Trendspotting

There was an article in Sports Illustrated this week about google's newest piece of brilliance (Sheldon, if you haven't seen this you'll love it). Salt Lake leads the world in searching for "nude volleyball", jeopardy, and mullets. Apparently The Simpsons are huge in Australia and the Brits love Bill and Ted. Who can find the most surprising number one city?

http://www.google.com/trends

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Who says "Cowboy Diplomacy" is dead?

Last week there was much ado about President Bush letting loose the "s-word" while miked. When I first saw the mildly amusing video (shown here at YouTube.com) I was surprised more by what I saw than by what I heard.

To this day I belive that Karl Rove's greatest accomplishment has been selling George W. Bush - a silver-spooned, prep-high, Ivy-league aristocrat - as a homegrown Texas cowboy. In any case, Mr. Bush was in rare form at the G-8 summit last week, showing that while his administration's diplomacy may be dead, the cowboy still lives.

Slouched in his chair, President Bush butters up his roll and then tosses it deep down the hatch where his molars take over. After taking a few chomps with his mouth wide open, he leans over to Tony Blair and spits out the controversial sentence while still chewing on his cud.

Now I understand that blogs could be filled with posts about the frivolity of etiquette, and the hyper-analysis of eating behavior. Yet I believe that most of us would probably sit up straight and chew with our mouths closed at a company dinner.

When President Bush says, "Yo, Blair!" with his mouth full at the G-8 Summit, he makes himself ripe for a cheap pot-shot. And that's all this post is meant to be.

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A tribute to the greatest Saturday Night Live Skits locatable in cyberspace!!!!

Hello LYMA land! As a little deversion and end-of-summer humor, post your favorite SNL skit for the benefit of all.

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Male is to Female as Esquire is to ??????: A heroic tale of a man making an effort

I really do want to be an accepting and understanding male. But no matter how hard I try, I always seem to screw it up. Many a time I've found myself on the receiving end of a shocked stare after having made an inadvertent statement that offended the opposite sex. I don't think I'm quite as bad as say Napoleon Dynamite who offered the compliment, "You're not fat you know... you could be drinking 2%". On the other hand, I don't know if Mrs. Beard has ever let me live down my slip when asked what I would be doing when my wife went out. I still think that it is just fine (and in no way chauvinistic) to refer to watching my own child as “tending”.

The other day, I made an attempt at paying a compliment to my female co-worker (whom I share an office with) by adding the title “esquire” at the end of her name when I addressed her. Holy cow was that a mistake. I’ve always thought the term “esquire” was pretty cool. I mean come on, “BILL – S – PRESTON – ESQUIRE”. How cool is that? Doctors get the title “Doctor”, University Profs, “Professor”, why not Lawyers “Esquire”.

My co-worker was shocked that I would support the ancient and pretentious practice of using esquire to refer to lawyers. How it just supports the old-boys-club mentality that the law is for men. Her explanation was so animated that eventually other lawyers were in our office offering their point of view on the subject. Somebody postulated that perhaps there was a female equivalent to esquire, and so, in an effort emulate my favorite google searcher and pistachio eating brother, I ran a quick search to see if there was in fact a female equivalent.

NOW WE’RE TO THE PART WHERE I SCREWED UP, YET AGAIN!!!

I let out a little chuckle and reported my search results, “well it says here that the female equivalent of esquire is ‘Goodwife’ or ‘Goody’ for short”.

Needless to say, many of the attorneys present that day still refer to my co-worker as Goody. I’m just confused as to how all of this became my fault?

Don’t worry, I’m not in big trouble or anything like that. Luckily for me, my co-worker is one of the nicest, goodhumored people I’ve met.

The question remains however: What’s a man to do? Can’t a guy catch a break?

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My Boss Carries a Purse

My new boss came to work last week. My old boss left for Tokyo the week before, so it has been relatively quiet. It is still fairly quiet as my new boss tries to figure out the ropes. But while he tries to figure out the ropes, I'm trying to figure HIM out.
My boss carries a purse. I mean in no way, shape or form for this post to make fun of my boss. I just HONESTLY want to know why a man would carry a purse. It's small, black and on a shoulder strap. He straps across his chest when he wears it. He carries another bag, a briefcase type, with him, so I really want to know, WHAT's in the PURSE, or as my husband says, the MURSE ( Man + purse = MURSE), It's like the Seinfeld "Bro" just less controversial. ;)

As a female, I carry a purse for several reasons: 1) Female clothing often does not have pockets. I keep meaning to complain to someone about that, just haven't figured out who, yet. 2) I tend to like to be prepared, so I have not just my wallet, but paper, a pen, a comb, a fan for if its hot, make up, etc. The usual girl stuff. But I don't usually carry another bag with me, so what's in his bag?

He's a chronic chain smoker, maybe it is a special bag for cigarettes? Maybe he's OCD and has a nail cleaning kit in there? Maybe his lips are sensitive and he needs to carry his SPF chapstick in there? I don't know. Guys, help me out here, why on earth would a man carry a purse, and if so, what's in it??

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Look, Up in the Sky...the Lamest Superhero Ever!!

I'm all for thought-provoking symbolism in movies, but Superman Returns was just too much. I just wanted to scream at the director for feeling the necessity of pounding the "Superman-as-Christ-Figure" idea into my head. Mr. Singer, I get what you're trying to say!!! How about next time we just let the people with the ears hear, and then let the others just enjoy a man in tights flying. Sorry, this post really isn't about why Superman is or is not a Christ-figure (nor the Nietzscean irony of the whole idea). What I really want to write about is why Superman is a LAME superhero.

1. Part of the joy of superheroes is that you imagine that, given the perfectly fortuitous mishap, you yourself may one day become like them. But this is not the case with Superman - he is unattainable, unreachable. On the other hand, I could easily imagine being bit by a radioactive spider (a la Spiderman) or accumulating a whole bunch of awesome gadgets and hitching them to my belt (a la Batman) or even being the reciepient of a slight genetic mutation (a la the X-people). But Superman is an alien. In fact, he's only Superman BECAUSE he is an alien. And I'll never be an alien.

2. Superman has everything. C'mon, does he really need eye lasers? The joy of most superpeople is that they find a way to adapt their particular power to the situation at hand, thus making them both super and clever. Superman has no need to adapt to anything (except the occasional kryptonite encounter, but even that's a little silly) because he possesses every supertool known to the universe. You just can't relate to the guy who has everything and whose only weakness is a glowy green rock. Rooting for Superman is like rooting for the Yankees which, in turn, is like rooting for OPEC. Thus, rooting for Superman is like rooting for OPEC. Seems logical, right?

3. Superman has every imaginable power and yet he goes around pulling cats from trees and stopping convenience store hold-ups. I implied before he has no need to be clever, but you'd have to quite a bit slower than a speeding bullet to recognize that this is not a good use of time. Leave that sort of thing to Spiderman, who can't go flitting about the world, and who is really only useful in a big city. (Can you imagine how useless Spiderman would be in, say, Omaha?) If you are Superman, you really should focus on the big picture. World peace!!! Where are you on North Korea, Superman? If you haven't noticed, there's a lot going on in the middle east that you could help out with....

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