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Auburn / football / iPhone / Twitter / video / weekend — Comments Off
30
Oct 10

Football Saturday

Straight from Twitter. Watched the Auburn game with friends, and three delightfully distracting little girls who managed to turn the television off at one point. At least they were all short enough to walk under the screen and not get in the way of the shot. On the other hand we learned about chocolate chip cookie brownies, so the trade off might have been worth it.

Stick around for the video at the end:

Florida and Georgia look like two emo kids trying to out emo each other.

Maybe Georgia is the most emo. They are wearing the black trim. Hunker down and play Radiohead, unironically, Bulldogs.

Ok, I’m at the football party. Let’s play ball. What do you mean it is already 7-7? Cam Newton the receiver? That’s just on-field Heisman marketing.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! There is no scheme for Onterio McCalebb on that misdirection.

Masoli to Summers for the score. The Auburn defense will get off the bus shortly. 14-14.

@tzac81au is no fan of Faulkner. Though he does run rather like Sound and Fury.

Cover this guy, cover that guy, there’s always Emory Blake. I love this. They haven’t had to show it, so the pre-season narrative has been diminished and then forgotten, but there are weapons and talent and the ability to produce all over the offensive side of the ball.

We didn’t see that. Best not to see it. As I, and now others, have said: the only team stopping Auburn’s offense is Auburn’s offense. Fumbles will do it. This at a point where they’d produced a defensive stop and could have gone ahead by two scores and start the tidy business of putting this game away. Instead Ole Miss gets a reprieve.

Demond Washinton with the goal line pick. So the drive in which we create separation continues again. I’m starting to warm up to this defense.

I’d like to see Kodi Burns catch one in space, just to see him run again like his freshman year’s enthusiasm. Do you remember that? He’d dance around, gather a few yards, get tackled and then hop up like a kid so flush with energy he couldn’t vent it or express it all at once. It was beautiful. He should get a few more moments like that.

Now this is offensive balance. Fill the box, Auburn will just throw it around the yard. Defensive coordinators are waking up in cold sweats now.

Darvin dropped a pass. Does not compute.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Cameron Newton to Darvin Adams, showing a complete offense to the RebelBears.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Demond Washington! 95 yards! 31-17. Kickoff returns for touchdowns make one think we might get something resembling the illusive complete game. But Washington has been due a big return for weeks and Ole Miss is not very good at this. Stands to reason it would happen here.

Ole Miss comes up short because Josh Bynes shows off his super powers. Now let’s see another score, just to rip out their hearts. The scoring defense isn’t there, but they show up when it matters and that is enough given everywhere else Auburn can produce.

A touchdown would have been nice, but I’ll take a 17-point lead going into the half of a trap game. There is no Admiral Akbar. I just never saw the trap in this game. My sense of peace with it is now validated. And this is only halftime.

Hey Ole Miss? Look away, look away, look away: Tigers are in town. One of the best songs a band plays. About four years ago, after Ole Miss lost at Jordan-Hare the two bands struck up a song simultaneously. Auburn’s band stopped playing while the Rebel band finished this tune. It was late, dark, a little ethereal out. I’ve always liked that memory.

His next update is “This is too easy.” RT @cameronnewton Cameron Newton can tweet during halftime. That’s a spoof Twitter account — I don’t write it, don’t know who does — and it is worth following.

If you can hold a team to a four-yard gain, and feel good about it, you might be playing Auburn. And you’re in trouble. Because, really, you’ve limited Mike Dyer to half his average yards per carry. This guy just gets more impressive with each game.

@wesbyrum stretches the Auburn lead to 20. 37-17.

When ESPN calls your game and gets things wrong about your school you wonder how much they get wrong about other placed too. And, no, I don’t mean just Bob Davie.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Mike Dyer for 30 yards down the sideline. 44-17. He, too, is about to break a not insignificant Bo Jackson record.

Eli Manning is looking to beat traffic put of Vaught Henmingway!

