Last week hundreds of Americans around the world celebrated the “New Year” with cake, ice cream and pez dispensers shaped like C3PO. I was caught up in the festivities, and failed to blog about the occasion, and now it seems too late, so I’ve decided to write about the Chinese New Year instead.

The Chinese New Year does not happen on January 1st, as you might expect. Instead, the people of China get together and figure out when they’ve all got some time, and they celebrate the new year on that day. Last year it was February 7th, but the International New Year Committee told the Chinese that this was too late, so this year they’ve agreed to celebrate the new year on January 26th.

Here are some interesting facts I discovered about the Chinese New Year.

“… the beginning of Chinese New Year starts with the fight against a “mythical” beast called the Nian or “Year” in Chinese. Nian comes on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers put food in front of their doors…especially children… at the beginning of every year. People saw the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red, and they understood that the Nian was afraid of color red, so they began placing the children outside in blue, or sometimes green. Also, the villagers would hang red lanterns on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten the Nian…especially firecrackers shaped like children,… the Nian never came to the village again”

There is also some confusion about which year we are celebrating. Here, we think of it as 2009, because that’s what year it is, and we don’t question why. But, in China, it might be 4706, or possibly 4646. However, while some Chinese believe that it is 4707 or even 4407, this is highly unlikely.* This makes it extremely difficult to be a Chinese computer programmer, because the Y4.7K bug is either 6 years in the past, or 54 years in the future. Also, it is impossible to accurately predict the end of the world, as this usually occurs on an even century mark, and no one knows when that is.

Be sure to mark your calendars for this year’s New Year festivities on January 26th. If you have any fireworks left over from any previous new year celebrations, I think they would be appropriate. Also, be sure to wear red, and keep the kids indoors.

The great thing about not paying attention to stuff is that, when something finally comes on your radar, it is a well-established and thriving concept with depth and history to explore. At these moments I feel like Horton, having just discovered an entire world that was previously unknown to me – a world where everyone is wearing Christmas Sweaters.
 

For example, I had no idea that Christmas Sweater Parties were a thing until my wife’s company decided to host one this year. At first the idea struck me as sort of weak, conceptually, like the time I was on the Morale Committee at my giant corporation job and, at the exact moment I realized that I was not designed to work at a large corporation, I suggested that we boost morale by having a(n) “Hawaiian Shirt” day, ala Office Space. This was not well received, and the committee went with “Ugliest Green Hat” day instead. I held my own one-man Hawaiian Shirt day – again, not well received – and left the company shortly thereafter, which significantly boosted my morale. But, the Christmas Sweater Party is actually on a whole other level – I’ve done some research, and this type of party is bordering on becoming a beloved tradition.
 

We began our search for a holiday sweater at the thrift store. In a million years, I would never make a connection between thrift stores and unattractive seasonal wear. I come from a long line of thrift store shoppers, so to me thrift store says mint-condition Rustler jeans, shirts with logos of companies you’ve never worked for and Members Only jackets ten years too late. But, in the world of holiday party wear, the thrift store is the primo spot for finding that perfect red sweater depicting a puffy Christmas tree with lights that actually light up. (Batteries sold separately.) This was evidenced by the no less than four other couples in the thrift store also looking for ugly Christmas sweaters, or failing that, just an ugly sweater, officially making Goodwill “Your Ugly Holiday Sweater Headquarters.”
 

I’ve been thinking about the logistics of this for almost a day now, and I don’t understand how thrift stores around the country manage their holiday sweater supply. Do they actively buy these atrocities in anticipation of the holiday parties? Or, is the universe such a well-balanced machine that there is always enough natural supply of used and donated holiday sweaters to meet the demand at Christmas time? Where do they come from? Who buys them initially and why do they donate them? Baffling.
 

Of course, some of the mystery was solved when we went to the mall later that night – the “who buys them” portion, specifically. We saw several people – mostly women in their early fifties – proudly wearing what were probably, given the clientele at the mall, recently purchased, expensive holiday sweaters. Neither the newness nor the price made these sweaters any more attractive. These were not women working at the Christmas store, but shoppers who made a conscious choice to appear in public in a sweater with a snowman emblazoned across their chest. But, this is where the fine line is drawn, and why I hesitated even to write this. While there are throngs of people actively poking fun at the holiday sweater, there are just as many people wearing them for real and not realizing that their “this year’s” sweater will become next year’s prize winner for ugliest holiday sweater at someone’s Christmas festivities.
 

