Archive for the 'Strange But True' Category

You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head, and it just won’t go away? Sure, that happens to everyone. What about situations — something happens, or you notice something about your surroundings, and there’s that damned song. I knew someone long ago who’d find a rock song, usually by the Stones, that she’d find relevant to almost any situation: if your shoelace was untied, Iris would somehow connect it in her head to Waiting on a Friend or Miss You, and she’d break into song with a voice that sounded like she’d never inhaled anything but cigarette smoke since birth — kind of cool considering she was 15 and didn’t smoke.

I find myself in a similar situation whenever I hear Joe Biden’s name. I don’t know for sure yet whether he’s going to be Obama’s running mate, but it’s looking more and more likely, and that means that at least until November, I’m going to be hearing his name a lot, and if Obama becomes president, I’ve got four or even eight years of hearing that name pretty damned often.

What song is it I hear whenever someone says “Joe Biden”? It’s Elvira, by the Oak Ridge Boys. Iris was lucky. She loved the Stones. Me, I can’t stand the Oak Ridge Boys, and I hate that song in particular. But that doesn’t mean I’m throwing my support to Johnny “Lotsa Houses” McCain. I’ll just have to deal with it. It’s my sacrifice for the future of this great land.

I guess I should consider myself lucky it’s not Thank God For Kids.

Eyes that look like heaven, lips like sherry wine
That girl can sure enough make my little light shine
I get a funny feelin’ up and down my spine
‘Cause I know that my Joe Biden’s mine

It seems Al Franken isn’t the only comic (I’m sure he’d prefer “satirist”) who’s gone into politics.

Do you remember that guy over on the left? It’s Funky Winkerbean. Frankly, I’m not particularly familiar with the comic strip. I’m sure I’ve read it a few times, but the only thing that stands out in my memory is that name — Funky Winkerbean.

I did a little research, and found out a couple of things that really set it apart from most other comics:

• It takes place in an actual place: Ohio
• It’s dealt with some serious issues, like war and the rights of the disabled
• It had a major character die of breast cancer

But the thing that really struck me is that the characters have actually aged. Funky is no longer a high school student. How long has Archie Andrews been trying to get his diploma? That’s Funky Winkerbean on the right, at the age of 46, the co-owner of the pizzeria where he used to hang out. Off the top of my head, the only other comics I can think of in which the characters have aged are Doonesbury (rah!) and For Better or For Worse (blah).

What if Funky Winkerbean was some 20 years older still? I believe that may be him on the left, still living in Ohio. In fact, he’s serving as the mayor of Toledo.

Naturally, he’s changed his name. You can’t be mayor of a “Business Friendly City of the Future” with a name like Funky Winkerbean. So it just follows that, when he decided to sell the pizzeria, move to the big city and get involved in public service, ol’ Funky would drop the comical moniker and go for something a little more sophisticated.

Say hello to his honor, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

Remember back in July, when Bob Riley, the governor of Alabammy, issued a proclamation calling for a week of prayer for rain? One could argue that it met with some degree of success. One would be wrong, but that never stopped anybody.

On Sunday, a series of strong thunderstorms brought torrential rain, flash floods and lightning to the area, but apparently not enough to bring much relief to the drought-stricken area.

“I don’t think it made a big dent,” said Patrick Gatlin with the National Weather Service’s Huntsville office. “… This is the most rain we’ve seen in quite some time but it definitely won’t get us back to normal.”

With a record of success like that, it should come as no surprise that in Georgia, where they’re dealing with a drought of historic proportions, Governor Sonny Perdue would put that tried and true method to use:

Bowing his head outside the Georgia Capitol on Tuesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue cut a newly repentant figure as he publicly prayed for rain to end the region’s historic drought.

“Oh father, we acknowledge our wastefulness,” Perdue said. “But we’re doing better. And I thought it was time to acknowledge that to the creator, the provider of water and land, and to tell him that we will do better.”

