Month: May 2006

I was reading Ad Age when two ads just struck me. Both featured very attractive Hispanic women. The copy for the Univision ad read: “Just talk to me in Spanish.” The one for Si TV read: “You lost me at ‘Hola’.” It continued that 96% of young Latinos speak English. Of course, these ads reflect the respective programming of these cable networks. But, to me, it also addresses the fact that one cannot pigeonhole the Hispanic population in the language debate.

The Senate’s largely meaningless gesture to designate English as the national language seemed designed more to be able to tell the folks at home about how they’ve “stood up for America”, because the bill wouldn’t alter multilingual ballots, signage, or government websites, nor should it. Next thing you know, they’ll be an official muffin.

As for the President’s words on the topic, he seems to be speaking from both sides of his mouth on this. As Neil Young might say, “Flip. Flop.“
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In the last three weeks, I’ve seen three stories, on two networks (ABC and CBS) about ethanol in Flex cars in Brazil. (This MSNBC story on the topic is nearly two years old.) Flex cars, some of which have been designed by GM, can run on ethanol, gasoline or a combination of the two. The Brazilians use sugar cane, which costs about $1 per gallon to produce. Corn, which one would likely use in the United States, costs about $1.25 per gallon to make. Gasoline now goes for about $2 per gallon to produce.
It’s less polluting, it cuts gas imports (Brazil now has no imports). No drilling in ANWR would be necessary. Maybe there’s a downside, besides the loss of market share for Big Oil (poor Exxon Mobil!), but I haven’t discovered it yet.
Hey, I wonder if they could make a hybrid flex car?
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The 70th most popular baby name for girls on the Social Security page for 2005 is Nevaeh. It went from not in the top 1000 in 2000 to #266 in 2001, #191 in 2002, #145 in 2003, #101 in 2004 to its current position. As I saw on the news last week, the name was devised by singer Sonny Sandoval, who, I must admit, I have never heard of. He’s with a Christian band called P.O.D. Nevaeh is Heaven spelled backwards.
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Near-twin Gordon reviews my latest mixed CD.

Sometimes I experience insomnia. Quite often, I can identify the proximate cause. In the words of Paul Simon, sometimes I think too much. Also, eating late in the evening, or drinking caffeine (even one diet cola in the morning) may affect my noctural experience.

I find that white noise sometimes helps. In my new office, they have white noise, which is supposed to prevent us from hearing other conversations. It doesn’t, but it does make me sleepy. Unfortunately, our country has not adopted the concept of the siesta, and being in a cubicle, I can’t take a cat nap.

The idea of the nap used to be foreign to me, but lately, one a weekend can get me through the next week.

I find pills don’t really help, even the prescription stuff such as Ambien, but Nyquil often does. But I don’t want to become habituated to it, especially if I’m not sick.

The other thing that helps somewhat is heavy breathing (no, not that – get your mind out of the gutter), filling my lungs as much as possible then exhaling slowly.

Lately Lydia has been experiencing something similar. Like me, she generally falls asleep, but then wakes up in the middle of the night.

So my questions, if you would be so kind to answer:

Do you, or have you suffered from insomnia? For how long? Under what circumstances (stress caused by a particular event, e.g.)?

How did you treat your insomnia? Did you ever go to a sleep clinic?

Why does a two-year old wake up in the middle of the night more often than not recently?

I feel crummy.

Well, I need to back up a bit.

Monday, May 15- go to Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown with my father-in-law, Richard. While it was lovely at noon for the parade, it started clouding up during the Home Run Derby at 1, and they started the game early, at 1:35 instead of 2. If they could get in five innings, it’d be a legit game and they wouldn’t have to refund 9000 tickets. But the rain increased, and we got soaked, so the game was called after 2 1/2 innings. My mother-in-law Joyce and I rendezvoused with Carol and Lydia. Our anniversary dinner consisted of salads at the McDonald’s in Cobleskill, NY, then home.
Tuesday, May 16- First day in new office. Getting there was easier than I thought. We’d all done floor designs for our cubicles. I don’t know why we bothered, as our designs had nothing to do with what they set up – in my case, my back to the entranceway. My Chinese colleague Jinshui said it was bad feng shui.
So I rearranged the office, and started putting my stuff away. Sometimes, I feel as though I have ADHD, because I simply cannot stay on a task for two or three hours at a time. I did some reference, what I could do that didn’t involve copying (copier not there yet) or the CD-ROMs (LAN not working).
I wait at the bus stop to go home. The bus passes in one direction, so I figure it’ll make a stop on the return trip. But then it comes back and passes me again. Fortunately, I flag down another bus and make it home.

Wednesday, May 17 – finish unpacking and do some reference. While getting there is easy (because other buses stop at the designated locales), I manage to miss BOTH late buses and have to walk home. Now, as the eagle flies, my new office is much closer to my home than my old. Of course, roads aren’t designed that way, and I end up walking along I-90, which is dangerous enough in the best of circumstances, but potentially lethal during construction. Fortunately, some construction worker invited me to walk inside the barrier, and I got home a little less than an hour and a half after I left, soaked from a brief but torrential downpour.

