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Be helpful.

Just one ques­tion: When Rudy Giu­liani took that call from his wife, why didn’t the audi­ence stand up and throw pens at him? What a strange, screw-you moment. For once more or less agree* with the WSJ edi­to­r­ial page.

Any­one like to imag­ine what that edi­to­r­ial would have read if it had been, oh, John Edwards tak­ing the call? Ball-busting bitch hen­pecks hus­band, no doubt. It’s all in how you spin things.

Surly, surly, surly. I can tell it’s Wednes­day. Sleep depri­va­tion is start­ing to catch up, but it’ll be sev­eral days before relief beck­ons from my fluffy pil­lows. Ah, well. That’s life in these hard­scrab­ble times. A break for blog­ging, and then we’re back in the saddle.

One of the things I like about Safari, Mac’s Own Browser, is the way it lets you orga­nize book­marks. I have sev­eral fold­ers right on the menu bar: NN.C, News, Blogs, Money, Detroit, Shop­ping, RSS and Ref­er­ence. They’re self-explanatory, right? Any ques­tions? I have one rule — no drop-down menu can drop down longer than the depth of the screen, so I cull and refresh reg­u­larly. That’s mainly a prob­lem with the News and Blogs fold­ers, but the sur­prise (for me, any­way) li’l book­mark folder that could is turn­ing out to be Ref­er­ence. It’ll soon have to be culled, it’s grow­ing so fast. This is where I keep all the handy sites for look­ing stuff up; as a jour­nal­ist, of course facts are very impor­tant to me. (Yes: Kid­ding.) But some­times I just page through some of these sites to turn up Fun Facts to Know and Tell.

Top four on the list: Google maps, Wikipedia, WHOIS lookup, Bartleby. That last one’s toast, most likely; noth­ing beats the Google in look­ing up famous quo­ta­tions, although Bartleby has a bit more author­ity, I guess. Any­way, I book­marked it to have Bartlett’s close by, and it sucks, or else it’s incom­plete. I just asked Bartlett’s to find me the orig­i­nal source of the phrase “bet­ter angels of our nature,” fig­ur­ing I’d give it a slow pitch right over the mid­dle. Cita­tion not found. Click “all sources” and Bartleby finds it no prob, but by then I could have Googled it and writ­ten three more para­graphs. I’ll keep it around, but it’s on probation.

Screen­plays — I use this one a lot when I can’t remem­ber a line of dia­logue. It only works if the movie’s in the data­base, how­ever, and lately IMDb’s “quotes” sec­tion in indi­vid­ual movies is kick­ing butt. But let’s give it a try: Ooh, what’s that line John Good­man yells over and over as he’s run­ning down the blaz­ing hotel cor­ri­dor in “Bar­ton Fink?” I can’t quite recall…I’ll show you…something. Ahh, here it is:

Char­lie: Look upon me! I’ll show you the life of the mind!

And as a bonus, here’s the rat-a-tat-tat between the two police detec­tives inves­ti­gat­ing a disappearance:

Mas­tri­onotti: Started in Kansas City. Cou­ple of house­wives.
Deutsch: Cou­ple days ago we see the same M.O. out in Los Feliz.
Mas­tri­onotti: Doc­tor. Ear, nose and throat man.
Deutsch: All of which he’s now missin’.
Mas­tri­onotti: Well, some of his throat was there.
Deutsch: Physi­cian, heal thy­self.
Mas­tri­onotti: Good luck with no fuckin’ head.
Deutsch: Any­way.

Psst: Don’t even go to “The Big Lebowski” quote page. You’ll be there All. Day.

I warned you.

OK. One lit­tle taste:

The Dude: Jesus, man, could you change the chan­nel?
Cab Dri­ver: Fuck you man. If you don’t like my fuckin’ music get your own fuckin’ cab!
The Dude: I had a rough…
Cab Dri­ver: I pull over and kick your ass out!
The Dude: Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!

Ha ha. Mov­ing on, Worl­dome­teres, world sta­tis­tics updated in real time. I hope you’re not among the 69,792 who will die today.

