UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

I’ve just set up a brand new page of RSS feeds. Now you have a choice of not just the plain vanilla (no, make that a “kamikaze” Mr. Misty* from Dairy Queen) feed with everything in it, but a separate feed for every category of Blather in the known universe (if the extent of the “known universe” is this website).

Check it out!

*I’m no longer the Dairy Queen aficionado I was in my youth, but there’s one a few blocks from my house and we occasionally take the kids there in the summer. I’ve noticed this strange thing lately on the menu called “Arctic Rush.” Never having been a Mr. Misty fan myself, I didn’t notice it had disappeared from the menu, and apparently it has just been renamed. Personally I think “Arctic Rush” sounds lame… something an inferior competitor would come with. Burger King, perhaps, or McDonalds. Except then it would be the “Arctic McRush with Cheese” or something.

Just kidding. It’s just an optical illusion from this photo I took yesterday on an incline on the East River Road on the University of Minnesota campus.

This interactive tool from the LA Times reveals the daunting challenge Barack Obama faces in this election. It lets you paint the electoral map based on which candidate you expect to win each state. Remember, the popular vote doesn’t matter: in the end, 270 electoral votes are the only thing that can make someone president.

This tool defaults to Republican, Democrat, or toss-up, based upon the 2004 election results. Any state with a margin of victory of 8 points or less in that year is considered a toss-up. This is somewhat disingenuous, as it doesn’t take into account current trends and polls (for what they’re worth). But it’s as good a place to start as any and it seems to line up pretty well with what we’re seeing in the polls (for what they’re worth) this year.

I took the challenge, and went with my best guesses for those toss-up states: I painted Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Delaware “Democrat Blue” and Nevada, Missouri and Florida “Republican Red.” That left three states in play: Colorado, New Mexico, and Ohio. Ohio is a 20-vote powder keg in this election. If McCain wins Ohio (along with the other three states that I think are fairly safe for him), and Obama prevails in the entire, aggressive slate of ten states I assigned to him, Obama still must win Colorado and New Mexico to (just barely) win the election. Ouch.

The blogosphere has been all… atwitter (oh, I went there [“there” being a new level of punster stupidity])… over the past week or so concerning the inexplicably terrible Microsoft Seinfeld commercials. And now, abruptly, they’ve killed off those ads and switched to a new campaign, entitled “I’m a PC,” intended to change the image of what a PC (and, by extension, a PC user) looks like. Sorry, Mac-using John Hodgman, you’re no longer the human embodiment of lowered technological expectations.

But a mystery remains… what the hell was the deal with Those Stupid Seinfeld Ads™? And did Microsoft really intend to kill them off so soon? To the latter question, I’d have to say “Probably not.” But I think I may at last have discovered an answer to the former.

I saw one of the new ads last night during The Daily Show and I thought it was, surprisingly, pretty good. But it makes no sense that they did Those Stupid Seinfeld Ads™ and then jumped to this.

The only explanation I can muster is that Those Stupid Seinfeld Ads™ were like a palate cleanser. When you go to the World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta (as I did a few times when I lived there), there’s a room where they have fountain dispensers of every flavor of soda the company produces worldwide. There’s one called Beverly that they produce only for the Italian market that is clear and extremely bitter tasting. And it’s used solely to cleanse the palate when you’re doing wine tastings and such (at least, that’s how I understand it). It’s godawful, but that’s the point.

Maybe that’s the case with Those Stupid Seinfeld Ads™ too.

Addendum/Full Disclosure: After I wrote this I lingered a while on The Daily Show website, and got lured into an “I’m a PC” banner ad at the top… which lured me to Microsoft’s ad site… which lured me into finally watching the second Seinfeld ad, “The Family.” And I actually found moments of it kind of funny. I even (*gasp*) laughed out loud a couple of times. Oops. But still… there’s an extremely feeble thread woven into the very last moments of it, tenuously tying it to the new “I’m a PC” ads (Seinfeld’s mention of Gates having connected over a billion people). So they’ve almost managed to present this as a cohesive marketing strategy. Almost.

A package was waiting for me in the mailbox today. It was from someone I don’t know — at least, someone I don’t think I know (and if I do know you, sorry!) — sent from a city I’ve never visited. I opened it with some trepidation, though the anthrax scare and my own quasi-cyberstalker are distant enough memories that I wasn’t too worried. I assumed it was my Obama car magnet, though I wondered a bit why they’d roll up the magnet to send in a roughly 3×3×8 inch box, instead of just a flat envelope.

I was totally, utterly shocked when I opened it and discovered what was actually inside. It was none other than — well, OK, the surprise has already been ruined by the accompanying photo — a Beep for Breakfast cup, just like the one I remembered my grandfather keeping on the edge of his basement sink, so many years ago!

About three months ago, I put out a call to help me locate just such a cup, but I had mostly put it out of my mind, and certainly never expected one to randomly appear at my doorstep one day!

I’m still a bit perplexed as to how the sender obtained my address. (Well, not too perplexed, because I know how I’d have gone about finding it, and it probably wouldn’t have been terribly difficult.) But I’m glad they did!

To the sender (whose identity I will keep to myself), thanks!