Category: Musings

Posted on

Well, it’s not a typo, but…

After filling out an online survey about a product I recently purchased, the company offered me a free year’s subscription for up to four magazines on their list. It was pretty extensive and showed a recent cover for each one. There was Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, Entrepreneur… and then there was Ebony. “Wait a sec… Nah, that can’t be right.” So I clicked on the magazine and zoomed in on the cover. Sure enough, the person on the cover of Ebony was Michael Jackson.

I guess the article was about the 25 years after Thriller (back when he had slightly pigmented skin and some semblance of a nose), but seriously, is he still considered ebony at this point? Shouldn’t he just get his own color in the crayon box or something? Still, I guess that’s better than putting him on the cover of some of the others. Like Good Housekeeping. Or Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. Or FamilyFun. Yeah, parents would love that one…

Posted on

Today’s lesson on geography

Okay, technically, it’s November 25th’s lesson on geography, but even though I read this article on the Internet a few days later, I needed to say something.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ally of Bush Is Defeated in Australia
By TIM JOHNSTON
Published: November 25, 2007

SYDNEY, Australia, Nov. 24 — Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the electorate on Saturday, as his Liberal Party-led coalition lost its majority in Parliament…
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Here’s your Geography Quiz for the Day!

Question #1: How many continents are there?
Answer: Seven —> Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America

Question #2: Are Asia and Australia on the same continent?
Answer: Ummm… didn’t we just cover this?

Question #3: Should we garnish the wages of this columnist for The New York Times and use them to buy him a globe?
Answer: Nah. Who needs to know anything about the rest of the world when you’re talking about politics?

Posted on

FreeRice

If you need to find a website that’ll help you waste 15 minutes (or 20 or 30 or a couple hours), you can check out FreeRice. It presents you with vocabulary words and you pick out what it means among four choices. For each correct answer, the website will donate 20 grains of rice to… someplace that needs rice. As you get right or wrong answers, the difficulty of the words changes—the site shows what level you’re at and what your best level was.

Up to this point, I matched a few words at level 42, but I’m gettin’ sleepy and my vocabulary is slowly diminishing. In another half hour, I’ll be lucky to understand the word “diminishing”. Or “vocabulary”, for that matter. But at least I can take comfort in knowing that while I could have gone to bed much earlier, I did the humanitarian thing and sat in front of my computer for a couple hours. No need to thank me—it was the right thing to do.

Posted on

How to make a bad first impression

Seen on craigslist.org:

“Need an editor or writer to help create this year’s holiday letter to friends and family. I am an English teacher with loads of editing and writing experience. I’m reliable and affordable and I look forward to hearing from you!”

Either the English teacher needs help editing and writing a holiday letter or the English teacher needs help with his/her English…

Posted on

Catchy phrases

I was watching a commercial recently for The Real World and in the middle of it, these big bold letters popped up onto the screen as the announcer called it “this SOCIAL EXPERIMENT.” It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I tell ya, the writer for TRW who thought up that catchy phrase out of the blue deserves a raise…

Posted on

The downfall of creativity

I cannot begin to explain how many times I’ve felt the urge to write in my blog and never done so. There are so many little stimuli out there, little things that poke my brain like a little kid poking a frog on the street with a stick to see if it’s alive. Yes, yes, as far as I can tell, my brain is quite alive. Quite active at times, but there have always been problems that exist between me and the final product of creativity. Continue reading “The downfall of creativity”

Pages: 1 2