Viva España!

Germany 0-1 Spain

This guy is selling his entire life on eBay.

Seriously. My favorite part is that his friends "were willing to be introduced to the highest bidder." Those are some deep, meaningful friendships he has right there. I'm seething with jealousy.

More soaring

And thanks to Mum for finding this one:

Aaaaand... still soaring

Trying to ignore people passing you on the sidewalk is pretty dumb.

Here is an exercise in futility if I've ever seen one. I'm walking on a sidewalk, and there's a person coming towards me on the same sidewalk. For some reason, I decide, "Nah, I'd rather not acknowledge that I see them." So I desperately try to feign ignorance - I stare at the ground, or I suddenly become supremely captivated by that cloud formation, or I get the urge to look - no, stare - at my watch, even though I know exactly what time it is. My favorite though, is when I just stare straight ahead as they pass. That gives the impression that, if the person passing me said hello, I would suddenly turn and look at him, completely startled, and say, "Oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there." Right.

Heaven forbid we bump into each other once in a while.

Riccardo Chailly and Martha Argerich: young and old

How cool is this?!

Young: Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3
Old: Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto

Still soaring...

More (moar?) on soar

I found this on NPR.org this morning. I rest my case:

P.S. To those news agencies guilty of using such hackneyed language, here is a list of alternatives, courtesy of my industrious mum, courtesy of Thesaurus.com. You're welcome:

aggrandize, amplify, augment, boost, build, build up, burgeon, enlarge, escalate, expand, extend, grow, magnify, mount, multiply, proliferate, rise, run up, snowball, swell, upsurge, wax

The soaring popularity of the verb "soar"

I don't recall a single instance in the last... six months or so in which I read an article or heard a newscaster report on the price of gasoline or oil or food without seeing or hearing the word "soar." It seems the only thing they are able to do is soar. They can't skyrocket or rise or grow. Only soar. I wish that, just once, somebody would use a different verb in that context.

A conflict of [televised] interest

So last night I was watching one of my favorite movies, Ocean's Eleven, on TV. Whatever channel it was one had one of those "series" in which they play various movies under that series name that may or may not have some loosely connected theme with one another. This one was called the "Make a Difference" series or something like that. Anyway, at the commercial break the announcer said, "This 'Make a Difference' series presentation of Ocean's Eleven is brought to you by UNICEF."

...UNICEF? Seriously? A movie about robbing casinos is sponsored by an organization which feeds starving children? ...Ok.