Fergaliciously Nostalgic 2: The Remix

So, after a first successful attempt at guest blogging, it's time to keep the momentum going

(NASA is still relevant people)

As such I shall continue to discuss nostalgic points from my youth. Tailgating from the last post, it is time to tackle educational shows that masquerade as game shows! The #1 culprit has to be

That's right, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Sure it had game show qualities like a competition, prizes and questions that if answered correctly you advance. You know what else has questions and answers that if correct you are rewarded... geography quizzes. I'm onto you educational system!

(She's onto you as well)

But really, the show was quite informative and I imagine helped encourage my thirst for knowledge. It was also perfectly set up to go an almost unlimited number of seasons (given good ratings).

(Darnit Chuck, you were on the upswing)

Carmen had potentially countless minions and they'd only get caught if the player figured out everything. I feel like everybody can use more of these type of shows. Trickery that educates people.

(Or was it all an illusion, Michael)

Fergaliciously Nostalgic

There has been a debate (with myself) on how to get back into guest blogging and what I could bring to TFLW. It is what would keep me up at night if I didn't pass out immediately upon getting in bed. I considered going the topical route and give my two cents towards the big or little issues of the day. This could be a soapbox to expound my views and attempt to justify those views. Or this could be an opportunity to pull a Seinfeld, and talk about nothing of importance.

About 2 weeks ago there was a trending topic on Google+, #TakeMeToYourChildhood,  which is a much creepier way of saying #Nostalgia. I can get very nostalgic (full disclosure - iTunes playlist with over 200 theme songs). I'm known to get nostalgic about Rumors (great D.C. hotspot by the way) and that place still exists. Idealized walks back down Memory Lane (no Minnie Ripperton) are the way to go. In my youth I was heavily exposed (indoctrinated) to Nickelodeon; PBS and other television programs geared towards my age group which leaves me with knowledge of cartoons, live action game shows, and educational shows that pass as game shows.

Ladies and gentlemen, for my first entry I've decided to talk about a show from 2 decades ago (late 80's - early 90's) when cartoons had implausible storylines, but just seemed better. I'm sure people of all generations will say the same thing, but guess what, this isn't their entry. Ladies and gentlemen, for your enjoyment, I present Denver The Last Dinosaur. How does a prehistoric guitar playing, english understanding human-size dinosaur seem so well adjusted to the 1990's... who cares, he is my pal and can be yours as well.

Oh those were the days, before cynicism kicked in and everything had to be examined. But really, shouldn't we care? After sharing this entry to the trending topic steam I received a comment from a random person which is what happens when you make things public, "He's my friend and a whole lot more.... hmm...wonder what they meant by that." I mean his point is valid by todays standards, but in yesteryear, we wouldn't even pause

.

So I say that to say this, listen to theme songs, talk about the shows you grew up on and remember them fondly, but under no circumstances really take the time to examine what you use to watch. It ruins things! Childhood is a magical time and we are really losing magic people. Kids are growing up too fast and arguably worse, the programming is terrible with the exceptions of Young Justice and http://www.tv.com/shows/the-avengers-earths-mightiest-heroes/. So in reviewing what was written, I did decide to make this a soapbox.

I'll leave you all with some theme songs to some random shows.

So audience of The Famous Last Word, has there been any nostalgia that has been ruined or almost ruined by going back and re-examining your past?

Please see HR to claim your boxers

Oh, you know, just another one of those days where you go to the ladies room and there's a random pair of men's worn boxers in the hallway.

Our HR girl has dreamt of this day since she began a career in this industry...

"Ensuing Company-Wide Staff Email

To: Office Staff

From: Lisa

Subject: Found

A pair of men's Tommy Hilfiger boxer briefs was found near in the hallway near the elevator. Please see me to claim them.

-HR"

It's the little things that make a day great.

A piece of pi

Christmas is Coming

If you were born in the long summer, you wouldn't understand.

Thoughts

Perhaps we're all being a little negative. Maybe Al-Qaeda is growing all those fields of poppies because they look pretty.

Call me a lunatic

AOL is the post-Singled Out Jenny McCarthy of the tech world

Yesterday I was at a meeting on innovation (what kind and for whom shall remain nameless), for which a former executive of AOL was a featured speaker.

And in like, a non-ironic sense.

With this one fact we have all of the critical differences between my generation and the one before me when it comes to anything related to the internet and technology.

When businessmen-of-a-certain-age hear former executive of AOL, they think of AOL's soaring success as a new business.  They think of how they were the revolutionary force, getting the average middle-income home up and online.

When someone my age hears AOL and innovation together, they snicker.

