Also, a secret that web designers won't tell you: if you set your browser to 800px wide, the only thing you're missing is advertising.

- Z

OK poetry world, I'm sorry (e:zobar,47483). I like you again.

Bridal Shower
by George Bilgere

Perhaps, in a distant cafe,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite cafe.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant cafe,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.

- Z

- Z

attempted not known

Thing three: we finally did get the Obama coins, ugh. (e:zobar,47301) They were addressed to 40 Hartford St, 14221, which I am told does not exist, so they sent it to us instead. I brought the package back to the post office and explained to the woman at the counter what happened. She put it in a stack and sent it back to 14221. As I was walking back home it occurred to me that we may be headed for a problem.



Sure enough, two days later we got the same package again. This time it said ANK, which is short for 'Attempted Not Known,' which itself is short for 'If this gets to its intended destination you owe the entire post office a beer.' (e:dragonlady7) said she'd try sending them back this time. I said the suspense was killing me and if we get them again I'm keeping those hokey-ass coins. [It's inexplicable why I want them.] So she went to the post office and told them the package just wasn't going to get through to Mary Sheehan, and they should probably just return to sender. The post officer told her that since they weren't the stated destination they weren't allowed to make that decision, and the only thing they could do is send it back to 14221. You can see where this is going.



But no, she blacked out the address, put a couple hundred stickers all over it, and finally got rid of it once and for all.

- Z

---

Deep thought: Transit Road is a perfectly straight line, thirty miles long. God will judge us by our works, and that's going to be a tough one to explain.

Google Image Search tells me this is a photograph of a 1981 Zenith television. Not so much 'steampunk' as 'we may as well have poured this one in concrete, cause it's not going anywhere.

I'm starting a new category called 'education,' where we can get ourselves smart'd -- together.

My great-aunt used to live in this house. She was the only person I knew with an antenna rotor. On top of her big oak television* she had a small plastic box with a knob on it that was labeled with a compass. She had neatly stuck labels on it pointing to where all of the broadcast towers were, so that she didn't have to fiddle with it when she changed channels. Adjusting a TV antenna was always such a black art I figure she must have just marked them all out trial-and-error-like.

Twenty years later people are getting fed up with the cable company and the DTV changeover has renewed interest in terrestrial broadcasts. But the whole concept of antennas has left the vernacular. Now that we're living in the age of Total Information Awareness you can just type in your address and get a cute little map telling you where to point your antenna.



But it only tells you compass heading and distance. Inexplicably, this is nowhere near enough to satisfy my craving for information. Why does it say Channel 4 is 25 miles away when their studios are right down the street? So I asked the FCC. Apparently I'm a total idiot because it turns out that they don't broadcast directly from the studios. All those antennas and satellite dishes, it turns out, are decorative.

Channels 2, 4, and 7 broadcast from various locations in and around Colden, whereas channels 29 and 17 broadcast from Grand Island. And almost every Canadian station that I've ever heard of broadcasts from the CN Tower.

The upshot is, because I am easily amused and I enjoy putting things in order, here's a map of every broadcast tower within 60mi of Buffalo. Unless you're going to go crawling around on the roof I wouldn't expect to get anything more than 30-45mi away but at least you'll know you're pointing in the right direction.

And the weirdest part about it is, I don't even watch TV. We got no cable, no antenna, the DVD player is disconnected, and the digital converter is still in the unopened box. I guess I just like mapping things.

- Z

_______________

• They don't make electronics out of oak anymore. I want an oak microwave.