Oscar the Adults-Only Grouch

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The original Sesame Street episodes are being released to DVD (Vol. 1, Vol. 2)…just don’t show ’em to your kids.

According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

What?

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

I’ll freely admit to leaning to the left politically and socially, but this level of über-sensitive, overwrought ‘Political Correctness’ is absolutely ridiculous.

Were I ever to have kids (or spend some time babysitting any nieces or nephews — consider yourselves warned, Kev and Emily, Noah’s in trouble with me!), I’d be more than happy to give ’em a full dose of Sesame Street and the Muppets both (that is, during one of the few times we plopped ’em down in front of the TV instead of with a book or a game or outside play or other such things).

This world just gets weirder and weirder some days.

(via /.)

Missed One…

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Well, that’s a mild bummer — I missed posting yesterday. Took a test in the morning before school (it was posted online at 6:30am), went to school, came home, had lunch with the girl, went to work, came home, had dinner with the girl, and went to bed. Somehow managed to completely forget about posting…and there goes the one-a-day streak.

Well, I’d already missed Nov. 1st, since I didn’t start this project ’til the 2nd. Guess I’ll go for 28 out of 30 days.

Turtle Butt

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Sea Turtle

Sea Turtle, originally uploaded by djwudi.

In lieu of actually posting anything truly interesting, I give you one of my favorite shots from our trip to Hawaii this summer (no, I’m still not done working my way through all of them). Prairie and I were snorkeling early in the morning at Carlsmith Beach Park in Hilo, and had brought along a little disposable film waterproof camera. As we floated along, we were joined by a couple of sea turtles, cruising their way through the coral reef and finding their breakfast.

Ask Your Doctor For A Reason to Take It

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Prairie and I have been alternately amused and appalled at the never ending onslaught of prescription drug commercials. Actually, it would be more accurate to characterize us as appalled and amused: appalled when yet another one pops up (as we find the whole idea more than a little sleazy — medicines should be prescribed by doctors, not self-prescribed on the basis of a thirty-second overgeneralized list of symptoms), and amused at the seemingly endless list of ever more disturbing sounding side effects. With most of these, it doesn’t take long at all before we decide that we’d prefer to just live with whatever issue the drug is supposed to alleviate rather than risk the side effects.

Apparently (and thankfully), we’re not the only ones watching these ads with more than a little distaste. Consumer Reports is starting what’s intended to be a series of video/weblog posts analyzing these DTC (“direct-to-consumer”) ads.

The problem with such “direct-to-consumer,” or DTC, advertisements is that they may generate excessive demand because people go straight to their doctors asking for this or that specific medication. In a 2006 survey by our National Survey Research Center, 78 percent of doctors said that patients asked them at least occasionally to prescribe drugs they had seen advertised on television, and 67 percent said they sometimes did so. And don’t expect the ad barrage to let up. While Congress recently gave the FDA more authority to regulate ads, it rejected a measure that would have allowed the agency to place a moratorium on ads for new drugs that raise safety concerns. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world (the other is New Zealand) where such ads are legal.

The first entry of the series looks at an ad for a drug intended to treat RLS, or “restless leg syndrome.”

That condition may sound fanciful, but it’s a real problem. Something like 3 percent of Americans suffer from RLS, which is characterized by an uncontrollable impulse to keep moving your legs even when you are trying to go to sleep—which obviously could make sleep difficult.

Several years ago, doctors discovered that drugs that were originally developed to treat Parkinson’s disease could provide meaningful help to people who suffered from moderate to severe forms of this condition. But the drugs have serious side effects – one of the more bizarre involves a propensity for uncontrolled sexual or gambling impulses, as our video mentions. And while these medications may provide welcome relief to some RLS patients, the ads could leave anyone who ever suffered fidgetiness when trying to go to sleep to wonder whether he or she has RLS and should seek treatment.

