First, I not only wrote the cover story for the latest issue of Isthmus, but am actually on the cover. Mrs. Josh says the picture doesn’t look like me, but that’s neither here nor there—what’s really important is that my friend and mentee KaAndrae looks good (and he does!). The story is about what it’s been like to mentor a 12-year-old young man for the past 10 months. And I’ll give away the answer now—it’s been deeply rewarding—but you should read the article anyway; I must say, I’m awfully happy with it. You might also consider becoming a mentor! If you’re in the Madison area, you could contact the program I work through at Madison-area Urban Ministry. If you live somewhere else, you can find a mentoring program in your area.

I’ve also still been blog-blog-blogging away through science fiction’s Hugo Award–winning novels at io9. This past weekend, I wrote about Larry Niven’s Ringworld and how, while it shares some striking similarities with Lost, there’s a defining thematic difference between the two stories.

Dr. Bob sent this along, and he is a Real Scientist (I’ve seen his office!), which just lends credibility to the proceedings. Anyway, the data contained in this chart are going to allow us to make so many new discoveries. For example, we may finally be able to pin down the elusive constant G^GW, which is of course the number that determines exactly when a girl is about to go wild.

And then we can stop all those girls from going wild, obviously.

Last night I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough material to fill the allotted time; as it turned out, I ran a few minutes over. I did my best to acknowledge it, though, and to hurry up and finish, so I hope no one was terribly upset.

If I had to do it over, I would spend a bit more time explaining what I wanted to talk about and introducing myself professionally. I’m afraid that in my eagerness to get to the content, I might not have made it 100 percent clear that the point of the content was to help businesspeople pitch themselves and their businesses as interesting subjects for newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio stations to cover. And I rushed through my own qualifications and background (although I don’t really think I needed to dwell on them, as long as what I had to say spoke for itself).

The other thing I would change is kinda funny: Before the meeting started, I told another MABC member it was my first time using PowerPoint and that the only thing I didn’t want to do was just read verbatim everything on the slide show, because isn’t that just the worst, when all you’re doing is saying aloud what a roomful of perfectly literate adults can read and comprehend for themselves? Naturally, I then proceeded to read much of the slide show verbatim. It’s very hard not to! I believe I provided some added value with my presence. Certainly the questions and input from other members were really fantastic. (On that note, many people chimed in with useful info, but Diana Mahaffey specifically mentioned Help a Reporter Out, a resource I’m linking to here and in the previous post.)

For anyone who’d like a copy, I’m posting a PDF of the PowerPoint document here—and of course, even if you’re not in MABC, you should feel free to take a look at it. (I can’t guarantee it will all make sense if I’m not standing in front of you, speaking and gesturing, however. The 300 graphic, for example, might be confusing.)

Update: During the presentation, Diana Mahaffey mentioned Help a Reporter Out, a website that lets you offer yourself as an expert source to reporters in need of sources. It’s a great resource, so thanks for the tip, Diana! And thanks to everyone who was at the meeting for lending me your ears, and for your kind words, thoughtful questions, and great feedback.

In case you ever thought doing weird pop art was more a matter of “weird” than “art,” this video of Ke$ha on SNL more or less falsifies that notion. This Jezebel post says, like, exactly what I would say, which is convenient. Flags and spacemen don’t automatically make something interesting. (Although on the other hand, here it is getting blogged about, so.)

(via bulicks)

There are two Penney’s in Madison, and we shopped at both of them this weekend, and had pretty disparate experiences:

On Saturday, I went looking for a suit. Now, I work out of a cave for the most part, and it’s a great cave (thank you, in-laws and previous owners of this house, for furnishing it so nicely), but the dress code is less “casual Fridays” and more “I am probably in just my underwear right now.” (Apologies if you are eating.) So while I need a suit occasionally—for instance, I’m going to a business event in Chicago this weekend—it’s mostly going to hang in the closet.

As a result, I wanted to spend as little as possible and still end up with something nice. I headed to Men’s Wearhouse, where I was helped by Iven (his title is “Assistant Manager II”), who was quite personable, but who heard that my budget was around $300 and immediately showed me a $400 suit. He showed me some other options, but they weren’t really tenable. I told him I’d think about it (thought: My wife will kill me if I buy this suit) and scooted over to Penney’s across the street at the West Towne Mall.

BOOM. Stafford Suit Separates, on sale. $150. No one’s gonna mistake me for a magnate or a tycoon or a mogul, but I look respectable and had enough left over to get a couple of shirts and ties, a belt, another pair of slacks, and some shoes. The gentleman who helped me—John—was pretty low-key and friendly, if not overflowing with fashion advice, and I’m giving him some props here. PROPS.

Cut to Sunday (i.e., yesterday), when the lady and I dashed over to the East Towne Mall to get my new suit pants hemmed and to look at patio furniture. Prices at the furniture store—pretty outrageous! Prices at JCPenney—highly reasonable, and augmented by a 20 percent nearly storewide discount that day. So we picked out a table and four chairs and went to check out.

Now, what we wanted to do was not particularly complicated: The chairs were in stock, but the table needed to be ordered. We wanted to pay for both at the same time (to get our 20 percent discount), and then pick everything up at once, when the table came in (because we’ll need to borrow or rent a truck to get them home, as our car is small). Not that hard, right? Just set four chairs aside, and we’ll get them on Wednesday.

Well, the guy at the register was Having a Day. Not like an “I’m Depressed and Man, This Is a Pain” day; this was a “Dealing With Customers in My Capacity as a Provider of Customer Service Is Just Waaaaay Too Much to Ask of Me” day. First, when another salesperson started to ask him a question, he threw up his arms in front of his face and cried, “I’m not really here! I’m not really here!” I guess he was about to go on break or something. But then he started to help us, got a fifth of the way through, had clearly missed some significant steps in the process, clapped his hands and told the obviously new employee next to him, “OK, you finish up with them!” and dashed off. She was very nice, but, again, obviously new, in that she did not really know computers or how they worked, which was disadvantageous, as ours turned out to be a pretty computer-intensive transaction. Finally, another salesperson showed up and helped her through it, and twenty minutes later, we were free.

We think our chairs will be there when we go to get the table on Wednesday. Anyway, I sympathize a little with “I’m not here” guy, because he seemed to be sort of in charge, and I got the sense that he maybe ended up handling a lot of complicated stuff; and that is just an awful feeling, to be the only person at your job who can handle the complicated stuff. On the other hand, I might be wrong—he might not be all that important there, just a prima donna—and more to the point, you just don’t up and leave in the middle of a transaction. It sucks to get caught up in something right before your break or clocking out, but cripes: Stop, take a deep breath, spend the five minutes it will take to get through the rigmarole (it’s not like we were hoping to drag the experience out), and avoid getting called out by name when I inevitably take the survey mentioned on the back of the receipt so that I can get a 15-percent-off coupon.

Next time you are using a mouse with a designated right-click button, notice the way you feel just before you get to right-click something.  There is an almost imperceptible little celebration that happens.

Wow. That is absolutely true.

Since my favorite funny blogger-lady has not blogged anything in SO LONG (I hope it’s because she is busy making pork chops!), go check out Hyperbole and a Half.