One job down, one to go...

Ok, I don't plan on quitting my Run-A-Ton job anytime soon, but two Sundays ago (or maybe it was three?), I did finally quit my Crate and Barrel job. And that's why I can spend so much time updating my blog today!

As I've said before I did actually enjoy working at Crate and Barrel - my co-workers were really nice and great to work with (with the exception of the college slacker summer hires, not to be confused with the college student summer hires who were not slackers), on the whole the customers were pleasant and friendly, but most of all, I had a nametag that said "Marsha-Marsha-Marsha" on it! Oh, and the employee discount was nice too.

I'd have to say the big downside is that having to work a weekend day is pretty stinky if you don't have to. But the biggest reason I left was because I wanted to devote more time to Mochi Kids!™ activities, which I have been able to do to a small degree - since I left C&B I've created a couple of new designs as well as some more products. One of the reasons I haven't been able to do more is that I've been working a couple of full-time weeks, filling in for the gal who normally does the accounts payable stuff while she is away on vacation. Ha, I never thought I'd be doing accounting stuff! But it turns out I'm not too bad at it. Go figure.

Mission Impossible.

It's been several weeks already since I gave up on trying to potty train the kitties.

The two main reasons were these:

• Spammy loves to play with water. When the CitiKitty hole got big enough for him to stick his whole upper body through, all he did was play when the water was clean. At least he was smart enough to wait till the water was clean.
• Musubi wanted to drink the water. When the CitiKitty hole got big enough for her to stick her whole upper body through, AND Spammy had already kicked all the water out of the water bowl before playing with the toilet water, Musubi felt she had to resort to drinking the toilet water, and therefore stopped using it to go potty.

Oh well, we tried. I still think that if it were just Musubi, she would be potty trained by now. Mabye we'll try again in a year or two, when Spammy is more mature. For now, we even have had to move their water bowl to sit inside the sink in the half-bathroom, so that when he plays with the water, at least it just goes down the drain and not all over the floor!

Weird On-line Advertising

Ok, so this is one of those things that has probably been going on for some time and I only just noticed it today.

A few minutes ago, I was reading this article about how the International Astronomical Union has finally come to a decision on what defines a planet. (Incidentally, there are going to be 12 celestial bodies recognized as planets - eight "classical" planets and four "plutons".) In the article, I noticed that there are a few words that are text links. Expecting them to link to something related to the article or the particular word in the article, I was surprised to find out that they were nothing more than advertisements! If you click on the link, it takes you to the advertiser's web site. If you simply roll over the link, a little window pops up with a mini-ad from the same advertiser.

I don't know how I feel about this form of advertising. I guess it's easy enough to ignore, which is mainly what I do with on-line advertisements. But imagine reading a whole article in which many of the words are hyperlinked advertisements. That could be really annoying. And then it would be hard to determine which links are just advertisements versus links to information legitimately related to the article. Bluh.

What kind of bug?

So this evening I was making some focaccia bread (sorry, not from scratch - but it was yummy!), and as usual, while the oven was pre-heating, our smoke detector went off.

As soon as I got my hands out of the dough and reasonably clean, I went and shut off all the racket, and then made sure all the downstairs windows were wide open. While opening one of the dining room windows, I noticed a large clump of something on the outside window sill. It was the big huge bug you see here!

So anyway, I don't know what kind of bug this is, and neither does Kenji. If you know what it is, let us know. :)

Update:

Ok, fine, I did a little research and found out that our bug is a cicada. I showed Kenji the bug, and opened the screen so he could get a good look at it. Just as I shut the screen, the cicada tried to fly into our house! It scared the crap out of us and we jumped and screamed like little girlies. Well I did anyway. But I got the screen shut just in time, and Mr. Cicada just kinda bounced off it and flew away.

Amputee

This is a story of a kitty cat amputee.

On Saturday night, Kenji and I decided to move our bed from the room we had been using as our bedroom into the larger room in the upstairs of our house. The larger room was our bedroom at first when we moved in last year, but then we found that the smaller room had a better breeze to keep us cool on hot summer nights. But Kenji's folks very kindly sent us a nice portable air conditioner, which we decided it install in the larger room. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Anyway, as we were rearranging and moving furniture, I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me. What I didn't realize was that little Spammy was right underfoot, and when I shut the door, the tip of his tail got caught! I'm not even sure he knew his tail got caught - he didn't say a word. About five minutes later, I discovered the tip of his tail laying in the floor next to the door. :(

So we went and found Spammy and took a look at his tail - sure enough about an inch of his tail insides were sticking out the end. :(

We took Spammy to the emergency pet clinic right away (it was midnight already), and they said that because the tip of his tail had been "degloved", they would have to amputate about an inch and a half off the end so that his skin can grow back over the bone and avoid getting infected. So we had to leave him overnight and pick him up on Sunday.

