Elevating the Inconsequential to the Merely Trivial
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Friday, April 01, 2005 at 08:19 AM [GMT-6]

• Today is, of course, April Fool's Day and Mother Nature has done it up right, luring us out the door with bright happy sunshine...right into the teeth of a wind chill in the 20s. So much for putting away the ski jacket for the year. I blame my wife, who is enjoying the heated seats in her new Santa Fe entirely too much.


• Underhyping the iPod? – The new edition of MacAddict Magazine points out that an ad for Apple's new iPod shuffle actual understates something. The ad reads "240 songs. A million possibilities." In reality, the number of potential unique sequences is 4x10²⁶⁸ (according to the magazine; I didn't fact-check its claim, but you should feel free to do so). I assume that the ad's creator has been inducted into the Marketing Hyperbole Hall of Shame for missing this one.


• In that same issue, MacAddict showcases Roland's new FR-7 V-Accordian, a digital squeezebox that "supports 30 different virtual accordion timbres." For only $6,499, you can be the jam master at the next polka rave. (I shudder to think about what this is going to do to my search engine referrals.)


• OTOH, maybe the accordion is destined to be The Next Big Thing, given the cult status of "Napoleon Dynamite." I can hear Bono now: "Uh-one anna two anna three anna catorce!"


• Does this mean that Midland is 95.6% clean? -or- Just how low can that bar be set? – Today's edition of the MRT reports that Midland continues to have the lowest unemployment rate in the state, at 4.4%. My pal Morris Burns, PBPA Executive VP, is quoted as saying that the oil and gas operators in the area are doing their best to deal with the tight job market, and that "they are still 'looking for folks who can pass a drug test.'"


• Memo from Abbye: Lose the Hat – In case you were wondering, "...dogs yawn to reduce their own stress and attempt to calm others. Tip: when a dog displays a fear of some common, nonthreatening stimulus (such as the approach of another dog or someone in a hat), the family members might try looking away and yawning at the onset of the stimulus." [Source]

We now return you to your own regularly scheduled inanities. Seriously, the pleasure was all ours.

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