If my kid were already out of her mommy’s tummy — and if we put her on her stomach (tho she’s too young for extended tummy time) — and laid her in the doorway of her bedroom — this is pretty much what she’d see, assuming a wide open aperture for her eyes in the golden hour of light. ;-)

It’s done.

Toast.

A relic now, consigned to the trash heap of internet history.  It’s a site that is part of the common language today, but will shortly prove to be a memory, and not a viable shopping option.

So long, and farewell.
EBay Is Planning to Emphasize Fixed-Price Sales Format Over Its Auction Model - NYTimes.com

Acknowledging that most online shoppers cannot be bothered with auctions, eBay plans Wednesday to announce changes to its fee structure that emphasize fixed prices over bidding. The move is intended to help eBay compete more effectively with Amazon .com and other big online retailers.

Because, sadly, I have time for no other posts today. . .

Less than two weeks to go before the final season premiere!  Here’s an interview with Michael Chiklis:

The Watcher - All TV, all the time | Chicago Tribune | Blog

It’s a high-strung role. It’s exhausting. Some roles are exhausting physically, some are exhausting mentally. Some are really devastating psychologically. [Vic] is all of that. You ever take a face cloth and soak it and wring it out? That’s me, at the end of the day. I’m a wrung-out washcloth. An overcooked noodle. I got home last night and I had to look at my words for today. And it’s a new [episode] so it’s particularly difficult when you’re starting a new [episode] in the middle of the week. You don’t have the weekend to shift focus.

In this week’s “So You’re Going to be a Parent for the First Time” class, we learned that there are three types of Cesarian Sections:

• Planned
• Unplanned
• Emergency

Surely, I can’t be the only one to see what’s wrong with that.  It’s not so much a linguistic issue as a logic one, isn’t it?

In other news: I watched a video of such an operation.  Ewwww.  I used to watch “Operation” on TLC back in my high school and college days.  My stomach is properly strengthened for that kind of video.  But, still.  Ewwww.

I’m not so sure I could watch one in person done to someone I know, though.

Anheuser-Busch Goes All Out as Sponsor of Final Season of FX’s ‘Shield’

The final season of “The Shield” — a show almost no major advertiser would touch when it debuted on FX in 2002 — is being sponsored by Anheuser-Busch.

Anheuser-Busch is one of FX’s biggest sponsors, spending between $5 million and $10 million annually on the cable network. It will be presenting the first three episodes of season seven of “The Shield” with limited commercial interruption, as well as the three episodes leading up to the finale. There won’t be any spots in those episodes for approximately the first 20 minutes.

I almost want to take up beer drinking now.

I’m excited by the thought of more DVDs right now.  That probably has to do with the fact that I have my surround sound system plugged in and operational once again. Now that I’m not living in a one bedroom condo with thin walls, I can blast some volume, fill some space, and watch movies with the kind of environment you’re supposed to enjoy them in.

That all said, I’ll never have the time to watch them.  But the excitement is there, and I enjoyed plugging a few DVDs in to hear them again.  (”The Rock” has the greatest soundtrack ever.)

Onto this week’s releases:

• Street Kings

Keanu Reeves plays an honest cop opposite the cop with political and power aspirations in Forrest Whitaker, who looks to be reprising his star turn from “The Shield.”  How he didn’t win an Emmy for that season is beyond me.  Wait, nevermind.  The Emmys are a joke.

• The Scorpion King 2

Hot on the heels of the failure of the third “Mummy” movie comes this spin-off sequel.  Even The Rock knew better than to reprise his role for this movie. This might be direct-to-DVD.

• Gossip Girl: The Complete First Season

It’s The CW’s last best hope for success.  That, and the 90210 series starting in the fall.

• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete First Season

If you had asked me a year ago, I would have confidently told you what a short-lived dud this series would be. Instead, it seems to be something of a success for FOX.  Go figure. The Terminator franchise is fast turning into one of the most convoluted and deep continuities in major media.  Usually, you need a comic book to last 100 issues to start filling in gaps like this.  Instead, there’s a TV series, three movies, and another new movie or two upcoming.  (Christian Bale stars in one. Perhaps he’ll be out of jail long enough to promote it, when the time comes.)

Next Week: “The Shield”, Season Six! The greatest drama on TV returns to DVD before the final season begins in September.

Julia Child was a spy.

I love real life more than fiction sometimes:

Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. […]
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.

Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in “The Godfather”; and Thomas Braden, an author whose “Eight Is Enough” book inspired the 1970s television series.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

Follow me over at Twitter.  Over 300 people do already! That’s more people than subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed.  Scary.

• I wish I could stay home tomorrow and read comics all day while waiting for furniture deliveries. My wife has all the fun. 

• Baby Class: Week Two ran really long tonight. My night hasn’t begun and it’s already over. I’m in pain.

• I’m too tired for Monday.

• I have high hopes for Tuesday this week. Feels like something might get done today. And, goshdarnit, people like me.

• Now that the painting and carpeting are done, it’s almost a shame to move everything into the house. Here comes the clutter!

• Anyone who follows more than 2000+ people and complains that Twitter thinks they’re silly deserve to be banned from the service.

• I can barely keep up with the 33 people I follow. . . 

• @gordontheintern - My #1 mission in life is to have everything ironed out before the last season of THE SHIELD begins. Oh, and the baby.

And now, the IKEA Chronicles of last weekend:

• Proof I’m barking mad — it’s 11:00 p.m. and I’m now going to put together an IKEA kitchen table. Go, caffeine!

• I don’t know about this, IKEA. These chairs seem awful flimsy. I’m sure these screws and awful metal screwdriver thing will set it, though.

• Oh, goody. Now I get to use a power tool!

• Last chair to build. Time to blast Jonathan Coulton’s “IKEA” at top volume.

• “IKEA. . . selling furniture for college kids and divorced men.” Uh oh.

• Ouch. I have a blister where the bent-angle screwdriver thing twisted around and around. Painful. (Still not healed, five days later.)

It’s a television-on-dvd week.  The movie people seem to be sleeping off their “The Dark Knight” hangover.  Let’s look at three interesting TV show releases:

• Caroline in the City: Complete First Season

Wow, I had just about forgotten about that show.  Maybe they really are running out of TV shows to put on DVD, after all. . .

• Tru Calling: The Complete Season

Just in case that new “Dollhouse” show does well, here’s where Eliza Dushku last struck out on her own for a series. . .  I can’t believe this hasn’t been out on DVD before. Has it?

• The Wire: Season 5

Someday, I really hope to see this series. Someday. . .

In the meantime, I’ve getting very excited for the return of THE SHIELD for its final season next month!

The wife and I took our tour of the maternity ward at the hospital our baby will be born in less than two months from now.  Two points:

1. While in labor, gravity is your friend.  The mother should spend hours changing positions in ways that will allow the baby to naturally fall into the pelvis at the right time.

2. While in an empty room in the maternity area, the nurse pointed us to something that would make the fathers-to-be happy.  The guy next to me said, “a PlayStation?”

3. Brainstorm: Wii Bowling for pregnant woman.  All of the fun, and good for the baby, too! The natural swinging motion. The slight bend over.  The leg stretches.  What better way to bring a baby into this world than with a 200+ game of Wii Sports Bowling?

Somehow, I doubt my wife will go for that.

* Those aisles between cubes — are they “hallways?”  “Aisles”?  “Rows”?  “Narrow strips of land surrounded by bland mediocrity?”

* Someone at work sneezed the other day and literally said “ACHOO” as she did it.  I mean, you could hear the enunciation in her voice.  Odd.

And so another season is in the books.  Sadly, I didn’t get to watch much of the last three weeks while I was busy setting up the new house, but something struck me:

Reality shows have a general arc they follow. In the first season, everything is ne and exciting.  Over the next couple of years, the format shifts subtly and everything gets ramped up a notch.  Everything becomes bigger and bolder and, theoretically, better.  Pretty soon, people catch on to the tricks.  The show moves so far away from its original mission statement that it’s practically a new show that merely catches shadows of the original. And the downhill slide begins.

“So You Think You Can Dance,” on the other hand, is maintaining an upward trajectory. The show hasn’t had a misstep yet.  There’s been no major shift in the formula.  Sure, they may shift partners earlier or add new dance styles or give the votes to the viewers sooner, but it’s basically the same show.  Same set.  Same judges.

And it works.  Every season has gotten better and better.  And this season was so packed full of talented dancers that when the best dancer in the series’ history got voted out by America a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t that big a blow to the show.  There were still plenty of capable dancers left.  There were no slackers in there.

That said, the show may have to pull back a little next season.  They’re overworking the contestants. Two went to the hospital over the weekend.  There’s just too much stuff happening.  Perhaps they should back off the two hour episodes with two routines each week.  Let the show shrink to an hour and a half or even an hour.  Give the contestants’ bodies a chance to cope.