Hundreds of Georgians — ministers and lawmakers, landscapers and office workers — gathered in downtown Atlanta for the prayer vigil. Some held bibles and crucifixes. Many swayed and linked arms as a choir sang “What a Mighty God We Serve” and “Amazing Grace.”

As Perdue described it, “We have come together, very simply, for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm.”

And did the Rain God deliver?

Gov. Sonny Perdue said Thursday morning that he’s not gloating over the fact that it rained a day after he held a prayer vigil at the Capitol.

“This is hopefully the beginning of more,” Perdue said from Canada, where he is on a trade mission. “One rain won’t refill the reservoirs. It is great affirmation of what we asked for.”

Most of metro Atlanta got a little rain overnight ahead of a strong cold front that blew through North Georgia, and a wind advisory was in effect for gusty conditions behind the front on Thursday.

“As we do all we can from a conservation standpoint, virtually all of us know we are dependent on rain. I am just a person who believes it comes from God,” Perdue said.

While almost all of metro Atlanta got rain, most rainfall totals were only around a quarter-inch or less.

Overnight rainfall totals included .14 inch at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, .21 inch at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport and .28 inch at Dobbins Air Reserve Base.

The rain was a little heavier north of town, with Cartersville reporting .82 inch and Gainesville .75 inch.

The wind advisory for 20 mph winds gusting to 30 to 35 mph was in effect from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

“Such strong winds may result in weak or small trees being blown down, some possibly onto power lines,” the Weather Service said. “Loose outdoor objects such as lawn furniture and garbage cans, should be secured or stored indoors.”

The forecast for metro Atlanta calls for sunny skies on Friday, with early-morning lows in the mid-30s and afternoon highs in the upper 50s.

Lows will be in the low 30s Friday night under mostly clear skies, forecasters said.

The weekend outlook is for mostly sunny skies Saturday and Sunday, with highs in the mid-60s and lows in the low 40s.

There is a 20 percent chance of rain Tuesday night into Wednesday, the Weather Service said.

Praise be.

While we’re on the subject, what’s the deal with the names of Southern politicians? You’ve got Sonny Perdue, Trent Lott, Saxby Chambliss, and I’m sure plenty of others. I’m guessing that Lott and Chambliss carry old family names that remind their constituents of the glory days of the region, kind of like the confederate flag.

Do you think anybody with a name like that could be taken seriously up here? I mean, “Trent Lott” sounds like a name Elvis would call out in the middle of a song to introduce a bass solo, and “Saxby Chambliss” has to be the sort of effete upper-class fellow Scarlett O’Hara’s family would have tried to marry her off to, but he just wasn’t manly enough for her.

I was doing some research for a blog post earlier today. I needed to get some information on a member of Congress who’d officially come out as an atheist, so I ran a Google search for [atheist in congress]. Look what I got in the onebox:

It seems my mother has been speaking with Larry and Sergey. They’re all in cahoots, trying to get me a date even when I’m not looking for one. A word of advice: I’m not going to date someone all the way down in DC, even if she is an atheist. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly nice atheists right here in Boston, so stick that in your algorithm and smoke it, Google.

Here’s a wee hunk of American history that you probably don’t know.

We’re all familiar with the story of the first Thanksgiving, the feast shared by the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag neighbors. No, turkey was apparently not served. Instead, the meats feasted upon that day were most likely venison and duck. But that’s not the piece of history I’m here to teach. I’m here today to talk about the corn that was served that fateful day.

Even without butter, corn on the cob is kind of sloppy food. And when you’re a Puritan, sloppy food is embarrassing food, and embarrassing food is sinful. One particular fellow by the name of Joseph Lymon expressed his disgust with the concept of grabbing the corn in one’s bare hands and gnawing on it, leaving little wet torn up bits all over it. He vowed that he would find a way to make corn eating sufficiently godly, or that he’d make sure no one ever ate it again.

