The Blog With No Name

I picked up Sean Astin’s book at the library, pausing at first (should have paused forever!) given that the dust cover mentioned topics other than making LOTR. What a load of tripe. I couldn’t even make it through the first few pages. His co-writer should be shot, and whoever took home a paycheck after claiming to “edit” this book should be fired.

I should, at this point, quote a few paragraphs, but I couldn’t stand to have the book in my possession any more and hurled it into the book return at the first opportunity. Maybe I’ll check it out again and give you a few choice samples. But oh my word, don’t you waste your time. Really.
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In case you hadn’t figured it out, I listen to public radio a lot. We have a station at a local college, and in fact their main tech guy is my cousin’s husband. So anyway, if you listen to public radio, you know that they don’t have “ads” as such, but they sure do have lots of sponsors. Which is a good thing, no argument. BUT what has lately begun to annoy me is the little sponsor blurb that inevitably accompanies mentioning the sponsor. Here for example is the one that tipped me over the edge:

“The law offices of (famous name you’d recognize), committed to providing a tradition of excellence blah blah blah…”

What the HELL does that MEAN? It has those three words, someone must have done a study on them: “committed,” “tradition,” and “excellence.” It sounds dangerously close to Mad Libs, or Bullshit Bingo.

The local hospital has another one:

“(Hospital) Heart Center – providing a continuum (?WTF?) of care – we take care of hearts, so you can take care of life.”

It’s like CNN making up dramatic names for the crisis du jour, and having some dork in a back room with a nice computer making pretty logos for each war, famine, or what-have-you. Edward R. Murrow did not need this. Why do we?

(Aren’t I just full of the Christmas spirit)

Just came from the Nova Singers concert, which was naturally EXCELLENT, and saw Kermit Wells, the boy’s choir director since before the dawn of recorded history. I became obsessed, during the concert (my cousin can attest to this), with discovering Mr. Wells’ age. This overwhelmed my usual obsession with matching up the names/bios of the singers to the faces in the group (WHY can’t Laura Lane put their PHOTOS in the blasted book? But I digress…)

Google to the rescue – an article from a local paper lists Mr. Wells as 68 in 2002. Voila.

Dinky Dawson was also there.

We have a dog. I am not terribly excited about this.

He’s a five-year-old beagle, from a local no-kill shelter. Potty training is obviously not an issue (thank the gods), but I’m annoyed that he seems to have been allowed to have the sofa (hair hair hair!), and he’s knocked over the garbage can once already. On the other hand, the spousal unit seems to enjoy taking him on long walks, which is probably good for both of them. Heck, I’d like to go too.

Luckily, we know someone who is mad for dogs, and who has volunteered (volunteered!) to keep Elmo at her house whenever we are out of town. That’s a plus.

The spousal unit sent me off to IKEA on a Saturday, then went and got this creature. Isn’t that sneaky?