Chris Brown, reporting for duty.
npr:
Do you have the same name as someone famous — or infamous? If so, please share your stories of the happiness, confusion or annoyance this has caused you in an email to agreenblatt at npr dot org.
—
Meaning The Annotated Cat includes “behind the scenes” and “making of” insights into the classic Seuss books.
Meaning we now lack the context to refer to a book as being “like a book.”
This volume includes a short biography of Giesel, the historical context of his cat in the hat books, the inspiration for them and their impact on early literacy. Which is all information that, when pertaining to feature films, yes, might be included on the Special Features disc of a DVD set.
That doesn’t mean though that this book is like a DVD with extras. It’s more like … a book containing research on a topic.
This claim also bothers me because “a DVD with all the extras” has rarely seemed to me more than a challenge to fill a vacuum. With the transition from VHS to DVD came the ability to get downright silly with the space suddenly available on the medium:
“Hey, I know. Let’s include the whole movie, all over again, but this time with actors and directors talking over it.”
(I assume with the current transition from DVD to Blu-Ray, we will soon reach a limit to how little we can compress the video and have the difference be noticeable on one’s television. At that point we’ll probably just scramble to fill the space again. Look forward to full length biographies on each actor appearing in the film. Possibly audition reels.)
Finally, it’s ultimately a meaningless container comparison in the content vs. container model.
It’s like a whole Internet, all about Cat In The Hat!
It’s like a thoroughly researched audiobook, but with printed words instead of sounds!
It’s like an epic narrative ballad, written down!
Our annual bet began last night…whenever the Super Bowl ended. Last one to find out who won the game wins. I had a close call in my Monday morning all-company meeting when the president made reference to the game, but he didn’t actually say anything about the winner! I suppose if I knew who he…
I need to elaborate on this story a little bit so we are all aware of the Ridiculousness.
It’s not as though I wasn’t being careful. I drove to work with radio on, but with an itchy twitchy finger poised and at the ready to jab it into silence at the first mention of anything even marginally sports related. And jab it I did! During the BBC headlines. “In the world of sports, t-” JAB. Radio off.
But for some reason, having arrived at work, all my defenses went down when I walked through the library door.
I wasn’t at my normal branch, so I was just kind of looking around, getting acclimated, taking in my surroundings, getting the lay of the land. I noticed a newspaper sitting out to my right. For reasons unknowable to anyone, this set off no warning signals for me.
Glancing at the top of the paper, I passively took in a picture of what looked like a man, and … a man with something on his face? No, it’s like he’s kissing something. A trophy. Why is that man kissing a trophy?
At this point, obviously there should be alarms and sirens galore. All kinds. Emergency Broadcast alarms, tornado sirens, air raid sirens. Instead, unfathomably, I just felt a calm, fatal curiosity about this man and his trophy-kissing, and I begin to examine the banner more closely.
Yep, that man is definitely kissing some kind of trophy. I wonder why—
And then, what in early-literacy circles is called Print Awareness happens. As soon as I am aware of the printed letters, I understand what has happened. The words PACKERS WIN haven’t even had time to register in my mind as anything meaningful, but I already know that those letters, once decoded, will tell me the news I don’t want to hear.*
And so, within 10 minutes of getting to work, I am spoiled, and I have lost the bet. In spite of everything, I never saw it coming.
I felt like I was on the loser’s end of some scene from Animal Planet. The kind where the predator’s ambush is so perfect, that the cute little rodent—me, obviously—not only doesn’t know that danger lurks nearby, but also never realizes that he got pounced on from behind, poisoned, and eaten.
It’s just BOOM. You’re dead, and you know who won the Super Bowl.
* The name of the real winning team has been changed in order to protect those who are not yet spoiled.
(This panel from Bearmageddon is a scene from my life.)
When I was 16 years old, I had a job at Winn-Dixie. I started out bagging groceries, and eventually graduated to cashier. It wasn’t glamorous, but the paychecks were pure disposable income, and I was down with that.
The store manager who hired me eventually left for one reason or another. Maybe he was promoted, maybe he was fired. We don’t know for sure. It’s not important. What’s important is that Mister New Manager, his replacement, was a fat, angry, unpleasant man who wasted little time making a drudgery out of what previously had been a pretty tolerable job.
He spent a lot of time hassling my coworkers, which was to be expected. You need be neither pleasant nor sober to bag groceries, and a lot my coworkers didn’t bother being either. So I couldn’t really spare them much sympathy any time Mister New Manager took one of them out behind the tool shed. (He basically just built his office behind the tool shed to save time, eliminating the need to constantly walk back and forth. You didn’t get called to his office anyway unless it was to get chewed out.)
One day he took me out to his office behind the tool shed and demanded I shave. “If it ain’t a ‘stache, it goes in the trash!”
I got indignant. There were legitimate performance gripes with other people. I, on the other hand, was not only a friendly and competent employee, but I was a 16 year old with a beard. That’s damn cool. I wasn’t about to give that up just so I could keep working at Winn-Dixie for an asshole.
I asked him if there could be an exception, and when he said no, I handed him my smock and I walked out.
Yeah. I quit a job over facial hair.
My favorite coffee mugs at work are, in order—
If I can drink from one of my three favorites, I know it will probably be a good day.
[Note: Most people who read this will already be aware of these things. I’ll probably be preaching to the choir. But I had to get it out anyway. And I don’t care if it sounds like a lecture. You know how it is.]
This morning was like any other. I sat stopped at a red light while cyclist after…
Stopping at red lights is low on the list of priorities for the ethical cyclist.
Once your own personal safety has been secured, your cycling should be informed by awareness of others, by the intention of not endangering them or negatively impacting their experience on the road.
Here are cycling actions that impact cyclists and motorists negatively, and which should be avoided.
When I encounter these actions, I am more likely than not to comment on or otherwise try to correct the behavior.
Here are some cycling actions that do not affect other cyclists and motorists.
If I have assessed the safety of proceeding through an intersection and have decided that I can do so without impacting other citizens of the road, then I usually give myself permission to break that traffic law and continue through.
If one chooses to address these minor, not-hurting-anybody offenses, then they do so on shaky ethical ground, because through their heckling it is now they who are needlessly, negatively impacting someone else’s experience on the road.
Seen on my bike:
In the road, one upright and empty champaign bottle, next to two empty plastic Starbucks cups.
My name is Chris Brown. I live in Denver and rely on my bike for transportation. I'm an insufferable DIY-er. I'm snobby about coffee and music.
