… as does living on the West Coast. As of yesterday morning, I had given up on my search for the elusive Nintendo Wii. Just for kicks, though, I checked the Amazon message boards at 11:30 last night … and lo and behold, someone posted a link saying that Wiis were on sale at Target online. I had to buy the bundle, which was more expensive than just the Wii itself, but it comes with an extra controller and a memory card, both of which I will eventually need to buy, and Madden 2007, which I probably never would have bought on my own but I’m sure I will get many hours of enjoyment out of. Supposedly it is being shipped tomorrow. I will cross my fingers and hope it comes through. Yes, I am a total raving geek.

The sad ending to this story is that I had pledged to buy one for my brother-in-law, Mark, if I found one. Unfortunately, it was late at night, and I couldn’t be sure that Mark would have wanted the expensive bundle. I have failed you, Mark, and for that I am sorry. Please do not take it out on my sister and the kids.

From an email by my friend Matt:

Here is how I know I’m back in New York, dude:

1. I walk into a 50’s-70’s furniture store on Ludlow. They have an Alf phone on sale for $175.

2. Dude in the middle of 42nd Street, apparently not finding any cabs, yelling, “this is SILLY! This is just so fucking SILLY! So goddamned SILLY!”

Today, I was looking up the word Lego for usage in a vocabulary book I’m writing as a freelance project. I was trying to determine whether or not I could use the word Lego as a general term, in the same way that one might use the word Kleenex to describe a snot rag or Frisbee to describe a flying disc. I did not find the answer to my question because I got sidetracked by The Brick Testament, a website featuring Bible stories made out of Legos. I have just learned more about the Bible than I ever learned in Sunday school.*

*Note: I never attended Sunday school.

I did a Google search today for “Dinsmore,” after looking at my stats and seeing that a few people came to my blog from that keyword. I don’t show up until page 18, which is pretty sad to me, especially considering that I’ve written two books. If you do a search for “Jeffrey Dinsmore” I’m way up there, but c’mon. That’s really stacking the deck.

Coming in much higher than me on the Google list is my dad’s company, The Dinsmore Group. He’s all the way up on page 4. But perhaps most impressive is my grandpa, who is the NUMBER TWO DINSMORE IN THE WORLD, right behind some law firm. My grandpa is a very smart man. He invented the sensor that got him the distinction of #2 Dinsmore. He has explained to me what it does before, but not being a technically-minded person, I don’t really get it. All I know is that it must be pretty darned important if it has made him the #2 Dinsmore in the world.

David Lynch is the best. I don’t love all of his movies, and I would not call myself a fanatic by any stretch of the imagination, even though Blue Velvet is my favorite film of all time. I just like that he is who he is and he’s been able to make a career being just that. According to this Entertainment Weekly article, he is now starting his own line of coffee products. Lynch’s description is pretty much the best product tagline I’ve ever heard:

“I think it’s going to be…good coffee for the people.”

(Thanks, Segretto!)

Last night our friends Rosten and Damon spent the night. They’re in town from New York. They are partners in an organization called CUP (the Center for Urban Pedagogy). They’re in town right now teaching a course at the Sundown Schoolhouse, where Sarah is a student.

All of this information is beside the point of my post. The point of my post is that Rosten and Damon were awakened this morning to hear the FBI staging a raid on one of the apartments in my building. As of this posting, they’re still up in the apartment, dusting for fingerprints or whatever it is that FBI do. I’m burning to find out what was going on up there. I will keep you posted.

If you can make it to the end of this SNL skit, you are a far stronger person than me. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that this would not be the slightest bit funnier if I had ever seen Lost and/or had any idea what they were talking about. I have put this video in the “entertainment” category for lack of a more accurate term.

Ever since the Democrats retook Congress, I have had a difficult time caring about current events. I think this means that the only thing I care about in life is getting angry. I’m sure there are still plenty of things to get angry about, I just haven’t been in the mood to think about them.

In 1985, Burger King spent $40 million dollars on a campaign known as “Where’s Herb?” Herb was supposedly the only man in America who had never eaten a Whopper. The campaign was universally lauded as the “most elaborate advertising flop of the decade.” I’ve taken a totally informal survey of my friends and almost no one remembers the Herb campaign. I remember, Burger King. You might not have captured the world’s attention, but you touched the life of one very special little boy, and because of that, your campaign can never be considered a total flop.

First, the commercial that started it all:

Note the total absence of any kind of humor in this commercial. This is in the wake of the “Where’s the Beef” ads, and suddenly commercials had to be quirky to get noticed. So we have all the staples of the “quirky” ad … the dead-pan dialogue, the over-enthusiastic narrator, the hokey music … but there isn’t a single joke anywhere to be found. It’s very disconcerting to watch something that presumes itself humorous without making a single stab at humor.

I’m not sure if this was planned from the beginning, but Herb’s identity was eventually revealed, to little fanfare. The poor sod who played Herb was sent to Burger King restaurants around the country to hang out until someone recognized him, sort of like a real life “Where’s Waldo?” The first person to spot Herb in each restaurant won $5,000. I would love to know how this contest worked in real life. Did they send Herb into restaurants unattended? And was it his job to determine who first spotted him? I could see this getting really ugly–patrons breaking into fistfights over who saw Herb first while the sorry bastard in the Herb costume is forced to referee. In the end, it’s not so much a campaign for Burger King as it is for violence and loitering.

Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, announced that he would take his oath on the Koran instead of the Bible. First of all…why in God’s name (no pun intended) are politicians still made to take the oath on the Bible? Couldn’t we use something more closely related to their job…like, say, the Constitution? What do physicians use when they take the Hippocratic Oath, or lawyers when they promise to do whatever it is they promise to do?

Apparently, the Religious Right is SUPER PISSED that the dude is being allowed to use the Koran. Because when our politicians are allowed to have their own religions, it is obvious that the terrorists have won. This is from a column written by Dennis Prager, who is one of our Greatest American Wackjobs:

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism — my culture trumps America’s culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

…and?