Now, while Prairie and I are reasonably sure (though without any actual medical diagnosis) that there’s a chance that I have a mild case of RLS, in my case, it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with via a few relatively simple measures (a king-size bed, separate sets of sheets so I don’t yank hers off when I kick, and a guest bed for the really bad nights). Besides, the list of potential side effects in the ads themselves were enough to scare me away from even remotely considering the drugs to ‘treat’ RLS…and that was before I watched the Consumer Reports entry.

Kudos to Consumer Reports for starting this series. Hopefully it reaches beyond simply preaching to the choir.

I do have to admit to a little curiosity about what they might say about Panexa (acidachrome promanganate), though…. ;)

PANEXA is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion. For patients with coronary heart condition (CHC) or two separate feet (2SF), the dosage of PANEXA should be doubled to ensure that twice the number of pills are being consumed. PANEXA can also be utilized to decrease the risk of death caused by not taking PANEXA, being beaten to death by oscelots, or death relating from complications arising from seeing too much of the color lavender. Epileptic patients should take care to ensure tight, careful grips on containers of PANEXA, in order to secure their contents in the event of a seizure, caused by PANEXA or otherwise.

I’m a Winner!

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My job handles product training through a training site called Cyberscholar, which offers prizes as one of the incentives for completing various training modules. I’ve been good-naturedly grousing (well, some days more good-naturedly than others) that while I’ve been doing Cyberscholar training for quite some time now, even going beyond what’s required to do training on other products (some of which we sell, some that we don’t), I’ve yet to win a prize. This was occasionally even more frustrating when I’d hear about other local employees who’d won prizes after doing just a small handful of modules, while I’d been plugging my way through for most of the two years I’ve been with the company.

Canon ChairHowever, my streak has ended! I’m now the proud amused owner of a Canon Rebel (“Official Camera of the NFL”) folding chair!

Of course, I shoot Nikon, not Canon, the only football I have any interest in is the kind that’s played with a round ball, and it’s not nearly as impressive as the 30D that another employee won, or the 58″ HD LCD TV that another employee won…

…but I won! And hey, free chair, right? Always good to have in the trunk when Prairie and I take one of our little camping mini-breaks.

Plus, I can hope that this is the end of my unlucky streak, and there’ll be a high-end camera, TV, or other such goodie heading my way in no time! :)

Dollhouse

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BCloud, here:

What do you think of Joss Whedon’s new upcoming TV show “Dollhouse”?

I know you’ve watched Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, liked all of them (as far I as can remember) and I thought it was “weird” that you didn’t mention the news.

Are on the skeptic type trying not get too excited about it, or do you think this could be Joss’ good chance to hit another cult series?

I’m definitely curious. As you pointed out, it’s no secret that I tend to count myself among the many Joss Whedon fans out there, so this news definitely caught my interest (especially as it involves Eliza, who I don’t at all mind keeping an eye on)…though at the time, I just tossed it into my ‘Eclinkticism’ sidebar.

Since there’s not much information out there right now, though, I’m pretty much leaving it to simple curiosity at the moment. Besides, what with work and school, I can’t even keep up with the TV shows I’d like to watch right now (Heroes, Pushing Daisies, The Amazing Race), let alone shows that aren’t even on the air yet!

The Nerd Handbook

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While as with any broad overview of a particular genus or species, there is plenty of room for small or even large variations at the individual level (I myself lean a bit more towards the social side of the scale than what’s described here, though that is in large part the product of many years of practice), this field guide to understanding the common nerd should be required reading for many, many people, especially those involved with, living with, dating, or parenting nerds (also most varieties of dork or geek).

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

It’s unlikely that this project is a nerd’s day job because his opinion regarding his job is, “Been there, done that”. We’ll explore the consequences of this seemingly short attention span in a bit, but for now this project is the other big thing your nerd is building and I’ve no idea what is, but you should.

At some point, you, the nerd’s companion, were the project. You were showered with the fire hose of attention because you were the bright and shiny new development in your nerd’s life. There is also a chance that you’re lucky and you are currently your nerd’s project. Congrats. Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention. This handbook might help.