Let's be honest: if you know someone who still uses an .aol email address, you know one other thing about that person, and that's that they don't actually "use" their .aol email address.  "Here's my email," they say to you, anxiously peering over their glasses at the paper as they scribble it down. "DSmthdoglvr2834209380@aol.com....or was that DSmthdoglvr283420988?  I'll check at home and let you know."

But they never do, because they've forgotten their password.  And once that hurdle has been cleared, there's too much spam in their inbox and they hurry offline to avoid AOL's featured web performance of Nickleback, the AOL of rock/pop bands.

I remember reading an interview with Andrew Breitbart in GQ, who was talking about what it's like to have ADD and be on the computer:

I've got maybe four or five instant messenger conversations going on at the same time. I've got about five or six tabs in Firefox going. I'm probably talking on my cell phone while I'm monitoring my Fantasy baseball team, knowing the pitch count of the Milwaukee Brewers/Cincinnati Reds game.

Once again, generational differences.  I am 29 years old.  I may not have clinical ADD, but to paraphrase the Bloggess, I'm easily distracted and I have an internet connection, and that's basically the same thing.  Right now I'm writing this post, while watching a documentary on North Korean gymnastics, while on gchat, while researching the connection between "More than a Feeling," the Pixies and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  I can't tell you how many tabs I have open in Firefox because then I'd have to shift over and I don't feel like doing that, but be assured that it's way more than five.  I don't even have my music on, because I can hear David's from the next room. And all this is completely normal.  

"But Katie," you may say.  "That's your leisure time.  Andrew Breitbart has a site thousands of people read a day, whereas your work day consists of trying to pretend that your legendary research skills are something more than the ability to access Google. And let's not pretend that anyone besides the four of us read this site."  

Well, touche, readers, I say.  But if I may expand on that thought (and I will), I'd like to point out that Andrew Breitbart is a total asshat.  But also, what he points to as ADD looks to someone my age as normal bordering on focused.

What amazes me is how quickly we are approaching the point where executives will be people who were raised on the internet.  The little tricks that my generation has used throughout our interactions with our parents, teachers and bosses since we were 14 (the computer ate my homework) just isn't going to cut it.  Things move fast.  Mark Zuckerberg no longer stands for innovation.  Facebook is the old.  Google isn't even the new.   

But remember when we all had AOL accounts?  I think back now to how eager I was to sign up for my screen name, and how  many of those free month discs we went through in my home.  Hell, most of my good friendships to this day were probably solidified through endless hours of aim conversations.   I still use that same AOL screenname as my sign-in and tag for most of my internet interactions.  But what if I had the same reaction to AOL when I was 14 as I did to Facebook at 21, or Twitter today?  I'd be a pretty isolated, sad case.  So maybe I should just hop on board and accept the inevitable.

Or maybe not.

Holiday Bits and Pieces

So I haven't been posting much lately, and I apologize for that.  I'm having a hard time shaking off the holiday cobwebs.  However, here's a collection of bits and pieces that I couldn't quite flesh into full posts, but, now that I'm A Blogger, I have a compulsive need to share:

• I've been spending an increasing amount of my time daydreaming about what I would do if I won the lottery.  Won it big-time, like $170 million.  These dreams have gone past the point where I have been planning which friends I would hire as personal assistants, at what salary, and how I would have to get a good tax attorney to review all the scholarships I would create.  This is all well and good, except I just got alarmed thinking that I was really behind on what I had to today and then I realized that I was thinking of my imaginary "buy 5 houses" list and not my real work one.  
• Speaking of winning the lottery, my million dollar idea, which you are not to steal: Congressional Guess Who.  TELL ME THAT WOULDN'T GO OVER BIG WITH THE HILL NERDS.  Think about it: Do you have inappropriate relationships with people outside of your marriage?  Are you from New York?  Is it with your staff?   Do you like to tickle?  YOU'RE ERIC!  Copyright pending.
• Sub-point: I plan on learning to properly use the free Photoshop-type software I downloaded just to try to get that game to happen.  It will be my  holiday gift to you all.
• Speaking of which, this will be David and my first Christmas together, and people have been asking if we're going to get a tree.  "I want to get a Charlie Brown Christmas tree," I always answer, which serves the joint purpose of 1) answering the question and 2) screening the person, because if he doesn't know what I'm talking about, then I know to stay the hell away from that jerk.
•  And for another nice transition, I saw my old D.A.R.E. officer, who was way past inappropriately drunk, out at the bar over Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure what to do with that information (and that is far from the whole story), but I thought you should all know.
• There are two young women in my office who have done nothing for the last two months but talk about the calories they consume each day.  I need to stop this and I do not know how.  Please feel free to leave your ideas, because if I have to listen to one more rendition of "I'm having salad for lunch, just the lettuce, no dressing," I will scream, and this office already thinks I'm awkward.
• Speaking of which, on Monday two women in my office were talking about what to do with leftover turkey.  They were standing in the middle of a narrow hallway, which means I had to basically walk through them to get to my desk.  I felt the need to contribute, so like a 3 year old with Aspberger's, I enthusiastically yelled, "REUBENS!"  There was silence for a good 5 seconds.  
• It's after Thanksgiving, which means I can now troll you all with this little thought: I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes...