I am reminded of the Halloween when I donned the trucker hat and fake sleeve tattoos and went as “Guy who wants the world to think that he was once in a cool band, or is possibly still in a band, though not one you’ve heard of. Yet.” It was a concept costume, and not many people got it – especially the guy in front of me in line at the high school’s haunted house. He too was wearing a trucker hat and tattoo sleeves – only his were the real deal. I spent the better part of an hour standing next to a guy that, if you looked at it a certain way, I was making fun of. We didn’t talk much.
 

But, the holiday sweater party is right there with me. Twice last night we were tempted to ask one of the mall women where they’d purchased their sweater.
 

“Excuse me ma’am,” I would ask, “where did you buy that sweater?”

“Oh, do you like it,” the stately women would reply, “I bought it at Nordstrom’s.”

“I wonder if they’ve gone on sale yet,” I would ask, “that would be perfect for my wife’s ugly sweater party.”

“You are a rude young man,” the lady would reply while swinging her collection of Abercrombie, Banana Republic and Aveda bags at my mid section, missing me completely, but making her point none the less.

Still, if, as a society, we can’t make fun of ourselves, then who can we make fun of? Other people, I guess – which has me wondering where I might buy an ugly Hanukkah sweater, or maybe even an ugly New Years sweater. I imagine the latter would, instead of Rudolph or a manger scene, show the numbers 2-0-0-8 with a red line through the 8 and the number 9 just above it sort of at an angle.
 

I would buy that, for like, $4.00.

On Charity

I drove my daughter and her friend to school this morning because I was up, it was cold, and they don’t like riding the bus. The girls got on the subject of charity and the friend said that last year her family went to Wal-Mart and bought everything on the “help a needy family” tree. I pictured them actually lifting the tree out of its stand and putting it in a basket, but that’s probably not what happened. Still, every gift. Maybe it was a thousand dollars, maybe five. The point is, I could never do it. I would love to do it, but it is a financial impossibility. It’s not a “maybe next year” sort of deal – I realize that it will never happen. I am amazed at the power of money, but befuddled by the acquisition of gobs of it.

On Humor

I’m not a funny guy. I’ve spent the last ten years trying to be a funny guy. I would read really funny people and people trying to be funny and failing, and too often I noticed that my writing sounded more like the latter folks. (Maybe a little better, but not much.) Often times the lack of humor in something I’ve written stops me from posting it – more often than the lack of substance or thought-provoking writing. So, I am tossing around the idea of giving up on funny. We’ll see if it sticks.

On Inspiration

I get inspired almost daily. Inspired to change my life, to start something new, to try again something at which I’ve failed or upon which I have given. Just as convicts and out-of-luck souls take easily to religion, I think folks who are teetering on the brink of irrelevance tend to grasp at inspiration. As recognizable as this is, I am still susceptible to it – I still get sucked in. Daily inspiration has become a drug – I loiter in the dark alleys of the internet seeking out people selling ounces of positive thinking or dime bags of good ideas laced with words of wisdom. But, as much as I enjoy the high, it wears off quickly and instead of being motivated to act upon the advice, I find myself jonesing for another hit of inspiration. This might be all the explanation we need for the first paragraph.

On Writing

The decision to eschew the humor was influenced heavily by the site Stuff White People Like – an internet site devoted to making fun of stuff that is supposedly exclusively white. Examples include – The Onion, David Sedaris, Writer’s Workshops, Frisbee Sports and Appearing Empathetic with Personal Anecdotes of ”Poverty.”

To say that I recognized myself in a few of the author’s musings would be an understatement. For years, I thought that my love of David Sedaris, my desire to write for The Onion and my membership in the Professional Disc Golf Association made me unique. These were the things that grew from my troubled childhood, were nurtured and developed through my dichotomous intelligent under-achieverness and eventually came to define me as a person. This is Jay. Come to find out, my childhood, my experiences, my attitude toward life – none of it mattered. I developed these likes and dislikes simply because I am white. I am unique, just like everyone else. Depressing. When you realize that your unique hopes and dreams are actually universally held, it makes them seem less attainable, somehow. From the site,

“It’s no secret. White people want to be writers. Why wouldn’t they? Work 10 hours a week from a country house in Maine or England. Get called a genius by other white people, and maybe get your book made into a film.”

My country house was in South Carolina because, while I’ve never been there, I imagine it is woodsy, but with a beach nearby.

