Day off-ish

Stayed home, under the weather, if not terribly sick, yesterday; on Tuesday I was feeling pretty run-down and on-the-verge-of-a-cold at work, and I decided to stay home and try to head it off at the pass with lots of rest and orange juice, rather than come in, feeling moderately miserable, and wind up making it worse and getting the entire office sick too. (Don't you hate it when people with contagious diseases drag themselves to work, demonstrating their martyrdom, and stay just long enough to infect everyone else before saying "Actually, I should have stayed home in the first place"? And they also serenade you with hacking coughs or explosive sneezes or sinus-clearing snorts, so you can't concentrate on whatever you're doing for more than five minutes. Just stay home! Really! The moderate amount of productivity you provide by not missing a day or two of work is nothing compared to the lack of productivity caused by everyone else having to miss work because they contracted your disease. Okay?)



Anyway. Stayed home yesterday; you'd think it would have given me time to blog, but even though I spent some time in front of the computer, I didn't go online; I just hate my dial-up connection and getting mugged by Microsoft updates that make my whole system swim-through-molasses slow. So I guess today I'll try to catch up on the things I was hoping to write about yesterday; although, of course, I've also got that Actual Work thing to do. (I've got a t-shirt idea: "Will work for DSL.")

One week and counting down

One week before Election Day. ("60 Minutes" ticking-watch noise.) And that means only eight days until the recount! (She said pessimistically.)



This morning:

J.: I'll be happy when this election is over. I hope I'll be really happy, but I'll settle for it being over.

I had a dream about it being a week before Election Day; in the dream, I said "I'm glad there's only a week left, I'm really sick of all the negative ads and constant media coverage and spin-doctoring and everyone arguing about politics all the time." And then I woke up and it was August, and there were three months until Election Day. And that was one of the most depressing waking-up realizations I ever had. (Among the others: I can't fly, I'm not on the staff of the Daily Show, and I wasn't a member of Monty Python.)



By the way, I know that you are all registered (right...?), but as a service to humanity, here are the states where there's still time to register: Maine (register in person up to and including election day); Minnesota (election day registration at polling places); and Wisconsin (in person at the local voter registration office up to 5 p.m. the day before the election—Nov. 1st, in this case). (Links go to official state election Web pages; information via Fark the Vote, which is a much more serious, useful, and well-designed site than the name would imply.)

She bangs, she bangs

So, Ashlee "The Other Simpson" Simpson got caught red-handed (and red-faced) lip-synching on "Saturday Night Live"; it's really just ineffably amusing, and so much fun to have the Internet abuzz over something not related to politics. (I love the title of the Chicago Sun-Times article: Ashlee Simpson flees after talent malfunction on 'SNL'. Bwa-ha-ha!)



It's not quite Milli Vanilli redux—she was at least lip-synching to her own voice—but it's the worst kind of publicity for an aspiring performer (rejected words: "singer," "recording artist") promoting her first album, especially when she already faces snake-belly-low expectations. And if you are going to lip-synch, couldn't you at least try to make your voice sound better on the recording? One thing you gotta say for Jessica "The Original Simpson" Simpson: the girl has pipes. Her voice can raise the roof, and usually not in a bad way. Same thing with Christina Aguilera: in all her incarnations, from sweet to skank to retro-starlet, she's got the vocal power to back up the recording contracts she keeps getting. She might even grow into a better Madonna replacement than that desperate Madonna wannabe Mrs. Federline. (Not that we really need another Madonna, but there's an ecological niche for a sexed-up female pop singer who can still look good in a bustier when she's 40, and reedy-voiced Mrs. Federline it ain't gonna be.)



P.S. Ashlee, honey, blaming your band is not cool. They didn't start playing the wrong song; whoever pushes the buttons pushed the wrong prerecorded-vocals button, and if you want to blame anyone, blame a) that person and b) yourself for having a frippin' prerecorded vocal track. But lay off the band, okay? They're musicians, they're professionals, they're well-trained and hard-working, and none of those applies to you. So shut up; you're used to not using your voice, aren't you?



Update: Is there a video? Of course there's a video. From CNN.com, via Bonnie: She Bolts, She Bolts; or, The Walk of Shame.



Updated Update: The CNN.com video requires registration; here's a link to the free, non-subscription-requiring iFilm Simpson Snafu page. And while I was getting that, Kurt of b4yp posted a comment with a link to the also-free eBaum's World Ashlee Simpson Screw-up page. (This is going around the Internet almost as fast as the Jon Stewart Crossfire interview—hey, wouldn't it be great if we found out that Tucker Carlson was lip-synching his talk show?)

Played out

Friday night: Finally won a game of Minesweeper at the Expert level—after only a week of staying up past 1 a.m. every night trying to beat it. Now I must never play it again. (Current staying-up-late obsession: Spider Solitaire. I've won with one suit numerous times, two suits twice, but four suits continue to elude me. I hope it takes less than a week to get this one under my belt.)

Where loyalties lie

President Bush and John Kerry Loyalty Quizzes—swiped from Bonnie, whose results are rather different than mine (and the descriptions of them are considerably funnier; feh, being moderate makes you look so boring!)



The George W. Bush Loyalty Quiz: 10 Questions to Test Your Allegiance to President Bush

Your score is 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. You think Bush has some redeeming attributes, but generally speaking you are not a fan. You may have supported him at one point, but now you have misgivings about the job he has done as president. There's a chance you could bring yourself to vote for him, but at this point you are leaning against him.

The John Kerry Loyalty Quiz: 10 Questions to Test Your Allegiance to John Kerry

Your score is 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. You're leaning toward John Kerry, although you have some reservations about him. You believe he's presidential material, but wonder if he truly has what it takes to defeat President Bush. He's a bit uninspiring and makes you wince on occasion, but you're willing to suck it up and vote for him anyway.

Sportin' life

I don't think I've ever gotten as many comments on my blog as I did on yesterday's Red Sox post; I guess people really do like to talk about this sports stuff, huh? I've concluded that the reason the Red Sox pennant victory has elicited so much discussion and celebration is that it makes two classes of people very happy:

1. People who like the Red Sox.
2. People who hate the Yankees.

And between the two of them, they account for just about everybody in the entire country, except for the actual Yankees team members and their immediate families and maybe 10% of the people in New York City. Everyone else? Happy as clams in a federally-protected watershed. Julie of No Fancy Name sums it up nicely: "We should start a 'my team's not in the playoffs but I'm rooting for the Red Sox' group." So, unless you're a Cardinals fan...let's crack a Sam Adams and say "For the next four-to-seven games, we're all New Englanders!"

Signage

On South St.: a business called "Locksmith"—and it's a hair salon. I actually stopped in front of it and say "Hey, that's pretty clever." (And when I say "say," I mean it; I often talk to myself, mostly sotto voce, a habit I picked up when we first got the bird; talking to a pet feels less silly when the pet can talk back. [Not that she does talk, but eventually she probably will. And she'll hold up her end of the conversation with twittering and chattering for as long as your voice holds out.])



This one wasn't an official business sign, but it can still go under a "Signage" title: a for-sale-by-owner truck, with the usual soap-writing on the windows: phone number, asking price, mileage, and the claim that it "RUNS EXCEL." My immediate smart-ass thought: "That's pretty impressive, most used cars only have Lotus 1-2-3." (I didn't say that one out loud. And yes, I know that "EXCEL" was short for "EXCELLENT.")