I walked into the men’s room at my office building today to find that the last person in the room had strategically placed yesterday’s Parade magazine on the floor. Underneath the urinal. To catch the drips.

If you didn’t see yesterday’s Parade – the Father’s Day issue – here’s the cover photo (copyright 2009, Parade):

Yes, folks, a photograph of the President of the United States and his two adolescent daughters; left underneath a urinal in an expression of some dittohead’s disdain. This from the same people who squalled incessantly about how much they wanted Clinton impeached for “disrespecting” the office of the President.

Welcome to Texas, land of idiots.

I don’t know about you, but wherever I turn these days I see “peer-to-peer forums” and “online communities” and “open innovation.” Well, sure, they’re not the same things, and yet they do share some common characteristics; central to which is the theory that if one asks a question of everyone in the world, someone out there is bound to have the right answer. The buzz a few months ago was open innovation (see InnoCentive); wherein a multidisciplinary cadre of bright minds would incubate solutions to problems in completely different fields. It sounds fascinating – and, at least according to the company’s PR, it works.

That’s not what I want to discuss, however – I want to discuss the poor man’s version, so-called “peer-to-peer” forums. More than anything else, they’re a sneaky way for a company to abrogate its responibilities for customer support by passing it off to its fan base. If you’ve used Intuit’s TurboTax product in recent years, you’ve seen such a forum – “ask the community,” it’s called. The great unwashed form a social network and lend their expertise – usually garnering “ego-boo points” for answering many questions; sometimes getting additional points when their answer is chosen as the “best” by the person who posed the question (a puzzling thought – but more on that later).  So what’s wrong? you wonder…

Have a look at a few such forums of various flavors:

eHow.com – if you look through my back list, you can see it’s not my favorite site. People “earn” money for advice, and the more advice one gives, the more money one makes. It’s also social, with little mini-forums and friend lists and the like; but the core is the advice pieces. Not to put too great a spin on it, but a lot of the advice is bogus or simply paraphrased from another source (what some might call plagiarism). After all, unless one is a genius, eventually one should run out of advice topics, right? but some eHowians never seem to stop.

Yahoo answers – one of those places where people vote on what’s a good answer and the person who asked the question gets to choose the best answer. Excu-u-u-se me! how can someone possibly know what’s the best answer if he had to ask the question in the first place? Overrun with trolls as well, with most questions drawing as many smart-ass replies as serious posts.

Adobe Software Forums – one software company that’s decided to outsource a chunk of its support to its users. You have a fifty-fifty chance of getting a good answer here; about par for the course. Try asking twice from two different accounts to see how the answers vary. Be careful to say nothing whatsoever negative about the company or its products, or you will suffer the flames of Adobe Hell – one has to be strange to like Adobe, and these people show it.

TurboTax Ask the Community – do you really want to risk an IRS audit based on the answers you get from some guy sitting at home downloading porn in one window while he answers tax questions in another? I’m no tax expert, but a third of the answers I’ve seen here are wrong – or at least off-topic – and most of the rest simply cut and paste the relevant IRS forms.

AT&T Uverse Peer-to-Peer Forums – this bunch puts the “flame” in flaming assholes. Never, never, never suggest that their favorite product is anything less than perfect; for if you do you’ll need asbestos underwear. You’re not going to get any answers here, either, so don’t bother.

Social Networking is supposed to be the next big thing, and that’s what this is all about – bringing eyes to a site so that one can sell more software, advertising, and the like. However, these networks spawn numerous problems, among which are

• an “us against them” mentality that creates and reinforces insular attitudes, and
• competition to become more “expert” in whatever the topic, all too often demonstrating the Peter Principle

Social Networking may be fine when it comes to flirting and sharing one’s personal hopes and tragedies, but these five examples demonstrate that once you start asking people to be smart, it’s at best hit-ot-miss. More often, it’s just plain “miss.”

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A local fraternity held a pretty apropos event over the weekend: the boys marked part of their house’s lawn into a grid, rented themselves some portable temporary fence, and imported a cow (well, looking the photograph, a youngish steer). The boys of Alpha Epsilon Pi sold rights to the squares to other Hellenic types and then eagerly awaited the inevitable results of “Jori’s” morning grazing: the cash pot would go to the owner of the first square splattered with bovine doodoo. Oh, and some of the money raised was for charity – though probably not the ASPCA.

Problem being that, apparently, none of those suburban Chicago frat boys knew beans about fencing. You guessed it, Jori got loose and then led a dozen or so of the bros on a merry chase through the streets of Champaign, Illinois. There’s been no word on whether anyone was singing the theme song from “Rawhide” at the time, however. Keep movin’, movin’, movin’ / Though they’re disapprovin’ / Keep them dogies movin’ / Rawhide!

The “shit on a square” idea’s nothing new, of course: Ginny’s Longhorn Saloon in Austin has held “Chicken Shit Sunday” for years, though to my knowledge the chicken’s never gotten loose and terrorized coeds in the streets around the UT campus. And the local chapter of AEPi admits they got the idea from a brother chapter in Maryland.