Ole Miss scores, but this is all garbage time. 44-24. About the waning moments of the game, I feel for Mario Fannin having to fill that role, but I agree with the coaches that they’re going to need him to win. Fumble troubles notwithstanding, he’s a weapon receiving the ball out of the backfield. I hope he gets his chance to redeem himself before his career is done.

Houston Nutt just showed up, Ole Miss recovers a surprise onside kick.

@Lucas_au asked why Eli Manning would leave early, since Vaught-Hemmingway only seats 1,500 people. I replied: It takes a while. He can only drive his daddy.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! @tzac81au with the score.

If you were wondering, that’s hanging 51 points on an SEC team on the road. Fifty-one points! No matter if you say three-point road wins are good wins or that Auburn still has something to prove, you have to be impressed by this effort. The easy, obvious, natural comparison people try to make for this Auburn team is the 2004 vintage. I’ve asserted that you can be more confident about the general scoring power of the 2010 team on any given drive in any given game. Just for comparison, the 2004 Tigers, who could beat anyone like a drum by then, won 35-14 in Oxford.

How about that offensive line? They need a award, too. There’s no doubt these guys, Mike Berry, Byron Isom, Ryan Pugh, Lee Ziemba, Brandon Mosley (and A.J. Green, before his injury) are the reason why.

Nine and oh! War Eagle!

In a year where Auburn sheds the ghost of 2004 we find ourselves cheering for USC. Weird. Thanks, Trojans.

And, now, driving by Toomer’s Corner:

Undefeated, top of the charts and War Eagle!

Auburn / football / iPhone / photo / Twitter / video / weekend — 1 Comment
23
Oct 10

Eight and oh!

Strike a pose, Cameron Newton. 24-17 and Auburn is the lone SEC team still undefeated.

This is the Twitter feed during the LSU-Auburn game. Because Twitter will drop these comments eventually, and brilliant play and wry observations should be remembered forever. Pictures are included, as are after-the-fact thoughts included in bold.

One tailgating party has a musician playing the Van Helsing song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It is really good.

At the RBD library they are playing Brickhouse. If you walk up those steps on the side of the parking deck and just as you reach the landing you here the baseline kick in you may count yourself as having a good day. You might then knock over a Direct TV dish, as I did. And then apologize to the people who’s tailgate you’ve just disturbed. They were nice people.

Another day, another blimp. I also counted a light wing plane, a helicopter, two small hawks and a yellow butterfly. And also Nova, who flew right overhead. I’ve got great pictures in the photo gallery.

I smell corndog people!

Fighter planes overhead, a tank under center. Let’s play!

No better place than Jordan-Hare Stadium today!

@Z_Etheridge4‘s third down interception return to midfield sets the tone.

@cameronnewton laughs at your idea of broken plays.

Let’s review: Terrell Zachery, Mike Dyer, Cam Newton. TOUCHDOWN AUBURN 7-0.

What do Cam Newton and Heisman trophy winner Pat Sullivan have in common? They’ve scored the same amount of TDs in one season. And of course Newton would have that bit of poetry later in the game, and still four more games. Sullivan’s record stood for four decades. How old will we be when someone breaks Newton’s eventual number?

Lucky there wasn’t an unfair decapitation of the quarterback penalty there. How did he get up from that? Lucky, too, there was no roughing the quarterback penalty on that deadball dead lift and body slam. I suppose you could argue no one heard the whistle, but everyone else on the field stopped and I heard the referee blow it dead from the stands. Dodged a bullet there.

RT @wennybrown: Announcer: “Clock. Management. Problems. Where have we heard that before??”

Auburn’s defense holds, LSU settles for a figgie. 7-3.

Just so you know, there are a couple of Superman shirts in the north end zone, to which Auburn is now driving.

@wesbyrum boots a field goal. He is now Auburn’s all time leading scorer. 10-7.

Or 10-3. Accurate and it sounds better. Pardon me, we’re in the section of the stadium that goes delirious for field goals.

