KonaCam #1 takes a picture every minute, although it skips some minutes more or less randomly. Here is the picture from 3:05 this afternoon; Kona was sleeping at home and I was at work. The dog walker was not scheduled for today.

And here is the next picture on the KonaCam, taken automatically at 3:07. Notice anything different?

It is therefore odd that my father has chosen to post a video he found about the correct way to tie one's shoelaces:

This was a weird show, coming as it did on a Friday night on heels of a monstrous pair of blizzards that shut down most of the city for a week. And it was in a shiny new concert hall in suburban Maryland, which oddly enough is the home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I say oddly because Bethesda is a suburb of Washington, not Baltimore, which is forty miles away. So we had a huge hall, with three ranks of balconies, and a fairly bedraggled crowd. Vega and Cohn are both veteran performers, and each did a competent set, but only the penultimate encore, when Vega and her guitarist came out to join Cohn and his guitarist in a Cohn-arranged version of The Only Living Boy in New York, was completely moving.

And the show made me sad, because Mark Cohn has an enchanting voice, but his muse is clearly an intermittent one. He even said, introducing his new album of other people's music, that otherwise he would only be in the studio once a decade. Maybe that's why he seemed a little bitter, in general. It must be difficult to have a few big hits, to have a certain level of success, but to have spent many years knowing you're probably not going to get all the way back to that level, and that you don't quite deserve to on your merits. I hope he does turn some corner, find something that works for him.

But I'm still addicted to the news blurbs on the front page. Google news doesn't substitute. NY Times front page doesn't substitute. Nothing can fulfill this craving except six to eight short headlines and a touch of celebrity gossip or news of the weird.

And it's changed over time, usually not for the better, but I'm still stuck there. The best was when there were always, I think, six headlines, and the last one was some kind of light-hearted human interest item. They've stopped doing that, but plugged in a few more columns of junk. The top left part with the rotating pictures is terrible, but it has brain-dead-magazine-cover-type lists that I'm utterly helpless to not click on. Six ways to reduce your mortgage. Ten cars to avoid. Five foods with more anti-oxidants. I probably even learn one useful fact for every ten or twenty lists I read.

But make no mistake, the (mostly outsourced and syndicated) writing and the editing and the journalism is all terrible. Here's an especially cringeworthy excerpt, from this morning's article, Best and Worst 2010 Cars:

... Plus, with only 25.7 to 51.3 cubic feet of cargo space, [the Honda Accord Crosstour] doesn’t provide much utility. [...]

[The Dodge Caliber] looks bold and provides a respectable 18.5 to 48 cubic feet of cargo room, but is marked by subpar interior materials ....

Update: The editorial team outdoes itself by including this AP "news" item seemingly headlined and written by a publicist:

Brilliant designer Alexander McQueen found dead

LONDON – Brilliant and controversial British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead in his London home Thursday, his company said ... McQueen's sudden death robbed the fashion scene of one of its most innovative and successful young designers. His clothes were sexy and distinctive, dramatic and different, perfect for red-carpet presentations and late night rock gatherings.

...His pieces were coveted and treasured by stylish women across the globe....

During the period last summer that I only had one working arm, various people came to help take care of things. So I thought it would be useful to label some of the kitchen cabinets and drawers for them.

Of course, I wanted to warn them about the monster threat.

Little did I know that we would soon, indeed, suffer from a monster infestation.

It only got worse from there.

A few weeks later, we had houseguests on their way back from some sort of national high school Latin competition. They found the label maker ....

Apparently Aqua is Latin for faucet.

Meanwhile, the monster was still lurking. And sometimes, there were victims.

The Latin peoples were no strangers to monsters either.