republic to free the slaves but slavery did finally become illegal everywhere in the U.S. in 1865 thanks to the Thirteenth Amendment. We probably won’t amend the U.S. Constitution to get rid of snakes. Or send in the army.
Of course, there are snakes and then there are snakes.
Mr. Obama will report on the State of the Union this evening. He is expected say that unemployment is dropping but that we need to bring manufacturing jobs home from overseas, more home-mortgage market support, incentives for alternative energy development, more government, and higher taxes.