On The Blog

I think I’m going in a new direction for 2009. Actually, perhaps I am hoping to go in a direction. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the three people that have been with me since the beginning. I would also like to thank my mom, though I discovered recently that she had forgotten about my blog and hasn’t been here in a while. If you’re reading this mom, welcome back. If you’re new here, please let me know what you think. I’ll be sitting here, waiting for your comments.

Have a Happy Holiday of your choice, if I don’t see you before then.

Well, as I predicted, there is nothing going on in the world now that the election is over. No one is talking about anything, no one is complaining about anything. Pretty boring. I suppose most of the news reporter people are on vacation and once they return, there will be something.
 
I don’t have anything going on either, which is why I’ve decided to change blog themes today. I don’t mean the actual “theme” of the blog – I’ll still be talking about nothing and trying to make it funny – just the visual theme that you are now seeing. That is new.
 

I have decided that the world needs a new Jimmy Buffett/John Denver. Hang on – hear me out. When you listen to a song sung by John or Jimmy, you are supposed to feel like packing it all in and heading to the mountains, or to the beach, respectively. I like feeling like, if I were to pack it all in, that there is somewhere I could go to play guitar and hang out – possibly on a boat – where other folks who had also checked out were waiting for me with a margarita and a nice rayon shirt. But, today’s music pales in comparison. No one is creating a movement, or getting people excited about anything. No artists are instilling rebellion in the youth or reminding people that life is really all about getting high around a camp fire.
 

Part of the problem, I think, might be timing. When I was a kid I could tell that if I were just a little older, I would have enjoyed the television show “Thirty-something.” Now that I am thirty-something, there are no shows like it anywhere. Similarly, when I was but a lad, musicians were protesting war and railing against the rich man’s gold and our unending quest for that gold. Today’s musical persons actually promote the pursuit of gold, quite literally. I am almost 40, and I am ready to start the second part of my life – the part where I take part in a few smuggling operations and spend the better part of the year in sunglasses and sandals. But, there is no movement right now. Everyone is all about making money and sending kids to college and saving for retirement. Dude, if we were having a good time every day, we wouldn’t need to retire.
 

I do play a little guitar, so it is possible that in just a year or two, I could start my own movement. I would write war protest songs, because I think that is an important part of our culture that is missing. But, I am not a risk-taker, per se. I have never been the guy that would do something, and then think about it. So, the likelihood of me starting a movement is pretty slim. But, if you were thinking about it, send me an email, because I have some ideas I could share with you.
 

Last thought. I got an email today from this company that wants me to join their career site thingy. It is expensive, so I have not yet joined. But, one of the articles today began with this quote.
 
“If you haven’t figured out that you are being Googled in your job search just as frequently as you are Googling your business contacts, then it is time to enter the world of modern career management. Whether you want to or not, you must develop and maintain some kind of professional online profile and recognize that people are forming opinions about you based on what they find after typing your name into a search engine.”
 

It is not that I had not realized that, but when I think about all the things that are out there with my name on them, it makes me wonder what opinions people are forming of me. Probably they think I would be a good worker, because I have excellent written and verbal communication skills. Also I am self-motivated, and can work on multiple projects simultaneously. Actually, what’s interesting about that is that yesterday in my daily Seth Godin article, he said that if he were hiring someone, he would look for the following:
 

• You’re relentlessly positive
• You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes
• You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek
• You’ve taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on
• You’ve become the best in the world at something
• You easily engage with strangers and actually enjoy selling ideas to others
• You are comfortable with ambiguity, and rarely ask for detail or permission
• You like to tell stories and you’re good at it
• You’re intellectually restless
• You care enough about new ideas to read plenty of blogs and books
• You’re curious enough about your own ideas that you blog or publish your thoughts for others to react to
• You’re an engaging writer and speaker
• You understand that the system is intertwined, that your actions have side effects and you not only care about them but work to make those side effects good ones
 

I don’t ride a unicycle, or read ancient Greek, but I did teach myself guitar. The rest of the items, I think, describe me pretty well. I think that employment should be a relationship. You can’t base it on a picture and a paragraph – you need a 47 point inspection of the person to truly get to know them. If someone rated me on the above criteria, I’d probably get the job. If someone rated me based on my blog posts, I might get the job. But, how does anyone hire anyone by looking at a resume and meeting with the person for half an hour?
 

