Alright, here is a new, official, weekly feature of Hooray For Anything-- the NY Times Wedding Announcement of the Week. As anyone who reads the Times knows, the wedding announcement section, otherwise known as Jews Getting Married, is oftentimes the best part of the paper as it usually rich couples with even richer parents who are full of themselves enough to announce it to the world in the Paper of Record.

Anyways, the winning couple, heretofore known as the Cum Laudes, win for various reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they are either all broke right now, will about to be, or should be, all excepting the father who is too busy laundering money for drug dealers and CEO's looking for tax shelters to be in the poorhouse. Also, they win just for having the phrase "yachts department of an insurance subsidiary" listed in their announcement.

And here they go, the lovely Kathryn Bache & Christopher Lotz;

Kathryn Grace Bache, a daughter of Sara E. Davis and Stephen K. Bache, both of La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., was married Saturday to Christopher Philip Lotz, a son of Wendy Lotz and Philip A. Lotz of New Canaan, Conn. The Rev. Kelly H. Rogers performed the ceremony at the Congregational Church of New Canaan, and Rev. Ken Kline Smeltzer, a minister of the Church of the Brethren, participated.

The bride and the bridegroom, both 22, met during their freshman year at New York University, from which they graduated, she cum laude and he magna cum laude.

Ms. Bache is keeping her name. She works in New York as an intern at Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, a market research unit of the Omnicom Group.

Her parents work in Pasadena, Calif. Her father is the owner of Bache Capital Management, an investment advisory firm, and her mother is a manager in the portfolio management department at a subsidiary of Legg Mason, the Baltimore investment management company.

Mr. Lotz works in New York as an underwriter-in-training in the yachts department of an insurance subsidiary of A.I.G. Until this month he was a research assistant in the political science department at New York University.

His father is an owner and the chairman of Juniperus Capital, a hedge fund in Bermuda.

PS-- thanks to the magic of Google AdSense, on a message board full of people complaining about what a piece of shit Epson printers are, the entire right side of the page includes ads for Epson. Not quite sure this is where Epson would want their ads published.

One of the great mysteries of the computing world is that the very act of hooking up a printer, inserting all the proper chords, and the very act of hitting print never seems to work the first time. Chances are it won't work the second time either.

Now, you would think that this wouldn't be the case as the very act is one of the most basic functions of the computer world. But, for some unexplainable reason, it is far easier to use a web cam to film pornographic pictures of your neighbors having sex and then posting it on both YouTube and Facebook than it is to print a simple confirmation ticket to a movie.

It occurs to me in light of the recent financial clusterfuck that we might have been too hasty in getting ride of things like the stocks, public lashing, and tar & feathering as they probably would come in handy right now. Wouldn't things be much better if certain high level executives, CEOs, and even politicians responsible for this mess were punished in that way? After all, it's not like they're going to receive any sort of punishment that even come close to the mess they've created. Like what are we going to force them to do? Give up their Christmas bonuses? Be forced to resign? Sent to jail? Like that would mean anything-- a Christmas bonus would be a drop in the bucket compared to their salaries, resignations would come with golden parachutes, and jail would be some minimum security prison that's more of a day camp than anything. Thus, tar & feathering. Wouldn't things be better if, say, the idiots who run the Big 3 automakers be put in the stocks in the middle of downtown Detroit? Or all those people whose houses have been foreclosed to get at least one lashing at the head of Citibank or Fannie Mae?

Like executives would try and fleece poor people into ridiculous loans or lay off people right before buying the naming rights to some stadium if they knew it could end up with their being dragged threw town on a horse with people throwing their garbage at them.

Don't ask me how we discovered this, but last night Harlan and I stumbled upon this book.  This led us discovering an entire series of books (including reference books, mythology books, and comic books) about cats who apparently are formed in clans and battle with each other for cat supremacy.  Each clan leader-- with such original sounding names as FurPaw, Bramblepaw, Thornpaw-- leads their cat clans into various adventures and battles and conflicts with some apparent prophecy leading their way.  And, yes, they are illustrated just as seen as on the book cover.