Hard-to-find 800 num­bers, none of which I’ve ever called. How to Beau­tify a Face in Pho­to­shop. Turns out it ONLY works on pho­tos, damn it all. (Bossy has another P’shop tuto­r­ial, which fea­tures a pic­ture of her Great Dane. LA Mary, go check it out.

Who is Sick? for the med­ical writer, or just the geek hypochon­driac, in all of us.

Tired of tak­ing calls from an edi­tor? Post a word meter on your site and tell them to talk to the hand.

I did NOT write that/Yes you DID and the Inter­net Way­back Machine might be able to prove it.

If I ever get a ticket for park­ing in the old hand­i­capped spots at my local drug­store, which are no longer legal hand­i­capped spots but still have blue lines on them, the ADA Acces­si­bil­ity Guide­lines will get it thrown out of court. (And yes, there are other, legal spots, and I never park there. Although some­times I will take the “expec­tant mother” space at Kroger, if it’s rain­ing and I’m in a bad mood. Because it’s stu­pid, that’s why. And I’m hop­ing, if I’m ever chal­lenged, that I will have the pres­ence of mind to say, “Isn’t it won­der­ful? I’m expect­ing twins!”)

The Elec­tric Eclec­tic, because some­times you’re just bored.

What’s a ref­er­ence site you can’t live with­out? Leave it in the com­ments. Me, I’m back to work.

* edited from “total agree­ment,” which was sloppy and inac­cu­rate, earlier.

Posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 10:45 am
in Current events, Housekeeping, Same ol' same ol'.

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14 responses to
“Be helpful.”

  1. brian stouder said on September 26th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    dic​tio​nary​.com and acronymfinder​.com are two that I visit all the time (we won’t even men­tion the Google); another one that is quite use­ful is an all-purpose (in the indus­trial sense) con­ver­sion site, asknum​bers​.com.

    as a jour­nal­ist, of course facts are very impor­tant to me.

    This struck me as funny, since just this morn­ing I clicked the Falling Man link (on the night­stand) and was taken to: a fairly harsh pan-job of the book! Made me laugh out loud, because it struck me as a defin­i­tive Journalist-thing to do: rec­om­mend a book (or at least say ‘this is the one I’m read­ing’) and then pro­vide an essay that delin­eates why no one should waste their time read­ing that book! ‘Fair and bal­anced’, indeed!!

    (and now I will go onto post­ing pro­ba­tion, so as to dial back my gadfly-nuisance factor)

  2. Connie said on September 26th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    I hate those “expec­tant mother” spaces, the signs make me crabby every time I go to my local Tar­get. They should say reserved for moth­ers with babies. I know this from experiencee.

    One of my favorite links is my own library’s links page at http://​www​.elkhart​.lib​.in​.us/​c​g​i​-​b​i​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​5​.​p​l​?​&​a​m​p​;​f​i​l​e​=​l​i​n​k​s.html . It’s put together and kept up by a bunch of ref­er­ence librar­i­ans. I think the link I use the most is the local one, when­ever I want to find a local gov unit or agency or school or group. And the ref­er­ence link for all those things you’ve already men­tioned. Also best known librar­ian mod­er­ated web cat­a­log is http://​lii​.org/ , you may like that one as well.

  3. ashley said on September 26th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    What? From that WSJ edi­to­r­ial: “Most Amer­i­cans under­stand it takes an extra chro­mo­some to run for President”…

    “Most” Amer­i­cans under­stand that you need Down syn­drome to run for president?

    If this is sup­posed to be a joke, it’s quite unfunny.

  4. alex said on September 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    I think they mean only since 2000, Ashley.

    Seri­ously, spellcheck is no replace­ment for copy edi­tors. Speak­ing as one who’s been replaced by spellcheck.

  5. jcburns said on September 26th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    Great ref­er­ency link­age, Nancy. I espe­cially (now) like that I can orga­nize the heck out of my Safari book­marks and they end up per­fectly synced on…my phone.

    heh.

    I’m mak­ing the ‘call me some­time’ gang sign to you now.