However, given that University of Illinois is the state’s Agriculture school, one would think that at least one of the brothers would know someone who could control the rather smallish bovine, not to mention that a “Daily Illini” staff writer might know someone who could tell the difference between male and female cattle – especially from the rear. Calling the animal in the photograph a “her” is udderly ridiculous, believe you me…

If the brothers want to stage their event again next year, they may want to strategize a change in format. Instead of cattle, perhaps the fraternity should hand a freshman member a fifth of Jägermeister and pay out on the site of first Technicolor yawn. Or maybe just pass one of the locals some bottled water and pay out for the square where he chucks the empty. There’s gotta be something better than bull shit.

Visited the family over the weekend… for anyone who’s even a little bit left of Atilla the Hun, getting into a political discussion around my sister’s kitchen table is like Daniel going into the lion’s den: Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, and Son-in-law (loveable people all, to be sure) are steeped in the Fox News/AM Radio Call-in Show mindset. Yep, the subject of middle names arose at one point. By now I’m sure everyone’s received the email alert that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein (in fact, he’s Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.). Having that… islamofascist… errr… Moslem… errr… furrin middle name, apparently, means that Obama’s unfit to be POTUS. Wow: such poitical insight…

Sure hope someone can point out the line in the U. S. Constitution that contains the list of acceptable middle names for Presidents. Must be somewhere near that section about minimum age and citizenship, right? Clearly, those who find “Hussein” objectionable must have a list in mind. Surely it includes Wilson, Walker, and Milhous. Bet Dale’s on there, while neither Diane nor Jefferson is – but you have to wonder about Sidney.

Hmmm… gotta wonder: shouldn’t we choose a president on the basis of qualifications? positions? views on domestic and international issues? ability to lead?

Somehow I don’t think that middle names should rank too high on the list of criteria: kindly correct me if I’m wrong – and point me to the approved list, OK?

I’ll admit it: I’m pretty much a grump when it comes to English usage. No descriptivist “singular they” for me; and you’ll not hear me say, “of course it’s a word: you just used it!” I’m a great deal closer to the prescriptive end of the usage spectrum than the people who would allow such grammatical sins.

As do most people who observe the ebb and flow of grammar, I occasionally find myself peevish over the rise of an oddball (that’s my gentle way of saying “incorrect”) usage. For today, the pet peeve I’ve heard one time too many is a little grammatical hiccough I like to call “the Weatherman’s Possessive.” I’m sure you’ve heard it uttered; it seems that every weatherperson on every television (and radio) station I’ve tuned to in the past few years has used it. He or she will be describing an approaching thunderstorm and, in dulcet broadcaster tones, aver, “For you folks in Washington, there’s a powerful cell passing to your south.” You didn’t get it, did you? Let’s try it again: “Springfield and Decatur, the front is just now approaching from your north.”

What’s wrong with that, you wonder? Well, it’s quite simple: a direction cannot be your (or my) north, south, east, or west; for the compass points are defined relative to the Earth’s poles (and magnetic field). No matter which way a person turns, North will always be in the same direction. The compass directions are absolute directions. An orientation that depends on which way a person is facing – left, right, front, rear – is a relative direction.

Doesn’t make sense? Well, there are two other absolute directions; the directions defined relative to the Earth’s gravity. Does “The bird is flying in your up,” or “There’s a cave in your down,” grate on your ears? Because those two usages are every bit as logical as “There’s a minimart to your south.”

Offhand, I don’t know why television weatherfolk use the construction; “to your south” is the same number of syllables as “south of you.” I guess they’re just semiliterate.

Such is life; but at least I feel a little better now.

“Exuberance” does mean “inexperience,” right? It doesn’t? Well, you could’ve fooled me…

A University of Illinois student opinion columnist writing in the school rag says of John McCain, “…I’m going to say something that, as far as I can tell, no one else has said: a McCain presidency will be conservative enough for most conservatives, and yet will please many a moderate and even a few Democrats.”

At least he didn’t say, “…a few members of the Democrat Party…”

The guy’s a sophomore (you might want to look that word up: it essentially means “wise fool”), which I reckon means he’s probably not even old enough to drink – nineteen, maybe twenty at the outside. So when George W. Bush first ran for the Presidency in 2000, he was certainly more concerned with getting a peek at the next-door neighbor’s sixteen-year-old daughter in a bikini than in who’d end up in the White House. Well, kid, here’s some news for you: the Republican Presidential candidates included such worthies as Orrin Hatch, Liddy Dole, McCain, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer; in addition to the now-President Bush. Some of those names may not be familiar to you, but most of them are politically so far to the right that they might well be coming around from the left – Hatch, Buchanan, Keyes, and Bauer, for sure. In that company, George W. Bush looked pretty damned moderate himself. One could’ve said of him – in fact, several did say of the current President – that his presidency might “…please many a moderate and even a few Democrats.”

Damn, but would the speaker have ever been wrong!

After McCain was Roved out of the race with Karl’s push-polls in South Carolina, the Republican nomination was all over but the shouting. That meant that the presumptive nominee had plenty of time to cozy up to the pack of nut-jobs running the religious right (starting at Bob Jones University, in fact), letting them know that he would be pleased to carry their standard – after the general election, when it was safe to “come out of the closet.” Like they say, you run to the right in the primaries and run to the middle in the general election – and then do what you damned well please once you’ve been elected, ‘cepting you gotta dance with the one what brung you.

