Choose your words carefully.

This morning as per my routine, I was driving our exchange student to school and listening to the radio.  It's always a choice between Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw (a humorous morning show on a rock station) or KPBS radio broadcasting NPR.  Today NPR won, and I'm both glad and bothered that it did.

For a long time I've been a fan of NPR because they are sticklers for journalistic excellence and avoid the AM talk radio tendency to be very partisan and loud.  Also, it relaxes me and I get to sound like I know what's going on in the world without reading.  The reason that I'm bothered that I was listening today is, that I heard evidence that they are not as unbiased as I previously thought.

The topic was the purchasing of 'toxic assets' by private investors for a fraction of their value with the federal government being 'on the hook' for the 'lion's share'.  I use quotes here because those were the actual phrases used in context.  They also spoke of how the American people are angry, at executives at corporations like AIG getting paid bonuses with the bailout money, reporting that "Obama is sensitive" to the feelings of the American people, but that we can't legislate out of anger.

All of these quotes showing a degree of bias, but I didn't really catch them until the reporter slipped in calling it a "bank bailout", catching himself and correcting it to "federal economic rescue plan".  At that point it was just too obvious to ignore anymore.  Anytime the same 'stimulus' package was referred to when Bush was in office, it was called a bank bailout, emphasizing the one's profiting from the money were banks and bank executives.  Now, it's no longer a bank bailout, but a 'rescue plan'.

It's about connections little or big.

For my Birthday this year, we went to Disneyland. Kind of strange choice for me because it's one of my least favorite places. I know, I know. I must be dead inside for not loving Disneyland. But I have been rehabilitated by this trip.

This past Halloween our family went with Ben and Sharon and their respective spouses and children with the plan to go two days, and stay at a hotel near the park. When we went to get our tickets I was sticker shocked at the price. We went back figuring that there must be some mistake and asked if there were CA - resident discounts. There weren't for two-day tickets, but the low end annual passes had a CA resident discount that were cheaper than the two-day park hopper passes. So we got those. That set a bad mood for that trip, but setup my best day yesterday.

This year Disneyland is giving free passes for people that come for their birthday. In addition to getting the free admission, you get a button that you wear that says your name and that it's your birthday. Terry went on his birthday this year (we missed it GRRRR, but that's a rant for another time), and they also have annual passes. So he got a voucher for the price of admission that could be used to upgrade his annual pass, or just buy a bunch of stuff in the park. Which brings me to why I decided to spend my special day in on of my least favorite places. Free money.

Spending money in the park is something that I was brought up to not do. We always took our lunches, and would NEVER buy souvenirs. With ten children, my parents were prudent with money out of necessity. Ten kids means, ten tickets. Add to that ten lunches, ten souvenirs, ten ice creams ... you get the idea. The idea of having free money to spend in the park was a very exciting prospect to me. It turns out it was the right choice.

On to the day. Meg drove up the night before to Hesperia with the two younger boys so that her mom wouldn't have to drive. I stayed at home to take our exchange students to school, and brought the older boys to the park. This was great. For 4 hours (the drive up to the park and a little while in the park) I got to have my boys to myself and just be 'the world's greatest dad'. I pretty much let them run the show during this time. We went to Toon Town and did everything there first. Then we took the train to TomorrowLand where I bought my first EVER D-Land souvenir. A light saber and some carmel corn! Also, while on the train, I checked all the emails that were piling up on my phone. The majority of them were from Facebook friends wishing me a Happy Birthday. It was a little thing for each of them to do, but all together it added up to a lot of attention and love from people that I care for. But back to the events.

We saw the "Jedi Accademy" which was so much fun too see. Little kids are the best entertainment. My boys love "Star Wars" and when we go back for Sean's birthday, we are definitely going to get them into the show. Then it was Buzz Lightyear.

By this time, the Fowler women caught up with us. Mom was so great about letting it be my day and insisted that we only go onto rides that I wanted to go on. She also bought me lunch in the park, another luxury that was appreciated.

From here I'll just say, many rides were gone on and much fun was had for the rest of the time in the park. Every ride that we went on, the attendent would wish me a happy birthday. I would just say thanks slightly shyly, but it made me smile every time. A few times there were othere people in the park with the Birthday badge who would wish me a happy birthday by name. Even though we were complete strangers and still are, we have this silly little connection of sharing a birthday and choosing to celebrate it at Disneyland. Those tiny interactions were nice too.

To end of the day: I got to see some of my oldest friends at the park that I haven't really gotten to see in years. Throughout the day they were dotting our trip. At one ride, Meg and Terry were at separate parts in the line. The way the lines double back on each other they passed each other from time to time, and Meg decided that Grandad Terry needed to take Andrew, but there was a row between them. A nice older woman in a wheelchair passed him over. In line at another ride, I saw her and pointed her out to Meg saying that she looked like a nun because she had a black hood, and a white hat, that combined to make her look like well, a nun. But I didn't recognize her then either. But after we got off the ride, and were trying to get in touch with Elise, this woman in the wheelchair rolled by with her group, and I heard my name. It was the Wilcken family. A family that was in my ward and stake from the time I was 5 until I went on my mission, but Meg had never met Sister Wilcken and wouldn't have recognized her. We had a fun little chat catching up, and it was the perfect end to a really nice day.

I want my BIG BANG THEORY!

My favorite thing to do with my clothes on is watch TV. Sad I know, but it's the only hobby I have and it makes me laugh. Since we got At&t Uverse complete with HD programming and a DVR (which is amazing) the wife and I have become more and more addicted to our shows. There are two however that she has given up that I just can't seem to get out of the habit of watching. Heroes and Lost.

She records them anyway because she's a wonderful woman and I like a wonderful husband don't watch them at home. I watch them on Hulu. What's that you say? Haven't heard of Hulu? hulu.com has a bunch of prime-time shows along with a bunch of old TV shows available for viewing for free with minimal advertising. Instead of sitting through 2-3 minutes of commercial breaks like on normal TV, the breaks are at most 30 seconds, and placed appropriately where they would be if you were watching on regular TV. True, I could watch the recorded show and fast forward through the commercials all together, but this is steering me away from the point that I want to make.

That point is this. The folks at CBS are MORONS. They are idiots that haven't caught up to the fact that in this day and age of instant gratification and immense availability, television shows are going to be watched through a myriad of venues with or without commercials. If you go to hulu.com you can see most of what NBC puts out. If you go to ABC.com you can see most of what they do. Both are with minimal commercial interruption. People HATE commercials. Sure they are the lifeblood that drives this capitalist society, but they are annoying and non-entertaining. Furthermore, both NBC and ABC have full episodes to watch. They've figured out the format.

CBS on the other hand is either way behind the curve or filled with execs that have their heads so far up..... I'll stop there. First, there are no full episodes available to watch. I wouldn't care except I've gotten hooked on two "Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother". Instead they have 'clips' for these shows that are 2 min long. To watch them you have to sit through a 15 - 30 sec commercial. Do the Math people! The proportion of show to commercial is 1/4th. It probably doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're not getting a full show even, it's very much not worth it.

All I can figure is that the advertisers are paying a lot less for this avenue than what's being paid for hulu or abc ads. There's a good reason, no-one is watching them, so they're not reaching the audience. Essentially wasting your money. I'm not sure who's the bigger idiots, CBS for not catching up to the times, or the advertisers who are still willing to pay.