So, here's a thing I wrote. It's about fall, Mostly. And some other stuff, Tangentially.

And sorry for the link, I know it's a whole thing to click on it and all, but due to formatting (you'll see) you have to read it in a document form and not as a post.

I love a good oxymoron

Plus, the book next to it is just called "Rock"

So many titles...

So, this is the door to my new office, and as you can see, the main way to get to it is to wander through the library stacks. (Which is actually less obtrusive that walking through the student study area. Who wants to deal with them?)

Anyway, as you walk amongst the shelves, it’s impossible not to catch site of some of the titles passing by. And I have to tell you, it is an amazing assortment. I can’t stop looking at them. I stopped to take a picture of a particularly interesting one, and now I can’t stop. It's actually kind of a problem, because I have to leave my office approximately 50 times a day, and every trip, a new title catches my eye. And there's like 20 different rows I could walk down, so the possibilities are pretty much endless.

I thought I might share one a day, but how to choose? So many great ones, but I'lll have to pace myself. I'll start with my favorite so far (my attention was first caught by the title on the far right, but look how very many good titles can be found in such a small amount of shelf space):

In case you can’t make them out, titles include: Rogues and Scoundrels, Les Imposteurs, Romantic Liars, Romantic Rascals, Famous Impostors, and World's Wickedest Men. I think I need to know more of some of those and less of the others, although I'm not sure which is which.

Say what?

So, I have this thing I do when I'm running. You know, to distract myself from the horribleness of the running. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I mostly enjoy running, it's just that sometimes I need a little distraction from the actual doing of it. From the putting one foot in front of the other, the oh-jesus-am-I-really-only-halfway-done aspects of it.

Anyway, like most people, I listen to music while running, and I’ve started to notice that with nothing else to focus on while running, I pay more attention to the lyrics of whatever song happens to pop up on the iPod. I mean, usually when I'm listening to music, I'm also doing something else—driving, reading, cleaning, typing, general multitasking, what have you. But when I'm running, I'm pretty much just listening. As a result, I've begun to discover a number of differences between what up until this moment I thought the lyrics were, and what I have now actually discovered the lyrics to be. And I thought I would pass along some of these discoveries as I stumble upon them.

[An aside: I've discovered that this phenomenon is called a mondegreen, which is "the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning." Excellent word.]

I'll start with a little ditty by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I select them due to the fact that they are the purveyors of the classic misunderstood lyric “there's a bathroom on the right” (or bad moon on the rise, if you're looking for accuracy.) Anyway, I was listening to “Lookin' Out My Back Door” (which is an excellently paced song for running, if you are interested) and there is a line which I have now determine to be “tambourines and elephants are playing in the band” which I misunderstood a variety a ways. (And I preface this by saying that even the correct line it itself makes little sense. Songs are like movies and such, and you have to be down with the allusion and metaphor and suspension of disbelief and such. So, you know, there's an elephant playing in the band, deal with it.)

I had previously always thought this line to be “memories and elephants,” which made sense in my brain, since elephants are alleged to have excellent memories. I also thought it might be “Anne Marie's an elephant” which could either refer to an actual elephant named Anne Marie, or perhaps metaphorically to a girl named Anne Marie who was perhaps a bit on the large or unattractive side (although that would take the song into a meaner direction that the rest of the happy lyrics would indicate). Anyway, I maintain that my interpretations make at least as much sense as the actual words, but it's nice to know the correct words as well.

Ouch.

I have a huge (and I mean HUGE) bruise on the back of my left calf. How did I get it you ask? Well, I’ll tell you – attempting to climb through my bedroom window. Why was I doing that, you ask? A reasonable question. Answer: I accidentally locked myself out of the house.