Now, you maybe thinking "what the hell?"  as well as "how could anybody think these books are good?"  Well, according to the Wiki entry, one critic raved about the books for having cats that are "true to their feline nature," something I doubt as I'm pretty sure the cats in the book do nothing but sleep and chase toy mice.

And you maybe wondering what kind of audience their is for poorly written, awfully illustrated children's books about warrior cats and prophecies and all I can think of is that children of fat, wiccan cat ladies have have to have something to read.

Okay, I swear I'll post more.  I swear!  I'm still having issues detoxing from the election and spend way too much time reading politics.  Hell, I still can't even get into sports right now (although the suckiness of my fantasy football teams could have something to do with it).

Yes, I have an iPhone now.  And, yes, I love it.  On my way to work or at the gym, I can now do my two favorite things in the world-- surf the web and listen to music.  Throw in all those apps and I'm in love.  Except, of course, for the fact the whole phone thing is kinda sucky.  The other thing is that iPhones are so prevalent and they all use the same ring that often, when I'm at work, a phone will go off and I won't know who's iPhone it is.  I was at the store down below buying me some chips when the guy who was ringing me up iPhone's went off and both of us reached for our phone.

Anyways, my office is on the 16th floor and doesn't get really good reception.  It's especially not very good with my iPhone as AT&T kinda sucks.  As for internet access, I barely-- barely-- get three bars going and often have to wait a few minutes for a page to download.  I have, however, noticed that for whatever reason, the reception is much better in the men's bathroom and that downloading web sites is much faster there than at my desk.

Don't even ask me how I know this.

Yes, I'm on Facebook.  In fact, I'm becoming rather addicted to Facebook, especially as it's an App on my iPhone and with the press of a button, I can see what other people are doing. It's a quick and easy way to goof off.

Yes, it's kind of fun but it's also a really nice way of getting in touch with people you're not really in touch with anymore and see what they're up to the best possible way-- without ever having to email them or call them.  Like I saw that a friend from way back in the day just got engaged and I'd never know that if I didn't see that she changed her status.  Or that another friend is on some crazy-ass cleansing diet and has been eating nothing but fruit drinks for the past week.  Don't ask, don't know.

Of course, there's some downsides to it.  Like finding out that friends went out drinking and didn't call you up.  Or go to a party.  Or get married and not invite you.  Which wouldn't be that big of a deal if you weren't the one who was there when they met and hung out with them when they first became a couple.  

Not that I'm bitter or anything but I did spend some considerable amount of time waiting for that wedding invite.

Saw this t-shirt coming out of "Zach & Miri Make a Porno"- the front of the t-shirt had three trees on it with the middle tree obviously cut down.  The saying on the t-shirt?  "Who cut one?"

I'm back....

Sorry for a lack of posting but I've been so obsessed with the election I haven't done much of anything.  It's hard to write when you're clicking on Huffington Post every fifteen minutes while watching CNN at the same time.

Anyways, I'll get back to this whole election thing in a bit (because I might be the only person in the country to have not summed up the meaning of Obama's election) but two work related things.

-The office where I'm working is split into two sides with an elevator shaft/bathroom dividing those sides in the middle.  To get from one side of the floor to another, you have to walk a long, straight and narrow pathway.  This leads to situations in which you're on one end and another person is on the other side and if you're going one way and the other person is going the other way, there's a lot of time in which you're walking in a direction where there's nothing to do but stare forward at the other person.  

Now some people move confidently ahead as if it's not a big deal, even occasionally saying hi. Other people just put their head down so as to not make sure eye contact is made.  And other people, typically someone of the other sex, will turn things up a notch and suddenly find something inexplicably interesting about the wall they're walking by or their shoes.

-I was on my way to the men's room when I met up with another coworker who was obviously on his way to the men's room too.  We were both talking to each other when he suddenly just stopped and stood there.  Since I thought this was kind of weird, I asked him where he was going and he quietly told me that he had a phobia about walking into a men's room with another coworker at the same time.  So he gave me about a minute heads start and then headed off onto the bathroom behind me.

Later on, he partly explained his phobia and did so by breaking down all the various bathroom behavior of other coworkers- who talked, who farts, and who does things most people deem disgusting.  

I learned a lot, actually.