Snowflakes of thought

Snowflakes as in "lots of little things that accumulate to create a pointless mess."

• I took my car to the dealer last week to solve the CEL mystery. Turned out the engine control unit was fixin' to drop dead, so I'm glad I didn't try driving to Cambridge that week. It was under warranty, so they fixed it for free. Then I hung around the dealership being tortured by the CNN for an hour longer than I needed to, because they didn't bother to tell me when they were finished with my car. (I brought my laptop with me so I could work, but I could still hear the TV, and I was afraid that some of the stupid would burn me.)
  
  
• Speaking of stupid, on the early news on Fox Providence last night (something I generally try to avoid), there was a story about a kids' vaccine called Hib. It's pronounced "hib." The dingaling on TV kept saying "H-I-B" instead - actually, it sounded like she was saying "H-I-V." I knew there wasn't an HIV vaccine, but I'm guessing that many people do not know that and were probably very happy to hear that kids were being immunized against HIV.
  
  
• Speaking some more of stupid, that's me after midnight. I was bummed by the lack of new Daily Show and Colbert Report (especially since Scott McClellan wrote a not-yet-published tell-all book about his misadventures as White House press secretary). I thought I would give Keith Olbermann's show a try. Well, it's not on till midnight, and it turns out that my brain shuts down a few minutes before that. (It explains why I watch cartoons at bedtime.) I can tell that that man has a lot of brains and anger inside him, and I bet I'd enjoy watching him in the morning... I should probably record his show at night and then watch it when I get up.
  
  
• Speaking of cartoons, a Futurama movie (Bender's Big Score) came out on DVD and I didn't even know about it. The Cartoon Network didn't get to renew their contract with the show; they were brutally outbid by Comedy Central, who will start running it sometime in 2008. They'll be showing the new movies broken into half-hour episodes. I am excited about this, because the Bender movie resolves something in a previous episode that many people found upsetting (I had thought it was just me).
  
  
• Speaking some more of cartoons, the Boondocks episode "A Huey Freeman Christmas" is maybe the best Peanuts Christmas tribute/spoof of all time.
  
  
• Sunday's Republican debate on Univision was even worse than I expected. Many of the immigration and foreign policy remarks seemed to be directed mainly at the Cuban exile community, which is big in the Miami area (where the debate was held) and is generally their best bet for votes anyway. In politics, and especially on immigration matters, the rest of the US-Latino community is often at odds with these views, and this was reflected in blog posts on Monday. In other words, the Republican candidates studied to pass the test and not to actually become informed or learn something. (Isn't that also how they want schools to work?) I wish there was a way for NOBODY to win the Republican primary. Fred Thompson was particularly dickish.
  
  
• I went to the China Garden again on Sunday, but this time I forgot my camera. One of these days I'll go there, have my camera with me, AND the batteries will be working. And I'd better do that soon, because I noticed they were looking at carpet and wooden flooring samples. After all these decades, they might actually be planning to redecorate.
  
  
• I found out that it's legal to chain two instead of three at the beginning (or end) of a row for double crochet. Not that I was worried. I mean, I've been doing it for years and the Yarn Police have never come for me. But I still felt better when I Googled and found out that lots of other people do it too.
  
  
• Rudolph is not off the hook yet. (The angry hook, not the crochet hook.) That rant is still coming. When I get around to it.