And he’s been dancing with the RRs ever since, from Supreme-Court nominations to stem-cell research to “faith-based” programs to abortion. And that’s exactly what John McCain would do, too: he’d have to sell his soul to a voting bloc that’s about half of the voters needed to win. No way he could win without them!

But, of course, that’s an observation that’s based on experience: eight years of George W. Bush in the White House kowtowing to Colorado Springs – an eight years that this college sophomore probably spent mostly trying to download porn, get drunk on cherry vodka and root beer, and score with a cheerleader. Now do you know why they say experience is the best teacher?

At the very least, the writer could have taken a minute or two to learn that a “viola” is a stringed instrument…

The Ms was asking me about traditions the other night… and it got me to thinking (which could be dangerous). We do have some family traditions of our own: we play the same cassette (recorded off of KBCO in Boulder back in 1983) every year while we decorate the Christmas tree; and every year we buy each other a kitchen gadget and a special ornament for Christmas gifts. We name all of our cars. We at least try to split up the kitchen chores: if one of us cooks, the other washes dishes. I guess you’d call those traditions – and it that’s the case, I really like the idea, since it’s a part of our history.

So why is it that when I run across a group tradition that it so often leaves me cold?

I’m thinking about a couple here. First, there’s the Texas A&M bonfire, which killed twelve people before it was “officially” ended in 1999. Wikipedia, though, says that there’s still a bonfire, only it’s not officially sanctioned. We’re not talking about a big pile of logs here, people, we’re talking about “wedding cakes” made of telephone poles that, at one time, reached 109 feet in height. Guess it’s “an Aggie” thing (and no, I’m not a “tea-sip”).

The Second group tradition that leaves me cold is Chief Illiniwek, erstwhile mascot of the University of Illinois – the closest educational institution to my house. There had been arguments about the Chief since the 70s before it was finally officially retired by the university in 2007. The tradition dated back to 1926, and took two forms. First was a stylized image of an Indian chief wearing a giant feather headdress. The second was a mascot who danced at halftime of varsity sports events, wearing the school’s official “regalia.” That the “regalia” had been obtained from a Lakota Sioux in South Dakota instead of a representative of the Illini Federation of Tribes never seemed to matter to those who considered the Chief a valued tradition. Both the Chief symbol and the dancing mascot have been officially retired by the University, and sales of items bearing the seal have been banned since the University owns (or claims to own) the symbol – there’s a lawsuit at the moment brought by the designer who created the image, although as a “work for hire” I doubt he has a leg to stand on.

Locally, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette continues to stir the pot, having taken an extreme pro-Chief stance over the years; and all the frat boys who played the Chief over the decades (“The Council of Chiefs”) are attempting to create a student-sponsored chiefdom not unlike the unofficial Aggie bonfire. And then there are the donors (The University of Illinois Whining Alumni), who en masse said, “Ugh. Illinois take-um away Chief. Me no give-um wampum.”

What do I think…

1. Why can’t they just let it go? If the newspaper and the ex-chiefs would shut up, in four years no one would give a rat’s ass any more.
2. The dancing Chief mascot at football games looks like an actor out of a 1950s episode of “The Lone Ranger” doing that Cossack dance where you cross your arms and kick out your legs as close to horizontal as possible. Tres silly.
3. If the local paper and local AM radio talking heads hadn’t enlisted the automatic support of knee-jerk conservative dittoheadss by calling the protestors “politically correct,” the Chief would have disappeared in 1995.
4. At a guess, if the protestors had said that the Chief looked outdated and deserved to disappear like rumble seats, raccoon coats, and shouts of “Boola-Boola!” it’d have been gone in 1995, too.

Let’s get one last thing straight: As far as I’m concerned, the cutesy little decal of the guy with the big headdress wasn’t offensive – inaccurate, yes, but not offensive. And the dancing mascot wasn’t as offensive as he was just silly.

Hello… Is this thing on?

Did you hear the one about the lawyer, the priest, and the prostitute? Me, neither.

Hmmm… people seem to expect either sex or profundity from blogs, so I guess you’re stuck with the profundity aspect from me. They say to never talk about religion or politics in public. Is this “in public,” I wonder? Well, hell, let’s have a quick look into politics… the thought for the day is “smokers’ rights.”

Personally, I have to hand it to the advertising guru who came up with the unassailable concept of a “right” to smoke whenever and wherever you damned well please. What an utter crock, huh? Let’s see – I’m pretty certain that if ones who want to paint their lungs black really had some kind of “right,” we’d have long ago heard of a state or federal court striking down no-smoking ordinances as unconstitutional. Haven’t heard that one yet, though I suppose that if Bush II can stack the court with a couple more Alitos and Thomases in the next 11 months 28 days, it could happen.

Be real folks: it smokers have “rights,” then cat burglars must have rights, too. Hell, their rights should be stronger – after all, cat burglars are attempting to make a living; while smokers are just… just feeding their addiction.

‘Nuff said.