The world is a very strange place.
 

When I awoke this morning I was excited about what I assumed would be non-stop election coverage. As of 11:45 MST, I am totally disappointed. So far it has been similar to watching the first fifteen minutes of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, only without the fun parts.

My only hope is that someone somewhere will eventually vote so that we can see some progress. I guess everyone is waiting until lunchtime.

GO VOTE, you losers. I need some election coverage.

Warning: To those readers with small children, I don’t normally use the worst word in the English language, but I suspect that in this post, I will. If you are offended by bad words, go here.

For months, maybe years, I have been anxiously anticipating the merger of XM Satellite Radio with Sirius Satellite Radio. I have been an XM Satellite Radio subscriber for several years now, and I have never liked it. In sharp contrast, every time I get into a friend’s car that has Sirius or go to the Rock Gym where they play Sirius, I love it. I have called three times to cancel my XM subscription, but every time they give me three free months, so I stay. And, when the merger talks started, I figured if I waited it out, I would finally get Sirius, so it was worth hanging in there.

I received an email today from XM Satellite Radio. The merger is complete. And, as a special gift to me, an XM subscriber, I am reaping the benefits. Well. Not benefits, really. You are probably thinking “what do you mean, Jay? Aren’t you happy that you finally get to listen to Sirius channels now? That is what you wanted.” You are right. That is what I wanted. But, that is not what XM offered me.

The offer, as it stands, is that I can add “The best of Sirius” to my package. “The best,” here, means “all the channels that suck.” Let me elaborate

Howard Stern Channel

I need to listen to Howard Stern like I need colon cancer. He is an ass. He built his career on being an ass. That career was over some time ago. Now he is just a washed up ass.

NASCAR Channel

I don’t even know what to say. I don’t watch NASCAR, why would I want to listen to NASCAR? Isn’t NASCAR just people driving cars around in a circle. Why would I drive around in my car and listen to people driving around in cars? I am confused.

NFL Channel

Seriously? I am supposed to listen to football on the radio? That is like, the worst thing I can think of doing. No.

Martha Stewart Channel

Well… Fuck.

Playboy Channel

I could actually see the value of this channel if (a) I was not in my car during most of my radio listening time and (b) Playboy was at all relevant to me, or my life or the world.

That’s It

Seriously, that’s it. That is “THE BEST” of Sirius. No mention of Lithium, the Grunge channel, Left of Center, the Indy Rock channel or 1^st Wave, the Classic Alternative channel. In fact, you may have noticed a lack of any channel that resembled music in any way.

“But Jay,” you are thinking, “at least they gave you something, right. I mean, two competing companies merged, and even though they are somewhat monopolistic now, you supported the merger because you felt like you might finally get some good programming. And,” you say (you are still talking) “you didn’t get exactly what you wanted, but you got something for free, and that is better than nothing.”

You would think. Only, it’s not free. To add the “Shittiest of Sirius™” to my XM subscription, I would have to pay an additional $4.00 a month. Remember how I said I wanted to cancel my subscription? Yeah, this didn’t change my mind.

Of course, while I can upgrade my plan to add The Shittiest of Sirius™ to my plan, there is nowhere for me to click to cancel my subscription. I did notice though that if I wanted to add The Shittiest of Sirius™ to my plan today, I no longer have the option of paying monthly. It seems they have switched to yearly subscriptions. If I were an idiot, I might pay only $448 for a three year subscription to XM Everything plus the Best of Sirius. But, really, what is the likelihood that XM will even be around in three years?

On a side note, Sirius subscribers didn’t fare too well either. XM only had crap to offer, so the offered crap like the Oprah Channel, NHL, NBA, PGA and College Sports. Still, they already have some rockin’ music channels, so they didn’t need anything additional.

If you want to sign up for Sirius, click the image below. I’ll be right behind you in line.

Happy belated Labour Day to my friends in NZ – sorry I missed you, I was busy. Speaking of busy, I’ve been writing blog posts like crazy, in my head, but none have made it to paper. So, today I’m breaking down the fourth wall on Unfocused Content so that I can tell you about a very special day – it’s Picture Post Wednesday!!!!! I’ve been collecting pictures of interesting things and meaning to write about them. Today, I’ll posting the pics with little mini-stories. I guess we could call it mini-story Wednesday too.

Awesome!