So, in order to get back in, I had to access the only window that was unlocked, which was my bedroom window. This situation has happened in the past (and here I would like to digress to point out that in this and other cases, the reason I was locked out of the house was not entirely my fault. In fact, I would go so far as to say very little of it was my fault. In my house, I never use the locks on the door handles, I only use the deadbolt. So, it’s not usually a problem for me to close the door behind me when I go outside, because if I want to lock the door, I have to use the key. But, on the occasions when someone else has been in the house – say feeding my cats while I’m out of town, as was recently the case – these other people tend to sometimes use the handle locks, which I have no way of knowing until I am locked out of the house)

Anyway, the last time this happened, I was able to get in through the window in the guest room, which is actually slightly closer to the ground than the one in my bedroom. Alas, that window was locked. So, I get this like, bench/stool thing from the backyard, put it under the window, and climb up. I get the window open, pry the screen loose, and shove the bed out of the way (yes, the bed is in front of the window, but fortunately I have hardwood floors and have therefore attached those little felt circles to the feet of all the furniture. In addition to keeping the floors from getting scratched, it makes it pretty easy to slide the furniture around.) Now, as I have said, this window is slightly higher off the ground, and as a result, the thing I was standing on was not quite tall enough to allow me to step through the window and onto the floor of the house. I tested it out by putting my leg through the window, and discovered that I would have to use my arms to hoist myself up to the windowsill while simultaneously not falling off the stool and not knocking myself unconscious by banging my head into the window itself—a prospect I was not sure I could pull off. So, I was standing there with one leg in the window, trying to decide the next move. That’s when the stool decided to fall over.

Luckily, it was near the exterior wall of the house, which it hit and which kept it from turning over entirely. But, it did leave me balanced on its steeply sloped surface hanging by one leg from the window sill. As the metal window frame pressed painfully into my leg and began forming the giant bruise on my calf, I tried to pull myself up, right the stool, and generally try not to break any of my vital body parts. I managed to extricate my leg, break the frame of the window screen, and fall on my ass, but was otherwise unharmed. Except for the aforementioned extremely painful and now huge and purple bruise, of course.

As my cats came over to help by attempting to escape through the now open and screenless window, I decided it was time to call in reinforcements. Standing on the now righted stool, I could reach through the bedroom window to the phone on my nightstand, which I used to call the holder of my spare keys to come over and let me the hell back in.

Dear Chapstick,

I don’t know why I feel the need to mess around with those other lip balms. I'm weak and easily seduced by their glossy packaging and empty promises of healing powers and moisturizing goodness. Please forgive me. You know I always come back to you. You may not be sexy, Chapstick, but you work like a champ. Thank you for taking me back and offering my poor chapped lips your delicious strawberry protection from the blustery London winter. I promise not to stray again. Love, Liz

Casual shoppers beware.

Ok, so I had to do a little shopping today, needing to acquire a birthday gift for the youngest member of the Byron clan. The Byrons live in England, so I opted to purchase my items directly from Amazon.co.uk, which saves me on having to do the international mailing myself. Plus, there's the added bonus of allowing me to do my usual pointless procrastinating while still getting the gift there in time for the actual event.

At any rate, I’m doing my browsing, shopping for a child’s gift, I remind you, looking at various games and toys and such. I click on one item that looks promising, and then down at the bottom in the “customers who bought this item also bought” section, I happen to notice that one of the suggested items is the item featured above. Not only that charmer, but also this. And this. And also this. And if you follow any of those links, needless to say it all only goes downhill from there.

So I ask you, how did I go from cute children’s arts and crafts kits to thongs, ball scratchers, penis jewelry, and masturbation guides in a single click? (Oh and as an aside, did you note the name of the wanking book author? If not, go back and look, I laughed aloud). I don’t recall encountering this issue on the US Amazon (although, it did point me randomly to this, now that I think about it). And who are these people who buy Borat thongs along with their children’s toys? (Also, why does such a thing as a Borat thong exist?) I’m all for multi-tasking, but I think these items might be better suited to separated purchases.

Excuses for why I suck:

So, I haven’t written anything on this damn blog for a while. Even thought I do have a fairly legitimate excuse – I was out of town for 2 weeks with limited internet access – I will not deny that it is also largely due to the fact that I am feeling lazy and uninspired. But, they say the way to get over that sort of thing is to just write something, so that is what I am attempting to do.

Ok, and here is where I illustrate exactly how unmotivated I am by telling you that the previous paragraph was written on Monday. It is, of course, now Thursday. Yeah…that’s not so good. Alas.

But, I am going to post this when I get done typing it, so at least there will be a bit of blog action. And hopefully that will help to kick start my sorry ass into getting back into the groove.

Of course, now that I think about it, no one reads this thing anyway. So maybe I won't sweat it.