At the second Thanksgiving feast a year later, after the prayer, Lymon stood up to announce that he had found a way to enjoy corn without insulting anyone’s (including god’s, of course) sense of propriety. He held up his invention: small, beautifully polished pieces of wood with one end sharpened. He proudly demonstrated how to insert them into either end of the corn cob and feast on the lord’s bounty without ever having to touch the food with one’s hands. “With my new Corntensils,” he declared, “we can give thanks and praise to the Lord without acting like lowly beasts.”

His announcement, much to his surprise, was met with laughter of derision, and he stormed away in a holier than thou huff.

A week later, Lymon and a few of his followers packed up their belongings (including the colony’s supply of Corntensils) and declared that they could no longer stand to live among the ungodly beasts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They traveled inland to the west and the south for weeks, until they arrived at a wide river. It was there that they declared they had reached the land promised to them by god, where they would create their own colony, with their own laws, not the least of which would be the law of Corn Etiquette.

Tags: Thanksgiving, History, Etiquette

This is your idea of terror, Boston? It’s Err, for fuck’s sake!

I was supposed to go to the pharmacy today, and instead I sat here terrorized by all that terror in the streets. The bridges were closed! The River Chuck was closed! They even found one of these “packages” here in the ‘Ville!

So because of this panic over a cartoon character, I wasn’t able to pick up my drugs — the drugs that are supposed to keep me from panicking over stuff like cartoon characters!

If anyone on the news had bothered to mention that these tools of terror were LED Mooninites, I could have told them not to worry. Instead of that, this day, which was supposed to be a joyful celebration of gorilla suits, is now going to live in infamy as the day of the Boston Magnetic Light Scare. (I will admit, however, that for a day about gorillas to become famous for guerrilla marketing is kind of cute.)

Honestly. Get a grip, Mayor Mumbles.

Tags: Boston, Terror, Err, Mooninite

It’s true, you boys. I have been given the great honor of joining the team at In Search of Stuff, that beloved blog of search marketing wisdom that all the cool kids read.

You’re probably familiar with the story about Google’s concern that their name — their trademarked name — was being genericized, like Band-Aid, Xerox, Rollerblade and many others before it. That is, the name was turning into a general term that wasn’t limited to Google itself. Both Merriam-Webster and the OED view the word as a verb.

Google’s response to this was initially to complain vociferously. I believe they sent out a few cease and desist letters, but that was before the word got added to the dictionary. Now they’re being a bit more conciliatory, asking us all, “Do You Google?“

Here are some hopefully helpful examples.

Usage: ‘Google’ as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: “I just love Google, they’re soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!”
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There’s no question here that you’re referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: “I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Well, we’re happy at least that it’s clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to “Google” means “to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: “I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

OK, fair’s fair. It happened, and they realized that they really couldn’t stop it, so they’re playing along, but hoping you’ll only use it as a verb when you’re talking about them.

You know about all those Apple products: iPod, iMac, iTunes, iLife (which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and even iWeb — “Internet Web”?) and soon (pleeeeeease) the iPhone. Apple says the i stands for “internet”, or at least that’s what they said when the iMac was released. I don’t have an iPod, but I’m pretty sure they don’t go online.

Apple’s not the only iCompany out there. In fact, somebody else is already using the name iPhone, and they’re using the i the way Apple supposedly intended to in the first place — this iPhone is a VoIP company. Internet phone. Get it? And of course there’s that women’s web portal, iVillage. Internet Village. Perfectly sensible. And I’ve no doubt that it takes an iVillage to raise an iChild.

Getting back to that Google-as-a-verb business, what about when a company makes it clear they want you to use their trademark as a verb? Have a look at this:

Isn’t that cute? I village, you village, he she or it villages. Come on everybody, let’s village!

Now I’m waiting for people to start to pod, mac, tunes, life, phone, etc. Yeah, yeah, I know they already phone. You get the idea.

