The Daily Grill

The Slolympics Pre-Show

The Olympics in Beijing haven't even started yet and already the media rampup seems to be running out of interesting things to talk about. Today's thrilling tale of "target panic" (a kind of pre-mature release among archers) in the NYTimes is enough to make you want to make sure your Tivo is set to block ever capturing the archery competition even by accident. Makes me wonder what's next. Baton blisters in the 400 meter relay? Nipple burn on the uneven parallel bars? Or maybe that most feared affliction of all, internaphobia -- fear of being cornered by Jay Leno's Ross the Intern for a barrage of inanities.

myPhone

I may be bad rapping the deal I got on my new iPhone 3G but I stilll wrote this sketch about a guy who is entirely fixated on his new baby. As performed by my good friends in the Fries On The Side group in Los Angeles.

Ript Oft

Having dropped and broken my first generation iPhone a few days ago, and desperate for a replacement, I didn't read the fine print on the ads for the new 3G flavor. So it wasn't until I stood in line for an hour and had to settle for the 8 gig model that I found out the "great" price of $199 ($299 on the 16 gig model) only applies to those who aren't already part of the AT&T fold. With another year left on my previous contract, my customer loyalty was rewarded by having to pay full freight -- $399 -- for the smaller model. A full $200 more. If I wasn't a pre-existing AT&T schlemiel, I could have bought TWO new iPhones for the price I got slammed with. Made me feel like when I bought the first iPhone a year earlier, only to have Apple yank the price down two months later. Since my earlier phone was broken, I had no real choice -- c'mon, I'm not going to get some other phone at this point -- but to suck it up and plunk down the extra money. The only satisfaction is being able to rant about it online. And that, my friends, is small satisfaction indeed.

Grunt Zappers

It's finally coming out that a few of the casualties -- and countless injuries -- caused during the ongoing War In Iraq® have been due to hundreds of fires at US military installations. Fires caused by crappy electrical work performed by private contractors from the United States is apparently to blame. According to a story in today's NYTimes, soldiers in one housing unit in Baghdad were complaining of getting electric shocks on an almost daily basis. This problem, which has been running silently rampant since the troops moved into Iraq, was finally brought to light when the family of Green Beret Ryan Maseth demanded an explanation of how he was electrocuted while taking a shower. When it turned out that faulty grounding was the culprit, that flipped the switch on all the other problems the military had been hiding. Talk about friendly (electrical) fire.