There's always YouTube

I skipped the Obama speech. Instead I watched Unfaithful with Diane Lane on Lifetime, where she cheats on Richard Gere with an impressively stereotypical French guy and manslaughter most foul is committed with a snowglobe.

Good word

"Who knew that Alaska even had a governor?"

-- David Blaska

Can you hear me

Even though Doris Lessing's shattering first novel The Grass is Singing is set in 1940s South Africa, I can't help imagining that in this paperback edition's cover illustration, Mary Turner is talking on her cell phone.

Burns in the news

"One guest, Kenneth Burns, brought in a lunchbox filled with 45s, half of it disco. It inspired a group jam of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen.'"

I was just sorry we didn't have time to listen to my Charlie Daniels 45s. Read all about it here.

That old thing?

Disregard any suggestion you read on the New York Times' web site that your crappy rabbit-ears antenna won't work after the digital television transition in February. It will. But you may need a convertor to plug it into. It's surprising that the Times is still getting this wrong, with the transition just months away. But there's been a lot of confusion.