Finally get a kickoff out of the back of the end zone … and have to re-kick. Penalties still must be a concern, this just being one more example of something that a championship caliber team needs to cure. This resulted in a net of 16-yard gain for the Bengal Tigers. They’d drive to midfield and then punt, starting that sequence of drives Auburn began at the goalline. A competent offense takes advantage of this 16 yard gift.

Nick Fairley does not like Cajun food. He does like bayou quarterbacks.

@CameronNewton would run for class president, but he is too busy running through LSU.

@supurmario27 also makes it look easy.

Auburn, from their own 1, slices through a generous LSU defense, but the field goal try is missed left.

Do not make Nick Fairley mad. He will only haunt your daydreams, too.

“Hi. There’s no one within 10 yards of me, I don’t need this football.” How many of these gifts will the Auburn team (generally) and the secondary (specifically) get this year? How deep does this karma cache go?

The Miles Quatum Singularity: four minute drives last three days, and refs stop the game clock for reasons they can’t explain.

10-10 at the half. This game should be SO much different. Corollary: it will be in the second half.

Mike Dyer is a cannonball. Darvin Adams is, in fact, smooth.

@cameronnewton is coming to Baton Rouge to walk old ladies across the street. He will score many touchdowns in the process.

@cameronnewton runs 50 yards for a score, runs upstairs to review the play and back to the field to call it a touchdown. Should have sent a poet.

Little known ref fact: side judges are Bama fans. Not a conspiracy theory, but fact. He waved and we saw the colors peep through his uniform.

Best not to talk about the fumble. The only team that can beat Auburn’s offense is Auburn’s offense.

Fear the LSU kick team. Everything else appears manageable.

Aubie had a Trojan horse contraption. Mike the Tiger tore the head off. Ahh, the pageantry of football.

Worst spot of the game. The ref’s stripes are purple and gold. This being the Kodi Burns forward progress abomination. The fair reaction: this is the an unintended consequence of better camera angles and, ultimately, the huge network deals the SEC has signed. Everyone sees the officiating. Officiating has always been hit or miss, of course, but it isn’t improving as the game gets faster. There have always been calls made and others missed. Now every play can be closely scrutinized, even as unfair as that criticism of officials may (or may not) be. The unfair reaction: is that guy from Louisiana?

The fans are wishing the officials a booooootiful Halloween.

Someone text the Auburn coaches and tell them Lee can’t throw on the run.

A hasty tilt-shift shot of the crowd at Jordan-Hare.

What is this? Every year of SEC football before Gus Malzahn showed up? #fieldpositionfootball

@cameronnewton is not an Ent, but he did inspire Tolkien.

Mike Dyer also plays rugby.

And we start the fourth quarter feeling in control, but Les Miles is eating chlorox pellets. There is no control.

Auburn has 364 total yards through three quarters. 278 of them on the ground. LSU has 192 total yards.

Les Miles strikes with his first bout of successful irrationality. Let us hope it is not diarrheal. 17-17.

Third and long? Run a draw!

This game now enters Bizzaroland, population: the SEC. Les Miles, mayor.

@wisematize, a Texas Tech man, asks “When did you re-hire Tuberville?”

@wisematize In a moment I’ll tell you we were just doing what we do. Whatever that is this week.

Nick Fairley dislikes the color yellow. He thinks you look stupid in purple, too.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Onterio McCalebb! 70 yards! 24-17!

Auburn over 500 yards of offense tonight so far, the fourth SEC game in a row the Tigers have done that. Never before. Savor it, because it can’t last forever. A few more years isn’t too much to ask, is it Gus?

6:10 left on the clock. Just to counteract Les Miles Auburn needs a 6:35 drive.

This place is the thunder dome.

This is a fourth quarter defense, designed to wear you down early and tear out your heart late.

If @cameronnewton doesn’t win the Heisman the Eufaula Tribune will give him the inaugural Camsman Trophy.

Eight and OH! Auburn sits all alone atop the SEC the Tigers get ready for Ole Miss. 24-17.

On to vict’ry! I believe in Auburn (and it has nothing to do with football).

Gene Chizik just leaped the rail to get to the student body. And the Heisman chants are echoing to the Downtown Athletic Club.