Word is dumb

So, I’m writing up this letter at work the other day, and it has the word “information” in it a lot. (What can I say? I have a lot of information and I provide it to others. I’m nice like that.) Anyway, since I was using the word over and over, I thought I would try to use a few synonyms to mix it up a bit. I threw in “data”, but then I was stumped due to late-afternoon brain exhaustion. So, I decided to ask MS Word what it might suggest. This is what it gave me:>>>>

It’s “information” you idiot computer program, not “in formation”. Note the space. One word, not two. Plus, it’s like a totally common word, especially in the computer and business worlds. You would think Word would know it…

If you have to have ads, at least make them entertaining

So, we're visiting both ends of the unsolicited advertising spectrum this week. First, I encountered the scary teeth in the previous post. But that was balanced out by this charming lad who also recently appeared in my yahoo mail.

That is just funny. It almost seems like it could be a fake ad in the Onion. Good for you, unnamed insurance company whose name I cropped out of the image and therefore don't remember now. That's some good comedy you've got there.

Teeth just look weird out of the context of the whole face...

So this was the ad lurking over on the side of the screen in my yahoo mail this morning.

Don’t all of the teeth in this image seem a little scary, even the ones that are supposed to be the white shiny versions you want? The bottom ones have those super-red lips and menacing smile and look suspiciously like they might belog to Dr. Frank-n-Furter. You really don’t want them going all Rocky Horror on your ass.

The top pair is a little too “heh, heh, check me out, I'm-a gonna come over there and bite you. That’s right, look out here I come. Chomp, chomp, chomp, bitch.” (Also, in my head I hear the teeth saying that in the voice of Bruce the Performance Artist from Family Guy (and if you don’t know that voice, here are his greatest hits. He is my favorite character)

An open letter to people who use words

Dear speaker,

Just a few things I would like to call to your attention:

1. Words that start with “es” should not generally not pronounced as if they start with “ex”, i.e. it’s es-specially, not ex-specially; es-spresso, not expresso. I noted this last week, but it seems to be spreading.
   
   
2. The abbreviation “vs.” does not stand for “verse”. It’s versus, people. Two syllables. Please use them both. "FSU versus Miami", not "FSU 'verse' Miami". That’s just lazy.
   
   
3. Please stop saying “chillaxe”. Just…stop.

Thanks ever so, Zil

7 unrelated things

1. OK, so you know that new-ish Dell commercial, where the workers are in the factory making the laptops in the pretty colors and singing “Lollipop”? For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why they changed the lyrics to “her kiss is sweeter than a cherry pie” instead of an apple pie. I was like, "that’s weird. Is it because the computer is red? No…apples and cherries are both red." Then it finally dawned on me…Dell doesn’t really want the word “apple” anywhere near their commercial for their PCs. Duh. Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake.
   
   
2. While I’m not generally in favor of political unrest and the overthrowing of governments and such, at least the recent events in Honduras have caused newscasters to have to say Tegucigalpa a lot, which is always entertaining. Definitely one of the most fun Central/South American capitals to say (along with Montevideo and Paramaribo. Actually, there are a lot of fun names down there like Tierra del Fuego. And Lake Titicaca. Hee...Titicaca.)
   
   
3. Have you ever noticed how many people pronounce “especially” like “ex-specially”? What’s that about?
   
   
4. I’m planning a conference at work, and I’ve been using this web service that lets you make and keep up with on-line registration forms and such. It’s called Wufoo. You know why? Because one of the guys who created it “really likes the Wu-Tang Clan and Foo Fighters.” That is awesome.
   
   
5. Why is it that everyone at work feels the need to constantly comment on what day of the week it is? I got several “Happy Friday’s” on my way in. (Along with a number of “I can’t believe it’s Monday already's” back at the start of the week.) Further evidence of my theory that work sucks and everyone hates it.
   
   
6. Just finished the Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin. That is some good stuff! And just offers more evidence that that woman ain’t right. I would love to hear what the author thinks of her recent abrupt resignation.
   