A Layman's Guide to Office E-Mail

For those entering an office environment for the first time, I offer a brief introduction to professional e-mail communications.

The Care and Feeding of Your Ellipses

All this grammar nonsense can be a great hullaballoo of rules and procedures. Luckily for you there is a short cut that grammarians don't want the public to know about. The secret is thus:

If you are ever in a situation where you don't know how to punctuate a sentence you can use the special "catch all" punctuation: the ellipsis.

While many people have invested a great deal of energy perpetuating the myth that the ellipsis is intended to designate omitted words, the truth is that the ellipsis can also replace omitted punctuation!   This versatile little guy can represent anything writer wants.

Take this sentence:

"I have a party on Saturday, I'm bringing the cake!"

This can easily be rewritten without changing the meaning as:

"I have a party on Saturday… I'm bringing the cake…"

Exactly the same.

And the snozberries taste like snozberries!

The pineberry is a member of the strawberry family, with white flesh and red seeds.  According to The Daily Mail, the UK's answer to the New York Post and therefore everyone's favorite source for hard-hitting news, the pineberry tastes like a pineapple but looks like a strawberry, hence the name.
 

It joins another member of the strawberry family that hit big in England this summer, the strasberry.  The strasberry is genetically the same as a strawberry, but is smaller and, its seller insists, has a "unique, aromatic flavor" that apparently goes very well with cream and in dacquiris--

--just like some other fruit I know.

The League of Super Villains

They are ordinary men in extraordinary costumes.
We are extraordinary people in ordinary costumes.

This mantra is continuously repeated to me during the time I have spent with The League of Super Villains, a group so exclusive and so powerful that for centuries their existence has been but rumor.

Forget what you've heard, what you've read and what you've seen.  These are not your comic's villains.  These people, are much, much more terrifying.

Daddy issues.

I'm still not sure how or why I was granted access to their ranks. With the resurgence of the Real-Life Superhero Movement, headed by Seattle's Phoenix Jones, I suppose there must have been some desire to tell the other side of the story.  I know I wanted to hear the other side.

And then I got the phone call. 

I was flown by private jet bussed to an undisclosed location.  It was hard to judge how long I was on the road, because I fell asleep rather quickly after the glass of wine they gave me.  Odd, because wine never affects me in that way.  The taste, though, was delightful.

They did me the courtesy of carrying me into their headquarters rather than wake me from their nap.  This caused me to miss not only the way to get to their lair, but also the chance to identify the location from any of the surrounding topography.  I assume I was either deeply underground in Arizona, or in one of the top floors of a skyscraper in north Jersey.

The fun can not be halted.

Hello? Is that Seacrest you're looking for?

This is important.

11 seconds in.  TELL ME THAT IS NOT RYAN SEACREST.

A Vocal Majority

There are people protesting on Wall Street, and they're not even sure what they want, they just know that they have a lot to protest.  And it's just going to get bigger.

 At least, before it gets colder.

Taking Over the Internet and Other Things I Will Do Today

.

The same thing we do everyday, Pinky.

In Defense of Book Nerds

I  listened to a Henry Rollins monologue on dating the other day, and it troubled me.  

"So what are you reading?" he asked expectantly. 

"Well I'm in the middle of this Harry Potter-" 

"Don't be an adult woman reading a fucking children's book in my car, get out!"

This is not going to be a defense of Harry Potter.  Statistically speaking, most people who are reading this blog probably are already Harry Potter fans, so I don't need to go down that road.

You're Welcome.

Danish: the very start of the video

Danish: where his fat little knuckles mimic the sun

Danish: that is my fav part

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Danish: hahah, they are fat yet little though, no? he has a gravity to him not unlike Tony Soprano

AC/DC/TC

Getting all political with this blog is the last thing I want.  However, I needed to share this bit of my Tuesday morning reading:

Live every week...

When it comes to approaching the ocean, there are two types of people in this world: those who love the water, and those who saw Jaws at far too young.

Story time: I used to waitress at this seafood restaurant on Shark River in Belmar.

Fun fact: got fired.

One day a southern gentleman came up to me and asked why the body of water was called the Shark River.  I immediately launched into what I thought was a ridiculous story, all about how Jaws was based on shark attacks on the Jersey Shore and how sharks had swam upriver and killed a young girl.

Luckily the photographer was there.

Turns out, the story was not that far-fetched.