And the angels sang

So ... I'm pretty much convinced that, as wonderful as DTV is for the rest of the world, we who are nestled in the valley between the mountains will be a long time in being able to appreciate it.

I bought my converter box with my government-funded coupon (read: I'd already paid for the coupon, so why not use it) months and months ago, and despite clever Antenna Gymnastics throughout my living room that involved intricate poses with my television, antenna and digital converter box, each time I did a scan for available channels, I came up empty handed. And frustrated. And slightly out of socket where some joints were concerned. And very much out of humor.

The kind but dim-witted folks who run the dtvanswers.com site were bold enough to suggest that in addition to my $50 converter box, I might need a more powerful antenna. A "Smart Antenna," they called it. With printed Q&A page in hand, I trundled to Wal-Mart in search of a Smart Antenna, which is as existent as the Tooth Fairy, which is to say that it may exist, but I'll never see one. Frustrated all over again, I opted for the most expensive set of rabbit ears I could find, set them up and performed The Antenna Olympics, Round 2.

No dice.

Returned the antenna, swore a good bit, cursed the idea of a digital transition, and gave up.

Until this weekend.

On a whim, I did a channel scan, cynically expecting the zero at the bottom of the screen to remain unchanged ... until a "2" suddenly and magically popped up.

I have two - TWO! - channels found by my digital coverter. I swear I heard voices singing a jubilant chorus. Or maybe that was just me singing. Out loud. They're both Wyoming PBS, so I now have three PBS signals (Count: 2 from Wyoming, 1 from Colorado, all usually with different content on each) ... Woo!

Two channels.

DTV sucks, but it sucks a little bit less this week.

Didn't miss much

According to a source on the ground, it's a toss-up whether being a "part of history" was worth the near-frostbitten toes; the thousands of backsides of "other suckers" that blocked her view for hours on end; the expensive inaugural ball drinks and lame food while being separated from her companions for several hours by other grumpy ball-goers; the hours spent getting through security for a very, very late parade; or the overall feeling of being treated worse than cattle in a feedlot.

It's possible that hype is just that ... and better observed from a toasty-warm living room while clutching a steaming mug off coffee and wearing fuzzy slippers. How very bitchy of me.

Hypocrite

I find it odd that in the midst of an economic crisis, the president who wants to "spread the wealth" and harp at us about the poor, the disadvantaged and the uninsured in our country is going to get the most expensive inauguration on record.

This is change?

Sarah-isms 101

Woot!: A bursting word of encouragment, usually shouted with hands cupped around the mouth to help it carry obnoxiously far over large crowds of people who may or may not be cheering along with you. Most entertaining when done by a parent who has never "woot"-ed anything before and suddenly bursts forth with it at a show in Branson.

Woo!: Not to be mistaken with "woot." It is an expression or response of joy, cheer, excitement. In written/text format, it must always be accompanied by an exclamation mark.

Cuddle whore: A person who enjoys cuddling, with or without an accompanying relationship. This term can encompass everything from innocent cuddling while watching a movie on a sofa to things that are a bit less innocent. (Get your mind out of the gutter, perv - not THAT much less innocent!)

Text whore: A person who is maintaining text conversations with more than one person at a time. The term, however, is most appropriately applied when each of the text recipients is a potential significant other, and neither/none know(s) about the other(s).

**NOTE** Aside from the two above instances, I can think of very few instances when it's even remotely appropriate to call someone a whore. Unless, of course, they are, in fact ... a whore.

Friend dumped: The position of finding that one of your social networking "friends" has decided that you are no longer worth associating with in the cyber world. Because no matter how old we are in real life or how mature we pretend to be, once we're on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., we revert back to junior high school social tactics. You're not my BFF anymore.

Disgustipating: Something that is so disgusting to look at/think about, it hurts somewhere in the gut area, similar to a feeling of constipation.

Ginormous: Alright, I ripped this one off of "Elf," but I still love it and use it frequently. I should see whether the folks at Merriam-Webster are as in love with it as I am ... (update: they are!) Use this word when describing anything that is both gigantic AND enormous -- it's so big, it needs a combination of the two words.

