Innocent Bystander

No, I don't need a term paper, thank you very much...

It is, perhaps, a sign of the times in which we live, or more correctly, in which I live. I have been making a concerted effort to blog every day, and I'm happy to say I've gone 31 for 31 in the month of January. Yes, I know...I cheat every Friday with "Friday Foto," but they're nice photos, aren't they? And they're all by me, so get over it.

I have been rewarded with this renewed dedication to blogging with growing stats. After peaking at about 300/day, I started to fall a bit, but now it's going back up. I don't know if more people are logging in each day ("Logging in" is the Internet equivalent of "tuning in," right? Discuss.), or if it's still the same people who come here because they Googled Chrissy Russo, Susan Lennon, Kathleen Bade or "Always bet on black!" that immortal quote from Wesley Snipes in the classic film Passenger 57. Either way, my statistics are on the upswing (and without me taking a little blue pill, too!), so I'm grateful for that.

But with increased traffic comes more comments and lately I've been bombarded with spam comments from people who sell term papers online. They'll find an older post and leave a comment on it, thinking I'll never find it. HA! I laugh at these lame-ass comment-leavers! Your comments are like so much dog poop to me, which I shall scoop up with 17 blue plastic bags wrapped around my hand, followed by a thorough scrubbing with bacterial soap and a wire brush. (This is why I do not have a dog, people, but for the record, I am not germaphobic. I am however poopaphobic.). I check my comments EVERY. F-ING. DAY. and I obliterate you when I find you. I smash you like a bug on the windshield of life. There will be no term paper selling on my blog, I'll tell you that right now, nosireebob.

Actually, who buys term papers these days? And who out there thinks this is a blog that high school or college age kids read? I mean I'm flattered and all, but c'mon...this is not my target audience. I don't even have a Target audience. I may have more of a WalMart audience. I certainly do NOT have a KMart audience, nor JC Penney or Sears. (I'm still pissed off at Sears for dropping poor Roebuck years ago. What the hell ever happened to him? And that reference alone tells you I'm not a blog young people read. maybe young-feeling people, but not young.)

In conclusion, let me just state that all you paper peddlers, go peddle your papers elsewhere. Term papers, divorce papers, pedigree papers...there will be no paper peddling here, nor peddling of any kind. NO ONE SELLS STUFF ON MY BLOG. Get me?

By the way, have you bought a copy of my book? Just click on the cover in the upper right corner to order your copy now!

Apple: What's next?

With Apple's announcement of the iPad this week, the next logical question becomes "What's next?' The computer giant, once boasting the bragging rights of a mere pittance of Bill Gates' market share when it came to operating systems changed the music industry with the iPod and started a faithful gathering of new converts to the Apple way of life. The iPad begat the iPhone and, lo, the world changed for Apple and Apple doth changeth the world.

Okay, enough of the biblical speak...but someday I'm going to write a whole post like that. You've been warned.

So now we have the iPad, which has, of course, unleashed a flow of feminine hygiene puns (I just spotted one by me!). But I sincerely believe that Apple is just getting started and we can look forward to even more iProducts. On the horizon I see:

The iPed, a small device you put in your shoe to measure how far you walk, what speed you walk at, and your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood/alcohol level based on the sweat from your feet, and yes, even how stinky your feet are. What a boon to science and health this device will be. Indeed!

The iPee, which will help diabetics like myself keep better track of the sugar levels in our urine. Don't ask me how it does this. You don't want to know. It'll also tell you if you're going to pass that drug test or if you're going back to prison.

The iPet, which takes the place of a real pet: dog, cat, goldfish, parakeet, coyote, dingo. You pick. They're all on there!

The iPie, which makes perfect pies every time, however they're very tiny.

The iPoo, the iPee's sister device. You can figure that one out.

The iPow, which has a little tiny boxing glove in it, which springs out and hits people in the face. Okay, that one's pretty lame.

The iPun, which tells jokes. Really, really bad jokes. Kinda like this post.

And finally, The iPud. You're on your own with that one, folks.

Friday Foto #114...

Along the High Line, New York City, Oct. 2009. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

Everything you forgot about LOST in one handy, dandy video...