Still, it’s a great show.  I thought the second place finisher would be the big winner this season, but I was wrong.  Oh, well.

Mary Murphy couldn’t keep up at top speed with the dancers on the show, but Nigel was very cute with the kids from the Debbie Allen Dance Academy.  And the pop-and-lock competition was really cool, though my wife found it boring.
Can’t wait for next season. . .

Just got this from Amazon:

“In September, gift certificates will no longer be available as a disbursement option for sellers. This disbursement change applies to all sellers and is not a reflection of your seller eligibility.

“As a seller who has used the gift certificate disbursement option in the past, we want to be sure that you are aware of this upcoming change and take the necessary action to avoid any disbursement disruptions.”

And with that, eBay becomes a viable selling option again.  I use the money from the stuff I sell on Amazon to buy new stuff on Amazon.  It’s a great way to budget my money and a nice way to hide it from my wife. ;-)

I haven’t sold anything on Amazon recently, but I was thinking of putting a few books up there in the coming weeks to put towards future Amazon purchases. If I go through eBay, I’ll rake in less money thanks to PayPal deductions, and that money won’t be available for Amazon purchases. I’d have to buy those comics through a dealer who accepts PayPal.  That ain’t Amazon, who keep feebly attempting to create their own PayPal and failing.

Bad move, Amazon.

Finally, Disney gives diabetes some attention!

FOXNews.com - Nick Jonas Launches Type 1 Diabetes Awareness Campaign

Pop superstar Nick Jonas is already an inspiration to the millions of teens and ‘tweens’ who hang on every lyric sung by his band the Jonas Brothers.

But Jonas, who suffers from type 1 diabetes, hopes a three-year partnership he’s created with Bayer HealthCare will serve as an inspiration to others living with this disease.

I haven’t compiled these in weeks.  My bad.  My very very bad.  Let’s look at some of the highlights.  As always, you can follow my daily Tweets at Twitter.com/augiedb.

• I’d be lost at Comic-Con anymore. I wouldn’t recognize all the big Hollywood stars people keep blogging that they ran into. I’m a lost cause

• Please don’t leave me a 30 second voice mail with your phone number AT THE END. Lead with it, so I can go back and hear again quickly.

• NBC is posting videos of their TV Comic-Con panels to their website. Nuke the fridge, baby. . . 

• So very very tired. Will the madness never end? (It still hasn’t.)
  

• So, to sum up San Diego — bad weather for flights out on Wednesday. More bad weather for flights back Sunday. Glad I didn’t go. I think. (Nah, I still wish I was there.)
  

• Ugh. Mondays. Someone should do a comic strip about this feeling. Perhaps starring a fat cat. UGH 

• Oooh, Lightroom 2.0 is now out. And only a $99 upgrade. Yay!

• Need to get my act together and buy the Lightroom 2.0 upgrade, stat! I have hundreds of pics that need processing, and cataloging!  (Still haven’t bought it.  I’m lame.)

• My new drug of choice: Home Depot. Stopping there makes me want to rewire the whole house, and then replace random flooring elements. 

• Back to ironing while watching “Don’t Forget the Lyrics.” (Honestly, that was the first TV show I watched after a full week of not watching anything while trying to get the new house in order.  It felt so good.)

• Done painting for the day. Now I have to troubleshoot the system that’s failing at work. I’m not sure which is worse.

• Troubleshooting is easy when NOBODY REPLIES TO YOUR QUESTIONS! ::sigh:: Thankfully, it can wait till tomorrow. It kinda has to. (And the next day, I discovered the trouble was with me, not the systems. Oh, cruel fate. . .)

• ‘Dark Knight’ made almost $45 million again this weekend, it’s THIRD weekend of release. Most movies would beg for that opening. Awesome.

• Monday. UGH. Wonder if I could get a book deal writing “VariousAndSundry.com Without Augie”? Or did that Garfield book ruin that market?

• Successfully completed first week of baby training class. It’s like watching ALIEN all over again, but with a human head. . . 

• I was in a class with 10 pregnant women, all of whom wanted a rain check after seeing the birthing video.

• And everything is the man’s fault, of course! We are pure evil.

• I don’t need sleep — I need more time to do stuff. Crap. Rest wins again.

• Sometimes, no matter how much you think you have your stuff together, you just run later than you wanted to. Argh

• I love that “FAQ” is used in things like printed promotional brochures, not just the internet. I’m a geek