Email: Netflix Support

Title request: F.T.W.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Hellboy: The Seeds of Creation

Neologisms: fweep

I've used fweep for years as a term for a dweeb, a dorkus, or a schlub.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: seaQuest DSV (1993-1996), Seasons 2-3

Poetry: The Lady's-Maid's Song - John Hollander

(via The Writer's Almanac, from Selected Poetry © Alfred A. Knopf)

Though shoulder, bosom, lip, and knee
   Are praised in every kind of art,
Here is love's true anatomy:
   His rib is gone; he'll have her heart.
So women bear the debt alone
   And live eternally distressed,
For though we throw the dog his bone
   He wants it back with interest.

Words: glitch [AHED]

NOUN: 1. A minor malfunction, mishap, or technical problem; a snag: a computer glitch; a navigational glitch; a glitch in the negotiations. 2. A false or spurious electronic signal caused by a brief, unwanted surge of electric power. 3. Astronomy A sudden change in the period of rotation of a neutron star.
ETYMOLOGY: Probably from Yiddish glitsh, a slip, lapse, from glitshn, to slip, from Middle High German glitschen, alteration of glIten, to glide, from Old High German glItan. See ghel-2 in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS: glitchy —ADJECTIVE
WORD HISTORY: Although glitch seems a word that people would always have found useful, it is first recorded in English in 1962 in the writing of John Glenn: “Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was ‘glitch.’ ” Glenn then gives the technical sense of the word the astronauts had adopted: “Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical current.”

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Shut Up & Sing (2006)

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Ugly Betty

Press: Praying with their hats on at a church for cowboys - HC

Praying with their hats on at a church for cowboys - Houston Chronicle: "You don't need a cowboy hat to attend Cowboys for Jesus Christian Fellowship, but if you have one, you can wear it during services.

Most folks take theirs off, but just about anything goes at Cowboys for Jesus. The new church building looks like a big red barn, and as long as you're here to worship, the congregation doesn't care who you are, how you dress or whether you stand or sit during songs."

(Here is a fellowship where you can wear jeans, boots, and a hat -- and a dog named Max "gives everyone a warm welcome"!)

Musings: I just realized...

Shirley Jones and Florence Henderson are both 72 years old.

Angeline Jolie is 31.

Getting closer, Rene Russo is 52.

Annette Benning is, however, 48.

So all is indeed right with the world.

Email: Passion in dating [EH]

[The mature man or woman] can be passionate yet still think (do the right thing).

I believe in being loving -- but real love includes being thoughtful, responsible, and prudent.

Politics: Seeing beyond the spittle

Pride goes before a fall -- usually accompanied by apopletic spittle. The Republicans have become so drunk with power in recent years, with no effective checks to balance them, that their spittle-spraying extremist views are producing a long-awaited backlash from the public and the backpedaling of their own more sensible colleagues. Their rabid attack ads on Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell claim that he wants a completely naked border with Mexico; no Republican with a pulse or a brain would believe that, much less anyone else with considerably more compassion. What is it about Republicans needing to be so much about command and control, while Democrats are all about freedom and empowerment?

Now I only wonder if gubernatorial means "born to be a goober"...?

Email: Attention seekers [EH]

This woman just wants validation. Someone said the first 6-12 months of online dating is all about "Wow, if I can get all this attention, I must be worthwhile." I say she should consider the source: It's not how much attention you get, it's from whom. (You don't want attention from desperate, needy, sex-crazed, or control-freak nut jobs.) There are women who just want to suck up as much free attention as they can get -- because they're shallow, insecure, or are a user/taker. These are the women who accept -- and even solicit -- all the free drinks, meals, and gifts they can get from men -- but give nothing in return. Actually they would be whores if they gave favors in return, but I'm talking about an emotional return. They are like the soulless "confirmed bachelors" that women are always complaining about.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Animaniacs, Seasons 2-5

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Beauty and the Beast, Seasons 2-3