Seriously: In the absence of anything else worthwhile to say, this fits many occasions. Adjust the tone of voice to fit the appropriate reaction. Can also be used as a precursor to most other phrases, such as: "Seriously, Sarah, don't let anyone tell you that you're missing out on something by not being married." Or: "Seriously! That jackass just totally cut me off!" Or: "Seriously. We're all adults. Let's act like it." Or just: "Seriously ... (!)(?)" It's possible that my overuse of this word was influenced by a brief infatuation with "Grey's Anatomy."

Well, America ...

I hope you're able to afford the "change" you're getting. You can't whine that you're getting something you didn't ask for or don't deserve ...

Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ...

"Since you are all such good customers, he said, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."

Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. Like that idea.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100 percent savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33 percent savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28 percent savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25 percent savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22 percent savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16 percent savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right!" exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute!" yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night, the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

----

(Contrary to what the e-mail forward said, this was not written by Professor David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia -- he doesn't know who wrote it, but I think it's still a good analogy. Thanks to Snopes.com and Dr. Kamerschen's Web site for this additional information.)

Not an expert

I'm not going to pretend I understand even a fraction of what's going on with the economy, but ...

I'm not down with giving $700B to bail out banks and businesses that have proven, on a monumental level, that they're incapable of handling their own money. What makes anyone imagine that they're going to be responsible with taxpayer dollars? I don't think I'm down with any kind of bailout, come to think of it. If I eff up my personal account, I don't get a bailout. On the contrary -- I get overdraft fees; quite the opposite of help. But the lesson is learned: I don't overdraft my accounts.

And this bout of the market throwing a financial temper tantrum because Wall Street doesn't like that other people don't think a bailout is deserved is BS.

In other news: There's a gas shortage in North Carolina. Matt said the school district north of them (not the one Molly teaches in) is busing its employees to and from the schools, because everyone in the greater Charlotte area (perhaps in the Carolinas area -- that wasn't quite clear) has been advised to not buy gas for the next two weeks.

Molly's district, however, is not offering anything nearly so nice.

If teachers in Molly's district can't make it to school due to an unavailability of gas, the district will "let" them take an UNPAID personal day off from work. And not because they're out of sick or vacation time ... just because the superintendent apparently is an ass (inster witty Shakespeare-ism here). Matt had other sentiments, spelled out in capital letters, accompanied by sign language.

We chatted a bit about gas prices (it's really not that expensive where he is -- it just isn't available, either) and how people still fail to comprehend that the price you're paying at the pump today reflects the price of the oil bought several weeks ago; they think that if oil was lower on the market on Monday, then they should start seeing a break on Tuesday. I asked him about gas prices there, because he wrote the day after Hurricane Ike to say that gas was $5.30 a gallon. "Isn't that price-gouging?" I asked, and he confirmed -- to the point that the stations that had charged over $4.50 a gallon at that time had been fined, and the stations that had charged over $5 had been closed down ... and are still closed.

The lesson learned here? I'm thankful that I live in Wyoming, where gas is a) available and b) relatively affordable ("relative" is $3.41 a gallon, compared to $4.21 a gallon).

Waxing political ... a very little bit

Have you noticed how Barack Obama is reported to have "faith" (aww ...), while Sarah Palin is consistently said to only have "religion" (curse her!)?

Me, too ...

And if I get one more story about how flash bulbs reflected off her glasses, about her pregnant daughter (who isn't running for anything and wouldn't be under nearly so much scrutiny if her mother was a liberal Democrat), or about her "outdated" hairstyle, I'm going to slash it and fill the remaining space with a horribly written press release. It will, in the end, be a better use of space. There is no mention of aesthetics or physical appearances in the stories about Barack Obama (or Joe Biden), no scrutiny of their children ...

I like Sarah Palin. I like her politics, I like her faith, I like her stance, I like how she's not taking anyone's BS, I like her glasses, I like that her choice for her son was life, I like that she walks what she talks ... and I like that she's got Obama's campaign scrambling and the media showing just how much they worship Obama. Reading stories side-by-side from Denver and Minneapolis show the media in a near-orgasmic euphoria at the feet of Obama, while they were pretty much at a darts tournament covering the RNC. I don't care what party you're in -- it was embarassing to read, see and hear.

I agree with BJ -- charisma and well-delivered speeches do not a great (or even a good) leader make -- that the opposite, historically, has also been painfully true. He drew some more extreme parallels, but the conclusion is the same: Obama is suave, and he's a historic first for racial politics ... and that's about it.

Let's hope the novelty wears off in time for common sense to sink in.