east village idiot

At a friend’s dinner party last week (which included far more wine than dinner), I kept some of the partygoers amused by drawing the outlines of all 50 states and having friends name them. I would then add the two-letter abbreviation and move on to the next outline.

I’m no Al Franken, but I would say I did a pretty good job.

The only state I had trouble drawing was New Jersey. After several fruitless attempts to draw it accurately, I resorted to old stereotypes.

At that point, two players guessed it correctly right away.

Sorry, New Jersey.

This internet commenter, found regularly on Projo.com lately, makes me smile every day.

To: All Staff
From: Mother Nature
Re: Spring

This is to inform you that effective April, 2009, spring will be eliminated due to budget shortfalls. We regret having to make this decision, but because of the recession, all companies are being forced to make cutbacks. This was a difficult decision to make, but with the nature of today’s economy, one season had to be eliminated.

You may have noticed that in anticipation of an economic slowdown, our corporate parent, God, Inc., recommended instituting a trial run of eliminating spring in 2008 in the New York area. Winter was extended by several weeks, and summer began several weeks early to accommodate the additional space in the schedule. The success of this trial resulted in our decision to eliminate spring entirely in 2009.

Some staff reductions will be implemented due to the elimination of spring. These include the following:

Pella Andersen, Manager, Open Windows and Cool Breezes
L.L. Bean, Associate Manager, Windbreakers and Lightweight Sweaters
Fritz Bee, Assistant Manager, Outdoor Activities
May Flowers, Manager, Spring Greenery
Merry Maid, Director, Spring Cleaning
April Showers, Manager, Spring Precipatation
Bud Weiser-Binge, Assistant Manager, Spring Break Travel

Remaining employees will be transferred to other the summer and winter departments. We honor these employees for their service over the years.

Please contact your manager if you have any additional questions about these changes, which are effective immediately.

Does anyone else feel like this…

…is just an oversized version of this…

…13 years too late?

Not many people in New York City listen to the radio. This has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t sit in cars all day driving around from place to place. But if there was really an incentive to listen to radio, wouldn’t we find a way to tune in?

Well, this little game below is not exactly an incentive to listen. Based on their playlists from the early morning of February 23rd, match the artists to the stations that played them. Keep in mind that an artist could have been played on more than one station.

 Answers are after the jump.

(more…)

After quitting Facebook yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice today’s CNN.com Quick Vote, proving that CNN has its finger on the pulse of a nation obsessed with mundane facts about total strangers:

Yesterday, quite unceremoniously, I bid adieu to Facebook. It’s been a long time coming, and it was a steady and determined process that led to my final decision.

I used to be obsessed with Facebook. Not to an extent that was particularly unhealthy, but logging in up to ten times a day was probably a little on the high side. I’m sure that I was probably closer to the middle of the pack in terms of Facebook usage, but it was definitely detracting from my work, my personal life, and the relationship I was in at the time. I would update my status several times a day just a few months ago. In the past few weeks, I had only updated it a handful of times. I was tired of it.

I wasn’t necessarily bored with Facebook, but I had realized that Facebook wasn’t helping my social life, it was simply making a mockery of it. I had over 400 friends, but most of them are a mish-mash of people I hadn’t spoken to since high school, people I had never actually met, exes, friends of exes, and assorted people whose every last move I don’t really care about anymore. Sure, I could delete them as friends, but I think I’d be overly concerned that someone would take it personally. That’s backwards logic, since I really don’t know these people and shouldn’t care what they think, but I’m not the type who likes to offend anyone. It really hit me when I was scrolling through my list of friends, saw a name, and asked myself, “who the hell is that?” It happened more than once.

I can’t recall what the purpose of joining Facebook originally was, but everything that seemed to be advantageous about it a few months ago is everything I hate about it now. I hate that every bit of news that I get about my friends is filtered through Facebook. I hate that I rarely get phone calls from friends anymore because they figure a simple status update will suffice. I hate that I learn about my friends’ marriages, relationships, breakups, and new jobs from Facebook, and when I don’t, I learn about them from a friend who saw it on Facebook. I enjoy personal communication, but Facebook has seemed to replace that entirely.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the never-ending “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” meme. It got completely out of hand - so much so that it was in today’s New York Times. At least half my friends ultimately did it, and many of them “tagged” me to encourage me to do the same thing. I’m 27 years old, and most of my friends are well into their 20s as well. I think I did one of these lists in an e-mail chain in high school ten years ago. If you’re my friend, and there are 25 things I don’t know about you, they’re probably some very mundane things. But it persisted. A few people stood up and insisted the trend was getting out of hand, but more of these lists came up, and more friends encouraged me to make one of my own. The very same moment I poked fun at the fact that these lists were taking up valuable space on my news feed, two more appeared in my news feed. Facebook was becoming a mockery of itself.

So, in two simple clicks, I retired from Facebook. Is it permanent? Maybe. Am I suffering from a little bit of withdrawal? Absolutely. Does it bother me that Facebook appears in my address bar in Firefox, and probably won’t disappear from it for a very long time? You bet. But I’ll deal with being less connected, and eventually, I’ll feel a lot better without Facebook in my life than I ever did with it.

(And to be fair, friends, I’m not giving up on social media entirely. You can still follow me on Twitter, if you absolutely have to know what I’m up to and have a massive fear of calling me. And luckily, for now, Twitter won’t let you write 25 things about yourself in one place.)

Google seems to be having some issues this morning with their web searches, because NOTHING is safe for you to view on your computer.

Except Google.

I saw a commercial for Milk last night, and within the first five seconds, I remembered something that stuck out like a sore thumb when I saw the movie. This was one whopper of an anachronism:

This particular scene from the movie is supposed to take place in 1972. But see that highway sign? It has an exit number on it. California did not begin numbering exits until 2002.

Anyone who has driven in California knows that most of its highway signs are ancient. Yet Milk managed to find one of the few signs in the San Francisco that has actually been replaced in the past six years, rather than a “period” sign.

Also, don’t get me started about where this sign is, because it makes absolutely no sense in the context of the scene.

Yes, I am a huge nerd.

It’s the title of this post, and it’s the title of a Wikipedia entry.

Now you know.