You know what bothers me?

The 'Just For Men' commercial where they say "Let the real you come through", then encourage you to hide the real you by coloring your hair.

That's just stupid.

All of the other commercials irritate me just slightly less. Not enough monkeys in commercials anymore.

What doesn't bother me? The O'Jimmies are in 2nd place ... our high-water mark for season. (Of course, Josh Hamilton strained his wrist tonight swinging @ the on-deck circle. ?!?)

Hey. Welcome.

Of all the teachers I had in nearly 20 years of school, the one that I remember the best was (maybe not surprisingly) one of the last ... Tetsuya Theodore Fujita. Dr. Fujita had a fascinating and exceptionally productive life. His skillful reconstruction of severe weather events (tornadoes, microbursts, hurricanes) through aerial photography greatly increased the understanding of these phenomena. By the time I made it to the University of Chicago, Dr. Fujita was winding down. He had quit taking on doctoral students and IMO was being edged further to the fringes of a faculty that was shifting, or had shifted from, away from the observationally-based research (e.g., Horace Byers, Roscoe Braham) that had built the department's reputation. He still had his lab and he still had a small staff and I never detected even a trace of bitterness re: his status as he entered into his last decade of life in 1988.

He was, by far, the most human of all the U of C faculty, at least from the perspective of this lowly grad student.

He tended to speak in proverbs; and the ones he enjoyed the most popped up frequently in his classes on satellite meteorology. My two favories were:

1. "My way's better. What you think?" - The brilliance of this was he truly believed his way was better, but he was just insecure enough to want some nobody grad student to acknowledge it.
2. "Monkey write Shakespeare. You no write Shakespeare." - The theory here was the long-standing concept that 1,000 monkeys sitting at 1,000 computer terminals, over 1,000 centuries ... would eventually randomly write something brilliant. Dr. Fujita didn't think my odds were as good as the monkeys (follow link for my all-time favorite commercial - the "pointer" one).

So, as I start this blog, I do not set out to beat the monkeys. There probably won't be anything that approachs the brilliance of Shakespeare, let alone the brilliance of that monkey commercial. It will likely be a rather vanilla recounting of events/issues/things that I find interesting. Per the name, I intend for it to be cheery as well. There's enough depressing stuff on the internet. If nothing else, it'll be good mental exercise to write.