Women: What Your Favorite Classic Rock Band Says About You

My friend, author Treacy Colbert, was inspired recently by a viral e-mail about classic rock bands to put a female spin on the subject. So we both chipped in ideas and came up with ....


WOMEN: What Your Favorite Classic Rock Band Says About You


Van Halen: You can play ping-pong with your hands tied behind your back.

Dan Fogelberg: You are sexually aroused by doilies.

James Taylor: You're appalled by how much the average consumer spends on shampoo.

Aerosmith: You can tie a cherry stem into a knot in your mouth.

Motley Crue: You can tie a cherry stem into a knot in someone else's mouth.

The Indigo Girls: You always cry at commitment ceremonies.

Gordon Lightfoot: The rose tattoo on your breast is now long-stemmed.

Air Supply: You have a standard poodle named Skyler.

Journey: You have a daughter named Skyler.

Spandau Ballet: You have a son named Skyler.

Celtic Woman: You’re on your third name change, first Summer, then Skyler, now Windstar.

Ronnie James Dio: You're on your third sloe gin fizz.

The Doors: You're on your third liver.

The Who: You have a “Teenage Wasteland” bumper sticker on your Rascal.

Boston: You can confirm the veracity of reports about the man from Nantucket.

Loverboy: You know a website that sells Bartles & James wine coolers.

Cyndi Lauper: You still bop even though it inflames your carpal tunnel syndrome.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Two words: government cheese.

Rolling Stones: You've said "Welcome to Walmart" so many times the words have lost all meaning.

Joni Mitchell: You have used a speculum as a roach clip.

The Beatles: Your hedge fund outperformed the S&P by three percent.

America: It has never occurred to you that “the heat was hot” is redundant.

Bread: You have satisfied the munchies by eating one of your scented candles.

Seals and Crofts: You own a large collection of mismatched, partially shredded knee-highs.

Al Stewart: You’re surprised when the bartender doesn’t know what a kir is.

Rod Stewart: You still own—and wear—the outfit you had on in the family photo taken in 1970.

Jackson Browne: Ativan is now your favorite controlled substance.

Grateful Dead: You slept with your son's roommates at Tufts.

Pink Floyd: You married your dealer, then dumped him to run off with his dealer.

Bob Dylan: Haybuh homa fleege, trumuh fleege, maddle flooge.

Sammy Hagar: You keep your G.E.D. certificate in the back of your Ford Maverick, along with all your other possessions.

Ozzy Osbourne: You campaigned for Lyndon LaRouche, but only because you had him mixed up with a cartoon skunk.

Allman Brothers Band: Your kids call the Health and Human Services outreach specialist “Uncle Greg.”

AC/DC: If you can read this, you don’t really qualify as an AC/DC fan.

Yes: Your subwoofers are the envy of your assisted-living facility.

Touche, Google!

I expected that, by now, based on my Friday post, Google would have placed here ads for body creams, travel sites, or miracle manhood cures.

Yet, like most every time I come up with an idea I think is so damn clever, this one backfired. Instead of taking the bait and putting the expected ads on my site, Google's surprisingly sarcastic computer put me in my place instead.

As of this writing, the prominent new ad on my site -- the direct result of my clever idea -- is titled, "Bathroom Ideas."

You've won this round, Google.

Cellulite cures don't work, male enhancement pills are for suckers, fares to Hawaii right now are overpriced, and today's stock market is a money pit

Truth is, I know nothing about cellulite cures or male enhancement pills. They could be modern miracles for all I know. Really, I don't care.

I just wrote that because I'm incredibly amused by this whole Google ad business.

A few months ago, I figured out how to put these automated Google ads on my blog. For most bloggers, it's no-brainer technology. But I still struggle to understand it.

I thought I read that payment is based on the number of times people click ads. According to my statement, I have received exactly zero clicks. (I’m kind of proud of this, by the way. It suggests I have smart readers. No many. But smart.) Yet I have indeed earned money from these ads. Perhaps there’s also some payment that I didn't read about that's based on page views. Still, I report to you today that I have now raked in advertising revenues totaling 15 cents.

(Google, by the way, sends you a check when and if that total ever reaches $100. So I’ll look forward to cashing that in sometime around age 70, when it’ll probably pay for one gallon of gas.)

But one thing I have figured out about these ads: They’re automatically assigned to my blog based on keywords. And the software that assigns them isn’t very discriminating. I write, "Merriam-Webster sucks," and two days later an ad pops up for Merriam-Webster.

That’s pretty funny.

So, hoping that you too find this stuff amusing, I’m dedicating today’s blog entry to seeing whether I score any ads for cellulite treatments, male enhancement, Hawaiian Airlines, or some sucker investing tips.

Who knows? If that’s really where the money is, maybe when I’m 70 I’ll be able to afford two gallons of gas. Or, perhaps by then I’ll want to invest it in male enhancement.

(P.S. If you’re thinking of clicking on the ads to give me a leg up, that’s sweet but please don’t! The Google terms include my word that I won’t pull any tricks like that -- or ask readers to. I suspect that, if there’s one thing their computer really is good at it’s knowing when they’re getting ripped off. I’d rather stay an ad-click virgin.)

Thanks for listening and, P.S., Merriam-Webster sucks.

What Not to Do in an Earthquake: Conclusions of a spontaneous scientific experiment

Experts have amassed a wealth of information on how to react in an earthquake. But, as is true in most fields of science, there remain hypotheses that cannot be verified due to the ethical problems of performing certain tests on human subjects.

