I have a new computer! I'm very excited - even though getting it was such a pain. This is what I hate about Madison - if I need to get anywhere, say, the Apple store at West Towne Mall, I've got to wait forever for a bus, since during off peak hours, they run about once an hour. (Yes, I realize that was probably the worst sentence ever, but...I'll let it go.) So I'm hanging out in the rain waiting for the bus, talking to some guy who says he just got out of jail and "is happy remembering what females look like" (creeeeeepy), finally got on the bus, got to the mall, and realized - whoops - the new iPhone launch was yesterday. I was approached by a random Apple employee, who basically told me that all of their specialists were busy helping with the iPhone launch, if I could come back tomorrow...
I said, "You've got to be kidding me. I just spent an hour and a half dealing with the bus system, I'm trying to give you $1500 for a product you have in stock, and you're telling me you're not going to help me?"
"Ummm...unfortunately, with the iPhone launch...uh, I can set up an appointment for you to come back tomorrow..."
"No," I said, "I need to buy a computer today and I can't come back tomorrow. I don't need a 'specialist.' I want to buy that computer, right there, I don't need a specialist, all I need is a cashier. Otherwise I guess I could head to Best Buy and pick up a Dell."
So I got my computer. I just can't believe that, despite whatever else is going on, that they would turn away a customer who's willing to spend the equivalent of six iPhones. Also picked up a printer (free with rebate - yippee), which was a pain getting back to the bus and home...but it's something I've needed because I'm tired of going to the library.
So I got home, set the thing up, stole all of Tim's mp3's...it's nice to not have to borrow Tim's whenever I need to look something up. Expect my blog posts to jump exponentially - I bet you're looking forward to that! (ha)
Hmmm...what else? I finished Kill Bill - great second part, so-so ending. I took a three hour nap (really not smart). And I screwed around a bit more on the computer.
On to the Internet!

Let's get the politics out of the way first. The AP (via Yahoo) reported last week that pet owners prefer McCain to Obama by a 42 to 37 percent margin. Thankfully, I don't take advice from people who name their cats "Lady Jane Taylor" and "Mr. Tommy Katz" (I'm not kidding - read the article).

On the Huffington Post, Max Bergmann says the McCain campaign should've been virtually over after the events of this week - but mass media simply isn't covering it. Among the issues are: his top economic adviser calling Americans "a bunch of whiners" for worrying about the increasingly uncertain economy, and proof that he knows absolutely nothing about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Oh yeah, and that offhand joke about killing Iranians.

I've been meaning to share this one for a while - I KNOW the story's two weeks old, but it's too funny just to skip over. The American Family Association's "OneNewsNow" website posts stories from the Associated Press - in a way. The AFA is so afraid of...something...that they put their implicit trust in an auto-replace system to weed out anything "offensive" in their articles - and if the last sixty years of sci-fi movies have taught us anything, isn't it "DON'T TRUST COMPUTERS"?
So the AFA had a bit of egg on their face after sprinter Tyson Gay took the 100 meter race at the US Olympic track and field trials. Thanks to that pesky auto-replace, the filtered story on the AFA website read:

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]

Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

That's what you get.

Speaking of internet stupidity (redundant?), some "writer" gets paid to blog about celebrities for the LA Times. Every paper has an entertainment and gossip section, but doesn't it always seem that the writers of these sections are always complete idiots? And I'm getting to the point.
Elizabeth Snead of the LA Times blogged last week about the oldest and most stale topic in the book, celebrity baby names.

"Fruit. Days of the week. Biblical characters.
What the hey is going on with all these strange celebrity baby names?

The latest unusual celeb baby monikers are Matthew McConaughey's son Levi, and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's daughter, Sunday Rose.

Levi is, according to the gospel of McConaughey, a biblical name and another name for the apostle, Matthew. Whew. Because for a minute there, I thought he'd named his son after his favorite pair of jeans."

By the way, the author's first name, again, is Elizabeth. If there was ever a more classically Biblical name, I think that's it.

Finally, have you seen the Will It Blend guy? It's an entertaining advertisement for Blendtec blenders and food processors. In this series of videos (up to 50+ at this point), a science-y looking guy, dressed in a lab coat and protective goggles, puts random things in a blender to, I guess, prove its power. This week's test subject, was, appropriately enough, the new iPhone:



He's also done a MarioKart Wii Wheel and a copy of GTA IV.

I've got to get to work, so, until next time...