The Day is Saved (AGAIN!)

I’m a huge proponent of Easter celebrations for many reasons, but probably the biggest one would be the candy. Chocolate bunnies, candy beans, malted-milk eggs — this holiday is about as bad for the teeth as Thanksgiving is for the waistline.

My family has never been into the whole Easter basket thing; usually, we’d just order some stuff directly from the Wolfgang candy company whenever my scout troop was trying to raise money for tent poles or whatever. Despite our unorthodox basketless methods, I like to think we at least did the candy tradition justice based on my current number of molar fillings.

Now my aunts in Rochester, they were awesome. If we were visiting during Easter, my sister and I would get cut in on the Easter baskets and all the wonderful sugary loot they contained, including the almighty marshmallow Peep. I remember one year in which my cousin ate four of the little buggers in one sitting and was ill the rest of the night. This was also the year in which we broke my whoopee cushion, but that’s a story for another time.

Heck, even when we had a family reunion down here in AsheVegas last year, they were awesome enough to buy enough candy for each cousin. By the end of the day, the only sweets left were bits of chocolate coin, a few Twizzlers, and a large pile of black candy beans — who eats those, anyway? Up until then, I never really fully appreciated the piquant flavoring that the yellow-flavored Starburst brand candy bean lent the palette following Easter dinner.

So imagine my disappointment at waking up this morning to no candy. Neither myself nor my folks had the chance to pick up anything up until the last minute, when we discovered everyone else had bought it all. In the words of GOB Bluth, “COME ON!!” Still, I celebrated most of today with all the joy and cheeriness that I could muster and then went to work.

Well, imagine my utter delight in discovering that WLOS’ own Stan Pamfilis — the face of News 13 Sports — had brought in two leftover bags of candy beans. He also offered me a bag of black licorice mini Twizzlers, but I politely refused. I have my limits.

I love my job. 

UPDATE:

Last night, before the 10 PM broadcast, I was on my way into the studio to start setting up when Stan walked out of the sports office, pointed at me, and said, “Hey buddy, c’mere!” While handing me an Ingles bag absolutely LOADED with chocolate and candy beans, Stan explained that his wife felt bad for those of us at work who didn’t get any candy. Plus, you know, they had a lot of leftovers.

With his instructions to “share the wealth” in mind, I made for the secret candy stash cupboard in the control room, which has been empty for some weeks now. I haven’t seen so many happy people in there since our weatherman called snow “white happiness” live on the air.

In Other News

In the world of the Foreign Service, yours truly has made the register of available hires. I’m currently ranked 24 of 82 candidates for my particular career track and giving the hiring trends for this year, I could reasonably expect to get an offer this summer, provided there isn’t a huge glut of newly cleared folks who have a better rank. If I wanted to be optimistic, I could expect “The Call” this spring, but I hate to get my hopes up.

It’s a little surreal to think that my entire world could get thrown on its ear in the next few months. Perhaps that’s why I try not to think about it too much. That, and I don’t want to get obssessive over something that is now completely outside my control.

More to follow as it happens.

Cut and Run

Ars Technica reports that the RIAA is treading in dangerous waters.

You may remember me following their updates as they reporting from the trial of Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota woman who elected to bring the sue-happy watchdogs of the music industry all the way to trial when they caught her downloading on the KaZaA peer-to-peer file-sharing service.

While Thomas was certainly guilty — honestly, if you know what you’re going into, why use the same frelling username that can be traced to you? — the RIAA had a tough time of explaining exactly how they got a hold of her information.

Well, this time around, they went after the wrong person:

[Tanya] Andersen is a single mother living in Oregon who was sued by the record labels in February 2005. She eventually filed a counterclaim against the RIAA, and when the labels voluntarily dismissed their case against her last June, she filed a malicious-prosecution lawsuit. In it, Andersen accuses the RIAA of fraud, racketeering, invasion of privacy, libel, slander, deceptive business practices, and violations of the Oregon state RICO Act.

The first part is par for the course: if they don’t think they can win the case if the defendant decides to pursue it, they cut their losses and look for some other sap. If possible, they also try to dismiss the case “without prejudice”, which is legalese for “no harm, no foul.” Both sides pay their own fees and the problem goes away, which is vastly unfair to those wrongfully accused.

While the outcome of the case may only help those in Oregon looking for a precedent to use, the actual results could mean curtains for the RIAA’s tactics:

The RIAA is likely to fight the discovery process tooth and nail, however, as the information that is unearthed could prove to be extremely embarrassing, if not problematic. “They’ve operated in this zone of secrecy for five years now, and we hope to put a stop to that,” Lybeck stated emphatically, “because it will become obvious that their conduct is illegal an their whole scheme is flawed at its basic core.”

In other words, MediaSentry, the “private investigator” the RIAA uses to dig up info on guilty parties, will be forced to come clean on exactly how it does its dirty work. Once that happens, our friends in the music industry will have to find some other way of dealing with file-sharing, such as, I don’t know, recommending their clients adopt a business model that won’t put them out of business in the next ten years.

“Higgily Hoopily!”

Saw this on Yahoo! News: apparently people in London are becoming so distracted from texting that they lose track of their surroundings and bonk into things. No surprise there.

The news of this situation comes from the city itself, which has turned a sympathetic ear on the plight of these bruised and befuddled masses and installed padding on lamp posts. Watching people run into lamp posts, padded or not, is still hilarious.

Now, if I were the Eternal Student, I might take this opportunity to reflect at length at how this is a sign of the times and we need to get in touch with real people and stop being so distracted. Perhaps I might even use this as a means to segue into a quote from Emily Post on the proper etiquette of saving face after falling down in public in an especially humorous manner.

But I’m not feeling particularly motivated or smart enough for that, so here’s some visual documentation of the plight of our hapless friends across the pond instead: