While I know I’m certainly not the first, may I be, at least, the next person to write about the power we give to the often poorly chosen and often misguided names and words we use?

In yet another tale from the “You Can Take The Boy Out Of The Newsroom, But You Can’t Take The Newsroom Out Of The Boy” chronicles, there were certain words and phrases believed to possess almost talismanic powers over viewers. Magical incantations that would cause men, women, children and some of the more intelligent species of dogs to put down the remote, jump out of the kitchen, the laundry room or the tub, or emerge from  underneath the sheets (where they were sleeping, of course. This is, at least nominally, a family blog), and give their rapt and undivided attention to whatever the demographically approved anchor is reading. Lower level incantations included, “take a look at this,” or “you won’t believe…” are sprinkled throughout even the most mundane of stories. Words like “amazing,” “unbelievable” and “shocking” are also the standard salt and pepper of any rundown. The favorite, however, and by several lengths is the phrase “breaking news.”

You may be wondering about the lively internal debates that ended up determining just how old a story has to be before it no longer qualifies as breaking news. The answer is… Continue reading “Bacon Flavored Ice Cream” →

If you live in San Francisco long enough, you’ll forget this is a very strange place.  I can tell you without any equivocation that a guy walking with a white tipped cane is absolutely, like, the ninth most interesting thing you’ll see in my neighborhood.  On my walk to work, there’s a placard outside a… let’s call it a variety store… proudly proclaiming, “We Buy Porn!”  Around the corner, at the entrance to the Castro MUNI stop, the homeless guy by the bus shelter calls out, “Kidney?  Harvest your kidney?  Sir, may I harvest your kidney?”  What I’m saying is that when the mannequin in the front window of the Goodwill store is dressed with a tuxedo top and a pink chiffon ballerina dress bottom, seeing me making my way around a construction pylon with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cane in the other is just not goig to be on your radar.

I also think San Francisco must be the birthplace of Competitive Leisure, the idea that you can’t just have fun.  You have to have more fun than everyone else, or it doesn’t count.  It means if you come to work on Monday and someone asks you… with that slight note of a challenge in their voice, “So… Continue reading “Over, Under, Through” →

This is a test of the emergency blogcast system.  This is only a test.  If this were an actual post, you would be vastly more informed, entertained or otherwise amused than you are at the moment.  Please stay tuned for actual content.  This has been a test of the emergency blogcast system.