Category: Commentary

Check it out: my tip – about how to make a Pledge Fabric Sweeper reusable – made it to The Consumerist today!

Woo-hoo! I’m an Internet celebrity!

Back in the early 90s, there was a long stretch – almost a year and a half – when I didn’t date anyone. Sure, I went on a date here and there, but I just couldn’t find a girl I really liked. I still went to bars and nightclubs with friends, but I was kind of tired of that scene. I wanted something new to do.

One random day, I noticed that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Creative Loafing had lengthy lists of free classical music concerts held throughout the city. There were tons of the things every week, from something like “the choir of St. Luke’s Episcopal sings Bach’s oratorios” to the “Emory University Chamber Orchestra plays Haydn’s quartets”. Having grown up listening to a lot of classical music, I started going to these things almost every Sunday.

At around the same time, the Atlanta Symphony made headlines by hiring a 23 year-old named Christina Smith to be principal flautist. She wasn’t especially pretty, but she was around my age and in a major symphony orchestra, so she had a lot of “nerd appeal” (and if you click the link to see her picture, remember that she was much cuter eighteen years ago). As you might guess, I developed a minor crush on her.

One Sunday I pulled into a church parking lot for a show. I was sitting in my car, finishing a cigarette… when, to my great surprise, a car with Christina Smith inside pulled in to the space next to me! I quickly put out my smoke and followed her inside. And during the walk to the church, I gave up any notion of ever having a relationship with her. Not that I ever expected to have one anyway. I was still in college and living at home. But the brand new Mercedes her older, elegantly-dressed boyfriend drove and the way she snuggled up to him was an unwelcome “she’s out of your league” punch to the gut.

Continue reading “The novel I never wrote”

Think about all the decisions you make in a day. I’m not talking about the big decisions, like “should I join the Army?” or “should I get married?”. I’m thinking about the hundreds or thousands of little decisions you make in a day.

For example, on a weekday morning my better half will wake up and go to the bathroom to get ready. She will choose between this lipstick or that lipstick, this eye shadow or that eye shadow, then choose this dress or that dress, these shoes or those shoes, and this bracelet or that bracelet. She will then go downstairs and choose between yogurt and a banana for breakfast. She will then choose whether to drive the white Jeep or the green Jeep to work. She’ll then have to decide if she wants to take Wilkinson Boulevard or I-85 to get to the office, and whether to listen to “The Bob and Sheri Show” or something else along the way. She will decide whether to try to make a traffic light or if she should stop safely. A few minutes later, she will decide whether to change lanes, or wait for a truck to pass first. She’ll then have to decide whether to park in this space or that space. Once inside the office, she’ll have to decide whether to check her email or voicemail first, whether to return this call or that call first, then decide whether to process this invoice or that one. She’ll make a hundred other decisions before lunchtime, where she will decide whether to pick something up or open a can of soup she’s brought from home.

The reason I mention all this is because I had a thought yesterday.

Continue reading “Decisions, Decisions”

One thing I hate about having a website is that I often miss big anniversaries. If an upcoming date is 75th anniversary of broadcast TV, or the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, you can bet I’ll find out about it two or three days after the fact, thus missing a chance to commemorate it on my site. Heck, the Steelers win in last year’s Super Bowl made me forget the 30th anniversary of Sid Vicious’ death, something I had been counting down for years!

So this time I won’t forget: today marks the 65th anniversary of the Allies’ bombing of Dresden in World War II.

After the atomic bombing of Japan, the bombing of Dresden is considered one of the Allies’ most controversial actions during the war. Although Dresden was a manufacturing and communications center for Nazi Germany, the Allies didn’t bother bombing the city’s suburbs, where such manufacturing took place. Instead they bombed the city center, allegedly in hopes of disrupting both communications and to cause panic and confusion amongst refugees – something the Brits learned for themselves when the Germans bombed Coventry (contrary to popular belief, Churchill and other British leaders didn’t let Coventry get bombed so as to prevent the Germans from finding out that the Allies had broken their Enigma machines; while the British knew from decrypted Enigma traffic that the German bombers were coming, they had no idea what their target was. Churchill himself thought it was London, not Coventry).

Continue reading “An Anniversary”

OK, it’s hardly the snow storm of the century… but still… it snowed in Belmont yesterday:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZvubvnxc1M&feature=player_embedded

Look, I don’t know of a easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it: judging by the way I hear people speak up here, the North Carolina public school system has apparently done a horrible job in explaining the difference between “good” and “well”. So let’s see if I can clear up some of the confusion for you:

“Good” is typically used as an adjective. Adjectives modify nouns. So you’d say “That was a good dinner” or “He is a good quarterback”.

“Well” is typically used as an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs. So you’d say “He cooks well” or “He throws the ball well”.

It’s all quite simple, no? Well, the English language being what it is, there’s an exception to this rule, and that’s when linking verbs get thrown in the mix. Most verbs imply some kind of action (like “cooks” or “throws”). But some verbs simply link a noun with a state of being. Words such as “appears”, “seems”, “looks’, “tastes”, “grows”, and most forms of “to be” (“am”, “is”, “are”, “was”) are such linking verbs, and you can use either “good” or “well” (“I feel good” or “I’m well, thanks”) in some cases, but not all.

So how do you know which one to use?

In most cases, if it’s a simple adjective you use “good” and “well” if it’s a simple adverb. If it’s a linking verb, simply remove the verb in question and replace it with “am”, “is” or “are”. If the resulting sentence makes sense, use “good”; if it makes no sense, use “well”. For example, “the pizza looks good” would become “the pizza is good”, which makes perfect sense. On the other hand, “the bunny smelled the grass but decided not to eat any” would become “the bunny is the grass but decided not to eat any”, which makes no sense, so you’d then say that the “bunny smelled the grass well”.