   
7. I also just got finished watching the first season of True Blood on DVD. My problem now is that I know that season 2 has started over on HBO, but I’m not a subscriber. I really want to know what happens next, and I really don’t want to have it spoiled for me during the 9 or 10 months I have to wait for season 2 to come out on DVD. (I also just finished season 4 of Weeds, so ditto this problem with Showtime) I guess I will just have to occupy myself with Dexter (season 2), In Treatment (season 1), Rome (season 1), The Tudors (seasons 1), Californication (season 1), and of course there is always all those seasons of The Wire (which I have never watched, despite being told by critics and friends that is the best show that ever was on television ever). I guess all of that should take my mind off the vampires…

As we stand here on the eve of the funeral of Michael Jackson, I’m remembering the last celebrity death that reached these epic proportions of media coverage, madness, and pubic outpouring of emotion…Princess Diana. Only that death seemed to be even more… well, even more everything. She was more beloved, her death was more shocking, her children more sadly orphaned. While both Di and MJ had endured public scandals, she had emerged victorious from hers. During the royal divorce she was perceived as the victim, people were already skeptical of the monarchy and were quick to believe that the end of the marriage was the fault of cruel, cheating Charles and his evil family. Their hatred of Di stemmed from her refusal to bow to their demands, to behave as they dictated, to “stay in her place.” People were happy to believe that she was simply too independent and fabulous to stay under the thumb of the outdated monarchy, and they embraced her as a single mother and woman of the people.

Measure that relatively mild disgrace against MJ’s various pedophilia charges, disturbing body modification, and increasingly erratic behavior. While MJ was going broke due to his excessive Neverland lifestyle, Di was doing charity work, crusading against landmines, and raising the future King of England. It’s generally agreed that Di put her children first, while MJ is best known for parading them around wearing veils and surgical masks and dangling them off balconies.

Add to all that the circumstances of their respective deaths. Di was a victim of the actions of others and circumstance – a passenger in a speeding car driven by a possibly drunk driver being chased by the hated paparazzi (the opportunity for lots of “they hounded her in life, and have caused her death” stories was just too good to pass up). MJ, on the other hand, was probably a victim of drug abuse and a lifetime of the indulgence that is granted to the rich and the talented.

Di even wins in the conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths. MJ’s doctors may have overprescribed him drugs and he may have been taking anesthesia-level sedatives. That’s nothing compared to all the pot-stirring that came from Mohammed Fayed – that Di was pregnant with his son’s child, and that the racist Royal Family arranged to have her murdered rather that see her with an Egyptian Muslim.

Anyway, I really had no strong feelings about Diana when she was alive (I was in elementary school when she married Charles, so I vaguely remember the wedding hoopla, but I really wasn’t that interested. I mean, I get the whole “fairy tale wedding/wanting to marry a prince” thing, but really, even to a ten-year-old, Charles didn’t seem like much of a catch.) Actually, her popularity is in my mind very similar to that of MJ. Whenever they would show a MJ related event where his fans were around (especially those super-crazy ones overseas) I could never understand what all the fuss was about. I mean, those people were fanatical…screaming and crying and waiting outside his hotel in the cold to catch a glimpse of him. What was all that about? I just never really got it. Same with Di. I admire anyone who uses their fame and resources to aid charitable causes, but otherwise, I never really gave her much thought. And while that may have been the case when she was alive, that certainly changed when she died. And that’s because I was living in London when it happened.

I was working for FSU’s London Study Centre. I had just arrived a few days before, and I was busy getting over jet-lag, settling in, meeting my new flat mates and coworkers, and getting things organized for the arrival of the next batch of students. I remember being asleep and hearing church bells ringing early in the morning. When I got out of bed a couple of hours later my flat mate told me that Princess Diana had died.

I’m sorry, MJ fans, but your outpouring of grief is nothing compared to what I witnessed in the UK. Maybe it’s because I’m not in Los Angeles or Gary, Indiana or Neverland or some other more MJ intensive locale. Maybe it’s because the UK is so very small compared to the vast United States, so the mourning was concentrated into a much smaller area. Whatever the case, the entire city (and country) was just at a complete loss. Just like in the last few days, I witnessed the same wall-to-wall, interruption-of-all-regularly-scheduled-programs news coverage. But, I also saw the madness in person out on the streets. I went out and walked around the city, and there were just so many places that people were mourning publicly. Over by Di’s residence, Kensington Palace, there were police officers everywhere, directing people out of the tube and into blocks-long lines to stream past the gates and leave their flowers and tokens. The piles of flowers, teddy bears, notes, and other items were huge (it is estimated that over a million bouquets were left there). Ditto at Buckingham Palace. At both Kensington and St. James Palaces, hundreds of thousands people waited in line to sign various condolence books.

