Thoughts on Valentine's day

First off, I got Mary some organic cotton flannel sheets for V-day. I rock. They're super soft, really comfortable, and just what the doctor would have ordered had she a choice in the matter.

Second, what's the big deal with Cheney shooting his lawyer friend? Not that it's a good thing it happened, but why's the media all up in arms about the delay in releasing the information? The media seems happy to sit on the sidelines and not pester the White House about the important things like: growing deficit, lack of funding for poor people in all capacities, cuts to social programs, tax breaks for the rich, science in our schools, education in general, the Plame leak case, corruption in the White House, no changes before or since Katrina, croneyism, growing terrorism, global warming, electronic voting, armor for troops, where'd the money go in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Not that I've had much respect for the U.S. media in general, but to get their panties in a bunch over the shooting accident? Now that's reporting.

The company godaddy.com got a lot of flack about their Superbowl commercial last year (didn't see it), and had trouble getting their commercial approved this year (check out the link). I took a look at some of the commercials. Sure, they're very suggestive. But if you're talking about standards, two other commercials come to mind to be more risque - but were aired on TV. The first is Paris Hilton's Jack in the Box commercial where she washes a Bentley in a thong bikini. It ran a long time before the SuperBowl, but it was aired. And Jessica Simpson's "these bots were made for popping" Pizza Hut commercial had her pretty much seducing a 15-year-old boy. That seems way more inappropriate than a busty woman standing in front of an old-man judge. Whether or not you like the commercials or think they're appropriate, it appears as though the bar is set at different heights for different companies.

Vacuous coverage of the Olympics. I've been happier with the coverage than I expected. But more often than not, you get stupid comments. The announcers often just repeat the same information over and over. For instance, in the downhill, they talked a lot about the choice of skis by the U.S. downhillers - and how they were making last second decisions about switching skis. Good - but then they got into a loop, "i can't believe they're switching. they're switching skis. this is unprecendented. they're switching skis. i'd never do that. they're switching skis." How useless is that info? Try telling us what would be different about the skis, why would one be better than the other? What's the normal process these guys use? etc.

Another example was Apolo's fall in the short-track skating. It was plainly obvious on replay that Apolo's hand hit the skate of the guy in front of him. Yet, the day after, I heard an announcer say that Apolo was bumped. Huh? They showed the replay a dozen times from 3 different angles, he was not bumped.

And just for a Corvallis weather update. It was snowing two hours ago, and now we have sunny blue skies. Very odd.