I'm thoroughly looking forward to the new--and final--season of Lost, which debuts on ABC Tuesday Feb. 2. (Or as ABC says: "ABC's Lost on ABC." Apparently their promo writers graduated from the Redundant College of Redundancy.) While the usual recap show will start off this 3-hour event, there's so much information from the first 5 seasons of the series that I think all viewers need a refresher course in Lost-formation. This video tells you everything you need to know in slightly over 8 minutes. A warning: It's a little annoying at first, but it grows on you, and it really does bring you up to speed.

And yes, that Tuesday date is correct. The show has moved to Tuesday nights this season.

Countdown to ecstasy: The Apple iPad...

Okay, I'm in love. Apple announced their game-changing new device today, the iPad. It's a tablet computer that fits somewhere between a smart phone and a laptop computer. And as usual, it's so sleek and beautifully designed that it becomes--for me, at least--an immediate object of desire.

It does Web surfing and e-mail. It plays your iTunes music, movies, and TV shows. It will run all your iPhone apps, and Apple wisely opened it up to application developers now, so there'll be even more apps to come. The biggest thing for me is the iBookstore and the ability to read e-books. IN COLOR. Let me stress that with all caps and in bold. Bite me, Kindle.

I can't adequately describe it...you'll have to see it for yourself, and you can by clicking here. Yes, it looks like a giant, flattened out iPhone. I don't care. I know I'll buy one once it comes out (a release date wasn't announced.) Once again, I'm convinced that Steve Jobs somehow picked up the Terminator's arm when it was destroyed back in 1984. Everything that has come from Apple since then is based on what they stole from that arm. Thank God they're using the technology for good and not evil (however that judgment call may differ for you).

(Not) a whole lot of shakin' goin' on (actually)...

A couple of months back, we had a series of small earthquakes here in southern California or SoCal, as the hipsters like to refer to it. I have to remove myself from that "hipster" category, because honestly...I've never referred to myself as living in "SoCal." I am, however, thinking about buying a porkpie hat and growing a soul patch. I'll let you know when that happens.

Ever since that series of quakes, my earthquake radar has been finely attuned. We had one sorta big one in there, which made everything shake quite a bit for 10 seconds. Oh, I know...you Easterners...how you'd LOVE to have 10 seconds of rain or snow. But 10 seconds of your whole building shaking, no matter how slight or violent it may be, is an eternity.

Nowadays when my apartment makes some kind of building-related noise--a snap, crackle or pop--no matter what the reason, my body reacts. Even if someone down the hall slams their door, I feel the couch move under my butt (little known fact: those were Carole King's ORIGINAL lyrics for "I Feel the Earth Move"), my stomach rolls over a little bit, and my eyes open up wide (not unlike my experience with dating these days). I'm waiting for that next quake, big or small. The last one had me moving to the bathroom. Don't ask me why I felt safer in the bathroom, especially since the tub or sink or--even worse--toilet from upstairs could come crashing through the ceiling (getting killed by a falling toilet is not my preferred exit plan from God's green Earth).

So if I seem a little jumpy these days...it's because my butt is just waiting for it's next good shake.

Umm...let me rephrase that. I'll get back to you.

Keep a lid on it...

I come from a long line of toilet lid closers. My mother--may she rest in peace--was one of those women who bought the matching toilet bowl lid fuzzy cover and the fuzzy rug that wrapped around the base of the commode. We had them in a variety of colors. The lid ensured that if you just happened to sit on the toilet with the lid down and your butt naked, it was met with a soft, warm covering. And the rug was an easy way to catch errant peeing on the floor...you just scooped it up and threw it in the washing machine. For my mother, living with 3 males wasn't easy. As someone who gets up at 3am to make a nightly rest stop, I can testify we men are not always working with the greatest of aims. In fact, at 3am and in the dark, I'm just happy to be peeing in the correct room.

