Oh, Carolyn No

My apologies to the Beach Boys, but it is a fitting title for a post about the just announced shake-up on my one "reality TV" guilty pleasure, The Apprentice. Donald Trump has fired Carolyn Kepcher, better known as one of his two regular advisors in the board room. Trump claims that she has become a prima donna as a result of the success of the show. Apparently, she has been neglecting her work while focusing on extracurricular speaking engagements. I guess the writing was sort of on the wall this past season as Trump's daughter Ivanka has been making more and more appearances in the board room. In my opinion, this is more of a move by Trump to get some publicity for the next season of the show. The man has always been something of a self-promoter.

RadioShack Sucks

And not just because everything is way overpriced. Today, RadioShack fired 400 employees by email.

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated."

If you can't conduct layoffs face-to-face, it's probably time to rethink that career in management.

Katrina: One Year Later

I vividly remember one year ago today. I started my day irritated with the sensationalistic coverage of the impending landfall of Katrina; watching as idiot reporters stood outside in high winds to demonstrate their journalistic courage. Later in the day, it appeared that New Orleans was spared while the Mississippi coast took the worst of it. That all changed when the levees failed and the rest is history.

A year later, things are getting better but there are still years of work that needs to be done. We all know what has happened with New Orleans over the past year but for the most part, the Mississippi coast continues to recover with very little attention from major media. I still think that if nothing had ever happened to New Orleans, the Mississippi coast would have really been ignored. It's just sad that after all of this, attention is still on only one of the two disaster areas.

Apple Battery Recall

Apple Computers announced today that they are voluntary recalling 1.8 million Sony laptop batteries due to an overheating risk that can cause fire. This should come as no surprise after the Dell recall of Sony batteries two weeks ago. The recall applies to iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 laptops purchased between October 2003 and August 2006. Apple is shipping free replacements so it is in all users best interest to exchange their defective batteries. To see if your battery is being recalled, check your model and serial numbers against the chart listed on the Apple Battery Exchange page. If your battery is on the list, follow the instructions to get your free replacement.

Kittens!

Roxi's parents' cat Percy had kittens two weeks ago and today they are making their grand debut here!

My favorite is the grey one.

Float Trip 2006

This is the second of a few belated blogs but I'm working hard to catch up and eventually keep up with my writing. Two weekends ago, Roxi and I made the trek to southern Missouri (or SoMo as I have called it) to partake in the annual Float Trip. Long term readers of this blog will probably remember me mentioning the Float Trip at least once. I wrote about it last year so I'll skip the background information in this post but you can go back and read about it in last year's post. I can't get over the fact that this was my fifth Float Trip!

This year was different in a couple of ways. First, Roxi and I drove up to Missouri from Louisiana. This year's drive was quite a bit longer than the drive from Nashville, but still doable in one day. However, Roxi and I decided to split the trip up on the way to Missouri. We drove as far as Little Rock, AR on Thursday afternoon and stayed in the beautiful and historic Rosemont Bed & Breakfast.







We arrived in Little Rock late in the evening so we didn't get to see too much on Thursday night, and when the sun came up on Friday, we found that there was surprisingly little to be seen. It seemed that there were only three things to see in the city: an overpriced Picasso exhibit, the Bill Clinton Presidential Library and Little Rock Central High School, the first integrated public school.



From Little Rock, we headed to Van Buren, MO and Big Springs Park where we hold the annual camp and float. The attendance at this year's float was a little smaller than usual, but those that were present fully embraced the pirate theme and had a great time. How could we not considering the beauty of the surroundings?

My Birthday Blog

As usual, I am having trouble finding the time to do my blogging and that went for Sunday, my twenty-ninth birthday. Roxi and I were too busy celebrating my birthday for me to write up a post, so this will have to suffice as my belated post. Roxi organized some wonderful surprises for me and gave me the perfect gifts. I hate to choose one favorite gift, but I would single out the "I Park Like An Idiot" bumper stickers. I saw these a while back and just loved them. Roxi made a mental note and gave me a great gift that I can't wait to share with the world...or at least the world's terrible parkers. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and helping me celebrate!

Yet another article with hints about Season 3 of "Lost"

More news from one of the producers of "Lost." Bryan Burk claims that many of the lingering questions from Season 2 will be answered within the first six episodes of the new season. Of course, as any fan of the show knows, for every question that is answered, two more are posed. So I expect that there will be quite a few "lingering questions" with us after the mysteries of Season 2 are solved. Check out the article for more. Of course if you want to be completely surprised you could always wait a few short weeks.

Only 7 More Weeks Until "Lost"

I was listening to one of the many "Lost" fan podcasts that I subscribe to last week and the hosts were mentioned that Season 3 of the show began filming a week ago. Tonight I came across this article with some more cryptic and not-so cryptic information about the season that begins seven weeks from tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to "the season of the Others."

Comedy Central's Double Standard

I just saw a commercial advertising that this week's episode of South Park will be a repeat of "The Passion of the Jew" which depicts a raving, insane Mel Gibson. Of course this is being shown because of Gibson's recent arrest and subsequent anti-Semitic tirade. The thing that just doesn't seem quite right to me about this is that earlier this year, Comedy Central was afraid to air a repeat of "Trapped in the Closet" that exposed Scientology for the nonsense that it is a implied that Tom Cruise is gay. This was after repeated public displays of insanity by Cruise. Comedy Central finally repeated the show a few months later, but only after being taken to task for caving to pressure from Tom Cruise's people. To quote the South Park kids, "Pretty f***in' weak." Frankly I am disappointed that the network is not more of an equal opportunity offender.

Borat and the D

Man, I love Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character and this trailer for his movie looks much better than his Ali G Indahouse movie.



And if that isn't enough, the glorious trailer for Jack Black and Kyle Gass' Tenacious D movie is out! Behold: The Pick of Destiny!

The Police Reunited...

...at least they are in a documentary compiled from footage filmed by drummer Stewart Copeland during their travels around the world. In all the hours of film, there are very few of the legendary fights between Copeland and Sting. Of course, as Copeland remarks, "Maybe I forgot to pick my camera up when I was in the middle of a screaming match. It would have been really cool if I did actually, and it would have been in the movie if I had." So there won't be much insight into why the biggest band in the world at that time couldn't stay together, but it will be great to see their experiences from their perspectives.

As far as a legitimate reunion goes, Sting seems to be the only holdout but then again, he might be right not to do the quick sentimentality tour for the money. Things have to be right otherwise it could end up like a Van Halen reunion rather than a Pixies reunion. Here's to hoping that I could afford tickets if they ever do decide to get back together.

What's a four letter word for "jealous?"

Here's another article for all you Sudoku lovers out there. Apparently, crossword puzzle writers are pretty bitter about the success of Sudoku over traditional crossword puzzles in the daily paper.

"Right when they started passing out Sudoku, I headed for the bar," veteran cruciverbalist Rich Silvestri told me, regarding the Sudoku tournament Gould held in Stamford after his talk.

If you ask me, they are nothing but a bunch of whiney snobs.