Get Dave Letterman On the Phone

On Monday, I kind of took a jab at my wife over her saying that they killed Obama Bin Laden.   Well, I apologize because everybody seems to be having trouble getting the name right.   Now, normally I would laugh at the fact that FOX News got it wrong.   I’ll let you stew on that for a bit.   However, it seems that CNN, local news affiliates and even people can get the names mixed up just as much as Geraldo Rivera.

Check out 1:02 for the huge fail.

Now, as I was coming back from lunch during my day long sit-and-wait-to-be-told-that-I wasn’t-going-to-be-picked-for-jury-duty, I passed by one of the televisions which was showing HLN.   The crawl at the bottom was “NYC FIREFIGHTERS REACT TO OBAMA’S DEATH”.

As an amateur humorist and lover of all things quirky about language I have to find the funny in all this.   In our time, we have had a murderous Al Qaeda leader named Osama Bin Laden and a President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama.  Now, what are the odds that, one day, these two people with similar sounding names would cross paths where one would end up being killed during the others Presidential term?  It boggles the mind.

As we move through the life cycle of this news story, there will probably be countless other grammatical slips and I hope that we have the common sense to realize what they are and move past them.   However, I’m sure somewhere in the White House, Michelle is asking her husband about his ‘other wives’.   At least, I hope she’s joking about it.

With that, I leave you with the only possible to tie this all together.

Dave at the 67th Annual Academy Awards

March 27th, 1995

The Saga of Balloon Boy

Andy Warhol coined the phrase "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Who would have known that Warhol predicted the age of reality television and the 24-hour news cycle almost two decades before the first Gulf War and Jessica McClure falling down a well.

On October 15th 2009, the world was gripped with fear and astonishment as a little lopsided helium balloon, which I’ve dubbed the Helium Falcon, took flight across the skies of Colorado. The experimental balloon, which looked like the love child of a Jiffy Pop pan and the Swedish Chef’s toque blanche, was tethered outside the home of a family in Fort Collins, Colorado. Reports came in that the six year old Falcon had climbed into the basket or compartment below the balloon and undid the moorings. The balloon then floated up and away from the home as onlookers wondered if this was an attack or a live promo stunt for ABC’s V, airing in November. That’s when the world started watching. Speaking of ABC and 15 minutes of fame, the Heene family was featured on the show Wife Swap.

As the detached dirigible floated up towards 10,000 feet, everyone sat on the edge of their seats wondering if little Falcon was inside. Wolf Blitzer covered it on CNN as analysts and pilots debated on the qualities of the balloons. Was it big enough to carry a boy Falcon’s size? How did the father construct the balloon? All manner of questions were thrown out to keep the story alive for longer than 20 minutes. Helicopters and camera crews watched in awe as the spinning balloon soared along the skyline towards Denver International Airport. Two Imperial Officers watched the balloon whiz by their tower, “Look, there’s another one.” “Hold your fire, there are no life forms on board.” To which the other officer replied “What are we being charged by the laser, now?”

Then as suddenly as it happened, the balloon gently landed in a field and little space men walked out and greeted Richard Dreyfus. Kidding, there was no Falcon inside the balloon. Where was Falcon? So, then it becomes a mystery as to what happened to this little boy. Did he fall out? Was he ever in the balloon in the first place? Now, a twenty minute story morphs into a media frenzy as search and rescue teams head out into the dwindling daylight to search a 15 mile or so radius for this detached basket. Soon, Wolf Blitzer throws up an image of the balloon and in the lower left corner of the image an object of some sort is seen in motion. Cue the Mega Pixel Giant Touch Map! Now we people trying to grasp and stretch this image that, wasn’t clear to begin with, into a huge blurry image so that we can try and perform a mass Rorschach test on live television. Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it Falcon? There was no clear indication what the hell that thing was except for the fact that it happened to be in the field of vision during the photo. It could have been a turkey flying over head.

Now, here’s where it gets even crazier. All the while during this media frenzy being dubbed Balloon Boy, which conjures up images of Jake Gyllenhaal in Bubble Boy, the Internet goes nuts with parodies. Shirts on Zazzle and CafePress hit the net. Writers in Hollywood start churning out spec scripts for a movie or at least a Lifetime Television Event. Everyone goes nuts until…….they find out the kid is hiding in the garage.

Around 6:15 pm, I finally switched back from watching Glee on my DVR to find out that little Falcon had been found alive, hiding in a box in the rafters above the family’s garage? His diary will be out next week. Seriously? The kid was hiding in the garage. Was this kid taking lessons from Bart Simpson? Did he just watch 12 Monkeys? WTF?!? (Internet Slang Quota Reached)

Now, what would have happened had this turned out differently? The entire media machine, including the amateur set of bloggers and shirt designers [read me, et. al], went crazy over the story and had we been wrong and the kid did fall out of the balloon or crashed, we would have been no better than the paparazzi standing alongside the wrecked remains of Princess Diana’s car in 1997. The ability to reach out and propagate a thought or fad or meme today is astounding. Blogs let us publish opinions and editorials, instantly. YouTube let’s upload movies…as long as they are not copyrighted… in minutes. I can produce and publish a design for a shirt in less time than it took for that balloon to crash into a field.