This is my original artwork, inspired by a bumper sticker that said “When Bush took office gas was $1.46.” When I first saw this bumper sticker I thought “So effing what? When Clinton took office, I bet gas was $.99. Hell when Carter took office, gas was…”

You see how this could go on forever, because of the whole inflation thing. But, Clinton or Carter would seem too much like I cared, and we love to talk about William Taft around here.

I’m not sure there was gas when Taft was in office.

We’ve been without a urinal at my office for over a week now. No word on what happened, or when it will be fixed – just a plastic bag and a plunger. Lots of times in life we lose something dear to us without explanation – it just goes away. I think the picture represents that.

So, now we are all using the regular bowl type toilets as urinals, and apparently I work with some gentlemen who believe that if it is yellow, one should let it mellow. I happen to wholeheartedly disagree. Sometimes there is splashing. It is bad enough to have toilet water on ones pants – I do not need another dude’s urine on my pants. Please flush, thanks.

Recently the Coca-Cola in my office went from $5.33 a gallon to $6.93 a gallon. (I might be the only person that measures Coke by the gallon.) Our friendly neighborhood Coca-Cola delivery guy posted a letter on the Coke machine that, in essence, said “our costs are going up, and we hate to do it, but we are passing the burden to you, the consumer, so that our shareholders and corporate executives can continue to live the lifestyle to which they have become accustom.”

The price of a 12 ounce can of Coke went from $.50 to $.65 – a 30% increase. I am usually not a skeptical guy, but I do have trouble believing that Coca-Cola’s suppliers (sugar factories, mostly) had a 30% increase in costs in the past 6 months. I also have trouble believing that Coca-Cola is more expensive to manufacture and distribute than gasoline, even if Bush is president.

A few days later a co-worker taped a news story under the official Coca-Cola letter with the headline “Coca-Cola’s 3Q profits up 14 percent.” The story went on to say “the company says that it earned 1.89 billion, or 81 cents per share, in the quarter ended September 26… Revenue was $8.39 billion, up 9 percent.” I’m not a mathematician, but I am almost certain that a 9% increase in revenue, and a 14% increase in profits, are both indications that Coca-Cola is having a pretty good year.

The next day a third letter went up. This letter used phrases like “use the economy as an excuse to gouge your customer,” “raise your prices 30% and keep the profits,” and “when the economy gets better, no need to lower your prices.” I’m guessing, when the Coca-Cola guy comes back, he is going to think twice about his price increase. Or, maybe not.

Do you ever have one of those days where you start with the goal of being super productive but end up reading the entire Wikipedia page about Tupac Shakur?

It started when I realized about 10:00 this morning that I’d been playing Refuge by Tom Petty for a good two hours. Not for real – in my head. Apparently this is called an “ear worm,” though the source of that information is suspect, so don’t quote me.

Refuge was the last song I’d heard before throwing off my headset in disgust at a work-related issue. After the issue was somewhat resolved, I headed back to my iTunes and saw the name of the song, which made me realize I’d been playing it in my head the whole time. The song immediately stopped playing – as though my brain didn’t want to get caught, but it was much too late for that. I started thinking back, and I realized that my brain does this all the time. I don’t know if it is programmed to play the last song it heard or if it is just bored and needs something to do, but either way, all of it is going on without a directive from me.

With one notable exception, I have pretty good control over the movements and actions of all of my body parts. Unless I sleep funny, my arms and legs and hands and feet all do what I tell them to do. I thought this was the case with my brain as well. I mean, it is my brain – the central processing unit of me – so you would think that, apart from breathing and heart function, I would have some input into what is going on up there.

But, no. Apparently there is a little iPod in my head – but it is not an iTouch, or even a Nano, it is just a Shuffle with a one song capacity. Songs are loaded, one at a time, through the ears. When the ears stop receiving input, the iPod in my head kicks on and just plays that one song until it gets more input.

That is a screwed up broken piece of machinery.

I couldn’t live with Refuge anymore so I fired up my iTunes and the song in my head went away. I didn’t think about any of this again until after lunch, when I looked up and realized that not only was my brain playing Changes by Tupac Shakur (1971-1996), it was reading the Wikipedia page that covered his life from his childhood in East Harlem to his tragic death. I almost immediately closed the page (right after I finally sorted out who was East Coast and who was West coast) and realized that my brain might actually be taking over entire portions of my day.

