Lou Dobbs’ latest commentary was posted to the CNN site today. I really liked the first paragraph, as it is such a great indicator that Lou got a fresh bucket of commas today:

I’ve been, over the years, because of our reporting on controversial issues and my strongly held beliefs on those issues, attacked, and usually pretty vigorously, by both the left wing and the right wing of this nation’s media, both mainstream and otherwise, and of course the politicians that form the extremes of our political spectrum.

It’s like he pulled sentence fragments from a hat.

Slashdotters aside (who all seem dead-set on calling this a big touchscreen and nothing more), the new Microsoft Surface is very, very cool. It uses some of the latest new interface ideas (using two fingers to “spread” an element larger or “pinch” it smaller), does it all with cameras instead of heat-sensing (so objects with barcodes placed on the table can be identified), and so on. It’s neat. Face it, Linux geeks — it’s cool.

The government of Sweden has opened an embassy in Second Life. A few months ago, Coldwell-Banker opened a huge (and glassy — I went) real estate office in the virtual world.

Strange. I always figured the geeks of the world would blur the lines between life and cyberlife — I never would have thought governments and big business would be the trendsetters.

So I took a five minute break to poke around the web and, after hearing an ad for monster.com, decided to go take a look. I don’t really want an office job right now, but I check in every once in a while to see what I’m missing (or avoiding). I saw one job title that made me laugh out loud (and then bark like a dog for a while, as I have a bad cold right now):

Senior Assistant Manager

I didn’t even look at the job. I enjoyed the title too much to risk finding out something rational about it.

So this was Memorial Day weekend, and deliciously enough, we had NO plans. Not that I don’t enjoy socializing, but I’m deeply behind with work stuff and the thought of three straight days when I was working and my clients weren’t was pretty tasty.

Anyhow, I have had two straight nights of insomnia, so my hopes of efficiently pounding out work up to the last minute of the weekend are starting to fade. Still, I got a lot done.

But I just found myself going cross-eyed, and thought I’d better take a little entertainment break. I went to YouTube, and with no effort whatsoever found this:

I Really Wanna Be Famous

I’m not sure if it’s funny or not — I’m far too tired. But I laughed (somewhat guiltily).

I had a terrible day*. It started out nice, going to Nora’s future school and doing some fun kindergarten stuff. It quickly degenerated into Outlook hell, mail server hell, work problems, lots of driving short distances with wasted time when I couldn’t afford it, and so on. I came home thoroughly depressed and pissed off. In fact, some poor woman pulled to the side today to let me by because she noticed in her rear-view mirror that I was screaming at the top of my lungs with the windows rolled up. Bless her heart, she saw a lunatic breathing down her neck and got the hell out of the way.

Lizzie, my wife and combat psychologist**, did something about it. She sent me this guy.

• The Entertainer
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Classical Gas
• The Benny Hill Theme
• Linus and Lucy

I’m still tired and down, but not like I was. What a perfect Friday YouTube dose. There are other examples at YouTube of his artistry — he does the Sanford and Son theme quite well, for example. I taught Nora to do this in the bath (nice wet hands), but we never got anywhere close to the mastery displayed here.

* I didn’t lose a limb, I didn’t get sued, I didn’t bleed to any appreciable degree, I didn’t have bad hair (or worse-than-usual hair), I didn’t get poked in the eye or kicked in the pills, I didn’t lose my pants, I didn’t lock my keys in a newspaper box, my house did not flood or burn down (or up — we live in the basement, you know). I know, it’s not truly terrible, as days go. But on the scale of my boring work life, it was a crappy day.

** I also go talk to a regular psychologist with letters after her name with whom I speak calmly about feelings and stuff. Lizzie, on the other hand, gets to hear my sputtering rants as they belch forth and try to catch me before I teach Nora, our clean-brained daughter, new words we can’t unteach her. She’s a hard-working woman, some days.

Check it out — the number of able-bodied people who rent electric wheelchair/scooter things in Vegas is increasing. Apparently people who don’t feel like walking the strip, wading through a casino on foot, or navigating with four-inch heels are now renting electric mobility scooters.

Just when you thought Vegas couldn’t get any more id-centric than it already is … I won’t go into the morals of it, as I don’t know where I fall on this one. But is this crazy or what?

I drove to and from Milwaukee today. Gas prices were hovering around $3.50 all the way up there. I kept myself content by telling myself that Canadians and Europeans are still paying more. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t go down as I got out of Chicago, but whatever. We still enjoy some of the best gas prices in the world, right?

But I drove north past a place today at about 10:00 a.m. that was offering regular unleaded for $3.49. At 11:45, when I was driving south toward home, it was $3.64 at the same place. Of course, I immediately turned on the radio to hear about the oil platforms or pipelines that had been bombed by Al Qaeda, but found no such story. Apparently something dire happened in the Wadsworth, IL area that increased gas prices by fifteen cents in less than two hours. I’m confident my local news will catch it and cover it. And when it does, I’ll post it here.

And rent a plane to report it via skywriting.

This is getting a little silly. I don’t drive much, so it doesn’t hurt me directly every day the way it does others. We do, however, have a fair amount of business with Adams Press that involves overland shipping, and these prices really do hurt us.

Last year, a three-cent increase twice in as many days got the attention of every local news agency around here, and the station in question was shamed into offering cheaper gas than anyone else. Why a fifteen cent increase goes unnoticed now is a complete mystery to me. I guess it’s because of the impending cicada invasion or the (admittedly heinous) bank robbery this morning — there’s only so much room for news in this one-horse town of Chicago, Illinois.

My Google homepage has a little quote thing that gives me three quotes every day. Today’s was funny.

The last time somebody said, ‘I find I can write much better with a word processor.’, I replied, ‘They used to say the same thing about drugs.’

– Roy Blount, Jr.

Here in Chicago, we’ve had a few heroes lately. Some well-known, some known now. Here are two.

First of all, Blair Holt. He was a 16-year-old high school student, and son of a Chicago Police detective and a Chicago Fire Department commander. Last Friday, a gang member, recently expelled from school and recognized by a bunch of students, got on a CTA bus last week and started shooting (apparently trying to kill a rival). Holt, according to eyewitnesses and the bus surveillance camera, threw another student down and shielded her with his body. She was shot in the foot, and he was buried today by 3,500 mourners.

Secondly, Roger Ebert. Here in Chicago (and perhaps elsewhere) he’s Mr. Movies, and he recently re-appeared after a long fight with salivary gland cancer. He’s still fighting, but decided that he would appear at his annual film festival in Champaign, Illinois. He spoke through his wife, and made a point of doing the local media rounds here with his jaw hanging open unnaturally and no ability to speak. His stated logic was that we “spend too much time hiding illness.”

I spent a bit of time today patting myself on the back for all the stuff I did today (helping my inlaws get their lawn sale together, doing some work, being a dad, doing some dishes, cleaning the bathroom, blah blah blah). That’s all well and good, but these people are making statements by their actions from which we can all learn. I deeply, desperately wish that Blair Holt was alive today, but barring that, he acted heroically. I’m glad Roger Ebert is alive today, and he is proving that dignity is something you claim for yourself, not something society gives you.

Chicago has been lucky to have them both, in their separate ways. I thank them both.