It is remarkable how many people are lingering in Jordan-Hare Stadium.

This post-game video on @AUHD is great.

Like that.

football / photo / Twitter / weekend — Comments Off
9
Oct 10

Football, via Twitter

Football on Twitter, copied and pasted for posterity. Tennessee at Georgia in the morning, Alabama at South Carolina in the afternoon and then a night of craziness as LSU visited Florida and Auburn went to Lexington looking for revenge against Kentucky.

The Twitter updates are in blockquotes. Anything that needed further thought is bold.

Les Miles eats these. Next week he’ll try to eat the real thing. Somehow, this will win him a football game.

Mark Richt’s Bulldogs look like world-beaters today. Too bad they can’t book Tennessee for 12 games each fall.

Can anyone explain the internal logic for ESPN3 blackouts? I mean, besides there not being one?

And that was the morning, really, that and Dean Foy. In the afternoon …

Hey Alabama? South Carolina is calling. They’ve got your number.

Somebody in Columbia send me a garnett Beat Bama shirt, mmkay?

Spurrier’s back, baby!

Just saw a guy in an Auburn shirt cheering at Brice Stadium. War Eagle, sir.

When did Gary Danielson replace Barry Krauss on the Tide Network? #coloranalysthomer

Double bad news for Alabama: trailing at South Carolina and that big Penn State win looks less than impressive. Zook beat PSU badly today.

Spurrier just benched Garcia so hard in his mind … (Upon the instance of Garcia’s safety.)

When was the last time Alabama’s defense was gashed like this? Been awhile.

Ballgame. (Upon the instance of Bama failing to convert on a fake field goal.)

Danielson Summary: Bama cheats, Carolina still gets it done.

Alabama fans commence saying many things to soothe themselves for losing to Stephen Garcia.

JUST thinking that. RT @victoriacumbow @StevenStiefel I can see it on Nick Saban’s face: “Who am I gonna blame for this?”

SC beat Bama with their defensive line, wide receivers and backfield. Know who’s are as good or better? #wareagle

Tomorrow’s Tuscaloosa meme, today: Tide were looking ahead to Ole Miss.

And after that delightful mid-day diversion we come to the game of the night, Auburn at Kentucky:

I think of early drives as something Auburn refuses to prepare, opting instead for the joy and challenge of mid-game adjustments. #wareagle I’m ready for any other rationale you might have on the subject, too.

Cam Newton will trade you this stiff arm for your graham crackers. #wareagle

Meanwhile, Florida, on the alternative screen, show you why you should never wear orange jerseys.

Touchdown Auburn! If Cam has a Twitter account his new status from the sideline is “Isn’t even trying hard.” 7-7 #wareagle

Dyer, Lutzenkirchen, Dyer. Kodi Burns. Chewing up the yardage. Look for another drive or two like this before the night is over. #wareagle

@tzac81au, too, looks like he doesn’t have to run especially hard. #wareagle

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Cam Newton grinds out the last bit of the bluegrass. Now’s the time to set the tone for the rest of the night. #wareagle

Look at those Kentucky fans, dreaming about basketball already! #wareagle

Nick Fairley is trying out finishing moves for a potential wrestling career. #wareagle (Upon the instance of the first questionable 15-yard penalty.)

I’m thinking of inventing a candy bar and naming it after Josh Bynes. You’d buy one of those. #wareagle

Do not trick or treat Cam Newton’s place. He will just push your costumed kids to the ground like Kentucky defenders. #wareagle

That’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous. Cam Newton to Kodi Burns on the most ridiculous made up play ever. Ridiculous. #wareagle (Spurrier added it to his playbook for next week’s Kentucky game.)