Then there was the funeral itself (which I stayed inside for and watched on TV, like 2 1/2 billion other people) with the celebrities and the Elton John and the eulogies (including her brother striking out at her treatment over the years by both the press and the Royal Family) and the estimated 1 million people standing outside Westminster Abbey and along the route of the funeral procession. The entire country was at a standstill for that service. I’m interested how Michael’s final farewell is going to stack up.

Also, I hate songs with parenthesis in the title

So here is a weird thing that happened yesterday. I had to stop by my dentist’s office to pick up a copy of an old bill (blah blah blah, medical reimbursement, whatever). Anyway, the business next door to the dentist is an establishment that seems to offer car window tinting and stereo installation. There were a bunch of dudes standing around a car out back. I guess they had just put a new system in it, and they were trying to test it out. And, the method they chose to employ to do said test was to blast “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” by Michael Jackson at maximum volume. Now, this seemed odd at the time – that’s really not one of your better MJ tracks (in my opinion), and it’s also one you don’t generally happen across that often (couldn’t tell you the last time I heard it) – but it seems even weirder in retrospect. This was around lunchtime yesterday, which is when the paramedics were just showing up to MJ’s house, so it’s not like the car dudes knew he had kicked and were offering up some sort of parking lot tribute. Although, I do like the concept of that. “Man, did you hear? Michael Jackson is dead!” “No way dude, let’s go blast P.Y.T in the parking lot!”

Go USA

So, I finally got around to watching the US v. Spain game from yesterday’s Confederations Cup (I already knew the outcome, so I wasn’t in that much of a rush) Good game, even though now we have to play Brazil. Some thoughts:

1. How did Spain not score? They spent practically the whole game in the US’s penalty box.

2. That red card was nonsense. Bradley was totally going for the ball.

3. Landon Donovan performed one of the worst dives I have ever seen in my life. He brushed lightly past a Spain player with his shoulder, then randomly fell to the turf writhing like he had been kicked in the face or something. You are a bad actor, dude.

4. I used to totally hate Alexi Lalas, but I like him so much better since he shaved that thing off his face.

5. David-Villa was by far the prettiest thing on that field.

And, when I turned the DVR off, my TV was still on ESPN2 from the night before. They were showing something called Major League Lacrosse. Boston was playing Toronto. Since when do we have a professional lacrosse league?

huh?

You know, I was thinking that I hadn’t posted anything on the blog in a while and I should probably come up with something to say, when this happened:

So I stop off to get a bagel on the way to work this morning (a little Friday treat after going to the gym @ 6am). And now I notice that my previous entry also took place at a bagel place. Odd. Anway, I’m standing in line minding my own business when a guy comes in and gets in line behind me. I turn around and am confronted by this:

Now, I apologize for the complete crappiness of the photo but I while I was trying to take the picture I was having a bit of a struggle for the following reasons:

1. I didn’t want the dude to see that I was taking a picture because, well…awkward.
2. I was walking past him on my way out and couldn’t really stop, you know, for reason #1 (and which is the cause of the extreme blurriness. The subject was still, but I was in motion)
3. I didn’t bring my bag with me when I ran into the bagel place, so I was trying to snap a photo with my iphone (which is often tricky under ideal conditions) while also trying to hold onto my wallet, my bagel, a side of cream cheese, a cup of diet coke, and my keys

So really, you’re lucky to have any photographic evidence at all.

Now, since you can’t see his head in the photo, I will say for visualization purposes that he looked quite a bit like Tim Conway in the “Mrs. Wiggens” sketches on the Carol Burnett Show (and while that is a truly weird point of comparison, it is totally the first image that came into my mind when I saw him. That must have been lurking somewhere in the back of my head for quite some time. I haven’t seen or thought about the Carol Burnett Show in years – although I used to watch the reruns all the time as a kid. But, I certainly don’t know how that particular sketch remained in my brain. Oh another digression: as soon as the sketch popped into my mind, I could totally hear Tim Conway saying “Mrs. Wiggins” with that weird pronunciation, which is much the same way Stewie says “cool hwhip” in that episode of Family Guy. )

Anyway, back to the bagel shop. So the notable thing about this dude was not his similarity in appearance to a 70’s-era variety show sketch character, but rather the t-shirt he was wearing. And while you can’t make out what it says in the photo, you may be able to tell that it is airbrushed which I think just adds and extra layer of weirdness on top of the already weird layer that is the shirt’s message, which was: Lesbian trapped in a man’s body.

