All right, see, this is what happens to me when I'm not trying to make anything happen: I was trying to drink a 7-Up Bite without spilling anything on my camera (it got quite sulky once when a drop of Seasons Iced Tea dripped on its zoom lever) when two young men came up to me and asked something while holding out a video camera to me. I assumed they were asking me to record them in front of something, which I was happy to do, but then they repeated the request, which was to figure out why the view screen drew a little disc in the ``No!'' circle-with-strike. Why they picked me I can't guess unless they were either guessing a scruffy young-ish white guy in sandals was probably from SIlicon Valley and therefore knew all technological foolishness, or a doughy foreigner barely in control of his bookbag, tripod, camera, and soda would be an easy wallet to lift (I'm neither), or I was the first guy who didn't have a vague excuse to move on (that I was).
Anyway, I couldn't figure anything out, although I was impressed by the menu for the video camera -- it presented the menu in this nice scrolling-wheel with a touch-screen -- but for all my fiddling I kept getting the No-Disc icon. I suggested maybe the recording disc was faulty and they should replace it, and they nodded, and asked me if I had any idea how to fix it. So I suggested maybe the CD they were recording to was faulty, and if they had another they could try that. They asked how I would fix it ... I pointed out there was a 7-Eleven right over there (a little to the right), and they probably have blank discs of the right size for their camcorder. Finally, I believe, they accepted that whatever the problem was, I couldn't fix it, although when I last saw them they weren't walking toward the 7-Eleven.
The Asian Games in Doha have wrapped up, and the part of Singapore shown on the evening news is bursting with pride at the results -- the 132 athletes came out with a total of 27 medals, twelve of them bronze, seven silver, and eight gold. That beats both the total record (17, set in Busan four years ago) and the gold medal record (five, set in the 1951 New Delhi games). Bowling champions Valerie Teo and Michelle Kwang (who scored the first gold medal for Singapore) managed a total of 2,671 pins knocked over in the course of the games. I don't know out of how many frames that is, though.
In a Japanese kitsch store I noticed they had a stuffed doll version of Lady, from And The Tramp fame; the doll was entirely yellow. The label billed it as ``Lemon-Scented Lady,'' which is either quirky beyond reason or good covering for a production error in the felt department.
Trivia: In December 1944 WABD, the DuMont network's station in New York City, moved from channel 4 to channel 5. Source: The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television, David Weinstein.
Currently Reading: The Pirate Coast, Richard Zacks.