I said this seven years ago: Cell phones are the new Pocket watch [Some blog on the BusinessWeek web site and unfair & out of nowhere criticsm of it]

Actually the title of the article that I am linking to (in the title) is "Pocket watches are back."

In reality, it wasn't my brilliant punditry that made me say what I said about "cell phones as pocket watches" when I said it (1998). And in fact, I think I said it about SMS text-messaging pagers. But the truth is (Hello. Strunk and While calling William: You need to cut it out with the "throat-clearing" introductory clauses [these parenthetical comments are no picnic either]) I've more or less always (why qualify?) liked pocket watches better than wristwatches. Pocket watches remind me of my Grandpa.

Make no mistake about it, however, my punditry is brilliant. All hail me! The Oracle of Sugar Land! Soothsayer extradonaire! Futurist-Savant!

Haza! Hazaa!! Hazaaa!!!

On to the meat of my criticism of the article:

BusinessWeek is indulging either in a sad or a keenly ironic excuse for blogging (maybe it is both!) The main weakness of the article (and the blog in general) is that it tends to a sticky frappe blended from cultural anachronisms (Cathedral bells and school buzzers? Dude! Are you predicting the end of time or the end of secular public education?), basic "miss the boat"ness about technology, and metaphorical expression tortured in a bag of mixed locutative phrase-coinerismations.

Yo, Author of whatever that blog is called! Write about something current, for example, "the distressing prevalence of Lt. Uhura cell phones" Here is an ironic link that topic, written about "so last year".

Here, I'll start you off:

What's the deal with these ear-sticky-outie cell-phone thingamabobbers? It's like the TMBG song "Everybody wants prostetic foreheads on their real heads"


Enough abouut you. Back to me...

I say, "We are not going far enough."
Technology needs to intrude further into our lives and personal space. Which brings me back to "Inspector Gadget" How about a poem? Yes, a poem.

[ahem]

Ode to Inspector Gadget

What a beacon of our time!
How graceful and noble of purpose!
Oh, to have a cell phone embedded in my left hand, such that my pinky be the microphone and my thumb the speaker!
My heart takes flight, although cell phones must be turned off while the cabin doors are closed.
My soul soars, to the furtherest reaches of my provider's coverage map.

Inspector Gadget, I would call you even if I had only an analog signal.

If they refashioned the redoubtable gray "Gentry" such that a cybernetic arm with a mind of its own would pop out to grab stuff, hold up a magnifying glass (to look at clues), or just rub the ol' chin while both hands are needed to puzzle over a map... people would buy the thing like mad!
But not like M.A.D., for that is the way of Dr. Claw: which is bad bad bad.

Go, Gadget, go.

Batman Begins to annoy me

So I arrived in Houston late last night and I get to the parking lot and my battery is dead and won't stay on after a jump unless I keep my foot on the gas, which I do... all the way home (poping into neutral to brake, but still very frightening) such that by the time my healthy jog to Sugar Land is done, the batter is charged... so I think, but on the way to work the car loses power and guess what? The transmission lines are also leaking. New Battery, New transmission lines, plus new fuel pump last week. Makes for a very bad week.

I blame the in-flight movie, which as you might infer from the title of this post is the snooze fest staring Christopher Bale and Liam Neison.

*Spoiler Alert*

Actually if its a spoiler to you that in a Batman movie... Batman wins... ... who am I kidding? You people are smart. Let's just move on.

So this movie is all about conquering fear, thus Rasch al ghoul and Scarecrow are the bad guys. At the end of the movie, Gordon lets Batman know that the sequel will feature the Joker.

The message here is: Once you conquer fear, the next obstacle is to conquer jokes.

These thoughts are rolling through my head as I am rolling in the fatwill-mobile, in neutral, downhill on the freeway, 70 mhp, one foot on each pedal, lights flickering/threatening to die, me exhausted from my trip (oh and from food poisoning) and I'm repeating "why not just use safe clear?"