Yesterday, after I got out of work, Kenji and brought little Spammy home. We made the mistake of letting him out of his box without isolating him in a room by himself first. As soon as he saw Musubi, he attacked her, screaming and yelling, and flying up the stairs after her. The bandage on his tail flew right off, and the naked little shaved and sutured end of his tail was exposed. I was finally able to capture him and calm him down. We tried to put the bandage back on, but Spammy wasn't having any part of it. So Kenji called the clinic, and they said to bring Spammy back and they would rebandage him.

I took Spammy back to the doctor by myself. Meanwhile, Kenji cleared all the stuff out of our smallest room so Spammy could live in there overnight and not climb on somthing and hurt himself. When I brought Spammy home, he was a lot more calm, but he was still very upset about having a club-like bandage on his tail, and even more angry about having a big clumsy cone stuck around his neck. He was still groggy from the sleepy drugs they gave him at the clinic, but as the effects of those subsided, Spammy's personality returned to his normal sweet self. He began to purr and roll around and ask to play with his stick.

Spammy's allowed to go out of his room now, but little Musubi is still traumatized by his attack yesterday, and wants nothing to do with him. Fortunately, she is not an aggressive kitty - she just doesn't approach him; and when he approaches her, she just hisses, growls, gets puff-tail, and backs away. This picture was taken about a month ago, when Spammy discovered that he really loves watermelon. I didn't want anyone to have to remember a sad Spammy with all his bandages and his cone-collar, so I thought I'd share this happy picture of him too. :)

So if you have pets, be extra careful to make sure they are not underfoot when you don't expect it. And get pet insurance! We were thinking of dropping the insurance we got for Spammy and Musubi, but now I'm glad we didn't. Between the emergency room visit, the surgery, the medications, and the follow up visits, this little incident would cost probably around $1,500! With the insurance, we should be covered for at least $1,000 of it, so neeless to say, we are very very glad we have it!

Sewing Stuff

A couple months ago, Kenji bought some short-sleeved button-down shirts for real cheap at Steve and Barry's, or whatever that store is called. Problem was that the shirts were way too long. So yesterday Kenji decided he was going to shorten them, so he asked me to show him how to use the sewing machine. This was my mom's machine, not my grandma's, a picture of which is in this blog post.

So now Kenji knows how to load up a bobbin full of thread, thread the machine and make it go! He also got to sort of learn how to make a hem. Probably not a proper hem, since I never really learned how t make one, but it was good enough for his purposes.

His Name is Glen Miyashiro

This morning I mentioned to Kenji that the next time we get cats we should name them Glen Miyashiro and Lori Yamaguchi. Frank Delima fans will understand. But we like our kitties and don't want to get new ones, so instead I decided to give Spammy and Musubi nicknames. So now i call Spammy Glen Miyashiro and Musubi is Lori Yamaguchi. :)

Fireworks Over NYC

Ten years ago today, I watched the fireworks shows over New York City. I had an unusual vantage point though - I was over the fireworks looking down on them from a plane!

Ten years ago today is the day I flew out of JFK Airport to go to Kenya for three and a half weeks. It was my first time outside of the United States, with the exception of visiting Quebec four summers earlier. On our way to Kenya, our plane stopped over in Saudi Arabia and I had to spend about eight hours in the airport waiting to connect to Kenya.

During my stay in Kenya, TWA Flight 800 was shot(?) out of the sky (did they ever come to a conclusion of what really happened to flight 800?), and a bomb was set off at the Summer Olympics. I spent a few hours in the United States Embassy in Nairobi helping someone we stayed with obtain a student visa. Two years later that building was bombed.

I got to see all kinds of free-roaming animals that you normally only get to see in a zoo, or maybe even never at all - lions, cheetahs, zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest, crocodile, hippopotamus, impala, dik dik, vultures, secretary birds, plus a whole bunch of others that I have written down someplace in a journal I had with me while I was there.

Dancing with the Ugly Dolls

This week I attended the Licensing International 2006 trade show at the Javits Center in NYC. The reason I went was to learn more about the licensing industry and how it applies to Mochi Kids!™, see what other artists are doing regarding licensing out their artwork and/or characters, figure out what next steps I need to take, and meet people who might be able to help me take those next steps.

