Too Many Characters

Every now and again I just can't fit my thoughts onto Twitter. This is one of those times...

-I was hanging with the next generation this afternoon, which means some "Sesame Street" time, which in turn means seeing "Elmo's World". Now, for those of you without kids, at one point of Elmo's segment he asks a baby how they do some various activity. The baby never answers and instead looks at the puppet, trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. Every time I see this I am torn as to whether this is awesome or traumatic for the baby. On one hand, once they learn to talk they can say they met Elmo, which carries tons of street cred in the toddler world. On the other hand, it's a creepy puppet with a guy's hand up its butt talking to you. Either way, I think it reflects badly on the parents involved.

-One other kid observation: I'm noticing children are aware of camera phones at an earlier and earlier age. What this means is that you can't take pictures of them anymore because as soon as you take out your phone to snap a picture of them doing something cute, they realise what is in your hand, stop doing the cute thing and want to play "Angry Birds". So much for capturing memories.

-There was a story in the news this week about First Lady Michelle Obama's flight being waved off from its scheduled landing because an Army cargo jet was taking too long to taxi off the runway. This is the exact same thing that happens to the rest of us when we fly and most of the time we don't even know it's happening. However, since the First Lady was involved the press felt the need to include dramatic words, saying the planes had gotten "dangerously close." The actual distance apart was 3 miles. Now, I get that 'dangerously close' in aircraft terms are dramatically different from a dangerous distance for a car, but even for a plane I feel like 3 miles is pushing it. Even at one mile I doubt there is any real danger.

-On Tuesday the SWAT team was called to the Burlington Mall after reports of a weapon in the area. It turns out it was an umbrella. Given that they never said what kind of weapon someone thought it was, I can only assume there were two umbrellas and a couple of idiots acting out a very involved sword duel. Maybe they even took it up a notch and made lightsabre noises, in which case SWAT was a wise call.

-To the creators of SPAM mail viruses: if you want to trick me into clicking on a link that will infect my computer with tons of viruses, might I suggest hacking into the email account of a person who actually sends emails. I got a message from someone the other day whom I haven't gotten an email from in years and it was nothing but a link, which I obviously didn't click. I would have been less suspicious of an email from an African Prince with an investment opportunity for me.

-While waiting for a package to arrive via UPS, I was able to track it online. I saw that it left the local distribution center (located less than three miles from my home, which in airline terms is dangerously close) at 6 AM. The package was dropped off on my door at 8 PM. 14 hours to travel three miles. Talk about taking the long way around.