"William, people who drive stick, often have two feet on the two pedals and often put the car in neutral. What do you want, a medal? For goodness sakes, it wasn't that dangerous, although it probably was bad for the car."

Anyone who's ever driven with me driving stick understands what a terrifying experience is.

So the car gets home and you'd think, that it must be just desserts that I ruptured the automatic transmission fluid hose.. but its not. It's Batman.


I got a song to sing about Batman
Sha na na na na na na na
Batman!

Finally, what's up with D.C. Comics hating Princeton University. Bruce Wayne is a dropout after sophmore year (talk about sophmore slump) and Bruce Banner is a researcher from Princeton (that might have only been in the live-action series staring Bill Bixby) By the way, did anyone think it was incredibly sad the way Brandon Cruz was the only person who tried hard to raise money for Bill Bixby? For those of you who don't know Brandon Cruz was Eddie Corbett in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" for a while, he was also the singer for the Dead Kennedys (although I'm sorry, but its not the Dead Kennedys without Jello Biafra!) and if you never thought it was possible for a punk to be sad without being emo (which isn't punk, I don't know what you call it... oh yeah... you call it emo) then watch the incredibly uncomfortable spectacle of a grown man's heart breaking in public as his effort to save the life of his TV dad is chronicled by TV entertainment news magazines.


As Batman Begins to annoy me, the captain comes on the overhead to announce our descent into Houston.

Operator Error

The biggest risk to all designs are the operators. Case in point, Inspector Gadget. When people would accidently grab on to the button of his overcoat, he would turn into a floating, bouncing, crazy hazard. This gets into post that I previously abandoned as a draft entitled:

Batman Begins to Annoy me, in which I blame my car problems on the in-flight movie. My point there was that Hollywoood movies and certain Japanese anime suffer from too much explanation. Once the "Why" elements are explained, you say "oh... that was sort of dumb, it was better not knowing."

In this sense, Inspector Gadget was terrific. Who was Dr. Claw? Why did inspector Gadget have all those gadgets? Did Penny accidently kill her parents trying to build a cyborg? Is Chief Quimby really a police officer or is he an informant like Deep Throat from the X-Files?

Like the real Deep Throught, Inspector gadget is less enjoyable when you get to know too many mundane details.

As a final Thanksgiving thought, consider this: Deep Thought, Deep Blue, and Deep Purple.

I rest my case.

Wanna see a cool animation of what they did to my house?

I was going to make some sort of pun about "getting level" or "righting my house" and pass it off as profundity. Louren says that they dug a hole so deep that she saw the top of a hard hat. They didn't mess up the plants or the driveway.

"William, you own plants? You have the brown thumb!"

Hey man, lawns cannot live on grass alone.

Hold on to your oxygen because the Space Station will have... a live videoconference!

So there is a bunch of hype because Paul McCartney is going into space... via videoconference. Big freakin deal!!! Oh... and another thing: Paul McCartney isn't "beaming" into the Space Station to sing them a song. There's nothing mysterious about the technology at all, so we don't have to be all 1980's about it.

Here's the real headline:

Interest in ISS waning, even the astronauts are bored. Former Beatle dispatched to liven things up. War is over, if you want it. Oops, wrong Beatle. Anyway, this is too long for a headline. How about that local sports team. The article is going to start right about... now!

So the moral of the story is... don't let me run a newspaper.

Texas Rules of Evidence 803. Hearsay Exceptions: Availability of Declarant Immaterial

(1) Present sense impression. A statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter.

Compare with Fed.Evid.R 803(1) (reading verbatim).

Here is an example of this in action. Note that the declarant is exempted but the commentators' statements would probably be hearsay.

Which State elected Lt. Governor DuBois? Let's call it Mohiowyomindelarizoklafornewashintennebralaskanas

I've previously complained about what's wrong with TV Show synopsis sites (one of the earliest posts on this blog) and viola! Someone has fixed it.