Touchdown Auburn! Another play, another rushing score for Cam Newton. Three tonight as the Tigers roar out to a 21-7 lead. #wareagle (If only they did this for 60 minutes …)

Kentucky dribbles the ball and Craig Stevens recovers the fumble. First down Tigers! #wareagle

@atcrawford It wouldn’t be the most egregious MNC anyone ever counted. (He congratulated Auburn for claiming the transitive national championship for having beaten the team that beat Alabama …)

Should be 28-7, but nice to see
@wesbyrum connect to run the lead out to 24-7. #wareagle

Dear referees, @Z_Etheridge4 has been through enough. Now he’s going to go through some Wildcats. (Also, he’s still in play.) #wareagle

Dear referees, It is called gravity. And is legal. Newton (not the quarterback, the other one) wrote a law about it. #wareagle

Florida is playing LSU not to lose. Which is working into Les Miles’ oddly crafted hands.

Cam Newton is winning the Kentucky Derby. Write it down. #wareagle

Touchdown Auburn! Gus Malzahn is working in the future, driving up Newton’s stats so he can show off a Heisman to recruits. #wareagle

At the half: Tigers 31, Kentucky 17. Newton is 8-11 for 129 yards passing with 132 yards rushing and FOUR scores on 13 carries. #wareagle

So the first half of the third quarter was an excellent time to eat dinner. And if you are superstitious, I’m not having dessert. #wareagle Because my having food was clearly what caused the problem. That and whatever you were doing after the break. And whatever you’re doing, you really need to stop doing it during football because it was not helping matters.

@wesbyrum Chips one in for a score, Tigers re-take the lead 34-31. #wareagle

And we’re tied again, 34-34. I vote for a seven minute drive featuring Michael Dyer culminating in a @supurmario27 touchdown plunge.

Auburn just put us all in the uncomfortable position of Bob Davie making sense. Hate when that happens. #wareagle When Davie is talking about being sensible on kickoff returns you know you’ve over-thought a play.

We’re running yellow-37. That’s Cam scrambling around to make something happen. It is similar to colors green and red, and numbers 4-31.

@wesbyrum kicks the game winner. 37-34, WAR EAGLE, 6-0 and moving up the polls! #wareagle

LSU, with seconds left, lines up for tying field goal, fakes it, drops it, and STILL gets the 1st down. Les Miles’ soul has been sold again.

The play is being reviewed, but Les Miles is laughing because he knows the NCAA has NO RULES FOR HIS MIND.

The Auburn finish was just an inevitability and not quite as dramatic as the Florida game.

“They can spike it, run it out of bounds or throw it incomplete.” Or they can run the LESTER!

We should start to consider the possibility that Les Miles is sane and brilliant and the rest of us are crazy.

After the game Les Miles and are going to Vegas and betting it all on .5 turquoise and walking out with the roulette table! I changed the color because that makes it funnier.

Not a bad Saturday, that.

journalism / links / site / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Oct 10

Wednesdays go so fast

Early morning at the gym where I did as little as possible to justify the trip. Some days you don’t have it for the weights. And those are the days that are hard to push through. So I only did four short groups.

Spent the late morning talking to newspaper executives. One gentleman was from North Carolina and we chatted about Appalachia State football at great length. App State recently put a beating on Samford, so there was that. There’s talk that the Mountaineers are once again considering moving up to DI ball — the newspaper guy thought not. I told him a story about a Samford-App State game a few years back, it was a nice chat.

Later I called another newspaper company. The person that answered told me the person I wanted no longer worked for the company. That’s never awkward. Played phone tag with the new person I wanted for much of the day before we finally caught up with one another.

Swapped out some computers. Talked a little football with the IT guys.

Critiqued the Crimson. Nice paper this week, with only a few real layout problems to fix. They had a little coverage of the gambling indictments from earlier this week. There have been a few bike thefts. And there’s an advance on the Marine Corps band playing on campus this weekend.

You can see more here.

I ran into one of my students who is working on a video assignment for another class. “These cameras are amazing,” he said. We shoot in high-def. We love telling that to high school recruits, too.

Spent the evening studying. Reading for researching media effects, where I have now filled an entire three-ring binder with assignments. Much of it is on the limited capacity model, so I wonder, ironically, how much of it I’ve retained.