But most importantly, I went to dance with the Ugly Dolls! I think the Ugly Dolls are hilariously cute in their ugly sort of way. It happened that their trade show booth was right next to Sonic the Hedgehog's booth. And it just so happened that I walked by Sonic the Hedgehog's booth right when the folks at Sega were celebrating Sonic's 15th anniversary. They had a little band playing music, all the Sega people were wearing blue hair in honor of Sonic, and they had a giant birthday cake that they cut up and served to all the passers-by, of which I was one. The Ugly Dolls came over from their booth to dance with Sonic and celebrate with him. So of course I had to get a picture of me dancing with them too!

I also got to play with some other fun characters, like Pikachu and Miffy! But I don't know where my Miffy picture went. When I find it, I'll post it here. There are also some other pictures of me posing with random characters and monster trucks, but my friend, Robert, took those pictures on his camera so someday hopefully he'll get around to sending them to me.

So anyway, some things I learned while I was at the trade show... Well, I already knew this one - which is that I have a whole lot of work to do to really get started. But the benefit of attending Licensing International is that I have more concrete ideas of what some of those things are.

For example, I need to beef up my portfolio of designs, including increasing the number of cetral images I have. And to go with each central image, creating background graphics and patterns, icons and border images. This is necessary to make it easier for licensees to apply my images to different types of products - some products, like t-shirts, lend themselves nicely to central images. While others, like bed linens, work better with a repeating pattern of images.

I'll also need an intellectual property attorney, and I'm pretty certain that I will want to work with an agent, to assist me with developing the brand and connecting and negotiating with potential licensees.

And I also want to add depth to the Mochi Kids! characters. Since I don't have the expertise to create animations, or the funding to hire someone who does, I'm going to start the kids off with their own little blogs. Of course the challenge I'm running into here is thinking of things the kids can post about. Unless I'm just babbling off the top of my head like I do here, I do find it a challenge to write things that require more direction. Plus the other thing they told us at one of the seminars that pertained to using blogs and other forms of digital media for marketing was if you are using a blog to promote your character, buisness, etc., "post often, post short, and always post a picture!" So I gotta try to keep the kids' babblings to a minimum, and make pictures for them to post. And my goal to start with is have the kids post at least once a week.

What I need is more time! So yes, I'll be quitting one of my jobs in the not-so-distant future... I'd say by the end of August.

Surprise Trip to Philly!

This weekend instead of the usual grind of spending my Sunday working at Crate & Barrel, I took the whole weekend off to accommodate a friend who was coming into town to stay with us. But then at the last minute we learned that my friend was not going to stay with us after all. That meant road trip!!!

We decided to go to Philly, because I'd never spent any time there before (we drove through Philly on I-95 a couple months ago when we went to Maryland, but that doesn't count), and plus it's really not that far away - only a couple hours drive. So we got up bright and early Saturday morning, had breakfast along the way at a diner near the Menlo Park Mall down by Woodbridge, New Jersey, and made it to Philly well before noon.

On our way into downtown Philly, we took this photo of the traffic light. It just worked out that City Hall happened to be right behind it.

Since it was so last minute, we didn't have much of a selection of bed and breakfasts to choose from. We ended up staying at The Inn Between, which is in the University City district of Philly. The inn is one half of a pretty amazing duplex built in 1903. The owner has only been operating it as an inn since January, so I think she has quite a ways to go in getting her business up to the standard of the other B&Bs we've stayed at before. It really just felt like staying over night at some old house. The furniture was a mish-mash of styles that looked fresh from local yard sales and flea markets. Cleanliness would not pass the quintessential mother-in-law test. And breakfast was ho-hum - nothing I wouldn't be able to fix for myself. The innkeeper was pleasant to talk to though, and she had a lot of good info about things to do in Philly to impart verbally; however, she didn't have many of the free brochures or maps available that many B&Bs offer for the convenience of their guests.

One of our main objectives for this trip was to catch the Phillies' game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. So our first order of business upon arriving in Philly was go to the stadium and pick up a pair of tickets. Who knew I would fall victim to the giant black and white ghost of former Phillies pitching great Robin Roberts. I don't think he actually meant to smack me on the head, but he really oughtta watch out during his follow-through.