For example, would a person react to temblors in a fundamentally different way if he were raised from infancy in an oversized maraca? Would it or would it not increase your chances of survival if, when the shaking started, you immediately took cover under the belly of Rush Limbaugh? Or would you be pummeled by a barrage of pills and/or curses against the liberals responsible for the quake?

The sad answer to these and many other questions is: We may never know.

But one such scenario -- previously thought untestable -- was indeed subjected to inadvertent empirical analysis during yesterday's 5.4 magnitude temblor. And I was the unwitting subject.

This fluke occurrence, which could never before be simulated for a human subject, answers at long last the age-old question: Should you or should you not attempt to eat a chicken wing during an earthquake?

The spontaneous experiment began at approximately 11:41:59 when, in a fifth-floor office in downtown Los Angeles, I lifted a cafeteria hot wing to my mouth. At approximately 11:42:00, a tremor rocked the building.

The following observations have been recorded for science.

* In a quake, chicken wings becoming highly elusive targets. A subject may try jerking her head back and forth in an attempt to capture her rapidly moving quarry. Yet these efforts will be for naught, as the hand holding the wing is likely moving at a speed unattainable by subject's open mouth.

* Interestingly, colleagues' yells of, "Earthquake! Earthquake!" do not immediately hinder the test subject's efforts. Attempting to eat the moving chicken wing proves sufficiently engrossing as to cause a delayed response, temporarily muting the noise associated with less-important matters such as building evacuation.

* Attempting to eat a chicken wing during a magnitude 5 or higher temblor can result in an effect similar to that seen in the 1980 documentary "Airplane" -- illustrating an experiment in which an airline passenger attempts to apply lipstick amid extreme turbulence -- except with blue cheese dressing instead of lipstick.

* Though a subject who maintains laser-like focus on a chicken wing during a life-threatening emergency may indeed possess certain academic skills, such as adeptness with language and grammar, such subjects are nonetheless not very smart.

Must. Learn. To write. Shorter. Sentences.

I've been doing a lot of copy editing in the last year. It's satisfying work. The bad kind of satisfying. The drunk-on-self-righteousness kind of satisfying. The "this sentence is a pile of crap and I and only I can whip it into a work of art but not without first nursing some very unkind thoughts about the writer" kind of satisfying.

Power-drunk-jerk stuff.

Okay, I'm being a little hard on myself. I'm not that big a jerk. But I do enjoy getting angry at clunky, fatty, inefficient sentences. I enjoy pummeling them into submission. I enjoy the little rush of outrage I get in the process.

Here's what I don't enjoy so much these days: Looking at my own writing.

Don't get me wrong. I can write some good sentences. Elegant and efficient. But I also excrete some colossal steamers. And it's making me mad.

Here's how thoughts come out of me.

When I consider whether it's important to write short
sentences I can't deny that, in more skillful hands, long sentences are, indeed,
often quite effective and, when used as a form of artistic license, can
serve as a form of Cormac McCarthy-esque poetry-as-power sort of device.

Here's how I want that to come out of me:

Yes, some long sentences kick ass.

I suppose the good news is that I'm catching more problems in my own sentences. The bad news is that I don't want to catch them. I want to write sentences perfectly in the first damn place. I can only hope that, slowly, that's what I'm learning to do.

In the meantime, I should probably lighten up on the freelancers I edit who don't know a dangler from a dingleberry.

Nah. That's not gonna happen.

An Open Letter to Paula Poundstone She's Sure Never to Read

In her hilarious book, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, comedian Paula Poundstone talks about her aversion to computers. She doesn’t use them. She doesn’t trust them. And she’s not exactly convinced they’re a great thing for society.

Her Exhibit A: She once got an e-mail, printed out by her assistant, that contained just one line: “Is this really your e-mail?” Her closing argument: Nobody sent stuff like that back when doing so meant finding a stamp and licking an envelope.

I’m a member of the “loves computers” camp, but found myself tempted to switch sides yesterday after getting an e-mail from a reader of my weekly column.

The column, which runs in a handful of community newspapers in California, Florida, and Texas, offers mini-grammar lessons. True, it isn’t exactly the dream of my early journalism career. Young reporters often start out vowing, “I’m going to be just like Woodward and Bernstein.” They never vow, “I’m going to be just like Funk and Wagnall.” Still, I have a few readers who enjoy it.

Apparently, I also have some readers who do not, as evidenced by yesterday’s e-mail. It came on the heels of a column I wrote about clauses (and which, apparently, one editor titled "Baring My Clause"). Here's the reader's e-mail, unedited.

Ms. Casagrande,

"Baring my clause" Could not find in the dictionary the following words you used descriptor,nonetheless,subset. A strange article what meaning does it have? My conclusion,another modern day gumsnapper trying to be different,as in blog,reditt etc. You are a product of schools failing.
regards

It ended there. The sender did not give a name.

For a moment, I was ready to join Poundstone’s camp. But just as I was about to drop my laptop out a two-story window, I had an idea. I went to Dictionary.com, entered a few terms, then began composing my reply.

My e-mail reply contained just four lines: a URL linking to the definition of “descriptor,” another linking to the definition of “nonetheless,” and another linking to the definition of “subset.” The fourth and final line was a link to my Dictionary.com search results for the word “gumsnapper”: a link that showed there's no such word.

A pretty adept use of technology, I thought, for “a product of schools failing.”

Oh, and one more thing, Ms. Poundstone: The guy clearly wanted to remain anonymous. But he was unaware that his e-mail server wasn’t as shy. His name is Anthony Cibello.

That’s all for today. I’m taking my computer out for a romantic picnic followed by a few hours of passionate defragging. I love it that much.