For those who missed the original news…

Sun Journal
WCAX
Maine Today

Paul's obituary

Nice remembrance from the "Citizen of Laconia" newspaper

A day late, but Happy St. Lucia Day! (Or God Luciadagen!)

Not exactly what I had in mind. (That cat's like, "WTF?!")

Here's a better image. I was always the one on the left, as the oldest daughter gets to play the part.

I think I need to add a "Launchcast" blog category, since it seems I have at least one post related to it every few months.

I'm sitting here listening to my station, and what should come up? Think… Thanksgiving is no longer the harbinger of Christmas overload - I saw decorations up in Target in effing OCTOBER - so naturally, Launchcast has started shuffling some Christmas albums into the playstream.

I couldn't hit the "Skip" button fast enough for this one:
Christmas Carol Cats - "Deck the Halls"

WHY?! Seriously, why?!

then, if that weren't bad enough… a few songs later:
Jingle Dogs - "Ding Dong Merrily On High"

I kid you not. Who thinks of this stuff? Better yet, who buys music like this?!

…again.

Many of you know that I get most of my crap, er, furniture off Craigslist. It's a pretty valuable resource for cheap ass people like me, though there are a fair amount of creepy people on there as evidenced by the Personals.

Anyway, I've been intermittently searching for a chair for my room, and I have my eye on an IKEA Poang chair. I feel obligated to buy IKEA stuff not only because it's nice and affordable, but we're talking about a company run by my (Swedish) heritage here. Plus it'll match all the other IKEA furniture I have sitting around my room.

The Poang chair isn't huge, and is just the right size to fit in my room. Currently I strike all sorts of awkward poses on my IKEA bed with its IKEA mattress made up with IKEA sheets to watch the TV on my IKEA dresser without falling asleep.

Back to Craigslist. Like I said, I'm cheap, so finding a Poang chair for $50 would make my day. Today I saw a posting for a $50 chair and e-mailed the owner, half expecting it to have been snatched up by now. Well, apparently the guy who was supposed to buy it fell off the face of the earth, so it's still available… but there was one catch:

"The last guy had offered me $65." (says CL seller)

I e-mail her back and say, "I can pick it up tonight, but I was only hoping to spend $50 as that's what you have listed in the ad." He/she e-mails me back and says they'll take $60.

Okay, from what I remember in Used Stuff Negotiating 101 (as taught by my dad, aka "Cheap Charlie"), normally one bargains DOWN from the advertised price, not up.

I haven't e-mailed them back yet, as it seems kind of pointless. If I wanted to spend $60, I might as well spend $90 on a brand new chair that hasn't been used (and possibly peed on by someone's cat), or fork out a bit more on this cute Lillberg chair that someone has listed for $75.

Maybe I should just buy a folding lawn/lounge chair and just be done with it. I wonder if anyone on CL is selling one…

Even though I've posted this under "Rants," I'm going to try my best not to make this into a wild-eyed ranting entry. Really.

It seems nowadays nearly every minivan or SUV sold has a DVD player/console in the back. Perhaps automotive makers were reflecting on their experiences with their own spawn getting antsy and impatient during long trips, thus inspiring them to thing of new ways to keep them quiet other than traditional road games. Fine. Having been in that backseat myself for 6+ hours at a time, I wouldn't have minded the same sort of luxury usually reserved for airline passengers once in awhile.

HOWEVER. It drives me absolutely up the $#%^ing wall to see parents who have this "convenience" turned on every time they back out the driveway. I find it hard to believe that parents in the parking lot of the grocery store with their soccer-uniform clad kids are driving more than 30 minutes and thus need to put "Finding Nemo" in for the "long trip home." Bull. The real reason is that parents are recalcitrant to actually discipline their kids when they get bored, so the easiest thing to do is to shove them in front of the TV so they'll shut up and Mommy can yap on her cell phone.

Okay, so that last sentence is probably just a generalization, but you get my gist. What really gets me is that today's parents seem to care less and less about what goes into their children's heads.

To me, every time I see the flickering light of a DVD console in the back of someone's minivan on a weeknight, I think parents are directly contributing to the overall "dumbing down" of kids today. "Scientists have found that watching television before the age of three could damage a child's ability to learn. And research into children aged five to 15 discovered that those who spent the most time watching television were least likely to leave school with qualifications."

In reality, it doesn't matter how old children are when it comes to the negative effects of excessive TV. Another study by the University of Washington in Seattle, looked at the maths and reading abilities of almost 2,000 children. It found that television viewing among under-threes seemed to harm learning ability, concluding that toddlers learned far better when they actively took part in word and number games. In addition, it has been reported that children under two should not watch television because it increases the risk of them developing attention deficit disorder. "Watching too much television increased the child's likelihood of being unable to pay attention in school, and each hour a day in front of the TV increased by 10% the chance that the child would show signs of disorder," the study found.

I can't go on and on about the negative effects of TV and claim that I never watch it and it's a horrific invention, because that would be a total lie. When I was growing up, my parents limited the amount of TV I was able to watch. At the time, I absolutely hated the "half hour" rule, but looking back, I'm glad they instituted it. Consequently I became a reading fiend and was able to survive those long car trips by bringing along a stack of books.