A quick Google search indicates that this condition is not uncommon. In fact it has a name – “luny bin,” but you may know it by the scientific name “nutty as a fruitcake.” From the Wikipedia page

“When a person has no recollection of portions of his day or week and often ‘wakes up’ to find that he is dancing naked in an outdoor fountain or building 1:20 scale ‘General Lee’ model cars in his neighbors basement (naked or not), it is a pretty safe bet that he is, indeed, crazy.”[Citation needed]

Of course I’m kidding. My brain is not taking over, I don’t think. It is hard to say what ideas belong to me and which belong to my brain, but that is another post entirely. But, most people’s brains play the last song that they heard over and over until the next song comes along, so that is normal. When we are aware of it, we say we have a song stuck in our heads. The fact is, the songs are always there, we just aren’t always aware of them – sort of like nuclear weapons or teenagers.

The good news, if you are raising kids, is that this is a great way to get them to remember their math facts. They have to be set to music though – the iPods in our head do not accept the spoken word format (AAC, I think). I once tried to remember the 1938 speech by William Taft (the famous one, you know) but every time I’d stop to see if it was sticking, Thriller by Michael Jackson would start playing. 1984 was a good year.

–END BLOG POST–

–BEGIN RANT ABOUT NOTHING–

On November 6th, or December 20th – when the elections are long over and President Elect (Insert Name Here) has resolved all of our personal and professional woes – will there be dead air on CNN? I mean, they talk about the election for 24 hours in a row everyday. One can only assume that, were it not for the election, they would have nothing else to talk about. So, when the election is over, can’t they just stop talking?

Of course they can’t, nor will they. The news networks exist to give news to people who crave news. The world view of these people is that by keeping up with the news, they are staying current with the world, are informed and can discuss any issue with some level of intelligence. If you are someone with this world view, there is always news because there is always something to talk about because news junkies always want to talk about something. But, if you do not share this world view, there is no news, because there is never news because there is never anything worth talking about.

There is another world view which goes something like this – If a building blows up, that is news. If the market plummets a million points, that is news. If we elect a new president, that is news. If something happens that might affect people, it is news. What John McCain ate for breakfast, or when Barack Obama went to the bathroom or what song Joe the Plumber sang whilst showering this morning – that is not news. That is fluff.

If all you have to talk about is fluff, then please shut up, or do your job and find some real news.

–END RANT–

I know that of the millions of folks that visit this site everyday, there are probably thousands of you that, like me, are too busy to read a newspaper and too tired in the evening to watch the 10:00 news. (4:30 BCE. for my Egyptian readers.) That is why you will be thrilled with my latest discovery. I call it “news on the computer,” though if it catches on, and I am sure it will, there might be another name.

There is this new company called “Google,” and they have a whole web page where they put news. I know what you are thinking – “This isn’t the 1800’s, and I can’t wait for Pony Express to arrive, or for some college kid to update his web page, to get my news – I need to know all the important stuff that happened in the world before I go to bed.” Fear not, my friends. These Google people update their page every time there is a new story. I don’t know how they do it, but it seems to work.

For instance, I visited the Google News page this morning and learned the following:

• A company called Apple just released a new computer called a “MacBook Pro,” that is revolutionary because the keyboard is black instead of gray. (How do these guys come up with these ideas?)
• The 80’s singer Madonna has divorced some guy (didn’t give his name) and is now going to tour the world. It is good to know she is still alive and able to travel.
• Two brothers of the Lehman family exposed themselves, but Merrill Lynch does not want to discuss it. (They must have been employees.) I think they should not discuss it, since they have a business to run.
• Some people by the name of Britons had sex on the beach and it made international news. Get a room people.
• John McCain is angry because Barack Obama is so cool. I know how you feel John – getting old is tough, but we just need to realize that we’re not in our 20s anymore.
• President Elect Hillary Clinton has said hundreds of words in the past few weeks. According to Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Ms. Clinton, “disturbing” was one word “out of hundreds Senator Clinton has spoken in recent weeks.”

So, you see, there is really no need to wait until you are in bed to catch up with the world. This new computer news thing will allow you to read the news anytime – at your desk, in the bathroom, where ever you have a computer.

I think this may revolutionize the news industry. I predict that in just a few short months, we won’t even need television news. So, never again will my wife’s soap operas be interrupted by television news people giving her urgent news about the stock market slipping 500 points (and don’t forget to watch the debates tonight, even though this is not a plug for our network right in the middle of a broadcast.)

If you would like to check it out, go to Google News and see for yourself. And, tell them I sent you.