Mirabla dictu!

{William Did you just do a clip show a la Family Ties?}

Remember when SNL had Justine Bateman as a guest and they did a clip show of the previous clip shows as a skit...

That was almost less funny that Mumford the Magician's trademark like "a la Peanut Butter Sandwiches." I always hated Mumford... always doing magic and messing things up. You start out with a vexing but manageable issue like... your shoes are merely untied. Then (and before you can protest) its all "a la peanut butter sandwiches" you've been turned into a talking Rutabega and it's extremely windy, so much so that Grover flies by ("Hey Froggy ba-beeeeeeeeeeee...) I always wanted to stand up from my Legos and shout "Mumford, you are completely incompetentl! Why don't you practice your craft properly? First perfect your tricks before you go subjecting other people to your negligence."

One would think that I would have a similiar problem with Grover's carelessness as a waiter, or his ineptitude as a super hero, but it has always been easy for me to forgive Grover for his human foibles (furry blue monster foibles, you mean!) and appreciate him for the cute fuzzy friend that he is.

I suppose there is a life lesson here. Something about, I should see the Grover in Mumford and be a Kermit to the world.

Actually, the lesson is that the show was actually called "Frank Leaves for the Orient" and not "Frankie goes to the Orient". I must have gotten mixed up with that 80's band... "Devo"

So maybe the punchline is that I'm really Mumford? Maybe the punchline is that one should ask not for whom the Peanut Butter Sandwiches are invoked in magical form, for it thee invoked ... is.

The odious State, blindingly hewn in doubt

Just to amuse myself, I sometimes try to think of clever post-modern superheroes. The other day, I was thinking about the problems that FEMA officials reportedly have had with names that are commonplace in Southern Louisiana, but strange to the insensitive ear of the "Washington Beauraucrats" such that they could not correctly spell or say such tricky names as "Morris" and "Bergeron."

Our course, such hyperbole annoys the living carp outta me. I'll guess that the article was written because of some anecdote, the substance of which is that "Bergeron Morris" was put down as "Morris Bergeron" and as a result got sent to the refuge camp in Alaska rather than to the Astrodome. In the spirit of such hyperbole, I present:

SUPER PERSONNEL PERSON: The power to correctly say or spell any name from a single time reading or hearing it. This power would be unlimited, such that SUPER PERSONNEL PERSON would instantly know, which of the fourty possible pronouncations of "Milo Machinery" was correct. Morever a shivering imp of a man with no teeth who stated his name as "Ger mur mur Mig yergle le pig leg" would be correctly typed up as Jim Kltpzyxm.


Back to the 5th dimension with ye!

When in doubt, you can always talk about figures of speech

Slate featured this article by some tedious dictionary editor about how "literally" is sometimes used to mean "figuratively." The article, in a nutshell, admits that this is so and advises that there is no sense complaining about it. People should just get over it.

People need help getting over things, they need something else to beat up. In that spirit, I submit that people should instead get tough on the expression: "Don't make me laugh!"

What a heartless world this is where you command people to cease all humor! Of course, the underlying sentiment is that the person speaking is such a bold-faced liar, that it might be humorous in a different context. Nevertheless, the speaker of the phrase perpetuates the sin of a mirthless world. (Theologians if you think a world withould mirth is not a sin, then you are ugly and your mother dresses you funny)

I had a punchline here, but I just eclipsed it with my parenthetical comment. Oh, what the heck...

Instead of saying "don't make me laugh" people should just call the person a liar in a way that is just as icy, but has a touch of mirth and is evokative of our rich linguistic heritage. I propose that whenever one would say "Don't make me laugh" the phrase "thou speakth with a fork-ed tounge!" should be used instead. It works better if you say it with a "one eyebrow raised, one eyebrow lowered" scowl.

Try it in a meeting, or in casual conversation amongst friends. See what kind of reaction it gets. You'll be the envy of everyone in the room. Literally!