But, the joke could be on us. All of us who got sucked into the pseudo drama of Balloon Boy may have been taking for more than just a balloon ride. This could have been some Warholian attempt to get back into the spotlight. When asked by Wolf Blitzer why little Falcon didn’t come out when he was being called for, the kid didn’t answer. When his parents repeated the question, the six year old did what most kids do, say the wrong thing. “You guys said that, um [pause] we did this for the show.” What show, exactly? For show, meaning pretend? Then the kid gets sick, twice, during interviews on television, when asked the question, again.

Now, taking a day to digest all this, I watched the video of the “lift off” by the Heene family. After the balloon starts to float away, the father gets visibly upset, almost to the point of bad acting. Then, watching the Wolf Blitzer interview and hearing Falcon’s response, it almost seems like the kid was afraid to answer, like he forgot the preprogrammed response to that question. Asked about Falcon’s response, Richard says that Falcon was talking about a later moment when he was asked to recreate his climbing into the ceiling for the cameras.

As more and more comes out about this story, shock and awe turns to disbelief. The kids are allowed to swear and make rap videos? What about the report that the father asked his other son, Bradford, to take a ladder and get on the roof to look for the balloon’s heading. Then he states his fear that the kid could touch the high voltage supply inside. Was it 1.21 gigawatts of electricity?

As this all unfolds, you feel like this is some unscripted episode of The Office and Richard Heene is Michael Scott. Then the police hold their briefing today and the candor of the officer is just hysterical. I couldn’t hear all the questions being asked but at one point it sounded like a reporter asked him his personal take on the story and he responded, “I’ll tell you off record, perhaps over a toddy.”

And yet we watch and we watch and for 14 more minutes the world talks about Balloon Boy and his father Caractacus Potts. ABC is probably shuffling to find a spot in the schedule, so that they can rerun the episodes of Wife Swap featuring the Heenes. I’m sure the SNL is churning out specific bits for their live show on Saturday. I can see Bill Hader playing the beleaguered father while Fred Armisen plays the young Falcon. Robot Chicken could do an entire episode of bits with the balloon crashing into various Pop Culture clips like the aforementioned Star Wars interlude I spoke of or crashing into the balloon from the end of the Wizard of Oz after the Wizard breaks loose and even floating across the stage of the VMA’s in miniature as Kanye West halts the balloon’s progress long enough to say, “Im’ma let you finish, but Richard Branson has one of the best balloon videos of all time.”

See, we just can’t stop ourselves because our common sense is hiding somewhere in a box in the garage.

Seven Sins For Seven Virtues Part 3: Diligence vs. Sloth

A continuation of the Series Good vs. Evil: The Internet

Can you just see where this one is going to play to?

Writing school papers were always a burden to me. I would get the assignment and pretty much put it off to almost the last possible minute. There was always something better that I would rather do then to sit at my old 286 PC or Apple IIC and pound out a four page paper on any subject. Still, I had hopes of being a writer and that kind of procrastination is evidence as to why I am not one today. However, when I would sit down and begin to write, I could get in the zone and within a couple of hours, I had five to ten pages of my paper written. I could bullshit with the best of them but at times the gas tank would run dry and I'd find myself adding some margin space or extra words to fill up the page. But, I made sure I followed the advice of Dr. Meredith from Real Genius who said, "Always... no, no... never... forget to check your references" So, I kept musty old books and MLA style guides riding shotgun as I fluffed my paper. Then, during my junior year I had to perform a mighty task, an electrical outline. Simply put, our crazy Physics teacher had us do a huge paper on chapters from our Physics textbook. This was the same assignment that my brother had done when he took the class six years before. The teacher was so behind with the times that he used the same tests for years and made students covert all the metric units into English in order to take the test. So, when it came time for me to write my outline I figured if his tests hadn't changed maybe his electrical outline hadn't either. I asked my brother for his copy and I reproduced it on my computer. The teacher thought he was keeping us honest by marking every page with a pen so that we couldn't simply change the name and submit one he previously graded. All I did was follow the work of someone else and typed it out word for word. I got a B. He docked me because the printer ink was a little lighter than his liking. It was all worthwhile since I made a $100 selling it to another student the next year.

Now, I told you that story as a basis for how the Internet can help to blur the lines between diligence and Sloth. In 1991, the United States went to the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupancy. Gone were the days of going to the movies to see Moviola reports on the Allied efforts during WWII. Now, we could watch up to the minute reports on CNN. We could see grainy black and white POV footage of missiles as they flew through windows and exploded. News and information just became an instantaneous commodity. One the Internet would take to new extremes.

