That Seminar at the Ramada Inn Pays Off Yet Again

Well, friends, it looks like it's time to take another break from this blog. I've decided to re-brand myself. Toward this end, I hired a prominent public relations firm to overhaul both my image and my mission statement. So where before I was nothing more than Soren Narnia, some loser with a PC and a keyboard, I will now officially be known by my carefully chosen corporate brand name: Propensia. (It sounds a little like "propensity," which, the PR firm told me, was a positive-sounding term.) All future writings will be issued under this brand. It will be me writing those writings, of course, but only through the Propensia moniker will they get that extra boost of credibility. I also have a new slogan: "Lookin' toward tomorrow!" And I have a logo too! It's some naked-looking silhouette holding a lightning bolt in one hand and reaching toward the sun with the other. I'm not sure what that has to do with me, but any further questions about Propensia (meaning me, I guess), its holdings (my stuff), or its policies (stuff I think about) must be submitted in writing to my publicist (still me as far as I can tell). I have every confidence that by becoming a corporate brand instead of just one named dude, awareness of my net product group (NPG) will expand manifold. Anyway, it's going to take some time for Propensia (me, remember) to draw up a three-year plan for me, so I'm going on vacation. If you need a ride to the end of the driveway to pick up the mail, let's go---although I swear to God, you're just getting lazier and lazier with each passing day.

Your Internet Questions Answered!

We open the blog today to your questions about the Internet.

Q: Is it true that I can use the Internet to look up the dates of famous wars in American history?

A: Yes, this is true! More than half of all major world wars since 1800 have some sort of information about them online. If you have a state-of-the-art computer, you can even look at still photographs of battles on some web sites.

Q: I was walking down the street the other day and I saw a nice tree. Is it true that I can use the Internet to find out what kind of tree I was looking at?

A: Yes, this is also true! From elms to saplings, the web has plenty of information about trees. (Types of trees beginning with the letters A-D or T-Z might have no info available as yet.) Not only can you learn about trees, but you can use the Internet to educate yourself about the sizes of various coins.

Q: I have to move to Phoenix from Atlanta. Is it possible to attach all my personal possessions, including my car and my house, to an e-mail message, then send it and receive everything on the other end? I have a Hewlett Packard PC 860 with a 56k modem and a 16 gigabyte hard drive.

A: This is a tough one. You may have to switch from a standard corded mouse to an infrared cordless variety. This can only be done if you have RAM. If you don't have RAM, you won't have any flat padding to skate the mouse over.

Q: Why isn't it called the Electro-File instead of the Internet?

A: I have no idea.

Q: Why are the letters on the keyboard arranged the way they are?

A: Again, I just don't have the answer.

Q: What does the "http" mean before a web address?

A: If I knew that, I'd pretty much be an all-knowing, all-seeing god, wouldn't I? And guess what, it turns out I'm just human like everybody else. I don't know all there is to know, I make mistakes, I bounce checks, I lose my patience with pets.

Q: I'm the person who asked about the dates of famous American wars a minute ago. I just typed in "Civil War" on Google and my computer told me that nothing matched my query. Why did this happen?

A: You screwed something up.

Q: Could you just tell me the dates of the Civil War?

A: I'm not.....no.

That's it for this week's edition of Your Internet Questions Answered! Next week we'll have a guest panelist who will teach you how to use your computer's On button to shave deli meats.

Suddenly I am very thirsty. You ever get that way?

The Thing That Happened

Look, in about five minutes the phone's going to ring and you're going to hear about the little problem that just happened out there in the press room. And Mr. President, I just don't know what to say. I guess "I'm sorry" won't really cut it. I don't know what came over me. I mean, when I got up this morning I felt fine. A little nervous, sure, but generally I thought I had it together. But when I got up there at the podium and there were all those reporters there and the White House seal and everything, I guess I got overanxious. You know, it's your first day as the President's press secretary, you just really want to impress, you want to make a splash. So I started talking, and the first few questions seemed to go okay, I told everyone that stuff about North Korea and the national debt....I did pretty well on those, I have a good memory, really. And then some guy from the Wall Street Journal said, "What economic initiatives is the President spear-heading?" and I just sort of froze up a little. I know I was supposed to mention the steel industry and interest rates. Believe me, I know it. You and I went over that many times. But the next thing I knew, I had said something about....um.....well, for some reason I told everyone that within the next six months, every man, woman, and child in America would possess his or her own personal aircraft so we could all motor around the sky miles above the ground. It just slipped out. I have no clue where I got that from. I mean, as far as I know, nobody's even working on something like that. And then the part where I told everyone that the government would be giving these supposed floating vehicles away for free....with free tune-ups when necessary and a low-cost soy-based fuel available at stilt-supported stations that will also sell soda, chips, and magazines ....again, I am very sorry. I might not be the best man for this job after all. A competent person just doesn't stand in front of the media and say "This President vows to all citizens that come summer, no one will ever have to operate a car again" or "The long sad history of congested street and highway traffic will be a laughable memory by August at the very latest." You deserve better than that. You deserve better than some fool going on and on about how all Americans should "burn their cars, now, right now, in every available public square, for soon we will all be cloud-borne sky-conquerors!" I'll just work the next few press conferences until you can find a suitable replacement, and then I'll go back to the Treasury Department where I belong. Do you know who I should talk to about carrying my health insurance over? Is it Jill in HR? Is it still her?

