Do NOT follow that link

CNN's 4th most popular story was too much for me.

You got the balls for a quagmire?

Froomkin disects Cheney's interview with Jonathan Karl.

In 1991, Cheney predicted invading Iraq would guarantee a quagmire. Karl asked Cheney what it was like to be so right. Cheney answered.

Froomkin asks:

"So if I read this correctly, Cheney is saying: Yes, it's a quagmire. But after 9/11 we needed to prove that we weren't weak. Is that now the official White House position?"

Mini Speakers

There's a TV at the gym hanging from the wall when you enter. A 40" flat-panel. It's not viewable from any part of the gym except the front desk. I would suppose that the bored staff watch it, except that every time I walk by it, there's this same commercial playing.

The setting is a downtown area. People are walking around listening to their iPods. They are wearing big old fish bowls on their heads, to symbolize how the iPods are disconnecting them from their surroundings. It's subtle. Some people are just waiting for the bus, but one couple is trying to make out. Of course, the fish bowls are preventing them from actually kissing. Then one guy suddenly is holding a different form of an MP3 player: one with little speakers on it. He takes the fishbowl off his head, smells the fresh air of the city, and triumphantly smashes the fish bowl on the ground. He thrusts his tiny speakers up into the air over his head and everyone around him looks up amazed. They remove their fish bowls and cast them aside, removing their iPods as they do so. The couple that was trying to make out remove their fish bowls, too, and finally kiss. Awwww. Everyone in the city starts dancing in the streets as the camera pulls back and the screen fades to black.

This is the dumbest commercial I have ever seen. If people wanted to listen to their music through tiny little speakers, they would be doing so already. Really, though, if people wanted to listen to their music out loud, they wouldn't use tiny little speakers, they would use big old boom boxes. And people did used to do bring their boom boxes everywhere they went -- but because they weren't keeping their music to themselves that everyone else in the world pressured them to stop doing it. Why would tiny speakers be any different? Other people's music is annoying. Ever ride the bus and hear a guy with headphones turned up too high? I tap that guy on the shoulder and tell him to turn it down. Now imagine that guy with little speakers, bobbing his head in satisfaction as he spreads his perfect taste in music with total strangers. Death metal, without the base, with the screetching sound of the symbols and the upper notes of the guitar, and a singer's unintelligable voice.

Painting

Yesterday, Pants and I painted one of the two small bedrooms in our house. The old color was this bright yellow. Because we're putting the house on the market in a few months, we want to repaint everything in a neutral color. We've been using this one paint color called "bone." It's off-white, kinda greyish. When I rolled the first patch of paint onto the yellow wall, my eyes played a trick on me. Against the old yellow paint, the new grey paint looked purple. One of those color-wheel things: yellow is the oposite of purple. It wasn't until the whole room was painted that we finally realized we'd been using purple paint.