Yeah...that's just odd. On top of the whole cognitive dissonance (i.e. the shirt might make more sense on a frat boy than a guy who looks like a middle-aged accountant) what is he even trying to say with that? Is he trying to pick-up lesbians? Is he expressing solidarity with the sisters? Is he pointing out that he, like lesbians, enjoys sex with women? Really, it was just too much for me to parse at 7:30 on a Friday morning.

An open thank you note to the new bagel guy at Bruggers this morning

Dear New Bagel guy, 

Words cannot express my joy at arriving at work this morning to discover that the bagel you presented me with had actually been cut into 2 pieces of equal thickness.  It was a true pleasure to be able to place my bagel in the office toaster confident in the fact that I would not end up, as I have so many mornings,  with one thick, chewy, practically untoasted half and one thin, toasted hard-as-a-hockey-puck half.  Thank you so much for you diligence in performing correctly what is essentially the only task required of you.  I only wish your crooked-bagel-cutting colleagues would follow your shining example.  Keep up the good work.  Love, Zil

An open letter to the Denver Nuggets

Dear Nuggets,

Thanks for forcing me to have to root for the Magic.   Because while I don’t really like them at all, the Lakers truly bug me.  I’m tired of Phil Jackson and all his Zen master hoopla.  And also, shut up, Kobe.

It’s not the Lakers’ fault, really.  It’s the whole L.A. vibe that gripes me.  All those celebrities in the stands…so annoying.  Led by Jack Nicholson.  Oh Jack Nicholson, how did I manage to leave you off my irrational hatred list. You are definitely a member.  The way you wear sunglasses all the time.  You are inside, Jack.  I do not believe you have an eye condition that requires those. And the way you have become a parody of yourself.   You no longer have to act in films, you just have to act like Jack Nicholson.  (And that is a shame, because you are a fine actor and I do enjoy a number of your performances.  In fact, it is not your film performances that bother me. I’m just sick of seeing your mug in the audience at awards shows, where the host then has to call attention to how cool you are.)  Oh, and if you could date a woman near-ish to your own age for a change, that would be refreshing.

Oh, and back to you, Nuggets.  Thanks also for causing me to have to think more about Jack Nicholson than I would normally like to in a day.  Fortunately, I’m not planning on watching the games, so I won’t have to endure all the cuts to Jack sitting in the stands.  In his damn sunglasses.

I tried to think of a clever acronym for this post, but it was too much work

So I wandered off on a bit of a tangent at work today (just for a couple of minutes, I wasn’t squandering your tax dollars or anything). It started when I was trying to find some information about a bill someone mentioned in an email. The legislation was supposed to be about open textbooks and educational resources, which is related to a project I am working on. I found the bill (H.R. 1464, if you are interested). I also discovered that its official title is Learning Opportunities With Creation of Open Source Textbooks which acronym-philes will note spells out LOW COST. Clever.

This took me back to the day a while back when I stumbled across the fact that the Patriot Act is also an acronym (did you know that? I was shocked.) It's actually the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) So, in additional to any other problems I have with the Patriot Act (and there are many), I am now also really annoyed that they bent over backwards to make the title spell out something cute.

So I then poked around a little more and discovered that this is a thing. Apparently, your bill sucks unless the title spells out a cute acronym related to the content. (Talk about squandering your tax dollars. Someone has to think these things up, people. Isn't this what supervillians do in comic books and spy novels? Come up with catchy acronyms for their organizations of evil? SPECTRE, anyone?) For example: Electricity Needs Rules and Oversight Now Act (ENRON Act), Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM Act), Prevent Unfair Manipulation of Prices (PUMP Act), Curtailing Lobbyist Effectiveness through Advance Notification, Updates and Posting Act (CLEAN UP Act).

That last one is apparently from Sen. Barack Obama. Say it isn't so. No one is immune.

Except Barney Frank, God love him.