Paper or plastic?

THIS WEEK'S CHICKEN SPECIALS ON THE BLOG

Perdue Farms chicken---mass-produced, chickens kept inhumanely
$4.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken
$5.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken fed with untreated grains and spring water
$6.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken fed with untreated grains and spring water and allowed to live a full year before slaughter
$7.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken fed with untreated grains and spring water and allowed to live a full year before slaughter, and permitted to fall in love at least once during its life before choosing its own method of execution
$9.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken fed with untreated grains and spring water and allowed to live a full year before slaughter, and permitted to fall in love at least once during its life before choosing its own method of execution, and educated in the arts, and taken on travels beyond the barnyard including at least one trip to the great capitals of Europe, and not killed until some measure of emotional and intellectual self-actualization is achieved, whatever that might mean for a chicken
$12.99 per pound

cage-free, farm fresh chicken fed with untreated grains and spring water and allowed to live a full year before slaughter, and permitted to fall in love at least once during its life before choosing its own method of execution, and educated in the arts, and taken on travels beyond the barnyard including at least one trip to the great capitals of Europe, and not killed until some measure of emotional and intellectual self-actualization is achieved, whatever that might mean for a chicken, and its biography ghostwritten by a major journalist from either the New York Times or the Guardian and then published by Harper Collins, and offered a full burial in Arlington Cemetery, and lied to by a priest at the very end who guarantees acceptance in chicken heaven, where it will supposedly reign as king
$16.99 per pound

chicken fingers basket w/ fries and a small soft drink
$3.50 after 4 pm, no sharing

The Double-Edged Sword of Small Business

Coming up with a logo for a new company is hard enough, but when it's your own company, whew, it's even harder. I've been coming up with ideas and tossing them out just as fast this whole day. The problem is that our product is so difficult to express. I need a logo that says to the client: "We here at Central Assassination Services are ready to train your secret operatives in the process of killing human targets remotely through extra-sensory thought projection three hundred and sixty-five days a year." So at first I thought I'd just draw a pair of red eyes with lines shooting out of them to represent thought lasers, and have the lasers hitting the letters C.A.S., but Donna, the cool morning barista down at Starbucks, said that seemed a little over-the-top, so next I tried out a drawing of a robot with its jaws open standing over a dead body, but then I thought, Well, we don't really have robots working for us, so even though it would seem cool, I had to toss that idea too. Another logo which didn't work at all was a big pulsating brain with blood dripping from it. It was perfect, but it was just too tough to draw. I don't really know how to draw 'pulsating'. I tried to do it using little lightning bolts, but it seemed all wrong. My mailman just started laughing when he saw it. He suggested a simple design with the letters C.A.S. set against a black field, the theory being that our clients wouldn't be too impressed by fancy artwork, since they're all very busy trying to figure out exactly who to kill remotely through extra-sensory thought projection, and when to do it, and how to get away with it, which seemed like a fair point. But then I remembered: sex sells! So what I've just about settled on is a hot girl in a bikini peering over a pair of sunglasses. Animals are good in ads too, I've noticed---that Sugar Smacks gopher warms my heart every time I look at him at the breakfast table!---so I might change the girl to a chicken and the sunglasses to one of those old-timey bicycles with the one huge wheel and the one teeny-tiny wheel. I have to settle this issue soon because we have to start thinking about shooting our commercial and buying ad time on channel 44 during the Long and Foster Sunday Showcase of Homes.

Sonata in G Minor

LIST #313:

EIGHT SONGS THAT ME AND RODNEY ARGUED ABOUT WHEN WE WERE AT THE COMPUTER DECIDING WHICH SONG TO LAY UNDERNEATH THE VIDEO MONTAGE OF US DOING STUNTS AT THE SKATEBOARDING SAFETY EXPO WE ENTERED LAST SUNDAY TO SHOW TO THIS GIRL THAT RODNEY LIKES, EXCEPT HE WON'T ADMIT HE LIKES HER BUT YOU CAN TELL HE DOES BY THE STUPID SUGGESTIONS FOR SONGS HE MADE, WHILE MY SUGGESTIONS MADE MUCH MORE SENSE AND WOULD HAVE SOUNDED TOTALLY COOL UNDERNEATH THE VIDEO OF US DOING STUNTS AT THE EXPO, AND THEN THIS GIRL WOULD HAVE SEEN THAT I AM WAY MORE WORTHY OF DATING THAN RODNEY IS, ESPECIALLY IF A GOOD DOWNBEAT COULD BE SYNCHED RIGHT AT THE PART WHERE I'M GOING UP IN THE AIR OFF THE HALF PIPE AND I GIVE THAT BIG THUMBS UP WHICH IS MY SIGNATURE MOVE:

Taking Care of Business
Welcome to the Jungle
Eminence Front
Rock the Casbah
Start Me Up
It's the End of the World As We Know It
We Will Rock You
Where the Streets Have No Name