After securing our tickets for the Saturday night game, we headed back into the heart of Philly in our terribly hot, un-air-conditioned car. We bit the bullet and spent $7 on flat-fee parking in a garage near Chestnut Street and 7th. We were glad to have the car parked in the shade instead of on the street where it could just bake and bake and bake some more. So that we ourselves wouldn't keep baking while exploring central Philly, we ducked into a museum where Kenji met up with the venerable Ben Franklin (and some air conditioning).

I have to say that Ben's aged pretty well for a 300 year old guy, don't you think?

Next we tried to visit Independence Hall, but not unexpectedly, all tickets for entry were already sold out for the day. But that didn't stop us from wandering around and peeking into free places like the Quaker Meeting House and the Independence Hall/Liberety Bell Visitors Center, where Kenji was able to get his face on the $10 bill!

We were too cheap to go or do anything that might cost more than $20 apiece, but before we knew it we were hungry. Of course you know what that means...

...Philly Chesesteaks!

Yes, we made the trek all the way from central Philly down the Federal and 9th where the famous Pat's and Geno's cheesesteak sandwich rivalry happens all day, every day (and night).


This of course is Geno's, the flamboyant cheesesteak place. It was for that reason we decided to just take a picture of Geno's, and actualy eat at Pat's, a more simple and down-to-earth cheesesteak place, instead. Pat's doesn't use any bright colors or Hummers to attract it's customers. However their ordering process is a bit like the Sienfeld Soup Nazi. Very stressful.

After lunch, we wandered back to our car and made our way over to the Inn Between to get ourselves checked in and take a nap before going to the game. I forgot to bring my camera to the game, so sorry no pictures of Philly's version of the green monster for you.

Sunday morning we followed the advice of our hostess, and made a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On Sundays it's pay-what-you-want-to-pay day. So we paid a little bit, but not anywhere near what the normal entrance fee is. When Mochi Kids!™ takes off someday we'll go back and overpay
instead.

The museum of course is huge and even though we spent four hours there, we still didn't see everything. I can never remember the names of artists or works that I see when I go to museums, so suffice it to say there's a lot of cool stuff there. Besides, I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone would I?

Naturally we had some photo fun outside the museum, with me trying to bring some shady releif to this statue:

And I took this picture of Kenji because he likes the color blue, and the top of the buiding behind him has blue behind all the figures, but you can't really tell from the photo:

And wherever there is a giant spider, naturally I want to be there:

After we finished with the museum, it was time for another cheesesteak. This time we drove down the south Philly to check out a place called Tony Luke's, recommended to us by my friend, Steven, who lived in Philly for a few years some time ago. I thought the bread was better than the bread at Pat's, but the meat was a whole lot more greasy. Sorry to say, but my favorite cheesesteak ever so far I got in Hilo, Hawaii of all places. I don't know why that cheesesteak tasted so darn good that time... maybe I was just super-hungry? I don't know. I would tell you what the the name of the place is but unfortunately I can't remember. I think it's in the little strip mall that is kinda-sorta near the mall in Hilo that is on the road that you take to go visit the volcanos.

Oh well, anyway I guess I'll conclude this post by saying that although the cheesesteaks didn't live up to my very elevated expectations, I though Philly was a wonderful city. It was so easy to get around and figure out how to go places that I feel like I sort of know the city already. I also enjoyed that they have a lot of buildings with crazy murals painted on the sides... two of which we managed to snap photos of here:

There was another really cool mural of some of Philly's famous musicians/singers that should be here as well. After all, it was on the wall of the building facing me while I was eating my Pat's cheesesteak. I must have been so hungry I forgot to take a picture. Oh well.

Busy-Busy

I haven't had much time lately to update my blog. Too busy working six days a week at two jobs, and then also trying to finish up Mochi Kids™ in time for the Licensing International trade show that is coming up in a couple of weeks. Anyway, just thought I'd mention that before heading off to sleep. Aloha!

Job Perks

I just started a new part-time job. It's with a company called The Run-A-Ton Group, Inc. Among the several brands they have, Wholly Wholesome is the one I do the most work on as their Marketing Assistant. Tonight I got to bring home one of their bake at home cherry pies. I baked it, and it's really yummy. :) Sometimes we also have to bake cookies for donating to various charity and community events. The rule is if you bake cookies for an event, you have to bake some extra for the staff. I think that's a pretty cool job perk.

At Crate and Barrel, of course there is the employee discount on their merchandise. Also, if I make a single sale of $1K or more, I get to pick out one item valued up to $10 to take home. This perk is a perk offered by our particular store, rather than a corporate-wide perk.