I also have to review and critique an article for class tomorrow. The article I have was co-authored by one of the founding members of our department. No pressure there. The article was about Applachian ticks. Well, it just used the ticks and a new fictional disease to prove a point about visual story telling toward exemplification theory, which is one of Dolf Zillman’s main areas of research. I actually wrote part of the Wikipedia entry for it last year.

And that accounts for most of my day.

Journalism and Internet links: Oh Leonard. Spread it around a bit more:

I remain convinced that, with exceptions, citizen journalism is to journalism as pornography is to a Martin Scorsese film; while they may employ similar tools — i.e., camera, lighting — they aspire to different results.

Leonard Pitts, who I’ve admired for a long time, picked James O’Keefe and tried to paint everyone with that brush — a traditional journalism technique, generalize everything through one anecdote. He helpfully forgets every problem traditional journalists have ever been caught in and actually gets a few of the details wrong in his own column. Several people helpfully point that out in the (incredibly binary) comments.

The problem here, then, is one of identifying credibility. Traditional journalists proudly carry the mantle of the masthead they broadcast for, or the mic flag from which they broadcast. In most cases that’s something an audience can expect to rally around. The real uphill battle, and the real danger in an online context, is establishing, maintaining and spreading a similar credibility in an environment where developing an official looking platform isn’t especially difficult. That’s something I’d like to study in the near future, actually.

For example, which one has more credibility at this point? The Daily Beast or Newsweek? What about if they combined? The sites are looking a lot alike these days … But what about someone who produces a similar looking page, puts out some slick content, satire or outright libel? How will we discern between online offerings? Media literacy is a critical function and an important area to study.

Hey, did you see CBS’ Les Moonves: “(T)hey have to come to us for our content.” I read that on Mark Coddington’s, not CBS.com site, which helpfully proves the point that we’ll be able to find content elsewhere.

In online news, I’m making it a regular habit to visit bamafactcheck.com for the latest dose of truthiness. In case you were wondering, that’s a site run by traditional-style journalists, like our friends at The Anniston Star and other media across the state.

Have you tried examining your Tweet Reach lately? I like it (because it gives me healthy numbers). Though I’ve no idea the methodology they use, over the course of my last 50 tweets I’ve apparently reached more than 40,000 people and made something like 52,000 impressions. Even if you divide that by some number of skepticism the returns aren’t bad. Since it is apparently basing this on the most recent tweets your numbers will fluctuate, but still. If it is correct it goes a fair way to answering the question of the power of that tool’s reach. Check it out.

And be sure to check out the 1939 World’s Fair post, below. That’s ready for your perusal. And now I must return to studying, because that is what I do.

journalism / photo / Samford / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 10

Some sunny day

The newspaper was put to bed at 12:30 this morning, which is more than an hour quicker than last week. That’s progress. Now I have to warn the hardworking student-journalists that there will also be a night of setbacks somewhere in their future.

The paper looks better this week. In our critique meeting today I picked on a lot of small things. There are a few design issues to work through and some other editing and writing topics to address, but I think this year’s staff can make quick strides. The biggest thing will just be in recognizing the problems early. No easy trick, that.

Some of those things can be fixed quickly, others will take a little time and perhaps a workshop or two.

Today we finished the preparing on our high school workshop, which takes place tomorrow. We’re going to have a record crowd on hand. This despite one or two local high schools dropping their journalism program for the year because of budget cuts. (Also, the Alabama Scholastic Press Association’s workshop is running opposite the Samford program this year, but it hasn’t hurt our attendance.)

I’m only doing one little presentation this year. I’ll be running around making sure the speakers arrived, everything is working and that no one is lost. It is a great way to spend a day, talking with high school students about their newspapers and television stations, showing them around Samford, introducing them to our students and to professional journalists. We have a great time with it and our visitors always seem to enjoy themselves too.

Now that the big day is almost here I’ll probably turn back to student recruitment. Having a gorgeous day on the beautiful Samford campus tomorrow won’t hurt that effort, either.

It is a great job, and an easy day, when you can talk about exciting things like that with young people who are also very much excited about where they are going to wind up, or what they might study when they get there. That’s the sort of enthusiasm that is contagious.