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Death of A President

Email: Netflix Support

Title request:
"The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show" (1983)
You're in Love, Charlie Brown (1967) (TV)
Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1986) (TV)
Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981) (TV)
Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980)
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983) (TV)
It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992) (TV)
Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)
He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (1968) (TV)
You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972) (TV)
aka "You're Elected, Charlie Brown" - USA (working title)
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985) (TV)
You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (1975) (TV)
She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980) (TV)
You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979) (TV)
Here's to You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years (2000) (TV)
Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? (1983) (TV)
It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976) (TV)
It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984) (TV)
It's Magic, Charlie Brown (1981) (TV)
Why, Charlie Brown, Why? (1990) (TV)
Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown (1985) (TV)
The Making of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' (2001) (TV)
Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles Schulz (2000) (TV)
Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown (1980) (TV)
aka "Life's a Circus, Charlie Brown" - USA (video box title)
A Charlie Brown Celebration (1982) (TV)
Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown (1979) (TV)
You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown (1990) (TV)
It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977) (TV)
It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown (1974) (TV)
It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969) (TV)
I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown (2003) (TV)
Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971) (TV)
There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973) (TV)
What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! (1978) (TV)
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986)
It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown (1997) (TV)
It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988) (TV)
You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! (1994) (TV)
It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1980) (TV)
It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown! (1992) (TV)
Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz (1969) (TV)
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1973) (TV)
A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1965) (TV)

Press: Embracing the subtle upside of terror - Garrison Keillor

"But now the federal government is extending the frontiers of terror with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, legalizing torture and suspending habeas corpus and constructing a loose web of law by which you and I could be hung by our ankles in a meat locker for as long as somebody deems necessary. "Any person is punishable ..." the law states, "who knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States" and when it comes to deciding what "knowingly and intentionally" might mean or who is the enemy, that's for a military commission to decide in secret, with or without you present. No 5th Amendment, hearsay evidence admissible, no judicial review.

[...] They won't have to torture me to get a good confession. I am a professional writer of fiction, my little monkeys, and if they turn the bright lights on yours truly, beans will spill by the bushel, names will be named, and dates, and stories will be told one after the other. Everybody who ever done me wrong, I am going to implicate them up to their dewlaps. A trial with hearsay evidence allowed and no cross-examination is tailor-made for a novelist. Throw me into that briar patch, Br'er Bush."

Lyrics: The Gift of Love - Hal H. Hopson

Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control,
Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed;
By this we worship, and are freed.

Web: If Microsoft marketed the Apple iPod

Ads: Purina "poop confessions"

(via DB) In a strange but lackluster attempt to create their take on Bruce-Willis-as-a-talking-dog, Purina has assembled a series of five confessional video clips. I'll say no more -- just see the clip of Wally ("Nobody wants a wet dog") the Dachshund.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Underdog was on [TV] for 9 years--surely you can do better than to offer only one disc of 9 episodes!

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: The Tick, Seasons 2-3

Weather: A gift for guessing

After walking Twerpette this morning, I decided it felt like 68 degrees, then looked up weather.com (to investigate the predictions for rain today and confirm that I need to close my windows): It is currently 69 degrees.

I can't think of a time I've ever guessed the temp (a game I've taken up since moving to Texas) and been more than a degree off.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet

Ads: Mac vs. PC ads

Gotta love those ads!

Press: Republicans rejecting Iraq policy - AP

(Associated Press) "Bush has stopped saying he is staying the course because that suggested he was locked into a losing policy. Now Bush asserts that he is constantly switching tactics. [...]

Mindful of the political ramifications, the White House sought on Monday to tamp down the growing GOP criticism by portraying the president as engaged — and flexible."

(To me it's galling how, for years at a stretch, the Bush administration has clung to the stonewalling tactic, largely saying: "We have a plan, it's a secret plan, it's a masterful plan, we have the answers, you can trust us, don't ask questions about it, don't hold us accountable, anything we do is lawful (even if the law says otherwise) because we say it is lawful, we are not lying (even when our words and testimony contradict each other), we are right and the rest of the nation and the world is wrong, we (and those who follow us unquestioningly) are the only true and faithful Americans and everyone else is a terrorist sympathizer." Yet whether it takes one or two or four or more years, the faith-based Bushites ultimately find they have to face reality (esp. of the political kind if nothing else) and admit to what their detractors have said all along -- though of course twisting their words to make it sound as if the current change in plan is no change at all but a part of the plan all along. Stonewalling and denial -- not the ingredients for moral leadership in my book.)