In the race to be first and grab the audience, the Internet has made it possible for news and information to be available 24/7. However, there are casualties in the war for information supremacy. Diligence has become one of those casualties. Newspapers and other media outlets want to be first and its hard to compete with the Internet for first place in the race to report. An example is something I mentioned in my last 7 for 7 post, the Sago mine disaster. While the the reports came in unchecked that all but one miner was alive, the news outlets scrambled to report the good news. What they didn't do was check their facts and wait to see if there was a mistake in the chain of information. It turned out that all but one died in the tragedy and the devastation to the families was second only to the confusion at how a mistake like that could have been allowed to happen. For that matter, how could it have made it half way around the world before it was caught?

Now, before you start throwing fits, I don't believe that the Internet suddenly became sentient and started telling everyone bad information. Anderson Cooper was right there and he got the word, too. But with the Internet as a player in the game, everyone wants to scoop everyone else and to beat the Internet means you have to be quick. Facts be damned. One hand washes the other. There's even been times where the legitimate, and I use that word loosely, have relied on the Internet as a source of information, only to discover it was a prank. In fact, now, there are times when I watch the news where stories or images are credited to websites, like TMZ.com or Smokinggun.com instead of actual reporters. Sometimes, a lackey with an itchy trigger finger and too much Red Bull has pushed the button prematurely on a story before the facts are all there. In an attempt to be the first to prey on the grief of the world, templates are even prepared for obituaries of prominent people and Joe Intern has accidentally left the door open. The interchangeable obituaries leave room for nasty errors like "Dick Cheney was the 'UK's favorite grandmother.' One quick edit could drop the grand and have been accurate. For the record, Elvis is still dead, but Abe Vigoda is very much alive.

The other side of the coin being Sloth. I'll have you know that I'm writing this post from work right now. Remember when I said I would rather find something better that sit and do a paper or any work. I've re watched movies, bad ones, more than once even though I have work to do. I am a professional procrastinator. There is nothing I can't do that the Internet can't help me to do in the act of avoiding work. Although, I do make an effort when I am on the clock. I only stray towards an open browser during lunch or when I'm waiting for my little SAP or Sharepoint window to load the next screen. Usually, it's checking alternate email accounts or reading news. Of course, my work has blocked most fun sites. Oh you name it and it's blocked, most radio station homepages, Facebook, myspace, Youtube, Lottery sites, and anything mp3 or streaming music related, and so on and so forth. I'm surprised eBay is still active as well as ESPN.

When I first started in Customer Service in 2001 I was on a team of four, who were responsible for all orders for the west coast. We handled maybe 35-40 calls on an average day. Since I was the new guy, I had to work most shifts from 11:30 am - 8:00 pm. This usually meant that around 6:30 pm the phone went silent and I was alone in the office with one or two credit analysts. Since the phone wasn't ringing I was surfing. Pogo, Iwon.com, iwin, CNN, eBay, everywhere. My usage probably made IT's head spin as I commandeered the bandwidth pipe and went nuts all to keep myself busy until my shift was over. As I gained tenure, my hours became more regular and the work load became more. My usage became less, still whenever there is a lull, I was out slacking around the net. Today, since most of my favorite sites are blocked, I have to wait until I'm home to do some fun stuff.

My wife asks me what the hell I'm doing. I say, "Getting a third of my $156.00 worth of money spent on cable." I play casino games, scrabble, and other little goofy aps on Facebook, check the job sites of various companies and catch up on email. If I have some time, I even try to finish up a few blog posts to build up my library so that I don't have to scramble at the last minute to keep up with my three a week commitment.

I am not much different than, well, anybody. I get up for coffee or to go empty out my recently ingested coffee and I see numerous screens. Doing a search of "Work Internet usage" in Google News returns a lot of results from Canada and the UK. The Internet has even been a part of a few lawsuits in employee termination cases. Diversions from work are a part of everyday life and the Internet, or more importantly those who create and market sites on the Internet, know it and use it to make billions of dollars a year. What would happen if it all just went away? No more penguin tossing or flying a paper airplane through the office. Go read Richard Clarke's Breakpoint. Of course, his novel is more about terrorism and government networks, but just think of it in terms of slacking. First there would be complete and utter chaos followed more or less by increase of productivity. Maybe, that would be a good thing. Then again, if that happened, how would those 2.5 people who actually read my blog see it? I discovered the .5 was someone who just scanned through and didn't actually pay attention to any posts. Go figure.


Therefore it is the judgment of the Mongo Municipal Magistrate that the Internet isn't evil in terms of diligence vs. sloth.

The Internet isn't out to get you or make you lazy. You are. "It's PEOPLE!"