    Oh, and: mac users, don’t for­get the trea­sure trove of ref­er­ence info at your fin­ger­tips even when you’re a hun­dred miles away from the inter­net…Dictionary.app sur­prised us so many times this sum­mer at the cottage…oh, that won’t be in there…hey, it is!!

    And there’s that thing where you high­light a word (in Safari, even) and do control-command-D and…voila!

  6. nancy said on September 26th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    And oh.…snap! Alex wins his spot in the remake of “The Boys in the Band” yet again!

    JC, the built-in dic­tio­nary is now part of the NYT web­site, too. Kind of annoy­ing, actu­ally, at least for us news-farmers, who are accus­tomed to triple-clicking on a head­line to cap­ture the whole thing. Now I get a def­i­n­i­tion of the last word in it.

  7. MichaelG said on September 26th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    You agree with the whole WSJ thing Nance? Even this: “Mr. Giu­liani has run an impres­sive cam­paign so far, espe­cially on the issues. He has a record of accom­plish­ment in New York, and he projects the kind of exec­u­tive com­pe­tence that many Amer­i­cans want in a Pres­i­dent.” I think he’s a bug eyed wacko and the phone calls don’t help.

    I like local.live for maps and aer­ial photos.

  8. nancy said on September 26th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    Oh, hail no, Michael. I think he’s a nasty prick and the worst pos­si­ble out­come in terms of end­ing the war. But I do agree that these phone moments — I under­stand there have been a few — are just wack-ass crazy. What is he try­ing to say? I love my wife, who won’t respect sim­ple bound­aries? Yuck.

  9. Jolene said on September 26th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    Yeah, those calls were just too weird. Have y’all looked at the James Fal­lows blog? He’s in China these days, but he watched the most recent Repub­li­can debate, as well a GWB’s lat­est speech on Iraq.

    He was, to say the least, not impressed with what Giu­liani had to say. Also has inter­est­ing com­ments about the other can­di­ates. Do check out the link at the top of the arti­cle I’ve linked to.

  10. LA Mary said on September 26th, 2007 at 6:22 pm

    I’ve had three Great Danes and all three sit on the couch look­ing silly, just like the one in that photo. They are the lazi­est dogs around, and I think they’re the best watch­dogs. They look scary as hell if they’re bark­ing and growl­ing, but they are far too lazy to do any­thing mean.

    I spent my day at a crit­i­cal care nurs­ing sym­po­sium, hus­tling nurses and chat­ting with the other ven­dors dur­ing breaks. There was a nice guy from a com­pany that makes med­ical mon­i­tors, called Space­Labs. He’s send­ing me a t-shirt for my lab, Smokey, in return for a photo of the dog wear­ing it. I fig­ure some weld­ing gog­gles and a skate­board hel­met would be a nice addi­tion to the out­fit. If this guy comes through, I’ll share the pic­ture of Smokey the SpaceLab.

  11. Cathy Dee said on September 26th, 2007 at 9:13 pm

    Always to be read cau­tiously, and backed up with sec­ondary research, but I’m turn­ing to Wikipedia more often. Like I had to look up polar­ity the other day. Dis­cov­ered more than I needed to. It can be a good start­ing point, anyway…the ref­er­ences at the end of arti­cles often being very rel­e­vant and useful.

  12. Robert Rouse said on September 27th, 2007 at 10:14 am

    Per­son­ally, I like Brainy Quotes.

  13. brian stouder said on September 27th, 2007 at 11:18 am

    Brainy quotes is worth a laugh! I clicked “Mar­riage” and then scrolled down the (lengthy) alpha­bet­i­cal list of quoted nota­bles — and clicked a few. LBJ and Mae West both had good­ies; Zsa Zsa was worth a chuckle, too

  14. grapeshot said on September 27th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Well, here are two that never fail to amuse me:

    The acronym gen­er­a­tor http://​www​.acronymfinder​.com/​b​u​z​z​g​en.asp

    Answers to life’s per­sis­tent ques­tions
    http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/

    I also have lots of fun with http://​the​saurus​.ref​er​ence​.com/

    I’ve learned a thing or two from here:
    http://​www​.straight​dope​.com/

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