I talked this afternoon with the news director of the campus radio station. She’s one of those same, excited go-get-em types. If you can’t brainstorm up have a dozen good ideas in a hallway with people like that you just aren’t trying hard enough.

I like to drop little nuggets like this into those conversations from time to time.

Reporting has always in some ways been a collaborative process between journalists and their sources. But increasingly, there’s a merger between the source and the content producer. As a result, more journalism will happen through collaborative reporting, where the witness of the news becomes the reporter, says David Clinch, editorial director for Storyful and a consultant for Skype. Journalists, Clinch says, must be able to pivot quickly between the idea of using the community as a source of news and as the audience for news, because they are both.

Students are intrigued by ideas like that, once they realize they’re allowed to think this way. The latest example, included in that link, is the hostage situation at the Discovery Channel offices in Maryland earlier this month. The story came out of a news start up there, which leaned on a Twitter account to break the story. Novel approach, that.

(Not really, I was doing that two-and-a-half years ago at al.com. I set up that account and within a week broke two fires and a prominent business layoff story. Now that primary account, aldotcom, has 6,500 followers and breaks news constantly.)

I say this to your boredom, but it never ceases to amaze me that I get to read and dream up and put into practice and teach these things and call it a career. I’m a lucky guy.

After all, I get to work here:

Where I get views like this:

Visited Walmart tonight for a little of this and that. The irony was on rollback pricing, since I’d noticed earlier in the day that my bank is now running a cashback program based on my “unique spending preferences.” They are running the ads between the lines of my online register. The first offer was for Waffle House, which I visit exactly once a year. (And where I’ve never used anything but cash, making me wonder just how unique these preferential algorithms are.)

The second offer was for Walmart. I made fun of that. And then I found myself there. And then I found this:

Just wrong.

The meme on Twitter tonight was rock ‘n’ roll retractions. I had a lot of fun with these, and want to remember them forever, sooo:

I’ve got two tickets to paradise. Pack your bag we’ll leave during off peak hours.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth. Oh, never mind, I see it right here.

No more ‘I love yous’ but expect late night hang up calls, standing outside of your apartment and pining on Facebook.

After much consideration I am, in fact, not too sexy for this shirt.

You know what? I WILL put a fine point in it. I am the only bee in your bonnet. No one really likes you.

Yes, you may kiss me once. You may even kiss me twice. But, come on pretty baby, you needn’t kiss me deadly.

It has been brought to my attention that I don’t want you to want me, need you to need me, nor would I love you to love me.

Turns out the heart of rock ‘n’ roll is actually the guy that plays the triangle.

Let’s do the time warp, but only the once, so we do not create space continuum problems.

I’ve reconsidered it, and I would do anything for love, provided it is legal in my state of origin.

Turns out we did not rock the casbah, but we dropped a few bunker busters in the vicinity.

Nope. That was most definitely NOT paradise that I saw there by the dashboard light.

Don’t stop believing. Unless you’ve been swayed as of late by Christopher Hitchens.

Welcome to the jungle. We’ve had a change of heart and you can live quite prosperously here now.

The government now tells me I was born on a protected wetland, born on a protected wetland.

In da gatta da vitta you should know that I am merely fond of you.

Turns out the fire should be on the water and the SMOKE should be in the sky. Deep Purple regrets the error.

We decided to not live in a yellow submarine because, on reflection, that’s just stupid.

About that Lola thing … sorry.

Changed my mind. Not working for the weekend. I have to pull a double shift at the 7-11 on Saturday.

Ok, you talked us into it. We WILL take it, if you’re talking about a general wealth redistribution program.

I’ve had a change of heart. Do not pour your sugar on me. I’m on a low cal diet.

Been thinking about it. Should have never gone electric. Regretfully, Bob Dylan.

The London Tourism Board has asked me to rephrase. There are no werewolves here.

Yes, I said that Friday I was in love, but I was just lonely.

Tons more here.

More photographs from the 1939 World’s Fair will be along in a bit.