Press: This blowhard bit is working out great - LAT

(Los Angeles Times) "There are really two John Hodgmans. One is well known to viewers of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" as the "resident expert" who offers preposterously inaccurate assessments of such things as Alan Greenspan's retirement and Iran's atomic aspirations. He's even more widely familiar to those who have seen Apple Computer's recent spate of ads, in which he appears as the comically fusty PC, stealing the show from actor Justin Long's slacker-cool Mac."

Press: GOP attack ad draws heat for racial overtones - LAT

(Los Angeles Times) "WASHINGTON - A new Republican Party TV ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to "call me" is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.

Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race to become the first black senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy."

Web: Microsoft free software

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Conversations with God

Email: The belongings pool [EH]

It's a good plan in general for each person in a couple to be primarily responsible for their own things. A couple can pool certain resources but to pool everything [or to trust the whole shebang to one person's hands] means any one person's mistake can punish both persons.

Dating: Way to go, eharmony!

Not only does eharmony arguably represent the best value in online dating sites (because of its scientific matching system) but it seems to be the only site that stands by ethical standards of membership. (True.com claims to verify the single status of members but is known to fail to do so, and now uses semipornographic model photos in all of its online ads.)

ML told me she had been matched with a guy who reported one of the things he couldn't live without was pornography. I said tell eharmony, they'll kick him off the system. She just called to say that's exactly what they did!

Books: Going Nucular by Geoffrey Nunberg

Books: Talking Right by Geoffrey Nunberg

Press: A few liberal words on the meaning of words

"We're all pretty liberal — at least if you're using the word as historically defined. It's hard to imagine even Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter coming out in favor of racial segregation, child labor or male-only workplaces. To the degree the word no longer evokes the fight against those things and connotes moral squishiness and effete elitism instead, Republicans have been successful in deconstructing it, making it unusable.

If you're a word person, you watch this with a sense of appalled wonder and ask: Is anybody else seeing this?

Geoffrey Nunberg is. He's a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."

Press: James Baker's granddad tried to warn him

"From his office at Baker Botts, James Baker discussed his book Work Hard, Study ... and Keep Out of Politics! and the state of politics today."

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: The Life Before This

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Speaking of Sex

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Casper's Scare School

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Casper's Haunted Christmas

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Green Hornet [TV]

Books: Two in a Bed - Paul C. Rosenblatt

Amazon.com: "Two in a Bed includes interviews with more than forty bed-sharing couples as they candidly discuss winding down and waking up, cold feet and tucked sheets, who sleeps near the door and who gets pushed to the edge, snoring, spooning, sleep talking, sleep walking, and the myriad other behaviors we negotiate in falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up each morning beside a partner. In addition to exploring the routines and realities of sharing a bed with another person, these interviews reveal important information about sleep, relationships, and American society."

Proverbs: She has a mind like a teal strap.

Email: God and dreams [EH]

I do think God can speak to us through our dreams -- if we are willing to listen, anyway.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Adventures of Huckleberry Hound

You only have "Volume 1" (26 episodes) when 57 episodes were made from 1958-1962.

Email: Lego.com Support

When I search the 77024 zip code for all locations that carry Lego products (including Lego, Wal-Mart, and Discovery stores), your Web site lists four sites--none of which are the half-dozen Target, Wal-Mart, and Discovery stores within the five-mile radius selected.

Email: Beavis & Butt-head [EH]

I have always hated Beavis & Butt-head and considered [the show] part of the downfall of America... Hard to believe that its creator, Mike Judge, is also behind King of the Hill -- and a new limited-release movie called Idiocracy [IMDB].

Weather: The human thermometer

Walking Twerpette this chilly (for Houston) morning, I found myself practicing my hm-this-must-be... aptitude. I decided it must be 58 degrees, because it didn't feel as cool (as I remember in Minnesota) as it had to get at night for it to be too late in the season to apply an outdoor coat of paint (55 degrees, usually mid-September).

On Molley's return sweep for unsniffed grass blades, however, I decided while walking into the breeze that it might be as cool as 56.

Upon getting in, weather.com said the Houston temperature is 57.