Do you remember the episode of The Flintstones in which Fred becomes a scout master — the one where he goes to the big jubilee (or jamboree, or whatever it is scouts have) in Shangra-la-di-da Valley? No, this post is not about how the scouts treated prehistoric atheists and homosexuals. You’ll see where I’m going in just a moment.

Fred has been named the new leader of the Saber Tooth Tiger Patrol. He comes home wearing his usual schmatta, but with a difference: his tie is absent, and he’s got a hat, a kerchief, and a stick. Wilma sees him and asks, “Fred, what happened? Is there a war?” Fred chuckles and says, “No, this is a boy scout uniform.” Wilma makes some comment about how she’d thought maybe the army had gotten desperate and was scraping the bottom of the barrel, then does a double-take (or to be more accurate, her hair does a double-take) and exclaims, “A boy scout uniform???” You can see the scene here, and you’ll hear how Wilma stresses the word “scout.” You’re likely to notice that it sounds a little odd.

That’s because, under normal circumstances, the phrase “boy scout” has the stress on the “boy” (ouch). I’m sure you’ve all heard numerous examples of this phenomenon. Every now and then, someone says something like “probably,” and it just rubs you the wrong way. It doesn’t feel right. It’s just not the way you’d expect it to sound. Whenever someone puts the stress on the wrong syllable (ahem — syllable), it’s called a Wilma, in honor of that modern stone age lady.

You’ll hear quite a lot of Wilmas if you watch shows on the eye of hell in which people are reading from cue cards or prompters, because they often don’t see a full sentence while they’re reading it, so they’re not always sure of where to put that little punch. Wolf Blitzer is the undisputed king of the Wilma:

A dozen years ago Republicans took control of the House and the Senate in mid-term elections.

So, what is the proper response to a Wilma? There are two, the more common being to shout “Wilmaaaaaa” the way Fred did in the closing credits of the show. My favorite, however, is to quote Wilma herself. I just love to say, “a boy scout uniform???” I say it rather a lot actually, especially when I’m in the Situation Room with Wolfie and the gang.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the acronym WOM, but in marketing-speak it’s what we call “word of mouth,” which has become one of those marketing buzzwords like Web 2.0 and viral marketing. Sure, everyone knows what word of mouth is, but there are people who are paid to manage it for companies, or at least to try to manage it.

It’s the sort of thing that can get out of hand. After all, nobody owns the interweb tubes, and despite the efforts of some, public opinion is pretty hard to tame. That’s the situation the venerable Bank of America currently finds itself in.

BoingBoing is reporting on a huge customer service gaffe on the part of a Bank of America branch. As word has spread about it, people have been closing down their BofA accounts to express their disgust, to the tune of about $50 million.

And then there’s the video below, of a couple of BofA folks performing their version of U2’s “One,” with lyrics extolling the glory and wonder of their mastery of the world of credit cards (which BofA actually invented, by the way) as they absorb competitor after competitor. The headline of its page on YouTube describes it as “funny/terrible,” but I have to admit, the guy has a good voice. What’s funny/terrible about it is the concept of singing with passion about the credit card business, and the way these guys are dressed. It makes me want to shake them by the shoulders and angrily scream BANKER at them. It’s kind of like the way the space hippies called people “Herbert” in that Star Trek episode.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhYg_7e3X54]

There’s one thing that it seems many people don’t know about BofA. That abbreviated version of the bank’s name is pronounced “B of A” by most, but some of us prefer the single word “Bofa,” and that just happens to be a word of celebration in the Zulu language. Just imagine a bar in Soweto, full of fans watching a World Cup match between South Africa and the hated Italians. Italy is favored to win, and moved ahead with three early goals, but the South Africans are making a comeback. Every time the goal tender makes a save, the crowd shouts “Bofa!” With each goal by the South Africans, the shouts of “Bofa” grow louder, until the game is won when a player from the Townships makes a miraculous penalty kick and the whole nation shakes with screams of “Bofa!“

It’s true. Would I lie?