Thursday, May 18 – As I did the previous two days, brought Lydia to day care. She’s starting to develop a cough. Meet with a potential intern. Try to get some work done, but now the Internet and e-mail are also down. Except for catching up on reading Advertising Age and the Wall Street Journal, there is literally nothing I can do workwise.
Wife Carol calls to tell me that Lydia threw up at day care. They tried to call me, but we got new numbers. The old number was SUPPOSED at least leave a message, but no, it has a recording of the new tenant in our old space. So the day care couldn’t reach me at all.
Got a ride to town, took myself out to dinner at a Greek restaurant.
Went to a meeting of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, got elected vice-president. Listened to a storyteller talk about the historic Cherry Hill section of Albany. Went to second half of choir rehearsal, then home.

So today, sick Roger is home with sick Lydia. Usually, I’d like to come up with a punchline to these tales, but as the great Peter Paul commercial says: “Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t.”
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I’m sad about the Macca split, mostly because of the speculation: http://news.aol.com/entertainment/music/articles/_a/Paul-mccartney-wife-to-separate/20060517065409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Yeah, this is one of those fill in the blank thingies I swiped from Tosy, with apologies to Neil Diamond:

I am a news junkie. If I can’t watch it, I’ll tape it.
I said a lot of things with a filter.
I want people to recognize that the current federal government is not working in their interest, unless they make a lot of money.
I wish my father were still alive.
I hate hot and humid weather.
I love my family, my friends, music, and blogging.
I miss a lot of my family and friends, who are too far away to see regularly.
I fear getting bats in the house AGAIN because the contractor never bat-proofed the house like he said he would.
I hear poorly in bars.
I wonder about the nature of God. Constantly.
I regret not being able to have made my ex happy, even though no one can make another person happy if she’s rooted in depression.
I am not nearly as smart as people think I am, but I let them keep thinking it anyway.
I dance at weddings, and that’s about it.
I sing constantly. Even when I’m not singing aloud, I’m often singing in my head.
I cry often over certain pieces of music.
I am not always methodical.
I make with my hands lasagna. Some other stuff, too.
I write not nearly as often as the muse strikes.
I confuse some of the -ance and -ence word endings.
I need a massage.
I should lose some weight.
I start making duck noises and crack myself up.
I finish weeding old magazines, even if they’re unread.
I tag no one. But those who haven’t blogged lately – and you know who you are – might use it to get started again.
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Happy birthday to my “baby sister”, Marcia!

Last year, when I attended these same two conferences, I gave laboriously detailed instructions to my wife to make sure she took out the VCR tape on Tuesday night before JEOPARDY!, lest the six hour recording be cut off and I miss recording one of our shows. This year, I didn’t have to worry about that because we have a DVR. All I had to be concerned about was the fact that the memory was up to 87% and that I had to watch or purge some programs.

So what did I think of the finales of Everybody Hates Chris, Scrubs, My Name Is Earl, The Office, and Gray’s Anatomy? I don’t know; I haven’t seen ANY of them yet, or indeed the penultimate episodes of ANY of those series (three back with Gray). Also, as is often the case, I watch the series finale of a show I used to watch, but then stopped. Previously, that’s included Friends and Seinfeld; this season, it was West Wing. Haven’t seen that either.

The only finale we DID watch was Gilmore Girls. I was disappointed. But then I read Tosy and I’ve totally changed my mind. Really.

I hadn’t read many of the bloggers until recently. I hadn’t seen Eddie’s review of my recent compilation or Lefty lifting heavy books or even Fred dissecting the Pen 15 club back on May 11.

I did answer Lefty’s question about boycotting musical artists. I tend to operate opposite of that. The Dixie Chicks are putting out a new album this month, and I’m most inclined to get it because of their troubles.

(Although now that I think of it, there IS one artist I did boycott, or more specifically the product she endorsed: Anita Bryant and orange juice, until her contract ran out.)

There’s a special on Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions on CMT that I’ve missed twice already, and will record tomorrow (Thursday) at 6 pm.

I almost forgot Pinkersterfest on this Saturday past (!) until my wife reminded me; it’s a VERY BIG DEAL around here. Maybe it was the gloomy forecast, but actually Saturday was the one day it DIDN’T rain – at least in daylight hours – in about a week.

More than that, I almost missed They Might Be Giants playing in the park for free! In any case, they were great. They did “We’re the Replacements” from the very first EP of theirs I have from 1987. Of course, they did “The Egg”, one of at least three venue songs they performed. One of things they were promoting on stage was “Experimental Film” from Homestar Runner. Very early on, during their description of the sun, they described their politics, talking about a “failed foreign policy”, a “failed domestic policy”, and “a failed Presidency”; they also describe themselves as “tax and spend liberals.” Their last song before the three-song coda was “Istanbul”, which was written the year I was born.
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Friend Dan sent me this a while back:
“Thought you might find this amusing. Think about it… so many comic covers these days have blatant female T and A in skintight outfits, and no one objects. I sure don’t, lemme tell ya.
But what’s good for the goose is good for the female bird, right?
So… are these covers obscene, or are they the male equivalent of female depictions?”