When I worked for HTDC, I think my favorite perk was getting to ride in a black hawk helicopter that one time. That was way cool. Then I also got to meet ambassadors and other dignitaries from small southeast Asian nations. The vacation days weren't bad either. Plus working in Manoa was nice. But most of all the people were super cool.

Olives Olives

I forgot to blog about the olives I bought on our last two trips to Wegman's. A few weeks ago, I picked up some Maddalena olives, and last week French Picholine.

The two varieties are very different from one another. Maddalena olives are large and dark purple, and the meat almost falls off the stone, which makes it easy to eat. The flavor is ok but not as fun as the other olives I've tried so far.

Now that I know that Spammy likes olives, I gave a little piece of the Maddalenas to him. He sniffed it a whole bunch, licked it once or twice, and then tried to bury it with his paw. I think the sweeping paw motion is the kitty cat version of two thumbs down.

Picholine olives are small and green. Their meat doesn't fall off the stone, but it's by no means difficult to eat. Both Spammy and I agree that Picholine olives are the yummiest we've tried so far. No sweeping paw for Picholine. Perhaps the kitty cat version of two thumbs up is when Spammy tries to climb up my leg to get an olive from me. :)

From the Martyzone: Who's on First Zone

I haven't even read the rest of the newsletter yet, but I got a kick out of this:

After having dug to a depth of 1,000 meters last year, Korean scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1,500 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors had a telephone network all those centuries ago.

Not to be outdone. Chinese scientists dug to a depth of 2,000 meters and shortly after headlines in Chinese newspapers read: "Chinese archeologists have found traces of 3,000-year-old fiber-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Koreans."

One week later, Portuguese newspapers reported the following: "After digging as deep as 3,000 meters in a Lisbon marketplace, scientists had found absolutely nothing. They therefore concluded, that 4,500 years ago, the Portuguese were already using wireless technology."

Coffee Table Anniversary

Today is our Coffee Table Anniversary. I'm not sure what other couples call their 2nd anniversary, but ours is Coffee Table. That's because we finally bought ourselves a coffee table - the one we've been eyeing at Crate and Barrel from before I started working there. Indeed, it is one of the reasons I decided to work there.

Oh, and did I mention that I somehow won part time employee of the quarter this quarter? I'm thinking it must be because they give that award out to employees in alphabetical order by first name. The last part time employee to win it was Manahz (I think that's how she spells her name). Either that or it's because I proudly wear the "Marsha Marsha Marsha" name tag they made for me. ;)

Right so getting back to our anniversary... Kenji took us out for nice dinner at Chart House, right on the Hudson river across from Manhattan. As you can see, we had a very nice view of the city.

Dinner was very nice. The only thing detracting from the experience was the couple that was seated right next to us - the woman suffers from a terrible condition - diarrhea of the mouth! But the food was really yummy. For starters, we shared the seared ahi; Kenji had the fillet mignon for his main course and I had coconut crunchy shrimp; and for dessert we shared hot lava chocolate cake, covered with vanilla ice cream and bits of Heath Bar candy. Yum!

Oh yeah, so anyway I just thought I'd add that photo of us from two years ago today.

Gone to a Go-Go

I managed to get some free tickets for Kenji and I to go see the Go-Go's perform at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ. We just got home - it was a lot of fun! Well, the Go-Go's performing was fun - of course they played all kinds of songs that I haven't heard in twenty years. I'd listen to them again right now, except all those songs are on vinyl, hiding in the top of my old closet in Massachusetts. Yep, so even if they wern't in Massachusetts, I still wouldn't be able to listen to them. And no I'm not about to go download them all. Why not? Because I'm lazy. And cheap.

The part of the concert that was not fun was...

The opening act! Some loud whiny acoustic guitar strumming chick named April something or other. She was so depressing to listen to. She made me just want to plug my ears. I would gladly have kept listening to recorded 80s music instead of her, thank you very much.

But the Go-Go's rock! You'd never know they are middle aged, except they do look a little like really cool moms rockin' out on stage.

Harriman Hike

Ok so it took a while for me to post about it, but a couple Saturdays ago, Kenji and I went hiking with some of the same folks I've gone hiking with before, and also some new people. This time we went to Harriman State Park, which is just across the border in New York.