While I've forsaken the fuzzy cover and rug, I do religiously believe in putting down the toilet lid every time I use it. And ladies, as an added incentive, I ALWAYS remember to put the seat back down, too. I know what you're thinking: SHOWOFF!, but I'm proud of that one consistent mark on my otherwise failing memory.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah...the lid. I've noticed when people come to visit and use the bathroom, they almost never put the lid back down. It's like they're at home or something and they do what they usually do. When you visit someone else's home, I'm a strong believer in keeping things as you found them. If you can't do that, they're automatically going to know you peeked in their medicine cabinet. C'mon, 'fess up: you know you do that.

It may have been my upbringing of being taught to always close the lid--and show off the fuzzy cover (that's what she said)--that has led me to this point in my life. But there was a reason to my mom's madness. She swore up and down that our neighbor told us a story from when she lived in an apartment when she and her husband were first married. Late one night they heard a huge commotion in their commode. They went into the bathroom and opened the lid to find a huge rat in their toilet. The moral of the story was they kept the lid on it, so the rat couldn't get out. Even as a kid I didn't buy this story, but to this day, I look twice before I do anything in that porcelain receptacle no matter whose house I'm in. 

So, in conclusion my friends, I urge you to do the right thing and keep a lid on it. Especially if you come over to my place and ask to use the bathroom. And yes, I'll KNOW you peeked in the medicine cabinet, but it's boring anyway, so that's okay.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

I thoroughly enjoyed Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and Rachel McAdams. In fact, I found it to be the most coherent Ritchie film yet, adding credence to the thought that maybe with Madonna out of the director's personal life, his vision and life is more focused. But I'll leave that kind of conjecture to TMZ.

Holmes has a plot, somewhere, about a madman, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) wanting to take over England and hence the world via black magic (although in the Victorian Era, England was the world). The plot is almost incidental, a gigantic MacGuffin, allowing Holmes and Watson to chase around through merry olde England. And what a London Ritchie has created for them! It's dirty, majestic, and imaginative. The climactic scene takes place on the still-being-constructed Tower Bridge. I'm not sure how much was real sets and how much was CGI (the Bridge, obviously so), but the movie's production design is astounding and absolutely seamless between real and computer-generated. I'm much more impressed with a CGI-world in a film like this that deals with an historical recreation, then I am in something like Avatar which is created fresh. There's no rules in the latter (an admirable state in and of itself), but in something like Holmes, everyone comes in with a pre-conceived notion of what Sherlock Holmes' London looks like, making the realization of it much more difficult.

All three of the leads seem to have had enormous fun making this film, and for once it shows on the big screen. Downey just dropped out of another film in order to fast-track the sequel to Holmes, so it might not be too long until we see the next one. In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend this restarting of the Sherlock Holmes cinematic saga, even if it might not sit too neatly with all those Baker Street purists out there.

Stuff I learned during a very rainy week in San Diego...

It rained ALL. WEEK. here in San Diego. From Monday through Saturday. That rain, at times, included huge waves, high winds, hail, thunder, lightning, and in the mountains east of the city, snow. Lots and lots of snow. Feet of snow. Not just inches. Feet. In the 11 years I've lived here, I've never seen this much rain fall in even ONE of those years. But occasionally a TV weather person will mention the term "El Nino," which might be taken for this is just the beginning, folks, of a very wet winter.

But when you're as deeply philosophical as me (What? You didn't know that about me?), you take a wet week like this and you learn from it. I learned lots of stuff this past week, and I am now going to pass that knowledge onto you, dear reader, at no extra charge. Herewith comes the spewing of said knowledge.

• If you have a job that requires you to stand outside dressed as Lady Liberty while flipping a pointy sign that calls attention to an income tax preparation service, and your boss still makes you do this in torrential rain and wind gusts of up to 50 mph, it's time to find a new job. Either that or stab your boss with that pointy sign over and over again. (Note to that boss: Not that many people are thinking about doing their income tax on Jan. 21st, especially when getting in your car and driving somewhere to get it done may be life-threatening.)

• Thunder and lightning in San Diego are about as rare as a Republican senator from Massachusetts.

• It never rains, but it pours.

• When you have to drive to and from work in conditions that barely allow you to see, there's really no place like home.

• Rain or not, Conan still got screwed.

Friday Foto #113...

We interrupt our series of photos from our trip to NYC in Oct. 2009 for a beautiful San Diego sunset, circa Jan. 16, 2010. To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!