Our friend and hike leader, Jason, says that Harriman has many different trails - the one he chose for us that day was in the Seven Hills Area of the park. I didn't count how many hills we went up and down, but it was hilly. And we were all complaining about it by the time we were halfway through the hike. ;) I'm not sure we ever really officially got onto the seven hills trail, as we never followed the path indicated by the arrow painted on the rock in this photo of Kenji.

As proof that we did manage to climb at least one hill along our way, here's a picture I took of the distant and hazy NYC skyline:

Here's the whole group of us, after we finished lunch.

We met some cool new people on this hike. In particular was Nancy, who when she was twenty-six, decided to fly off to Ghana just for the heck of it and see what she could do to help out over there. She said when she got off the plane, one of the first things she did was go to a bar and talk to some of the people who happened to be there. They ended up showing her around some. Since then, she's gone back every summer. She even started a rural school, which she helps to fund through a non-profit organization she founded, Global Youth Empowerment.

Mission Impossible, Day I Dunno

I could go back and figure out how many days it's been since I started my kitty-cat potty-training project, but I'm too lazy.

Today I learned I must have at least six people who have read at least parts of my blog, because I got a message from peace chik'n (peace chik'n actually posted a comment on my blog, which automatically emails me a copy of the comment) saying that s/he'd like an update on how Spammy is doing with the CitiKitty.

Well, he's doing about the same as he has been, which is to say that he's pretty good with doing #1 on the potty but not #2. A couple of weeks ago I witnessed him actually doing #2 on the potty, so I know there is hope. However, I think I may have stymied the process a bit because I had to change the brand of litter we were using. Well, to tell the truth, I didn't have to change it... but the store I usually go to for it was all out of flushable litter altogether, and the other store I tried didn't have our kind, but at least they had some.

So anyway, here's an obvious tip to you CitiKitty users out there - don't change kitty's litter while you are in potty training process. Spammy still uses it, but I can tell he's not as comfortable with it. Musubi, of course, is not phased by it in the least. I'm still considering whether to go back to the old brand, or still give the new brand a chance for Spammy to get used to. I'm also considering abandoning the whole potty training process, but dammit, I'm determined! Especially since I know Musubi would be totally trained by now if we weren't waiting for Spammy!

From the Martyzone: Self-medicating sheep

My favorite from this week's newsletter from Marty Plotnick:

Self-medicating sheep shake off the 'stupid' label

Maybe in another few centuries sheep will be starting their own pharma companies. ;)

Laundromat

Our king-size down comforter needed a cleaning, so this morning I took it over to Laundryland... not the closest laundromat to our house, but much better than any of the others I've either seen or used already.

The one laundromat we used a few months ago the last time we washed the comforter was very noisy and uncomfortable, and the change machine short-changed us by 50 cents! When I complained to the staff, all they did was show me that the change machine worked fine for them. Anyway they can take their junk customer service and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Laundryland is much nicer. First of all, they have ample parking right out front. And they at least make an attempt to make going to the laundromat a pleasant experience. Nothing frilly like a cafe or anything like that. But on the walls they have painted murals - on one side is the African bush with lions, zebra, elephants, giraffe, impala and cheetahs. On the other wall is an underwater scape with a SCUBA diver swimming amongst bright-colored tropical fish, whales, dolphins, shark, turtles, jelly fish and a lively coral reef. Artificial potted plants hang from the ceiling alongside cardboard decorations leftover from Christmas. There is also a multitude of large televisions suspended from the ceiling to entertain patrons.

Sitting here almost captive (I suppose I could go do something somewhere else, but it's not the best neighborhood to go wandering around in, and I don't feel like driving anywhere), reminds me of the first time I ever was called up for jury duty, when I was held captive in a room for several hours with a television on that I really didn't feel like watching. The shows that are on at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning are so terrible. Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, Judge so-and-so... they always show just about what is the worst and certainly most idiotic side of human beings. I don't say worst, because I suppose the talk show guests could be killing or maiming each other instead of just screaming at and verbally abusing each other.

Yet, I have a hard time not looking. It's like a car accident on the highway... you almost have to look. These kind of shows are so gawd-awful yet they persist. I mean, that time I had jury duty and had to watch (or at a minimum hear) these shows was probably ten to twelve years ago, yet the same shows are still on!

It must be because the networks either have no other content they can use fill up the late morning hours with, and the people who watch these shows do so because seeing such idiots on TV makes them feel better for a while. I mean, who couldn't feel like they have some redeeming qualities when comparing him or herself to a grandmother who pimps our her granddaughter and then goes on Jerry Springer?